Chapter Two
Request
Ensign Hoshi Sato had sat down moments before for an especially early morning breakfast in the Mess Hall when Tia Anlor approached her. "Vascan Sato, pli Li tuvi fuur kisnan?" She said it in Auran, but Hoshi knew she meant 'Ensign Sato, may I you with speak?' The young woman appeared extremely apprehensive.
"Of course." She answered, pronouncing it 'Suu tiik'; pushing out a chair beside her. "Fiw mis." Hoshi continued, inviting her to 'sit down'. She surreptitiously reached into the pocket of her uniform and switched on the UT she carried.
In the moment it took the woman to get settled, Hoshi regarded her. Tia had been aboard since yesterday.
The young Auran was slight, barely an inch over 5 feet tall, which made her even smaller than Hoshi. But where Hoshi had the olive complexion of her Asian heritage, Tia was golden. Not gold/blonde, nor the golden tan so striven for and prized by 'beach bunnies' even today, nor truly golden as if dipped in gold. Rather, the gold in her tinted her flesh the way human's red blood colored theirs.
On her world, natural selection and evolution had led to all life being based not on iron rich blood as on Earth, but on gold. Where the metal did not normally lend itself to bonding with oxygen, in her race it did, being of a different nature that only Phlox understood properly.
Phlox had explained it to them; something about a trinary bond, where an atom linked with both gold and oxygen, almost as if the latter 'piggybacked' for the ride through her bloodstream. T'Pol had understood; Hoshi did not. To her, it seemed an unnecessarily complex system for evolution to come up with. But the fact was that the young woman's complexion took on the tint of gold where human skin would adopt the pinkness imparted to it by red blood. Even her long hair, which reached past the middle of her back, and the irises of her eyes were golden, and Hoshi had to admit that the effect was quite attractive indeed.
But it was that very golden nature that led to her being aboard Enterprise. Her world of Aura had been conquered decades ago by a race known as the Silurians, who 'harvested' their slaves for the gold that they could acquire. Tia and her friends, after lives of cold-blooded abuse, had hijacked a ship and escaped, only to be hunted down by a Silurian warship. The crew had been killed in the attack on their ship, though Tia had survived to be found by Enterprise and rescued. Learning that there had been a survivor on the stolen ship, the Silurians had returned and demanded her return. Vastly outmatching the Enterprise, the Silurians had the power to back up their demand until Captain Archer had hit on the logical solution.
They had 'bought' her from the avaricious race, using matter re-sequenced gold to pay a stunning 150 kilos of the 'valuable' metal, more than the Silurians could 'harvest' from her body in over a millennium. To 'harvest' that much from her blood, even if she lived long enough to 'process' it from what she ate or drank on Aura – not on this ship – would take over 375,000 days. The Silurians had taken the gold and gone, leaving Tia behind.
But Tia was a refugee, unable to return to her enslaved planet, and stranded among aliens that she did not understand and who could not fully understand her. She was trying to find a place aboard the ship for herself, and knew nothing yet of having left Archer with the unenviable task of explaining to Starfleet Command just how he had 'bought' a new crewmember.
That had been yesterday, and Hoshi's duties had kept her on the Bridge, so she did not have much contact with Tia beyond refining the initial programming she had done on the Universal Translator to allow them to communicate. So she was pleased to finally have a chance to sit down and talk, if only briefly, and to evaluate the success of the programming she had done on the new technology that was the Universal Translator.
x
"Tia, I'm happy to see you. How are you coming along?"
The golden girl looked at her, rather perplexedly. She had been startled at first to see Hoshi's lips moving out of sync with her Auran words, but then realized what the woman had done. But her phrasing was very strange, so much so that Tia could barely make sense of it.
"I … came down the corridor to this room."
'Well, that answers that.' Hoshi thought. 'I'm going to have to do a lot more work on the UT.' It was confusing enough when the UT worked properly. What people heard never did match the movement of lips, making conversation seem like watching a badly dubbed film. "No, I mean: How well are you adjusting to life aboard the Enterprise?"
This at least made sense. "A lot is strange. I have seen little, but when we speak I encounter many difficulties."
"Yes, I realize that. I should have put far more work into the Universal Translator's matrix than I had the time to. I apologize."
The last word Hoshi said did not translate, but Tia felt she understood what Hoshi meant from her tone. She guessed the woman was trying to say 'anston', though the machine did not.
"No, it is ca-klir." 'All right'; the UT imparted belatedly. "People … they are patient. But I – I came to dresna." This time the UT did not provide a translation to Hoshi, not even delayed one.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I lurin na kisnan to dresna."
x
Hoshi shook her head, feeling more like she should kick herself. Two days aboard, and she had not fine tuned the UT so the girl could carry on a simple conversation? It was criminal. "I really am sorry. I had no idea things were this bad."
"I do blame you nyasi; you have been kilyantin. You have worked hard in programming the vasdmineq with a language you ailu heard. I feel it is I who anston to you."
Hoshi was mortified. Clearly the temperamental technology was not up to the task, and it was Hoshi's fault. She should never have let herself get so distracted with her duties. She pulled the UT from her pocket. "I'm really sorry. I'll fix this." But Tia put a restraining hand on her arm.
"That is why I am here. I do not want you to program the vasdmineq any further." This time the UT did provide the word 'machine'; about half a second after Tia finished speaking.
"What?" She could see Tia was trying to hunt for other words to say, so she held up her hand. "I understood you; you don't want me to program the UT."
"No. I want to learn your tongue." She took a moment in Hoshi's surprise to explain. "Right now, I have problems communing. But without the aid of your ut, I will be completely duvile." 'Lost' the machine eventually said. "As long as I use it, I can only be understood and understand on this ship or in places that have an ut. I want to speak to you without an ut."
"U.T." She corrected absently. "We spell it out, not use it as a word."
"You see? I want to be understood, and to understand, without the crutch of a machine. People tell me you are a teacher. I want to be a learner. Will you leggot?"
"Of course I will. We can start right now."
Hoshi had learned a great deal of the Auran language from her initial conversation with Tia, enough to program the UT. Studying the very few records of the derelict ship that she was able to identify as Auran (pitiably few) had helped to partially round out her education, so she was certain her natural talents would be up to the job. It only mattered how quickly Tia could learn. She put the control pad on the table and punched in a brief sequence into the computer link. "All right, talk to me." She pushed a final button.
"Dupres avoionn keroiss veriaainn. Keevlanti avoionn milyanti."
"Avoionn milyantio wen." She put a hand to her chest. "Mrunion werunne o Hoshi. My name is Hoshi."
"Mrunion werunne o Tia. My name is Tia," she said with a bright smile of satisfaction.
"Wernneuo. Alphabet. Yee nu sle ah gni … aay bee cee dee ee…"