-Claire-

“So, that is how GalStan handles the concepts of gendered nouns and plurals. In practice it works very much like Old Earth romantic languages such as French, German and Spanish. In contrast, they don’t place much inflection on past and future participles, preferring instead to outright state the intended tense. They DO, however, place strong inflection on related concepts of ownership, such as with the words Jind, Jindon and Kas’Jind; Hide, Hidden and Secret, respectively.

“They also use what we call ‘Utility’ words in place of conjunctions, where the actual word as we recognize it is inferred by the context of the surrounding words. The most common of these is ‘Ien’, which governs the use of A/It/To/Too/Is and So.

“They also make common use of compounding words, concepts that add or extend upon a root word to create a related concept. Using part of our earlier example we have Kas’Jind, or Secret, and then Kason, Kaslin, Kas’ava and Kastor; which are Knowledge, Learning, School or more accurately, Shelter of Instruction, and Test.

“Some of you may have noticed that spoken GalStan has an archetypal cadence that flows through the language. This seems to be an intentional construct put in place when the language was created, as it allows the new users of the language to better place their words and inflections. As with all things associated with the Galactics, have created their universal language with the intent of making it as easy to pick up and use for new arrivals as possible. This is also why there are some consonants that we are familiar with that are missing from the Trade Language, like the hard “G’s” and “J’s” which become Guh and Yuh sounds. This is because there are some races, such as the Chirleen that we are going to see, that don’t have the appropriate anatomies to properly form those sounds.

“Their written language uses a series of scribe marks that should be easy for any new species to begin replicating, whether through claw or tool. Remember they write apostrophes to connect their pronouns to nouns into a single word, and they write their duplicated letters connected to one another as though being mirrored.

“Putting that all together we get this, a common Ruulothi proverb translated into GalStan:

“Drekk ien mon ket brell, sut ien anen mon kas’jinds. Vin esto ien tallan drekk paaon voh ket nelan. Which means, ‘Death is not the end, and it keeps no secrets. For even a quiet death echoes in the night.’”

Claire wrapped up her block of instruction and opened the floor up to questions. She answered them as best as she could. Though she was still conversationally fluent, there had been few opportunities to actually use her language skills. This meant that some of her capabilities had fallen by the wayside as time went on, leaving gaps in her knowledge. Her instruction now was bringing back some of what she had forgotten and giving her the chance to improve herself at the same time.

Despite her frustration at discovering she had lost some of her skill, she was plenty satisfied with her ability to recover what had been lost. She considered it to be a lesson in perseverance.

Once all questions had been addressed, they broke for a quick break before their next instruction block, which was going to consist of familiarization of the planet Fildecl itself. Tomorrow they were going to focus on studying the Chirleen and local politics.

___________________________________________________

-Damien Winters-

“Fildecl is a temperate world with large oceans and numerous lakes and rocky mountain ranges that sits on the inside edge of the habitable zone around its star. There are four major oceans that cover the majority of the planet, and three major continents with about six smaller subcontinents, that in effect are more like large islands. From the equator to the sub arctic regions the world is covered in forests and mountain ranges.

“Overall, the planet ranges from hot to warm, with the notable exceptions being the small arctic poles. The northern pole is a glacial shelf that rests on the nexus of several mountain ranges. The southern pole is a sheet of ice attached to a small subcontinent.

Winter’s deep voice carried through the briefing room as he explained the ins and outs of the planet they were going to be landing on. Though they weren’t directly planning on needing to act in their traditional Search and Rescue Capacity, it was still good practice to know what they were getting into.

He had been keeping a careful eye on the greenhorns. There was a lot of information and training that they needed to absorb, and they hadn’t had the time he would have preferred to have to train them properly before their deployment.

“Hell, there hadn’t even been enough time to have a proper diplomatic envoy assigned. This whole effort is a disaster waiting to happen. Not enough people that speak the language. Not enough time to teach, prepare, train or fully staff. Even the planetary briefing is based off old information. I hope to hell that these Chirleen are as friendly to outsiders as we have been told. Ehhh, speaking of…”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“The Chirleen have primarily inhabited the largest of the continents, which they call Chworaal. They have plans to expand to other continents, but those plans have been put on hold thanks to the issues they have been having with the Qazirxel. There are seven cities on Chworaal, with a number of outposts and villages in remote areas as they continued to expand internally in spite of the blockade on the system. It appears they kept things to the local continent to prevent any supply chain or unforeseen complications from arising until they were free to act as they desired.

“We don’t yet know where exactly we are going to be landing, that is going to be determined when we get in system and make contact with the Chirleen themselves. Which should be in another couple of days.”

One of the crew raised a hand to ask a question, “I know we are bringing supplies, but from what I can see it will just be a drop in the bucket for a population of that size. What are we really doing here?”

“That is a fair point, and you aren’t incorrect. Though the supplies we carry aren’t much in comparison to the entirety of the planet’s population, we are a part of the first wave and the supplies we carry are very much needed. We are also a valuable medical resource, which from the request we received is something that they have begun running very low on.

“As we discussed in our original briefing before we left Proxima, our medical instruments aren’t keyed just yet to Chirleen physiology, but the DNA coding programs will quickly change that and allow us to begin providing care for those who have been suffering. Our facilities and machinery can work absolute wonders, but only if we have the encoded information. Their baseline genetic structure is something that we are going to have to bargain for once we get in system. Once we have that it will greatly reduce the time required to assess and treat those who come to us for care.

“Oh, and for those among us who just joined, the medical equipment we carry uses both accelerated stem cell treatments, genetic encoding, and nanites to repair damages to a person’s body, root out and eliminate diseases and synthesize medicines. In addition to being a fully equipped search and rescue vessel, we are essentially a portable hospital, but one with a limited bed capacity. We primarily use our facilities to save those injured during natural disasters but are sometimes called upon to provide assistance during other emergencies, such as this one.

“That means that there is a high likelihood that we are going to be bouncing between different settlements until the local Government can get their supply issues squared away. Which in turn means that we aren’t going to be able to fully embed in one particular community. So, check your habits, remember your briefings and diplomacy trainings and if there is any question about something, ask a department head first.

“There are going to be a lot of first impressions down there, and we are now on the razor’s edge of Humanity’s diplomatic efforts. Whatever impression you give them is going to reflect on how they see humanity as a whole. Remember, we have the film crew with us, but they are more focused on how what we do looks back home rather than how we look to our hosts. But they have volunteered to go over their own training that covers the basics of conversational diplomacy, situational awareness and recognizing cultural cues.”

He stopped a moment to let all that sink in before adding one final touch with a predatory smile.

“No pressure.”

_____________________________________________________

The security door hissed open and shut again as Damien stepped onto the bridge of the Crucis Renatus. He took in the general bustle of activity from the Control Crew as they prepped for their final jump of the trip.

Commander Hawke was mulling over reports in his command chair and looked up as the door sealed itself behind Damien.

“Ah, Damien. How are the instructional blocks going?”

“Better than expected Sir. Still worried, we don’t yet have the information we usually have. But the crew are as prepared as we can make them.”

He caught Hawke’s brief smirk at his comment. It was an old and familiar tradeoff between them. They were never trained enough for Damien’s liking or had enough information. It was a habit carried over from his military days, where a bad briefing and intel could mean absolute disaster.

It was also a habit that Hawke allowed him, as he felt that Damien’s extra focus on training improved their overall readiness and effectiveness.

Even if it meant he had to listen to Damien gripe about it from time to time.

Damien’s expression softened as he shook his head and grinned himself, as he could see the reports the Commander had been looking at were contingency and emergency plans. It seems they were of a like mind on this trip.

“How much longer to final jump, Sir?”

Hawke continued to review his reports as he answered, “We are running final checks now. I am having Josiah and the rest of the engineering crew set up a Relay Buoy on both sides of the jump, just in case. If worst comes to worst, at least a record of what happened will make it back home.”

Damien sighed, “Sometimes that is the best we can hope for, right? At least we won’t just disappear.”

“Yeah. I also have the ship computers ready to send a Crash Burst in the event of a catastrophic failure of some kind or distress signal activation by a member of the Command Crew. God willing, we won’t need it.”

Their discourse was interrupted by the Senior Sensor Tech calling out, “Commander, the Buoy has been launched, and second Buoy prepped. Final checks from all areas are completed. We are Jump ready, Sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Start the countdown, please.” He responded before reaching for the ship wide intercom.

“All hands, All hands. Commencing final jump. Commencing final jump. Strap in to jump stations. Strap in to jump stations.

“Right then… here we go.”

Damien strapped into his chair and gave him a mischievous grin, “Boldly going, Sir?”

Hawke gave his XO a sidelong glare, “Don’t you start now.”

They sat and waited for the clock on the main display to wind down. As the last few seconds ticked away, he gripped the arms of his chair tighter. As he saw the rest of the bridge crew brace for the jump he muttered to himself under his breath, “And here. We. Go.”

The indescribable feeling of being stretched across space and time took him as the jump drive engaged and launched them to an uncertain future.