---Defector---
---Lhamo’s perspective---
---2680 Terran Calendar/33 years BF---
I streak through the skies of Gangsri Gsar at a multiple of the speed of sound, looking down on the snow capped mountains that give the planet its name.
The setting sun is to my right and the creeping darkness of night to my left.
It’s so utterly freeing to have the yoke of my craft in my hands and an endless sky to fly through!
I can’t imagine having to go everywhere by safe, AI driven capsules!
This tiny craft and the lessons to pilot it are the best investment I ever made!
Of course, had I not had more valuable skills, that training almost certainly would have had me conscripted to the Fighter Force.
Apologies to whatever poor sod took my place!
The nav is trying to send me on a detour around the Sisters, A Lcag and ’Og Ma, 15km and 12km tall, respectively.
I look at the gap between them and at the 90 second detour my screen is instructing.
“Cute…” I smirk, as I plough straight forward at full speed.
The sheer rock face of A Lcag passes less than 200m on my right and ’Og Ma the same on my left.
10% of a yak racing track might sound like a lot but it really isn’t when you’re traveling this fast!
Passing out the other side of the Sisters, the ocean comes into view and, with it, so does one of the very few sea level cities on this planet.
Most places where the mountains meet the sea, they plunge straight into it with nowhere to build.
Here, the alluvial plain, deposited by the same river as runs through the heart of Lhasa Gsar, allows for the existence of the city of Chuchen Zhingkha.
I reduce my speed significantly.
I hail my destination “This is private craft Dzha10759Ka82, requesting permission to land, transmitting clearance code now.”
“Stand by… You are clear to land, private craft Dzha10759Ka82.”
I begin my descent, hovering down as I line myself up with the landingpad that my HUD is highlighting for me.
I set down and immediately see the irritated bodylanguage and expressions of the nearest pair of MPs.
I ready my holo as I swing open the door of my tiny personal craft.
“Miss…!” says the closer one, angrily, as he approaches, his open faced helmet showing me his scowling face “…I don’t care who you are, you’ve got to clear that pad, right now! We’re expecting…!”
“Dr Lhamo ‘Crane’ Yeshe, special consultant to the UTC Intelligence Service Office of Lhasa Gsar…” I say, casually turning my screen around to show him my ID app.
He’s stunned into silence for a moment before he checks my screen.
“…Am I not who you were expecting?” I smile with an (I feel) not unjustified quantity of smugness.
“I… was expecting someone… older… looking…” he says, adding that last word after apparently checking my age and finding that I am, in fact, 35 and just so babyfaced I regularly still need to prove my age when purchasing alcohol!
“Yes, well, regardless of what you were expecting, would you care to show me inside?… It’s chilly out here, in spite of the low elevation!”
The pair turn, without apologising, and begin walking toward the nearest building.
I follow.
As we approach, a man who looks very out of place on a military barracks emerges from the door and, spotting me, makes a beeline.
“Dr Yeshe, I presume?… Formerly professor of theoretical xenopsychology at Lhasa Gsar University?” asks the weedy European man in accented English.
“I am. Though, I think we can dispense with the word ‘theoretical’, these days(!)” I smile, extending my hand and speaking in English.
He takes my hand and shakes it as he says “Dr Otto ‘Alpenstock’ Kleinfeld, a pleasure to meet you! Thank you so much for making the journey!”
“Thank you for the flattering assessment of me as the best person on world for the task…” I smile “…Please… lead on, Dr Kleinfeld.”
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The little man leads me inside. The MPs (thankfully) do not follow.
“So… you have read the brief?” he asks.
“Enemy pilot, seems to have stolen a fighter craft and flown it here to surrender to us. Has a device, inferred to be a personal holo, that can translate his language into English but can’t manage Tibetan. Says he has information on the current position of a GU fleet that he’s willing to trade to us on the condition that we neutralise it with minimal casualties. When asked his reasoning, he answered that the Admiral was knowingly on his way to engage with a dreadnought blockade… which he regards to be a suicide mission. He believes he can give us the information necessary to take the fleet by surprise and surrender it with minimal loss of life. You want me to assess whether he thinks he’s telling the truth, whether he might have been fooled into thinking he’s telling the truth and what it might be worth promising him for the information he claims to have. That about the size of it?”
“Yes… very good.” chuckles the man, nervously, as he pulls out his holo “I just have a checklist to run down with you before you can undergo decontamination… Have you had symptoms of illness any time in the last six weeks?”
I smile “I think I can save some time there, Doc… tell me the author of that checklist, would you? Should be down at the bottom… fine print…”
The man frowns but scrolls down and squints.
The penny drops as he says “Dr L ‘C’ Yeshe… et al…” and looks up at me, a little defeatedly.
“Shall we assume I wouldn’t have bothered making the journey if I were to answer negatively any of the things I should answer positively, or vice versa… on the list that I was the lead author of?” I ask, trying and failing not to sound patronising.
He slumps before answering “I suppose I’ll just fill this out for you myself then… We’re here…”
He directs me through a door, into a darkened room.
To my left is the backside of a one way mirror.
Tentatively, I walk toward it, bringing into view the xeno defector.
The first thing that strikes me… is just how enormous he is!
I’m 175cm but that guy’s as tall as me, sitting down!
Some quick mental maths tells me that he’s got to be more than 2.5 metres, standing!
The next thing I realise is the fact that he has no nose… where it should be is instead just a smooth, flat patch of pale, purple-blue skin.
The longer I look at him the more uncanninesses I find in his appearance; one too many fingers on each hand and thumbs on the wrong side, eyes too large and a vivid orange colour with no pupils that I can see, ears the wrong shape, limb proportions slightly off, body too slim…
And… yet… despite all that…
Kinda hooot…(!)
Certainly no pinnacle of masculinity (in any way besides his imposing stature) but handsome none the less!
The kind of handsome you could see being cast as the love interest in a 24th Century scifi romance film(!)
He’d be the prince of a space kingdom, son of an eeeeevil space king, who unwillingly goes along with his father’s dastardly plans until meeting the beautiful Human heroine, in the second act, who causes him to have a change of heart, in the third(!)
Maybe I should take up screenwriting, after the War(!)
Of course, I know better than almost anyone not to share even a fraction of my little daydream with the room at large, having helped write the book on xeno interrogation procedure!
“Alright then… shall we start…?”
---Ngngomg’s perspective---
One of the Terrans enters what I infer to be the decontamination chamber, adjoining this room.
She raises her arms above her head and is sprayed with a liquid substance, following which the chamber is illuminated by harsh, bright light.
She stands in the sterilising rays for what seems like a dangerous amount of time before the internal door finally opens.
“Heh lother. Itsnaiss tu miitchu, Wii Ngkoman Der Ngngomg, mai neimz Lhamo.” she says.
If I didn’t already know what she was, I could walk past the woman in the hallway of a space station and think nothing of her except, maybe, to notice that she’s rather pretty… in spite of that strange, prominent sense organ in the middle of her face(!)
The language she speaks is what I recognise as her kind’s lingua franca and not the other one that I’ve heard, since landing, with a completely different cadence and tonality.
Apparently, the Terran's have thousands of languages… though, I don’t believe that personally.
Probably, they have thousands of dialects of a few dozen unique languages! That seems more realistic to me.
My assessment of what she spoke to me is proven correct when my holo is able to translate it into ngGollogng for me.
“Greetings. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, [untranslatable rank: ‘Wing Commander’. Meaning: one who orders and is obeyed while flying] Ngngomg, my name is Lhamo.”
Irritatedly, I correct her “Ngngomg is my personal name, you will address me by my tribe name, Ong!”
She looks at my holo as it turns my words into her language.
When she seems to have understood, she closes her eyes and dips her head.
“Apologies, [Wing Commander] Ong… that is my mistake.”
I narrow my eyes at the woman as she sits on the far side of the wide table, the weighty *thud* of her meeting the surface hinting at the powerful density of her body.
She’s… much more polite than I expected a deathworlder to be!
I truly expected to have to endure days of torture before they’d finally listen to me but… unless they consider being locked in an interrogation room for hours on end to be a form of torture (which isn’t out of the question, given how much they purportedly revile boredom), I’ve endured none!
The woman places her hands, palm down, on the table in front of her.
Her thumbs point inward, toward eachother!
She curls her mouth without baring her teeth and says “I would shake your hand, [Wing Commander], but it is probably best if you and I do not touch… Do not worry about airborne microbes… this whole room acts as a fume hood… It is extremely unlikely that anything I breathe out over here is going to reach where you are.”
I don’t answer.
“So… I understand you have some information you want to give us, [Wing Commander]?”
“I don’t…” I scowl.
Seeming confused she looks to my face and says “You do not?”
Angrily, I stand, towering in comparison to the little deathworlder, and slam my palms down on the table “I don’t want to! I don’t want to be a defector!”
She raises her hands, defensively, but… not toward me…
Her eyebrows are both raised, her eyes wide, her jaw set and her skin pale as she faces the mirror.
It takes me a few moments to realise that she must be worried that they’ll storm in here and subdue me, given my outburst.
I feel my attitude toward her soften… she wasn’t even slightly worried for herself!
True… she probably doesn’t actually need to worry for herself but… still!
Satisfied that she has conveyed her wordless message to the spectators, she returns her attention to me and says “Why not tell me, in your own words, what led you to where you are right now?”