The Paladin joined in on the introductions. Nellara. All of the birds so far had fairly nice sounding names, and after all, why not? What did she expect, cawing and hooting? As soon as Nellara put its hands behind its back, Vigdis immediately pointed at it, mimicked its posture and brought her hands in front of her. She was outnumbered and trying to pay attention to several things at once, not being able to see someone’s hands on top of it did no favors for her peace of mind.

Up until that moment, she thought that the strange happenings with Nellara’s orbs and Kareet’s badge might have been some local technology, like electromagnets or miniaturized tractor beams or whatever, any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic and all that. Before the Yenge showed up, no one thought FTL was possible either. But Nellara and Humanoid Torch’s shows shattered that idea so thoroughly they might as well have used a wrecking ball. [i]“What the FUCK is that?!”[/i] She took a few long steps to get away from whatever witchcraft was taking place, slipping into Venerian Russian in the heat of the moment. After that demonstration, Vigdis was visibly reluctant to accept the ball from Nellara, first walking over to the welder and donning her welding gloves. Not a perfect insulation, but better than nothing. A tiny ball made of metal, like you’d find in ball bearings. She rolled it in her palm and threw it up and caught it a few times. Too heavy to be aluminum or titanium, too light for tungsten, wrong color to be silver or silicone… Probably steel or iron, maybe cobalt or nickel. When they figured out how to talk to these people, she’d have to ask if she could break one to figure out what it was made of. Kareet and Kerchak would probably enjoy a demonstration of the metallographic instruments they had in the workshop.

With the captain’s warning, she returned the ball and clapped her hands a few times to get everyone’s attention, then pointed at the airlock, jabbing her finger in its direction a few times and raised her hands in front of her, open palms facing the locals. She didn’t know how else to convey urgency and demonstrate something to be non-threatening.

Of course the first one through the door was a big guy with a big gun…

Getting another idea about how to potentially convey something important to the locals, Vigdis turned to the Captain as soon as she entered, stood at attention and saluted before speaking. “Captain, I was on my way to seal the last hull breach as per the day’s order when these locals caught me by surprise. I’ve been trying to set up some foundation for communication.” She gestured to the writings covering a decent wall area by now, “It looks like we’ve managed to figure out numbers and names. As you can see.” She added when Kareet introduced herself, “I was about to start length and time measurements, but you’re welcome to take over, I’m running out of rope.”

“Doing my best, doctor. To be honest, I nearly shit myself when Nellara showed up.” Vigdis replied to the FTL specialist, indicating the armored bird. “Speaking of which…” Vigdis made her way through the gaggle of humans to clean up the box she kicked over during her panicked retreat from Nellara. She chuckled at Ixtaro’s joke about Spanish, having given that some thought already and decided that she wasn’t cruel enough to confuse the locals with Cyrillics, learning one new alphabet would be enough. Another problem would be actually learning the language, but the mind of an engineer is always working on solutions to problems. And if problems aren’t available, engineers create their own. They’d need to build a library of both alien words and grammatical rules first. She could make a gizmo with a microphone, a speaker and a wristpad connection in half an hour. Then, they’d need someone who knew how to code.