Work Text:
Thrii’Nik’kikk lowered his head plumes respectfully, trying to determine the most diplomatic way to say that he had no clue about what he’d done until after it was all over. He’d had to retell the story too many times to keep track of, bureaucrats and xenologists alike each looking for some new detail, something he’d left out that might shed light on the impossible situation he’d been a party to. It didn’t get any easier with retelling and this time he knew would be the same.
No one ever expected to discover a new species while repairing beacon satellites on the edge of known space. You didn’t find new species in space, that was a known fact, researchers spent years looking for them, the signs of life on promising planets and then contact was carefully established. Or broadcasts were picked up and sent back and forth between a race recently capable of faster than light travel and qualified linguists and xenologists and formalities were carefully, painstakingly established over years of communications until the meeting finally happened.
New sapient species didn’t just show up unannounced and then head off on their merry way.
That sort of thing had never once happened in recorded history.
At the start of it all Thrii’Nik’kikk had simply assumed that the strange craft, blaring unintelligible signals in all directions, belonged to a bunch of thrill seekers who thought no one would be in listening range so that their noise pollution was harmless. Equally likely was that they were researchers doing some loud, obnoxious project best done away from interference.
Still, on the off chance that there was something more to it, he’d hailed them over wide transmission, not sure if they’d pick it up at all with all the noise they were making.
The noise stopped, bounced the signal he’d sent back with some modification, and then, after an unreasonably long pause gave what might have been a greeting. It was decidedly nonthreatening, though not in any language he or the computer were familiar with. Then again, it took all sorts and most broadcasting and translation systems had a hard time with the pidgin used by species that relied heavily on visual or pheromonal cues for communication.
He bounced signals back and forth with them, trying to figure out something that would work to talk, because repair work that far out was boring and lonely and too delicate to be trusted to some automated or remote drone. The pay was good though, and the two cycles on, one off schedule meant that he had as much down time as he wanted between jobs.
Eventually they managed something that worked, not well, but it worked and at least he’d recorded all of it. The thing was, it was commonsense given his line of work. If there was any room for anything to go wrong you wanted a record of it so it wouldn’t be dust on your tail, as the saying went. Not that talking to some random ship as far out in the middle of nowhere as they were was something where anything could go wrong.
The communications were crude, mostly implied rather than stated, an invitation to talk and tell them about his job.
Because if they were researchers, they were probably bored and stir-crazy as he was, so he’d given them a run down on basic satellite maintenance and it had certainly fluffed his tail that they’d listened with rapt attention, asking sincere, albeit ignorant questions. Then again, the average K’thip out there didn’t think much about how their ship navigated, so the ignorance of the strangers really wasn’t that much of a surprise. Their enthusiasm though, he’d really enjoyed that. Some species were culturally polite and he’d assumed that he’d encountered one of them. That they were genuinely that ignorant and that interested in his job had never occurred to him.
He asked them about what they were doing, just to be polite, not that politeness mattered since they were ignoring all semblance of propriety and procedure, basically yelling back and forth over wide broadcast so that anyone, not that there was anyone, could hear them.
Of course it turned out they were thrill seekers, out exploring they said, which was the most hilariously quaint thing he’d heard. They were right about the anomalous static they’d picked up though, the beacon he’d been working on was broadcasting at the wrong wavelength and squealing intermittently. It was kind of cute that they called that racket ‘static’, and he could understand why they’d decided to investigate. At the time he’d also been glad that they hadn’t tried to make repairing the satellite their good deed for the centi-cycle. The number of horror stories about the botch jobs done by well-meaning idiots who happened to be near malfunctioning beacons…
They talked back and forth a bit more. He didn’t recognize their species, but with so many in the ‘League it was hardly a surprise. He’d been out of education for cycles now and any classwork where he’d needed to memorize the three hundred plus species in the League of Known and Allied species, plus the handful that hadn’t joined for one reason of another was pleasantly far in the past. So meeting an unknown species in the middle nowhere wasn’t a surprise.
What would have been a surprise was meeting another Nik’Sh, but coincidences like that didn’t happen.
What did happen was that they exchanged some techno-jargon to see how compatible their biology was. Their pidgin terms for the elements were absolutely amazing with how literal they were, actual figurative depictions of them, which made it easy enough for his computer to process that their atmospheric requirements were within spitting distance. A little more of an allowance for argon maybe and a slightly lower range for oxygen, but nothing too out there. They’d be able to breathe the same air with no headaches and, more importantly, no stinks. He had nothing against beings from sulfur rich worlds, but they tended to leave a smell like overly ripe fruit everywhere they went.
Again, those logs saved him, tracking all the little details about species that you didn’t think anything of.
More importantly, what they ate and drank was also similar enough and their biology close enough that an invitation extend the gangway and share mild intoxicants was readily accepted. Of course they didn’t have any intoxicants, or a functional gangway of their own, but that was fine. Thrii’Nik’kikk had tried more than his share of strange local brews and was confidently able say that, in all of the civilized universe, only Nik’Sh knew how to ferment fruit.
The link-up had been awkward, their ship not really made for it, but they managed to rig up something that would have terrified him if he were the one to use it.
His guests didn’t seem that confident about their job either, traversing the gangway in full EVA gear, ridiculously overbuilt, archaic looking getups, like something out of a museum.
It had been kind of terrifying honestly, that his guests looked so poorly prepared, but they were carrying several sealed and pressurized containers with them, the promised food.
His guests, three total, with two others staying back on their ship for reasons they weren’t clear on, arrived safely at the airlock, entered with minimal fuss and removed their suits.
They were, as most species were, hideously bland, hopelessly androgynous with their drab colors and oddly varied head plumes, some long, some short, some in the absolutely wrong places – on the tops of their heads of all places, though one had an impressive, albeit bland, red plume along the sides and underside of their face, much more proper than the one with the straight black and green plumes that started on the top of their head and went down past their shoulders.
More than that, they were thin and shallow chested, not at all what he’d expect of creatures that breathed relatively thin air. Not to mention their limb and eye configuration, too few of each. It was amazing how well they maneuvered when they were unable to see behind them or even that far to either side without turning their whole head.
Still they were guests, enthusiastic and respectful guests, acting like his ship was so much more impressive than it was when he gave them the grand tour. The one with the red plumes was especially fascinated by the hydroponics room, complimenting Thrii’Nik’kikk on the artistic arrangement of the water filters, growing lights and the choice of both edible and oxygen producing plants. He’d been proud of that, pointing out his favorite features, such as the stones in the filtration tank being selected to evoke the idea of a proper tranquility pool. It was the closest thing he had to a garden, and like every Nik’Sh male, he took pride in the colors and arrangement of his garden.
So yes, he spent a lot of time talking about his hydroponic setup and not questioning his visitors about themselves, but was he really at fault for that?
The food he prepared was simple enough, but still far better than the rehydrated, reconstituted something that his guests brought with them. Again, proof in his mind that they were adventurers and nothing more.
Because of their complimenting his garden he had felt kindly towards them and brought out a canister of far better drink than he’d originally planned.
Again there were compliments on the color and taste of the drink, and those compliments grew more and more extravagant as he continued to pour. Ethanol worked the same for their species as it did for Nik’Sh, possibly more so, for the one with black and green plumes needed help back into their EVA suit after the meal.
They parted ways with an exchange of pleasantries and he gifted them with some spare seeds from his hydroponics room, because it was the friendly thing to do and he thought nothing more of it.
All in all it was a pleasant distraction from his task. Hardly anything worth all of the fuss it caused when he returned home and decided to look into exactly what he’d invited into his ship.
How was he to know that there were no records existing of a species that identified itself as Homo sapiens and that their appearance, language and everything else about them was unknown?
Now he had countless officials trying to determine which diplomatic protocols he’d violated and how to properly make not first, but second contact, with a previously unknown species of intelligent life.
Not just intelligent life, but intelligent life that was capable of space travel.
It was shocking, fascinating and horrifying.
And Thrii’Nik’kikk, the humble satellite repair technician had found himself in the middle of it all.