Turning around I saw Blackness approaching to land in the back of the village. Majestic ship was pretty in the green and blue landscape, the metal was strangely calming the way it bounced sunrays of its hull. Paul and Jerry left back to their posts I assigned them few minutes ago leaving me alone with Anna.
The silence between us was calming me, I did not know about her but I enjoyed being with her here. Aliens here and there were starting to get anxious maybe thinking that this was just a front. The noise was not helping either since it just amplified their fears. Taryn was approaching where we were standing.
"Captain, I've finished counting them 32 individuals including the 2 that you brought from the cellar." Taryn said to me,
I started to move towards the now landed Blackness, I had thought of briefing the members of the force that was going to help us with civilian extraction. I passed by many aliens not giving them a glance, but when I walked by the remains of the 2 aliens I paused. Standing there in place I offered them a silent prayer. Noticing that the Blackness's hangar bay doors were opening I proceeded to move. 50 people came out and saluted me.
"At ease men, is there a universal translator on board? We did not have one here." I asked them.
"Yes sir we brought one as you asked, and we sent information as what food they could not eat. I'll give it to your medical officer right away." The man explained what his duty here was.
"Ok, First Lieutenant," I checked his ranking on his uniform, "One more thing there are remains under the blanket inside the village, I beg you that you treat them with care." I asked my honest feelings regarding the matter.
A woman approached handing me a small palm sized device. It was universal translator that we used to communicate with any species that did not know our language. I made few adjustments to translate into English, of course, from whatever they named their language on Solanje. It was small but it had incredible amount of data from all of the species that we earthlings met during the 400 years of exploring the galaxy. Our ancestors met them almost 300 years ago and conversed with them, taking various data down about their language, one could only hope after their abrupt disappearance they kept the valid data about their language. If not we were left to the old methods of waving hands and pointing fingers.
I moved back to the village and sat at the first bed that had a tall alien lying down on the moist ground that was covered in a blanked, a makeshift bed, that my resourceful solders made. It was crude but it served its purpose. Next to the lying alien there was a female looking one that was in a much better state, one of the rare adult looking ones, which looked at me with her big eyes. I returned the long stare and after sometime remembered what I was here for. Using my finger to point towards my mouth, then her, then the device I was holding. I move my hand towards her but she got startled and flinched. I demonstrated the intent I was having.
"Hello I am Kal Farah." I spoke into the device and it responded saying the same thing.
Aliens' eyes remained unaffected, but I could see her forming a smile on her lips. I, again, used my gestures to show her what to do, and she followed my instructions. Feelings I have right now are pretty strange. I love seeing her struggle to speak and make the same the noises, it looked mainly childish. Anna approached me and said the alien we saw in that house has died of injuries. I nodded and continued to look at the strange alien woman playing with the device.
"Yeah this could take a long time, UT is getting pretty archaic." Anna was making a valid point.
I stood up, "Yeah maybe our military can be so gracious to get us normal DATA pad chips. They are smaller, faster and can handle infinite amounts of data." I made an ironic quip. "Let's begin with the bonding."
"Hahaha right. And, pigs would fly." Score. I made Anna laugh. Pretty proud of myself at this moment. "Good luck" She finished letting me continue what I was going to do.
I gently took the device back and with some tinkering I displayed a picture of food, showed it to her and then listened to what she said. That's how you learned their words. Before DATA chips were available, a person would come and manually interact with species they wanted to learn their language. And when you take all the data from the spoken words then you can make a data library of spoken language that any device can translate. Especially these DATA chips that military personnel would use when they start servicing.
If you had thought about the good old Sci-Fi movies where everybody talks English under the guise of being able to do that with an implanted chip inside skin or brain, well that is possible but it's expensive. Usually wealthy members of society, politicians and military personnel would get a chip that would help them converse with many species that inhabited our galaxy.
