Expeditionary Force: First Contact

“Someone coming, Chief.  What do I do?”          

Finn O’Neill looked up from the field log and studied the stranger, who was too far away to see in any detail.  Judging by the walk, it looked like a woman, but there were no women unaccounted for and no reason for Base to send a messenger.  He grabbed his binoculars and, looking through them, released a whistle.  The stranger was humanoid but not human, and was dressed in military fatigues but was not Galactic Peacekeeping Force.  “Where did SHE come from?” he wondered aloud; there was no native higher life form on the planet.

Blun-dala arrived, answering the whistle.  ~She not native,~ she gestured in British Sign Language.  Her natural speech was unintelligible to humans so she had, by necessity, become fluent in all the visual communication systems her fellow soldiers understood.  For the Commander, whose origin was Matrox, it was the gesture language from the Terran medieval period.

“WHAT is she?” O’Neill asked, automatically holding out his binoculars to Blun-dala.  The Dipteroid closed her scanner and accepted his offer politely, positioning herself level with them and making a brief pretence of viewing the distant alien through them, but they were designed for human visual apparatus, not for compound eyes.

~Not humanoid,~ the Alienologist  stated, before opening her scanner.  ~Species unknown,~ she added, then returned to studying the readings.  Her posture and gentle humming buzz made it clear she was again matching the alien’s readings against the information in her exceptionally accurate memory.  She double-tapped O’Neill’s field-glasses with one of her remaining hands.  It was her people’s dismissive gesture for obsolescence.

O’Neill raised the glasses and looked again.  The species expert’s opinion went against his first impression but Cora had assurred him there wasn’t a planetary native Blun-dala couldn’t identify.  “So you don’t think she’s from this galaxy?” he asked, causing widespread interest among the recruits.  There were rumours of life in other galaxies but, so far, no-one had been able to find a way of travelling the immense distances it would have taken to find out.

~Species unknown,~ Blun-dala repeated, scanning once more.  ~She species undiscovered.~

“Why not native then?”

~Perhaps she species galactic BUT ...~ the alien expert continued as if she hadn’t heard her Commander’s question.  Those of the others who understood British Sign Language waited eagerly for her to continue.  ~... she species wrong chemistry on ...~  she waved her upper pair of arms expansively, to indicate the planet.  It was quicker and easier than finger-spelling ‘Robivo’, more especially because she had less than five fingers at the business end of each of her slender limbs.  O’Neill looked around him, as she returned to studying the alien’s chemical composition.

The lookers-in sounded deflated.  O’Neill could guess what they were thinking, having thought most of it ahead of them; if the approaching woman wasn’t extra-galactic, she wasn’t likely to possess any interesting technology and if, like humans, she was a stranger on the planet then she wouldn’t be able to guide them to anything worth exporting.  It seemed like the Commander would have to continue assessing performance on scouting patrols until doomsday.  It was a grim prospect on this world, with its endless violet skies and seemingly endless rocky deserts.  He longed to return to active service, on planets with more challenging social structures, where peacekeepers were truly needed.  While he acknowledged the need for training planets, and the need for recruits to practise survey and exploration techniques and strategies, he felt more comfortable training combat troopers and dealing with conflict situations than minding scientists and technicians.  To the scientists, Robivo was a safe base for federation exploration of the deep chasm of the unknown void between galaxies but for him, his posting was a hiatus in his career progression.  He had many times regretted the decisions which had resulted in his temporary removal from strategic operations.

He studied the unfamiliar alien as she closed the remaining distance between herself and the perimeter guards.  She seemed to be about average height for a human and had a mainly human shape.  She had the modal average number of limbs but she moved them as if their joint arrangement was different to the standard humanoid model.  In shape, her clothing resembled the working uniform of a Starship Engineer with the exception of  her boots, which appeared to have been manufactured from an unusually flexible metallic material.  If nobody took account of her colour, she could have passed for human although no human woman could ever have been blessed with the faultless glowing complexion which added to the alien’s strange attraction.  O’Neill speculated that the stranger’s early ancestors had been something less anthropoid than apes.

Coming nearer, more detailed differences emerged and he could see why Blun-dala had disagreed with his early classification as humanoid.  The alien’s lilac skin was matt in a way human skin could never be and the outer coating of the thick strands of her crimson hair were a strange, previously unmet texture, like fish-scales.  But colour and texture were minor points; it was her digits which made so great a difference.  She had seven fingers on each hand and her boot-shape suggested the number was echoed in her toes.  It was one too many digits for her to be officially classified as humanoid.

As she paused by the perimeter guards, seemingly waiting for permission to enter the camp, O’Neill felt himself flush with the kind of sexual excitement he hadn’t felt since Usha had dissolved their union.  He dismissed the thought, determined to behave with the professional detachment which First Contact with a new species deserved.  He asked Blun-dala to find the linguist and he commanded Frederick Malcolm, the platoon historian, to document the interchange which was about to follow.  Anxious not to sour the relationship between humans and whatever species the stranger originated from, he approached the perimeter from the inside.

“I offer you greetings,” he stated clearly, displaying his empty hands palm forwards in Blun-dala’s newly recommended gesture for friendship and openness.  He arranged his features in an expectant smile and waited for the alien’s response.

The stranger’s features remained expressionless, as if her facial muscles were immobile beneath her perfectly smooth skin.  Her scarlet irises briefly flickered then she grasped her forearms and held them forward in a strong defensive posture.  She appeared to be ready to attack if it became necessary or desirable.  It wasn’t the response either he or his historian had anticipated.  O’Neill sent a trooper to find out what was delaying his Linguist.



Cora Danville half-woke from the sexiest dream she’d had in the five months since she’d split from her husband.  “Just let me finish,” she pleaded but Blun-dala wouldn’t allow it.  “Oh, he was so handsome and oh so willing and ...”.  She would have gone on but the Dipteroid woman cut her short, clicking urgently.

“First Contact protocol?” Cora repeated incredulously.  It was what she’d trained for but she hadn’t expected to be chosen by fate to represent the human race in an inter-specific first dialogue.  Quickly, she discarded all memory of the beautiful man in her dream and rooted out the dress uniform she’d worn the night before, as designated staff representative for the next batch of recruits’ first training camp.  The jacket was inside her pillow case and, when she saw the state of it, she let loose such a volley of Old Terran vocabulary that Blun-dala asked if she was approaching  delivery.  Her answer, when she calmed down enough to deliver it, was a simple negative.  She admitted, however, experiencing intense emotion and she indicated the hopefully temporary damage to her dress uniform jacket.

As she examined it in more detail, she remembered the more memorable events from the pre-departure party she’d been forced to attend despite her protestations of advanced pregnancy.  Sometimes the belly-plea worked but, on that occasion, it hadn’t.  The Commander had insisted she attend because, with her maternity leave imminent, it would be the last pre-training-camp party she would attend.  She’d been supposed to introduce herself to the recruits and give them an informal overview briefing of the purpose of the coming exercise in which they’d learn orienteering and exploration techniques and strategies.  However, when she’d returned to camp, exhausted from dancing with every recruit and some of the Base staff, she must have left her uniform on her bed and, while she was in the shower, her orderly had returned to turn back her sheets and had unwittingly crammed the jacket inside her pillow case.

Because all Galactic Peacekeeping Force linguists were duty bound to wear dress uniform when participating in First Contact and because her spare dress jacket hadn’t been adjusted to her expanding figure,  Cora knew she’d have to do the best she could with the ruined one.  She was certain the creases would iron out but some unknown Someone had written a message on the collar in an unidentifiable green marker.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t standard issue ink and the message wasn’t in any Official script.  Blun-dala expressed her disapproval.





“Yes.  Well ...,” Cora started sheepishly.  “I think I know what it means.”  It was an obscenity in a little-known Rimworld character script so the linguist had an idea who was being framed for the act.  Camille Robeson had been raised on Broadowler, so the linguist was certain she would have come across the script, and she’d made explicit remarks about who she wanted to replace Julie Earl when they’d split up, but she hadn’t been at the party and sneaky graffiti messages were so far from her style that it had to be someone else.  Cora thought it was probably one of the men, frustrated because she was far too heavily pregnant to consider doing anything like the activity depicted so explicitly in the strange green marker.  And he’d have framed Camille simply because she offended all the men with her frank female chauvinism.

Scrubbing didn’t remove the writing so concealment was the only option.  Cora felt like an exhibitionist, hurrying through the camp in her uncomfortably tight let-out full military dress uniform teamed with an ultra-feminine violet silk Malaysian-Terran headscarf decorated with flowery broderie anglaise in thread of gold with Indian filigree highlighting.

The guard dropped his jaw when he saw them rushing to the place he’d just left.  “You have to hurry up; the Chief’s struggling!” he barked, but Cora could see he was finding it nearly impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of her outfit.

“The alien might be Muslim!” she snapped, as if she’d planned all along to wear the headscarf.  She could hear other soldiers sniggering as she passed so she was grateful when she reached the perimeter guard-post.  “Reporting for ...”

The Commander cut her short with: “What in Excretia are you wearing, Captain?”

Cora blushed and offered the same explanation she’d used on the trooper.

“Well, now you can see she’s not,” he snapped.  “Take off that stupid evening cloak, you’re a disgrace to the uniform.”

Cora lifted the scarf just far enough for her superior to see the obscenity scrawled on her collar.

“Take it all the way off!” he ordered, with some impatience.  “We’re filming this for posterity.”

Cora knew then that he couldn’t read the Rimworld script and, try as she could to explain, he insisted she wear full dress uniform, with regular cap, and with no additional extras.  Blun-dala adopted the posture which her linguist friend had learned to interpret as a shrug.

When the deed was done, Cora turned to her commanding officer, who was facing the stranger, waiting impatiently for the dialogue to begin.  She felt far too anxious to conduct the exchange of information properly, finding it hard to cope with embarrassment of knowing she was displaying a pictorial description of a perverse consensual act, in an information interchange destined for viewing by the highest echelons of the alien’s command structure and the president of the Galactic Justice Commission.  She was seriously worried she’d make a ghastly and ultimately fatal error in interpretation and her concern wasn’t caused by the anxiety of pregnancy; her impression of the alien woman’s mood, based on Western Culture body language, was of contempt and concealed hostility.

“What is your purpose?” O’Neill inquired, using the recommended form of words, despite the knowledge that his linguist would translate his speech into every known language until the alien understood.  He wanted to follow the script so he wouldn’t appear negligent to the many millions of future viewers.

Beginning with the Official group, Cora began the long process of trying one language after another, waiting for a response after each.  The alien’s body language changed to something approaching equality as Cora began speaking and she showed interest in some of the sounds of International English but it was obvious she understood nothing of their meaning.  Sign and gesture languages met with similar results, precipitating interest but not understanding.  Click-speech seemed hopeful at first; the lilac woman leaning towards Cora and making encouraging movements with her rather sinuous arms but, ultimately, that too failed.  “I can’t do it!” the linguist moaned finally, admitting the defeat she’d feared.  She just wasn’t up to the job.

~Try again,~ Blun-dala encouraged.  ~Remember why you here.~

The humanoid alien leaned forward again, mimicking the flying alien specialist’s arm-and-leg movements.

~Remember why you here,~ she stated, using the new gesture language which Cora was helping her Dipteran friend to develop.  The human linguist smiled.