Translating Discussions

Posted on Wed Mar 2nd, 2022 @ 5:04am by Captain Bethsabée Leroux & Lieutenant Darru & Captain Stenn & Lieutenant Samantha Leyton & Commander William Gerhard & Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D. & Ensign Michael Sloan

Mission: Mission 5 - Babel
Location: Mess Hall
Timeline: Day 280 - 19:00
3027 words - 6.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Beth looked out the window that was in the mess hall looking down at the planet and where a beam of light was holding them in situ like a grappler would. It almost felt the same that it was utilizing a magnetic lock device to clamp objects in place. It was a wonder but whatever it was had not relented in any of their attempts over the last three hours to get three, the chaos had died down thanks to some extreme linguist skills from anyone who spoke two or more languages. It was mentally draining for Beth and she yawned into her hand and sipped on the strong black coffee that was so unlike how she liked it but she needed something to keep herself alert.

Beth turned as someone finally got the message to come to the mess hall so this could discuss as a team finally what was going on how they were going to deal with it.

William entered the mess hall and made his way over to the drink dispenser. He input the commands for cold water and waited for the cup to fill. He looked over at the captain nodded in greeting as he wiped the sweat from his exposed forearms since he had rolled the sleeves of his uniform up. For the past three hours, William had been down in the deflector control room as they had worked to remodulate a deflector pulse to disrupt the force holding the ship in place. Everything they tried did not seem to be working, and the added hurdle of not being able to communicate with some of the crew did not help matters. While he was glad some of his armory crew spoke German, William still had had to break up a few heated moments from getting worse. He picked up the cup of ice water and took a sip as he made his way over to the captain.

"The language issue is getting to be quite a problem. While most of my people can communicate with each other in German, the ones that don't speak a common language are getting frustrated at not being able to communicate. I had to head off a few heated arguments while we were working down in deflector control," he said in his native Swedish to her.

“Yeah I had to split up an argument on my way here too.” the woman said with a small sigh as she answered back just relieved for a moment to be just speaking on language. She did not even comment on the deflector control not working, it had been a long shot. There was only one thing for it they were going to have to return to the planet to work it all out.

Samantha entered next, feeling frustrated at the ship being stranded by an unknown energy field. As she approached the other officer, her eyes fell on a plate of cookies as she grinned and made a detour to grab a cookie from the plate. "How did we ever survive without Cranston," she said softly as she grabbed the cookie and continued her way over to the others. This meeting was going to be a pain in the ass, at least for Samantha as she listened to the Swedish dialect being spoken by the Captain and Lieutenant Gerhard.

As Sam wandered over Beth switched to Spanish to greet her and glanced over to the cookies hungry. She moved and picked up the plate bringing it all to where everyone would be. “I need these.” She said taking a bite as the door opened.

Stenn and Darru entered neither having had much in the way of communication with others besides themselves. "I believe the ray holding the ship in place is some form of tractor beam, they were fitting them to the D'kyr Type Combat Cruisers, only this appears to be much more powerful" Stenn told Darru in Vulcan. "How do we explain that to the crew, since it is not a technology they possess?

He looked at Leroux, gave her a respectful nod, offered the traditional Vulcan greeting "We come to serve" not sure how much she could comprehend.

Then continued speaking to Darru. "I know a couple understand some Vulcan, Ensign MacDonald for instance. However, I am not sure if they have a grasp of technical terminology and vocabulary. They are quite intelligent through, and mathematics is a universal constant, do you think that perhaps they would understand a diagram?"

Darru cocked his head to the side as he listened to the other Vulcan as the man spoke and glanced at the Captain as she caught a word or two of what the man said. “I believe you underestimate how much Vulcan they understand and how much compromise has happened between myself and the crew in the last nine months Captain. Both the Captain and Ensign O’Connery know a lot more now having just learnt it this week. They have taken time to learn over the last nine months as I was the only one, but a diagram would be easily understood.” This event was going to be a rude wake-up call for the MACO.

Avira rolled her eyes a bit at the interaction between the Vulcans, she knew enough Vulcan to understand what was going on between them. "Some of us speak Vulcan and don't care much for your condescension." She actually said that in Andorian but didn't care that they wouldn't be able to understand much of it.

"Condescension Doctor?" Stenn responded in passable Andorian. "I was merely stating logical fact, no condescension was meant or intended. Humans are indeed quite intelligent, however, attempting to discuss technical scientific details in an unfamiliar foreign language may prove a difficult challenge. I, for instance, would be unable to discuss medical terminology with you in Andorian, yet we can participate in a conversation about other matters and if you were to draw me a picture of an internal body organ I could probably recognize it, without knowing the Andorian words" He quirked an eyebrow at the Doctor.

This was the kind of Vulcan she had fought. They got under her skin so easily, it was sometimes difficult to understand why. Years of training and propaganda from the Andorian government and her instructors in boot camp. "Yet you don't hear me asking and questioning whether or not you'd understand such advanced and arcane knowledge." She took a deep breath trying to focus on the fact that they were not the enemy here.

"Enough..." Beth said slowly in both Andorian and Vulcan. She really needed Lexi if she was going to work this all out as if the mere thought of Ensign O'Connery was a signal the woman hobbled into the room on her crutches and glanced around pale and confused at the small group. It had been a crazy three hours but proved that one she was not fixed enough to be back on duty properly and that she had also not lost anything with the amnesia. "You requested me, Captain?" She requested in French.

"I need another set of ears and mouths," Beth said indicating to her mouth and ears as she spoke so that the others would understand why Lexi was there.

William looked over and acknowledged Lexi with a nod. He could tell she had been struggling since he had informed her and Ensign MacDonald about the problems with the UT. While MacDonald had been working on trying to figure the comm console out on the bridge, Lexi had been going around the ship helping translate since she knew the most languages. "How is your leg, I'm sure we can find a makeshift wheelchair to help you get around," he asked in Swedish, but the look she gave him back shut that idea down.

"Jolan tru," Michael greeted as he walked into the meeting. Engineering had been hectic as the crew had tried to quickly develop shorthand words to describe various tasks and equipment. It was important that they got cooling the warp core down fast as it would have been extremely unfortunate for the ship to explode while the Chief Engineer was in a staff meeting.

The Armoury Officer was saved from the words that would have come out of Lexi by the Chief Engineers appearance. Lexi just narrowed her eyes and shook her head as she moved to a chair nearly knocking Samantha over as she sat down heavily. "Sorry." She said in Spanish as she looked at the woman apologetically instead of shooting daggers at William and his absolutely sensible suggestion.

"No apology needed," she replied with a grin in Spanish.

“There is I am staring daggers at armoury chief,” Lexi said using his rank so he could not hear her talking around him.

"Why?" Samantha asked the woman, giving her a curious look.

“He is trying to be sweet. I do not need a wheel chair.” Lexi said with a smile at the curious look. She just shook her head as Beth look at her and smiled.

"O'connery is here as I need help to be able to speak so many languages to allow us to communicate. We need to know how your departments are." Lexi knew which languages she was picking, and quickly repeated it in Vulcan, Swedish and Spanish whilst Beth took the others.

"Most of my people in Armory division are fluent in German which has allowed some of us to communicate fairly well. The problem is the crew that is only fluent in Standard. None of us can make heads or tails what they are saying,” William replied in his native tounge.

“How many would you say there are?” Beth asked before repeating it another two times.

"Eight including Warrant Officer Walker. We've been able to use rudimentary hand signals to get some things across, but it has been extremely challenging," William replied.

As the eyes sort of fell on him, Michael sat a bit straighter as he got ready to present his report. "Engineering is a working mess," he stated in Afrikaans, though with a slight accent that was hard to place. Continuing, he explained, "The best and brightest of Earth come from all corners, so we've had to quickly develop a shorthand. I would say that we can work all systems and keep up normal operations as they are routine. But, I would estimate that in an emergency we would be limited to 60-65 percent of our regular operations until we can find a better way to communicate." He looked over toward Beth and Lexi, hoping one of them could relay the intent.

Beth relayed it seeing she spoke Afrikaan out of the two. "Working mess is fine. We are not going again where." Beth said with a sigh.

Stenn waited patiently until he was signalled, then gave his report via Darru for those unable to understand Vulcan. MACO was getting by between themselves with the sign language and battle signals they used for environments where comms had failed. That was only good for line-of-sight though. They had several personnel with English or other major European languages to interreact with others if needed, but their operational effectiveness would be depleted he acknowledged.

The medical department had the lucky misfortune that the team was small, which on the flipside caused the unfortunate circumstance that none of them had any overlapping languages, especially not in Medical jargon. "There were only a couple of small cuts, bruises, wounds, injuries." She talked slowly in Andorian, used simple words, and used as many synonyms as she could, "we are fine pointing, signalling, but if major surgery is needed we could be in trouble."

“I know.” Beth said simply. She knew they were operating with a time limit on how quickly they could operate like they were. The confusion would only become more frustrating.

"So what the hell has stopped us?" Samantha asked as she swallowed the last bite of her cookie.

"A source of power from the Tower," Darru commented in Vulcan but held up a pre-prepared picture of the tower and a line to the ship. It was easy to see it that way and did not rely on Beth nor Lexi to translate which made Lexi hold up her thumb in a universal signal for thanks. "The power had knocked out our translator and is creating a signal that is interfering with our ability to speak Earth standard." Darru carried on explaining about the communication console and the purple energy that seemed to be running through it.

With Romulan being related to Vulcan as well as knowing a bit of broken Vulcan allowed Michael to keep up with Darru if he really thought about what the Vulcan was saying. Trying at first in Vulcan, Sloan began, "Perhaps we... break it up.

Lloannen'galae has ways." He could listen to Vulcan and would understand, but speaking it was a bit more difficult.

Shaking his head at the obvious grammatical mistakes he was making, he turned his head to Beth. Dropping into Afrikaans, he explained more comfortably, "Perhaps we can find some way to dissipate the energy. Starfleet has built in fail-safes to distribute excess power to non-essential systems, maybe even use the deflector to send the energy into space?"

Samantha was dep in thought. She didn't recall anything special about the tower. She looked at Lexi and spoke to her in Spanish. "Lexi, do you recall anything strange with the tower?"

William heard Michael talk about the deflector and began shaking his head. "We tried using the deflector, it had no effect," he said to the captain as she translated it info Afrikaans. When Lexi had translated what the XO said he recalled something Elegy had said about the tower, though he didn't know if it had any bearing on their current predicament. "Elegy mentioned the tower was constructed of some kind of advanced organic polymer, though I'm not sure if that helps us," he said.

“It tried to kill me.” Lexi said simply surprised at being called by her first name. She had nothing major to offer around the building.

“Organic?” Darru piped up interested. “Organic could mean alive.” He offered watching as the realisation flickered across the senior officers.

"Alive?" Avira shook her head as she repeated the Vulcan word, nothing about the scans of the tower had indicated any kind of life and there was heaps of organic material that couldn't be considered alive by any stretch of the imagination. At least not as they understood life. "If it's organic, maybe we can make it sick?"

"As I said I can only recall what information Elegy shared which wasn't much, but I believe he said that the tower's skin absorbs the natural carbon from the air to self repair itself," William offered in Swedish, but he still wasn't sure if the information was helpful.

After a moment of listening, Samantha caught on that they were discussing that the tower was alive. Were they crazy? How could a building be alive? "You can't be seriously suggesting that a building is alive," Samantha replied in Spanish.

“It’s an option. What other options do we have right now?” Beth wondered in Spanish. “Something is powering up the tower to hold us here.”

"If needed, target the tower with our phase cannons," Samantha replied with a shrug.

William listened for the translation before he shook his head, "I don't think the phase cannons, or our torpedoes would have any effect. The tower skin composition appears able to withstand an enormous amount of explosive force. There is also no guarantee that the source is the tower."

"It needs to be investigated," Beth said simply. They could not waste torpedoes when they had no source to make any more if they could change the situation without using to many resources. “Stenn… Gerhard get a team we are returning to the planet.” Beth said finally hearing and translating enough of the conversation back and forth on theories around the organic material.

Stenn nodded once he got the translation. "A sentient structure? Intriguing" He mused.

Then said to Leroux "If the tractor beam stops when we reverse course that may substantiate the theory"

“We cannot move. It was considered but it’s not doable just like the deflector dish attempts.” Beth said simply relieved that basic Vulcan was coming easy to her.

"Then returning in person would be logical" Stenn nodded and left to gather a Fire Team.

Darru nodded at the Captain as he surmised that was why the Captain was suggesting a return to the planet. "I am logical sometimes." She said with a shrug instead of rolling her eyes very much like she wanted to.

William nodded at the captain before he also stood and followed after Stenn. He figured that he could help with translating for the Vulcan, though the thought of returning to the planet so soon after the tragedy that had befallen them was unsettling.

Samantha picked up and put together that the captain wanted to reverse course in hopes the beam would disengage. She only hoped the plan worked. The alternative could be disastrous and nearly rip the ship apart. "If it doesn't stop, we risk severely damaging the ship beyond repair."

“What doesn’t work?” Beth asked quietly in Spanish so they were all clear on assembling a team and returning to the planet.

"Our MACO commander suggested we move the ship closer to the planet," Samantha replied in Spanish.

"He suggested but I am not doing the suggested. I trust you and your opinion that if we attempt something like that we will damage the ship beyond repair." Beth said gently and squeezed her arm. "We need to have a proper talking about the second officer," Beth said softly they had not had that conversation since Nascimento's accident. It was much needed.

Samantha nodded. Things had been so busy lately that they hadn't chosen a Second Officer for the Atlantis. "Understood," she replied.

Beth looked around at everyone and nodded. They would get through the next adventure together as a team.