Try Not to Blow up the Ship

Posted on Tue Apr 5th, 2022 @ 9:14am by Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D. & Petty Officer, 3rd Class Kiyara de Vos & Ensign Michael Sloan & Ensign Duncan McManus & Crewman Timothy Richardson & Kyle Cranston

Mission: Mission 5 - Babel
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: TBD, Before Staff Meeting
710 words - 1.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Standing on the floor of Main Engineering, Michael looked between his gathered crew and the Warp Five engine above them. He paced for a moment, knowing that communication was going to be difficult to say the least. They needed to find some common words that they could use to help everyone understand what was going on and what to do when orders were being given. The easiest way was to go back to childhood and introduce yourself and where you were from on Earth. Pointing to himself the Chief Engineer said in his Human side's native tongue from Johannesburg, South Africa, "Michael Sloan, Suid-Afrika." Hopefully, they could find a few related languages.

Kiyara was standing there plucking at the stray hairs that had fought their way free of the braids. They had a tendency to do that when in stressful situations, which in their line of work happened frequently. Everyone around them was sounding off on who they were and where they were from, but they really didn't understand most of it. They had recognised South Africa as well as Germany and France, but they wouldn't be able to hold a conversation with those last two people beyond asking for directions to the nearest shuttle port. The circle had fallen silent and looking up from their ruminations they realised they were being stared at by everyone, "Kiyara de Vos, Delft, Nederland."

"Duncan McManus. The United Kingdom." Duncan was pretty sure he was in trouble here as he had no other languages fluently other than standard and even then with his accent he had issues getting his point across. "Francois and Gallic." and then indicated with his hand that he was not fluent. He shrugged a little looking a little lost but it was no one fault other than his own for never paying attention to french in school and forgetting what gallic he had grown up with.

Kyle sighed as he recognized some of the places and languages. Though he could have been in the mess hall cooking, he felt he was needed here more and on top of that, he was probably the most experienced engineer the Atlantis had at the moment. Other than Federation Standard, he could only speak some French due to his cooking experience. "Cranston. Cranston. Un peu de français," he shrugged.

“Bonjour.” McManus said hopefully to the man as he shrugged himself before looking at the Chief Engineer. He tried to speak but all the words that could be understood was - Leroux and O’Connery. He was trying to say that they needed one of them urgently.

After the incident that nearly ripped a hole in the ship Kiyara and the rest of the crew had realised that communicating in Standard resulted in gibberish. And not even gibberish that had any sense, the same word was scrambled in different ways whenever it was used. They looked at the Chief Engineer as well, knowing his native Afrikaans was close enough to their Dutch if both of them talked slowly and used simple words, "Twee-aan-twee, samenwerken. Schade beperken." (Two-on-two, collaborate. Mitigate damage). It was frustrating not being able to express exactly what they wanted to. "Geschreven taal ook beinvloed" (written language also affected), they hadn't been able to make heads or tails from the damage reports that had been coming in.

Everyone agreed on pairing up with people that had at least one language in common. It wasn't ideal as quite a few of the Engineers were fluent only in Standard, and that didn't work anymore. The teams that could work on things dispersed throughout the ship and worked to repair the damage that was done through the tractor beam holding them in place just as they wanted to depart. It was the first priority, if after the away team came back they hadn't been released yet they'd have to start workshopping solutions to get free from the beam, without speaking the same language.

Kiyara foresaw a lot of hastily drawn diagrams and frustrated pointing in their future. But for now, they focused on the internal damages done to the ship, making sure the Atlantis could get away if and when whatever was holding them down was switched off. One arduous step at a time.