Syrlla’s Song, the Southern Seas

Eastern shore

Tarrskyn Eiddersbor

"How did you manage to lose them? You’ve chased them all across the sea, and lost them the moment they get to land? Unacceptable!” Shulft was not happy. Not happy at all. And the idiot was going to get himself gutted if he didn’t get smarter very soon indeed.

“It’s quite simple,” Tarrskyn explained patiently, for the third time. “Their ship is smaller than we are. She rides lighter in the water. She can turn quicker and hides in the fog better than we do. And the young lord she belongs to is a damn canny sailor. I can see why your master wants him so much; he’ll fetch a handsome ransom.”

Shulft spat over the side and glared at the coastline as though it had made an uncouth comment about his mother’s virtue. “They must have gone inland.”

“Of course they went inland,” Tarrskyn agreed, wrestling with his insulted pride. Who did this lead-footed clod think he was talking to? He’d paid for the best captain and crew he could find, and now he was treating them all like fools.

But satisfying his frustrations and giving Shulft the thrashing he deserved before marooning him would be bad for business.

“So? Head inland!”

“Certainly, your bjerkarness,” Tarrskyn smarmed. “And which of the…oh…five inlets I’ve seen so far should we explore? Assuming they didn’t sail further north or south up the shore. We last saw them two days ago, I remind you.”

Shulft glared at him, then returned his wrath toward the land. “I thought I paid for the best.”

“You did. We haven’t lost them yet,” Tarrskyn promised. He returned to the back of the ship and dug through the items he had stashed there. “Watch and learn.”

He found what he was looking for, and turned around, holding it. Shulft frowned at the cage in his arms. “That’s an aurnak.”

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Tarrskyn agreed.

“I think she might be the ugliest aurnak I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Tarrskyn snorted, slipped on a thick leather glove, opened the cage, and transferred the hooded, taloned animal to his hand. It hung upside-down from his wrist, cocking its head this way and that as it waited.

“Flying those is a noble’s sport. What’s a lowlife like you doing with one?”

“Skathi here was always too ragged-looking to be a lord’s plaything,” Tarrskyn replied, stroking the bird’s head affectionately. Shulft wasn’t wrong; Skathi was too…feral to have ever been a noble’s bird. But that just added to her charms as far as he was concerned. “Which just proves you rich folk are more interested in style than skill. She’s the finest bird I’ve ever flown.”

“She looks like a hearth brush.”

“Thank you for demonstrating my point.” Tarrskyn grinned at him as he took Skathi’s hood off. The aurnak flapped her wings impatiently until he fed her a sliver of meat. “She’s a smart one, my Skathi. Sharp as an arrow point, and twice as fast. If that ship is within twenty leagues of here, she’ll find it.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“How do you think we’ve followed them this far?” Tarrskyn didn’t bother reminding Shulft just how far twenty leagues was. Any man too stupid to know that wasn’t worth the effort. If Wavebird was more than twenty leagues from Syrlla’s Song, then he, Tarrskyn, had been truly and deservedly out-sailed, and would be going back across the sea disappointed, after a lean winter spent on these foreign shores.

Good thing he’d taken enough money upfront to cover expenses, therefore. His men would be paid, which was the difference between mutiny and life. He could afford to go unpaid himself; if he failed to pay the men, they’d beat him half dead and throw him overboard to drown the rest of the way, and he’d deserve it.

He tossed another scrap of meat into the sky and heaved Skathi upwards as well. The bird let go of his wrist, flipped through the air in a tight turn, flapped powerfully, and intercepted the morsel at the top of its arc before it could start falling into the water. Shulft grunted, which was about as close to respect as Tarrskyn thought he was likely to get. He’d have loved to see some pampered lady’s sleek little pretty wrist-vermin pull a stunt like that, though.

He whistled sharply, and Skathi banked away inland with a keening cry. A few more flaps of her wings, and she was just a dot in the blue above.

“There!” He took the glove off and dusted his hands happily. “In the meantime, we need provisions. To shore, lads. Let’s find water and game.”

Not even Shulft complained. Their barrels were getting much too empty, and there was no telling how long Skathi would spend on the wing before she came back.

It might be days. But she’d be back. Skathi always found her prey.

And thus, Tarrskyn always found his.

Sjívull Wylderrjorssían

The conversation had turned about as tedious as could be expected. For the moment, Sjívull didn’t know what to think of the…glowing thing in front of Ember. She kept looking at it. Then she’d point at something, or speak a sentence in her language while theatrically gesturing, until he got the point and guessed at what sentence she wanted from him. Whatever he said or did, she just looked at the thing again and moved on.

The moment when she frowned at it then tried out a real sentence took him off guard. Her pronunciation was awful, but they were the right words, no mistake.

“Wh-hat iss…yoor sh’ip’s nnname?”

Drynllaf grunted. Sjívull blinked at her, and she did the widest mouth-thing yet, so wide and happy that her teeth showed for a second before she covered her mouth.

Sjívull could see why she was hiding them, though. Those teeth were completely wrong. They were flat and white, not pointed and yellow like a tooth should be.

More strangeness. He glanced at the glowing…whatever and shook himself.

“She’s named Wavebird,” he replied.

Ember nodded. “Oour shi’ip hass nnname…Dan-Dee-Lie-On.” She smiled at him again. “Woss that right?”

“Your ship is named…Dahn-dee-lye-on,” Sjívull corrected her. She nodded and didn’t even glance at the tool this time.

“Thank you.”

She could pronounce that one perfectly. Sjívull was honestly in awe; in the time they’d been talking, he’d picked up just a short handful of her words—“Yes,” “No,” “Water,” and “Name,”—but she was learning like a master bard memorizing a new poem.

No wonder she was the one doing the talking for these dwarves.

He’d decided he was happy enough the dwarves were friendly, at least. Which meant it was time to turn his thoughts to provisioning his men and making a camp. They still had the other ship to worry about, but it would have a great deal of coastline to hunt for them. And if they reprovisioned soon enough and raced back across the sea to the west, they’d leave their hunters behind, too starved and thirsty to give chase.

He needed to be decisive, therefore.

“We need to refill our water barrels,” he told Amber, then pointed to them and mimed drinking.

“Reeefill?”

“Uh…make more…full.” Sjívull did his best to mime an empty thing and filling it up. Borrowing her water bottle helped with that, and she nodded happily when she got the message. She spoke to the glowing thing, telling it the words for “full” and “refill.”

It had to be some kind of magic book. A book that could write down words without needing a pen? Sjívull had never seen any magic at all in his life, but Ember had a truly wondrous example just…lying on the ground in front of her. It had been in her pocket, as though it was as normal as a knife.

“Refill. Yes.” Ember nodded, them turned and pointed north. “Good water there.”

Drynllaf nodded approval and moved toward one of the huge water barrels the crew had laboriously hauled off the ship. It was empty, but still so heavy that two sailors were needed to roll it down the plank. His movement caught Roí’s interest; the burly dwarf took a few steps toward the barrel as well, and Drynllaf responded…carefully. Not aggressively, but not un-aggressively, either. He straightened and rested his hand lightly on his sword’s hilt.

There was a tense moment where the two men gave each other a serious look up and down, then Roí mimed picking something up, pointed to himself, then at the barrel. He rounded it off with a shrug as if to say The offer is there if you want it.

“I’ve got to see this,” grumbled Drynllaf. “I don’t care how big he is, there’s no way.”

Roí seemed to take his meaning, because he just did that stretched-face smile thing even wider than Ember ever had, flashing those weird white teeth until Ember spoke, promoting him to wrestle his expression into something more neutral.

Strange. They seemed to think showing their teeth was rude, despite that it was obviously natural to them.

In any case, Roí’s expression seemed…somehow tolerant. Weirdly so, like an old friend indulging another. He slung his weapon on a strap around his shoulders so it was out of the way and approached the barrel with his hands empty.

Skjer stepped aside and let him at it with his ears askance. “I don’t know, bjerkar…I think he can do it.”

“You a betting man, Skjer?” Drynllaf asked.

Skjer nodded affably. “Aye. I’ll wager…two coins.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

Roí meanwhile peered into and around the barrel, examined it, thumped it with the back of his knuckles…then rolled it over one of his huge shoulders and picked it up with one arm. It took him no discernible effort whatsoever.

Drynllaf’s expression very carefully didn’t change, but his hand dipped into his pocket and he slapped a pair of silver pieces into Skjer’s waiting palm.

Roí bared his teeth again, this time so Ember couldn’t see. Sjívull did his best to imitate the gesture, and Roí turned to Ember.

“Sí?” he asked. Ember sighed and waved a hand, speaking some resigned words.

Skjer looked smug as he pocketed his winnings. “Care to see if he can carry one on the other shoulder, bjerkar?”

“No bet.”

Roí relaxed a great deal and became much more animated. Happy and bouncy now, he approached the other barrel and casually hoisted that one onto his shoulder as well before guiding Skjer and the others in the direction of water.

Ember asked him a question, which he shrugged off with a tone of voice that said trust me in any language, so she shrugged, too, and raised those two little fur strips above her eyes at Sjívull. He had no idea what that meant.

Sjívull turned toward the crew. “Well? We’ve got a friendly dwarf willing to carry our water. Bring pots, the lids, and the mallet, and make camp.”

The crew shook off the spell of watching a man carry two barrels and did as they were ordered. Drynllaf, meanwhile, sidled closer to Sjívull and cleared his throat.

“A man that strong is damned dangerous, young lord.”

“No doubt. I suspect if he intended us harm…”

“He could break me in half, and all the men, too. Aye.”

“Yes.”

“Nice of him to restrain himself, then.” Drynllaf grunted and straightened up again. That was about as close as he ever got to a joke.

“These people clearly mean well,” Sjívull judged. “And in any case, it will be educational to watch him work, don’t you think? You can learn a lot about a man that way.”

“They will doubtless learn much about us as well, young lord.”

Sjívull glanced back at Ember, who was watching and listening to the conversation with unmistakable interest in those strange, large eyes. She looked like she was drinking in every word, and he knew by now that she was picking up his language far faster than he could grasp hers.

“Of that,” he said, “I’m in no doubt at all.”

Dandelion master control center.

D.A.N.I.

LITA was working beautifully, and DANI was having enormous fun constantly updating and patching her as the alien vocabulary flowed up the link from Launch 732, and he learned the system’s limitations and strengths.

Being sapient software had some very serious advantages, especially when it came to developing non-sapient software. He could iterate through development versions faster than a human would believe possible, which was why LITA was already on beta v.0.3.1.

He’d swear, despite the hard limits on her intelligence, LITA was beginning to develop glimmers of a personality, though. Of course she was learning from only a single human. And a single alien.

Which brought him to the question of Sjívull Wylderrjorssían. The captain of Wave Bird was clearly younger than the men around him, almost certainly still an adolescent, in fact. It was difficult to get a precise fix on his relative age, but DANI suspected Sjívull was much the same age as the Rangers. Presumably his culture released young males into adulthood rather sooner than modern human culture did.

Amber’s U-Tool scans and the footage from Nikki’s rifle scope-cam had helped him determine a lot about the natives. For instance, the big one—Drynllaf—was obviously a bodyguard to the younger Sjívull. But importantly, he was not a blood relative. He seemed more like a house retainer or steward. The rest of the crew were of a lower social class; their clothing was rougher and less colorful, they seemed less well-nourished and well-groomed, and while Sjívull and Drynllaf both bore fine swords in intricately-detailed leather scabbards, the crew mostly seemed to have simple knives, tools, and spears.

None of that was a surprise. Dominance hierarchies were all too natural.

The scientists of Xenobiology and Colony Planning had jointly set up a First Contact Center in Feynman Hall, Dandelion University’s most prestigious lecture theatre. They were poring over absolutely everything, from physiology and gross anatomy, down to the way literally every piece of equipment or apparel the aliens had that wasn’t obviously disposable seemed to have been decorated in some way. Belts, knife handles, the ship itself…even the water barrels sported artistic carvings.

The conversation surrounding that quirk was proving to be quite interesting.

Doctor Gotti, one of the sociologists, was shaking his head. “I think you’re attributing too much deliberation to it. What if personalizing their stuff is just what they do for fun of an evening?”

His counterpart was Doctor Sanderson from Xenobiology. “Hmm. So when they have some downtime, they grab a tool and decorate their possessions? Possibly.”

“It would explain the variation in style and quality I can observe,” DANI contributed. The nice thing about participating in the conversation via holographic avatar was he could use the same emitter to conjure up image panels and illustrate his point. This he now did, bringing up a side-by-side comparison of three different belts, one belonging to an as-yet unnamed crewman, Skjer’s, and Drynllaf’s.

All three bore the same general theme of intricate geometric knotted shapes, but the tooling was unquestionably inferior on the unidentified crewman’s. Drynllaf’s was excellent; the pattern was strong, even, regular, and elegant. But Skjer’s was the real standout; it was breathtakingly intricate. Every element that made Drynllaf’s belt so good was present on his own, but more. DANI ran the footage he’d taken that close-up from forward a few frames as Skjer turned and highlighted a tool pouch, itself also exquisitely detailed and pyrographed.

“According to the U-Tool, that pouch contains a number of rather good leatherworking tools,” he explained.

“Meanwhile Drynllaf, being of a higher social class, could afford to just buy a good belt.” Gotti nodded.

“Exactly. Now compare it with Sjívull’s.”

The young nobleman’s belt was made to age with him. Right now the free end was so long and loose that he’d had to tuck it back through the belt to stop it from dangling. Again, the leather-working was competent, just as competent as Drynllaf’s…but again, not as good as Skjer’s. The difference was in the details. Drynllaf’s had a brass tip protector; Sjívull’s, according to the U-Tool, was a gold alloy and set with a pair of garnets.

“We should call up some of the materials science guys,” Doctor Sanderson mused. “It’d be good to know where they’ve got to in terms of metallurgy.”

“I’ll make a few invitations,” DANI promised, adding those calls to the long list of other conversations he was simultaneously having across the ship.

Gotti nodded. “So we have a young man, captaining a rather fine ship, with a high-class retainer, and wearing gold and gems and fine clothing. I think it’s inescapable that Seevutl—”

“Sjívull,” DANI corrected gently.

“—Thank you, DANI. He’s a prince; he has to be. Or high nobility, certainly.”

“So what’s he doing in the wrong end of nowhere?” Sanderson asked. “They exhausted their supplies to cross that ocean; they wouldn’t do that unless they had to…would they?”

“I suppose it depends whether anybody’s ever crossed it before. If they know there’s land and a chance to resupply waiting for them then…they might.” Gotti frowned. “It’s hard to say. We took a leap into the unknown, after all, but we brought omnifactories, huge reserves, and DANI with us.”

“So long as I have access to a supply of water and raw materials, I could in theory oversee the construction and provisioning of a replacement Dandelion,” DANI added.

“Exactly. We left home with everything we could possibly need or want. Our safety margin was enough that we could even have turned around and gone back to Sol if Newhome didn’t pan out.”

“But these people had just what they carried with them, and from the looks of things, they barely made it,” Sanderson said.

“Yes. I can’t help but feel they wouldn’t have cut it that fine if they knew how far they were really travelling.”

“Making Sjívull the equivalent of…what? Leif Erikson?” Sanderson asked. “Blown off course, maybe?”

DANI shook his avatar’s head. “Unlikely. My analysis of Newhome’s climate and weather patterns shows no indication of any recent storms along their course. There is a cyclonic weather system, but the wind has exceeded no more than force three or four since it first formed four days ago. Visibility, however, is a perpetual problem—dense sea fog is a daily occurrence.”

“Well, something must have forced him across that ocean. Either that, or he’s foolhardy. And I don’t get a foolhardy impression off him so far,” Gotti said.

“He is an alien,” DANI pointed out. “His motives and logic may be different from a human’s or my own in ways we have not yet identified.”

“I don’t care how alien his logic is. You don’t set out on a trip like that only half-prepared. Not if you value your life.”

“If he values his life,” DANI agreed. “And the presence of a bodyguard implies somebody does.”

“Exactly. So I think we have to assume something forced them over the water.”

“Or somebody,” Sanderson interjected. “Maybe he has enemies?”

Gotti paused. “Actually, that would make sense.”

“It seems likely,” DANI agreed after running up some quick probability tables, “but I have insufficient data to say for sure.”

“Well, why don’t we have Miss Houston ask him?” Sanderson suggested. “She’s doing an excellent job so far.”

DANI nodded. “I’ve added a request queue to LITA. As soon as it can prompt Amber to ask that question, it will.”

“I must say, this light lag isn’t as bad as I feared it would be,” Sanderson said jovially.

“Right now we are still quite close to Newhome, at a mere billion kilometers. It will get much worse over the coming—Ah. Welcome, Captain.”

Torres smiled at DANI’s avatar as she trotted down the theatre’s steps, nodding to and greeting the various scientists, who made room for her. As the closest thing Dandelion had to a head of state, she was a figure of some celebrity. Gotti had certainly never met her, to DANI’s knowledge, and seemed a little starstruck. DANI made introductions and showed off LITA for her.

The name seemed to tickle her. “You and your acronyms…” she teased.

“My name is an acronym. They’re important to me.” DANI sniffed. “Besides, I happen to think anything intelligent, even a Limited Intelligence, deserves a name.”

“Fine, fine, you big sentimental…” Torres grinned and leaned forward to examine the projections DANI still had up showing off the belts. “Wow, those are nice.”

“The ship—LITA thinks the name translates as Wave Bird—is even more impressive,” DANI said. “In her way, she’s just as much an accomplishment as Dandelion.”

Torres nodded. “Can I see the first contact footage?”

“By all means.”

DANI brought it up for her, and both Gotti and Sanderson moved back so Torres wouldn’t see their grins. Neither of them wanted to spoil the surprise.

Sure enough, Torres reached the historic first words between human and alien life, and sighed.

“Oh, no. I know she’s young, but…really?”

Sanderson chuckled. “Yup. The full Vulcan Salute, complete with a ‘Live Long and Prosper.’ To be fair though, Captain, and with all due respect? I think we all would have struggled to do better on such short notice.”

“Still. Really?”

“Captain, I must concur with Professor Sanderson,” DANI said. “And indeed, with Miss McKay, who correctly observed that it worked.”

“If it’s dumb but it works, it ain’t dumb,” Gotti agreed, quoting Nikki almost verbatim. “And frankly they’re doing a stellar job, considering they were totally untrained and unprepared.”

Torres shrugged, accepting their point. “Still. I can’t help but feel young Mister McKay there may have been a bit brash…should we recommend he tone it down?”

DANI thought it over carefully. “My advice would be no. They’re young, not stupid, and so far they haven’t put a foot wrong, as far as I can tell. Roy admittedly took a bit of a risk there, but it was a reasonable one, and it made an impression with the armed bodyguard and awed the crew. They respect him, and that reinforces Amber’s authority.”

“So what happens next?”

“They learn the language and establish a diplomatic relationship. On Amber’s part, she’s making genuinely remarkable progress. Though I think I will remind the twins that they only have so many of their energy bars, and it wouldn’t do for them to run out before I can send more. That should persuade Roy to be a little more judicious about showing off if anything can.”

“Speaking of the twins, how long has that poor girl been lying on her belly in the dirt?” Torres asked.

“I assure you, Captain, Nikki will outlast all of them. Her instructors in the militia remarked that she would have made an excellent recon sniper.”

“Oh.”

“She’s a little intimidating, isn’t she?” DANI observed.

“She wouldn’t have been in my husband’s troop if she wasn’t.” Torres sighed. “In any case, as fascinating as this all is, I came down here for an expert opinion. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that the Council needs to meet to discuss how this changes our plans. There are some who say we should recall the Rangers immediately—”

“Not possible,” DANI asserted firmly.

“—and even a few who say that even if we can’t, we shouldn’t pollute an alien culture by continuing with the colonization effort,” Torres finished smoothly. “We need to know if the Rangers are going to just be hunkering down for a few years so we can pick them up and proceed to Second Star, or if they’re going to establish a permanent settlement and we’ll wind up sharing this world with the natives.”

Sanderson made an uncomfortable noise. “Whew. That’s…I don’t know if we have the right. Can you imagine if aliens had come along and settled on Earth?”

“Some conspiracy theorists believe they did,” Gotti said. “Are we certain the Rangers can’t be recalled?”

“Certain,” DANI intoned with finality.

Sanderson scowled. “Damn. Simply making first contact is cultural contamination. Living alongside the natives for the better part of a generation is going to have permanent repercussions.”

“There’s always the possibility of being shot at again too,” Gotti pointed out.

The Council session had been streamed to the whole ship. Everybody had heard DANI’s arguments, and the consensus all over Dandelion’s social media and discussion boards was that he was right. Only a few wishful dreamers continued to hold out the optimistic hope that the emergency was just a coincidence.

“If that happens, my directives will compel me to abandon the Newhome mission entirely, now that colonization has technically been achieved,” DANI informed them. “If the crew wish to override me, you will be forced to disconnect me from the master control system and assume the helm directly.”

“I’d rather it didn’t come to that,” Sanderson said. “I think we’re all aware that we’re only alive right now because DANI can react faster than us.”

“I agree,” Torres assured him, “but all that means we have to assume the colony is there to stay. If we make it safely, and if the Rangers are happy to abandon everything they’ll have achieved in the coming eight years, and if we can be reasonably sure of making it out of the system without being shot at again…”

“Which we cannot,” DANI added.

“Which we cannot, yeah…If all that comes together, we’ll be able to recall the Rangers and head for Second Star. But should even one of those stipulations fall through, our high-minded idealism is going to lose to practical reality.”

“Then I think you already know the answer to your question, Captain,” Gotti said. “The Rangers are there permanently. Or at least, that’s the necessary assumption going forward.”

“Would you be willing to state that on the record?” Torres asked.

“I thought I was,” Gotti replied, “but absolutely. That’s my professional opinion at the moment. Subject to future reevaluation in light of new evidence, of course.”

“And for the record, I officially support and agree with my colleague’s professional opinion,” Sanderson declared.

Torres and DANI’s avatar looked at each other and nodded firmly.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “I’ll stop wasting your time now.”

“You absolutely weren’t wasting it, Captain,” Sanderson replied, and that was that.

DANI strolled his avatar along beside the captain as she left them. Torres didn’t immediately speak, so he let her think and cleared up a few low-priority concerns in his perpetually filling inbox. Nine hundred thousand people didn’t stop having requests for him just because he was having an interesting conversation, after all.

But something seemed…off.

Torres had always been difficult for him to read, more so than most humans, and even most captains. There were several important reasons for that, the greatest of which was a secret he rather suspected was going to come out sooner rather than later, but the truth was Amida Torres played her cards very close indeed to her chest. Combine that with a talent for juggling a conversation alongside completely unrelated thoughts, and she was often a closed book to DANI.

Which was why she completely wrong-footed him when she next spoke.

“I’m taking the rest of the day off,” she said.

That was a surprise. In a moment like this, the captain was needed more than ever, and she knew it.

“Is something the matter, Captain?” DANI asked.

“Is there an emergency happening right now?” she asked.

“No?”

“And I’m not scheduled to speak with anyone this afternoon?”

“You are not,” DANI confirmed.

“Well, then. I’m taking some personal time. You know, I haven’t had time to stop and think in the week since we dodged that bullet? I need ice cream and a good book, and time to just…process things.”

That, DANI had to admit, was eminently fair, and he said so. He was aware that he had a blind spot when it came to leisure time, an artifact of how he never wanted or needed any for himself.

And the fact was, she was right. For the first time in several days, there were no immediate pressing concerns on her time. For now, the worst of the crisis was behind them, and the challenges of the future were in apparently very capable hands. She could afford some rest and relaxation, as well as having earned it.

There would be plenty more for her to think about soon enough, after all. The time was coming, imminently, when DANI would have to open a Pandora’s box he’d mostly kept closed throughout the whole voyage. Best to let her have some quiet time before he revealed the exact nature of Dandelion’s crew to her.

She wasn’t going to like it.