Frank was replaying the events in his head. Dropping into this system, picking up a distress call, came across someone who he had ASSUMED was suffering some space madness, now it seemed HE was the mad one looking upon the three that stood in front of him. 'Fucking space demons?!' What deity decided to pull this trick on him. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath trying to contain the adrenal spike, and smacked himself in the face. Well, he felt it, so he must still be awake. With an awkward smile he opened his eyes too see them recoiling slightly. 'Of course they would, they just say their 'savior' smacks himself.’

"I'm sorry about that, I'm just a little confused. Um..." He tried thinking back to the UEG first contact protocol, but came up blank. They were here and now, how gives a damn what they'd say. "Welcome aboard, Lelith, am I pronouncing that right? I'm sorry if I seem a bit incoherent, you're the first aliens I've come across, well, alien to me at least."

He saw them glance at each other. 'Lelith' turned toward the man on her side and whispered something to him. The other woman appeared to be tensing up quite a bit. She seemed prime and ready to draw whatever that was on her side, his smile dropped a bit. He just stayed still, concerned that even the slightest of moves would set her off. He thought, 'I guess some body language is universal regardless of the species. 'Lelith' seemed to finish her conversation and turned back to face while the man headed back into the craft. She raised the pad and whispered again.

"Causing significant self harm and aggressive baring of teeth are cause for concern. Are you entirely sure you are alright yourself?"

"Oh? Oh! I see how what can be taken out of context. You see, when we Humans believe we're hallucinating, we attempt to use pain as a focus. As for the 'baring of teeth', we call that a smile, its uh... A form of body language we use to show contentment, not an aggressive display." He dropped the smile completely and thought, 'no smiling at the big space demons, got it.'

"You must forgive me," he saw her brow furrow slightly, as if she wasn't convinced, maybe body language isn't all that different after all. "Since we have never seen your species we are unaware of the differences in behaviors. If you do not find it presumptuous of me, perhaps you can tell what whereabouts your system is? We should have come across your kind already..."

"I'm not sure what you call it, but from what we call Sagittarius A, the black hole in the middle of the galaxy, our main system is twenty-six thousand six hundred light years from that. I honestly was heading to one of our furthest outposts about four hundred lightyears..." he thought for a second about his orientation and pointed toward the deck plates near the center-front of the cargo bay, "...that direction if I'm not mistaken."

"To think there is actually a civilization that far into the outer rim? That would explain quite a bit why we have never met. Even though we are at the edge of the Galactic Council territories."

"I'm sorry, did I hear that right, a Galactic Council? As in a formal group?" This was surprising. 'First space demons, so what's next, space angels? Space elves?' He saw the man return from the craft.

"Oh yes, there are a total of forty-one species that are members."

"This is a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I need a drink..." He shook his head a bit to clear his mind. "Where are my manners? Let's head to a more suitable place to speak. Perhaps figure out what I can do for you. If you'd follow me."

He began making his way to the exit. He felt the pull of the mag-boots and deactivated them. Not like he needed them anymore, and hating the extra effort. He jumped up the ten foot high steps having to catch the second from the top. Gravity this low meant he can jump instead of climb. As much as he wasn't a fan, he wasn't going to deny himself that little joy. Had he looked behind, he'd see a slightly shocked look on the faces of the ones following him. He tapped the panel to release the door interlock safeties and punched in an override to set the ship to the current cargo bay gravity.

He walked into what was essentially a kitchen/dining room. Dropping his helmet and gloves on the counter, he opened a cabinet and pulled a bottle and a glass. He poured a few fingers then sealed and returned the bottle. As stepped to the table, took the middle seat on the one side he tapped some keys on the table to display the sensor data, the trio finally entered.

"Please, take a seat where you'd like. There's a small panel on the side of the stools that will raise and lower it for you."

The woman hesitantly took a seat across from him and adjusted the seat. The other two took up seats on either side of her in much the same order as he had see them standing. Perhaps the sides they were on had a cultural significance. He'd have to keep that in mind. He took a sip of his drink feeling the burn slide down his throat. After sitting, the man presented two tiny objects to the, Captain he reckoned she was, and she held them to the pad in her hand for a moment before placing them on the table and sliding them towards him before whispering into the pad.

"Please use this, it will help make the conversation much easier to have."

She placed the pad down, fiddled with her ear and removed an identical item to the two on the table and held it a little closer to him to show exactly what it was. 'okay, some sort of translator maybe? That WOULD make this easier.' They looked a little oblong, but they looked similar to his earplugs he'd used from time to time. After fiddling with them a moment to put them in, he realized there was absolutely no change in sound.

"Are they working properly now?" She spoke and well, it wasn't from the pad this time.

"Well, if their purpose was active real-time translation, they seem to be working perfectly." He was kind of glad. The awkward pausing for the translating pad was slightly irritating.

"I'm so glad that they work. Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am Lelith, daughter of Lelyvia. On my right, Zedora, daughter of Zebis. To my left is Ozakos, son of Ser'vios. On behalf of the Brirali , I am incredibly grateful for your help in our time of need." The trio all bowed their head slightly.

"And to formally reintroduce myself, I'm Frank Barnet, commander is this ship, the Occasional Epiphany. As for the assistance, it wasn't that big of a deal. We humans have a habit of helping when we can and able. Now, onto the matter at hand. Just how bad is the condition of your craft?" He took another sip.

He saw Lelith turn and nod towards Ozakos and handed him the pad they were using. He tapped a few keys and looked over the display.

"Well Frank, I will be honest. I do not know exactly how bad the damage is. We were under attack and had to perform an emergency jump to get away. Our power generator was already damaged and the overload of the jump did not do it any favors. The power drain used to come out of the jump was enough to effectively shut down the generator. That might be a completely lost cause. I have no faith our jump drive fairs any better. It requires a constant supply of power to the magnetic control coils in order to maintain a functional state. Our thrusters need the power generator to run at all, so of course they are non-functioning. We have some baseline sensors, shortrange communications and life support are the only things I know for a fact that are working. I'm not sure what your time demarcation is, but we have been adrift for a little more than six Galactic Standard Days."

"Time demarcation... Hmm... Well, we split our time by seconds, minutes, hours and days. In our case..." he glanced at the display on the table and began tapping his finger to the seconds next to it. "Each tap is about one second. It's sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour, and twenty-four hours to the day." After another moment he stopped tapping.

"If I'm correct in this, a Galactic Standard Day would be about twenty-eight of your hours. however our lesser demarcation is close to your hour. We will call that a Galactic Standard Hour, in this case, it is twenty-five hours."

"Well, a wise man once said 'time is relative'. I wonder just how compatible my power transverter is and perhaps we can shunt some power to your ship and see if we can get a better idea of what's right with your craft."

"Hmm, those words are quite wise." He punched a few things into his pad. "I would greatly appreciate it if you can have your engineers begin the work."

"Sorry, but I don't have any engineers."

"Scientists perhaps you call them?"

"Nope, I'm the only one on this ship."

"You must be joking," responded Ozakos.

"A primate like you run this ship, by yourself? Quit lying..." Zedoris spoke up glaring at Frank, leaning towards him. "You'll need at least nine people minimum to crew a ship this large! You expect me to believe that?!"

"Can't deny I'm evolved from primates, however, I do, in fact, operate this ship myself. Now," he took another sip of his drink. "I have been extremely courteous in this conversation, there's no need to get angry, let alone insulting." He narrowed his gaze at her.

"Really now, then what's to stop me from..." She placed both her hands on the table appearing as though she was going to leap at him. He placed his glass down and began tensing. If she wants a fight, he'd be happy to oblige.

"Zedoris, enough!" Lelith spat. Immediately Zedoris settled back down. "I do hope you will forgive her, she has always been an aggressive individual."

"It's fine, it almost reminds me of an old girlfriend of mine. Didn't think I'd get reminded of her out here." He glared at her, still smoldering in her seat. "Anyway, allow the adults to continue talking." She looked like she was going to say something before Lelith shot her a look. " You said you performed an emergency jump to get here. I hate to ask this, but do you know where you are."

"To be perfectly honest, I only have a slight idea. If I had a map, I might be able to figure that out." Ozakos mentioned.

"I may be able to do that for you." He tapped the panel on the side of the table turning the full top into a display showing a two dimensional starmap. He slid his hands across the surface to zoom into the system where they were, then zoomed back out a to show the distance to Sag A. "You can operate it by sliding your hands across the surface like I did. If you tap on a system, you can get some basic information. Sorry if the information is extremely limited. Honestly, this part of space isn't exactly explored at all, hence why I'm out here gathering data."

"Simple, yet effective. It's quite nice really, fairly intuitive as well..." He played around with it a bit. Lelith seemed rather intrigued while Zedoris sulked in her seat. After a short while, and a finished glass later. "I think I may have an idea where we are. If I'm reading this right, we had jumped from this system here," he tapped a system about seventeen hundred light years away. "I really did not think that the jump would take us this far out. A normal jump is usually limited to three hundred light years at most."

"Wait a moment, your jump drives have that kind of range?!" Frank was shocked. "And here I thought my range was pretty good." He knew a few vessels that could go fifty easily, and a couple cases of sixty on the outside, but three hundred? Whoa.

"There are some that can go even further, but those are on larger ships. Vessels like ours are a bit scaled back."

"Okay then." He came down from his shock. "Since you were attacked there, it might not be a good idea to go back there. Do you have a secondary system we can head towards?"

"Yes, I do believe we have a system here where we can safely go," he said as he tapped another one about eighty-three lightyears away from the first. "Yes, this system should be safe, it's near the outter edge. There's a shipyard there that can handle repairs as well."

Then that seems to be the best choice we have. Quite far out, but should be doable... Eden, calculate a plot a course to the targeted system, fastest route at maximum jump range."

"Acknowledged, Commander," crackled from the speakers.

"I thought you said you were alone." Zedoris nearly shouted, her hand immediately reaching the weapon on her side.

"I am," Frank sighed. "That's just a voice-activated computer program. It helps me operate the ship. It's not a person."

Zedoris, to her credit seemed to relax slightly, the looks from Lelith and Ozakos may have helped. Frank rubbed the back of his neck and stood.

"Well, it's going to be a little time before the course is plotted. If you need to rest, through that door is a cabin area. I'm not sure how well you'll fit on the beds, but you can at least get some rest. The marked cabin is mine, but you're free to use the others are you deem fit. Just inside the doors, on the wall is a slider where you can adjust the light levels. I do have a slight favor to ask you Ozakos, is there any chance you can help me learn your letters? Sure this translator works well for audio, but I would like to have an idea of how to read it if I'm going to work on your systems."

"That shouldn't be an issue at all, and you do have a point..." He turned to Lelith and said, "You should take him up on his offer for some rest. I'll stay with him and given him a bit of a lesson."

"I do believe you are correct. Frank, I do very much appreciate this. Zedoris, come with me." The two women stood up. Lelith bowed slightly before heading into the cabin area with Zedoris.

"Well," Ozakos tapped a few times on his pad. "Since I have a copy of your letters and words, it'll make it easier since I can translate it directly. What we generally use within the Counsel systems in what we call Galactic common." He turned the pad to Frank who was changing the tabletop to a blank screen with a touch keyboard...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Course plotting completed, Commander"

Frank stretched his arms over his head. With the help of Ozakos, he managed to program his visor with a simple visual translation software for galactic common, programmed his communications system to use a translation software, and even a rudimentary computer-to-computer data interface with their systems. It may be a bit slow, but it was a start. In between technical discussion there was a bit of talk about eating habits and homeworlds. Frank was surprised that they were primarily herbivores and Ozakos was surprised how truly omnivorous humans are including a variety of plant toxins that had beneficial effects, though some things are similar, they seem to eat quite a bit less, along with declaring Earth a 'Deathworld', theirs' did seemed like a paradise comparatively. It wasn't so much an insult, but a statement of just how 'unique' the planet really was and how study humans were.

"Well, let's see what we have." Frank pulled up the starmap again with Ozakos looking as well. "This might take a while. Seventy-one jumps... Hmm... Including drive travel and cooldown, no stopping to look around, it's likely going to be about," he thought for a moment, "fourteen Galactic days travel to allow for some rest myself. Maybe ten if I really push it."

"Your drives are that archaic? I mean, at least by our standards." Ozakos asked.

"Well, we've only had FTL for maybe a hundred and eighty years."

"Only that long?! Most species take almost six hundred years to reach that point safely."

"And there is the catch, right there. You said 'safely'. I'll be the first to admit, we never quite did it safely. We kinda just jumped off the cliff, as it were, either the test failed and conditions were adjusted before the next, if it succeeded, it would be improved upon. To be honest, that's how most of our developments came about."

"I take it back, you humans are crazy." Ozakos said in disbelief at what Frank said.

"Oh, we can be in some ways. No denial. However, it does allow us a bit of an edge in some cases. You called my planet a Deathworld. We became the top creature, not because we were the biggest or strongest out there, but because we never gave up and did everything we could for even the most infinitesimal advantage over the rest." He shrugged.

"It would explain a few things... " he mumbled under his breath. "I should speak to the others and get them up to speed as to what appears to be our new travel plans."

"Go ahead and get some rest yourself. I'll be on the bridge down that way," he pointed down the corridor. "It's been a rather 'interesting' day for us all." Franks got up and stretched, feeling a slight pop in his back. He watched Ozakos get up, bow slightly, then turn toward the cabins. He tried to contain a yawn as he opened the fridge and pulled a bottle of water and made his way back to the bridge. Before he sat down, he took his old cup and tossed it into a nearby compartment, something to take care of later. Once he settled into his chair, he began pouring over the received sensor data of the system.

He woke with a start, hearing footfalls on the deck behind him. It took him a second to remember he did have guests onboard. He glanced at the clock to see almost five hours have passed.

"This ship appears to be quite spacious," He heard Lelith say as he began standing up from his chair, "very surprising it can be operated by just one individual." He was finally facing the direction of the voices to see Lelith with Zedoris trailing behind her.

"Welcome to the bridge. It was originally set to have a crew of six, but as I said, I've made some changes. Sorry about the lack of seating though, I generally don't have guests onboard." He walked over to the pair.

"It is quite alright. Much more comfortable than floating in space in what I assumed would be my tomb. Ozakos said that it may be fourteen days until we reach. If possible, I would ask that you take us. We will reward you handsomely. From what I've heard, your ship is, please don't take this the wrong way, rather primitive. If you will accept it as payment, please allow me to do what I can to provide upgrades. I may not be able to provide every advancement we have made over you, but I do wish to provide you with what I can."

Frank mulled this over. A part of him didn't want the changes, he like his ship as it was, and the upgrades might also make him a target. There haven't been too many significant improvements over the last fifty or so years. On the other hand if the ranges Ozakos told him were remotely possibly for his ship, and if he could negotiate some sensor upgrades, it would make his life a lot more profitable. Also, building up goodwill with aliens and having a contact within their Council, if reported to the UEG, there could be some government protection offered to him. After a moment, he made his decision.

"I accept your proposal, we have a deal." He offered his hand to the quizzical looks of the others returned. "Oh, of course... uhh, this is a human gesture called a handshake. It's generally used as a formal greeting or, in this case, a show of an accepted agreement."

After a moment, Lelith tentatively held out her hand, in which he gripped gently, feeling the same returned made a slight up and down movement and released his grasp, while she maintained hers. She turned his hand slowly looking it over before quietly remarking, "five appendages, fascinating..." Frank let out a chuckle as Lelith realized she was still holding his hand, she immediately released it and pulled her hand back.

"I am so sorry, I was distracted."

"It's fine. Curiosity is a drug in and of itself that even I'm addicted to. Curiosity leads to discovery, and discovery is one of the greatest things one may achieve."

"Sounds like something Ozakos would say." Zedoris finally spoke. Frank smiled slightly, doing his best not to show teeth this time.

"It would seem we might not be all that different after all. Perhaps we can learn a lot about each other and our different cultures since we'll be travelling companions for a time." Zedoris scoffed. "Since we're seemingly in agreement, shall we begin the journey?"

"Yes, I do believe we should be on our way. If it's quite alright, will you allow me to remain here a bit longer. I'm interested in how your systems work, and I have some other things I would like to ask you."

"Yes, please. One moment" He stepped to the other seat, made a few adjustments that should allow her to sit properly, then stepped away. "That should just about do it. Feel free to take this one." He made his way over to his own and took a seat as she was navigating her way around to take the one he set up for her.

"I must say, it's quite snug fitting."

"It's by design, for the most part. You can adjust it with the panel on the right side of the seat itself. The front toggle controls the foot plate distance, the middle knob controls the width of the seat, and the rear toggle adjusts the angle of the backrest." He heard the soft hum of the servos as she was getting the seat just right for her.

"This seat is comfortable once adjusted. Also, this seems rather spartan in regards to displays.

"Oh that, well, my visor is capable of receiving the telemetry as a heads up display. Just a second." He tapped a few commands to activate the secondary holo-display for the co-pilots seat, while his remained blank.

"That is quite remarkable. Zedoris, come take a look at this." Zedoris stepped over looking over Lelith's head while leaning on the backrest at the display with a look of bemusement, maybe?

Frank typed up a few more commands. His controls rising to meet his hands. He manually targeted the next system and shifted the craft right and down as he triggered the drives to begin their charging. Once at the redline he tapped a control on his throttle. After a brief burst from a thruster, he was on his way to an 'interesting' journey.

"FTL drive fully charged, entering slipspace in fo-err... three... two... one... Drive engaged"