As K-A units of measurement were compared to human ones, Vigdis took careful notes and when it was done, she sent them to the ship. Wodan should be able to edit the translator to also convert measurements as it went, doing away with all the manual conversions and she also attached a note suggesting the translator also immediately translate between base ten and base eight numbers.
Vigdis’ amused grin at Ixtaro’s confusion remained concealed by the mask. But when Ixtaro tried to treat the healed hand, she had to laugh out loud. Vigdis may not have known history through a comprehensive lens, but she knew it through an engineering one, and like most socialists before her, Ixtaro saw a problem - real or perceived - and then proceeded to go and ‘solve’ it without having enough information about it or even the required know-how. At least this time no one’s turned a barely-shielded reactor into an oversized roman candle or tried to use half-century old naval ordnance. Silently, Vigdis gestured to the severed hand and to the regrown one. ”Get in line.” She said flatly, removing one of the leaves that wrapped the food Shirik had gifted her and wrapped the severed hand. The lab folks would have some fun with it later. She was going to say something else, but was rudely interrupted by an unholy screech. What subgenre were the three metalheads playing again? But no, that couldn’t have been them, this came from far away…
The cause of the noises soon came to view. The creatures looked… wrong. What they did afterward even more. She turned to Kareet and Shirik before they left. ”Alright, what the fuck guys?” She echoed Ixtaro’s words.
”Jesus fucking christ, you’re joking.” Vigdis groaned in a mix of disbelief and disgust. She wasn’t as disturbed as one might have expected. For one, just a week ago she saw a man get fried alive, and two, Kareet’s avian appearance was putting enough of a gap between her and a human that Vigdis’ brain rated it closer to watching a deer get run over rather than a person being maimed. The weirdest part of it all was the serene calm and determination with which Kareet mutilated herself. ”You couldn’t have just had him make a flower wilt and then bloom again, could you? Fuck me. Good thing I wasn’t eating, somehow I get a feeling that wouldn’t have dissuaded you.”
The demonstration was definitely an impressive one. If they could regrow limbs, they practically had limitless meat supply. Cut off an animal’s legs, regrow them back. What is the animal gonna do, complain? What about, they could numb it, clearly Kareet felt no pain so even all the bleeding hearts gluing themselves to slaughterhouse equipment could rest easy. And since they apparently could halt aging as well, they would only need one set of animals for decades, maybe longer.
”Can you, without magic, make an anvil without a foundry? Or can your shipwrights make a ship without a dock?” She answered J’eon’s question with questions, ”Abstract concepts cannot create concrete objects, but yes, our grasp of mathematics helps us design things, and was crucial in developing computers,” Once again indicating her wristpad and the tablet, as J’eon hadn’t been present when this word was first used, ”which further aid us. But imagine how complex your ships are, and the facilities required to build them.” She tapped the drawing in Kareet’s sketchbook before pointing to the Jotunheim, ”Now imagine what’s needed to build that. Mending the damage sustained in the crash will be hard, but we believe it possible. Might be a good idea to send someone to let Silbermine know that we will not take kindly to some troglodyte who has never seen an allen wrench thinking they know what they’re doing and poking around the ship.” Every time Silbermine said anything about his engineers doing something to the ship, she felt a growing urge to smack some sense into him or at least ask why he thought his people would even know where to start.
”More on that note, could you show me your measurements of what I just described? It would make further communication even easier.”
“...you’re fucking weird, has anyone ever told you that?” Yekaterina shook her head at Hayden’s outburst as she repacked her magazines, combining two of her half-empty ones into a single full one, starting to wonder why someone sent him here or how well he could hide his state of mind in the outside world.
“Make a hole. Get a hammer, or a heavy wrench.” Kat commanded. Pulling the halligan out of her bag. Chain, steel bars, padlock. Old one, heavy. Not much slack on the chain, perfect. “Scratch the hammer, actually.” She wedged the shackle of the lock holding one of the tourist cages shut between the forks of the halligan tool and started twisting it. The first quarter turn pulled the remaining slack taught, another half turn started deforming the chain and then the weakest link snapped, the padlock flying off. With Hayden having already opened the other cage with non-Africans, she stowed the hallie away again, ignoring the locals. “We don’t have the manpower or equipment to get them out of here, not in that state, and they’re not all gonna fit into the Hilux either. Let’s grab the richest-looking one and make for scarper city.” She didn’t try to keep her voice down, unbothered by what the rescuees thought of it. She wasn’t particularly happy about leaving them to their fate, but they weren’t gonna help anyone if they couldn’t get out themselves. And dragging a dozen of injured and half-starved people, likely journalists and rich people who disappeared on a safari or when ‘taking a year off to discover themselves’ would be like tying yourself to an anchor before attempting a swimming record.
“Unless any of these guys knows something that would help us.” But what were the odds either of them even knew anything about the Hyena? A hyena, maybe. “Who are you guys, how long have you been here?” She addressed the captive that looked the least out of it, trying to muster up the cleanest English she could and then repeating it in German to make it easier on him or anyone else who wanted to answer her.
APPEARANCE: A caucasian woman sporting brown hair and blue eyes, measuring 5’6” (167 cm) and weighing 134 lb (60 kg) with a lean build honed by her job, though by no means a physical powerhouse. While not winning any weightlifting competitions anytime soon - or ever - numerous inmates of US and some foreign prisons would attest that she doesn’t seem to tire, like Homo Erectus running down an elephant, in addition to being fairly nimble and coordinated. Superiors also have to search pretty far back in their memories to recall the last time she took a sick day due to her own health as opposed to that of a family member.
PROFESSION:
Deputy Marshal, U.S. Marshals Service Tactical Operations Division (2017 - present)
Deputy Sheriff, El Paso Sheriff’s Office (2013 - 2017)
EDUCATION: Insofar as formal education is concerned, Laura holds a High School Diploma from the El Paso Academy. She acquired most of her actually useful skills via on the job training or from her father before his death.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION: Scoring within the average range on IQ tests, Laura possesses what some might call “crackhead determination” - slightly ironic, given her zero tolerance attitude toward drugs stemming from her father’s death at the hands of an addict - capable of near-unbreakable, single-minded focus on a given task or object. Some see this as a strength, others point out the possibility of being overly fixated on one thing and missing something else. A life of unexpected twists and turns led to a person who tackles life one day at a time, considering planning any longer ahead wasted effort that will inevitably be thwarted by circumstances beyond what can be anticipated. Having clawed her way to where she is from the depths of the foster care system, Laura’s learned to recognize and value those who help her, but woe be upon those who attempt to hamper her or take away something she’s worked for. She’s had even less fucks to give since raiding a cult compound in 2019, unwittingly being exposed to the Unnatural. Seeing something as degenerate as that made her much more willing to bend the rules to get results, in effect doing bad things for good reasons. While obviously respecting authority and chains of command, she does tend to see other people as carriers of skills and knowledge at first, only opening up and getting to know the person if she’s likely to deal with them for an extended period of time. This is a result of both the nature of Marshals’ work - frequently aiding local law enforcement or other agencies before moving on - as well as previously described life experience. Those in the “inner circle” though can expect someone they can lean on in nearly any circumstances.
Daughter of a florist and a US Army vehicle maintenance technician based in Fort Bliss, El Paso, fate woke up and chose violence the very minute Laura’s life began as her mother died in childbirth. As a result, she bonded very closely with her father, spending many evenings fixing up a 1989 Ford F-250 together. But fate decided Laura was too happy, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dan Allen would be shot by a junkie in a robbery gone wrong in May 2006.
With no relatives to take over, Laura ended up in the US Foster Care system and a seed of a plan to get involved with law enforcement was planted. After graduating high school with mediocre grades, Laura turned to any odd job she could get to support herself, from delivery driver through petsitter to lifeguard. Until fate decided to be a bitch again in 2012, blessing Laura and her then-boyfriend Carlos with a son and cursing them with an unexpected financial burden in one fell swoop. Fate could have chosen a worse time, however, as the next year Laura became eligible to join the El Paso Sheriff’s Office, gaining stable employment for the first time since leaving high school and fulfilling a promise she made to herself following her father’s death.
Laura was a Deputy Sheriff at the EPSO for four years, two of which as part of the EPSO SWAT unit. The job first led her to contact with the U. S. Marshals Service, aiding them in apprehending a suspect handed to the USMS by the DEA. The work done by the Marshals appealed to Laura, as did the pay rise. “What the hell, you miss all the shots you don’t take.” She thought, took the shot and landed herself a job as a Deputy Marshal in 2017. That’s when fate decreed that joy was not to be, if one could blame fate for this at all. While the stress and working hours of a Sheriff’s Deputy at times strained the family, it was nothing they couldn’t manage. But the increased level of danger, working hours and even less time spent home resulted in some cracks beginning to show. Still, having made the decision together, the Reyes’ labored to plug any leaks and made it work. Until the USMS raided an apartment owned by the “Children of Tarrone” cult in early 2019.
That apartment… was not fucking right. Only being able to tell bystanders from perps the moment they draw and start shooting, that she had trained for and was familiar with. Unhinged writing about “the Charnel God”, “the Hungry Ones” and “Dreamlands” on the walls, that she could’ve ignored. Borderline fanatical resistance from perpetrators going so far as to bite people long after they’d been cuffed, so deformed it must’ve been several generations of inbreeding, that she could’ve gotten over. Torn up basement with DIY coffins and bodies showing clear signs of being partially eaten, that she might have eventually pushed out of her mind. But not all at the same time, and not after encountering the cult’s leader. No amount of inbreeding and traumatic injuries could explain that. Little did Laura know at the time that she and two police officers had just killed a member of the DeMonte clan, a survivor of the 2005 post-Katrina purges of New Orleans Ghouls carried out by Delta Green.
Fate had not been kind that day, and Deputy Marshal Reyes came out of that apartment a changed woman. The psychological fallout of that raid was the last straw, the iceberg that sunk a marriage. For three months following the raid and a mostly-peaceful divorce, the now Deputy Marshal Allen had convinced herself that her son Domingo hated her for being a terrible, absentee mother and only hung on by a thread by burying her head in work, only pulling out of the dive following an intervention staged by Supervisory Deputy Marshal Daniels, who made Carlos and Domingo aware of the situation, and though not enough to recover the marriage, Laura had at least gotten back to wings level.
The whole time since the Tarrone DeMonte raid, she’d been covertly monitored by Delta Green. When it became apparent the psychological fallout was a result of home life issues as opposed to the Ghoul encounter itself and that the Deputy Marshal had stabilized, the observing agent gave his handler the green light on approaching her.
Domingo Reyes: Laura’s unexpected son and without a shadow of a doubt the number one priority in her life since 2012. When it comes down to it, even the job she loves is nothing more than a means of supporting her son.
Carlos Reyes: Laura’s ex-husband, an El Paso general repair car mechanic. Despite the storm of 2019 being long past and both sides making attempts to mend things, not all casualties of that incident are yet buried nor can the ordeal be easily forgotten.
Supervisory Deputy Marshal Cedric Daniels: A senior Marshal whose team Laura was part of for the first three years of her USMS career, he recognized a problem based on his own crisis nearly a decade earlier and put together a solution. Since then Laura considers him not only a good boss working for whom she remembers fondly, but also a personal friend she can reach out to for work advice when needed.
Fate’s had a thing for kicking Laura where it hurt, leading her to develop a stubborn determination to hang on to whatever life she’s got with teeth and claws, to pick herself back up just to spite fate and show it where it can shove its bullshit.
Taking priority over everything else, this world is the one Domingo will have to live in, and Laura will burn bridges, bury friends and sacrifice her body and mind to make it better for him.
Whatever life’s thrown at her, she’s so far managed to dodge or roll with the punches. But there will come a day when fate will have the last laugh and she won’t have the strength or will to get back up. Knowing that this is inevitable and closer each day has kept her up at night before, compounding other fears and insecurities.
Serious harm or inconvenience to Domingo. While the occasional hurdle helps build character, there are very few people she would wish even the experience she had growing up on, and as bad as she had it, it still could’ve been a lot worse.
”She may not be convinced by your word either, given that Kerchak has just stated plainly for me to hear that you two don’t know each other that well.” Vigdis said matter of factly, far from trying to throw stick under their feet, rather simply allowing them to view the situation through a human lens. ”The time it takes for an injury to heal depends heavily on the injury and where the injured part is. Some bones in my ankle were so damaged they had to replace them with metal ones, the full recovery took about sixty days because it’s a joint and because it had to be cut open. When my father broke his forearm in two places, he was back working in just thirty days. The burns on my hands took around seven days until I could move my fingers again and ten days for the facial lacerations.”
”Diseases are another matter entirely. Some pass on their own in days, others we can cure quickly. But many acquired ones take a long time to completely cure, and some of them grow resistant to medicines over time. What’s even worse, despite having made major strides in combating them, there are still numerous inborn ailments and maladies acquired not from injury or infection, but damage on such a foundational level that our bodies start growing wrong.” Cancer and radiation sickness were proving to be some of humanity’s most stubborn enemies, ones that couldn’t be fixed with ‘easy’ transplants. ”But a demonstration would certainly be in order, especially if it can halt aging as you’ve claimed. I could think of a few things to do with an extra decade or so.”
”Yes, measurements, that was something I was going to try to illustrate four days ago before it got buried in better ways to communicate. Wait here for a few minutes, and when I get back I’ll explain how long a minute is.” Vigdis excused herself and disappeared inside the Jotunheim, inwardly proud of that joke. She returned with a measuring tape, a lab scale, a box of M8 bolts, a few graduated cylinders, a measuring cup from the galley, a protractor and a contactless thermometer.
Using this scavenger hunt worth of seemingly random stuff plus the clock app on her wristpad, she proceeded to illustrate the measurement units of length, time, weight, angle and volume, putting the temperature in context of 0 and 100 degrees celsius and using the box of bolts to accurately measure out one gram and one kilogram. Abstract quantities such as energy, work, electric current and voltage would have to wait.
Lastly, she grabbed the bigger tablet and copied the second, unsolved set of mathematical operations from the shuttle bay wall onto it, this time expanding the exponentiation and roots using multiplication and division - such as “23 = 2 . 2 . 2” - and copying the Pythagorean Theorem problem. By now she was certain they knew how it worked, but might as well.
Vigdis took a few seconds to study the drawings, more general design sketches than blueprints of specific parts. It reminded her of the first semester at university where they were required to draw by hand before moving to CAD software the next semester. God, how she hated that, trying to erase one wrong line and taking two more with it and smudging the paper. ”Off the top of my head, I could show you a more complex cog shape that makes the mechanism run more smoothly and increases the contact area, thus reducing the strain on them without changing the size or material of the gears. I could also show you a type of gearbox that can merge two inputs into one output or do the opposite, though at the cost of being more complex.” Helical or herringbone gears and planetary gearboxes, the former harder to manufacture, the latter to assemble and maintain, but both with significant advantages going forward. Not only would it slightly improve Kareet's machines, it would future-proof the way machines were designed for when the time came to take full advantage of them. ”I could also explain a metalworking technique that hardens the surface of a steel piece, making it more resistant against wear while leaving the core soft and tough to make sure it won't snap under stress. You may even be doing this already without knowing it. It requires precise temperature control, but that shouldn't be a problem for a heat mage.” She continued, glancing at J'eon as this was up his alley as a blacksmith. Carbonizing worked best in an airtight furnace filled with carbon-rich gas or liquid, but charcoal could also be used and if they could make charcoal, they could get a vessel to be airtight enough.
”Of course since we have no mages, I also know at least three ways to make these work without the involvement of any mage, beast or manual labor at all.” Steam, combustion or electric engines. Maybe they shouldn't tell the locals about fossil fuels and then start buying K-A oil at cheap prices. Planet definitely had trees, had been here long enough to develop sapient life, so definitely long enough to form oil and coal and if the local life wasn't carbon-based, they would have known by now. ”We’ve also figured out a less cumbersome alternative to paddle wheels, especially better suited for rough waters.” A propeller was a lot less likely to come out of the water when the waves were high.
Shrink then came by, dropping off a piece of the sea monster they caught with Ixtaro. Vigdis briefly pondered how weird it was that a treant was preparing meat before she remembered some plants on Earth were carnivorous. Now she had to get the mental image of Shirik discussing the culinary arts with a Venus Fly Trap out of her head. ”I've just had breakfast before coming out here, I'll save it for lunch, thank you.” It wasn't a lie, but it did provide a neat way of not being rude, yet waiting for the lab to say it was safe. Another whiff under a lifted up mask made Vigdis want it to be safe even more than before.
It was then that a Glen approached. Not Silbermine, good riddance, the blacksmith that had been part of Kareet’s group. ”Hello again.” J’eon had questions too. What the heck, she was there, she had the answer and she saw no harm in sharing it, might as well. ”What, you mean the gunshot? When the Tekeri hunting party approached our team? That’s just what some of our weapons sound like. The older models, when not fitted with a suppressor. Be careful around humans who look like they might be shooting something, these older weapons are actually loud enough to damage our hearing.” She still remembered how strange shooting coilguns felt when her basic training company first went out to the range. Discounting the sonic cracks if firing supersonic, the muted ‘click’ of a coilgun was no louder than the snap of a crossbow’s bowstring compared to the loud bark of powder-driven firearms.
She stopped herself short of offering J’eon a seat by instinctive reaction before answering Kareet’s questions. ”Yes, we do wear clothing all of the time, except a few very specific occasions. Being undressed in public can land you in trouble with the Poli- the guards.”
Something in Kareet’s voice brought Vigdis back to her childhood, hearing a hint of the same awe and wonder she experienced when her father was telling her five year old self about the ships he flew and the planets he flew between. ”More than a thousand years and thousands of scholars. You may think of us as some incredibly wise people, but really all of us that you see here are standing on the shoulders of giants.” She took care to sound properly humble as she spoke of the scientists who came before her, whose labor made for the foundation and staircase that they used to reach the stars.
”Your inventions?” For a moment, a hint of admiration of people like Ixtaro or apparently Kareet, those who discovered the new rather than just taking the known and implementing it into practice as she did appeared in Vigdis’ voice. ”I’d say most of your inventions could be improved by what we know, seeing as any non-magical invention of yours has been known to us for hundreds of years by now, judging by the way your societies are organized and the sort of technology - such as weapons and armor - you’ve demonstrated and comparing to how long ago we used these things. That’s assuming magic hasn’t surpassed what we could do without it. I’ve also said already that I don’t want to do that for the benefit of one nation.” Vigdis reminded Kareet, ”But now you have me curious, what have you invented? If or when the political negotiations go horribly wrong, trying to preserve the balance of power will get thrown out the window as we turn to fully supporting whoever helps us survive and any improvements to your designs could be implemented faster if we had time to think about what you have.” She leaned forward with anticipation.
Vigdis would’ve been delighted to know that what she set out to do worked out. Right now, no one would know what to do with any of it and she was still being open and sharing, but some day, someone would go back to those notes, go “Hang on, what if…?” and be inspired to do something that may otherwise have taken decades or longer. Either that, or someone fucks up royally and soon she’s gonna be explaining high-carbon steel to Ascendancy blacksmiths so they can start producing arrows that can penetrate Mythandian armor with some degree of regularity. But to be honest, she wouldn’t even mind coming back here - intentionally, with sufficient supplies and with a way home! - and passing on what she knew. A university with her name on it, maybe a statue in every capital… Here and now, Vigdis, here and now. And keep the status quo.
”Matter can exist in multiple states. Take water, for example. If it’s too cold, it freezes into ice - a solid. Heat it up, and it melts into water - a liquid. Heat that up even more and it boils away into steam - a gas.“ The locals must have known this, but now hopefully what might be new information would have some link to known things, ”There’s more matter states but they’re not important now, we’ll be talking about gasses. The air we’re breathing is made up of many gasses, water vapor being one of them for example. One of these gasses is one we call ‘oxygen’. This is the one that every creature we know of needs to live, so I’m assuming it’s what you are breathing too. So any planet that has a lot of oxygen in its air is interesting because things might be living on that planet. There are eight planets in our system, only Earth has any oxygen in its air at all, it’s fairly rare.” It was an oversimplification of course, discarding star types, magnetic fields and goldilocks zones, but she was trying to stay on topic and keep it simple. She was rambling enough as it was. ”It’s also the gas that fire needs to ‘breathe’. One of the possible ones, anyway. And the air here has more oxygen in it than the air on Earth. And as I’m sure you’ve figured out yourself by now, more oxygen for a fire to burn means things combust more easily. That’s why one of the things we need from you are fabrics, most of our clothing will burn too. This even extends to our tools, even the markers we’ve been writing with were made of metal because that shouldn’t catch on fire even here.”
Explaining spectrometry would be a bit tougher than that. ”Starlight isn’t made of one color. It appears white, but it’s actually a combination of many colors making it look that way, like when a painter mixes red and blue to create purple. A rainbow? That’s the white light being split into its component colors. And when light passes through enough gas, it absorbs some of those colors. We have devices called ‘spectrometers’ that can measure the amount of each color in light. Let’s say you are the observer on Earth, my finger is kanth-Aremek and my fist is the star it circles around.” She held up a fist and then moved her finger between it and Kareet, simulating a transit. ”A small portion of the star’s light passes through the atmosphere of that planet, and it absorbs some of the light. We compare the light from the star to the light that passed through the planet’s atmosphere and since every gas absorbs a slightly different color, we can tell which gasses are in that planet’s air.”
”We did meet here today to answer your questions. Ask as they come. I won’t be able to answer all of them, thus they’ll filter themselves out. As for those you won’t think of, tomorrow is also a day, and so is the one after.” Vigdis looked toward the cookout and lifted up her mask, taking a deep breath before putting it back on. ”That smells good. We could move over if you wish. Then we could involve other people. I think Dr. Ibarra knows a lot about history, actually.” the Engineer offered.
”Spices were historically very valuable, back when the height of exploration was sailing around the world in wooden ships driven by sails. I assume Kanth-Aremek isn’t the same everywhere, Earth definitely isn’t. Spices grown where it’s hot and dry can’t be grown where it’s cold or wet and so on. And if something is hard to get, it means the people who can get it can ask a high price for it.” She elaborated, briefly considering something before continuing, ”The speed of light is, according to common understanding, the upper limit of how fast something can move. The heavier an object is and the faster it’s moving, the more effort is needed to further accelerate it. Light is massless, it doesn’t weigh anything, which is why it can achieve… well, the speed of light. You would need to expend infinite effort to get anything that weighs something to move that fast.” She judged this to be harmless information. It would be a while before the locals could use this information for anything. Frankly she was proud of getting through it without having to use the word ‘energy’ once. ”But I don’t know if there isn’t some gap in my understanding of things the ship could have taken advantage of. The reason for trying to go as fast as possible is to shorten travel times, as celestial bodies are very far apart. Even the moon or the planets you can see in the night sky with your own eyes are so far away I feel confident claiming you cannot imagine such a distance, no offense intended.”
”As for how far from Earth we are? Good question, and one we’ll have to find an answer for if we ever want to return home, so let’s unpack it.” Vigdis started counting points on her fingers, ”One, the jump from Earth to here was instantaneous. To my - limited - understanding of the jump drive, that shouldn’t have been the case. This would imply we are close. Two, this world has an oxygen-rich atmosphere. More so than Earth. If a planet capable of supporting life was close to Earth, we would’ve found it centuries ago. That leads me to believe we are very far away and that the jump drive performs better than expected. Discounting the whole ‘accidental activation’ part, that… that needs work.” Vigdis chuckled, ”If the relevant equipment is intact or can be repaired, if we can see Earth’s parent star from here and if we can learn the axes of Kanth-Aremek’s orbit around its sun, we’ll be able to calculate the distance.” And don’t think about what will happen if they can’t find Earth.
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