Angel meanders across the tarmac, chuckling at the exchange between Nagwai and Kadi.
"Ah yes, the divine sisterhood of badasses. Someone should make a movie. Hell, we're even in LA. How about that..."
He gives the British newbie for a second. "You know a guy named Mallory? He's with the SAS, but hell, you're all on that tiny island of yours, you might have run into him."
When Luis offers his hand, Kadi noticeably takes pause before unashamedly scrutinizing those golden orbs. "Excuse my French, mate, but what the Hell have you gone and done to yourself?" She waves her fingers curiously in front of them, watching for their reaction.
"They're a set of optic implants, and a skull jack," Luis says with the grin of every new smartphone owner. "I've gotten to fly a few ships and enjoyed it. These implants make it possible to jack into a ship's computers and fly the ship with virtual reality." For a moment, it looks like he might be able to stop himself, there, but he continues, "The optic implants also add vision enhancement, with zoom and some limited extension into the near IR and UV."
"So you've let yourself get sliced and diced by the Sheen so you can skype it in rather than sit in the seat?" Kadi tuts, doing her best to peer at the edges of his eyesockets in the less than ideal light. "Did they at least cram a harddrive into that empty noggin so you can output a visual record. Better question, is there a user's guide?"
Luis sees what Kadi is trying to see, and tips his head to try and help her get a better look at the interface between the implants and his eye sockets. "It's a bit more than just VR, really, more immersive than that. And yeah, it's got an on board vox built in, so it does holo-recording. Oh, and it makes phone calls, too." Luis grins, "The basic gear is actually Imperium, not Sheen, they just did some er...aftermarket tweaking. I can get you a copy of the user's guide if you want."
"Tt. We let you guys use our remote island and you can't even tell us the Imperials have highly functional cybernetics in addition to all their other gear," Kadi laments the usual stirling US ability to share information. "And yes, user guides, service manuals: anything like that is going to be vital when EM interference or some sort of remote hack turns your vision off and I've got to fix it."
"Tt. We let you guys use our remote island and you can't even tell us the Imperials have highly functional cybernetics in addition to all their other gear," Kadi laments the usual stirling US ability to share information. "And yes, user guides, service manuals: anything like that is going to be vital when EM interference or some sort of remote hack turns your vision off and I've got to fix it."
Luis gets a faraway look for a few moments and his face twitches oddly as he goes through the mental gymnastics to pull up an email. Converting the on-board documentation to something Earth systems can read takes a raise of the eyebrows, then Luis looks back to Kadi. "Do you have an email address you can access from the plane?" he asks. "I can send them to you with my brain."
Kadi nods. "Yeah, it's in the shared directory," she acknowledges the transfer, before putting the tablet to sleep and stuffing it back in her personal bag.
Then at last, she returns her attention to Gorlan and gives him a small bow. "Please, forgive us for ignoring you," she appologises in her flawless Imperial. There is a smalll smile in there, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "But as I'm sure you realise, there are certain military protocols that must be observed upon redeployment."
Gorlan nods. "Of course. And meeting the people you will entrust your life to certainly doesn't hurt." The pump truck behind them shudders to a halt as the plane is fully fueled. "I believe that's our cue to leave," the Imperial noble says, and starts to walk back up the steps into the plane.
"Well, there's my layover," Hugh muses. "Ten minutes on the tarmac, can't even hit the duty-free. Well, move 'em on and head 'em out, everyone, it's back into the wild blue yonder we go."
Kadi makes her way up the ramp and finds herself a seat, slinging her backpack into one of the overheads and strapping in. Even though she tries to hide it, during take off anyone perceptive enough who happens to be looking her way might well notice the way her mouth tightens in a brief display of the (in)famous British stiff upper lip. But then the moment is gone.
Once the plane levels out and the seatbelt sign flashes off, she's out of her seat and retrieves her backpack, from which she produces a long grey-coloured coat which she pulls on. Accessorizing, she follows up by donning a headset with a microphone boom and a pair of slim lip-stick sized cameras, something resembling a choker, a pair of wire-covered gloves and finally her tablet which she boots up and slips into her thigh pocket.
"This," she explains as she readies herself, "is a prototype I've been asked to field test. "When they learnt that the Whirr have a chromatic component to their language, some of our boffins thought that they could improve on hundreds of years of pidgin sign language. These gloves contain motion sensors that track my hand gestures in 3D. The headset picks up audio visual data while this thing" -- she points to the choker -- "handles my own vocalisations. All that gets processed, with the end result being that the Whirr language gets translated into english for me, and what I say triggers a variable frequency feedback through this electrochromatic smartcloth like so:"
She claps her hands together in three quick strikes, then says to Swims-the-Black as she signs slightly slowly. "Greetings, Swims-the-Black, from myself and Her Majesty's government. It's an honour to serve with you."
About a second after she speaks in English, the tablet's speaker emits a series fo familiar sounding grunts as riplles of colour spread across the surface of her coat.
When Kadi steps up to Swims-the-Black with a backpack in her hand, Davis leaves his wife with her vox feeds and sits down next to his friend. For his part, Swims-the-Black watches with what Davis recognizes as a curious look on his face as Kadi unpacks the translator equipment.
Angel grunts. "Well aren't they clever."
The wherren gives an approving nod as she explains what all of the kit does, and as the equipment translates from English to Whirr-sign, a smile breaks out across Davis and Swims-the-Black's faces, ending with Swims no longer to contain himself and a sharp barking laugh escapes from him.
Davis contains himself first. "I'm sorry," he says in English, "it's not you. Your Whirr-sign is fine."
Swims-the-Black wipes a few tears from his large brown eyes. "It is a valiant first try, certainly more than the Imperials have ever made, thank you. But your scientists have focused too much on how our fur coloration changes. Look at me, when I speak, it is very small shifts of color, while your coat is changing wildly." Indeed, he's right. Mostly, the tips of his fur change, and through a relatively restrained spectrum of colors, mostly yellows, greens and orange. "Color changes as extreme and bright as your coat are more representative of emotions, and at the rate your coat flashes through them, it is like the person is mentally disturbed, jumping from one emotion to the next."
"The grunts are decent, though," Hugh weighs in.
"Yes, they are," Davis agrees. "And your sign is spot-on. But wherren really just don't depend on coloration all that much. It's like an accent, more than anything, but for emotions and state of mind."
Kadi takes the feedback on board as she puts the system into standby with another three stacatto slaps then pulls out the tablet and calls up the translation software.
"The Brits have learnt the lessons of Empire," she says, "and the power of language that they teach." Entering into the settings, she alters some slider positions to dampen the intensity and speed of the colour changes. Putting the tablet back in the pocket, she starts the translator and repeats her greeting.
Once again her signing is slower than you would expect in normal conversation, the equivalent of carefully anunciating her words for the sake of speach recognition software.
"The device is fine, if rather bulky for field use," Swims signs. "If it can be developed to work without having to need to learn our signs and allow the user to speak plain English and have signs, vocalizations and colors come out, possibly on a screen instead of on the coat, it would be very useful for the ambassadors and soldiers making contact with the Wherren on the homeworld."
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