YOU MIGHT WANNA STEER REALLY FAST BECAUSE THERE'S A PLANET DEAD AHEAD

The experimental drive works! And it didn't kill them! But it also transported them to...not Proxima Centauri. It's a planet.

Regrettably, there is not much time to think about what's happening because the drive dropped them in the troposphere with no propulsion. The sublight drive is not intended for atmospheric travel, and the thrusters are only intended to be used to rotate the ship in zero-g. They are totally going to crash in minutes.

The crew is in the g-force insulated rooms and they should be fine. The rest of the ship...well. The AAV Arch is a very big ship. It has about a million cubic meters of total volume and it's about the size of a skyscraper. They set the thrusters to their maximum setting and override their safeties to try and slow down the ship as much as possible before landing. The space below is land, not water, but it seems to be barren desert. So at least they won't be crushing anything.

They recite the blessing for being on a planet.

Hail to the Generous Patron of Desire, who brings forth life from the barren rock.

The barren desert receives them sandily.

A lot of radio signals start yelling at them.

Looking at the diagnostics is painful. Most systems have been damaged or rendered inoperable in some way. Both the sublight and experimental drives were broken. They don't feel anything, from inside the shielded rooms, or even hear anything, but seeing the readouts on the screen...

What do the external sensors say? What are the conditions on this planet? It has a good amount of atmosphere, and have landed in a dry place, but what else? Where have they ended up?

Their wind-communication crystal was shattered in the crash, but some of the mundane radio sensors are still working. None of these radio signals are encoded in any encoding scheme they know. And they have diplomatic contacts with basically every state in the Solar system capable of radio transmission.

Okay. So they happened to crash land on a planet with aliens. It was a mistake to not have planned for this possibility.

They don't try to transmit anything, not knowing their language(s) or encoding schemes. They'll record the data and do a combination of feeding the data to machine translation models and doing divination rituals with wind magic. It's going to take hours or days to get anything useful out of them, though.

The other people in the crew leave the shielded rooms and gather weapons and other supplies. They hope that the aliens will be friendly, but they did not exactly arrive in the friendliest manner. They really really don't want to fight, and don't anticipate being able to hold their position for very long, but...yeah.

They set visual sensors on both the ground around them and in the sky to see if anyone is approaching them.

The desert is on the eastern half of the planet's single continent. The sky is going to take more than a few seconds to fill with choppers. But some of the radio is just prime numbers!

The scientists Really Really Really want to complete the prime numbers! The captain is hesitant. But given how they've already made their presence very clear, it's not like it's going to gain them anything to try to be radio silent. He allows transmissions completing prime number sequences.

Yay! The prime number frequencies will try other Math Stuff once prime numbers are established.

They'll send other Math Stuff like Fibonacci sequences and Euler's number and try sending other physical constants like the spectra of hydrogen and helium and the fine structure constant.

The ship is shaped like a very thin pyramid, with the drives on the fat end. The point has been driven shallowly into the sands. Despite the interior being all messed up, the exterior hull has remained intact. Well, it's scratched up and dented, but there aren't any major holes. They barricade the airlocks and what of the holes they can access from the inside.

The mood inside the ship is highly bimodal with the ship's crew being despairing and the scientists being overjoyed.

Whoever's on the other end of those radio bands reciprocates cheerfully.

There's some helicopters now. Is the place, like, radioactive or super hot or anything?

Nope, the desert is perfectly normal save for Giant Spaceship.

The captain plus a few others get ready at the airlocks nearest the surface of the desert. Presumably some of those helicopters will land and have aliens.

They pause radio transmissions for now.

The radio transmissions toward them continue forlornly.

One helicopter lands! Aliens come out of it! They look remarkably humanlike apart from the colorful hair.

Sorry aliens! The captain has been approving transmissions manually and now isn't. Not that they can transmit that.

Wow. That is. So humanlike. One more point towards the panspermia hypothesis.

The airlock will open and reveal three people: the captain, a priest, and one of the researchers. The airlock is about a meter above ground and is slightly tilted relative to it. They don't exit but do stay at the edge.

The three are wearing light grey coveralls with tall standing collars with various patches on the shoulders and chest that presumably mean things. Underneath, not visible, they have stone magic enchanted body armor. They have patrol caps with wind magic that shield against mindreading, save for specifically keyed telepathy.

The captain and priest have belts with various devices on them shaped like spheres or rods.

They are also humanoid but are much taller — the three are about two meters tall — and have grey skin. Their eyes are a light grey, and their lips are of similar coloration.

How far away are the aliens from them?

The helicopter landed about a quarter mile away. The disembarking group is two greys, a blue, and three greens.

One of the greens is taking pictures and the blue attempts a wave.

They would prefer if they approached them than the opposite, since if the situation turned sour, they could close the airlock. Though it does seem like they aren't the sort to shoot first before talking. They recognize the gestures of taking pictures and infer that that is what that person is doing, and they also recognize the wave. They are unsure whether to reciprocate.

Discussion ensues. They think the aliens have been unconfrontational thus far and, given how humanoid they look, perhaps they would have humanoid customs. The captain waves back, several minutes late. Do they begin to approach?

Yes! Slowly.

That's fine. They decide to sing, even though the aliens won't know the words. It seems appropriate.

The priest will lead them in singing a hymn. It's a slow song — it feels a little melancholy but mostly hopeful. They are very good at singing, perfectly on-tempo and in harmony. Their voices are loud and rich and carry well across the sands. Which is to be expected, since they are currently melding their minds in order to be able to sing with coordination. There is the added benefit, the captain belatedly thinks, that it will make them more coordinated in the event the situation turns.

Oooooh the one with the camera fumbles to make it take in more audio.

Okay the captain is being too anxious and it becomes too costly for the priest to maintain the meld any further than that. They stop singing. Are they still approaching? They are willing to wait until they enter the priest's telepathy range. Which is about a hundred meters. 

One of the greens starts singing too! Just one, so it's not harmonic, but the quality is okay.

Discussion ensues. The captain gives permission for the priest to sing alongside the green, about two thirds of the way through the song. The priest sings in unison, an octave lower. The tune is unfamiliar but so long as the chorus (and perhaps the verses) have the same melody, he'll be able to copy it.

The verses have a repeating melody too! The lyrics are presumably a mystery except where they repeat.

They're coming into telepathy range now.

Yep, the priest has just been singing "a" the whole time, not matching the words.

Telepathy, despite being a mind-affecting effect (i.e. it inputs or changes information in the mind, as opposed to just reading), is regulated less strictly than other mind-affecting effects. It is not considered hostile or alarming to do it in the Asteral Accord, or in many states of the new Earth with knowledge of wind lore. They could stop contact until they develop better machine translation, but the sooner they get information back to the Accord proper, the better. They are willing to take the risk of potentially angering them by attempting it.

The priest will take a moment to prepare, given how they're at the very edge of his range, and because he wants to send to all of them simultaneously.

It feels something like language, and yet not.

:Hello.:

They stop! They look at each other! They confirm amongst themselves that they all heard that! It's really exciting and they should maybe tell the radio people to chill out?

They have no shielding and aren't taking the mental motions to render one more resistant to psionic probing (but neither are they trying to make themselves easier to probe), but reading people's minds without consent is generally impolite. Probably these aliens would feel the same. So, he doesn't, even though it would let him know whether or not they have bad intentions. They don't seem to, though.

:I have the ability to send and receive messages directly between minds. If you think of something clearly and intend to communicate at me, I can receive it. I have formed one-to-one connections with all of you but anything you send to me here will not be sent to the others in your party.

My ability is more tiring the farther away the mind is. My ability is more tiring the farther away the recipient is and I can more sustainably do it if you are closer.: