"Mayday, mayday, this is the Free Trader Initiative. Vessel is making an emergency landing. Our position is-" The captain reads several numbers off of a display, frowning at it the whole time. "We are approaching the southern coast of the largest continent. We have four onboard, one injured. The Initiative is a Frigate-class ship, yellow paint, significant damage from uncontrolled hyperspace travel and kinetic weapons fire. Requesting any information on safe places to land. Free Trader Initiative, over."
Captain Monzor does not like this situation at all, but he has to admit that it is slightly better than the situation he was in before this one. Traveling through hyperspace is dangerous even when you have a skilled pilot and an already charted route, because you might pass through an unstable region that wrecks your ship, or you might end up in some completely unknown star system with no idea how to get back. Traveling through hyperspace when your pilot is too injured to plot a course, and intentionally going off the charts because any known route is a route the enemy could follow you down... is an extremely bad idea because both of those things will definitely happen. However it's not the same kind of bad idea as staying within weapons range of a capital class enemy ship that has refused your surrender.
Even after doing all that walking while carrying another person, he doesn’t seem that tired. He watches the scenery as they travel, mostly keeping an eye out for any ambushes or any creatures following them.
When they arrive on the farm, he moves Astralis from the stretcher to the bed. He stays in that room, watching to make sure Astralis doesn’t get any worse and waiting for the healer to arrive.
When the locals start talking to each other, he holds out his translator device to see if it can start picking up the language. When it does, he gives it a very surprised look.
The translator isn’t picking up any connections to any known language. Which means it could take weeks, or even months, for the translation expert system to start learning. In fact, he needs to start learning it himself, and feeding the words and phrases he learns into the translator.
When they get back from to Constellation Republic space—which might be a while, if the whole planet is as low-tech as this farm—he needs to apologize to his languages instructor. He kept arguing about how modern translation devices made the class obsolete, but here he is in the ‘what if you get stranded on one of those planets settled by mad linguists where everyone speaks an incomprehensible conlang’ scenario.
So, what’s this farm like? Dirt and plants and stuff, sure, but do they have electricity? Net, or at least radio? Farming machines?
Goggles starts looking around the outside, but will start poking around in the house if no one stops her.
There are no farming machines in immediate evidence, although it's possible that they could be concealed in one of the two large barns a bit away from the house. It's the growing season, so there would be no reason to have a harvester out yet.
There is a large stone slab with wooden handles floating with no visible means of support next to a patch of what she might tentatively identify as squash if she has an eye for vegetables. It sits about six inches above the ground, apparently serving as a handcart based on the pile of tools, fertilizer, and general gardening detritus piled on top of it.
If she gets down on the ground and looks, it's quite clear that there are no wheels. Also absent is the ultrasonic whine which low-tech or badly tuned contragravity devices often generate. If she checks for RF emissions, she'll find the entire spectrum silent. Not even the noise you'd expect from an unshielded cable.
In fact, the only radio across the whole spectrum is the extreme-low-frequency pulse of the gas giant's magnetic field ponderously turning, the high-frequency hiss and crackle of a warm summer day, and the familiar pulses of The Initiative's still active emergency distress beacon.
When she tires of the outdoors and moves her focus to the small cabin in which Brother Astralis is resting nobody stops her, and there's not much poking to be done. The house is divided into two rooms. The bedroom contains nothing technological other than a small glowing rod hanging from the ceiling to provide light. There is no wiring leading to it. It's glowing in roughly the same hue as the sun.
The other room has a table and chairs, storage cupboards, and a handloom. More rods are suspended from the ceiling by handspun twine. A large square block of stone sits in the middle of one wall on a slightly raised dias of bricks. It's giving off a faint heat and has concentric circles and swirling lines cut into the top.
Zeterse lets Arthur take the sole chair in the bedroom, and leans awkwardly against Çet's table in the other room.
:It's not far to the village. Çet should be back with the healer soon,: she reassures everyone. :Perhaps in the meantime, Wozet and I can teach you a few words?: she offers Bellerophon. :I'm sort of the worst person for teaching languages, but we can cover the basics.:
Wozet watches Goggles investigate the cart for a few moments, and then turns his attention back when he hears his name. "Turut," (:We can teach you:) he agrees.
Bellerophon leans against the wall opposite Zeterse, so he can watch her and Wozet speak. He goes with the 'friendly and relaxed' lean, and gives the two of them a thankful wave.
At the same time he is also noticing that Wozet noticed the mechanic poking around, and keeping an eye on that situation in case he needs to defuse any conflicts that start there.
Goggles does not notice Wozet watching her because she's too busy being very confused. This place has gravity tech but no radio. They have gravtech that's cheap enough to use for a little cart? But they still do their food making with hand tools?!!?!?!?!
Maybe this is the house of one a fancy rich people, someone who can afford to buy a floating cart and who thinks growing food from dirt is fancier than just buying premade food cubes?
Looking inside the house, they have lights and a heater. No cables, so either they're battery powered or there's some kind of wireless thing, like one of those energy fields some fancy houses have. But there's no generator anywhere on this farm, and no connection to a power grid. So where is the power coming from? Goggles examines the slab for a way to open it up and change the batteries.
There's also that... string thing? Like the ones people use to make cloth on those planets that forgot how to use technology. But this can't be one of those because they still have gravity manipulation. There's no way people forget how to use radio and industrial food and cloth production but still remember how to maintain gravtech. Unless... they don't have gravtech at all.
Goggles steps back outside and pokes a stick between the cart and the ground, to see if it's actual gravity manipulation or just some transparent material holding the cart up.
Okay so it is real. Still good to check before jumping to conclusions.
Goggles puts the scanner away and drops the stick, and finds something to sit down on. This is a sitting-down kind of thinking situation, not a pacing-around kind of thinking situation. She gets out a small notebook from her bag, unlocks it, and starts listing which technologies the planet seems to have and which ones it doesn't. The main missing pieces seem to be radio, labor saving technologies for farming or cloth, and weapons more advanced than swords. But they do have gravity tech, lights and heat with no obvious power source, and brain wizards who can talk without talking. Also the critters, but they might be unrelated.
The explanation that makes the most sense is that there's some high-tech group that builds this advanced tech and gives or sells it to the rest of the people, but they are keeping some things for themselves. The specific things missing make it seem like they're keeping people isolated from each other, spending most of their time on manual labor, and without good weapons. Maybe it's the brain wizards, or the brain wizards are their agents?
She has to tell captain about this! When he's alone though, and only if he doesn't seem like his brain is being controlled. For now she's going to stay here and strategize about how to find these secret high tech people and how to convince them to help with spaceship repairs.
When she's spent a few minutes thinking, she might see a short man in long green robes come careening over the hill at improbable speeds. He doesn't send up a plume of dust, by virtue of riding several inches above the ground on a thin stone slab. His weight is pitched forwards to angle the slab relative to the ground, but as he sails into the farmyard, he leans back until he comes to a complete stop.
Hopping down, he picks up his slab and tucks it under his arm.
"Zumara! Pihoror." he calls, striding towards the house. "Nurhaqu yhini homdarna?"
When Goggles doesn't reply within a few seconds, he raps on the door to the house and peers inside.
"Zeterse zumurut, pihoror. Nat yhini gyenit?" he asks.
:Raymudi! He's in Çet's bedroom, through there,: she answers. :Raymudi's great,: she tells Bellerophon. :He totally fixed Wozet's arm when I, uh, demonstrated energetic target restraint for him.:
"Zentarut Zeterse mu?" he prompts, striding past her into the bedroom. "Nat hamtungagy," he announces as he enters.
:Oh, yeah, sure I can translate. This is Raymudi, he's a healer,: Zeterse explains, moving to lean in the doorway since Çet's bedroom is quite full.
He assesses the patient. Is Brother Astralis awake? Responsive? Breathing? All his limbs attached?
"Mu dore wer?" (:What happened to him?:) he asks.
Whoah!! This guy has a hoverboard? That’s Goggles’ favorite levitating vehicle design!
Goggles looks up at the newcomer, admiringly. The high-tech cabal secretly running things here can’t be that bad if they let people have hoverboards.
Captain Monzor stands up and makes room. With a level voice he explains the situation to the medic.
“Ship combat. Room he was in took a hit from some kinetics. Cuts and broken bones, mostly on one side. He got basic first aid, bandages for the bleeding, but the impact of a crash landing made things worse.”
Why is the captain looking to him to translate? This language probably doesn’t even have a word for combat between two starships, and if it did he hasn’t gotten to that in his few minutes of language practice.
He’s also a bit concerned by Zeterse mentioning injuring the other guard. Subtly reminding everyone that she’s a trained fighter, that could be a threat to make sure they don’t cause any trouble. Or maybe meant to impress them? He needs to figure out the cultural norms around violence here, before someone (most likely the captain) causes some misunderstanding.
There will be time to with that later. For now, Bellerophon attempts repeat the captain’s explanation with the extremely new and unpolished bit of local language he learned. “Sky… house… sky house… down.”
Agh, being this used un-eloquent is why he hated learning languages without translators. He attempts to pantomime something falling and hitting the ground.
As for the patient…
Brother Astralis is unconscious, but breathing and moving slightly. All limbs are still attached, but one arm is visibly broken. A whole host of light lacerations and bandages over a couple worse ones are also fairly obvious.
"Wuntung qu qyasatut?" (:Resulting in fall-like injuries*?:) he clarifies.
He leans down to check Astralis's breathing with a hand held below his nose, and then centers his other hand above Astralis's sternum and adopts a look of concentration.
* This comes across as a medical term, distinguished from illness-like injuries or concept-like injuries
:I think so, yeah. You know that big boom a little while ago? That was them landing,: Zeterse explains.
"Nat nya çankara. Ramamu dat pengatgya, Nat do hununtarar?" (:I've got him stabilized. Will you help me set his arm?:) he asks the Captain, who is best positioned to assist. "Pengatgya mu pihor," (:Put it here,:) he instructs, gesturing to show how the arm should be positioned.
For someone who looked like some kind of mystic, he’s acting like a normal doctor. Monzor knows how to deal with that.
“Yes, I can.”
He holds the arm and moves it into place, and generally follows the healer’s directions, keeping any concern or curiosity to himself.
Goggles stands in the doorway of the house and tries to listen in. She needs to know what’s going on, but there’s already too many people in there so going inside is off the table.
After failing to hear anything, “probably using brain wizard powers instead of talking” and circling the farmhouse looking for but failing to find windows, “okay what kind of civilization invents antigravity before glass” she gives up and just lingers near the doorway waiting.