Beyond the End of the World, Lokians 1

Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Swain was brooding over the outcome of their previous battle. Busy hands allowed him an escape, so he joined Thewlian repair technicians and helped to fix everything from comm. lines on ships to personnel armor. One of the engineers was chewing on ice chips, making obscenely loud crunching sounds, which brought to the Human an epiphany; he decided to fill the Swainium bullet tips with a Bose-Einstein condensate.

After finishing a repair shift, he bolted to the weapons lab on the Carrier. There, he conversed with Thewls about his idea. They first stated he needed to contain the B.E.C.s with a miniscule force field—one so tiny it fit within the bullet—then, they claimed it wasn't going to kill Lokians anyway; they were resistant to cold, but Swain believed the crystallization of their exoskeleton or armor made them weaker, slower.

"I don't know why you'd want to continue firing physical ammunition. Energy based weaponry is more efficient," an engineer advised.

"I agree, but," he paused in mid-sentence as he moved to a computer. At the screen, he showed schematics for a new weapon, a lightweight, Swainium, mini gun. It was something he had tinkered with during his downtime. The engineer looked over Swain's head at the screen. "Until we get the time and materials to build new weapons for Humans, I gotta' go with what works, or, you know, what might work...."

Rubbing his chin, the Thewl was in agreement. "I'll have words with my superiors. It's high time we provide you our kinds of weapons."

"Well, hold on, now," Swain smiled. "I was thinking about the arc laser. A rifle that can fire a miniaturized version of that beam will really get us going."

"We've tried, but there is no way to build a small enough version of such a lens."

"I'll get to work on something...I think we can do it."

It took some doing, but he figured there was a way to design a miniaturized lens using fullerenes. He then disassembled a photon field generator in an effort to devise a method for pumping highly charged photons through the new lens. It took a great deal of work and ingenuity, but when he presented his idea, they gave it a shot.

****

The days were filled with excitement for everyone, especially Nandesrikahl, who was determined to learn the Thewlian language. Basic orders were no problem, but they didn't just have words, they had turns of phrase, expressions, metaphors, which had bypassed him on numerous occasions. On top of that, they had told him it was impossible to understand every nuance without being familiar with complexion changes and the distinct scents of certain pheromones.

In agreement, he did his best to learn to read and write. He liked that they had only the one language, unlike Earth, where every ethnicity practically spoke their own tongue. He asked his alien friends about the oddity, but they had no answer, so he pestered the ambassador.

The two conversed about the changes, which largely affected Thewls after their home world was destroyed. Weh stated that at one time, there had been multiple languages, but that like Humans, facial cues and body language were universal. What remained after their reintegration was a generic form of their language, which evolved into what they spoke currently; a militarized speech conforming to a survivalist mentality.

Nandy pointed out that they all spoke remarkably well, professorial even; they were hardly survivalists. Weh told him to consider the fact that they had already abandoned their religion after the arrival of the travelers. Though they were very spiritual, they no longer worshiped deities. On top of that, they no longer spoke of art, music, dancing, colors, entertainment. He agreed that they were still a scholarly people, and intelligent, but there was no way to compare the past to the present.