'Elsewhere' turns out to be 'a forest'. The air is different in some hard-to-pin down way. The critters are different.

...They're on a small patch of life in a wide open sky. But what's here is thriving. And the man who heard their arrival is suddenly alert for danger.

Deskyl staggers and half sits, half collapses onto the ground; the droid drops to her knees, one hand resting protectively on her friend's shoulder, and looks around cautiously at their new surroundings.

There are trees and bushes - strange grass with seeds that tug upwards. There are birds and squirrels. There is a large - ship? (but it's made of some sort of stone...) - floating a couple hundred yards away. There is a man shouting in the distance, 

"Walta, come down here! Something strange happened, I want backup!"

That's not a language the droid knows.

She tugs Deskyl up into a sitting position; the Sith resists, but only a little, and settles into position leaning heavily on her. People, there, the droid signs, and Deskyl straightens up a little and watches the man.

Mostly hidden by trees still. He leans in time with the subtle swaying of the ground under their feet without appearing to think about it, scrutinizing the foliage in their direction, nervously holding something strangely constructed, but with the same general shape as a blaster. He's wearing a rope harness tying him to the ship and a nearby tree.

And a younger girl, looking barely adult, comes scrambling towards him out of the ship. They converse in that strange language.

The Sith and the droid stay put for a minute, and then Deskyl steels herself and stands. The droid follows, and continues following as she makes her way toward the pair.

"That's close enough. Hail, stranger! Did you fall here?"

Their clothes and equipment are - almost preindustrial That 'blaster' is nothing of the sort, though it's probably still some kind of weapon.

The woman stops when he starts talking, and signs something to the droid, signing hand held low. The droid comes up behind her, staying mostly shielded by her body, and asks him a question in an incomprehensible language.

"That's not Anglish, Nick. Not German or Mandarin either."

"Yes, I could tell that myself. Which means we have a bit of a problem."

He considers, then puts the weapon in a belt loop and gestures at himself. "Nicholas." At his assistant. "Erwelta." And at the stranger.

"Deskyl," she supplies, and then taps her own chest, "DZ-twelve-Q; DZ."

The strangers nod. And proceed to have a quiet argument, gesturing at the pair.

"...They look like they fell from somewhere. Tech hunters, adventurers, whatever, they will die if left alone here, Captain."

"Some kind of lost tech AI that powers a robot, I am not sure I want it on my ship, it seems dangerous."

"Could leave them some supplies?"

"We don't have that much to spare, there's only so much room in the hold."

"Well if you plan to leave them here to starve, I'll want my back pay in the form of food and gear and I'll stay here. You don't just leave helpless people, captain."

"Walta. I'm not saying we can't help them. I'm saying that we need to be a little hesitant and careful..."

 The woman leans against a tree, closes her eyes, and after some minutes begins signing rapidly while the droid watches.

The argument with the skeptical captain and the compassionate assistant continues. Eventually Erwelta - Walta - throws her hands up and walks towards Deskyl, intending to offer up her canteen and a sandwich.

Deskyl's eyes flick open when Walta starts to approach; her hands continue their signing for another second and then go still.

    "I'm not dangerous," DZ says, quietly but matter-of-fact.

"Ooh! Captain, they're - I think they're learning our language. Impressive! Deskyl, do you want a drink of water? D... Something. What does a robot need?"

The captain sighs slightly, but is pretty much resigned to helping these people somehow.

Now the droid signs, and Deskyl watches and shakes her head.

    "She doesn't," DZ confirms. "And she doesn't -" she taps the side of her head, where a human's ear would be.

"...She can't hear?"

The droid nods; the woman signs again. "Can we have more language?"

"Sure, uh, I'm not sure what to say..." Walta trails off.

"Excuse me," the captain walks up. "Is there something with which you could pay passage? Interesting bits of technology you do not necessarily need. Metals with which you are willing to part. Or similar."

    "I don't have enough language."

"...Well, this is a problem that might be solvable by just listening to us. Since neither of us are teachers. Perhaps if we just get back to work and you observe us for a while? It doesn't seem like you need anything immediately, correct?"

    "We'll learn," she nods. "Deskyl needs..." something she doesn't have a word for, apparently.

"A robot needs electricity? I have an alternator attached to number one turbine."

DZ signs to Deskyl, and the woman sighs - exhaustion and annoyance - but closes her eyes again and begins to sign.

    "I will need electricity."

"I will need payment for passage."

"Captain."

"Not much. Manual labor, if nothing else."

"We don't have things. I can do manual labor. Deskyl can - " she taps Deskyl's elbow, and the woman opens her eyes and gestures to a stick on the ground, which rises into the air and floats gently to her hand.

"...Potentially very useful! But not particularly urgent." Also vaguely worrying, but he's commited now. "Alright then! Deskyl does appear to need some rest. Shall we go settle her and then have you help Walta gather fuel so we can continue our planned trip? We'll need a fair bit extra if we're taking you two on. And I would plan to let you off next time we stop at a major town."

"Yes."

"Can you climb a ladder safely right now?" Walta asks Deskyl, though speaking towards DZ. "I can bring down a cargo net if not."

Deskyl's response seems to be that she'll jump, rather than climbing, from the signs; DZ simply answers "yes."

"...You're thinking of pulling some acrobatics. Please don't, not on my ship. Any number of things could go wrong, including things which will kill you."

    "She won't do anything dangerous," DZ reassures.

"Do you even know what's dangerous on a ship? She's tough compared to the wrecks waiting to happen that some people fly around here, but if you put weight in the wrong place or push off hard enough she'll pitch too far or maybe roll and we all have bigger problems than we started with. Please just use the ladder."

They converse, or perhaps argue, briefly, and then DZ turns back to Nick. "The - " she gestures as Deskyl did when she was levitating the stick. "Deskyl has more. She knows what's dangerous."

"I am the captain. It is my ship. If I think something is too dangerous, it is too dangerous. Is this a deal-breaker?"

Walta is looking on nervously. She doesn't think Deskyl will win this argument.

More signed conversation; DZ wins, but Deskyl is clearly not happy about it.

    "She will not."

"Good. Thank you. I know it's annoying. I don't intend to give you huge lists of rules. The most important ones are no acrobatics for now, and absolutely no fire or sparks if you can possibly help it. Shall we go up, then?"

"Yes."

The droid offers her friend a hand; Deskyl doesn't take it, but makes a point of appearing to be fine as she heads toward the ship.

Up they go. The ladder is a swaying rope thing, not a solid and secure one. It seems sturdy enough. Nick goes up first.

Walta asks DZ, "Uh, so, are you going to go up too or start helping me gather fuel?"

She considers it. "I'll stay."

(The ladder steadies noticeably under Deskyl's hands, and doesn't give her any trouble.)

Nick shows Deskyl to a cabin free of personal effects but with random things stored in it. "This one will be yours. I'll remove the crates. I'd show you around more but you look like you need a bed."

She looks around the room and nods, and begins floating the stacks of crates out into the hall.

...Alright then. He just gets out of the way. He suddenly remembers that she is deaf and gives a thumbs up gesture in thanks.

Come to think of it, he walks to the restroom down the hall and opens the door just to make sure she knows where it is. And then starts removing crates from the hallway.

Soon all the boxes are out, and she shuts the door and goes to bed and falls asleep immediately.

...Alright then. Nick goes to work on the engines.

Back down on the ground, Walta asks DZ, "I've heard of a lot of different kinds of robots. Are you a drone or an AI type?"

"I don't have enough language. We didn't fall."

"Uh. Alright then. No fast way to fix the language thing. Let's just work."

Walta fetches up one of the big sacks from a pile nearby and takes it over to a stand of the floaty grass. "We just hold the bag up and whack the grass, collect up what flies off." She demonstrates. "And then send it up to the ship when it's full."

She watches carefully, and then mimics what she's seen.

It's very strange to be working alongside a real live robot. They're supposed to be fantastical lost technology. She keeps looking over DZ, trying to figure out the joints and balance, or where the computer part is... But work gets done. "I thought you were learning very fast a minute ago?"

She nods. "Deskyl helps."

"Deskyl's deaf."

"Yes, but she helps." She does the levitating-a-stick gesture again.

"Hmm. Alright, implants or something. Lost tech is crazy stuff."

She pauses, shrugs, and gets back to work.

Walta has nothing else to say. She tries pointing and naming things, but quickly runs out of nouns to do this with. She starts quietly singing a work song of some kind - there's a steady rhythm to the words, but only a few are recognizable - after another couple of minutes.

DZ picks the nouns up readily, but doesn't object when the lesson is over; she doesn't join in with the song.

Robots are so weird. She keeps almost starting a conversation, but refrains.

...They work for a while. At least a couple dozen bagsful of the stuff.

DZ's not going to get bored, or tired. She does keep an eye on Walta, ready to suggest a break if she seems to be pushing herself to keep up with her, but otherwise works steadily until she's told to stop.

Slow and steady does it. She's used to this sort of work.

"...That should be enough. Should be plenty. If Nick complains he can get more."

"All right."

Up they go. "Are you good at... Uh, learning, basically? I would imagine the Captain is going to find more work for you. Probably not ridiculously much of it."

She nods. "I can learn work."

"Good... You need electricity. I shouldn't try and set you up with that, I could screw it up, we'll ask Nick to."

That gets a quick headshake. "Deskyl will."

"Hmm. Not likely, the way Cap'n is with his ship."

Another headshake. "Deskyl won't trust Nick to do it safely. She needs me."

"Electricity means sparks. Sparks mean kaboom. I really, really think Nick is going to push back on this."

"Deskyl can stop sparks and kaboom." She makes the levitating-stick gesture again. "Or work not in the ship."

"...Yeah, that might satisfy him. Working outside the ship. Hard shell, fire-proof. I think you have to connect to something inside sooner or later though, to get the power?"

Nod. "Nick can do the inside connect thing."

"I'll suggest it... The ship will burn very fast we catch fire, we all die if it does, that's why he's so paranoid. It's not to be mean or controlling."

" - I don't have enough language."

She shrugs, a bit embarrassed. "...Careful? We said careful earlier, I think. Captain Vauners is very very careful."

She nods.  "Deskyl is careful, but," the gesture, again, "different careful."

Walta finishes unhooking herself from the safety harness. "I'll go find him. Deskyl is probably in the guest cabin, that door there... You probably shouldn't go to the bridge- the, uh, front or back of the ship, or up, unless Cap invites you in."

"I'll stay with Deskyl."

"Right. I'll go talk to Captain Vauners then."

Off she goes.

She explains the robot's insistence on how Deskyl will want to work with its electricity, and the idea of leading wires outside the hull and doing the final part there.

"...I'm not sure I like that either, I have to modify the Whale rather permanently. Maybe I can spin it off to a running light or something... Something about them makes me uneasy. I'm still not sure this is a good idea."

"Well, get the robot to do extra work to make up for it? Maybe they know interesting things about tech?"

Nick makes a grumbling noise.

"Not all passengers are bad. They need help, we gave them help, and maybe you can still make money off it."

"It's not about the money. Well, not entirely." Sigh. "Balance the gas cells for me, would you? Deskyl collapsed into a bed but I think I want to talk to this robot. DZ. It's a smart robot as these things go, which is fascinating. Lost tech, who knows what'll turn up."

He goes down and knocks on the cabin's door.

DZ lets him in; Deskyl is still asleep.

"Walta told me the plan for your electricity. I will watch, and I don't want to give you with too many things to do it without additional pay or work, but otherwise that will be fine."

DZ sits back down on the bed to listen.

"I don't have enough language. Wait, please, Captain." She nudges Deskyl, who makes a disgruntled noise but opens her eyes and, after a few exchanged signs, sits up on the edge of the bed next to the droid and closes her eyes again.

He repeats himself, describing the idea of doing any necessary electrical work outside the ship somewhere for Deskyl's benefit, slightly impatient this time.

There's a pause, when he's done, and then Deskyl begins signing, grimacing slightly.

"You can watch, Captain," she agrees, when the signing is over, "and I'll work."

"I apologize for the necessity. I have to be absolutely positive there are no fires onboard my ship. A fire would kill all of us in minutes."

DZ nods. "Deskyl can stop fires. But she'll work outside the ship."

"All I know is that you say she can. Caution is prudent. I'll let you rest, Deskyl. DZ, do you need rest?"

"No, Captain."

"I believe you can't understand Anglish well without her yet, but mimicry will do for the first set of tasks I would like to assign you."

"All right."

Off they go then.

To what appears to be a cargo hold. Crates and shelves and rope and cranes. The huge wads of floatgrass they collected earlier have all settled near the ceiling. Nick pulls a lever that opens a vent thing, presses a button that starts a mechanical noise, uses a long tool to push some into a corner. With a mulching sound the pile is slowly consumed into the vent. "Fuel processing. Simple enough, yes?"

Yep, that's straightforward. She settles in to work.

Nick watches the robot move, fascinated, for a little while.

The ship starts moving after a while. He provides other relatively straightforward work when she's done with that. And then he has no more. He cooks a mediocre lunch for three as Walta takes over piloting the craft and takes the afternoon to let DZ peruse some textbooks and novels that are handy, and then teach some of the more complicated chores of the ship.

She appreciates the books, and goes through them at a pace only a little slower than someone already fluent with the language, occasionally pausing to ask how a word is pronounced. When it's time to get back to work, she proves to be a quick learner, both mimicking his actions and remembering his instructions perfectly.

DZ gets about ten hours' worth of work over the course of the day as they sail, set down again, and Nick does some maintenance.

(Walta appears to be trying to figure out precisely how smart DZ is, going by her subtly strange inquiries and actions and lurking around.)

She has no complaints about the work; when it's done, she asks if there's any more for her to do, and returns to the guest cabin when there isn't.

The picture Walta gets of DZ's capabilities is fairly alien, compared to a human. She's certainly smart - her memory seems to be perfect; complex questions that a human would have trouble holding in their mind aren't a challenge for her at all - and flexible, asking questions and pointing out contradictions as the need arises. But as Walta's questions leave the realm of straightforward fact, she struggles; she's only occasionally able to express preferences, and she seems uncomfortable at the limitation, her body language going tense and submissive if Walta asks too often or presses too much.

"There are stories about smart computers, but we don't have anything like them. Or they're really rare at any rate. They vary a lot. I'm tryin' to figure out what kind you are, because it makes a big difference to what the stories are like most of the time. It's pretty different if you're, uh. Well, there's different kinds in the stories."

"Oh." She considers. "I'm the kind that works with people. But I don't know what your stories are like."

"There are kinds that are almost human and learn, kinds that are made and destroyed over and over again with tiny changes until they're good at something, kinds that are ships, kinds that aren't in one body but every computer. Kinds that have one singleminded goal and don't care about anything else and kinds that are, uh, more human with lots of goals that overlap... But it's all stories, so I don't know."

"I'm the first kind. I've never heard of the others."