Mech Pilot who has a name scrawled on their battlefield tomb. I knew you by that name.
Okay. You're inside the Nozer necropolis. Or something. Maybe?
Now what, genius.
It had taken some doing to convince the very suspicious beings at what she hoped was this place's official public spaceport that a) the lanky human wasn't lost and really wanted to be on their planet and b) that she was invited, there to honour a fallen comrade, especially since they didn't really... speak as such.
Not in any way that made sense to her, anyway, and so far, humanity hadn't developed a translator that worked for a species that communicated entirely through colours and smells. In fact, most of humanity didn't even know about the Nozers - they didn't even have an official name yet they were so secret, that was just what she called them based on her sample group of, well, one - which was probably for the best. Humanity kinda sucked, and she didn't blame the officials for being wary of her.
Eventually, she'd gotten through to them with barely remembered battle language, laboriously flashing the colour bands for "ME NO ENEMY GO SEE DEAD FRIEND" over and over again - or at least, that's what she hoped she'd been saying.
She'd learned the words from her buddy, ages ago, separately, at different times, when they'd literally run into each other on what should have been an uninhabited moon, but turned out to be a secret Divine Conglomerate forward staging base, full of very angry soldiers hunting both of the unfortunate souls stranded there, and they'd had to work together to survive and get off-world, back to their people - but maybe she'd just been shouting random gibberish at the officials - if that's what they'd been - and they'd decided to make the strange creature someone else's problem.
She still had no idea how... their...? - did the Nozers even have genders? Not important. - message had reached her, but two weeks ago, there it'd been. Suddenly, out of the blue. And the security stink that had created!
A strange slab on her desk that made you feel dizzy if you touched it, with the colours for "FRIEND DEAD" splashed across it and then a complex diagram that sucked you in and gave you a headache if you looked at it for too long... that'd turned out to be coordinates for this place. Getting here had been an - unpleasant at times - adventure in itself, but now that she was here... what the fuck was she supposed to do? Where did she go now?
A moment of quiet despair, looking around at the rows and rows of strangely curved, amorphous stacked bands of colours equipped with various nozzles that after a cautious sniff and a lot of hacking and coughing were probably for the other way the Nozers communicated - other parts of these beings' names? words? further explanations? embellishments? Who knew, not her.
How was she ever supposed to find... whatever they did to remember her buddy? If they were actually dead, and this wasn't just some weird cosmic joke? If the Nozers even remembered their dead in this place? Or at all? Maybe this was some kind of... art installation?
This was such a stupid idea.
Plastic flowers - she'd figured she didn't want to accidentally offend or insult anyone, so fake flowers seemed like a safer bet, and easier to trek around the universe with as well - creaked as her fingers tightened in frustration.
But you owe them. They saved your life.
Fuck.
Well, I'm here now, so I might as well look around at least.
So she wandered the pathways between pillars, getting lost in this strangely beautiful place, a riot of colours and smells that meant nothing to her, until after who knew how long, something caught her eye.
No way.
No fucking way.
She doubled over with laughter. With relief.
She'd found it after all.
Tears in her eyes, she moved closer to her destination.
Placed her offerings at the foot of one pillar.
Her fingers gently brushed the alien-to-the-Nozers letters carved into it.
The name she'd given her buddy, so many decades ago.
"Hello, Stinky, old friend. Sorry I never called or wrote."
