Forrest Cameranesi Geek of all Trades

(1x01) Veil of the Foundation: Part 2, Episode 2

Chief Science Officer Katia Natali of the starship Valhalla descends rapidly toward the alien planet below her in an escape pod, while in the sky above her the landing ship takes fire from a weapon shooting from below the southern horizon. On her uniform is a seven-pointed star composed of overlapping curved chevrons somewhat resembling a flower, the emblem of the organization she works for, the Foundation. As she and the rest of her escaped crew, the Einherjar, search for each other on the surface of the alien planet, they are pursued by a non-humanoid aquatic species with advanced mobility technology that allows them to venture onto land, who seem likely to be the ones operating the weapon that shot down their ship from a platform in the planet's southern ocean. Meanwhile, at the outskirts of that star system, the Valhalla's artificial intelligence Amitabha follows her standing orders, contacting the Foundation back at Sol through the ansible link at the core of the artificial wormhole with which the ship is docked. She informs the Foundation at Sol that as feared there is an apparent threat on this end of the wormhole. She then goes to attempt a rescue of the crew in the Valhalla proper.

The separated Einherjar's own sidearms – a pair of what look like sword hilts that can project arbitrarily-sized blade-like or shield-like distortions of spacetime, as well as push and pull and grab objects, and a second pair of such that hover like drones under apparently telepathic control – are able to defeat the aquatic enemies with relative ease, but the nuisance drives them all further inland, north into the planet's jungles. There they also meet several different, primitive but sapient, non-humanoid, local species, en route to regrouping with each other. Like the aquatic species, they are all bilateral, endoskeletal creatures with two eyes and a mouth on a head at one end of their bodies, with two limbs near that end and the rest of the limbless body acting like a single large limb. One species walks on the ground with its two limbs and tail in a loping motion, and the humans nickname them "lopers". Another swings in the trees primarily from their two limbs, and hangs upside-down by their tails; the humans call them "monkeys". And the third has leathery wings on their forelimbs, flying for locomotion, and perching on treetops with a snakelike coil of their tails, and the humans call them "dragons". Meanwhile, as Amitabha approaches the planet to attempt her rescue, the Valhalla itself is also shot down by the alien weapon from an even greater distance than it took for the landing ship to begin taking fire, and Amitabha is likewise forced to escape to the surface, in an android body.

After the Einherjar and Amitabha eventually regroup on the surface, Amitabha is able to decipher one of the friendlier aliens' languages, discovering to everyone's surprise that it appears to be distantly related to the common language of the Einherjar, which they had believed to be a constructed language created by the Foundation, based on the Proto-Indo-European language, to serve as a lingua franca for its diverse members. To the aliens, that Foundation tongue sounds like a distant relative of one of their ancient holy tongues. Amitabha learns further that besides the mysterious language connection, not only do humans at least vaguely resemble the absent creators of these primitive local species, and of the advanced technology that shot down their ship (which technology has merely been usurped by the younger aquatic race), but that the logo of the Foundation, worn on the crew's uniforms, is of religious significance to these locals as well.

Next: Darak Meij: Part 2, Episode 2