By ChaosEternus Chapter 2
"Well, then I saw the light, and it wasn't any religious type deal, it was just a big ship, and when I say big I mean big. As in swallow a supertanker and have room for a destroyer or two type big. And it was a warship. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind about this, I was a serving RAF officer, I had spent time on the piddling little things the Royal Navy likes to call carriers, my family had all been Navy, so I knew a warship when I saw one.
And this was a big honking ship; the sort that screams I'm big, I'm important and I can take nearly everything on, all by my lonesome. And judging by the visuals, she had tried too at least once recently.
And she appeared to be interested in us.
Strangely enough, I think I would be interested in us too if I was them.
Well, my engineer Dafydd shows that brain he's renowned for and begins cycling through the radios, looking for any transmissions from our 'friends' out there.
Well, we didn't know who we were listening too when we picked the transmissions up because we didn't understand a single-sodding word of it.
I knew English and bad English, so I wasn't much help in this, Dafydd knows Welsh and French and Donally knew German, Russian and Ancient Sumerian, something he has always told us not to task too many questions about.
And we didn't recognise a root word, a style of language, nadda.
We were to put it mildly, screwed.
'Cos when the local big boy says jump, its certainly a good idea to say "How High Sir?" like a good recruit, and unfortunately, while we had certainly found the big boy in town, we certainly couldn't tell what they were or rather might be saying to us, and that is a bad thing.
See, if you don't answer the guys with guns coherently, they tend to use them, especially if they have a capital ship in the area to defend, just ask the American Supercarrier guys about that.
Well, we tried jabbering away in English, followed by bursts in every language we knew, but got nowhere. It appeared they didn't understand a word of it, we just hoped they got the point that we didn't understand a word so please kindly don't shoot the unarmed, un-armoured shuttle.
Maybe they did, 'cos twenty minutes later, we were still alive and the channels were buzzing, it sounded like at least another forty ships were headed our way, either the big boy had called in friends or they were just a scout.
Just a scout? Christ, if that thing is just a scout, wonder what the real big boys are like?
Then it happened, a clang sounded through the ship as something hit us and boy, did we set a speed record getting our suit helmets back on and sealed.
Then the airlock activated, a very distinctive sound, even muffled by our suits and we realised with horror we were being boarded.
Into our small craft strode three heavily armed, highly wary individuals. They looked human in every respect despite the lack of knowledge of any of our languages and humanities lack of any big arse space warships.
Leader boy appeared to be a grim, unrelenting type, all attitude and no fun, 'cept to those he felt safe enough around to drop the mask a bit, I'm sure you know the type.
Number two had attitude in spades, it rolled off her, not in a bad way but a Tom Cruise in Top Gun type way, I'm the best, I know it, got a problem? She was tall, blonde and had a cigar stuck in her mouth.
If number three was anything other than a tech, a spare body they grabbed to make up the numbers, I'd eat my spacesuit. She was small, dark haired with dirt and oil ingrained into her tiny hands, tiny hands which made me very nervous, shaking hands with guns in them is very definatly not a good thing, especially when the gun is aimed at me.
Well, number two spotted my nervous glance and sent the techie running though the shuttle, obviously searching for other people.
Well, she found no one, there was no one there to find, but she was certainly jabbering away a lot to the other two when she came back, she seemed amused and almost contemptuous. It didn't take a lot to guess she was telling them about the comparative joke that is our shuttle.
That I didn't like, but couldn't really do anything about, what with a big honking language barrier between us and all.
Obviously coming to some decision, grim and unrelenting gestured us out of the shuttle with his pistol, holding it to my back as we were taken into what could only be described as a better shuttle, a tall young dark haired women at the controls. She looked a nice enough type; her eyes were smiling, kindly but had a distinct edge of pain, of loss to them. But something about her was… off. That is the only word to describe it really, like something wasn't quite right about her.
Not that I could investigate that, under the circumstances.
With a metallic clunk, the shuttle detached from our shuttle and we were away, from the view out the front, I guessed we were heading towards the big boy we had seen.
This could be interesting"
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