By ChaosEternus Chapter 3
"The officer who met us off that shuttle, well if he wasn't the CO then we were really in trouble.
He had command presence.
In spades, buckets and whatever else you cared to mention.
With a sort of curious detachment I found myself saluting and at full attention. I hadn't even noticed it happening, but a quick shift of my eyes showed both my engineer and co-pilot flashing parade quality salutes to the dark haired man with the lined face and commanding presence.
If the slight glimmering in his eyes told me anything, it was that we had just told him a lot, and he was amused and pleased.
That ended when Leader Boy said something in that weird, unfamiliar language and we were shot a slightly startled look followed by one familiar to anyone who knew of that Irish arsehole, Murphy. You know the one, the look that says 'Figures' and is apparently recognisable even aboard alien spaceships.
I shot a double take then, glancing swiftly between leader boy and command presence, which got me a slight twinkle in the eye and a nod from command presence, they were related.
Now that's nepotism at work for you, I wonder if Leader boy had had an accelerated career, then I glanced again at command presence and guessed not, he didn't seem the type to favour his own family, in fact he seemed to be the type who would push them further, expect more of them because they were family.
But that still left us with one problem…
Notepads and paper didn't work, seemed we had different alphabets as well as spoken languages, nor did Sign language, which Dafydd had learned so he could speak to a deaf niece of his.
They caught on quickly that it was a language of some sort and it had them surprised and excited, making me wonder if they had any forms of sign language at all where they came from but it didn't help, they didn't know sign language and we didn't know how to teach it.
Back to square one.
On the off chance, Donally tried writing some Sumerian. It being a long dead form of communication and all we didn't think it had any chance of working. Interestingly enough it generated more of a reaction then any other type of writing we had chosen, they recognised it.
But couldn't understand it.
At that point, I made a few subtle comments regarding Murphy's parentage and love life that had Donally and Dafydd shooting me impressed and a little scared looks and the local boys glancing at me amused, they got the tone and the meaning even if they didn't understand the words.
I think I even got an 'amen to that' off broody who had just walked up with a message for the commander on an narrow sheet of old style dot-matrix paper with the corners clipped. Now this one was a person to watch if ever I saw one, an old brawler and a one-time binger if I am any judge. Certainly someone who knew how to handle himself in a fight but not necessarily the most personable of people, the sort of person who was most likely to need a kick up the arse every now and again to keep them on track, and judging by the harsh looks techie was shooting him, somebody who wasn't all that well respected.
This was getting interesting.
I take it back, this was boring, insulting and irritating.
They stuck us in infant's school.
Of all the indignities, they stuck us, veteran RAF officers in infant's school!
I know one of us would have to learn the others language somehow but surely there was a better way than this.
It didn't help that the Guards we had been assigned hadn't stopped shaking with laughter since we had been shoved in here, it didn't help that even the kids had a tendency to burst out laughing at us.
It really didn't help at all, but maybe…
Grinning, I decided that if we had to learn their language, well then those guards had better learn ours too. I explained my plan quickly to my crew, who shot the guards maniacal grins that wiped the smiles right off their faces.
A choked burst of laughter made me look up to see Mrs Top Gun and Mr Grim & Unrelenting standing in the doorway, fixed expressions on their faces as they watched the guards plough through the hastily drawn English Alphabet/Numbers sheets we had thrown together while beside them we tried to learn theirs.
The exchange between them needed no translation; being an obvious 'we gotta tell everyone about this', followed by an anguished 'no!' from our friends the guards and a smirking 'carry on' from Mrs Top Gun as they left again.
I was actually becoming quite surprised by exactly how much communication I was actually able to understand without any common language between us, maybe the shrinks were right when they said, 90% of all communication involved no words at all?
Naahhh… the day I admit a shrink has something useful to say is the day the sky falls in.
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