Princess Rescue Inc (10 page)

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That
night the Terrans decided to make some more distance from the war front. Perry
had them drive in shifts. They made their way down the trail and along a narrow
path avoiding the main road. They forded a river, then a creek and rounded a
bend right into a raider camp that didn't have a fire lit. Perry swore vilely
as the camp sprang to life.

Ben,
the linguist was in the lead hummer. He heard the camp people yelling and
brightened enthusiastically, “French! German! Celtic, no, no that's Latin... We
can talk with these people!” he said fully excited. He started to yell in
various languages leaning out the window, right up until a cross bow bolt
pierced his throat. Another bounced off the hood of the truck he had been in. A
third bolt got caught in a tire.

Perry
snarled and the military people returned fire. The night was lit with weapons
fire. The camp broke into chaos. Beyond, on the other side of the camp they
spotted the golden coach, flipped over on its side. Perry spun the hummer
around as his men piled out the side not facing the enemy. They took cover and
opened fire, but the raiders were running. Suppression fire switched to
targeted single shots, cutting down the terrified men like wheat. Perry didn't
call a check fire; he wanted the bastards dead and no witnesses.

When
the single shots died down Perry and the Sergeant detailed some of the soldiers
to check the perimeter and watch for leakers or a counter attack. Doc checked
the linguist hanging limply out the window. Blood was splattered over the side
of the door, and trickled down to pool under his body. She shook her head and
closed his dead eyes. “The bolt went through at an angle. It looks like it
severed both carotid arteries. He bled out in seconds,” she said to the marine
medic with her. The sarge came back and grabbed her by the elbow. He led her to
a narrow patch.

There
they found the body of a lifeless blond boy dressed in red, gold, and purple
splashed finery. A pile of blood soaked rags nearby could just be made out to
be a pair of women with their throats slit. A wounded, long haired blond man
was lying nearby, holding a knife to the throat of a bound blond young woman.
She was battered and bruised, with blood dripping from her defiant face. Her
red and purple dress was shredded. Rope wrapped around her torso, pinning her
arms to her sides and her hands behind her to the small of her back. A cleave
gag was knotted and stuffed in her mouth. Another girl was sobbing near by in a
pile of misery. The man snarled in his language. Doc lunged forward but a
marine held her back. The broad man's hostage squirmed slightly until the blade
pricked her throat.

Perry
drew the man’s attention, leading him to look away from the sarge who had his 9
mm drawn. Just as the guy snarled something the girl stomped on his instep and
thrust her body to one side and away from the knife. “Got the shot!” the sarge
said, but he was surprised when another weapon fired. He turned to see Ryans
holding his pistol in a two handed stance. The barbarian man slumped, blood
gushing from his chest. Doc rushed in, checking the woman. She ignored the
dying man. Perry came over warily, covering the man with his weapon. He kicked
the knife away from his nerveless fingers and checked. The blond man's eyes
were vacant and there was no pulse. Dead. Good, he thought.

“She's
alive,” she said helping the girl up. Angry eyes stare out over the gag. She
kept jerking her bound hands. She obviously wanted to be free.

“This
one too Doc,” Perry said, gently patting a mound of flesh and torn cloth. The
bound girl whimpered and pleaded in her native language. “Easy now miss, you're
safe now,” he murmured stroking her dirty blond hair. Doc untied the first
girl.

The
girl brushed off the helping hands and rushed forward to the other woman and
wrapped her arms around her pushing the marine officer away. Perry stepped
back, looking around. The two dead women were by the looks of their brown
dresses, some sort of courtiers or servants. Men in red, purple, and white
livery littered the coach and surrounding area. Their uniforms were trimmed in
gold and silver. Most were fairly young. None were armed. It looked like their
clothes had been stripped of any metal or jewels. The raiders were dressed in a
motley assortment of brown and black. Some had furs of various colors, others
had ragged skins. One had a child's skull on a string around his dead neck.
Most were not wearing any sort of formal uniform.

“Well,
they say the bad guys wear black,” Ryans muttered. The elder blond girl had
untied the other girl, from the looks of both of them they were hotties,
probably why they were still alive. From the look of them they were sisters,
probably sisters to the little boy. Most likely raped though, from their
shattered looks and torn clothing he was fairly certain of that. The first girl
stroked her sister's hair gently, hugging her as she cried. She glanced his way
and he tried not to flinch at the intense glare.

Those
haunted eyes; they burned right through him into his soul. He couldn't look
into them. God, but it burned, they were both kids, teenagers. War was
definitely hell. He really wanted to break something or kill someone right now.
Anything to get away from the looks of pure hell on those kids faces.

Doc
grimaced as the women gabbled at her in their native language. Ryans came over.
The girls stared at him with intense hostility. He offered the larger gold
tiara to them and the oldest snatched it from him. The oldest, the blond gave
him a scolding in some language and then looked away as she fluffed her
battered tangled hair and then put her crown on. He handed the other one, made
to look like a laurel wreath with golden leaves to the younger girl who took it
quietly and put it on.

“Sorry
about the gems ladies, I think they took them. If you check them you might find
what's missing.” He indicated the raiders. The women looked and then looked at
him. He shook his head. He snorted in amusement looking at Doc, clearly getting
the idea that they wanted him to do it. “It looks like the ladies are royalty
Doc, or at least nobility.”

Doc
sighed in exasperation. “Yes, but I can't talk to them!” She threw her hands up
in helpless disgust at the situation. “It is a hodgepodge of languages. I can
make out a few... It's worse than English, I mean it's got Latin, Germanic,
Swedish, French, Chinese, Spanish, apparently Celtish, and stuff I don't even
know,” she said as she sighed in frustration. “I think Ben said the base
language sounded like Latin or Celt though. I didn't really specialize in it
you know, I mean Latin in medical school is more oriented for what we need to
know, not to talk in it.” She wrinkled her nose. “Wanda and Charlie are in the
same boat,” she admitted. She shook her head.

Ryans
smiled. “Latin, French, and German are the base languages for English Doc;
we'll have to figure something out. With Ben dead, we'll have to go to plan B,”
he grimaced, looking over to the dead body. Marines were already bagging the
linguist. One was digging a grave under a tree. Sydney was piling stones
nearby.

Doc
looked over to him. “We have a plan B?” she asked surprised and amused.

He
nodded and pulled out a blue tooth and clipped it to his ear, “Sure thing. This
will pick up their language through the mike. I've booted Ben's laptop, it will
have his translation matrix files and the library database to go on,” he
grimaced. “The AI will sample the language then build a mutual vocabulary. I
tied in Sony's and my AI systems to make it a learning adaptive system. But we
need more context to start. It will be slow though, a noticeable lag. We may
have to do some repeats so patience on both sides will have to be in order.
Hopefully we'll pick up the language over time on our own,” he explained.

He'd
had experience with the system of course; he'd helped to design it. It combined
hardware and software in new ways to provide translation services for those in
need. His ear piece was part of the hardware. It had two microphones and two
speakers, one of each was used to pick up his voice and the other two were Omni
directional. As long as only one or two persons spoke at a time it would
function normally.

The
external microphone picked up the other person's words and sent the signal to
the nearest computer. The software in the computer, usually a phone, tablet, or
laptop would turn the speech into text and then process it through levels of
filters using a database to compare what was said with what it had. Then the
system fed the translation back to the user through their ear piece using a
generated voice.

Of
course that was the easy part. The real hard part was the return route. After
all, having one way conversation helped but it didn't solve the problem. To
solve it the user spoke and the system picked up what they said, canceled their
voice out by using the speaker to act as an Anti-Noise Control device. It
worked by releasing the same sounds the user said at the same amplitude but
with an inverted phase to the original speech. While it was doing this the
computer would process what the person said, translate it into the other
person's language and then feed it to the external speaker with a generated
voice.

The
user had to remember to continue speaking even though their normal voice
disappeared. It worked really well when VR glasses were employed but he didn't
have any here. With the glasses he could see what the translation was in both
directions and actually sound out the response himself, thus picking up the
language by osmosis. The system worked best with a lot of computing power, but
they could get by with a phone or tablet if they had to. It wasn't perfect, it
had a ninety percent success rate, but it was relatively frustration free and
it was fast once it was set up properly. He'd insisted on bringing it along
despite having a linguist on staff. Now he was glad he had insisted on bringing
it, though he wasn't sure how effective it would be with the hodge podge of
languages the natives seemed to speak.

He
nodded to the women. “Parlez-vous français?” he asked. “Habla español ?” The
women looked at each other. One said something in a liquid dialect. “Ah,
database said that was Latin and Arabic but a little too fast to follow.
Okay... let’s start simple with yes and no and identifying objects.” He nodded
and then shook his head.

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“He
is talking to us. Is he a gaijin?” Zara asked, coming out of her misery for a
moment to look at their strange savior. Deidra nodded; studying the man
hunkered down next to them. His lips moved strangely and a weird voice came
forth. It seemed to be coming from the thing on his ear. How strange she
thought.

“Indeed
it appears he is sister,” she murmured stroking the girl's hair. Not girl, at
least no more. Woman now, but woman made out of pain and the worst kind of...
she put the thought aside as anger welled up with it.

“A
gaijin saved us,” Zara murmured. Deidra looked at her in surprise. “Vita
sodalis. He smells funny though.”

“He
does,” Deidra said. It was the first thing to come to her, something different
about the gaijin other than his clothes and weapons. He smelled of mints and
strange soaps and musk, pleasant, more pleasant than the bastards around them.

“Can
you understand him?” Deidra asked.

“A
little,” Zara snuffled. “Oh Balthazar!” she cried, getting a look at their
little brother's body. Her eyes welled with tears again as men placed a cloth
over his body.

“Get
away...” she called but Deidra held her back. “They are here to help sister;
they are doing what they can for him. Someone must.”

“It's...
our...” Zara broke down into further sobs.

Deidra
sighed as she studied the gaijin. From the sound of it he was attempting to
communicate. His pronunciation was atrocious she realized. She had studied
under the masters of the realm, learning many languages. He seemed to be using
many and not in any particular order.

“They
are definitely gaijin, new through the portal. But strangely dressed,” she said
to Zara. She looked at the strange carts they had. Wagons were like that but
these were made of metal and had no animals to pull them. She turned to study
the men warily. There were women among them and the one who had helped her was
some sort of healer. “Do you need the healer?” she asked, holding her sister's
shoulders.

When
that didn't get a rise out of little Zara she observed the gaijin's vehicles
and gear. That finally did get Zara slightly interested. She turned with wide
eyes and wiped at her tear streaked face.

<==={}------------>

“You
see this?” Perry said hefting a sword. A few of the soldiers were going over
the dead on both sides. The boy's face was covered. He wasn't sure what to do
about the kid.

“What?”
Ryans asked coming up to him. He wasn't making much headway with the princesses
so he'd handed it off to Doc. Perry hefted the sword then went over to the
light of a dimmed headlight. He put the curved sword into the light.

“Curved...
Damascus steel?” Ryans asked looking it over. “Damn is that what I think it
is?” he asked, studying the water markings on the blade. Beautiful
craftsmanship. He could see two different kinds of steel.

“It
is. I did a tour in Okinawa. Saw some like this on the walls of a lot of
marines. How the hell did it end up here though?” The Gunny grunted running a
thumb over another nearby. “Damn, just as sharp too.” He flicked blood off of
his cut thumb, and then rinsed it with water from his canteen. Someone held up
some sort of battle ax as well.