Hey now I would not mind picking up some local armor, if its not too heavy. Rainwater notes. then speaking to the girl he points to himself and says Daniel.
The girl nods, and then draws her sword in a flash and drives the point into the ground. She then speaks in a language that, again, sounds like two cats being drowned in a sack as they try to slaughter each other. It sounds nothing like the language she was speaking a second ago.
As her speech finishes, she gives an elaborate bow over her sword, still thrust into the ground, before drawing it and resheathing. Then she speaks to the other girls. "Tá sé seo an ceannaire, ghlac sí freagracht as tú ag shábháil tú. Tabhair dílseacht di anois, tá sí freagrach as duit."
The girls all look a bit askance, but then they begin to come over and kneel down around Dawn, each making a sign of the cross before intoning (not in harmony, and some of the words are different) mostly the same words.
"Geallaimid mhionn a thabhairt duit, laochra an Glas."
Hudson is just finishing up, when he blinks. "Uhm, I think they just enlisted? Or you just bought them. I think she thought you were saying you were in charge, and now you're responsible for the girls."
The girls begin to stand up, and touch their chest and spout names.
"Oona"
"Caitriona"
"Amena"
"Heiretha"
"Demelza"
"Keelin"
"Brona"
The girl that Hudson just finished sewing tries to move and he has his hands full pushing her back down and trying to tell her to stop moving and not pop stitches.
Hey now I would not mind picking up some local armor, if its not too heavy. Rainwater notes. then speaking to the girl he points to himself and says Daniel.
Laine puts his hands to his chest to tell his name also "Laine Horatio"
When the girls start saying thier names he repeats the names to better remember them.
Dawn motions to a couple of the privates, lets get that iron cage off the wagon. We need to rig it up as a trailer.
Hudson, you get to play liaison. Learn more of their language. See if you can find out if they came from that village back there. Also see if you can find out where they might want to go from here.
Laine, you're on watch. Daniel, help out with the wagon or the LAV. We need to see what got damaged.
Dawn starts working on the LAV herself, first pulling the maintenance manuals to trace out the wiring harnesses and see what needed repairing, replacing, or could be bypassed.
Once Daniel is finished with assisting with the surgery he turns his attention to the LAV. Retrieving the tools he packed just for such an occurrence he gets to work, but makes little progress.
The girls all stand back as people hop into a flurry. Once she realizes what the privates are trying to do, the dark haired girl with the pink eyes draws her sword and steps over and brings it down on the bars of the cage just above where the cage is attached to the wagon. The odd looking sword sheers through the wrought iron with a sound of tortured metal. It takes her about 10 minutes to hack through the cage, turning it into a pile of waffle like grid pieces. When she's done, she checks the blade, seems to be happy with the results, and returns her blade to it's sheath.
Hudson gathers a few girls around him, and begins trying to find information. . While the pink eye'd girl is hacking the cage to pieces with help from the privates, he goes back and forth with the girls.
"Ok..." He finally says, addressing the Guard members. "I can't be sure, I'm talking baby talk to them, but it seems they were from the village, All except The Guardian, what they call the girl with pink eyes. She was in the village and fought the raiding party or whatever it was, but they caught a bunch of young kids and threatened them to get her to give up, I think. Then they kept the girls they thought were worth the most money, killed the adults, and put the bodies and the kids in the inn and fired it." He makes a face. "They left the kids alive in the inn before firing it, something about keeping their word to leave the kids alive in the village if she gave up. They uh, they seem to think they've enlisted in our army to fight the Emperor and his Barons, who fired the village. I don't get why, something about we made him do it or we gave him a reason, or something, I didn't understand at all on that one. They also seem to think we're devil worshippers for some reason, or demons, I'm not sure which. I tried to tell them we aren't, and they laughed and pointed to the guy they kicked and the ground we tore up with the Vullcan."
Dawn, while all this is going on, begins working on the wiring. Mostly it's burned out harness, as far as she can tell. The radio is completely burned out, the antenna seems to have been hit directly. The rest she can get working with a couple of hours of repairs.
Daniel finds that most of the mechanicals are fine, it's the electronics that got damaged. The radio is out completely, and several wiring harnesses were shorted out.
Dawn takes some wire and strips some of the insulation from the wire.
She pats Daniel on the shoulder, how's it looking?
She heads over to Hudson, see if any of them know about metal wire or copper. Maybe we can jury-rig a booster for one of our short range radios to the antenna.
Dawn looks the girls over, so they're orphans now. And the Sarge is gonna have my neck when he hears they want to enlist. Good work, see what you can find out about this Empire. Are they a neighboring country, rebels, in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Dawn then returns to the LAV to continue with repairs.
Its a mess. Entire wiring harnesses are burnt. The radio is totally gone. No hope there. But I think we can drive it still.
Laine keeps on guard duty while they hack away at the wagon's cage.
"Hey Dawn, you know I can also take a look about repairing those electronics. I used to mess around with the radioes and other stuff back at the station while we were waiting for a call to move the SWAT out." He says one of the times he passes by the LAV while being on lockout.
Righting the wagon's base is an interesting exercise, although once the privates start, the girls join in and help as best they can. The wagon is finally righted, landing with a loud 'WHAM' in three part harmony. The shattered wheel giving the wagon a slight tilt. The tilt would be worse, but the pink eye'd girl left about 100 lbs of iron on the opposite corner still attached as a counter balance.
As the wagon is righted, she turns and speaks to Hudson, who goes back and forth, and eventually translates. "I think she's asking us to give the girls something to wear? She only has what she's wearing, and none of the clothes are right?" A quick check of the chest with 'clothes' reveals what looks like stuff designed for a bordello. The guards don't appear to have had extra clothes, or if they did, they were in the packs they were wearing and took with them (other than the two who exploded, but their packs were also 'sploded). "About the empire, I'm not sure I'm translating it right. She says the empire is the empire, and the baron/king/prince who attacked was part of the empire. I don't think I know enough words for whatever it is that's going on."
Between the group of intrepid electronics repairers, they manage to get the LAV's electronics working other than the radio, which is melted and fused internally in several places.
Dawn looks at the girls in their white robes, I take it those robes probably mean 'for sale'? You know this isn't Kmart. I have a couple pairs of socks, and two extra pairs of underclothes. They can wrap up in some sleeping bags, but that isn't going to be much different than what they're already wearing.
Dawn takes another look around, we could back track to the village, but that might not be a good idea for them to see that. If they can hold out, we'll be heading back to base soon.
Dawn motions to a couple of privates, you two can start patroling. Laine, go ahead and see what you can do. I want to be on the move in 30.
With his work on the LAV complete Daniel takes a moment to go and examine the area. He starts with the boxes, then goes over to the bodies and checks both weapons and armor, and the dropped weapons from the fleeing men. He pays particular attention to the old man's armor. I think I am gonna try this stuff on. He says and begins to take the armor off the man. Once he has it off he motions with a friendly smile to one of the braver women to come over and help him adjust it for his slightly smaller size.
Later he notes I am thinking that we are done scouting and that that green mace is important enough to get back to base with.
They're probably not going to let you keep that bloody armor either. Next time don't ask the teenagers for help getting dressed, please.
Dawn leers at Daniel and then laughs before turning back to the captured enemy gear. Let's get this stuff loaded and get moving.
Dawn pauses for a moment, did you see anything that looked like currency? Be interesting to see what they are using. She'll look through any pouches or pockets herself.
She isn't laying claim to anything, but does lay it all out neatly and snap a couple of pictures.
Daniel begins to put the armor on, and realizes that the man was very tall and very barrel chested, and trying to wear the armor will leave the armor very loose around his torso, and too long for his arms and legs by an inch. The pink eyed girl laughs, gaining some titters from the other girls.
"She says if you want to wear the armor, you should get a smith to fit it to you. You look like a teen wearing his dad's armor to impress a girl." Hudson translates.
Once Daniel begins going through the crates, he finds silver plates, pewter mugs, jewelry, and other looted belongings. One of the girls cries out and races over to the crate and grabs a ring, tears in her eyes. Then she blinks, and drops the ring back in, saying something over and over again to Daniel and backing away quickly.
Hudson translates. "She's saying sorry, sorry, sorry, over and over again."
Another crate has weapons in it of various types, swords, maces, bows, and so on. There's a bushel roll of arrows on the ground as well. The living soldiers who fled dropped wooden bows that are short and wickedly curved. The two dead men had weapons, but they are in too many pieces to identify beyond badly bent and broken swords.
The old man's belt had a pouch that had small octagonals of copper, but a lot of them were broken in to smaller triangles. Silver coins were also octagonal, and also broken into halves, quarters, and eighths. Only the gold coins are solid, and each about the size of a nickle. The copper coins are the size of a 50 cent piece, and the silver coins the size of a quarter. There's maybe 25 gold coins, another 20 silver coins in various stages of being broken down into 'pizza slice' slivers, and another 50 or so copper coins in various states of break down. The copper and silver coins don't have any thing on them in decoration. The gold coins have a castle on one side, and a visage of a man on a throne in armor on the other side. They are not nearly as detailed as US coins.
"Well if we need a smith to help Daniel, we would first need to find a friendly village and a smith who knows how to work the materials." Laine says as he joins in looking through the crates, he notices the girl going for the ring and tries to give it back to her as it looked important for her. He looks to Hudson to translate for him "You can keep it, it looks important for you."
Laine looks at the gold pieces "I guess we know who's the big cheese around here now, to bad the vulcan tore through most of the other coins. Should we let the girls have some of the coins?"
Giving up on the armor for now, he looks over the other armor for a better fit. When the girl shows so much interest in the ring and Horato translates Daniel nods and offers the ring to the girl with what he hopes is a kind smile.
He then asks Hroatio As pink eyes there if she will help me pick out a good sword and bow. You never know when you might need local weapons.
The intel weanies might be interested in some of these coins. Introducing counterfeits would be one way of destabilizing the empire's economy. Let's hold those, or at least some samples of them to hold. If we drop these civilians off we can give them all the silver plates and jewely, they can barter or trade it for their needs.
Dawn grins as she holds some of the broken coin pieces, you know where the saying "pieces o' eight" comes from? Here it is.
She nods to Daniel, there are some special ops teams that specialize with crossbows because they are just as deadly and are much quieter than a pistol or rifle. I might practice with you. We might also see about some self defense with the swords for the firls too.
Dawn secures the coins in the LAV. Before walking over to Hudson and Calia. Please ask what she did to the old guy. Dawn mimics the marking of the guy's forehead.
Horatio looks confused at Daniel at first and then answers "I don't know how to speak with them, I guess I can try sign language but it's Hudson who has a basic form of talking with them. But I will learn to speak the language when we have time."
Laine picks up his sketch book and dawn a few pictures of what earthen swords and bows look like to show the girl with the pink eyes as a way to communicate with her without speaking the language for now.
Hudson speaks to the pink eyed girl, who then responds, and then Hudson responds, and then the pink eyed girl responds. Finally she moves over to pick up a bow that was dropped and draws an arrow from the pile and turns and fires.
The arrow narrowly misses a tree trunk. She drops the bow, and picks up another, and turns and does the same thing again.
This time the arrow buries itself in the trunk of a tree, nearly piercing it's two inch thick trunk. She hands the bow to Daniel, and then digs in the box of weapons before drawing out a short sword and a sheath. She draws the blade, swings it a few times, and then hands it and the sheath over to Daniel, pointing to the handle and then his hand, and the tip of the sword, and pointing away from Daniel.
Laughing, Hudson translates. "She says the dull end goes in your hand, and the pointy end goes in the other guy."
When Hudson then explains to the girl she can have the ring, the girls eyes get wide, and she looks first to Daniel, then Dawn, then the pink eyed girl, and finally darts forward to snatch the ring back, tears in her eyes. The other girls also get misty eyed as well, obviously eyeing various things in the crates.
The pink eyed girl then says something to Hudson, and more pidgen talking ensues. Finally Hudson translates. "I think she's saying some of the stuff in the crate was stolen from the girls families back in the village, and she's asking if we're going to give it all back, or just the ring."
He then goes back to pidgen talk, and after making gestures toward the old man, the pink eyed girl responds not with words, but by walking over to the lav. She raises a finger to her mouth, and bites on her thumb again, again drawing bright pink blood. She begins making an elaborate symbol on the LAV's front armor. As her finger moves over the metal, paint blisters and peels, and the metal under it begins to bubble and pit. When she's done, there's an rune burned into the LAV's armor, easily visible from a long distance, nearly a foot across. Then she begins to speak again to Hudson, making gestures.
Hudson finally speaks. "I think she marked him, and us, with different marks. I think his mark makes him an enemy to her people, or to someone. I don't think he's going to like having that symbol on his head. The one on the LAV I think is a protective charm, or a symbol of protection, or something. It's hard to understand, I think we're getting into major magic or major cultural things, or both."
When Horatio shows her the notebook, her eyebrows go up, and she runs a finger over the paper with obvious surprise. She examines the pen carefully, and the paper, then she turns pages, examining how the paper is connected to the metal spiral wire. The LAV didn't seem to impress her, but the paper and pen seem to have greatly impressed her.
She takes the pen and carefully makes a few tentative marks, and then begins making motions that are sharp, fast, and accurate, drawing runes on the paper. Next, she turns to another page, and begins to sketch a humanoid creature with a single eye, a cyclops of sorts, and elaborate head-dress, although whether it's a crown or a natural part of it's body is hard to tell. Where it's eyes should be, are instead cracks, and no nose.
She points to the image, and states clearly. "Bisharan." Then she taps her chest. "Ni'Bisharan." She points to the girls, one after another. "Huma, Huma, Huma, Huma, Huma, Huma." Then she points to Horatio. "Huma?" The tone is obviously a question.
Horatio is amazed by her drawings and it clearly shows on his face he also points to the pictures and repeats the words, stretching the words to how she pronounced them "Bi sha ran.. Ni bi sha ran.." As she points to the girls he thinks she is saying the are human and points to himself saying: "Human." he gestures to get the book back and turns the pages to the front to show a picture of the gate they got through to come here, showing with his fingers that they came from within the portal thing.
The girl looks at the gate drawing, and nods. "Ghat." She points to the girls. "Ghat." Then she flips the book back to the Bisharan. "No Ghat." She takes the pen, and quickly sketches a bulky looking humanoid. "Kel'Ree. Ghat."
Laine is uncertain what she mean with Ghat, he points to himself saying "Ghat?" in a tone meant to imply he asks a question.
She points to the gate picture. "Ghat." She then points to Laine. "Ghat." Then she points to the girls. "Ghat, Ghat, Ghat, Ghat." Then she points to the Kel'Ree drawing. "Ghat..." She makes the same 'walking finger' motions that Laine used earlier. Then she points to the Bisharan picture. "No Ghat."
Dawn smiled at the girls and nodded as she waved a hand to the boxes, help yourselves to anything of your families.
She watched over Hudson's shoulder as he and Calia drew pictures. She's saying that she's native and we're the aliens. Along with those 'kelrea' people. Sounds like her gat is gate.
Laine nods at the girl as showing he is understanding, he makes a quick circle drawing the Earth as seen with the american side facing her. He points to himself and his team and then to the drawing "Home. Earth."
You're rendition of Michigan sucks.
"Cram it Red. It's only a general outlying you can get to put in the colors when we get back to base." Laine says with a smile.
Buckling on the sword and throwing a quiver of arrows onto his back Daniel nods his thanks to the pink eyed girl. He then picks up the bow, expertly draws an arrow and fires at the same target.
His arrow stands next to the other in the target quivering for moment. He allows himself a smile at pink eyes and then goes to retrieve the arrows
Fine, whatever, but Rainwater borrowed my best crayons.
Dawn rolls her eyes, going native, Rainwater? I can still shoot you before you get close enough to use that archaic weapon. Dawn's obviously jealous.
If your gun is working. Magic, don't forget. Who knows what it might do. This gives me options, and stealth.
Calia studies Laine's drawing of 'Earth', and then nods. She waves her hand around in a general circle. "T'Lanar."
Meanwhile, the girls, now knowing they can retrieve some of their family belongings, begin digging in the crates, crying out happily as they find bits of heirloom. There are many tears as well, and a mixture of laughter, tears, and sniffles as they talk.
Then the two oldest girls speak loudly, getting attention, and then begin directing the younger girls to load the crates on the wagon, with the crates positioned over the unbroken wheels, leaving the broken wheel with less and less weight proportionally.
Calia looks at the wagon, and then looks at the LAV. She asks some questions, and Hudson translates. "I think she's asking how we plan to make the magic wagon pull the broken wagon."
Laine nods at Calia "I think this world is called T'Lanar, I hope I say it right". Laine says to the others.
As the girls move around loading the crates Laine asks "Guess we have to show them how we are going to move it. Who wants to be in the driver seat this time?"
The wagon has a tongue that was used to pull it. The LAV has a hitch with which to pull things. We also have towing cables.
Calia watches as the privates hack off the remains of the damaged yokes, and then run steel cables from the storage bay to the wagon and wrap them around the big 5 inch wood bar that forms the frame in the front of the wagon, much sturdier than the tongue itself. Then they hook the other end of the cables onto the LAV using the hooks on the end of the cables. When done, there's forty feet of distance between the wagon and the LAV.
The pink eyed girl steps over to the wagon, and examines the cables. An eyebrow goes up as she realizes they are metal, and not rope. She takes a dagger out and tests the cable, nodding as the cable barely gets a scratch on it from her dagger. She nods at the girls, and motions them onto the wagon. The oldest girl jumps up in the front seat, and grabs ahold of a lever that seems to be attached to primitive brakes.
Calia grabs onto the side of the LAV, and flips herself up onto the top of it, sitting in a lotus position on the top of the turret, apparently ready to go.
"Well with that taken care off, should we head out to find a place for the comms beacon or head back to base so we don't put the girls to unnessesary harm?" Laine asks Dawn and Rainwater as they go into the LAV. He thinks for a moment and adds "We could also look for a village but I'll doubt we might find anything safe for them."
Daniel takes a moment to survey the sight for anything they might should be bringing with them, making sure that all the unbroken weapons are salvaged and brought along. He then says I'm on the big gun. and climbs up and mans the turret gun, smiling up at Calia. I sure wish we could converse. he says. I have so many questions.
"Go hIfreann an Impireacht! Bás an Namhaid! Cad é atá ag fanacht againn le haghaidh? Calia responds to Daniel, and the girls on the wagon cheer and wave their weapons.
"I suppose I could take the wheels, but I haven't been a driver for a long time. Are you all ok with that?"
Unsure what Calia just said but feeling drawn into the emotion he joins in with the cheer, raising his voice with the others.
As the group travels along Daniel will point to things and say the English word for it: rock, tree, wagon, road, sword, bow, etc, encouraging Calia to say the native word for the same object. In this way he hopes to become more friendly with her and begin teaching her English while learning her tongue.
Dawn instructs one of the privates to take the driver seat.
We'll look for beacon sites on the way back. I have a feeling that at least one of our 'recruits' will be of interest to the brass.
Dawn offers the command seat to Laine as she pops one of the rear hatches so she can stand and see the wagon.
"I guess you mean our friend on the roof. I don't mind the command seat looks comfy."
As the LAV takes off, the girls in the back make noises about the sound of the engine, but settle down quickly once it becomes apparent the LAV isn't eating anyone.
Calia seems to enjoy the ride, at various points hopping up on the moving LAV and walking from to back, examining everything in detail, keeping her balance easily on the slowly moving LAV. Her legs bend with practice, as if she's been on platforms that move a lot, perhaps experience on a ship.
She easily plays the 'name that' game, and seems much better at it than the military folks, able to repeat English names for things after one time, every time.
Given that it takes them nearly a day to go 50 miles, where it took them two hours before, the going is much much slower. The group has spotted a couple of high spots for radio towers.
By the time the LAV makes it to the river a week later, Calia is speaking pidgin English as well as Hudson speaks pidgin native. As the LAV stops for the night by the river side, Calia looks at Daniel. "Why Daniel caintsolas all time with no meaning?" She points to Daniel's head set radio. "'Eeeee', 'eeee', 'eeee', no meaning."
Daniel smiles at the question and tries to explain. Friends Caiintsolas to me through this. But they are too far to hear meaning. He switches frequencies to use locally and Laine to join him on that channel. Looking away from Calia so she knows he is not speaking to her he says Laine,are you there? Please respond.
"eeee eeee eeee" Caila makes mocking sounds as Daniel speaks into this headset. "No meaning, like baby light, no meaning."
Rainwater, you want to take Calia and see about something to grill? She takes a look around, we may need to spend a day or two here to re-provision. See if any of the girls know about edible fish.