"I'll take the girl," the captain of the Ronda said to his crew, adding with a smile, "She's too young and `tender' for the likes of you ruffians anyway". The captain then quickly added as his men frowned and growled among themselves at being "deprived" of Sharon, "You can take the older woman as she's not `worth' too much of anything anyway". The words he had spoke horrifying me as their meaning became clear! Not only were we to be slaves, but my Sharon was to be raped and I was to be given to the brutal crew of the Ronda as a mere "plaything" of very little "value"!
Sharon slapped his face when the captain tried to touch her. My stepdaughter knowing enough Spanish to guess what the man planned now to do to her. The crew laughed uproariously at their master's "discomfort". The captain's face flushed with fury as he struck Sharon back, sending her stumbling stunned to the wooden deck there beside the man at the wheel. I felt a blood red rage go burning over me at the sight! The crew was paying me little attention. They didn't know the kind of a woman they now had in their midst. They would soon learn! There was no shortage of swords. I am not a beautiful woman. I don't have a "sexy" figure. I don't have the quick "repartee" of one like Janet Rogers, for example. But I do have one "quality" about myself that other women can only envy: When it comes to a fight, I am one of the meanest and toughest "bitches" that ever walked the face of the Earth! When other girls my age were playing with dolls, I was out playing with bows and arrows, a wooden sword thrust through my belt. My father used to say that I was the best "son" he ever had! I was weaned on Edgar Rice Burroughs' "MARS" books. When other girls studied dancing, I studied fencing. I did not consider the situation "hopeless" despite the odds against me. I would have taken the "gold" for France had I not gotten sick back then. When it comes to the use of the sword, I am without equal!
Laughing, the captain reached down to Sharon, my teenage blonde stepdaughter swiftly flipping him over herself with a judo throw. Her feet braced against his gut as I had showed her. His heavy painful crash to the deck making the crew roar with laughter! Now it was time for me to take a hand in affairs! Spinning, I drove a knee into the groin of the man holding me, my slim 5'9" body possessing amazing strength from daily exercise. As he cried out in surprise, doubling over with the agony, I jerked the sword he carried from its scabbard there on his hip. The weapon having a basket hilt and a good two foot long blade. I thought it would "do" just fine for my immediate "needs" now!
With a swift thrust I killed the man before he could cry out a warning. The others so involved with their captain and his humiliating treatment at the capable hands of my Sharon that none saw what had happened! Now they would learn the fury of Lorraine Duval! NOW THEY WOULD PAY! Using the sword as it was might to be used, the weapon a cross between a cutlass and a short sword such as was used by the Romans, I leaped into their midst with a blood-curdling cry. The men now falling back in terror as they suddenly realized then that I was not what they had thought!*
* The professional fighting man or woman of the 26th Century wore a small brand on the inside of their left wrist that identified them as being of that "caste". As Lorraine at this point did not have such a brand on her wrist, no one aboard the Ronda realized that she was capable of perhaps fighting back. However it is apparent from the story that the captain did consider her from her physical build as being quite suitable for being trained for arena combat as a female gladiatoral slave. (author)
The cold hatred made a haze before my eyes as I leaped among them, my stolen blade taking life before they could even defend themselves. Two died before they could draw their blades, so swift and vicious was my attack. They faced a black clad she- demon in human form, not a weak, helpless woman such as they had perhaps thought of me! With a curse on his lips, the captain drew his sword and attacked me. There was a swift second of dancing, ringing steel, and then I lopped off his head like a melon! The horrid thing dropping to the deck and rolling back and forth with the motion of the ship, the open mouth for a second horribly seeming to try to speak as his horrified eyes stared about for a few seconds before then finally glazing over in death! With a cold blaze of fury in my dark brown eyes I faced the remaining eight men. Standing there on the deck with the gray mountains of California in the background behind me. The ship rolling and rocking in the heavy swell. The motion doing little to settle my stomach. I wondered what to do next. The bloodstained cutlass heavy in my hand as the cutthroat crew regarded me. Looking much like a bunch of pirates out of some historical novel, their cutlasses and swords now in their hands. Sharon unnoticed behind them stealing a long slim dagger from a corpse. The polished blade gleaming in her hand as our eyes met for a brief second. I didn't consider the "odds" quite so bad now. I thought that this time I might "win my gold" after all.*
* I lost the chance to fence in the Olympics due to the "flu" and never got the chance to prove to those watching just how "good" I actually was. My coach, however, said that he thought I would have won the "gold medal" had I had the chance to fence in competition as I had already bested most of the other young women before falling victim to a virus that ruined my hopes for a "gold"!
There seemed to be a sense of "unreality" about the entire affair. A sense that none of this was real, and that it was only a bad dream from which I would awake to tell Sharon about at breakfast before she went off to school. Then the sun broke through the clouds and shown down upon us, and I knew that this was "for real" after all. And that the four still forms lying there bloody on the wooden deck were dead men. Men that I, Lorraine Duval, had killed with the blade now in my hand. I took a better grip of my weapon and waited for the men facing me to decide what to do next. My awesome skill with a sword having for the moment at least, awed them into a paralyzing fear of me. I didn't think it would last once the first mate got his men under control. The ship had drifted noticeably closer to the rocky shoreline, the red and white striped sails flapping and shivering in the strong breeze. I had no doubt that soon now it would be necessary to set the vessel under proper sail before it drifted into the jagged rocks and was destroyed. I needed at least some of the crew to sail the Ronda. I knew next to nothing about the handling of a lateen rigged vessel like this. "KILL HER!" the first mate yelled as he led his unwilling seven men against me. Waving his sword over his head to urge them on. I thought him a brave man, if also a foolish one. I suppose he believed that I would just stand there before them and take their charge, going down beneath their numbers. They didn't know me. You never accept a frontal assault if you have any choice in the matter. They didn't know that they were now facing Lorraine Duval, "the toughest bitch in LA" as they used to whisper behind my back there at Duval Computer Incorporated! And I probably "was" too!*
* Shortly after I started my practice I was threatened by a drug addict with a knife demanding drugs. I seized his wrist, broke his arm across my knee, and turned him over to the police. A few months before Sharon and I flew through the "Gateway" into this era, I killed a drug pusher who was selling drugs to the children at the local high school to where she was going with an icepick.
I leaped to one side, my keen blade a deadly extension of my arm. Thrusting deep into a man's side before he was hardly aware that I was there. Taking his life as he measured his length on the deck. My wet black leather spike heeled boots slipping a bit in the blood already spilled from another's dead body. Sharon driving her long slim dagger to the hilt into another's back, reducing their numbers now to six. Leaping among them as they milled in confusion, my blade struck twice. Taking life once, the other man dropping his blade as my point slashed his arm to the bone. My slender swift form flashing among them as I fought like a black clad demon, the bloody deck slippery beneath me. Sharon striking again, driving her bloody dagger deep. Her eyes meeting mine for a brief second as we fought together for our freedom and honor. For the precious right to decide as free women who would be allowed to use our bodies!
Once again with a swift flash of steel I took another life. Paying dearly for it as I slipped on the now bloody deck and took a deep cut just below my heart, the blade horribly scraping against my ribs as his sword blade slid across my chest just below my breast, making the blood run red beneath my now ruined dress! The wound hurt, but I did not let it prey on my thoughts, accepting it as merely a consequence of battle. I think my old fencing master would have been proud of me that day, my blade darting and flashing in the sunlight, ringing out against those of my foes. He always said that I had been born in the wrong era and of the wrong sex. I think he was right on the first, but wrong on the second. I have never felt that I was born into the "wrong" sex even if I have suffered a certain amount of prejudice from unthinking men who thought that a woman should not "do" certain things just because she happened to be born a woman!
The surviving sailors in their leather kilts and vests were an exotic sight, their attire reminding me somewhat of Imperial Rome. Their weapons and mine also being somewhat similar to those used back then. Janet Rogers always used to say that technology determines everything we do or can do, but that is a subject I will leave to others more qualified than I to consider and comment on. It does, I suppose, decide certain "issues". One can only build railroads when you have the "technology" to do so.
Now only the first mate and two of his men were left. One of them was wounded, clutching a bloody arm. Fear showed in their dark eyes. I did not envy them. Sharon now stood at my side, the bloody dagger she had used so effectively there in her hand. She was no longer the girl she had once been. Much passed between us without a word being spoken. Stepping back and lowering my point, I said to the men, "I will spare your lives if you will submit to me and accept my command." My dark eyes burned into theirs. They dropped their weapons with a clatter to the bloody deck and then knelt. Beaten men kneeling before a woman who had beaten them. I found the sight satisfying to my feminine soul.
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