Bubba And The Mayans

The Admiral’s Direction

Osned picked us up two days later. Ariana was with us. She was going to fly back to the states and submit her resignation to the college.

Felicia was with us too. She wanted to explain what had happened with Waziki and agent Smith. I never bothered to listen. I did not care. I would get her off planet. I was tempted to see if the Khelids started building their base on the moon. It would be technically off planet.

Of course, we went to his bar to have drinks and discuss what happened. Once again, he had saved me. He brushed it off as something friends do.

The local news was covering the events in the jungle. They explained it as a mass hallucination. Hundreds of people had come forward to claim aliens had visited the sight. There was no video of the event. Our signal jamming had worked.

There was video of Bubba entering the pit for the test. We also saw video of him being crowned as the reincarnation of Ubah Kan. Several people were looking for him. Most thought he would never be found since they saw him depart in a spaceship.

“What were you hiding about Atlantis before we started all of this?” I inquired of Osned.

“I wasn’t hiding anything,” he replied with a smile.

“You told us you knew what happened to Atlantis,” Arlo reminded him.

“Yeah, it disappeared,” Osned answered. He took a sip of his drink.

“What else,” Dingo joined in.

“Nothing else,” Osned said after a pause. “That is what everyone said happened to it. It disappeared and sank into the ocean.”

“But it did not,” Arlo reminded him. “There is a pretty good chance it is right where it has always been.”

“Right,” Osned agreed. “It did disappear though. I am surprised they were still looking for it.”

“What about the age of the earth?” Arlo inquired. “Why didn’t you tell us there were only a couple of hundred thousand years of history instead of millions?”

“Well, you never asked,” he explained. “Besides, you tend to hold to your beliefs pretty tightly. You would not have believed me.”

I nodded my head in agreement. Arlo had argued with the Mayans quite a bit over the point.

“I suppose I understand what you were saying about the television shows,” I commented. “All the assumptions are skewed because the basic premise is wrong.”

“Still a lot more entertaining than soccer,” Osned offered.

“I can’t argue that” Felicia added. “It used to kill me that these guys would spend hours on the golf course, or watching football, baseball, or basketball. All of it was meaningless.”

“Hold on just a minute there lassie,” Dingo said as he spit out his beer. “I need to tell you a thing or two about the Denver Broncos, the Pittsburg Steelers, the seventy-two Miami Dolphins, and America’s team in the nineties.”

“And the New England Patriots,” Danny Boy added.

“Always hated the Patriots,” Dingo began to argue.

“How long will you be staying?” Osned asked casually. “Seems like you should probably be heading off soon,” he observed.

“You are right,” I replied. “If agent Smith survived his trek out of the jungle, he is sure to be looking for us. I bet he will bring quite a bit of help.”

“Perhaps you could answer a question for me before you go,” Osned queried.”

“Be glad to if we can,” I offered.

“What’s the difference between ketchup and catsup?” He asked.

It caught me off guard. It had nothing to do with the Mayans, or our mission.

“I got his one,” Dingo said. He took a long drink from his bottle and tipped his chair back on two legs against the wall.

“Back before Columbus discovered America, but after Marco Polo visited China, the marriage of pasta and tomato sauce was created in Italy.”

I glanced at Arlo, who also seemed dumbfounded.

“What we now know as Italian cuisine was born in those dark ages and spread throughout the country after originating in Sicily,” Dingo continued.

“The feral cats which ran the alleys and streets on the island could often be found licking up the red tomato sauce in the alleys behind the restaurants,” Dingo explained knowingly. “There was an amazing variety in it at that time, due to the different recipes used by different establishments.

“The sauce was referred to by the sailors and beggars in those alleys as the cat’s supper. This later became commonly known as catsup.”

I did not know how to respond to this. Osned was nodding his head thoughtfully.

“Ketchup is just a bastardization of the original that has something to do with copyrights and recipes and such. Today there is practically no difference between the two in most areas.”

“Who told you all of this?” I inquired.

“My Italian grandmother,” Dingo said with a bit of superiority.

I could see Arlo was about to jump in and try to correct the errors in the story.

As fate would have it, a breaking news story flashed pictures of Dingo, Arlo, Felicia, and I on the screen as being sought by local and American officials.

It seemed like we could not even visit our own planet without having trouble with the government. In this case a couple of different governments.

Osned’s bar was far enough off the beaten path we would probably have a bit of warning before they arrived. It would be better to depart before they made it to the bar.

We said our goodbyes to him sadly and told him we would be returning in a few weeks to pick up Ariana. We left her one of our communicators and made our way out to the shuttle. It still looked like a military helicopter.

Dahlia gave us a few bottles of Chica. She included two of my favorite bottles of scotch to send us on our way.

I wished we had more time to visit with them. It seemed our visits were always cut short due to legal problems.

Ariana and Arlo were trying to work through their goodbye when we heard the sound of jeeps and sirens in the distance. Apparently, someone had decided the reward money was worth the betrayal.

Danny Boy climbed into the pilot’s seat. We quickly lifted off. A few miles over the jungle we shot back up to the ship.

Osned and Dahlia would make sure Ariana made it to the airport safely and back to the states.

We contacted Admiral Anastasi. He was orbiting Jupiter. I thought he would be a couple of galaxies away. I had hoped to drop Felicia off somewhere before the encounter. We locked her in her cabin.

The Admiral had not changed in the few weeks we had been away from him. Short, stocky, and gruff, he appeared on the bridge of my ship with four armed soldiers. Arlo and I met him there.

There were no pleasantries. Everyone else from my crew made themselves scarce. Arlo removed the two crystal skulls from their bags and presented them.

“This is what you got?” The Admiral asked with some surprise and irritation.

“This is all that we found,” I replied. “We believe all the data is stored on them. We found an ancient mechanism which was able to display files on them.”

“How did you get it to work?” He asked.

“Just dumb luck,” Arlo provided.

The Admiral nodded in response. “Dumb luck seems to serve you well,” he added as an afterthought. He caressed each skull for a moment before sliding them back into their bags.

“Felicia West is on board, alive and well.” I stated.

“Where?” he asked.

I pulled up a video feed on one of the monitors which showed her in her cabin.

He looked at it for a brief moment.

“So noted,” he replied. He turned as if to leave, and then paused. “There is one more thing,” he said slowly.

“There always is,” Arlo mumbled under his breath.

“What was that?” The Admiral snapped.

“We got what you asked for.” I stated flatly.

“It’s not what I was expecting,” he said as he turned to face me again.

“You wanted the plans for the machine. You have the plans for the machine.” I suggested.

“That remains to be seen. I will have to analyze the data once we figure out how to recover it. Until then, there is another issue.”

“What’s that?” Arlo hinted at anger.

“What do you know about the Doleiel system?” The Admiral inquired.

“I have never heard of it.” I responded.

“One of my men will send you the details. There is a problem there we need addressed.”

“What kind of problem?” I wanted to know.

“A terror,” the Admiral replied. “You know the stuff of legend and superstition.”

“The military can’t manage it?” I asked with surprise.

“It is not something I want to bother with. I think it would be perfect for your crew.”

“Why is that?” Arlo wondered.

“They are terrified of earthlings,” the Admiral responded with a smile that was not happy. “Fight terror with terror, so to say.

“You take care of the terror while we analyze the skulls. If they turn out to be real, and the terror is taken care of, you will be cleared of all charges pending in the galaxy.

“That’s bull!” Arlo started.

“I could still have you all executed,” The Admiral reminded us. He smiled his evil smile again, before he turned and walked off the bridge.

Danny Boy came out of hiding after the Admiral’s shuttle left and plotted a course for Lakanica.

Mikimo’s father was happy to see us. Well, he was happy to see his daughter. The rest of us he did not care for so much.

It was plain to see his health had deteriorated in the few weeks we had been gone.

Mikimo took three days to soften him up before she told him about the marriage to Bubba. The suggestion he might be a Mayan god softened it a little bit. There was a bit of fallout because none of her family was at the wedding. There were also questions of legality since it had taken place on earth.

That was alleviated by us staying on Lakanica for a month while a proper wedding was planned. Her father wanted to see his oldest daughter married.

I was not sure he would make it long beyond that.

Arlo, Dingo, Danny Boy, and I began scanning through the information we had on Doleiel. It was considered a primitive system, like the Earth’s.

The vague reports only mentioned an unidentified object coming to wreak havoc on two of the worlds in the system. It was called The Terror from the Sky. We did not have much to go on.

A nice payment of galactic credit was also included with the information.

Felicia, well, Felicia was set free to wander around Lakanica. She was not happy to be there. They were not happy to have her. Mikimo’s father told us we would have to take her with us when we left.

I hoped she would find a way off planet before then.

She did not.

After a huge, proper, Lakanican wedding, and a couple of days to say goodbye, we all piled back onto the shuttle and returned to the ship. Bubba and Mikimo came with us.

Everyone was happy to see us go. The Lakanica do not want to be bothered with events off world.

We swung back to earth for a couple of days. I restocked my supply of scotch. We picked up a few other essentials. We also picked up Arianna from the desert in Texas.

Danny Boy set our course for Doleiel.

We stopped at Otenganio to drop Felecia off.

None of the crew left the ship. We did not want to be banned from another planet.

I walked her to the door of the ship where we were docked at the spaceport.

She almost seemed sad.

“I guess this is it,” she said as she looked soulfully into my eyes. She stepped forward as if to hug, or perhaps, kiss me goodbye. I stepped away from her.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Goodbye Felicia,” I answered.

“You’re a jerk,” she replied and stormed off the ship.

I had no idea what she was talking about. I closed the door after her.

I took control of the ship. I guided us away from the space port and piloted us to our first jump point.

It was time to face The Terror of the Sky!