Bubba And the Aliens
khelid

Araselanomonfilikhelid

“The Lakanica sent us to the Khelids,” I said, as I resumed.

“Giant spider-like creatures,” Janet offered. I nodded. I watched Bubba finish off his beer. He did not like bugs of any sort. Fifteen-foot-tall arachnids, who were lightning quick, were more than he could handle. He had stayed on the ship while we went down to the planet.

“Khelid was an industrial weapons planet,” I explained. “They are the main suppliers for the Galactic military. Their spaceports were similar to large metal crates. I don’t know what it is about being part of the military industrial complex, but there seems to be some kind of groupthink among military types to go with function over style. They replace a way to create a general drabness, no matter which planet or installation you visit. If you go to any school lunchroom it is going to be a uniform shade of brown.”

“I was homeschooled,” Dingo interrupted. “I got lunch at the kitchen table.”

“Good for you,” I commented, “maybe it explains why you see things from a different perspective than those of us with formal government indoctrination. It also explains why you thought Naugas were real animals!

“Anyway, Khelid was boxy and drab in an unfinished metal sort of way. The soot from the smelting furnaces and the heat from the forges and machine works were heavy in the air. We had to wear masks after we left the ship.”

“What about the Khelids? Were they wearing masks?” Janet inquired.

“No,” Arlo jumped in, “they are used to the atmosphere. They are concerned about the overall effect on the planet. They have air scrubbers in their homes and office complexes. If you go outside there is a definite difference in air quality. They have a higher oxygen percentage in their atmosphere, which made us more alert and supposedly would have increased our endurance. It is about thirty percent or so. It makes the furnaces and smelters more efficient than ours. I worked in a steel mill years ago and was able to follow their jargon pretty well.”

“Bipodecus,” I took over, “was our liaison with the other races. Although the translators work well with languages, they do not interpret writing or symbols. We were there to shop for weapons we thought we needed for the rescue. He was there to negotiate the price and help with the particulars. We wanted to be non-lethal if possible.”

“I appreciate that,” Janet commented.

“So did the Lakanicans. They would never undertake our task themselves.” Dingo replied.

“Wait, who rescued you from the ship that was supposed to bring you back to earth,” Janet asked.

“It was a group of Lakanicans,” Bubba explained. “See, the few who do get selected for military service are seen as defective by most of their population. They haven’t been able to fully embrace the peace and harmony the rest of the planet has. Military service is seen as a necessary evil. It is similar to the way some people see our military.”

“Because of it,” I began, “many of those in the military are happy to get off the planet and serve in their own galaxy as part of the Galactic military. They are not warriors as we would think of them, but they do have some military training. They know some basic hand to hand combat and how to use certain weapons.

“Cargo ships do not carry weapons because they run designated routes which are patrolled by the military. It is really not a good idea to shoot holes in the walls of a ship in space. Bipodecus’ spirit or something was in the avatar. He was waiting on the second planet. When Bubba bought the figurine, Bipodecus was alerted. He booked travel on the same ship we were on for his group. He was able to alter its course through the navigation computer. He jumped to where the Lakanican ship was waiting. After we were rescued, it was programmed to jump three or four times and end up back on its original course.”

“It seems like a lot of trouble,” Janet observed.

“Well, they are devious little suckers,” Dingo commented. “Lies within lies and intrigue within intrigue and all. They are a bunch of peaceful, tree hugging, pansies, on the surface, but there is a lot of stuff going on underneath them green robes. Freaking Druids!”

“Wait, they were Druids,” Janet wanted to know.

Dingo shook his head. “No, I never thought to ask about it specifically. They sure reminded me of the ones I’ve seen in movies. I’m going to ask Osned about it when he comes to get us. I’m also going to spend the next couple of months checking out some theories on the internet. What if Stonehenge was set up by a crashed Lakanican spaceship? Maybe they were trying to figure out some way to signal somebody in space. It could be why it lines up with all those stars and everything.”

“If what you guys are telling me is true, we have been influenced all along by aliens,” Janet stated with obvious disbelief.

“Well, I don’t know how much influence they have had,” Arlo opined. “I mean, yeah, we have stories about some of them, but not they were aliens. We’ve got the ruins of what some of them built to puzzle us, like Stonehenge with the Druids.”

“Or the Aztec and Mayan cities in South America,” Janet offered.

“We are not going to talk about the Mayans!” Bubba repeated emphatically.

“Sorry,” Janet answered, a little taken aback. “Atlantis,” she suggested.

Bubba shook his head negatively. “Don’t know nothing about no Atlantis,” he said.

“Atlantians,” Dingo suggested. “You have to like what they did with the oceans and the fish.”

“Who?” Janet asked.

“Nobody knows,” Arlo stated. “Some suspect the Aquarians had a scientific outpost here at some time. The Aquarians deny it. However, you can only replace whales in two solar systems on this end of our galaxy, on earth and Aquarius. They may not be native to the planet.”

Janet stared at me silently for several seconds before a small smile crept onto her face. “The age of Aquarius,” she said softly and shook her head. “You guys have had all day to come up with some kind of story to tell me. This is what you come up with?”

“This is the truth,” Bubba defended for us.

Janet fixed him with a steely gaze for a moment, but he did not back down. “Okay Jack, keep weaving this tale. Let’s see where it goes.”

“Okay, where was I?”

“You were on the planet with the spider things,” she supplied.

“Right, the planet was no longer self-sufficient.”

“What do you mean?” She interrupted.

“Originally the oxygen content was higher. There were most of the features you replace on our own planet, like plants, animals, and such. However, due to the mining processes and the industrialization of the whole planet more or less, most of the vegetation and animals died out.”

“They’re trying to fix it,” Arlo interjected.

“Too little too late, just like here if we don’t do something about global warming,” Janet warned.

I glanced at Arlo momentarily. I was afraid Janet was about to go off on a rant.

“They have a whole continent they are trying to terraform,” I started before she could. “The original species of plants and animals are having difficulty because of the modified atmosphere. All buildings are required to have rooftop greenhouses in an effort to maintain as much oxygen as possible, but it is a losing battle.

“The damage done to the planet over the centuries means they cannot produce enough food, water, or oxygen to stabilize the atmosphere. They exchange the weapons they produce for money to buy what they need to live. Their profit margins are almost nonexistent at this point.

“Additionally, there have been two centuries of general peace through the universe. They are overproducing everything. They don’t want to lay anyone off. They don’t want to stop spending money on research and development in case one of their competitors creates something fantastically new.

“They are limiting their birthrate to one child per family. However, they have a three-hundred-year life span. It is going to take some time.”

“None of which would have really mattered with regards to our purchasing weapons,” Dingo commented.

“Partially true,” I conceded. “We got off the ship and walked into this drab, lifeless spaceport. Looking back, I am thankful we had not been arrested by the fashion police yet. I can’t describe how disturbing it was after the treatment.

“Bipodecus led us through the port. We went into a giant warehouse. It served as their sales center and proving grounds.”

“I was in awe of several things on Pilifin,” Dingo stated. “I was stunned to be on Pilifin. To see the majesty of their world was amazing. Lakanica was neat in its own way too. But this was the first place that truly impressed me.”

“Why is that” Janet wondered.

“Because I was a weapons master in the Navy! I love guns! They had some of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was basically the same thing Bubba did in the Army. It’s why we rib each other so much. So, you know what a nineteen-eleven is right?”

“No,” Janet replied.

“They had these silent little, wait, did you just say no?” Dingo asked perplexed. She had disappointed him for the second time tonight.

“Janet is more along the line of the Lakanicans than the Herpes or Octavians.” I supplied.

“Who are the Octavians?”

“Octopussies,” Arlo said and started giggling again as he sank back into the recliner.

“We aren’t there yet,” I delayed. I looked at my three compatriots for a few seconds before meeting Janet’s gaze again. “They did have some amazing weapons. Again, think about the stuff you see in movies and television shows, lasers, light cannons, photon torpedoes and the like. They had all that stuff and a whole lot more.”

“Shrink rays?”

“Yes,” Arlo answered, nodding his head excitedly, “But no one has perfected it yet. They can’t make the atoms smaller, so whatever you shoot with it kind of implodes, and then it explodes.”

“Makes a hell of a mess!” Dingo stated.

“Same way atomic weapons work basically,” Arlo offered. “Of course, the explosion of an individual is much smaller in scale, but it is still rather effective.”

“You watched them blow someone up?” Janet asked in horror.

“No, we did not. The used inanimate objects,” I stated. “Back to the electric stun guns and such,” I redirected. “We were looking for non-lethal weapons. No one has used them for thousands of years. It’s kind of like anesthesia. They have to be calibrated for whatever race you are going to use them against. Elvi are pretty close to us genetically, so they used us for calibration purposes,” I said and looked over at Dingo.

“Did it hurt?” Janet wondered.

“It sure as hell didn’t tickle!” Dingo answered. “You could have told them about tranquilizers before they started.” He directed his wrath at me.

Janet swiveled her eyes back towards me. “They didn’t have tranquilizer guns,” I explained. “After watching Dingo and Arlo take electrical hits from the weapons we were looking at, it was my turn. I wondered out loud why we didn’t just use tranquilizers on the Elvi. The Khelid who was about to shoot me stopped and asked what I was talking about.

“While Arlo and Dingo writhed on the floor, I explained it to them. The whole idea of non-lethal weaponry was new to their generation. The stun guns were ancient stock they had to look up in their database. As we talked about the application of various nerve gas and sedation agents, they were amazed.

“Somewhere in all of this one of their research and development guys was brought into the conversation. As we rehashed what we wanted and how it could be used, he stopped me. We went back to the labs so the rest of his team could hear my account firsthand.”

“What about Arlo and Dingo?” Janet inquired.

“After we quit quivering on the floor, they took us to shower and get clean clothes,” Dingo said, still upset about the whole incident. “The voltage we had received made us lose control of all body functions.”

“While they were recovering,” I injected, “I engaged in a lengthy discussion with the research and design guys about the application of different types of gas and chemicals. They could be used to disable an enemy without causing significant long-term harm to them or the environment,” I explained.

“As we began looking at the various projects they were working on, they were enthralled with the human perspective of various weapons and deployment systems. A lot of what they have been doing is just trying to improve the design of things already in their catalog. Having been in the business for centuries, they lack a lot of innovative thought. Someone like Dingo or Bubba would thrive there.”

“Ain’t no way I would go there,” Bubba stated.

“Okay,” Janet said, “I’m kind of losing focus here. Where is this going?”

“The Black Widow defense system!” I proclaimed proudly.

“Not this again,” Dingo expelled some of his mouth full of beer in his response.

“What is it?” Janet looked at me expectantly.

Arlo shook his head negatively and turned towards me. They had been a part of it, including the depositions, nondisclosure agreements, and military inquiry.

“Go ahead, tell her about it.” Arlo conceded.

“A few years ago, we were talking about ways to make money without doing anything,” I started.

“You do it every week,” Janet countered.

“Well, there was something with government grants Arlo was working on. The government gives away a bunch of money every year to people for research projects. Arlo figured, if we could come up with some grand idea, just vague enough, we could get a bunch of money and never have to produce any results.”

“Again, what you do every week,” Janet repeated.

“It almost worked,” I explained.

“Almost,” Janet commented.

“You know how we have all these missiles and nuclear bombs left over from the cold war?” She nodded. “Well, I thought, what if we came up with a deflection system to stop the missiles from hitting their intended targets. It would be something worth researching right?”

Janet nodded again and I continued. “After we had left the consultation meeting,”

“The bar we were in,” Bubba interjected.

Ignoring him I went on. “We were walking out to the parking lot. Bubba walked through a big old spider web and kind of freaked out a little bit. He doesn’t like spiders.”

“Evil little sons a bitches!” Bubba commented and took a swig of beer.

“That’s when it dawned on me, the perfect plan.”

“It didn’t work.” Dingo reminded everyone.

“Well, not exactly as we had envisioned it,” I countered. “They never let us test anything.”

“And we signed a bunch of papers saying we would never talk to no one about it,” Bubba reminded me. “Seems like there is a bunch of stuff we aren’t supposed to talk to anyone about.”

“Like the Mayans,” Janet suggested.

“Especially the Mayans,” he agreed. “We will not talk about the damn Mayans. We aren’t supposed to talk about the Black Widow defense system either.”

“Well, Janet isn’t just anyone, are you honey?”

“What happened,” she inquired.

“So, the perfect plan,” I began again. “Spiders can be cryogenically frozen. When you thaw them, they come right back to life. My plan was to research which spiders have the strongest webs. We would put millions of them in space in satellites. When someone shot a missile at us, the satellites would shoot out frozen spiders. The trip through the atmosphere would thaw them out.

“Once they were reanimated, they would be falling towards the earth. If spiders start falling, they shoot out webbing to try to suspend their fall. Millions of them shooting out webbing would create a huge web the missile would pass through. It would alter its course.

“I sketched the pertinent points out to Arlo. He submitted the grant proposal. We asked for ten million dollars for initial research on the spider webbing”

“They didn’t give it to you I assume?” Janet surmised, with mock surprise.

“Damn straight they didn’t!” Bubba reminded everyone. “As a matter of fact, there was some dang secret government lab somewhere. It was researching the same thing. We were all investigated by the military, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and a bunch of other agencies. They wanted to know how we got wind of the project. They kept asking who our source was. They spent two years searching for the mole who was leaking secrets to us. They searched through our bank records, contacts, backgrounds, and anything else they could think of.”

“When was this?” Janet wanted to know.

“About five years ago,” I replied. “They never found anything, because we never knew anything.”

“How did you know about the spiders surviving being frozen?”

“I saw it on some nature show or read it in some magazine somewhere. I don’t know. It’s fairly common knowledge.”

“What does this have to do with the Khelids?” She asked again.

“I asked them why they didn’t put their population into suspended animation until the planet healed. They could hibernate until there was an uptick in demand for weapons. Apparently, suspended animation is a lot more complicated than what they showed in the “Alien” movies and other films. The Cryogenics aspect was something the Khelids never considered. It was something completely new to their engineers and scientist.

“I didn’t know if it would work on arachnids of their size. I just threw it out there as a casual thought.”

“They ran with it,” Arlo commented. “They ran hard! By this time, Dingo and I had cleaned up. We changed clothes and joined Jack in the lab. There is a whole division being set up to investigate it. They are planning on setting up a research station on the dark side of the moon so they can collect all the data earthlings have on the subject.”

“They are setting up a base on the dark side of the moon?” Janet asked with surprise.

“Yeah, it will take them a bit of time to get things up and running. Then they need an intermediary to replace a couple of humans to work with them to help with translation and such,” Arlo stated.

“Where would they replace them?” Janet asked.

Arlo and I exchanged a look. “Well,” I started, “they would send a humanoid to earth and try to convince a couple of the leading scientist on the subject to help them.”

“And what if they didn’t want to help them?” She wondered.

“People disappear all the time,” Bubba commented. “All the time,” he repeated with emphasis.

“They would kidnap them!” Janet asked with outrage.

“Abduct,” Dingo replied. “hence, the whole alien abduction thing.”

“It’s unbelievable,” Janet commented.

“You better believe it,” Bubba said sternly. “I’m telling you it happens on a pretty regular basis.”

“Which is an avenue we probably don’t need to travel down at the moment,” I redirected. “With the excitement over the possibility of a new line of weapons, the possibility of curbing, or solving, the overpopulation and layoff problems, the Khelids armed us with everything we thought we would need. They threw in a small spacecraft to boot.” I said with satisfaction.

“How big is a small spacecraft?” Janet inquired.

“Planet hopper size,” I answered. “It is two-hundred-forty by eighty on three main levels or so. It is not a big ship. It has decent cargo space. We didn’t need a whole lot. I didn’t think our crew would be more than twelve, maybe fifteen at the most.”

“He wanted us to call him Captain Jack,” Dingo inserted. “We refused.”

“It was my ship!” I returned.

“You said was,” Janet queried as she turned her eyes to meet mine.

“It’s probably still at the spaceport orbiting Sesterisia,” I said a bit sadly.

“What if we go get it after Osned picks us up?” Arlo wondered.

“What do you mean?” I inquired.

“We were trying to lay low on the planet. None of us even checked on the ship while we were fleeing the Elvi. We could go back in eight weeks or so. It should be sitting in the spaceport waiting for us. The Elvi didn’t ambush us there. Danny Boy won’t know we jumped back in time.”

“You know you are right,” I said with surprise.

“What did you name it?” Janet wanted to know.

“Janet’s Lair,” I answered with a flourish and a wink. “I didn’t know if I would get to see you again honey, but I was hoping I would get back here someday.”

“It’s sweet, but it seems like one more small detail in an elaborate lie about why you were late.” Her tone hid none of her distrust.

“The best lies are ninety percent truth,” Dingo observed, not helping our cause.

“You said Bubba stayed on the ship while everyone else went down to the planet,” Janet recalled. “Just what were you doing while all this was going on?” She directed to Bubba.

“I was getting drunk,” he answered with a shrug. “The Lakanica produce an apple like hard cider. It is just a bit sweeter than what I’m used to. It has a more thoughtful aftertaste. I was through a half gallon before realizing it was alcoholic. It is extremely smooth.”

“We found him on the floor of the galley in a pool of drool when we got back,” Dingo offered.

“How did you get it to the next planet? I figure piloting a ship would take a bit of getting used to.”

“Well, we didn’t pick our ship up then,” I explained. “It had to be adapted to our specific needs. Navigation and instrumentation were installed for human control. Arlo did ask them to bump the oxygen up to thirty percent to make us more alert, but it was going to take them a few days to get everything set. They also had to produce and test the other weapons we wanted.”

“You don’t think Danny Boy will take the ship, do you?” Arlo said with sudden concern.

“Man, I hadn’t even considered it. He wasn’t with us on Sesterisia when Osned picked us up. He probably will go back to the ship after a while if he can’t replace us on the surface. If we can get back right around the time we left, it should be okay.”

“Who the H-E- double hockey sticks, is Danny Boy?” Janet interrupted.

“Navigator and Pilot, earthling, from Iowa,” Bubba stated. “He was on a fishing charter that disappeared in the Bermuda triangle four years ago. Anshikis, I think he said, took him and three of his other buddies from the Jacksonville air base. Well, not from the base. They took him from the boat, I mean.”

“Where did you replace him?”

“He was in the arena with Jack fighting the Kelvekians. It’s how Jack lost the tip of his finger.” Dingo chimed in.

Janet turned towards me. I held my left hand out for her to look at. The Kelvekian had bit the end of the finger off just above the joint. All it had really taken was the bit holding the fingernail.

“The scar above your eye,” she asked.

“He got in a couple of good hits.” I explained.

“Why were you fighting a Kelvekian? Wait, what is a Kelvekian?” I thought Janet might be going into shock.

“Think nine-foot Minotaur and add a couple of extra arms,” Dingo replied.

“Is it the one with the horse head or the horse body,” Bubba asked.

“Centaurs have the horse body,” Arlo answered. “Minotaurs have a human body and a cow’s head. Kelvekians have the cow like head and four arms with seven fingers on each hand. Bipodecus was telling me all about them when we were trying to get down to the planet to save you.”

“How did you save him?” Janet wanted to know.

“Well, why don’t we tell you why he was there in the first place?” Arlo supplied.

“Yes, how did you end up on,” she paused and looked at me with questioning eyes, “Kelvekia?” she asked.

“We were on Octavia,” I responded. “The Kelvekians were imported for sport. They are rather efficient killing machines in their own right, but not quick on their feet, one might say.”

“Octopussies,” she queried, looking at Arlo. He smirked and nodded but did not repeat the name. “Do the Octavians have eight legs, or arms, or heads, or what?”

“It is the eighth moon of the eighth planet in their solar system. The cats were the only thing to parallel our world. At least the only thing we saw anyway. They were just eight-legged cats. They were about the same size and variety as what we have here on earth.”

“Wait do other planets have dogs and cats and horses and elephants and whatever on them?”

“It depends on the planet,” I replied with a shake of my head. “There are a wide variety of animals across the universe and some parallels too, as we saw with the cats on Octavia.”

So how did you end up there?”

“By way of Darfo Seven and Herpe,” I answered.

“Fashion police?” Janet asked searching her memory.

I nodded gently in reply.