Memoirs of Kitty Siam Ch. 34

I chose to make my home across the hall from the Admiral's quarters in the Executive Officer's quarters. I guess I could have wrestled Sima for the better quarters but since she was by default the commanding officer of this facility, I deferred to her rank and agreed that she should have the better billet. This was also when I stopped trying to call the shots to restore the station and let Major Sima take charge. I have always been the type of person that sees something that needs to be done, and then just jump in and get things going. I did apologize to the Major in case she felt slighted by my take-charge personality. She confessed that at first she did feel a little put out and a bit disrespected but then she came to realize that this was just my way of doing things and actually felt better about her decision to recruit me. So things worked out well between us after all.

As we ended our third week on Mars, I was beginning to grow a bit restless. As much as I wanted to get the Mars portal up and running, I also wanted to make the trip to Earth to see what had happened there. The folks from the KC and the PTB were from the other side of the galaxy, and even though Earth was not my place of birth, the people that I knew and that had created me were and therefore Earth was my defacto home planet. Given the state of Udon and Mars, it was eating me up inside that I could not just take a ship and head for Earth.

Our long-range scanners were still not fully operational and though I did not want to admit this to Sima, I suspected that there was something seriously wrong with Earth as well since we had not picked up any on the short-range scanners that were working. Once our communications center was partially functional I had set one of the relays to monitor the channels that Earth Force would have used to communicate with each other and with Mars and there was nothing to be heard or read. It was dead silence and that greatly disturbed me.

Speaking of communications, it had been over three weeks since Sima had reported in to her superiors and of course her superior hubby so we put our work on hold to take a little trip. For us to send a standard radio message back to Central Command, it would take about six of our lifetimes for the message to arrive due to the distance. Had our portal been active, we could have just sent a message and it would have arrived at Central Command almost instantly as it would travel by a micro wormhole system designed specifically for communications. On the day that the Major decided to check in with Central Command we boarded our ship and left the planet. Our communications were just as limited aboard ship as they were on Mars but the ship had one advantage that Mars station lacked... we could enter hyperspace and establish a link with Central Command by one of the many communication nodes attached to the old style jump gates that were positioned around the galaxy long before ships had jump engines.

I held the ship in a stationary position just inside the swirling vortex that granted us entry into hyperspace. Since there was no final destination for us, it was a bit of a chore holding us in a stationary position. The Major gave her report and put in a request for the supplies and spare parts that we would need to get Mars station back up and running. Her husband confirmed that her request had been received and acted upon. It turns out that Mars is still quite abundant in the rare earth elements in the Lanthanide and Actinide tables, and there was an interest by the KC in exploring the possibility of resuming mining operations.

This time the mining would be done mostly by heavy machinery, not the backbreaking slave labor that the Annu used long ago to mine these elements from Mars. I know about this because as I explored the station, I came across a tunnel that led out of the station under the Martian surface to what had once been a primitive village. There were several obelisks constructed by the inhabitants in honor of their god Anubis. It was easy to translate the ancient Hieratic script, as it was one of the languages incorporated into my original UT designed by the Drax Corporation. The text was nothing more than simple prayers for fertility for their crops and for their spouses.

In another village I came upon a red sandstone temple that also contained wall carvings and badly damaged statues in the image of various gods and god-like rulers. This discovery was on the opposite side of the quarry in a village separate from the other that contained the Hieratic texts. This village was much older than the previous one and it too contained writings from its former inhabitants, but the writing here were in Sumerian cuneiform.

Most of the carvings detailed the gifts that the gods had bestowed upon them, and prayers to the same gods for what they most wanted. I even came across some graffiti on one of the obelisks where the author was lamenting the abduction and impregnation of his wife, daughter, sister, and several other women of the village by the Annunaki. It was clear that both of these ancient Earth cultures knew of the Annu, even though they both called their abductors by different names that contained the same root word, "Annu" as did the name of Anubis which was one of their most widely referenced gods.

Both of these ancient languages were also found on Earth by archeologists in a region know as Persia, and were two of the earliest written languages know to mankind, or at least from mankind on Earth. Finding these writings here on Mars made me want to go to Earth even more as this would be big news that ancient humans now had a confirmed link to Mars. It was not clear if humanity came here from Earth or if humanity on Earth came from Mars, but it was clear that in which ever order things happened, a race known as the Annu or the Annunaki were involved in the origin of humanity on Earth and Mars. Though this was not part of my official mission, it would now be one of my personal projects.

On our return to Mars, Sima informed me that help would be arriving in four days or so. The PTB always kept a team on standby for when a new portal was found and the agent making the discovery requested assistance. Once the follow on team arrived, Sima informed me that I would be clear to proceed to Earth, and that Central Command ordered that I not be allowed to make the trip alone under any circumstances. She did not state why but there were many reasons that I could think of. Which of those reasons were right and which were wrong, well I had no way of knowing and Sima kept it a tight secret.

A week later the requested technicians and replacement parts arrived as promised, and three days after that the portal on Mars was fully functional. There was still a lot of work to be done to make Mars station fully functional, but getting the portal connected to the rest of the galaxy was a big first step. Even though the portal was working, the folks from the PTB kept Sima quite busy with administrative matters, and since she was busy I volunteered to work with several of the other team members to clear away the debris that once was the Earth defense fleet as this battle debris field was deemed to be a menace to navigation.

I was assigned to work with Flight Lieutenant Jarro Lux and his crew to clear away the debris. The Lieutenant was on loan to the Mars station from the Interceptor Command branch of the Ksatria Cahaya (KC). It was not a really difficult job, but it was time consuming in that we had to round up the floating ship parts using single seat maintenance craft and deposit them in a pre selected ravine on the moon Phobos.

Since the wreckage contained human remains, fuel, unexploded ordnance, and other hazards to humanoid life, it was deemed unsuitable to be buried on Mars so the uninhabited moon of Phobos was selected to become the final resting place for what once were many proud military vessels. Once the cleanup was complete, I convinced the Lieutenant to have a proper military style ceremony complete with the playing of Taps and a volley of weapons fire to hallow the ground where so many brave crews and their ships were interred.

Sima and the Jarro seemed to be good friends, or at least they had a good working relationship given the familiarity they shared and by the nature and frequency of their off duty banter. I suspected that some where at some time the two of them had served together in some capacity. I knew that there was nothing going on between the two of them but there were rumors that there was. It was clear from the day that we were introduced that he had an interest in a certain feline girl in a tight white Drax Corporation flight suit.

On the day Jarro arrived with the rest of the technical team Sima and I met them at the landing pad in the hangar bay, and as Jarro exited the transport, he snapped off a proper military salute to the Major, but instead of looking at her as she returned the salute, his eyes were on me and my skin tight white flight suit. All things being equal, I have to say that as he was checking me out, I was checking him out as well. It had been quite a while since this kitty had a chance to purr.

We did not have much time to get together as I was assigned to station repair at first, and then I spent some time taking the technicians and team leaders around to show them the ancient writings I had discovered in the long abandoned villages. There were other men that came with the follow on team but the handsome young Lieutenant with the honey colored skin and dark hair from the planet Veron had my full attention. So when the Major asked for volunteers with flight experience for debris removal, my hand went up right away.

Several days after the debris was cleared Major Sima called the Lieutenant and I into her office to discuss a mission to Earth. She knew that I was anxious to make the journey and really felt bad about putting the mission off for so long. Unfortunately her husband the General and several other big shots were coming here for a meeting to discuss the future use of Mars. It was during our conversation on this matter that Major informed me that she would be unable to make the journey to Earth with me but offered Lieutenant Lux up as a suitable replacement if he accepted the assignment.

I am not sure it was because the Major suggested it, or because his eyes were focused longingly on my nipples as they were displayed oh so perfectly by the tightly stretched fabric of my flight suit, but which ever reason was the correct one, the Lieutenant accepted the mission. Within a few hours we met in the hangar bay and boarded Galora Explorer One and made our departure for Earth.

Jarro was the more experienced pilot between the two of us but since he was senior to me, Sima gave him command of the mission, and he gave me command of the ship. In other words I got to pilot the ship while he sat back and supervised. The flight using sub light engines would take three days to get to Earth, and even though I was making the trip with this very studly Lieutenant, I wanted to get there sooner as I had many questions that needed answered. The biggest question was why Earth had not sent anyone out to investigate the Mars and Udon incidents, or at least to tend to their fallen comrades floating around the Mars in a giant debris field.

Once in orbit over Mars I keyed in the coordinates for Earth and pointed the ship's nose in the proper direction and engaged the sub light engines. What my commander did not expect was when I activated the jump engines while technically still in orbit around Mars. The words, "No Kitty" echoed through my ears as the jump point formed and Galora Explorer One lurched into the yellow vortex. It seems that the Veron Space Force forbade engaging jump engines so close to a planetary body where the Lieutenant received his flight training. Fortunately for me the trip to Earth only took three minutes, so the butt chewing I had to endure from my mission commander was very short... and I might add, pretty much ignored by me as we made our quick exit from hyperspace.