Angelika Queen Of Mars

Chapter 19

Chapter 19 Foreign Relations 101

The trip back to Falth was pretty uneventful, I spent a lot of time with Moreck as well as Branak and his buddies. Dori hung out with Sharla and Rek her old crewmates. I worried that Dori might be growing away from me, but thankfully that wasn't the case, she kept reminding me every sleep cycle that I had nothing to worry about. Upon our arrival on Falth after we cleared security and got all the peanuts and coffee off the Giuffrida, we Kagorians got rooms at Drolugi's while Moreck made arrangements to have everything moved to his place of business. I knew that with two objectives to meet here on Falth, I was going to be extremely busy, although Dori would be able to work with Moreck, while I was meeting with the marines.

Captain Nargana and lieutenant Fennra would be meeting with their superiors at first, so I was able to spend some time with Moreck, while my guys hung out in the bar at Drolugi's trying to pick up women, although word quickly got back to me that Ethan was really falling for Sharla with the two of them spending a lot of time at her place. One evening I was with Jeff, Gerry, and Sergeant Major Branak at Drolugi's when we say two very different looking beings drift in and take seats at a nearby table.

"Who are those guys," asked Gerry, indicating the unusual looking "spacer's." I had a sneaking suspicion they were the very aloof, and private Amulians with bald heads, very pointed ears, somewhat taller, and thinner than the Falthians, with somewhat slanted yellowish eyes. To describe them sounds creepy, and the stuff of a 1950's Sci-fi classic, but in reality they were quite handsome and certainly very impressive. Both wore black Wellington style boots with what looked like tools sticking out of the tops, along with a blue-grey colored jumpsuit with all sorts of pockets in the pants part. There certainly weren't any silver jumpsuits on these guys.

"Those are Amulins my friends," replied Branak, this is certainly a first, they don't usually come in here."

"Do you think we could go talk to them?" asked Jeff.

Branak shrugged,

"Just don't anger them, if they invite you to sit down, by all means, if they act like they're ignoring you come right back here, you don't want to irritate them, which is very easy to do." Both Jeff and Gerry got up and went over to the Amulin's table, where they soon sat down. Sergeant Branak was very surprised to see my friends invited to sit down. I watched them for a few moments before resuming my discussion with Branak.

He told me that the Captain had contacted him earlier, with news that they were setting up a meeting the day after tomorrow with people in training command who were very interested in our presentation. Branak had to leave, so I hung around waiting for my friends to finish talking with the Amulins. When they returned to our table both men were quite pleased with themselves having talked to some real "aliens."

"We had a hard time understanding those guys at first," said Jeff, but the more we talked, the better we could understand them, kinda strange really.

"What did you talk about?" I asked.

"Basically if they had ever been to earth, and if they had ever seen "flying saucer," spacecraft."

"Are you tow still worrying about those things?" I asked.

"No not really," said Gerry, those guys aren't real big talkers, and the conversation was starting to drag, so I brought it up."

"What did they say?" I asked

"No they hadn't," replied Gerry, "But then they had to leave, so we came back here."

Dori and I spent the next day with Moreck helping him get things set up, portion out the coffee, as Falthian weights and measurements are somewhat different than back on earth. One of his old university buddies stopped by, to discuss business. Moreck introduced us to Amarick Lazima his other business partner. Apparently, Amarick ran a provisioning company that operated like concessionaire's back on earth, that supply the airlines with food, and other passenger items. Amarick outfitted everything from private space yachts to huge freighters, and everything in between.

"We re-stock their galley's take care of the "necessaries," and even bedding and water." Amarick was branching out into catering, and would be using our coffee and peanuts as special enticements at parties the wealthy threw, as well as business meetings that wanted refreshments. It would seem that we were the "middlemen," who supplied the product, Moreck and Amarick, would see to it everything was properly distributed.

That evening he treated us to dinner at an exclusive restaurant. Dori and I seemed to be a real subject of interest as I was a Kagorian. Dori was mistaken for one as well, but eventually got that mistake straightened out. All the Falthian women we saw in the restaurant were beautiful, and along with the fact that Falthian high fashion seemed to involve clothing that revealed the breasts, or very close to it. They also wore gold sprinkle on their chests and faces, as well as what looked like unusually framed glasses, but in reality, weren't. These frames had no glass in them but were all different colors, and were somehow stuck to the face, framing the eyes. It all looked so "A vant-garde," just the sort of thing you would think aliens would wear. At dinner, all the final arrangements, and details were settled, so now we could concentrate on just getting the coffee and peanuts back here to Falth.

The following day, I and my team met with the people from training command and watched an incredible video. I, Jeff, Gerry, and Ethan wore our marine corps Marpat digital combat fatigues. The Falthian marines wore a sort of field green uniform that involved pants with a lot of cargo pockets in them and tunic's that resembled World War II German ones, in that they had cuff bands indicating their regiments, and stripes that looked like British emblems of rank. Needless to say, camouflage was unheard of in the Falthian marines, although they wore all black combat uniforms when onboard a ship. We watched an incredible video that was made from the images created on the 3D computer board back on earth, and it just as if we were actually standing in a real village, you could almost reach out and touch things. We "walked," all over the village, "climbed" stairs, and ladders, and observed other buildings from various angles, inside another structure. As we "walked" along, I and my team described what we would be doing, such as the proper way to enter a dwelling, clear a room, or ascend a stairway I would also point out places to watch for danger. The Falthian marines had their own medics like the army and promised to have Ethan attend a training seminar, along with watching how these marines treated causalities.

We spent a very busy, but incredibly informative day, I told Branak that I and my friends were all extremely grateful for the opportunity to be involved in something like this, and looked forward to seeing an actual village constructed.

The following day, we were invited to the marine base, where we saw machines, and weapons straight out of science fiction. We saw marines in actual combat gear as well as protective armor that reminded me of the sort of armor the Spanish and British wore around the 1600's. We got to try it all on, finding it very light and form fitting. The helmets kept you cool, as well as the air you breathed, clean and filtered. There was a built-in range finder/ night vision device, communications, and video camera. There was also a sort of eyepiece that flipped over your right eye, that allowed you to display maps, and show others movement plans, and pictures. The commo was also first rate, allowing for complete communications within a squad, or full company.

We also got a chance to go to the range and fire some pretty amazing weapons, besides what we practiced with back on earth. Once again though we experienced an uneasiness at seeing all this incredible hardware, causing Jeff and Gerry to express their concerns to Branak, as well as his friends in the training command.

"You can't blame us really, but seeing all this equipment, we do have concerns about the possibility of having it all used on us some day." One of the colonel's they spoke to about this concern assured them,

"Believe me, if we were going to do something like that we would have done it many dorns ago when you were still riding animals and had nothing but primitive weapons.

This all goes back to why we merely observe your world, and only interact with private citizens such as yourselves. We have our own concerns, and priorities of a higher order. Eventually we hope that you Kagorians reach this level of maturity and responsibility yourselves, perhaps then we can meet on an "official" level." What the colonel was telling us in so many words was that we "earthling's" were "small potatoes," and not worth the bother.

The next morning, while at breakfast, I was talking to Jeff and Gerry when we were suddenly surrounded by several very serious looking plain clothed Falthian's holding what looked like the old Star Trek Phasers.

"I'm afraid you Kagorians will have to come with us, we are from the government investigative bureau, and have orders to pick you up." Dori immediately stood up and began to protest,

"What have these men done? What are they being arrested for?"

"Please sit back down ma'am, we are not concerned with you, only these men."

I called for calm, saying,

"Let's go guys, and see what it is we're accused of doing, it can't be much. All right we'll go with you, lead on."

We were taken to a van like vehicle, but not cuffed, although I could detect a shimmering at the rear door, some sort of force field no doubt. The van rose high in the air, and took us to some large building entering a hanger like opening on the roof. We were all told to not try and run, as they were doing us a courtesy by not restraining us. I kept trying to think of anything we had done the other day that might be the cause of all this, but simply couldn't.