53 Miles West of Venus Ch. 07

We didn't need to. Help was already waiting, about a half hour away. Another hour later and we were crawling one by one on our stomachs out of the tiny cave mouth up top and into the New Mexico desert evening sunshine on a small rocky hillside. Looking back, the cave mouth was small enough and hidden by surrounding rocks so that it could only be found by strangers by accident. Since none of us were ever returned to the mine ever again, being by now a collapsed heap of rubble from Level 3 upwards, we took the time to complete cover over the cave entrance that we'd had to crawl out of with a large boulder, and then a few dozen smaller rocks around the remaining open edges as well until the entrance was completely invisible even if standing in front of it. For extra safety we removed also the small encrypted GPS radio hidden in the rocks next to the opening was removed as well. This now made the only entrance to the final tomb of our now lost mine a bit more permanently lost.

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Our rescuing welcome party was a rather surprising pair of young ladies in their mid-twenties, being in fact the co-presidents of Littlejohn Geo-Exploration, Ltd themselves, the 'Wonder Twins' Anwyn and Arwyn Littlejohn. While just barely the age of twenty-five, the twins had each finished their doctorates (paleontology and archaeology respectively) and had assumed functional control over the Littlejohn empire immediately afterwards. They had an actual CEO at the office to manage 98% of the day-to-day affairs of their not terribly large empire, mostly non-profit geoscience studies, leaving the spunky duo to handle the dodgier secret (and much more interesting) portions of the family business. Namely handling special projects for the extended family, mostly stuff for 'Wheels'... like handling the old Hidalgo gold mining operations in Central America and the ultra-top secret burn-before-reading stuff concerning Poravuvu. Those old gold mines were pretty tapped out, producing just an ever-decreasing trickle of golden cash for decades. The 'family' certainly didn't have quite the fortune it formerly had back in the good old days of our legendary grandparents. Wheels certainly wasn't building any more world-trotting dirigibles or specialized submarines these days.

All of the in-house security folks at both Littlejohn and Roberts were tied up elsewhere, so the gals decided to get their decidedly rock-scarred and non-manicured hands busy collecting us in person. Prepared with a big four-wheel drive Range Rover the desert miles flew by at break-neck speed until we reached a state highway and then, with even less consideration for practical things like speed limits, they barreled onwards towards Littlejohn's corporate office in central New Mexico... chattering away incessantly nonstop the entire trip.

Worse, being true twins they had the skill of finishing each other's sentences mid-word. That just drives me nuts.

On the other hand, they casually (but probably with secret hidden glee) brought up the lingering topic of those disconcerting man-made underground passages and for the better part of half an hour they discussed the culture of long lost degenerate ice-age race of sub-humans who had created them (of course with the help of their extraterrestrial masters) and of the unspeakable rites they had conducted in darkness deep below the earth to "The Old Gods", such as in chambers like the one we had run past in adrenaline fueled terror. Arwyn was helpfully giving some details of their unspeakable petroglyphs painted upon the cavern walls depicting subhuman (and human) blood sacrifices and how the hunger of 'The Ancient Ones' could be ritually appeased when Phylicity pretty much lost all self-control and made a rather serious attempt at throttling the overly gleeful young archeologist.

I told Fredi later that the gals had just been joking with us... but they probably hadn't. Knowing Arwyn, she'd have been in all of those chambers and had photo'd every unspeakable petroglyph and non-Euclid bit of geometry or ancient pot. Besides, neither Anwyn or Arwyn possessed the slightest hint of a sense of humor or even a notion of modesty or self-privacy. They didn't give a fig that nearly everyone knew that they been enjoying incestual lesbian sex with each since early college, or about the age of fifteen. There were rumors that they weren't entirely strangers to the enjoyment of cocks but they habitually slept (naked) at night only with each other. According to tidbits of Littlejohn in-house rumor that I'd heard whispered over the years anyway. Brice is a perverted ass, but he does hear the best gossip.

The conversational topic mercifully changed... but not to a more pleasant topic.

"Oh, by the way," they stated, more or less at once, "Ted Brooks is dead. Dave, there's a helicopter waiting at the office to take you straight to the county airport. There's a family jet waiting to take you to upstate New York and a car there waiting to probably go straight to the funeral. It's tomorrow morning. Pretty much all of the family, at least the elders anyway, will be there. Not us... we've got to babysit our newbie, Miss Fredericka here and get her off on the next flight to Hawaii and then Poravuvu... after we talk rocks back at the office for a while first. That's Wheels' orders, and not just regarding her. Littlejohn is going to have to close up too, or at least downsize to just a shell for all public appearances, and we'll have to shut down nearly all family operations, at least here in the US. Maybe even including Roberts Electronics too. We've already closed down our other two test graphite/graphene sites, evac'd everyone and everything worth keeping and then blew the shafts too. AIS can go lick our cute young anal rosebuds!"

Ted Brooks was dead? Huh? What?? Inconceivable... and after the last week or two my imagination thresholds had been stretched a bit. I must have looked utterly shocked.

"Theodore II, junior that is... not your friend. His dad. Frankly not a bit of a surprise either, although the timing sucks for everyone. Too much starting to happen right now, and it's just going to get more frantic, well... according to Cassandra anyway."

Now the twins became stone silent, and rather awkwardly. Cassandra wasn't a name for discussion in my pay grade and probably a very forbidden word within the hearing of Phyl, let alone a newcomer like Fredi.

Gee thanks... rub it into my pain that the crazy twin geo-scientists were cleared to know what Cassandra thinks. To me, despite being of the direct family line, that name was just a whispered rumor associated with Wheels, someone at the top, right by his side but hidden... very, very secret. Probably the very head of family intelligence. As for facts or any real rumors or hearsay, she might as well have been the Easter Bunny. Some family rumors (Ted III's own pet theory) is that Cassandra is really Wheels' close cousin Pat, and tied in with the Lovett, Texas side of things. Anything really odd or weird invariably comes from that part of the family.

Ted wasn't close to his father. None of us third generation kids were. My dad was ok I suppose, but rarely ever home. Ted's dad in comparison was a remote and rather colder figure in his childhood and yeah he's bitter about it to this day, mostly suppressed now but that anger is never really ever gone. Even once Teddy III graduated from Harvard Law School and joined the family firm (and extended family business) their relationship remained a distant and non-convivial. Like a boss dictating to an employee, even after Ted became the functional (if not official) day-to-day managing partner of the law firm. In my opinion, the only close and personal relationship that Teddy Junior ever held in life was with a bourbon bottle.

"Ok..." Phyl replied, mostly to break the growing awkward silence, "then where am I off to? Off to the island then, if everything else is being shutdown, or am I staying at Littlejohn until it's closed up as well?"

"No... you're getting on another plane that been waiting on the tarmac for you since yesterday. Another security issue... crazy important though. Wheels' direct orders."

We all let the scenery pass without much trivial banter, and at all too much of a disturbing speed. There is lots of nothing in New Mexico and at nearly 90 miles an hour it passed by fast. No one was in the mood to say much other than trivialities and frankly the last half-hour to the airport passed by for me pretty quickly.

Concerning trivialities, like remotely blowing up our mine and the resulting collateral damage, everything had gone quite according to plan. Our remaining crew had taken the surface tactical tunnel out of the crater to safety and (complete with my useless parrot) they were now already heading to the island, including our all of our security temps which had all just signed perm employment contracts.

They had stayed in hiding for an hour or so that night after the evacuation, long enough to watch the roof detonation take down the landing helicopter. It didn't join the inferno there in the wreckage of our old Ops building but somehow managed to stay aloft but crippled to crash land nearby next to the state highway. There were reported survivors taken off by a reserve helicopter about ten minutes later which safely flew off towards El Paso. The crew of the other assault helicopter that had landed on the ground next door by the main entrance fared less well. There were a few survivors there and also from the third copter that landed further out and was largely unscathed by the crater explosions. Still, by this point there was really nothing left for the remaining assault team members to actually assault, especially when the ridge water pumps kicked in and began flooding the entire crater floor. The goons were all gone, their mission a failure even before their boots would have started to get wet. Now, according to a satellite photo taken last night, the new mine crater pond was filled mostly up to the rim and had already covered all of the remaining mine structures.

AIS wasn't ever going to find a way down here again, especially now that the land title to the entire property had been sold to our rancher friend next door!

As for the treasonous Claire, her planet wasn't nearly so friendly now. She survived but was as of this morning still in a coma in an El Paso hospital, missing several limbs and with known head and internal injuries. Her AIS pals had apparently dumped her the moment they realized that she was now useless to them. They stripped her body (including her allergy bracelet which contained an internal USB drive with all of her data, encrypted) and left her bleeding on a city street outside of the public hospital, as an unknown Jane Doe. Sucks to be her!

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I gave both Phyl and Fredi long hugs before we separated, Phyl off to her still secret new adventure and Fredericka remaining here for a few briefings, some rock handling and maybe a bit of rest and then off on a few long plane fights of her own to a new life in the South Pacific. At least she would soon be off to rejoin her sister in a day or two, and I'd join them there in maybe a week or two. Maybe we'd all, the three of us here right now, have something of a future together. See you soon we all said, as we cried and kissed together and then all too soon we were off, separated.

Here is as good a moment as any to say that neither of us ever saw Phyl again. Her very important and oh-so secret security mission involved a rather strategic intrusion into the R&D center in Oklahoma of our villains, Advanced Industrial Solutions. She was part of a four-team crew, each with three members that did its assigned tasked superbly, at the cost of three of their team. Very, very superbly... it was justice quite neatly executed that will probably put AIS into complete corporate extinction, or at least pluck all of their collective feathers into future uselessness. Phyl was one of the three casualties, almost immediately forgotten after the details of the success were revealed.

Now to find their bosses that gave them the orders. Probably not my problem though.

I didn't learn of her death, or even the existence and success of the mission until after the funeral. Frankly, if anyone had told me that this had occurred just a few hours before Teddy II's funeral, I'd have joined right with Ted III and quit the family business right on the spot. Maybe...

He played the role of the privately grieving but properly stoic son and held court over the burial, accepting the words of comforting platitude from everyone around him. The elders of the family were there, even the Lovett, Arkansas and Canadian cadet branches. I saw Wheels at something of a distance but since he had nothing to speak to me, I just remained seated on the second row, right behind Ted's folding chair and kept myself to myself until the very bitter end. Wheels and the powers that be, definitely not including me, disappeared first, mostly en mass off to their limos, supposedly off to a major family conference further upstate at the College. Another place that's more rumor than fact to 98% of the extended family. Back when it was built in the 1930's it was mostly a very private surgical facility and today it's mostly just a high security meeting place where Wheels mostly lives and where the real decisions are made. I didn't see my father at either the funeral or the burial but despite decades of working together, he and Teddy Junior were never close and except for family business rarely ever socialized together. He was probably already upstate, or handling some other critical business.

There was actually nothing dad and I needed to say anyway. Our relationship had always been pleasant but distant. Today, I was still a good soldier, following orders. Teddy III on the other hand finally had had enough.

"I'm done here," he whispered to me as we hugged like the brothers in long friendship we were. He had his current girlfriend by his side, quiet but pretty and properly supportive, apparently also the same gal from the competing law firm that he had told me about earlier.

"I'm taking her father's offer to become their managing partner... and I'm going to marry her and have a real family, one of our own that my other family can't ruin or destroy a small chip at time, like it's done for our fathers' and all of the Roberts. They'll eventually break you too, or else ruin any remaining joy for life you might have until you end up just like them. You should go too, while you still can."

He gave me one last hug and then grasped his fiancés hand and held it tight and they left, alone together towards a future of their own making. I turned to leave myself, being nearly the last one to depart as well... and I almost succeeded.

A woman, one of the Lovett ladies, I think, but I'd never seen her before sudden grasped my hand to stop me as I walked past her and pair of her lady-friends, then giving me a friendly hug. The other two ladies then each took one of my hands and held them firmly. I think I could see their husbands waiting for them, but at a distance by their own limo, but they had no bearing upon my sudden change of fortune.

"You've buried an acquaintance today, but your name has been much on the lips of those that you now distain and might yet bend your path firmly to their path," the first woman, now holding my left hand whispered, so quietly I doubt that even an owl five feet away would have heard her. With a quick squeeze, she then let my hand go and then took a step back.

"You'll then bury a closer friend in two days and your name is already being spoken of with favor in private council to further the plans of those you, and we, serve. Astonishing, terrible but yet important and wonderful plans that might, as some fear, increasingly depend upon you and those closest." The woman holding my right hand then whispered, equally as silent but still distinctively. She too then released my hand and stepped away, leaving the last woman holding me to impart my final future.

"The time will come soon when you'll face a terrible choice and either way you will bury someone closest to you - a friend or lover, either on behalf of... or against the wishes of those above us. You must serve or be served, and while your fate weighs considerable upon the final success of the Great Endeavor and the will of our masters, yours is not quite the most important to its final success... but still an essential crossing that no other can face. Not knowing you at all, and yet knowing, I'm sure that at just the right time you'll make just the right choice... and perhaps recapture and restore any other long-lost love too. Fortes fortuna adiuvat!"

Fortune does favor the bold, according to my high school Latin classes... and right then and there I boldly peddled my ass magna cum diligentia et properetas, with diligence and haste as far and fast away from that damned graveyard and those weird Lovett ladies as I could manage! Nutters, all of them!