Chapter 22: Surprises

Island Day 16-17

Elmer’s Clan:

Morning came and Elmer emerged from the cave he shared with Lola, looking around, arrogantly surveying his domain.

Hugo, Lugo and Fredo came out of their cave and greeted him.

Hugo snorted, “We needs to get Lola’s little bitches to fix us some breakfast! Um, right, Boss?”

Elmer bellowed, “Cecelia, Precious! Get your asses out here, right now!”

When no response came Elmer screamed, “Markus, Sonny, get your asses out here too! We need breakfast, GOD DAMMIT, and it’s YOUR jobs to help girls!”

Hugo started checking the cave the brothers had shared with Marcella. He was in it for only a second before running out, “Boss, boss! Dey GONE.”

“What choo means, gone?” Elmer huffed. Check the girls’ cave they share with Otis and Brutus.”

Otis stepped out of that cave and said, “They no come back all night. Maybe they still digging?”

Hugo looked nervous, knowing deep down they’d all gone, but, didn’t want to anger Elmer too much just yet. “Let’s check where they been digging? Otis, you and Lugo go see if they sleeping there?”

While they sauntered off to check, Hugo went back in the boys’ cave, to get a closer look. That’s when he noticed that all of their bags and backpacks were gone and there were now only two toolkits, where there had been six yesterday. When he opened them, he gasped when he saw they were nearly empty! He also noticed the three fishing poles they’d made were now broken and all the line was gone, too. There was only one spool of fishing line left and just 10 hooks! He also noticed there were no machetes or hunting knives, either. Even the masks, fins and fishing spears were gone.

His heart was in his throat, as he slowly walked out to give Elmer the bad news.

Otis and Lugo came jogging back, “They no dug deeper hole, Boss, just left dirt in a pile. They not there. I dunno where they could be?” Otis reported.

Elmer started sputtering, “Well, youse guys go FIND them! Hurry, so they don’t try to steal our new boat!”

Hugo was freaking out, fearing the worst, as all four of them desperately ran toward the beach. He recalled Markus’ words that he and Sonny would leave if they didn’t get their way. When they got down to the beach, he suddenly realized Markus and Sonny had truly left.

And had taken their boat and most likely, Cecilia and Precious with them!

He also knew he’d had his last blowjob, since neither Lola nor Marcella EVER performed, as they put it, ‘that disgusting act’.

Markus had been smart. Even with all the shit he and Sonny had been given last night, they never loudly threatened they might just up and leave because of it. Hugo was already regretting NOT checking up on them last night, before he went to sleep. He knew they had a good 8 hours or more head start and as he peered to the north, then the south, realized, he didn’t even have a clue which way they may have headed!

They and their nice boat were just ... GONE.

They all slowly moseyed back to camp, fearing Elmer’s reaction when he heard the news. AND realized there was nobody left to do all the chores around camp.

Elmer’s once strong ‘Family’ had just been reduced to the seven of them.

When they finally sauntered back to camp, Elmer was screaming, “WHERE ARE THEY? Why youse guys no going after them!?”

Hugo slowly held his arms up, in surrender, “E, they long gone. They must have left last night and could be anywhere by now. We no have no boat; how can we ever find them?”

Elmer’s face looked like he was about to blow a gasket. He KNEW he was now the only ‘brains’ his clan had left. And worse, knew Marcella and Lola would never let him hear the end of it!

And he realized he was clueless about what to do now. He certainly didn’t want to alienate the only helpers he had left.

The time for yelling was past.

He needed to reassure his guys he had the answers.

He just didn’t know what those were yet...

20 miles south of Elmer’s ‘Bumbling Buffoons’, the four cousins were also just waking up and starting a fire to cook some breakfast.

Cecilia volunteered to tend the fire, while Markus, Precious and Sonny went off in search of fresh water and to do some quick exploring.

They ventured upstream, finding themselves climbing at about a 10 to 1 pitch. Every 10 feet they walked they were going up a foot. The stream had bent slightly to the south and was flowing much faster. After about 150 yards, they came to another pond. This one was even bigger and also had a nice area on the south side to beach their boat.

They followed the incoming stream for another couple hundred feet and heard a waterfall coming down the mountain! The water was cool and clear and they took a second to relish in a nice cold drink.

They looked around a bit more and found a cave with a large raspberry bush a few feet in front of it, concealing the opening. It was tall inside and there was a slight breeze coming from within, meaning there was possibly another opening somewhere. They wandered back about 75 feet and saw light coming around a bend to the left, or north. They followed this ‘hallway’ another 100 feet and found another opening. It was larger than the other and explained the draft. The cave’s inside area was nice and large, a perfect place to call home. They could even have a fire inside and the smoke would vent out the other end. If they built a door, they could easily keep the elements out of the ‘living’ end of the ‘tunnel’ and limit the breeze when necessary.

They filled their water jug, then quickly went back to their boat.

Along the way, Markus counted the steps while Precious and Sonny found many fruit trees and even some nuts and other berries, besides the huge raspberry bushes by their new cave’s southerly opening.

They figured from the ‘upper’ pond, it was only a football field away from their cave. While the water was boiling for their MREs, they decided that they could pull or ‘tow’ their boat up the faster stream to the higher pond for added security.

Then, because the stream was just deep enough, they could easily row or just ‘guide’ their boat out to the ocean, whenever they wanted to go somewhere, easy-peasy.

After breakfast they put the boat back in the water. They tied a long piece of rappelling rope to the front eyehook and tried towing it up to the second pond. They ended up needing a long piece of bamboo to keep the boat slightly away from shore. They found that the boat towed easily and they quickly had it safely anchored on the shore of the upper pond, right where they wanted.

The upside of being up there was that the tide’s rising and falling wouldn’t affect them at all. They felt a sense of security here they never felt on this island before.

It was now just the four of them and they took their time setting up their new home and stowing all their gear. They sorted all their belongings, so they’d know everything they had and found they were much better off than they’d originally thought.

The only thing they were short on was clothes for the girls. They lamented not getting some of the duffle bags from Lucy and Lonnie’s boat since they’d been told they had lots of clothes in them.

Precious joked, “If it comes to it, we could all just go naked?”

Sonny chuckled, “That sounds like fun. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you or Cici in the buff before!? I sorta thought you two were lezzies.”

Precious punched him in the arm, “Do you call giving the guys blowjobs being lezzies? It was ‘Mother’ who kept any interested boys far, far away from us! She even had Uncle Guido send one of his guys after this one hunky guy who I really had the hots for. God damn her!”

Cici giggled, “Do you remember that Christmas when we talked you two into making out with us?”

Markus nodded and chuckled, “Yeah, weren’t we like 12 or 13?”

“Yeah, well, Mom got so mad she tried to convince Aunt Marcy to castrate BOTH you guys!”

Both boys grabbed their groins protectively, then broke out laughing.

“Aunt Lola never knew that Mom put us up to it!” Markus chuckled, “Ma was afraid Lola was turning you two into lezzies!”

Precious giggled, “Mom grilled us, and got really mad when we told her you guys were very good kissers and we couldn’t wait to kiss you again! She beat us with a switch and that’s why we were never allowed to be with you guys again!”

Sonny huffed, “Several years later, I remember Aunt Lola came over to visit Mom. When we asked how you girls were she told us you were both so traumatized from our making out that we’d turned you into lesbians! That fucking Bitch! No offense?”

Precious mock-scoffed, “For calling our cunt Mother a bitch? How dare you be so easy on that no good fucking cunt! Now get over here and let’s all start making up for lost time!”

And they commenced to not getting much else done.

The Gromorik Base – Science Center in the town of Wixton:

Director Tumrik, come look at this!” Specialist Leena panted excitedly, “The readings just spiked again! This time even higher! And it’s continuing to spike. What do you make of it?”

Tumrik blustered, “It MEANS there’s more than just one or two people or ‘beings’ that have extraordinary psychic abilities! Our stubborn Commandant is still dragging his feet, not giving us more assistance. His stupid local production problems makes him totally indifferent to our discoveries. Have you been able to refine the direction and distance to our subjects yet?”

“Not much. Why can’t he give us a satellite to use? We could easily pinpoint the location if we had one at our disposal for even a few ronas. (Hours)

“I am sure, however, it’s on an island west of the end of the main peninsula, like you first postulated.” Leena stressed.

“That rigid Commandant of ours thinks his excrement is without odor. He’s the same way with his native leaders. They all hate him, but, are so afraid of his reprisals they comply with his orders. Some day they are going to revolt and he’s not going to meet his delivery deadlines. When that happens, we’re all going to find ourselves under pressure.

“He doesn’t realize that if we can capture a couple bona fide ‘Psychic practitioners’, High Command would give him a huge promotion or at least cut him some lenience!”

Tumrik’s other assistant, Puntrak, said, “I have seen him ordering some of his native leaders to be tortured when they didn’t do exactly as he wanted. He doesn’t realize just how much that undermines the authority of his leaders over their underlings.”

Tumrik shook his head in disgust, “I know! Just this morning he threatened our ship’s Captain, Mr Brunkman, when the Captain told him he didn’t like the men that the Commandant chose for his crew. He is now stuck with mostly prisoners instead of good hands who want to be rowers or helpers! I’m not feeling good about our mission, knowing many of these guys may abandon ship the first chance they have, just to get away. I’ve requested some extra stunners just in case they try to flee or mutiny.

“I hate that this mission has become a punishment instead of a way to train a future crew. Only a few of Captain Brunkman’s crew are hard workers and want to be here!”

Leena asked, “Is our ‘Leader’ going to give us all the psychic equipment we need? Like the antennae-assisted locator device so we can pinpoint exactly where our subjects are and show their locations on the big screen?”

Tumrik scoffed, “NO. We’ve been given the smaller device with the pull-out antennae, so we’ll have to climb all the way up to the lookout post to use it. The arrogant fool won’t even give us a stun/photon rifle! Just five stunners and two psychic nullifier pistols. If we DO manage to capture any subjects, we’re going to have to keep stunning them.

“We must be very careful with this new device that’s coming! It’s all new and we must be sure we don’t let it ‘neutralize’ our contacts! That would make them useless as test subjects, since it completely ‘neutralizes’ that part of the brain where we believe these psychic powers are located! It’s detection range is only 200 mimasters (kilometers) without the antennae and 500 with the one we’ll install. It’s nullify range is less than 10% of that.

“Oh, and our Captain was only allowed to have four soldiers with primitive weapons, like bows and arrows, since our Supreme Commander doesn’t think we’ll find anything out there.”

Technician Puntrak looked puzzled, “But, Captain Brunkman told me he had 10 guards?”

Tumrik scoffed, “Yeah, but their job is to keep all the criminals in line! They’ll be so busy with that; they won’t even be able to accompany us on any expeditions we might go on.”

“You mean; we can’t use any of the rowers on our expedition? What if we encounter 15 people or more?” Puntrak questioned.

“Then we must hope our superior weapons will make the difference. That or diplomacy. Remember, they won’t know why we’re going there. We’re going to make them feel we’re friendly and just want to see what they’re doing there. I just wish we had more intel ... even one pass with full scan would at least tell us how many are on the island. Not to mention, exactly which island, they’re on. We’re just assuming it’s the largest one.”

Specialist Leena asked, “Do you have any ideas about the species these beings are? Also, how do you think they got there? They had to have gotten there by spaceship. Right?”

Tumrik looked puzzled, “I don’t think they’re native to this planet, if that’s what you mean. We’ve been scanning and studying for several Sun-cycles (years) and have NEVER had a psychic reading above a 30.2 power rating. These last several are over 90 and that’s over a distance of 2600 mimasters. (Kilometers) And as you should know, distance will often dilute the rating number! That is why we will need to be prepared! To my knowledge, readings this high have only been previously recorded by two species.”

Leena’s eyes went wide, “You don’t think these could be Helgordes ... or ... Chaemarians?”

Tumrik smiled while shaking his head, “I doubt it. Helgordes have not been reported anywhere near this sector of space. Chaemarians would have come here by spaceship and we would have detected them with our planetary defense grid. But, if we discover these ARE Chaemarians we WILL NOT treat them with anything but the utmost respect! They are a peaceful species and ... the most powerful species in the known universe. They could wipe out our entire race if we were to become their enemies and they viewed us as ‘hostile’. Is that understood?”

“Just what makes them so powerful?” Puntrak asked.

“Their total mastery of psychic powers! Just ONE Chaemarian can bring down our most powerful warship ... with JUST his mind!”

Both Leena and Puntrak gasped in disbelief! “How do you know that!?” Puntrak asked with a crack in his voice.

Tumrik grinned, “Because ... I was ON a warship that was about to attack a Greyzarian warship when just one Chaemarian figure appeared between us and froze us both in place! He started dragging us towards a planet’s gravitational well before letting us go when we promised not to attack each other anymore! And he didn’t even use his spacecraft! I shudder to think just how powerful those are!?”

The Prison Camp, 5 miles south of Port Loma: Two days earlier...

An angry Captain Brunkman enters the prison Director’s office.

“Director Harcourt, were you told which of your prisoners I was being assigned for my mission?”

Harcourt snapped, “NO. And before you get on my case, it wasn’t MY idea! I was simply given the order that you were to pick up 48 of my prisoners to use as oarsmen. I will add 10 of my own men to keep them ‘in line’ and make sure they get back here without escaping. The prisoners will take orders from you and my guards will make sure they get carried out. I’m curious, how long do you think your mission will take to complete?”