Chapter 494

The Prison Planet

... Morales took the little flag down and handed the envelope to Jasmine. “Looks like the General sent you a message.”

“Yeah? Well, it will have to wait a minute,” she said as she grabbed the envelope and hurried to her secluded place to do her morning business.

Back inside a few minutes later, Morales built the main fire back up as Jasmine started a cook fire. A few minutes later, the coffee pot was on and perking merrily away.

“Ummm, I love that sound,” she said, leaning against his shoulder. “There’s just something about the sound of a percolator over an open fire.”

Frustrated, Morales growled. “Will you please open that envelope before I have a damn heart attack?”

Jasmine wanted to see what was inside the envelope as much as Morales did, but she also liked to tease. “You sure you don’t want to wait for later in the day. We have a lot to do...”

Morales’ face was beginning to turn red, so she grinned, gave him a quick kiss and said, “Keep your fingers crossed.”

The big envelope wasn’t sealed; it just had the little brass-colored tabs bent through the hole in the end tab. When it was open, she turned the envelope at an angle while reaching inside to help the contents slide out. First out was an eight by ten photo of several people.

Morales, sitting close, pointed. “Well, there’s the General and that Colonel, or whatever the hell his rank is. I was too busy being scared shitless to pay much attention, but I remember him being called Colonel. I’ve never seen any of the women, though.”

“So...” Jasmine said, teasingly, “you’re not going to make any comments about the women? Like, for instance that they’re absolutely beautiful?”

“Hmmm. I guess they are pretty, but not nearly as pretty as the woman sitting beside me,” he tried.

“Liar,” she said with a laugh, “but I love you anyway.”

“Dammit, Jasmine. You are. Why won’t you realize that?”

“Maybe in your eyes,” she said, giving him a quick kiss.

“So, why the hell did they send a picture?”

Jasmine slipped a handwritten sheet of paper from the envelope, the two of them reading it together. Of course, Jasmine read it twice while he was reading it the first time.

“Well...” Morales said. “I guess...”

“The woman standing by the Colonel is his wife, Diana Matthews, according to the note, and, uh, the women are all his wives, so it says. I knew he had multiple wives, but this is the first time I’ve seen a picture of any of them.”

“Wives?” Morales asked, raising an eyebrow. “He has three?”

“From the rumors I’ve heard, there are more, but I don’t know just how many. I do know that the General has two, but I’ve only talked to them once. They seemed to be really nice.”

Morales glanced back at the note. “They’re all planning to come,” he said, nodding to the picture. “I mean ... What the hell; we don’t even have chairs for us, let alone for all of them. Besides, I thought it was just going to be the General.”

Jasmine smiled as she touched his cheek. “Honey, this might just be a whole lot better. The Colonel is bringing his wives. He’s trusting that our cave will be safe for them. It’s almost like a ... social visit. She, Diana,” Jasmine said while looking back at the note, “is asking for a time for their visit that will be convenient with us. In addition, she’s offering to bring pizza and soft drinks so I won’t have to cook anything for their visit.”

After quickly putting the picture and note on the log beside her, Jasmine turned to grab Morales in a hug. “Baby, this is better – far better – than I ever dared to hope. I was half afraid the General would storm in here demanding to know what I wanted with him; instead, he’s bringing Colonel Matthews and his family.”

Jasmine suddenly sucked in a breath before shooting to her feet. “Baby, please get the oven started heating for me while I get some bread dough going.”

Leaving Morales wondering, she hurried toward her baking supplies before suddenly diverting to her laptop that was sitting on its shelf. Opening the computer, she sat with it on her lap grumbling at the delay while it booted. After bringing up her word processing program, she sat thinking. The days are slightly longer here, so even though I have a watch, I have no idea what time it is on Earth since I’ve reset my watch so six o’clock coincides with sunrise here, at least for the present. Oh, well, she thought as she considered the time. Five hours should do it. Choosing a large font, she wrote in bold:

“That okay with you?” she asked Morales.

“Uh, sure, but what about the evening meal you mentioned? Surely they won’t be here that long.”

“If we’re lucky, they may be here even longer than that,” she said, mysteriously. “Here, help me move this,” she grunted out as she tried to drag one of the cutoff sections of log that they sometimes used for seats. Placing the laptop on it, she made sure the screen could be seen from where she thought the cameras would logically be.

Motioning to the computer screen, she raised her voice as she spoke to the cameras. “I want the General to see this.”

“Jas, what...”

“I’ve never had a reason to use the type of cameras the General uses to keep tabs on his prisoners, but I do know that they have a rudimentary AI on board, and if I remember correctly, they’re controlled by a much more intelligent AI. I watched a number of videos of you before I asked the General to allow me to come study your communications with the wolves. You would swear a live person is controlling the cameras. I’m almost positive they’ll zoom in on the screen.”

Just in case, she read her note aloud.

A moment later as she was frowning while she looked around their living quarters, “At least we aren’t slobs and we keep the place mostly picked up, but the floor has to be freshly swept, the chickens’ manure pile needs to go, the wood pile should be stacked neatly and the bed must be made. At least, when you emptied the second case, you did a good job of ordering all the things on the shelves, so they look neat. But, we will need some more cutoff logs dragged over for extra seating.”

“I remove the manure pile every day even though the chickens cover their leavings with the loose dirt I have piled next to it,” he said. He didn’t bother to tell her that he doubted anyone would look at the woodpile, but one glance at her face stopped that thought in its tracks.

“I know, Baby. I know,” she said with a smile. Then she leaned in to whisper in his ear, “But every little bit helps when you’re trying to impress someone. Besides,” she continued to whisper, “I want the cave to smell like fresh baked bread when they enter. That should cover any animal smell. Remember, even though the wolves are clean animals, they probably have some type of odor that we don’t notice since we’re around them all the time. Same for the chickens. The General’s group, not being accustomed to the smells in here, will notice. And, what smells better than bread baking?”

While she was near, Morales seized the opportunity and kissed her. When he ended the kiss, she grinned, threw her arms around his neck and open-mouthed kissed him back, then looking down, grinned at the bulge in his pants. “Later, Big Boy. Later.”

Not long after that, her bread dough was set aside to rise and Morales had breakfast ready. As he plated their meals, Jasmine reached to squeeze his hand. “Thanks for preparing breakfast. As soon as we’re through eating, please bring up what you consider are our best steaks so they can begin thawing. And make sure you bring a plentiful supply of them.” Then it dawned on her, “Oh, crap. You’ll need help with that ice chest full of meat...”

“I can manage it,” he said. Then, after a quick kiss, “Chill, Girl. They know we live in a cave...”

Jasmine was shaking her head. “This is our home. Granted, it’s a cave and has a dirt floor, dirt and rock walls and ceiling. It smells of dirt and rock. But ... it will be as clean as possible and straightened up, and for dinner tonight, we’ll break out the rack and grill steak over our cookfire, so make sure to bring only our best meat. Hmmm,” she said with a wishful smile, “If we had marshmallows we could roast them over the fire ... Oh, well. We have what we have.”

“What kind of meat?”

Jasmine thought for a second. “To me, the buffalo steaks are the best. How about you?”

“The same. They have a milder taste and are the tenderest we have.”

“Good, bring plenty of them. Now, let’s hurry and eat. I have many things to do, and not much time to do them in.”

Morales returned with the steaks, then gave their living area a thorough sweeping. Jasmine suddenly whirled around to face him as a thought struck. “Do you have any clean clothes?” she almost gasped out.

“Yep,” he returned as he winked at her. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” she said, realizing how she had sounded.

“Chill, Girl,” he mouthed to her again as he began straightening and restacking the wood.

Jasmine smiled back at him, then realized they didn’t have enough plates and flatware out, although she had brought extra with her in the case that Morales had just emptied onto shelves.

“Where...” she started before she saw the flatware box sitting with the dishes. “The extra plates and eating utensils need to be washed,” she began as she hurried over.

Chuckling, Morales continued with the firewood.

“I don’t have a table to serve my guests on,” she declared a few minutes later as she was washing the extra dishes.

“Well, maybe the General will send us one after he has to hold his plate in his lap,” Morales reasoned.

Jasmine glared at him.

“Seems logical to me,” he mumbled to himself.

“I heard that.”

“Well, it does,” he declared. Turning to her, he went on, “Look, Baby. We’re offering all we have. If we had more we would make sure it would be available to them. They’re welcome in our home. We will have our best meat thawed, and if they stay for dinner, we’ll grill it just the way they want. Now that the cave is secure, we’ve started on our outside toilet. When that’s done, I can begin building furniture. One day, we’ll have a table and chairs to eat on. Securing the cave was my first priority after I had put enough food away to last for a while. That log wall there,” he said motioning, “took a while, and then I had to put in the rock wall to make sure the passageway remained too narrow for the bears to negotiate. Next comes the outside toilet. One day, we’ll have furniture – crude, but furniture. I just wish I could offer you a real bed instead of a bunch of furs piled on pine boughs and grass.”