The Cross of Mithras Vol. 1: EOD Operation Welcome to Hell (12 page)

  A sixteen year old girl found something in a field that sparked her interest. From the looks of it, it had to be lying there for centuries. It had some type of a language on it that she didn’t recognize. So she wanted to see what was inside of it. After she forced the container open she got an electric shock. She said that, after that, she doesn’t know why she thought it, but at first she thought that there was candy in it. So she started to eat it. Then to her shock and disgust it looked like she was eating maggots. She left to go home, but she was in a trance. After awhile, she became very sick, her skin was turning a dark green color, and her belly was getting bigger. Doctors didn’t know what to make of it, until somebody found that container. It was Lyumarian bio-junk. It was some biological weapon that they were developing 750 years ago in the 15
th
century.

  After some time, as her condition was deteriorating, both doctors and nurses started to notice that when they touched her, they got a static shock. Later those shocks became stronger. She was slowly losing her sense of self. She would shock someone like her mother, knowing full well how strong they are. Then she would cry like she didn’t mean to do that. When her mother came near, she did it again. After that, she would smile real big, and she had this evil look in her eyes like she was enjoying it. Eventually she could give someone an electrical shock when they are a few feet away. It hit them so strong that it took them a several seconds to recover. But each time she did that, she became a little weaker. Doctors realize that she was using her bio-electrical field to do that - like an electrical eel could. They tried their best to restrain her, but it was not easy. Eventually her stomach became so large that it burst open. Some of the people in that room got hit by the fluid. Which caused them to become infected, but unlike her, their stomach never swelled up and burst. What’s more, what took her days to change, took them only a few minutes. And then all hell broke loose.

  The authorities call out for help, any help would do. Their situation was becoming more dire by the minute. The closest ship that could help was the one that Ramirez was on. Ramirez started to become very concerned about what is going on there. Ramirez asked the Captain what was going on, but the Captain wouldn’t say. He was too busy trying to get there ASAP. No, as he put it, ‘We HAVE to be there… like last year.’ That comment made Ramirez all the more concerned. When they finally did land the Captain told them what had happen. When Ramirez heard that it disturbed him. Two years before that incident, Ramirez came to Nilosyrtis Prime. When he arrived, as usual, he went to the bar. One day while he was there, he noticed this beautiful, blonde, blue eyed woman. After a few moments, he finally got up enough courage to go over to her to see if she was available. She was, and she was going to ask him the same thing. They hit it off real big and decided to leave together. He learned that she’s been a police officer for five years, and she really loves her work. She didn’t care that he was with the EOD. After a couple of dates, she took him back to her place; she wanted to make love to him. Not right away, but that’s what she wanted. When Ramirez arrived on Nilosyrtis Prime, it was her that he was concerned for.

  When Ramirez first encountered those infected people, he slowly came to accept that she was dead. At least, that’s what he hopes for since he didn’t want her to be infected. Towards the end, for Ramirez that is, they were in a field fighting those people. Ramirez then heard his closest friend screamed out in pain, ‘Oh my God! It burns … It burns! Oh God it burns!’ His hands were over his face when he screamed that. Ramirez then watched as his friend dropped to his knees, took off his helmet, took his laser rifle, and shot himself in the head. The shot took off half of his head from his nose, to the mid part on the top of his head. Ramirez then heard someone yelled at him to get on the helicopter, but he had to fight his way there. Twice he got one of those electrical shocks from those people. When Ramirez was on the copter he heard one of his friends say, ‘Black napalm ‘em!’ Black napalm, part napalm, part neuro-chemical, 100% lethal. As the neuro-chemical burns it turns into a gas, anybody standing within eight feet of the gas will be affected. As Ramirez look, in between two hills, he could see a river of fire moving towards them. It was a river that once was people. People who, no fault of their own, became infected because of a very old bio-weapon. But what got him the most was, not seeing that, but the callousness of his friends. They were ordered to travel to one out of two locations. But Ramirez knew that it was a matter of time before all of them would get killed. He knew that a Project 21 ship was coming to help out as well. He knew where it would land. It would land not far from where he was. He had to make a decision, before it was too late.

  After Ramirez made his decision, the helicopter had crashed, and his friends were dead. He lost an eye, and he was burned on one side of his face. He then ran to where the Project 21 ship would land at. As he ran he felt free, for the first time in his life, he felt free. The rest became history for him. But as he told other Project 21 agents, ‘If you were never apart of the EOD, then you would never realize why it is impossible to run away like I did. Its not why people think.’ As he told them, ‘When I was with the EOD, and I was with my community, my friends, and my family, it WAS impossible for me, or anyone else for that matter to leave. It was very hard to even think about it. Because it meant saying goodbye, forever, to my friends and family. But when I was not around my friends and family, I could think about it. That’s why it is impossible to leave it.’

(5)

  It was 07:28 hours and Vaistll heard a knock at the door. She knew who it was; she was surprised that he would come so early. She went to the door and answered it. Standing there was Ramirez like she suspected.

  “Wow. I must be awful popular… you came early.” She said with a smile, causing him to smile back.

  As he came in she asks him, “Did you eat breakfast yet?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No, not yet. I was thinking that we could go and eat breakfast at some place around here.”

  “Okay. Sounds good to me.”

  They both went and sit down on the couch. Vaistll was looking down as she was preparing herself to tell him about her life on her planet. She had the look of, ‘I have a lot on my shoulders that I want to get off… and I don’t know where to begin.’ Ramirez didn’t say anything; he knew actually how she felt.

  “I decided to start you off by telling you about the civilization that I came from. The name of my civilization is: Iomiyya. Yes... I know it does sound something like, ‘You lyin,’’ or more like, ‘Whom lyin,’ but... I really don’t want to mention it around our men. I just don’t feel like hearing them making fun of it in all.”

  “That’s okay, I won’t say anything.”

  “You know, it’s kind of funny but… I don’t remember what Iomiyya meant. It’s not because of my age, it’s just that… I must have heard it at least three or four times and each time… I forgot it. I wish that I didn’t. Oh well... I guess it doesn’t matter.

  When I first arrived on the Earth, with those nano-probes making me look like a human being, people would ask me about my ethnic background. I didn’t say anything. Mainly because I didn’t know what to say. But it started to get me to think about it. So looking at a lot of cultures around the world, and comparing them to mine... I narrowed them down to four - Greek, Irish, Danish, and Native American. So I started to tell them that what I was - multiethnic.

  With the Native American part, I never really pick any particular tribe. To me it just didn’t matter. When people asked me which tribe that I came from, I told them, ‘With the way that America treated the Natives, my family never talked about it. So I really don’t know.’ I pick them only because they, like all Apollinarians, have hyper-sensory perception. Like most Native American people would say, ‘The eyes are a window upon the soul.’

  At first I was gonna pick the English instead of the Greeks, but I decided not to. I made that decision base upon the fact that English, at times, can be mean spirited. They had that bad habit of killing the Natives... and that’s something that my people would never have done. So... I would have picked them if they were a lot more nicer.

  So I decided to pick the Greeks instead, because they, like Iomiyya, were a maritime society that is regarded as being highly influential, producing very talented people, and a lot of brilliant minds have come from them. Unlike the ancient Greeks, however, we had no use for slaves. My people valued knowledge and peaceful trading, not the enslavement of others.”

  She then laughed and said, “It is so funny… every time I heard an Irish comic joke about the Irish…“ She started to laugh again and finished, “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s my people.’” With that, she laughed out loud and said, “We’re just drunk fighters.”

  After a few moments she continued on. “During St. Patrick’s Day, when I first arrived on the Earth, I would tell people,” - she started to talk with an Irish accent - “We Irish don’t need a four leaf clover. We are a four leaf clover.” That caused Ramirez to laugh out loud.

  She continued on, “With the Danish I pick them because they, like my people, are tolerant and they have an ironic sense of humor.” After a few moments she asked Ramirez a simple question with a smile.

  “Hey, you want to hear something really ironic?”

  “What?” He said with a smile expecting the obvious.

  “I love things that are ironic.” That caused Ramirez to laugh out loud.

  She added, “Life is filled with it’s little ironies.”

  “Yeah.”

  She continued on, “When it comes to the culture of the Iomiyyans, I don’t remember that much about it, other than that it resembles ancient Greece, but more mystical. When my civilization declares war upon some nation, and we conquer them, we would put their leader’s head at the end of a pole, not literally. What we did was, we made a bronze bust of the head of their leader, and then we put that at the end of a pole. That pole resembled one of our ceremonial spears. Flanking that ‘spear,’ in an x pattern, is their leader’s standard banner or crest, his military’s standard banner, crest, or whatever they use to represent their military and their leader. The spear, and both the leader, and their military’s crest, is put midway on a column. On top of that column is our goddess of victory, which is made of gold. At the base of that column was our leader’s coat of arms. Below that, I don’t remember which it was, but there was either a gold or bronze plaque telling a little bit about the war. It gave the years that it was fought, the name of our leader, the battles, and the year that those battles was fought in, the losses on both sides, and the names of our best military leaders. When it came to our losses, and that of the enemy losses, my people told the truth, no matter how embarrassing it was.

  I don’t specifically remember actually what it looked like, but I think that it went something like this. Each one of those columns was connected to one another, and was put in a circular pattern with the oldest being in the center. At the center was a small round temple. Inside the temple, in its center, was a statue of four of our most hallow of gods - the god of thunder and lighting, who was facing north. He was the king. The god of the sea who was facing south. The god of war who was facing east, and the goddess of wisdom who was facing west. The king of our gods represented honor and justice - the righteous ruler who all kings should simulate. Our god of the sea represented our way of life. He was facing south because that was the direction of our sea. When we used the expression, ‘Sacred waters of our forefathers,’ we meant the sea nearest to our homeland, and thus, him. Our god of war was facing east, in the direction of the rising sun, because it represented our youthful fighting spirit - a Spartan warrior. What’s more, most of our wars were fought in the east. The goddess of wisdom is facing west; because it is wise to acknowledge that all things are fleeting - wealth, power, beauty, age, etc. She was important to us because we where a learned society. As a matter of fact, my civilization had the highest literacy rate that I know of.”

  “So why was your god of thunder and lighting facing north?” Ramirez asked her.

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think anybody ever told me, or that I ever read the reason why. My people always preferred to capture our enemy’s leader. And what did we do with him? We put him in a so-called palace that was a prison type of a fort. Surrounding that ‘palace’ was a military fort. So it looked like a rectangle inside of a rectangle. On the inside wall of the military fort, we painted a beautiful scenic view. I guess it was done to create some type of a ‘view.’ And as for his top lieutenants? We hang ‘em.

  Depending upon the type of a leader that he was, if he was a good leader we would return his body back to his people when he died, if not we would have cremated him and put his urn in a crypt below the palace prison.

  You know, sometimes I think that my people had embark upon some conquering stage in our history. Either that or we had a very long history. I once went to see those columns of conquest, and there were a lot of them.”

  “How many where there?” Ramirez asked her.

  “I don’t know there must have been like a hundred of them. I should have read something about that. If I did read something on it, it might have been when I was young and I just forgot about it. Oh well.

  You know, I once met one of those captured leaders. He was 237 years old with a plus-or-minus of ten years. I was 16 and still being trained as a warrior. His name was Tilloose (tee-la-loose), leader of the Grak’tyl (sounds like crack - till) - Grak for short. And my people did everyone a service by destroying them.”