“Oh. I wanted to paint a mural on the walls,” I replied forlornly.
“Once you have the new quarter’s designation, speak to me from the room you desire it in, and I can have it created for you.”
I grinned. This was going to be so cool. Now to see if Jolar had saved the backing paper for these stickers. Packing up at the drop of a hat once more had definitely not been how I’d planned to spend my day, but the reason for it didn’t allow me to feel upset about it. Far from it. I was elated.
“Moving on up!” I sang.
The front door chimed. That had been fast. I hurried to answer it.
“Hi! I’m Darla, Commander Gundar’s wife. I heard about the moving bombshell they literally just dropped on you and thought, that poor man! He’s going to need a friendly face to help him settle in, not to mention move.”
She smiled at me, and I took a step back to let her in. Her southern accent was adorable, but her take charge attitude left no doubt that she was used to being in charge. I certainly was not going to say no to help wrangling movers, that was for sure.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Yup, here they are.” She waved at someone coming up the corridor. “Hi, Lerpert. How many are with you today?”
“Twenty,” came the deep-voiced reply.
Twenty? Holy hell!
“Great!” She stepped inside. “There’s how many rooms? Two bedrooms, a living room, eat-in kitchen, bathroom…”
“Just those,” I told her.
“So five rooms,” she nodded. “Okay, how about I supervise the ones packing up the kitchens and living room and you mind the ones doing the bedrooms and bathroom where all the really personal stuff is? With four guys to a room you should be packed up in no time!”
I dazedly nodded along as the men all filed in carrying folded down boxes, leaving three gravity sleds out in the corridor with more folded down boxes on one of them.
“Sure, that works,” I replied.
“Great! You’re moving into the place right next to the elevator in our corridor. I just know we’ll be great friends. Let’s get all this over there, then I’ll treat you to lunch, then help you unpack.”
I smiled. Larry’s mother was great but she just breezed in and out as she took the boys’ places or dropped them off. We hadn’t really bonded as friends as such. Not like now. Go, me! I was sure Darla was right and we’d be buddies. I hadn’t had one of those since elementary school. It was a great feeling.
CHAPTER21
JOLAR
The humidity felt great,the sun warming my face wonderfully. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that while we Mylos all but basked, the humans around us were sweating profusely. I felt sorry for them, especially the agents from the FBI in their long sleeved suits and ties.
“We’ll start at the house,” Agent Peterson said. Have them sniff around inside and out, then start moving outwards. He glared at our L.T.C. as if daring him to contradict him.
Sachhuu merely gazed back at him with aloof aplomb. “That sounds logical. My men and I will walk around the yard with the rest of your team, looking for signs of disturbed Earth.”
“Fine, just don’t do anything if you think you’ve noticed something,” Peterson admonished.
It was obvious from the way we’d been treated by the man and his partner that they resented our presence here and thought we were nothing but a bunch of ‘space jockeys’ as we’d overheard them call us as we walked up to them from our rented car.
Peterson and his partner, Special Agent Jeffries, walked off, leaving us behind to go instruct their two teams.
“I’ll stand outside the front, by the chain link fence there,” Sachuu told Klora and me, pointing to indicate a length of fencing that ran across the front of the property. “Each of you go take a back corner of the rear fence.”
We nodded our understanding. Our positions would create a triangle for Xeranos to focus his scan on, the defined area allowing him to create a precise beam that he could run across the desired area while avoiding detection by the human satellites. It was absolutely ridiculous that the humans were opposing our use of the tech in this case, their politicians making noise about spy beams and other nonsense. We had no need to pretend to be investigating a crime while secretly scoping out their military programs. We already knew all about them and their governments had to keep us updated on matters as well as submit to regular checks according to our treaty, to ensure our tech wasn’t being used for or in aid of destructive purposes.
“I’ll take this side,” Klora said as we walked around to the rear.
I nodded and kept walking to the far corner. The yard wasn’t that large, I could cross to where Klora stood in less than five minutes even if I was merely shuffling along at the slowest pace possible.
Once in place, I lifted my phone to join the private group chat on the secure Mylos Matters app, which could only be downloaded via Xeranos and was exclusively for the use of those within the Fleet.
