“Where’s the separate pile of treasure which Father Hector wanted me to look at?” Banyon quickly asked the silent monk. They needed to get on the road and Banyon was impatient to get started.
“This way,” he responded.
They maneuvered around stacks of strange looking statues, haunting paintings, hundreds of metal panels and some stone carvings as well. Eventually they reached the back of the room. There the monk pointed to a pile of items which were slightly different than the rest of the artifacts. They were piled haphazardly on the floor.
“You must decide what to do with them,” Father Thomas said as an order as he presented the items with his hand.
While Banyon studied the pile, Loni marched up to it and began to pick up items and look at them. “These appear to be just regular things from a house or office. What could they be?” she blurted out.
“I know exactly what they are,” Banyon announced. He turned to Father Thomas. “I’ll give you one hundred thousand dollars for the whole pile,” he said.
The monk and Loni were stunned. “Why would you pay us that kind of money?” Father Thomas asked.
“Because once I own it, I can then do with it as I please,” Banyon responded.
“And what would that be?” the monk asked calmly.
“I want you to crate up all the items up in the pile. Then take them to the nearest fishing village and hire a boat. Have the captain take the crate out into the ocean about two miles and dump it into the sea.”
“Why would you do that? Some of these items are rather interesting,” Loni complained.
“Because they are part of Hitler’s lost treasure,” Banyon told them. “These are items from his office. I’ve seen pictures of him with these items around him.”
Loni quickly dropped the trinket she was holding like it was a hot potato. She crinkled up her nose. “Have you any hand wipes?” she asked in horror.
“I thought as much,” the monk said with a nod of his head. “Father Crespi brought these items over from the Vatican in 1956. He was a curator there for many years you know. They probably didn’t want them either.”
“Do we have a deal?” Banyon asked and held out his hand.
“Of course,” the monk said and bowed. “It will be done while you are in the jungle.” Father Thomas reached into his robe and produced a piece of paper. He handed it to Colton Banyon.
“What’s this?”
“These are the true directions to the cave entrance. It’s actually located about two hundred yards left of the cave entrance you have on your map. You’ve passed Father Hector’s test.”
***
Banyon, Loni and the monk found Maya near the front of the room. She had made several piles of artifacts. She looked up at him with the gaze of someone who was mesmerized.
“Colt, these items are incredible. This pile is ancient Egyptian. This pile is Phoenician. This pile contains Greek and Roman artifacts. But this pile,” she pointed. “This pile has items I can’t identify.”
Banyon looked at the items. Most of them were gold with depictions of humans with animal heads. Some were blue in color. “Where do you think they came from?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I believe they are some sort of religious gods that many cultures have worshiped. They may even be depictions of Anunnaki,” she replied. “Alien gods.”
Banyon knew the myth about aliens coming to earth and performing many miracles. Many ancient cultures revered them. So far there had been no true evidence that they really existed. Banyon was now one step closer to believing.
“What about that one?” Loni said and pointed to an item that sat alone.
“This one is very strange,” Maya said with concern. “It is a metal tablet that has writings which I have never seen before. I believe the metal is platinum. It is a metal which the ancients knew nothing about.”
“The Metal Library,” Banyon muttered.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When Colton Banyon came out of the mission building, he waved Steve over.
“You’re going to get your wish,” he told the security expert.
“What wish was that? I have many you know,” he responded cheerfully as he glanced at all the almost naked women.
“I want you to put together a list of the most secure devices for protection available.”
“Why?” Steve asked.
“The secret room doesn’t have enough security,” Banyon told him. “Then call the office and have them air messenger the equipment here. When we return from our adventure in the caves, I’d like you to install the system in the hidden vault.”
“Cool,” was all Steve replied. He walked off to call the office.
Next, Banyon summoned Heather over. As she trotted towards him, he had to avert his eyes. She was that alluring. Where are my sunglasses?
Heather was under thirty years old. She stood five feet–six inches tall and had a finely-toned body from many years of working out. She had the most open personality that Colton Banyon had ever met. He could discuss anything with her without embarrassment. It was something she developed while working her way through college and earning a degree in psychology. She had earned the money by being a pornography star.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked with a smile and spread her arms. Her bikini is very small, he thought.
“Ah…yeah,” Banyon said as he fumbled to regain control. “I want you to call the office and have them send one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to the mission.”
“Why?” Heather questioned.
“Because part of the deal I just made is for us to take some artifacts off the hands of the monks,” he replied. “I’ve arranged to have them sent to a proper location. That cost us one hundred grand.”
“And the other twenty thousand?” she inquired with a provocative tilt of her head.
“That’s for the tablet that Maya is carrying,” he answered. He pointed and she followed his direction.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I believe it is part of the metal library. I want to put it back where it belongs.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At 9:30 A.M. the Forever Ours team hit the road. Steve drove and Kenny navigated. Carol, Heather and Mandy occupied the middle seat. Banyon, Loni and Maya sat in the back. The girls in the middle chatted away like high school kids on an outing to the zoo as they sped down the road.
Everyone was excited to finally be on a real adventure. After about fifteen minutes, Maya suddenly spoke up.
“Does anyone want to hear what I’ve discovered in translating the prologue to the Orion Codex?”
“Hell yeah,” Mandy yelled out.
Banyon was not so sure he wanted Kenny and Carol to hear, but reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt as Heather would eventually Freud-a-size them anyway.
“Go ahead,” Banyon said.
“Well,” Maya started off as she pulled out some notes from her satchel. “First, let me say that I don’t know who wrote this prologue. There’s no signature. I’m also not sure I’ve translated all the words properly. It appears to be a recap of an oral history, but it could be fiction. Also it could’ve been written thousands of years after Orion died. And…,” she was immediately interrupted by the ever impatient Loni.
“Enough with all the disclaimers,” she snorted. “What’s it say?”
Continuing like Loni didn’t exist, Maya said. “I sent phone pictures of the prologue to my sister Previne in India — she agrees with my findings.”
“Previne has already read the prologue?” Banyon said with amazement.
“Yes.”
“What’d you find already?” Loni roared and flapped her small arms.
“Okay, okay,” Maya responded and threw up her hands in surrender. “Orion was the son of Poseidon, the Greek God of the sea, and a mortal woman who was a daughter of a king in ancient Greece. He lived a long time ago. Nobody knows how long ago for sure.”
“I think we a
ll know that,” Loni said with a huff.
“Go on,” Banyon encouraged Maya.
“According to the prologue, the Greek Gods became upset because one day a second sun appeared over their domain. It created havoc that the Gods couldn’t control. They wanted it to go away and put together a plan.
“Interesting,” Banyon noted.
“According to this prologue,” Maya continued. “Orion was bred for a specific purpose. He was brought into this world so he could hunt the ‘beasts in the woods’. They had suddenly appeared when the new sun arrived. But I don’t think the writer meant animals. Animals are often referred to as friends of Orion. These creatures were something else.”
“What kind of beasts were they then?” Loni asked.
“The beasts are characterized as tall, sometimes blue, humanoids who sometimes wore strange animal-like headgear. They seemed to feed on wood from trees in the forests. They cut down the trees and took them away. They were capable of destroying whole forests in a day.”
“How did they do that?” Banyon wondered out loud.
“The beasts had many devices. One was a large round disk that sped through the woods and cut down the trees with amazing speed. The beasts also employed a tool which cut the wood into pieces using the light from the sky. They then loaded up the wood on sleds and took it someplace else.
“They were very good at finding and molding metals as well,” Maya said. “They often just appeared in villages, then offered the natives statues and tablets made of gold and silver as a form of appeasement. They also helped people to build things. They could speak the local language through another device. Over many years, some people began to worship the beasts with sacrifices and rituals. This further angered the Greek Gods.”
“Makes sense,” Steve said from the driver’s seat. “Gods don’t like someone messing with their flock.”
“According to this report, the beasts never actually harmed anyone, but took wood and carried it away in chariots which were also made of wood. They had no wheels, they hovered in the air,” Maya said.
“According to the prologue, the beasts traveled in pairs and went everywhere on earth in search of specific woods and metals. When Orion was old enough, he began stalking them and used the few weapons given to him by his father to track and attack the beasts he could find — mostly around Greece.”
“Does it say which weapons he had originally?” Banyon suddenly asked.
“Again I’m not sure of my translations, but it seems Orion was a normal sized man, but could change himself into a twenty foot giant at will. That would be a weapon.”
“Phew,” Loni uttered with relief. “I understand that he was quite the ladies’ man. I’ve often wondered about how he could…you know…do it…with women if he was so big.” That got a giggle from the young female gallery.
“That’s one weapon we don’t have yet,” Banyon reported.
“He always carried a large club too,” Maya said as she got back to her findings. “I don’t think it was actually a weapon with power though. When Orion grew to twenty feet, anything he was wearing or carrying grew by the same proportion. The club would become huge and a formidable weapon.”
“We already have the club,” Steve pointed out. “We got it in Poland. I remember having to stuff it down my pants leg. It was hard to walk with it there.”
“That one is called Imagination and it builds things,” Banyon replied. Carol and Kenny were amazed by the discussion. They knew nothing about the weapons and remained quiet.
“It appears that Orion had the Zeus weapon and the Water-Wall weapon though,” Maya informed them.
“Makes sense,” replied Banyon, “lightening from Zeus and tidal waves from Poseidon.”
“So how’d he get so many other weapons?” Loni asked.
“The Greek Gods wanted the beasts to be exterminated and sent Orion on a life-long quest to kill them. He spent about forty years in tracking the beasts. In the beginning, when he came across an unsuspecting pair, he suddenly grew in size and bludgeoned them to death. He would then destroy their chariot and take their weapons. On one occasion, according to the text, Orion took one of them captive. He made it explain how each weapon worked and then let it loose in the woods.”
“So he kept the weapons to use against any more beasts that he encountered,” Heather recapped.
“The writer says that in the beginning,” Maya explained, “there were many chariots floating in the sky, but Orion killed them all. He also notes that there were three large yellow birds that came down from the second sun periodically and went to specific locations far from Greece. Orion was never able to destroy any of them. They always returned to the sky before he could get to them. The second sun disappeared when all the chariots around Greece were destroyed by Orion.”
“The mother ship,” Banyon uttered.
“Are you telling me that Orion found aliens on earth and killed them all?” Loni inquired.
“Well, at least the ones he could find. Do you have a better explanation,” Maya shot back.
“Wait! Wasn’t he killed by a giant scorpion?” Loni shot back. “That’s a little far-fetched and hard for me to believe too.”
“It appears to be true though,” Maya retorted. “After he eliminated the beasts, he was declared a hero by the Gods. He was allowed to do anything he wanted. He drank a lot and bedded many women. One felt scorned by his lack of fidelity and sought revenge.”
“A woman scorned,” Heather said with a laugh.
“She followed him into the woods when he was drunk according to the prologue. When he took off his armor and passed out on the ground, she released many scorpions from a jug. He awoke in shock and immediately thought to become big, but one scorpion was actually sitting on the weapon that made him gigantic. The scorpion immediately grew to be as big as he was. They fought and both became mortally wounded. That was when his followers reached him and where the prologue ends.”
So, are you telling us that Orion single-handily stopped an alien invasion?” Loni asked.
“Or the aliens were on an exploratory mission and the captain felt that earth was too dangerous and pulled back,” Banyon commented.
“All I can tell you is that Orion’s last words were; ‘I’ll come back when you need me’,” Maya said.
It sent a chill down Banyon’s spine.
***
No one said anything for several minutes. They were contemplating what Maya had told them. Suddenly Banyon spoke.
“So what did we learn?” he asked.
“Here’s one thing,” the highly intelligent Heather replied. “The Tayos caves are probably a depository for the items the aliens wanted to transfer to the mother ship by shuttle. The workers brought and stored things there. That would explain how so many artifacts are located there from around the world.”
“That’s good, Heather,” Banyon complimented her.
“We can also identify some of the weapons,” Steve said. “I believe one is some kind of a huge buzz saw that cut the trees down and another would be some kind of laser to cut the trees into manageable pieces.”
“I looked them up in the codex,” Maya replied knowingly. The buzz saw one is called Clear and the laser cutter is called Reducer.”
“What about the weapon he used to grow and the one he used to talk to the aliens?” Mandy contributed.
The one that make him grow is simply called Grower,” Maya said. “There are several weapons which he used to communicate, but the one that translated words to another language is called Talk.”
“What about the ability to work with metals?” Loni asked.
“I haven’t enough information to determine what weapon that is,” Maya explained.
“That means there is probably more than one metal-working weapon then. Creating metals usually requires several steps today,” Steve added.
Soon, everyone was quiet. No one had any more information to offer. “Did we learn anything else?” Banyon asked.
/> “I don’t think we learned anything more from the prologue,” Maya said unhappily.
“Wrong, there’s one more thing,” Banyon said. “We learned the aliens were here after wood. I wonder why?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Hummer had only proceeded down the highway for another hour when Kenny instructed Steve to turn onto a dirt road. Twenty minutes later he turned onto a barely distinguishable path. Kenny said it would lead directly to the lake on the side where the entrance was located. He said it was used only by the natives, the same people who had brought all the treasures from the Tayos caves to the monks. They were called the Shaur Indians and had lived in the area for thousands of years.
The ride now became very bumpy. Steve had to drive slowly to not break an axle. Soon everyone was complaining, so Steve stopped the Hummer for a ten minute break.
Colton Banyon and Loni got out of the vehicle and stood off to the side while waiting for the trip to continue. Soon Maya came over to talk to them.
“Colt, there was one other thing in the prologue. I didn’t share it with everybody. Only you, me, Loni and Previne should know,” she said like it was a conspiracy.
“What’s that?” Loni quickly inquired.
“Orion questioned more than one alien. Some of them talked about several transmitters which were planted on earth. The description of the transmitters is exactly like the one you found on Mt. Charleston a couple of years ago.”
While horrified, Banyon asked. “Why would they leave some transmitters here?”
“They could have left some of their people here as well and are trying to contact them or because they plan to come back for more wood.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As Colton Banyon climbed back into the Hummer his head was spinning. His beliefs were shaken to the core. Were there really aliens here? Were they planning to come back? Or could the whole Orion prologue just be more myth, he thought. He hoped that there were more logical reasons for the Orion weapons and what they had so far discovered. To accept anything else was unthinkable to him. He did understand that there were unexplainable things on earth. After all he was able to talk to a spirit. But to discover that earth was not the only planet which was inhabited was almost too much of a leap for him.
The Society of Orion Book Five: The Tayos Caves (Colton Banyon Mystery 18) Page 7