Ancient Astronauts

Sacrifices

Hans had just laid out the last of the dishes, which were few and far between, when they heard the knock at the door.

Alyonna went to answer it while Hans looked over the dishes one more time like a predator drone on a seek and destroy mission for anything out of place. Most of the dishes were trench recipes, special concoctions he'd learned to whip up in the field using K rations, like baked canned green beans with "bacon" if you could call preservative heavy pork "Bacon." Then his eye came to rest on the drumsticks and breast situated at the center of the table. He pushed down the feeling that he'd have to give his own drumsticks for that bird.

He stood by the table and smiled as Tyrone and Sheila came through the door. The smile faded a little when Sheila appeared. She was young, twenty-nine if he calculated correctly, with light brown complexion. His Scottish navy buddies from the Royal Navy auxiliaries had called her a "bonnie lass" which he felt fit her really well, never mind that while her father was black her mother really was Scottish. Her full figure swayed atop her heeled dinner shoes as she helped the elderly Tyrone through the door.

He couldn't shake the feeling there was something he was supposed to have told Alyonna before their guests arrived. But he didn't have time to think about it because just then Tyrone stumbled.

He crossed the distance in two strides and caught his friend, taking his hand from Sheila's. He helped Ty, who he figured was about seventy-one years old, to the dining table. Years of battle and the atrophy of space had worn on Ty badly.

"God you're still a strong man, Hans!" He wheezed, clapping Hans' pork shoulder of a forearm in a teasing gesture.

Hans winced a little, and a sad look came to his normally cheerful expression.

"Oh don't look so down, man! You have so much to be grateful for!"

"Yes," Hans said, looking in the old man's twinkling brown eyes, "yes I do."

Tyrone clapped him on the arm again, and accepted the chair Alyonna slid out for him. "Can I get you some water, Ty?" She asked.

"Please, if it's not too much trouble...uh, wait, Aly sit down, let Sheila or Hans get it. I won't have a pregnant lady running all over fussing after me."

Alyonna laughed, and patted him on the shoulder, "Oh come now, Ty. This baby isn't due for another eleven years!"

Ty hacked a laugh at that, and raised a napkin to his face. After a moment the coughing fit subsided.

"Are you alright, Ty?" Hans asked, worried.

Tyrone waved a dismissive hand, "I'm alright, just a bit parched. Stop fussing over me and give Sheila some love. She hasn't seen you all in, what's it now? 1,529 years?" He gave Alyonna a sly wink at that, and they burst into laughter again.

Later the jokes about the years would be put to rest by the administrative council who simply ruled that a year was a week, and a trident, or thirty complete solar rotations, was a year, 360 days. Hans had absentmindedly ratified it because, well, he didn't care.

Hans crossed to the other side and exchanged cheek kisses with Sheila before helping her to sit. Alyonna brought water for everyone and a moment later they were all seated.

For a while the conversation was silly and uplifting, exchanging old inside jokes, and generally having a good time, but soon the conversation turned to memory–

"Er, uhm, mmm mm," Tyrone cleared his throat, "and then there was the Astral Ark. Richardson was a genius I tell you, a genius! It was too bad he didn't live to see his dream depart the Earth for a new world! It is thanks to him, mhmm we are here today."