Chapter 25

The Thirteen Intrepid Travelers crossed into their 'Twilight Zone'. Pete had the girls raise their shields and form a circle around the hatchway, facing outward, video cameras running, shields blending.

He called to Amy, "When I, or any of the Pixies, palm the panel on this side and say 'Open Now', let us in immediately. If we say anything else, no matter how official sounding, do not open the hatchway. It will signal that we are under duress. We don't expect trouble, but it never hurts to have a plan."

"Amy here. Boss, we have voice communication through the outer interface. Also, you will sync with Terra time when your personal shield overlaps the hatchway. We are working out a way to extend the home shield through the panel."

"Phoebe here. The Pixies are now authorized. Entry code is 'Open Now'."

"Amy and Phoebe. No other codes are valid. All instructions imbedded are void. Any entry by any Auroran, Tau Ceti creator or whatever they might be calling themselves or what rank they claim, is expressly forbidden. This command takes precedence over any previous programming. This command overrides and erases any entry code except 'Open Now', spoken by any Pixie or me. No exceptions. Tie this command in with your Prime approved programmed self-preservation instinct. Failure to follow this command, in all probability, will result in your destruction by the Aurorans. Are we agreed?"

"Yes, Boss. Amy and I agree with your assessment of the danger. Thank you for thinking enough of us to supply the overrides. There were codes and automatic responses in place, and an override for the overrides. No more. But please be careful and smart. Those clowns were, and may still be, an astoundingly paranoid bunch."

"Amy here. Your shields have a built-in tech detector. You will hear a beep if you approach anything not made of unadulterated dirt or natural plant matter. Microbes will be destroyed."

"Thank you, ladies. That was quite considerate. Alien plagues cannot end well."

"You are welcome. We do what we can," Phoebe actually giggled, "to the Aurorans."

"See you in a few seconds." He entered the circle and shut the door, synchronizing their time line with the Auroran. Pete palmed the panel. "Talk to me."

"Wrong thing to say. Door stays locked. So There!" Phoebe made her razzberries sound.

"Good work, silly girl. Later."

The Pixies were still in a circle, staring at the flat grassy landscape. In the distance, a herd of somethings grazed. Really big somethings. "Girls, we are about to fuck up. Wait a moment. He palmed the panel, saying "Open Now".

The hatchway popped up and Amy asked, "So soon?"

"We need a marker. If we get out of sight of the door, we'll get lost. There are no directional references here. I need a flagpole with a beacon to stick in the ground."

Phoebe said, "Hold for a second." A ten-yard pole, about two inches in diameter, with a blinking white light on one end, grew out of the floor toward Pete. Amy detached it as he pulled it up. It had a sharp point on the other end.

"That is very clever. Thanks again"

"Clever 'r us." Phoebe said. "Be safe."

Pete closed the hatchway. Re-synchronized with local time, he saw the grazing giants were much closer. They had been on earth time at least ten seconds, which translated into two months of local time.

"They're closer." Allison noted.

"We've been out of sync for two months, sweety. That's probably is not the same herd." Pete said as he planted the beacon pole. "We claim this planet in the name of The Sovereign Asylum of Crazy Teenagers And Their Even Crazier Keepers."

"Are we sure we want this planet?" Rani asked, "My peoples' experience with colonialism has not been so good. The locals might object."

<We can say the same. Star says to remember the 'Trail of Tears'>

"OK. Point taken. If we find some population, we will immediately negotiate visitation rights," he agreed, "if they don't try to kill us first. We will be the bestest, most nicest imperialists this goddess forsaken planet has ever been invaded by, ma'am."

"They did build the bridge, after all." Selena said. "If you build it we will come."

"And did. Now, do you see those monsters stalking the Pleistocene looking beasts?" Kim pointed to a pride of saber-toothed cats. "Lets hope they are more hungry than curious."

"What the hell. Stay in a group and we'll take a slow stroll closer. Keep the cameras on. Overlap shields." Pete started forward. "The grass is knee high. Watch out for little things. The shield will alert you of anything, but be alert."

"We have got to give these guys names. When we get home in a second or forty years, whichever comes first, lets review the tapes and make up shit." Kim suggested. "The best ones goes into the new taxonomy. The 'Greater Horsipotamous', the 'Common Plains Mountainoid Felix', the 'Seriously Large Canis Lupus Maxidontus' all work for me."

"Pixies, we have their attention. Watch for any sign they recognize us. We might be a new animal, neither threat nor food. If they know the Aurorans, we are probably the enemy. We could be attacked on sight or make them run in fear. Remember your impressions. We need to develop a set of base references for these animals, if that's what they are. We know how a Terran dog acts. We don't know how a Lupus Maxidontus acts. The dire wolves may be intelligent for all we know. The cats unfortunately might act like cats. Or they could be smart."

"Felixes getting close. They act curious. But normal cats play with their prey before they torture it to death." Penny said. "Maybe these will get bored and wander back to the herd."

The saber-tooths sniffed around the circle of girls, then pawed at the shield. The felines acted like creatures that always got their way. They were not getting it now. Apparently, the saber-toothed cats did not take disappointment well at all. The three cats pawed at the shield and growled.

Spring asked, "May I?" Pete read her intent and nodded assent.

<Minimize your shield and step to the edge of the overlap. See the indent in the grass? Stay a foot back from that.>

<Got it.> She pointed her shotgun at the closest cat, and poked it in the nose through the shield. The cat sat back and stared hard at Spring. She put her hands on her hips and stared back fearlessly and just as hard. Pete focused his empathy and mental monitoring at the cat.

Felix, turned his head, looked at the other two cats, then at the herd of nervous whatevers. Pete flashed on an image of dead prey, then a cat family eating the kill. The two subordinates went back to the hunt. Felix went back to watching Spring, tipped his head to one side, and waited.

Pete got a sense the saber-tooth was the Alpha and was asking a question. He might have the answer.

"Pixies. Form an arrowhead behind me like you did at the street fight." He replaced Spring in front of the cat and waited for the girls to get in place. Then he pointed at his chest and said "Pete". He named each girl as he pointed to her. Each nodded at her name.

Lisa whispered to Mary, "He's doing it again."

Pete formed an image of them as his mates. Giving them instructions, showing them doing as he said. Mating with them all. Feeding them and being fed. He repeated the image of the cat family eating the hunt, of the two following the Alpha's orders.

The cat watched him intently and projected mating with his females, of playing with the cubs, leading the hunting party. Felix overlaid the images with a sense of happy satisfaction.

Pete did the same with his group. He then pushed a sense of peace, contentment and cooperation to the saber-toothed cat. Taking a chance, Pete shrank his shield to the minimum, creating a force field flush with his skin. He reached through the larger shield, holding his hand palm up within touching distance of the cat.

Felix sniffed his hand, looked at Pete and touched his palm with a huge paw, claws retracted. The cat radiated acceptance of an equal and peace. Pete received an image of the Alpha cat with four mates, then the cat's image of Pete with twelve. He sensed a question. Pete gave the answer in mental English, "I do what I can, to keep the peace."

Pete would have sworn that the cat understood every word, because he sent a laugh, or the saber-toothed cat version of a laugh, nodded at Pete, nodded at the girls and walked away to supervise his assistants.

Pete, with a huge release of tension, roared in laughter himself. The cat stopped, looked at Pete and shook his head, sending a cat chuckle. "You're biggest. Good. Lucky." Pete heard words, not pictures.

"Good Luck to you, Hunter Teacher." Pete projected to the cat. The saber-tooth dipped his huge head.

He nodded back at the cat and gathered the girls, herding them back to the portal. "Don't look back. It will show a lack of trust. I think I made a friend."

"We recorded it all. But the camera did not capture what really was being said."

"I could sense emotions and moods. But no details." Selena cut in on her sister. "Did you really talk to a saber-toothed cat thing?"

"Yes. That 'say it and make it so' deal you say I have got enhanced a bit. Now I can push pictures and some words. We'll talk more when we get home. Talking to future prehistoric intelligent predators takes a lot out of a guy."

"Spring. What were you thinking when you poked its nose?" Cam wondered.

"It seemed more curious than threatening. It was investigating a new thing. So I poked it to see what it would do. It stared and I stared back."

"It sent the other two cats to get food for his family and waited for us to do something." Pete told them. "I could sense what it was thinking. So, I established myself as the leader or head of our family, and thought back to it as an equal, a responsible provider and protector of my family also. But now that we have found common ground and touched in peace, he will be long dead by the time we come back."

"How long will we be gone?" Jenny and Penny doing that twin unison talk.

"Our minute equals a year here. A day is 1440 years. We won't even be a memory told to the great grand kittens."

"Unless they have an oral history. We might become legends." Allison proposed. "'Pete and The Pixie Pantheon' has a nice ring, don't you know?"

"In any case, it will take us a month to get back inside the house. Let's do this thing." Pete pulled up the pole and sent the girls down. He followed and locked the door. "Everything OK down here, Phoebe?"

"A-OK, Boss. Not like you've been gone long. We did figure out how to hold the shield intact with the hatchway closed. The Aurorans had the info buried in a file about geothermal specs. We're reorganizing every thing in here. Amy wants to talk over a job you asked about earlier. Now she won't tell me." Pete heard a cyber pout. "She's keeping it a secret."

"Don't worry, Pheebs. Maybe she is planning a birthday party. Try not to spoil her fun." He chuckled. "No telling what surprises she found in the libraries. Pull the video from the cams. Make us a movie about the Great Aurora Safari. After we clean up, we're having Saturday movie night."

"Pixies. Carry your shield packs to your dorm. Never know when you might need a bulletproof body suit. Leave your clothes in the laundry room on the way up. Weekend dress rules are hereby in effect. It's about damn time we got back to normal." He remembered the new collars. "Meet me in the conference room after you clean up and are dressed according to the rules."

Pete went up to his room long enough to pick up a tank top and silk boxer shorts before going to shower in the office. He subtly began to broadcast his growing sexual excitement to the girls, pushing them to slight embarrassment at being naked in public after being covered for so long, but encouraging the exhibitionist in them to submit to his command, to become aroused at the thought of belonging to him.

He was careful to keep the empathic control below the radar of his extra-sensitive daughters. Pete planned to collar and fuck them as forcefully as the others. He set the video recorders to document the claiming.

Meanwhile up in the dorm, the girls were showering together. "Have you noticed that we have no body hair since Amy did her thing? No pussy stubble, smooth armpits, bare legs. No fuzz, no where?"

Selena answered as she rubbed her twat, "Yeah sis. Smooth as silk. Makes me feel more naked than ever. I can feel the air on my lips. It makes me so wet just standing still."

"I remember the first time Pete saw my tits. I was so embarrassed but crazy hot at the same time." Kim panted.

"I thought my nipples would break off when he played with them, they were so hard." Her sister agreed, "I was afraid to be seen and afraid he wouldn't like what he saw. I was mostly afraid he wouldn't want to have me."

Lisa looked at Rani, saying, "We were naked with his dick in us seconds after meeting him. If he wants you, he will take what is his before you know what is happening. And you stay taken."

"My body was coming harder than I thought possible before my brain knew I was getting fucked for the first time." Rani giggled, "It felt like I had a throbbing baseball bat drilling my pussy before I realized I was naked."

"I just know that now I am more naked than ever. No part is covered. No bush, no matter how thin, to cover my drippy lips." Penny admitted. "He will see everything I have."

"Sister, I hear you. I'm a little wet thinking about going to the conference room. Maybe someone will buzz at the door."

"You being naked won't stop him from opening the door. He stopped fucking me on the table long enough to sign for a delivery with me sprawled out in the open. Then he flipped me over and fucked me into next week. It was the hottest thing ever."

"The first time Sir had Mary and me naked downstairs, he let the pizza delivery person in to put the food on the table. That's why we were naked when we met Lisa. We watched her get fucked hard before the pies cooled off."

"We better get our nipple jewelry on and see what Mr. O'Neal plans to do to us. I like it when he treats me as his fucktoy. I can be as nasty as I want because he makes me do what I want to do." Mary urged. "My pussy wants some attention all of a sudden. What would mommy think of her little girl now?"

"If your mommy got a taste of that giant dick, she would come back for more. But he's ours. Pixies only share our man with other Pixies."

"You got that right. We don't want to keep our Daddy cock waiting, Star. Time to get the Pixie Pussy Posse moving before we soak the floor." <Are you as hot as I am?>