Chapter 7: Carther

~~ November - Week 44 ~~

The transporter’s next stop was Tuath in Davinia.

The soldiers of the military transporter caused a bit of an incident when they went to Tuath a couple of days later. They had been given a 24-hour pass and were looking around town when they had come upon the military barracks.

They stopped to watch the local soldiers train. As far as they were concerned, they were bumbling idiots. They had been laughing as the soldiers had been going over an obstacle course, which they all considered ridiculously easy.

Carther had gotten incensed at their jeering of his crack troops. He complained to Aeron. Aeron called up their Captain and said that Carther wished compensation for the rudeness of his forces. The Captain said that his people couldn’t be blamed if Carther’s troops were inferior to his own. This upset Carther even more.

So, Captain Parker challenged Carther to a race through the obstacle course. He said he’d pick four of his people and match them against four of his. If they lost, they would apologise. Carther happily accepted the challenge.

News travelled fast, and by the time the race was to be held later that afternoon, the locals had turned up to watch. Aeron and the girls had also turned up to watch.

Carther had picked four of his best troopers. Captain Parker said to keep it fair, he would pick his four smallest soldiers. Carther agreed this was fair as half the soldiers were over 180cm (6’). So, the Captain picked his four girls. This upset Carther again.

He asked if the Captain was trying to make a mockery of the exercise, he should just have apologised for his troops. Captain Parker assured him that his soldiers took their honour very seriously and the girls would run.

Carther decided if he wanted to embarrass his female troops, then so be it. Carther blew the whistle to start them off and cheered his men on. It soon became apparent the two teams were not in the same class. Even Aeron had to hide his head in shame.

The four girls were sitting on the grass, watching the four men struggle to the finish line. Carther was amazed. They were barely even breathing hard. He had to admit they were magnificent to watch. They had skipped over the obstacle course as if they ran it every day as a warm-up exercise.

“Hey Parker, how long is it going to take for us to get used to this heavier gravity? My timing really sucked,” April complained.

“Yeah,” Mary Scott said. “I reckon given a couple of weeks we could cut at least two minutes of the time. It was pathetic.”

Carther looked at them, “What?” The women had made his crack troops look like raw recruits, and they were complaining they had been too slow.

Parker explained, “The gravity is over twenty percent heaver on this planet to that on Harmony, and the troops aren’t used to it yet. We only arrived on this planet a week ago. Harmony is also lighter than Earth, so the troops are still getting used to the heavier gravity.”

“I’ll tell you what General,” Parker said to Carther. “Give us another a week to get acclimatised, and we will come back and give it another go,” he grinned at Carther.

After a light discussion, Parker’s four female soldiers and the six males marched down to the start of the obstacle course and then set off. This time, the girls didn’t finish last, but they didn’t win either. In fact, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the first and the last places. The Local audience clapped to see elite athletes at play.

Carther’s troops could only stare at the human forces. They had all considered this course as one of the most punishing courses that the General had devised. Yet these guys had blown over it as if it was nothing. The fact the girls had run it twice and still gave their male counterparts a race was simply amazing.

Carther looked at Captain Parker and said, “Did Lord Lee send you here to show me what her elite troops could do?” he spat. He hated being mocked.

Parker laughed, “Elite, this lot? No, these guys are just grunts, ordinary soldiers. We left the crack troops on Harmony with the warship. We are just the guys who load and unload the transporter.”

The Captain was stretching the truth, a little. It was true that their elite force was on Harmony, but his troops were still classed as Special Forces, even though they were considered the grunts of the force.

Carther asked if they could shoot. The captain yelled out, “Tully who is the worse shot?”

Tully replied, “Mary, but she insists that she putts one of the bullets through the hole of another. Marty has the worst spread. He always ends up with one outside the bull’s eye at a hundred metres.” He held his hands up, showing a small circle about 6cm in diameter with his fingers.

Carther blanched. When the Lord Wizard said, she wouldn’t have wars, she meant it if these were an example of her ordinary troops. She also had space-flying warships, and he imagined they could take his people out without any trouble at all. Only they knew what other superior weapons the humans had.

Carther was at a loss as to what he should do. He knew his troops were no match to the off-worlders. If he made any aggressive moves towards the Antalians, he had a feeling they would be put down hard and fast.

His forces were down to less than a third of what they had been as it was. He wasn’t sure what to do with them other than to keep them patrolling the smaller villages like they did now. They still had trouble with the anti-slavers raiding the smaller farms and taking off with the slaves. No wonder his men had a hard time catching them. Obviously, his training wasn’t as efficient as it could be.

Everyone who had left his Army was busy helping out with getting the new business for their families up and running. Those not directly involved also seemed to have other support jobs that needed people to fill the roles. They also paid better than the Army.

Everyone that he knew had adopted the modern banking system. Even he had gotten an account. One of his troopers had told him the best way to get mugged was to not have a minder on your arm.

The merchants loved the new system. Now they didn’t have to carry around a lot of coin they felt safer, and they didn’t need to hire as many of his people. The fact they could do deals with the other continents over the minder’s they had been given, meant the ships were only carrying goods and not a lot of coin.

Incidents of theft had gone down. The ships could also contact the Navy to come to their assistance quicker. Even his Navy had said the number of pirates had gone down in the last week few weeks. His troops had hardly arrested anyone in a week. The fact that half the people they used to arrest now had jobs probably had a lot to do with it.

He had noticed a change in his sisters and many of the Genteli women as well. Lee had been doing the rounds of the ladies and had even been touching the males too. Those women who used to sit around bemoaning the horrors of childbirth were now well. They were also getting into their husband’s faces about them doing more.

One of his friends had said that he had given up his Pix bed slaves. He barely had the energy to keep up with his wife these days. She was insatiable since she had fallen pregnant at last. The thing was that he didn’t sound that unhappy about it. They had been trying for ten years to have a child.

Carther had even noticed a lot of the Genteli couples at court now seemed to spend a lot more time together. Frequently they would turn up and go their separate ways to find someone else to entertain them for the evening. It had been more typical for them to go home with a different person.

But that didn’t seem the practice anymore unless a husband was looking for a third to help keep his wife satisfied. Male or female, it didn’t seem to matter. He knew of three couples that had become triads in the last week alone.

Genteli women tended to have two sons to every daughter, so many of the single guys were more than happy to join a couple. They were also staying with them rather than moving on as well.

He had even heard there was the talk of expanding the universities to let women and more people of other races in. The humans were encouraging the women and younger men to study and learn more about how their world worked.

He had even heard a rumour that the wizards were buying female slaves and then freeing them. So now, they had to be paid wages, and they could get married. In the past, one of the few ways for a male slave to be free was to join the Army. But they couldn’t marry their sweetheart if she was still a slave.

His world was changing, and he wasn’t sure he was happy with all the changes.

April and Mary were watching the General.

Mary felt a bit sorry for him. Even she could see their presence was shaking the foundations of his life. “What do you reckon April, he is kinda cute?” Mary said.

“Shame the personality doesn’t match the looks,” April commented.

Mary looked at the General again. He seemed a bit lost and bewildered. She grinned at April, “Maybe he just needs a good fuck to get his nads untwisted?”

“Girl, I think you’d need to fuck him a whole heap of times to get that man unwound,” April told her.

Mary’s grin grew bigger. “Well, I think I could manage that as long he as the staying power Genteli men are reputed to have.”

“Year right. If you get more than two out of him, I’ll buy you dinner,” April said. Mary shook her hand, grinned and got up.

Carther was distracted when one of the female troopers came up to him. “Hi cutie, I’m Mary, what are you doing later? The Captain said we can stay tonight.”

Carther was surprised that a mere trooper was propositioning him. He was about to give her a dressing down for her audacity when he took in her figure. She was superbly fit, and the jumpsuit outlined every curve. She had short chestnut hair that was just long enough to be tied back, and a cute button nose and very kissable lips. And the loveliest blue eyes that he suddenly found fascinating.

She was a beautiful woman and only a little taller than he was. She pulled her shoulders back a little, so her breasts were more prominent, distracting his gaze lower. But it wasn’t really necessary as they were more than adequate as far as Carther was concerned. To his amazement, he felt himself responding strongly to her.

He looked her over again, and she grinned at him. “I’m sure we can think of a way for you to prove you guys aren’t wimps,” she said.

Carther wasn’t sure what a ‘wimp’ was, but he guessed it wasn’t a good thing for a soldier to be called. “Aren’t you tired from all the exercise?” he asked as she hooked her arm in his and he found he was walking her to his auto.

“Nah, that was just a warm-up. I just thought you might like to get a bit of your own back and I’m happy to help you out,” she informed him.

Carther found he was helping her into his vehicle and then heading to his flat in town. Mary had her hand in his lap, and he had a raging hard-on. He had to drive very carefully. The thoughts of going to war and killing Antalians were the furthest thoughts from his mind on that drive.