Chapter 201

"We're in a world of shit," Dave said as he looked toward the rear of the Retreat just as Kayla slammed the back door open, gun in hand, Art right on her heels. They both jumped the steps and headed toward Jeff and Dave at a dead run.

Even as Jeff heard the ready helicopter lift off, Arlene came out the back with Jeff's other wives following in a pack, everyone armed. "Oh, Shit!" he quietly said.

"Can't you stop Security?" Dave asked a lot louder than he intended.

"I tried, and I'm still trying," he answered, distractedly, as he continued to talk on his radio. Then after a moment, "They're coming, anyway," he groused.

The vicious-looking ready helicopter came roaring over, its crew obviously not having bothered with stealth mode. The craft made a circle of the area, then slowly turned in the air as the crew continued to scan for danger. Apparently, they took into account the invisible ship that was sitting a little to the right, though, and maintained enough altitude to clear it.

Dave stood eying the helicopter. "That thing makes me nervous," he said, his voice barely audible over the roar of the machine.

As the helicopter moved off a short distance, they could hear straining engines racing up the driveway.

Shortly, they were surrounded by Security, and Jeff's relieved, but pissed off wives, as he tried to explain that he was just conducting an experiment. Turning to Lieutenant Mayfield, "Dammit, Lieutenant, I talked to dispatch as soon as I blew up the damn rock. I told them everything was fine, but you came on, anyway."

"Sorry, Colonel. But I have my orders. Direct, face to face orders from the General himself. We respond to anything out of the ordinary. Your instructing us to not come has no bearing on response. Your wives could be hostages and you could be forced to tell us to stand down because of threats from perps to kill or hurt you or your wives."

The dark cloud on Jeff's face lifted a bit, but he still wasn't pleased.

Mayfield, in desperation, continued, "Come on, Sir. What would you do if our roles were reversed? And ... we both know if I let anything – anything – happen to you, the General would ... well..."

Diana grabbed her husband's head, pulling him down and kissing him hard for a second. "We're going back inside, but you're still in trouble," she whispered in his ear. Motioning to her sister-wives, the women, shivering from the cold, since none had taken time for a coat, trooped toward the back door. Art, after a grin and wink at Jeff, turned to go with them. Kayla stayed, and Jeff tucked his coat around her to protect her from the wind, holding her close.

Mayfield said something on his radio, and the helicopter turned toward the ski lodge. The remaining Security officers headed back to their vehicles. In a few moments, all that remained of Security was Lieutenant Mayfield and two of his troops.

"Want to see what that looked like from the security cameras?" Mayfield said as he handed Jeff his helmet.

The video started as Jeff placed the ball bearing on the stick and raised it to eye level. There was a brilliant flash of light, accompanied by a loud, rolling "crack" of sound that seemed to happen simultaneously with the ball bearing disappearing and the rock high up the mountain exploding, then a second or so later the sound of the rock exploding drifted back. Jeff assumed the "crack" was caused in part by the bearing breaking the sound barrier, but he also suspected that some of the report was the result of the surge of energy from the dimensions. The video cut off as the last pieces of the boulder rained down.

Little One said dryly in his mind, {{{ If you had pushed a little harder, we would have been measuring the ball's speed as a percentage of the speed of light. If ... we had survived the ball's contact with the mountain, or its passage through the air, for that matter. That ball might well have created its own nuclear fusion as the bearing slammed into the air molecules on its way to the rock. Our mountain could well have been a radioactive hole, instead. I would not suggest pushing any harder than you just did, at least, not within the atmosphere. }}}

Jeff, having barely nudged the ball bearing with the energy he had tapped into, began to wonder. Setting the video to run, he put the helmet on Dave's head as Mayfield, unaware of the mental exchange between Little One and Jeff, offered, "Might be better to use our rifle range rather than tearing up the mountain in your backyard. That big crevasse and the sound baffles we've installed muffle a lot of the sound, and a few more chunks of rock there won't make any difference at all."

Jeff noted that Mayfield didn't even ask how Jeff had exploded the rock with the ball bearing.

After the video shut off, Dave handed the helmet to Kayla so she could watch the video, then turned to Jeff. "That shows more than I saw firsthand. And ... I'm impressed with the helmet. It's definitely technology that's..."

" ... probably fifty years in Earth's future," Jeff finished for him.

"Maybe more," the Lieutenant expanded.

After watching the video, Kayla handed the helmet back to Mayfield.

Jeff took one of the hardened steel balls out of his pocket and handed it to the Lieutenant. "Think you can get me some more ammunition like this? I need them ASAP. I could probably find a place on the net that sells them and get them shipped overnight, but..."

"No, Sir. No need to do that. I'm sure the General would prefer that we furnished your, uh, ammunition." After scrutinizing the steel ball for a moment, "Could I keep this, Sir?"

"Sure."

"I'll contact the base and get someone started on finding these."

"Make sure they're hardened steel like the ball bearings are." After hesitating for a second, he continued with, "Hmmm, tungsten carbide might even work better. Perhaps we should try some of each."

"Yes, Colonel."

Mayfield hadn't even asked how many of the balls Jeff wanted, but he realized that Mayfield would order enough, and then some.

"I need an assortment," the Prime said after thinking a moment. "Probably from three-eights of an inch to two inches. And I need something else set up on your range." As he went on to explain, the Lieutenant stood nodding, wondering what his Colonel had in mind.

As Jeff walked into the living room, Diana jumped up and came over to him, reaching up to pull his head down so she could kiss him. "We need to talk," she said in a very serious voice as they broke the kiss and she played with the front of his shirt, absently tracing the stitching with a fingertip.

He wasn't sure whether she was pissed, or had her feelings hurt, but he looked down at her and grinned, anyway. "Yeah, we do, Babe. Yeah, we do."

Before she could say anything else, he picked her up and draped her over his shoulder. "Uump," she grunted as her weight pushed his shoulder into her belly. Then as she tried fruitlessly to push herself up, "Doggonit, Jeff. I'm serious, " she got out, exasperation prominent in her voice.

"Me, too, Babe," he chuckled as he turned and walked into the hallway.

Fighting against his strength was useless, as she was well aware, but she wanted him to explain what had happened in the living room. All of the men were avoiding the subject, and she was tired of their vague answers. "Jeff, dammit, I want to know what happened out there, and while you're at it, I want to know what happened in the living room. The women are asking, and I don't know a damn thing. I'm your Queen. I'm supposed to know what's going on."

"All in good time, Fair Lass. All in good time," he continued, obviously trying to project a great mood, despite his worries about his Queen being pissed at him.

When she kicked and squirmed on his shoulder, he whacked her on the ass and left his hand on her, rubbing the lick in.

"Jeff, dammit," she hissed out. "I am not going to let you distract me with sex."

When they got there, he reached a hand down to open the outer door of their suite, keeping his other hand clamped firmly across her hips in case she tried to squirm free while he was distracted with the door. "I could dump a few pheromones and you would."

"And that wouldn't be fair, and you know it," she grumbled, wondering if he were going to do it, anyway. The few, half-hearted licks he had given her ass, in addition to her feeling his strength as he casually held her on his shoulder, had already gotten her to thinking that they could have their talk after he had made love to her. Get your mind back on the things at hand, she admonished herself just before he walked through into the bedroom and casually tossed her onto the bed.

"Jeff," she squealed as she sailed through the air to land on her back. The top she had on certainly displayed her braless breasts, and her bounce on the bed caused them to shake and move around, evidenced by where Jeff's eyes were now locked.

"I want to talk to you, and I'm a bit pissed at you..."

Redirecting his eyes to her face and grinning, he interrupted her with, "We replaced the molding above the window because I accidentally blew a chunk out of it when I tried to make my pen spin on the table."

While she was digesting that, the look on her face priceless, he slipped her shoes off, tossing them haphazardly onto the floor, then sat on the side of the bed to remove his own shoes. Sitting back against the pillow, he pulled her alongside him, putting an arm around her and kissing the top of her head. "I didn't want to lie to you, but I didn't feel like going into detail then, so I just avoided the issue."

"And outside?" she asked, turning to him, a bit of anger left, but curiosity overriding most of it.

He took one of the ball bearings out of his pocket and handed it to her. "One of these."

Incredulously, "This is what made all the noise?"

There was a hesitation, then, "Uh, it and the contact it made when it hit a rock way up the mountain ... at a considerable velocity."

She sat for a minute thinking about what he said, then, "Jeff, what is this thing? It looks like a big, shiny steel marble."

"It's part of a worn-out axle bearing that came off one of Dave's cranes."

Diana handed the steel ball back, watching him slip it back into his pocket, and sat up farther so she could turn and look her husband fully in the eye. "You took that and..."

"I put the bearing on the end of a stick, held it up in front of me and ... pushed it toward the mountain with ... a little more velocity than I expected."

"You pushed it toward the mountain? A 'little' more velocity? A 'little' velocity made all that noise?" she asked. "And just how in the hell did you push it toward the mountain?" she finished sarcastically, wondering if he were teasing her.

Jeff cleared his throat, "Uh, we'll talk about how in a minute, but Little One said something about measuring its velocity as a percentage of the speed of light if I had pushed the steel ball much faster. It developed quite a bit of kinetic energy, as it was, obviously." He didn't bother to add anything about Little One's warning.

Diana whacked him on the chest with a palm, then unconsciously rubbed her stinging hand as she said, "If that rock had been close to you, you could have killed yourself, and ... I'm not going to be put off. How did you do that? Push that thing?"

"Uh..." At Diana's glare, he went quickly on. "Little One is teaching me to open a ... gateway, uh, a pathway to the dimensions. I focused the dimensional power behind the steel ball and sort of pushed."

"'Sort of pushed, '" she mimicked. Then after a moment, her suspicions building, "Something like that happened in the living room, too, didn't it? You had to do something to the window molding because of it?" At his nod, "Back to the fact that you could have killed yourself," his Queen reminded, determined.

Seeing the look on her face, he quickly went on, trying to distract the direction her thoughts were obviously taking. "Let's not make a mountain out of that proverbial molehill, and besides, we need to talk about something else, or someone else, as the case may be – Hope."

Diana's face changed, softened. "Okay, we'll table the discussion about the explosion for now, but it's not over. About Hope, you need to start thinking about her wedd..."

"No."

"No? No, what?" his Queen said, frowning.

"None of you seem to listen to me about Hope, and admittedly, I almost gave in..."