Chapter 207

Just before they stepped through the hatch, Jeff put out a restraining hand to touch Arlene's shoulder.

"There's something else."

Oh, crap, Arlene thought, knowing he was serious, and wondering what else he had in store for her.

"Since you're my second in command, you'll, of course, go with us on the mission to take out the diplomat and his security, so you need to spend some time training with Art and Kayla."

Arlene turned to stare at him. "But you've just given me..."

" ... an hour a day with the Ship, worked into your schedule whenever you decide the time is appropriate. The mission training will only be for a few days. You need to learn the basic helmet functions and how to handle a pulse rifle, just like Art is doing."

"So, I'm really going with you on the mission?"

"On the Ship. You'll wait in the Ship while we take care of the two assholes, but I have better sense than to take anyone into a combat situation – or a potential combat situation – without giving them all the training I can under the circumstances. We seem to have some time, so you need to train. Just bear with me, please..."

But Arlene was shaking her head and chuckling. "You read me wrong, Hubby," she said, tapping him on the chest with a finger. "To borrow one of your terms, you bet your sweet bippy I want to learn how to shoot one of those rifles and wear a battle helmet. What about the camouflage suits?"

"Yeah, those too," he chuckled.

Arlene jumped to clamp her legs around his waist and lock her arms around his neck. "You're going to get so lucky tonight, Husband," she declared, her face only inches from his, then glued her mouth to his for a moment. "Your Number One is going to fuck your eyes out. Bet on it."

The two of them laughing, he put her down and assisted her with her coat. "Now scat. The Ship says she'll help teach me to control the surge of power I've been using to push the steel balls."

Arlene looked up at her tall husband. "Here? She's going to teach you how to do that in here?"

The Prime was nodding his head. "I suppose. I spent some time with her while we were sleeping, just as you did. Apparently, she thinks the safest place for me to learn is here, inside her. And don't even bother to ask. I have no idea, but I do trust her. I'll see you back at the Retreat when we're finished."

"But..."

"I'm as safe as if I were in my Momma's arms. Now go tell your sisters about your new job."

Kissing him hard again, she turned and went through the hatch, grinning as she felt the wet disappear from her panties. Turning at the bottom of the ramp when she stepped into the snow, she waved toward the invisible Ship, assuming that her husband would be watching.

He smiled as he turned away from the seemingly transparent side of the Ship, knowing that he was looking at what the Ship called a vision screen, but the image was so real that he was hard-put to believe he wasn't staring directly at his young wife.

"I'm all yours," he told the Ship. "Where do you want me?"

Art opened the outer door of their suite and started in, his exuberance obvious as he blurted, "We have a couple of hours before supper. Want to take up where we left off this ... morning?" he wound down as he stepped fully into their living room and saw Hope sitting there with his wives. As he clamped his mouth shut, he noticed Hope's easel in a corner and her drawing paraphernalia on the coffee table. Oh, shit. I was supposed to be subtle with her, woo her as Jeff called it. Now I've...

Amazing him, Hope giggled and slapped her hand over her mouth.

"Hope," he stammered out. "I had no idea you were here. I mean ... Uh, I apologize..."

"Oh, hush, Husband," Bobby said with a chuckle. "You should see your face."

"We've been talking all afternoon," Sandra added. "Hope knows all about you."

Art had no idea what that meant, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to ask about it.

Further confusing him, his wives came quickly over, each grabbing him into a fierce hug and kissing him in turn, falling just short of rubbing themselves on him – all with a grinning Hope watching.

Why are they doing this in front of Hope? Surely, they know this will scare her away. Somehow, his confused mind lingered on Jeff's comment a few days earlier when the Prime had said very earnestly that he did not understand women.

Despite the embarrassment, Art was barely able to keep an erection from forming as his new wives' breasts pushed against him, but the fear of permanently offending the teenager won out – barely. Before he could think of anything to say, Sandra and Bobby grabbed his hands and dragged him to the couch where they plopped down on either side of him.

"So, tell us about your day," Sandra demanded as Bobby and Hope grinned, further mystifying Art, his expression setting all three females to giggling.

"Uh, well ... I spent a couple of hours learning how to strip down and reassemble the Mark Three-A Pulse Rifle. Tomorrow, I get to learn to do it in darkness," he added, his voice suddenly a lot more tentative. "We put on helmets and watched Kayla do it today. She's just ... amazing. I'll never be that good."

Shit, he thought, I'm bragging on another woman in front of my wives. How many more ways can I screw up this afternoon? "I didn't mean..." he began, before a laughing Bobby cut him off.

"We know what you meant, and we agree; she is amazing. Now go on and tell us the rest."

"Well, we went out to Security's range and shot for an hour or so." His enthusiasm about the rifle temporarily overcoming his worry about Hope, he continued, "I've never fired a rifle at a distant target that you didn't have to compensate for bullet drop, but on the Mark Three-A, you don't have to change the setting on the sights from one hundred meters out to a thousand, and well beyond. It has what first looks like a scope, but it isn't. Once you learn how – and I haven't – you can control the magnification, or zoom as the case may be, by using the helmet, and if you're really good with the helmet, it will display a set of cross hairs to indicate where the rifle's pulse will hit, and that section of the faceplate will zoom in just as the sight on the rifle does. That function is new, so they tell me.

"That's all way beyond my abilities at present, but I can, at least, use the sights on the rifle as well as the manual zoom on the sight. The weapon is equipped with something that's probably akin to a gyroscope. With that activated, I can hit the target at a thousand meters while standing. Not prone. Not with a rest; just plain standing freehand. That rifle is totally amazing. Of course, I'm talking about just hitting the target itself, not the X at the center. Carter says that Jeff can snap shoot the X out of that thousand meter target with the Three-A – and he can do it all day long. Never missing. I can get close to the X on occasion, lying prone with the bipod extended and the gyroscope to stabilize the rifle, but Jeff does it freehand with a snapshot."

Hope didn't know anything about shooting, but Bobby and Sandra did. Jeff's snap shooting the X at a thousand meters got their total attention. Art had never quite seen the look they had on their faces as Bobby asked, "Do you suppose that Jeff would let us..."

"Not my call. All I can say is to wait until you think the time is right, then ask him."

The two young wives glanced at each other, a look passing between them.

"We spent the rest of the time with the Mark 16 battle helmet. And before you ask, I can usually get it on my head correctly," he derided himself. They thought he was kidding – he wasn't. "And I can manually make the visor retract and manually change the channels on the radio, but the rest may as well be in Swahili as far as I'm concerned. The Sergeant gave me a list of exercises that I'm supposed to work with to help me prepare for the mental functions of the helmet, but right now, to me, the thing is mostly just a weight with a clear piece of armor glass for a visor and a fantastic radio that I can use manually, at least, to some extent. The Sergeant hasn't even touched on the vid capabilities yet, except to slave my helmet to his so I could watch Kayla field strip and reassemble the rifle in the dark.

"Kayla said she used a helmet off-planet, but it wasn't a battle helmet. She claims she's still struggling to learn the battle helmet's functions, but she's so far ahead of me that I barely understand what she's talking about. I can change channels manually and talk to others, but there are so many channels with their separate functions that even that is confusing.

"The exercises are supposed to help to teach me to concentrate on certain things that the helmet is keyed to. Well, that isn't exactly right. The helmet has sensors that, if it is positioned and calibrated correctly for the wearer, will sense activity in certain areas in the wearer's brain. When one of those areas is active – well, peaks to be more precise – the helmet will respond in a preprogrammed manner. There are a number of these areas in the brain that the helmet monitors, and there are a number of different ways that these areas can peak. For instance, two quick thoughts to activate a certain area produces something that I suppose is similar to a double click of a computer mouse.

"The Sergeant gave me a short tour of the helmet's basic functions. There were things similar to drop-down menus and icons. Some of the things made sense – most didn't, and ... these can be displayed on the inside of the visor, sort of an advanced heads up display, or directly input to the optic nerve if the visor is retracted – and the wearer knows how to activate the function."

Bobby shifted in her seat. "So that Security officer standing at the foot of the driveway..."

" ... has access to a startling amount of information," Art finished for her.

"And you're learning to do all that?" Sandra asked.

But Art was shaking his head. "Unh uh. I'm learning, and learning only the basics – the very basics. It would take a long time for me to learn even what the Sergeant demonstrated today, and he mentioned a lot of other things that he didn't actually demonstrate. We did watch a video of a stage one overview of a mock battle from the warrior's viewpoint as he used his helmet to identify enemy troops, their armament and capabilities, receive orders, direct covering fire for his unit, and a host of other things. The Sergeant assured me that was only the basics.

"According to him, it usually takes months to become proficient with the general capabilities of the helmet, using the mental aspects. And none of the higher-level functions can be accessed without learning the mental controls. There are no specific manual controls for them."

Enthused, he continued, "Kayla told me a little about her part in the battle in Atlanta when they came to rescue us. She had never been in combat before, well, other than when the Matthews fought those people here in the Retreat, and I strongly suspect she was going to be by Jeff's side, no matter what. As I mentioned, she was familiar with a regular helmet, but had very little experience with a battle helmet. She said the mass of information she was receiving during the battle was confusing in its abundance. The helmet was trying to show her targets as well as friendly forces. She said that later, when she had time to think about it, she suspected that Jeff was sending her information via his helmet. She did manage to kill one of the mercenaries, but later thought that Jeff had left the target for her so that she would feel that she had done something constructive during the firefight.

"She also said that Jeff slapped her flat a couple of times just before bullets tore through the weeds and brush where her head had been a half second before. To listen to her talk about him, it seems that she's convinced that he's some kind of super machine or something, or that his whole team is a super machine. She said the team had destroyed that much larger group of well trained and well-armed mercenaries in such a short period of time that the battle seemed almost unreal. To her, the team had acted as if it were one person. There was very little communication, and what resulted was in the team's personal battle code that kept the battle channel mostly clear, yet they responded to commands, again, almost as if they were one person."

Art sat back and crossed his legs, realizing that he had become enamored with the telling of his day. Clearing his throat and calming his voice, he continued with, "Today, I've come to realize that Jeff's team isn't just a group of well-trained men and women. They are also very intelligent. No one that isn't could ever learn to use one of those helmets proficiently. I've always thought I was a pretty sharp guy, but that thing has humbled me. Jeff just wants me to be able to perform the basic functions with it, so that I can become a part of this mission, but I want to learn how to use the helmet the way his team does – the way it was designed to be used."