Chapter 272

Ann jerked, then sat bolt upright in the command chair. Looking around, her eyes wild, she slumped back when she realized where she was. After her heart rate settled back to something like normal, she slowly came to her feet, her hand tentatively touching her left cheek. The Ship, realizing what she was doing, turned a nearby console screen into a mirror.

Staring at the reflection of her undamaged eye and face, she quietly uttered, "Shit," then slumped down in the console's seat to stare back at Arlene who was sitting on the Captain's command seat, a faint smile on her face.

"I..." Ann began.

Arlene interrupted with, "Ship allowed me to watch your test. You did extremely well, my sister-wife. Congratulations on a job well done."

"I was scared stiff," Ann whispered barely loudly enough for Arlene to hear.

"So?" the young Queen remarked, raising an eyebrow like her father frequently did. "What sane person wouldn't be? Surely you don't think I wasn't scared on my mission, do you? Just to set the record straight, I was petrified. I could hardly believe it when I woke up sitting here in this seat. Ship takes training seriously."

"No duhh," Ann responded, again looking at her reflection, her face perfect, although she knew she had received major damage to her left eye during the mission. "I ... felt little pain until just before I managed to get my scout inside the resistance fighters' cave. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I guess I bent my scout a little," she finished, fighting to keep from giggling hysterically.

"Yeah," Arlene tried to solemnly say, but her grin tended to cancel that out. "It did have a few dings, didn't it? Still, you managed to, uh, land it – more or less. Mine was gone in the energy blast from all those bolts catching up with me. Heck, Girl. You lived through it; I didn't. I think I'm jealous."

Ann managed a weak grin. "So what did you do this time?" she asked, trying to get her mind off what had happened to her.

"Same old thing. Classes and studying." Then nonchalantly, "Oh, I've started learning to fly an interceptor. It's a real badass, and it has some badass weaponry, too."

"I'm not as thrilled about interceptors as I once was. I felt like a mouse that the cat was after. If it hadn't been for the inertialess drive in my scout, he would have finished me in the first few seconds."

"But he didn't because you outsmarted him. You used his overconfidence to lure him into an ambush. But enough of that for now."

"It was more luck than anything else," Ann insisted.

"I disagree, but let's change the subject," the young Queen said as she smiled at her sister-wife and continued. "Now let's see. You've spent a good bit of time in a firefight, and you're pumped full of adrenalin, and then suddenly you're just sitting here with nowhere for that energy to go..."

Ann's face broke into a smile, knowing what Arlene was thinking. "Think he's got it in him? He just finished making love to all of us a few hours ago, but to me, it seems like months since I've had that fabulous cock of his in me."

Arlene stood and hugged Ann. "Yeah, me too. He's never failed us yet, though. I'm ready if you are."

After donning their coats near the hatch, they told the Ship good night and pranced down the ramp arm in arm, both proud of themselves, and each other.

Jeff didn't get to run this morning. He did manage to take time out to inform Security so they wouldn't be waiting for him at the bottom of the drive. Art had already told him that he wasn't going on their morning runs until he finished the pulse rifle training.

Eric awoke and looked at his watch. The movement woke Angie who was still snuggled against him with her head on his shoulder. "Uummm, I love waking up like this, Brother of Mine," she said, yawning. Then full memory of last night came back. "Oh, my goodness. I fainted, didn't I? And I left you high and dry, too? I'm sorry," she finished, bringing the lights up with the remote, her eyes focusing on the tent in the sheet made by Eric's morning hard-on sticking through the fly of his shorts.

Eric grabbed her hand as she reached for him. "I, uh ... can't believe I'm saying this after what happened last night, but we don't have time. You need to go help with breakfast and well ... I need to save my energy for the Sergeant's training. Apparently, he can't seem to fathom that we can fire the pulse rifles without first jogging a couple of miles in the snow, and doing sit-ups, push-ups or chin-ups until we're ready to collapse. He says that firefights often come when you're tired or even exhausted. And besides ... when we make love the first time, we shouldn't be hurried."

Looking back at the tented sheet, "But I can help with that..."

"Not now, Baby," he interrupted. Sitting up while keeping the sheet in place, he leaned to kiss her tenderly. "We started something last night that I've dreamed – make that fantasized about – for a long time. But I want you to be absolutely certain before we take that final step. Once we do, there won't be any going back. What if you wake up the next day and wish we hadn't done it, huh?"

"So, you have doubts, Bro?"

"No, Angie. I certainly do not have doubts. It's something I've wanted for a long time, but ... we are brother and sister. Are you sure you can handle being intimate with your brother? We can never be married..." When Angie started to object, "Well, not legally married."

Angie sat up, grabbed his neck and kissed him hard for a couple of seconds, the sheet falling away to expose her breasts. Eric tried masterfully to keep looking her in the eye as she pulled back, but lost out to a quick glance, which caused him to blush. Angie smiled, but otherwise ignored the incident. "From what I hear from the women, a marriage performed by Jeff and Diana is a lot more ... profound, shall we say, than any other marriage could ever be. The women say we will be able to feel the bond form between us. And besides, Bro," she said with a smirk, "polygamy and incest are the norm around here, and you have two daughters in that other bedroom who will be old enough one of these days, and they're both already madly in love with their father."

"There is no way..." Eric began just as Angie again sealed her mouth to his for a much longer kiss. When she finally pulled back, "Don't make rash statements that will come back to haunt you," she said with a giggle as she jumped out of bed. "Gotta hurry or the other women will think I'm lazy."

As Eric walked into the living room, Jeff and Dave were sitting together on one of the couches, both leaning forward and poring over various diagrams and sketches scattered about the large coffee table in front of them. Realizing that the two Alphas were involved in a discussion, Eric turned to leave.

"Morning, Eric. Don't even think about it," Jeff called out when he realized what Eric was doing.

Eric stopped and turned back to the two men. "I was just killing time until breakfast. I don't want to interrupt. I'll go to the kitchen and drink some coffee so you two can get on with your conference."

"Bull. Get your butt in here. You're now part of the Matthews Clan. We don't have secrets from family members. Besides, you might have a thought about this that we haven't considered. Come sit down, and by the way, anytime you see me sitting around, there will be coffee somewhere near. There are extra cups on the serving cart there. Pour yourself a cup and give us your opinion on our ideas."

"If you're sure..."

"We're sure," Dave responded.

Jeff motioned Eric to sit on the other side of him and indicated the rough sketches on the table. "We're going to put in several gun safes in various places throughout the building. Each Alpha will, of course, keep his as well as his women's pulse rifles in his suite near to hand, and we have smaller rifle safes for that purpose. But ... should an emergency arise, we may not be in or near our suites, so we're also going to need secure storage in other places in order to have the weapons convenient to hand should we be attacked. We don't, however, want the storage areas to be accessible or even visible to an outsider."

Dave broke in, "And concealing them will be relatively easy in the hallways because of the paneling. I can also set the safes up so that the Retreat's AI has control over them just like I did all the TV's and monitors throughout the building."

"But the AI is just a computer program, right? What if..." Eric started.

"If for some reason the AI is down, we can have the safes respond to fingerprint, retina recognition, hell, even voice, as far as that's concerned."

"Or any or all of the above," Jeff added.

"How many weapons are we talking about? Just one each for us and our, uh, women?" Eric wanted to know.

"The General says we can have whatever we need. I'm sure the Sergeant told you that the pulse rifles are set to respond only to a legitimate trooper who is in the database. The rifles could be set to respond only to the trooper that the rifle is assigned to, but in that case he or she could fire only that one weapon. In a firefight, that weapon might be damaged, or something could happen where the trooper must use another trooper's weapon. So the rifles will fire in the hands of any trooper. Of course, the ones you were using didn't have the security feature active, but once you qualify, you will be given your own personal weapon."

"Yeah," Eric responded, "he mentioned it, but with all that has been going on, I didn't dwell on the significance of it, I guess."

"We got caught with our pants down when that so called cleaning crew attacked us. And they damn near succeeded. It was a wake-up call. Then we had the latest failed attack as that team tried coming in from the North. If it had not been for the weather and terrain, they might well have been able to get close enough to hit our home with explosives. Oh, they would have died, and that very quickly, for the Ship would have cratered the area that the rounds came from, but we don't have large scale firefighting equipment ready to hand, and the most important thing: our wives and families could have died."

"What's this I hear about a bunker or something of that nature that you're planning to build?" Eric wondered.

"I'll let Dave answer that," Jeff said, nodding to his friend.

Dave, who was in the midst of sipping his coffee, quickly put the cup on the table. "When the company finishes their current project, they will begin flying in one of their rock borers and its complementary equipment. Not far below the surface of this plateau we're sitting on is granite. We're almost on top of a considerable mountain, to put it mildly. And ... that driveway from hell, as Helen calls it, is far too narrow to tolerate the boring equipment. Even if that weren't the case, the two county roads on the way up here are too narrow, not to say anything about being tree-shrouded in many places, which means there wouldn't be enough overhead clearance. So, everything has to be broken down and flown in, then reassembled on scene. The company's workers are used to doing that because the borers are too big for most highways. The company even has its own flying cranes.

"We had planned to wait until spring before starting on the fortress, but with the last aborted attack, Jeff – and I certainly agree with him – has decided to pay the extra fees and get the work started ASAP. They will probably erect tents over the area to thwart the cold where they're working, just as we did at Martha's Restaurant."

"This, of course, is going to open us up to the danger of our enemies sneaking in as part of the construction group. We'll have to be doubly cautious while this is going on," Jeff commented.

Dave broke in, "All the more reason to get the safes installed and stocked with our new rifles ASAP."

Jeff turned to Eric. "You did memorize the locations of the handguns we've hidden throughout the building?"

"Yeah," Eric responded, "and Angie did too. And now that my girls are being taught to shoot safely, I gave the list to them to memorize."

"Good," Jeff said, then with a grin, "You might warn them that Helen gives frequent pop tests and the location of our hidden handguns will sometimes be on one of those tests."

"Noted," Eric said, his face grim. "I'll make sure they take the list seriously."

After refreshing their coffee, Dave shifted his gaze to his Prime. "Dammit, I'm worried about Evie with this training we're going through. Is the training for our women that's scheduled for next week going to be the same as what we're doing? I mean ... Oh, hell. That rifle is damn near as big as she is. Jogging for a couple of miles over rough terrain with our rifles strapped to our backs before we fire the course is one thing for us Alphas, but it's going to be tougher for Evie."

"Ann and Evie are almost the same size," Jeff added, "but they've been enhanced, and we both know they're tough enough. But, like you, I still worry," Jeff confessed. "That said, I trust Sergeant Higgins. Training is his major function, and he's damn good at it. He won't push them past what they can do."

"I know he's good," Eric said, "I hate to shoot after he's demonstrated a technique. I will never be able to shoot like that."