Chapter 292

Martha's Restaurant

Steve had left a nice tip on the table for the waitress at Martha's Restaurant, but when he got to the cash register with their bill, the woman glanced at it and refused his card. "Already paid for," she insisted. When Steve tried to question her, she told them that the owner had said to not accept any money from them because the meal was already paid for. "Have a nice afternoon," she said with a smile, then turned to her next customer.

In the parking lot, Steve and Marcie had talked Meg into driving on to Denver so the three of them could catch a movie.

"You need to get accustomed to how your new Cherokee handles," Steve reasoned. "And besides, how long has it been since you've had a night out, huh? Hey, I'm buying, so let's do it."

"But it will be late when we get back. I don't want to be a nuisance to the Matthews after all they've done for me. Maybe we should go back and pick up my clothes and I can just go on home."

"I can solve that with a phone call," Marcie reasoned as she took out her cell.

"And besides," she added after ending her short conversation with Diana, "we want you to spend the night with us. If you need to, we can stop by your house on the way back to pick up a change of clothes and ... check on your animals while we're there."

"And..." Steve said with a grin, "surely you want to drive your new Cherokee farther than this short distance."

Meg Kimbrel gave in with a smile. She definitely wanted to drive her new vehicle.

Just before going into the theater, Meg and Marcie used the restroom. As Meg washed her hands, she glanced in the mirror and ... froze. "Oh," she whispered. "I look so..."

Marcie stepped up behind her and whispered in her ear. "Helen will give you lessons and a couple things that will make you look older when you need to. It's too bad that Steve couldn't see the look on your face just then."

"I ... I guess I haven't really looked closely at myself in a mirror since early this morning. I didn't expect..."

Marcie took Meg's hand and led her out of the restroom before the other women heard what they were talking about. Outside, Steve stood smiling at them.

"She noticed when she looked in the mirror," Marcie told her husband.

"Thought so. Thought so," Steve replied, his smile big as could be.

After watching the movie for thirty minutes, Steve whispered to the two women. "I think we chose wrong. Want to go on home?"

"Suits me," Marcie said. "It's boring and the acting is awful. I was almost asleep."

"I'm ready, too," Meg responded, "but I hate that you spent your money for nothing."

"I didn't spend it for nothing," he responded. "I got to spend time with two beautiful women."

As the three walked up the aisle toward the theater exit, Meg thought about what Steve had said. I'm far from beautiful, but when I put on my bra this morning, my breasts were standing up like they did when I was twenty, but I didn't notice much difference in my face then – I do now. Whatever this Healer thing did, it is apparently still working, and not just on my face. My bra feels far too tight, and my nipples are more sensitive than I can ever remember them being. Jeff and Diana told me my body would change and I could control how young I looked, but I didn't really believe them. I want to find another mirror where I can really look at myself, not just a hurried glance like I had in the bathroom.

As Steve held the door open for them to exit the theater and step into the hallway, Meg's thoughts continued, I just walked up the aisle at a normal pace without the slightest bit of pain. I can't believe this has happened to me. I feel absolutely wonderful.

Outside the mall, she handed the key to Steve. "You drive, I'm a little tired," she fibbed, wanting to have time to think on the way back.

As Steve reached out for the key and their hands touched, she felt a tingle and shortly could feel herself becoming wet. What's wrong with me? I'm lusting after my best friend's husband. Afraid they would smell her wet pussy and realize what was going on, she insisted that she sit in back and Marcie ride in the front.

"But it's your vehicle," Marcie tried.

"I want to see what it feels like riding back here," Meg said, getting in.

Marcie smiled at her friend and slid in the front, almost certain she knew why Meg had insisted on riding in the back seat. She's been enhanced and now she's turned on by my husband. But she's being discreet about it. Hmmm. Do I care? Am I jealous? Steve doesn't have a clue, she thought, barely suppressing a giggle. Men never know.

The Ship

Diana had relented about staying on the Ship the entire time Arlene was gone, but would not budge from her position come bedtime. Shortly after their meal, the Retreat aglow with Christmas lights, the Matthews were back on the Ship. Most of Jeff's wives went to their suite, but Diana headed for the bridge. With a sigh, Jeff followed her.

He grabbed her hand as they walked down the hallway. "Look, Babe, Arlene is in very little danger since that scout she's in is stealthed to the gills. Hell, it could hover fifty feet over a nationally televised football game and no one would know it was there. Also, you don't realize just how much training our daughter has received in the last weeks. Remember, a couple of hours of our time translates into one hell of a lot more time in Ship's simulator. And that reminds me that you, Helen – all my wives – need to pick up your training. Oh, I know that both you and Helen have spent some time in Ship's simulator, but I need for everyone to get serious about it. When we leave Earth on this Ship, there is no telling what we'll encounter. We all need to be trained – fully trained. That means that every last one of us needs to be able to operate one of Ship's shuttles, at the very minimum, not to mention that everyone should be able to understand how to operate all of her systems. You don't have to know everything about them, but you do need to know how to operate everything, at least minimally. My wives, my alphas and their wives are going to be crew. Although most will be trained for specific duties, we all need to be able to fill in, in a pinch."

Diana stopped and turned to her husband. "All right. I'll admit that my focus has been elsewhere, but I promise that I'll spend some serious time in the simulator, but first I want my daughter home..."

But Jeff was shaking his head. "Di, this surveillance of the aliens is an ongoing thing. As we've discussed, Ship thinks there's a very strong chance they will attack Earth. The only way we will know when they start this way is to continue to have someone watching them all the time. Right now, the only ones of us who are trained for a scout are yours truly, Ann and Arlene. Ship is adamant that she will escort me if I leave this planet. That would leave Earth defenseless while I'm gone. Until someone else is trained, I'll have to continue using Ann and Arlene. If these beings do attack, and Ship thinks that the alien ship is designed for just that, our only hope to reduce the possibility of monumental loss of life is to know when they're going to do it. One strike by a massive object coming in at high velocity would kill millions of people, and we have no real idea what other weapons they have.

"Ship will know if they drop out of warp within a light minute of Earth, but what if they drop out farther from Earth and drift in? No matter how many pickets we put out – space is big. And ... we have no idea what their stealth capabilities are. Hell, we know very little about their capabilities at all, but what we have found out is because of Ann's surveillance, and that information was chilling, to say the least. They're capable of easily moving large objects with those tenders, as we have called them. They obviously have what science fiction writers have termed tractor beams, and not only can they move objects with them, but they can apply enormous acceleration to those objects. We have no idea how big an object they can move, but judging from how they fired those boulders off at high velocity for target practice, logic would dictate they have the ability to move something a whole lot bigger.

"Ship also says that those ships that were taking part in the target practice are designed as heavily armed attack craft. If they have any type of force field to shield them, Earth won't have a chance, even if they come down low enough for our fighters or missile defenses to engage them."

"You have others training now," Diana began.

"Yep, and I'll have more in training soon, but until their training is completed, both for the scouts and the interceptors, and Ship is satisfied that they can do the job, Arlene and Ann are it. And ... I'm just as scared for them as you are," he said, taking her in his arms for a moment.

After a gentle kiss, they continued to the Bridge. "I want to sit on one of the command couches so I can have a deeper contact with Ship. If I am to be the Clan Queen and we're going to be on this Ship for an extended period of time, I need to know her a lot better."

As Diana relaxed on one of the command seats/couches, Jeff left to practice his TK on the Ship's range. Sitting at the small table, he waited as Ship materialized an open container of one inch steel balls.

"My Prime," Jeff heard mentally, "your mind is capable of several concurrent processes. You often do this unconsciously. Walking while thinking about something, or talking to someone as you stroll along, for example. From your mind I can also see several examples of doing separate things with each hand. All of your race is capable of doing several things at once. In battle, as you undoubtedly already know, you might well have to do several things at the same time in order to survive. You would do well to develop your TK until it becomes an unconscious function, just as you can move your hand to grasp something without consciously thinking of all the separate steps required to do so."

At Ship's suggestion, the Prime started the exercise by having several balls circling above his head while trying to hit a target a quarter mile away with another ball. Although he managed to do both, his accuracy was much better if he weren't trying to keep the balls aloft at the same time. He continued firing one ball after another at the target while maintaining the circling balls in an approximate three foot orbit above his head. Initially, all the orbiting balls were equally spaced out as they circled, but as he tried to focus on his accuracy, the circling balls began to cluster together. Soon, their initial spacing was completely lost and they might as well have been one ball, but his accuracy on the distant target had improved while he lost focus on the spacing of the circling balls.

"Start again," Ship said aloud. "Space the balls equally and maintain that spacing as you throw other balls at the target."

"Yeah," Jeff almost snarled, sweat already beginning to run down his face. "You should try it some time. It's like rubbing your stomach while patting your head, only about ten times worse."

"I don't have a stomach ... or a head," Ship responded with an odd inflection in her spoken voice, as a half dozen balls left the box on the table and began whirling around in a circle similar to Jeff's, each ball perfectly spaced from the next. At the same time, other balls began leaving the box and flashing downrange to hit dead center on the target. The circling balls picked up speed until they were producing a humming sound in their circle. Finally, they were moving so fast that they looked like a gleaming disk, while other balls were coming out of the box and going downrange at many times the speed of sound, producing a near continuous flash, as their impact became a constant roar.

"All right. All right," Jeff said, trying to hold back a grin. "I know when I'm beaten."

The balls spinning in their circle, suddenly slowed and played follow the leader back into their constantly-full box, and the ones that were going through the center of the target stopped also.

"You are not beaten. You can do this as well. You have the capability. You just need to..."

"Yeah, I know ... practice," Jeff said with a sigh.

He continued to practice and was getting better at keeping the balls equidistant in their circle while he fired others downrange.

"We need something to tax your mind while you continue to develop your TK. I suggest that you begin with a detailed discussion of your plans for the fortress while you continue what you are doing with the balls. Your TK needs to be almost instinctive, just as your martial arts training has developed reflexive blocks and strikes."

Jeff let out a groan, but began the discussion. The sweat on his brow soon increased, and his accuracy downrange dropped significantly, but he forced himself to continue.

His accuracy had peaked for a few minutes – not good, but better – but as his mind tired, he began to miss the target completely and the circling balls were losing their symmetry. "Time to stop," Ship said a few seconds before Jeff would have said the same thing.

The Prime entered the lounge and sat thinking as he drank a glass of iced tea. Tea finished, he put the glass on the counter and headed to the bridge. Seating himself on his command couch, he stared at his wife on the other couch as she lay with her eyes closed and a smile on her face. There were damp places on her tight top where her nipples were leaking. Merging with the Ship's mind, he looked at Di with his eyes while also 'seeing' her mentally via the Ship's mind. Both of them were now fully submerged in Ship's vast intellect. He had merged with the Ship and a wife before, mostly Arlene, but now his intention was drastically different.