Chapter 423

The Retreat

Arlene and Ann left to clean up after making love to their husband. Thirty minutes later, Diana and Selina found Jeff in the weight room with Kayla. One glance at Diana’s face and the Prime knew he was in trouble, but had no clue what he had done – or not done.

“Hey, Babe,” he said past a grunt as he pushed the weight bar into its rack with Kayla helping to guide it the last inch or so. After handing him a small towel, and a glance at Diana, Kayla went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water for her husband.

The Prime, clad only in shorts, got up to sit in a chair to wipe the sweat from his glistening body. Then with a thank you, he accepted the water from Kayla. The Queen stood waiting while he drank, an odd expression on her face.

Finally, “Jeff, I...”

“No.”

A frustrated Diana almost whined before she caught herself. “What do you mean, ‘no’?” she responded, her voice flat. “You didn’t even let me finish the sentence.”

“We have already discussed this. You are not going. You’re the Clan Queen. It’s too dangerous.”

Standing next to Diana, Selina sighed and unconsciously stood tall. “We have experience in a scout,” she pointed out. “To be more specific, far more experience than anyone else here.”

Jeff frowned at the almost seven-year-old. “So you’re asking to go, too? Your answer is an emphatic no, as well, and the experience you have was all simulated,” Jeff tried.

“And ... you have already told us that Ship’s simulator is just as real as life itself,” Diana inserted, her voice hard.

“Di, I...”

“You’re going to put your daughter and Ann at risk in an interceptor, not to mention Bill and Kathy. Why are our lives more important than theirs?”

“Selina is a child...” he tried, desperately.

“ ... with more brains than most of us put together,” Diana finished his sentence for him. “And you have told us over and over that the surveillance missions are safe. Now put up or shut up. I love you with all my being, and I respect you more than you will ever know, but I will not stand by while some of my family fights for our survival and I sit on my butt. And before you say anything else, Selina is excellent both as a pilot of a scout or as a copilot. We’re going, or there’s going to be dissension – major dissension – in the Matthews Clan.”

“Baby, I...”

But Diana cut him off again. “Don’t even start, Jeff. Dave and Evie have already spent too much time away, and Bill and Kathy are overdue. We need to find out what the problem is. I promise that we will take all precautions. Come on, Jeff; she and I snuck into that base and blew the thing to hell and gone. This mission is merely surveillance, and you know I won’t risk Selina. We’ll find Bill and Kathy, check with them and send them home while we watch for a while. Someone else can relieve us after a couple of days.”

Kayla, now standing behind her husband, put a hand on his shoulder before meeting the Queen’s eye. “Di, if one of us died, the rest would be devastated, but if you died, the Clan would never recover. And I can’t even think about losing Selina. I’m with Jeff on this. You’re the force that holds us together, and Selina might as well be our child. She’s too precious to lose. You just...”

Selina rolled her eyes but kept silent.

Interrupting Kayla, Jeff blew out a sigh, his mind picking up Diana’s emotions, although he little realized it at the time. “You might as well save it, Kayla. Whenever Di reaches this point, there is no changing her mind.”

Kayla turned to stare at her husband. “You mean you’re going to let her go?” After a slight hesitation, Kayla tried another tack. “You could tell Ship to refuse her...” she started, but shook her head, her voice tapering off, knowing that would only cause real problems – assuming that Ship wouldn’t still give Diana a scout, anyway.

“If I don’t allow her, she’ll just slip off in the middle of the night or some other time when we aren’t expecting it,” Jeff added with resignation.

“We’ve already told everyone else goodbye and our gear is aboard Ship. She said she would have a scout ready and waiting for us.”

“Ah, Di, dammit,” the Prime said, grabbing his Clan Queen in a hug that almost squeezed her breath away before he locked his mouth to hers for a couple of seconds before she reluctantly pulled back.

“Nuh-uh,” she said while shaking her head. “If you keep that up, I’m not going to be in the mood to walk out of here, not to mention that the result would embarrass Selina.”

Selina grinned at the Queen. “As you know, I am well aware of the sexual act and would not be embarrassed, but I think we should endeavor to leave as soon as it is feasible. The possibility does exist that something unforeseen has happened to Bill and Kathy.”

With a resigned sigh, Jeff grabbed Diana’s hand. “Let’s get you started before I change my mind.”

A few minutes later, Jeff and Kayla stood on the flight deck as Diana and Selina, small bags in hand, climbed the stairs to the belly hatch of a scout. “I don’t like this,” Jeff said under his breath as he and Kayla waited for the Clan Queen and Selina to stow their gear and get settled in the scout’s bridge.

Shortly, the craft glided out of the line of other scouts and interceptors to stop momentarily as Jeff and Kayla saluted. After flashing its marker lights, it moved smoothly to the big hatch, glided through, turned its nose skyward and disappeared as it clawed its way toward space with its inertialess drive.

Jeff just stood staring at the closed port until Ship advised them that the scout was clear of the planet and had gone to warp.

“I hope I haven’t screwed up,” he whispered barely loudly enough for Kayla to hear.

Kayla punched him on his shoulder. “Don’t start overthinking the situation. Diana is just as capable as any of the rest of us, and probably more so than most.”

“And Selina is a...”

“ ... child,” Kayla finished with a sigh. “In body at least, but her brain is so quick that none of us would ever go head to head with her mentally. She could make fools of us, but ... she doesn’t. She doesn’t flaunt her mental superiority, no matter who she’s talking to. And she no longer talks like an encyclopedia. That is because she wants to be one of us. True, I can’t even imagine her playing with dolls or toys, but she loves all of us, and there’s not one of us that wouldn’t lay down his or her life for Selina – and I imagine she would for us.”

“But she isn’t an adult...” Jeff started.

“ ... and she isn’t a child either, at least mentally. All of us wives have encouraged Diana to talk about their mission...” As Jeff started to object, Kayla touched a fingertip to his lips. “Don’t even bother to say that it was only simulated. We both know you’ll lose that battle. I remember everything I did at the academy, and my missions remain just as firmly in my memory as anything else. All of us have spent numerous hours in a scout, a shuttle or an interceptor. Some of us are good in them, and some are better. Then there’s Arlene and Ann, and Bill and Kathy, who are all in a class by themselves. I can’t come up with an adjective that accurately describes them.”

“I know, but...”

“Let me finish, Lover,” she said as she grinned up at him. “Diana and Selina have spent far more time in a scout than any of us, and they have done things that we haven’t even thought about doing. They outmaneuvered a mine that even Ship says should have destroyed them, and they visited another galaxy. Ship says that everything that happened to them and everything they did was feasible or she would have stopped the scenario. Baby, those two make a wonderful team and their forte is their ability in a scout.”

“But dammit, Diana is our Clan Queen. She can’t just go off running around the galaxy...” Kayla’s laughter caused the Prime to wind down. “Okay. It’s only six light years, but you know what I mean,” he finished, sheepishly.

Kayla grabbed her husband’s hand. “They’re out of communication range by now, so we’re arguing uselessly. Let’s go eat lunch, and then you, Arlene and Ann have an appointment with some hotshot pilots at the academy, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeff grumbled. “And I better damn well see some improvement or there are going to be some people wishing they had tried harder.”

Kayla grinned to herself. He has his Colonel face on, and he’s pissed that his Clan Queen defied him and went off with Selina. Those fly boys and girls better have done their homework.

After finishing their lunch, Jeff, Kayla, Arlene and Ann entered the training chamber. As the Prime turned to kiss Kayla, she smiled up at him. “I’m coming too. I’m a pretty good copilot and gunner...”

But Jeff was shaking his head. “I’m taking an interceptor out alone this afternoon. Ship will patch you in as an observer. You can see and hear everything that’s happening to all of us.”

“But Jeff...”

The Prime took her hands, brought them to his lips and kissed them. “Baby, I appreciate the offer. I really do, but I need to do this alone. If they manage to burn my ass, I’ll be pleased. If they don’t learn at the academy, they’ll die in combat. Those Paladins are vicious things with larger crews and what could very well be overwhelming firepower against our two-person interceptors. The only thing I can see that we have going for us is our inertialess drives, and I’m not even absolutely certain of that. Our shields just might be better than theirs, but banking on that is foolhardy. Our pilots need to learn how to stay away from the aliens’ guns. They can’t hit what isn’t there, and the inertialess drive gives us that ability – I hope.”

Ship’s Space Academy

The simulation with the experienced pilots was much different from the one the other cadets had encountered. Generally, everyone was given a completely bogus identity with a different home world and a memory of growing up there, and each started off as a plebe at the space academy. That phase was behind most of the Clan now, and their simulator training kept their Earth backgrounds, but was still just as intense and real as ever before.

The experienced pilots also kept their memories of Earth and what was going on, but attended the academy for the same flight training, other than a beginning orientation period. Since Arlene and Ann left them, the pilots had experienced six more months of intense flight training in the interceptors. There had been many long academy days of maneuvering, the pace gradually building as the academy instructors strove to force the pilots to unlearn Earth flight reflexes and install inertialess drive reflexes. The interceptors’ AIs could assist with this, but the pilots had to understand how best to use them. The AIs were predictable by another AI given a little time, so random evasive maneuvering governed entirely by an AI was out, but it could be used to augment near-instantaneous maneuvering for short periods of time to assist the pilot in the brief but highly critical periods when he or she was in dire trouble during a dogfight.

In other words, when your shields were in the red, an opponent was on your ass and you couldn’t shake him no matter what you did, you gave the AI control for a few seconds of maneuvering because its reflexes were many times faster than yours. Then before the other AI could extrapolate your AI’s next moves, you took over again. Hopefully, the aliens’ AIs weren’t as good as Earth’s, but only combat with the Paladins would prove, or disprove, that hope.

The instructor stood before an unusually quiet class for crack fighter jocks. “I have just confirmed that Arlene and Ann Matthews will be here at 1300 hours,” he said to the accompaniment of a class groan as he motioned to the clock high on the left wall of the classroom.

There was also a quiet, “Ah, shit,” or two that the instructor chose to ignore. But he certainly understood, though he would not condone the comments. Just to be an ass, he delayed for a moment, then as if he had just remembered, “Oh, yes. They will be accompanied by Colonel Matthews, who I am told, will test you himself.”

The room was suddenly so quiet that the instructor briefly wondered if anyone were breathing. Perhaps they weren’t, because a few seconds later there was a collective sigh that was faintly audible.

The instructor, who was not going to have to go up against any of the three – very much to his own relief – just grinned at the sour faces.