Chapter 446

The Retreat

Jeff was in the living room talking with a rather dazed Mike Hall who had just returned from his discussion with Selina. The AI interrupted to address Jeff. “General Whitworth would like to speak with you on line one.”

The Prime picked up the phone, said hello and listened for several seconds. “Yes, Sir. I’m on the way.”

Putting the phone back in its cradle, Jeff turned to Mike. “Something has come up and I need to talk with the General. Don’t be bashful. Explore and use the facilities as you please. Like I said before, you might want to spend some time on the phone with your fiancée and bring her up to date on what’s going on. This is your home until Frank sends you to your new job, so enjoy yourself.”

Seeing the look on the young man’s face, Jeff grinned and continued. “Don’t let Selina’s intelligence get to you. She tends to intimidate without even realizing it. She’s just naturally curious to learn anything and everything she can, and ... she digests knowledge at an appalling rate.”

Hall seemed to shake himself mentally enough to let out a chuckle. “Thanks, she is rather...”

Jeff laughed aloud and said, “Yep, she certainly is.”

“Thanks, Jeff, uh, Selina did ... amaze me.” Then changing the subject, “Marie gets off at three, so I had planned to call her around four.” After a slight hesitation, “Look Jeff, I didn’t mean to interfere...”

“You’re not,” Jeff insisted. “Sometimes, things just happen. Relax and enjoy yourself until Frank gets back and has time to talk to you. Your new job is assured, and you might stress that to your fiancée so she won’t worry. Duty calls. I’ve got to run,” he finished with a grin as he turned to hurry out.

When the Prime walked into the General’s office, he motioned to the coffee. “Grab a cup and relax, Colonel. I have a decision to make, and I would value your input on the subject.”

“Do I have a mission?” Jeff asked a moment later as he seated himself and took a sip of the coffee.

“Don’t start,” Whitworth said, a hint of irritation in his voice. “You know damn well that isn’t going to happen as long as you are the only one that thing will obey,” he said, motioning toward the back of the Retreat. “Particularly with a group of what seems to be aggressive aliens heading this way. It’s preposterous even to hope that the human race has anything that could touch that enormous ship of theirs if they decide to sit up in high orbit and bombard the planet. And with those damn Paladins, I’m worried that we’re going to take heavy losses, even with Ship and our interceptors.”

“Ship is building weapon platforms as fast as she can, but she’s a battleship, not a shipyard. No way will we have enough platforms to completely shroud Earth with an impenetrable barrier before the aliens get here,” Jeff reasoned.

Whitworth sighed, “And ... there’s always the possibility that they are friendly, so, even if you could convince Ship to leave Earth unguarded and go after them, we might wind up starting an interstellar war, especially if they managed to get off a message before she destroyed them.”

“So, I sit here chewing my nails while my team goes out again and again,” Jeff growled.

Whitworth almost reminded Jeff that he was no longer a Lieutenant with a team, but rather a Colonel who made the decisions and sent others out, but he knew better than to push the Prime. He had tried that once and it didn’t work out too well. “Dammit, Jeff, come back full-time with me. I...”

“Sorry, Sir. It’s not going to happen, and you know the reasons why. I’ll gladly go on special missions with my team, and I’ll command Ship if she has to fight for Earth, but I’m still not going full-time anymore. I’ve had enough military life to last me forever.”

Whitworth took out a cigar, prepped it, lit up and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Ah, hell, we’ve been over this a dozen times, but I called you for another reason. Something has come up that’s just... different, and I need your input.” He turned to face Jeff fully, hesitated for a second and said, “Actually, it’s been going on for several weeks, but it has now reached the culmination stage. I have to make a final decision, and ... I’m of two minds about the thing, because it could change the whole fucking concept. You see, there’s this fucking anthropologist who...”

The meeting took a bit more than an hour, and Jeff walked out chuckling while thinking about a line from a poem that seemed to fit so perfectly: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

Oh, I can’t wait to tell Diana what the General has gotten himself into, he thought as he went looking for his Clan Queen.

The Prison Planet

... After cleaning up from their meal, Morales and the wolves sat by the fire as the wind howled outside. “Want to crack some of those pecans?” he asked his friends.

Both wolves looked toward the rolling case that contained the pecans. “I guess that’s a yes,” he said with a chuckle.

How did Lila understand me? Did she pick up on the word “pecans” that quickly, or is she already doing whatever Lobo does to understand me so well? Shit, I wish I had the education to figure out what’s going on.

After dragging a flat rock in front of him, he positioned his cooking seat a little closer to the fire. With a fist-sized rock, he experimented until he learned to tap the nuts with just enough force to crack their soft shells, which, if done correctly, resulted in two perfect pecan halves. Of course, that happened about half the time, but even then, it only took a little effort with a slender hardwood stick, sharpened to a point, to pick the meat out of the shell.

With one piece for Lila, one for Lobo and one for himself, and ... with time out for cracking the nuts, they were not going to get fat eating pecans. But ... it passed the time away. In addition, he thought, The pecans are damn good.

Morales could feel the cold air blowing through the firing port on the door, and to a lesser extent, the hole he had made so Lobo could push the door open. Then griping again about his error, “Shit, I didn’t have to cut the push hole all the way through. That was just plain dumb. Oh, well. I can fill it partway in with a scrap of hide and some mud like I did the cracks between the logs in the wall, and Lobo will still have a surface to push the door with.”

Looking around the cave at the shelves and equipment, some brought from Earth and others made here on 2214, he smiled at another thought. I’m not a neat freak, but it used to piss me off if the woman I was with made comments about not wanting to go to a bachelor’s pad. Which really meant that she expected my place to be a pigsty. I don’t understand how anybody can be that fucking lazy. It’s just easier to find things if you put them back where they belong to start with. Not that I have that much, but by damn I’m going to one of these days. Come spring, I expect to have at least a table and chair made, and I still have to fire my pottery. Focusing on the clay jugs lined up along the wall awaiting firing, Hmmm, that might prove to be interesting, but what the fuck, on a clear day, I can shovel the snow out of the pit and fire the clay just as well in the winter as any other time.

Taking out the bear hide, he mounted it on the log wall. It reached from the beginning of the wall almost to the door, leaving some areas around the uneven cave wall that would require more hide to finish out. For tonight, he just stuffed pieces of hide in the push hole and the firing port, then hung a hide over the door, temporarily.

“That will do for now,” he told the wolves. “Tomorrow, I’ll attach the hide more securely so it will clear the supports when we slide the door open.”

That done, he stood looking at the stack of logs he had already brought in and cut to length for firewood. He had a good-sized pile of dry deadwood from storms or other causes, but also some green wood that he had cut down. “I fully expect 2214 is going to get extremely cold before the winter is over, so I’m going to need some pretty hot fires to keep us warm, and that means that a lot of the wood has to be split. Logs that haven’t been split can form a base that will last longer at night, though, so I can get by without splitting everything, but there’s still one hell of a lot of work to do to get enough split to last the winter. Oh, well, I’ll get it done sooner or later.”

Still feeling the cool air from farther inside the cave, he again wondered where the breeze came from. “Shit, I shouldn’t be too picky. Without the air flowing out of the cave, I would be stifled with smoke in here, but I’m still going to have to, at least partially, block off the area so we can have more heat in here. I can’t heat the whole fucking cave.”

He was tired, and with the snow falling and the wind howling outside, he tucked in for the night.

The sun was well over the horizon before Gertrude let out her morning squawk. Morales had been awake a few minutes, but had lain there wondering how long it would be before she awakened.

Grinning at her morning ruckus, he glanced toward the entrance. There was very little light leaking around the door, and that meant that little of the cold wind could leak past, either. Chances are that a second layer of hides or a second hide on the outside of the wall will give me even better insulation ... if I have enough hides left after I insulate the second wall that I’m going to have to build farther inside the cave. Then again, that wall might not work too well. If I put up too much of a barrier, it’ll slow or stop the airflow from farther inside the cave, and the smoke will wind up being a bitch in here. Oh, well, maybe I can get by without a second wall. I’ll just have to wait and see how cold the airflow gets.

After reaching to turn the lantern on, he hurried to dress before slipping on his fatigue jacket until the cave warmed up some. “I’m going to have to make a coat. This jacket just won’t cut it in really cold weather. I wonder why the General’s bunch didn’t send me a heavy coat to start with. Hmmm, maybe they didn’t think I would live long enough to need one. Instead, they gave me the fatigue jacket. I did find some kind of coat and matching pants in the resupply case, but both are made of some weird material that’s way too thin for really cold weather. Must be some type of rain outfit or something. Oh, well, sooner or later, my clothes will wear out and I’ll have to make my own, anyway. Might as well learn by making a coat.”

He had gotten up twice during the night to add wood to the fire, but it had burned low again. Grabbing an armload of firewood, he chuckled to himself. Damn, that cold air wakes you up in a hurry. Shortly, he had the fire going well.

A few minutes later, he stood with his back to the fire, warming himself as he waited for the coffee to perk.

Nature called and, with the fatigue jacket on, he started for the door when he stopped. “Well, that other coat isn’t very thick, but I guess I could put it on over my jacket. The two will be better than just this fatigue jacket by itself.”

The second coat was longer, big enough to easily slip over his fatigue jacket, and had a hood, so he pulled it over his head, noting the Velcro at the inside bottom of the coat. Weird, he thought as he put his weapon belts on and took the hide down from the door so it would slide back. As soon as the way was clear, the wolves bounded past him. Quickly pulling the door closed to conserve as much heat as possible, he was well behind the wolves by the time he was clear of the entranceway. “Fuck, so much for a couple of inches,” he griped as he stood staring at what appeared to be at least a foot of snow while the wolves were jumping and sliding in it.