Chapter 595

Ship

...”We were still here all the time?” Kathy got out with amazement. “Ann told me that Ship’s training was very realistic, but this is beyond...” she finished as her voice trailed off. Bill automatically put an arm about his wife as he cast a look around the room.

“Arlene and Ann had something they needed to do, but they will meet you in the lounge,” Ship told them.

Bill, Kathy, Arlene Ann and the two crews that had flown the training mission with them were all sitting around a big table in Ship’s lounge.

“Well, what do you think?” Arlene asked the two new interceptor pilots.

Bill and Kathy passed a glance before he answered for them. “I think that Kathy and I learned a lot, but ... all of you might have tended to make us new gunners look a little bit better than we actually were.”

“I could be insulted by that,” Worthington said, frowning, his voice gruff, “but I’ll take it at face value since you don’t know us. If you think we cut you some slack because you’re new to the wing, then think again.”

“It’s hard to fail as a gunner when your pilot sets you up for the perfect shot,” Camp added.

Worthington raised his voice, obviously pissed. “Oh, you two nailed us all right, but you didn’t skunk us. Arlene and Ann, with you two as their gunners, did win overall, but you have to give credit where credit is due. They set you two up for the perfect shot again and again – which made the two of you look far better than you actually are. Trust me, no matter how good you two are as pilots, though, we’ll take you when you two are doing the flying and others are the gunners.”

“They did pick up on the guns very quickly,” Ann broke in to defend Bill and Kathy, and maybe calm things down a little.

Bill turned to Worthington. “Then you didn’t try full out to keep us from hitting you in those asteroids?”

“Hell no. Arlene and Ann knew our moves and made you look good,” Worthington ground out. “A gunner can’t miss when the target is right there. Two prima donnas coming into the unit shouldn’t win the way you two did. Arlene and Ann knew what we would do and made you two look good when they set us up. We’ll hand you your asses when you two are doing the piloting, and Arlene and Ann are playing gunner for you. And while we’re at it, you two shouldn’t even be here. You haven’t earned your place. The slots should have gone to someone from our old unit.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to insult you,” Bill tried to appease. “I honestly thought that you had gone easy on us because we were new, but I have to agree, Arlene did make it easy for me.”

“No offense taken,” Worthington responded, but his voice belied his words, and it was evident that he was pissed that he had lost.

Arlene didn’t respond to Worthington, although she wanted to, and neither of the other two crews said anything.

Bill passed a glance with Kathy. What the fuck? Were they actually going full out? Come to think of it, my targets were easy more times than they were not. Now I’ve stirred those two up, but I’m beginning to wonder if some of it isn’t because of Arlene being appointed Commander of the unit. Shit, we don’t need hostile feelings among comrades, but be damned if I’m going to purposefully miss in training to appease his ego. Bottom line, Arlene and Ann outmaneuvered them and made it easy for us – plain and simple.

Bill’s musings were cut short as the other teams came in and took tables nearby.

Arlene stood and officially introduced Bill and Kathy to everyone. After the introductions and things had settled down again... “I have something to tell all of you. It is something that needs to remain a secret from anyone who is not already enhanced because we cannot do this for everyone – at least not at this time. Any of you who have been around my family and my sister-wives might have already noticed.”

There was some chuckling, and Arlene blushed. “All right, I walked into that one. And yeah, all my sister-wives are drop-dead gorgeous, except me, of course.” Before anyone could say anything, she went quickly on. “For instance, my mom and grandmother look far too young to fit either of those categories.”

“Clean living?” someone said with a chuckle.

Arlene grinned, “Well, that too, but what I’m going to offer today is exactly why they and others appear so young. Understand though, that we can’t do this for everyone. It simply takes too long, and there are other reasons that prevent that from happening that I’ll go into in a minute.”

“So, what is this thing that you’re talking about?” Billings asked.

Arlene hesitated for a heartbeat. “Enhancement. An enhancement of your bodies that will make you healthier, your vision and memory better, your reflexes faster, you won’t get sick ever again, and among other things, it gives you the ability to appear practically any adult age that you might wish.”

When the sound died down and she once again had their attention, “For now, you can’t give this, or even talk about it, to anyone else. The block will keep you from it if you try. Of course, you will have the option of taking the enhancement or not. We hope to be able to extend it to your families at some point, but for now, only you will receive it, and only Ship and Little One can do this. It takes up to thirty minutes to initiate the process in your bodies. You will feel better than you ever have in your life, and you will be ravenous for several days after the process is initiated. Even when the process reaches completion, you will always eat more than you do now, but you will not gain past your optimum weight.”

“Will it make us any better in combat?” Rivers asked.

“Yes, I think it will,” she answered.

“That’s the reason you managed to keep kicking our asses in the simulator, right?” Worthington wanted to know, his voice again tight and somewhat combative.

“I guess we’ll see when you two are enhanced, too,” Arlene said, oh so sweetly, but everyone there knew that she absolutely did not doubt that she would continue to kick his ass.

“I volunteer to be first for this enhancement thing,” Worthington snapped out with Camp only a second behind.

Arlene ignored him and went on. “Ship tells me that with her producing weapon platforms as fast as she can, she is limited to one enhancement at a time. My husband has said that we can use Little One to assist with the enhancements, so she will do one person while Ship does another. We will do the enhancement in alphabetical order – two at a time,” Arlene said in a no-nonsense manner.

“Adams and Albertville immediately after our meeting, then Billups and Camp thirty minutes from now...” Of course, Worthington came up last, which obviously pissed him off more. “Let’s do those four tonight, then four more of you before we train tomorrow, then the last two after we train tomorrow night. We’ll get the team that is out on their scout as soon as they are back. Bill and Kathy have already been enhanced. The list and times will be on the board. Those of you who are assigned to be enhanced today, please meet in the training room. Dismissed.”

When the others had left, Bill turned to Arlene. “I didn’t mean...”

“Oh, bull. You were just being nice to them since we kicked their asses. If those two weren’t good at what they do, they would have long since been back at the base. But ... they aren’t nearly as good as they think they are. Now, Ship and I are going to start teaching you two to fly an interceptor. I think it goes without saying that we all want you to kick their asses the next time we go up against each other in the trainer. And remember, all of this is so we can survive the real thing when we go against the aliens.”

A moment later, Jeff met Arlene and Ann in the lounge. He had told Little One what was going on, and she was ready for Ship to transfer her to the training area where she would assist in enhancing the first interceptor crew.

Jeff stared at his young wives. “Okay, it doesn’t take a genius to tell that both of you are stressed. What gives? Maybe I should have been there for the meeting...”

Arlene broke in to say, “If I’m to lead the unit officially, then I’m going to have to do it on my own, or they’ll never respect me.”

“So, what happened?”

“Oh, nothing, really. Bill was just being courteous, but Worthington seems to think that Ann and I have won in our interceptor because we’re enhanced. Since he was so obnoxious, I chose to have the enhancement done in alphabetical order – which means that he will be last. It’s trivial because he will be only one day later than the first four people.”

She went on to describe how she had set the enhancements up.

“Do you ever use alphabetical order while training?”

“Not always. It depends on what’s going on, but I have several times.”

“Then I don’t see how he has a gripe. At worst, he will be one day later than some of the others, and there will be another person that will be enhanced at the same time. Even then, he and the other person will only be done after training instead of before. Somebody has to be last. He might as well learn that pissing off the boss will have repercussions. Hell, you would think that as long as he has been a fighter pilot, he would know that.”

“He probably got away with it in his fighter group because he is so darn good, but he isn’t a team player, and what we’re doing takes teamwork. Without Ann, I would suck at this. And unless I miss my guess, he’s going to be a glory hound when we meet the Aliens,” Arlene finished with a frown.

“The team player thing was going to be my next question. I may have dropped the ball by not picking up on his attitude before now. Then again, he might hide it well when I’m around, and it’s coming out now because of your promotion over him. Hell, I can see his point, except that you can fly circles around him, and with Ann, you’re an unbeatable team.

“About the glory hound – I hope you’re wrong about that. Bottom line: we don’t need someone risking others by his actions. Crap, I wish I had picked up on this before now. No matter how much we need the team, if he steps out of line, you will have no choice but to drop the team from the squadron. Someone who won’t obey orders in combat is too big a risk. How about the others?”

“Just like always, the rest are willing to go the extra mile, and ... they have great attitudes. He’s an excellent pilot, but his attitude has been worsening even before you put me officially in charge of the unit. As far as the rest of the teams are concerned, we have all worked together to develop different approaches to combat situations. Several of the techniques we use came from people within the unit. When they come up with a new idea or a variation to a technique that works, they share, just as Ann and I do.”

“And Worthington and Camp?”

“They’ve shared some ideas in our brainstorming sessions, but come to think about it, what they share is usually something that someone else has mentioned in passing, or it’s a slight variation to something we’re already doing – at best.”

A moment passed before Arlene continued. “I hope Bill and Kathy catch on quickly. We all go against each other in the simulator. We know that it’s just training, and when we have live fire, the guns don’t fire with killing force, even if our shields are exhausted.” She paused before continuing. “It’s getting too late to replace Worthington and Camp, so I hope Worthington will settle down.

“Bill and Kathy did extremely well while they were on the guns,” she continued. “Maybe they can catch up flying an interceptor in the time we have left. I gave them videos of our combat maneuvers so they can memorize them tonight.”

“You should have spoken to me about Worthington before this, Wife.”

“And what would she have said,” Ann asked, defending her sister-wife. “He has an obnoxious personality? But as she said, he and his partner are darn good in their interceptor, and he has kept his gripes – shall we say – mostly below the threshold until now. Besides, all the interceptors are crewed by fighter jocks. They’re all type A-plus-plus personalities. In their own minds, each is positive he or she is the best there is.”

Arlene sighed. “Now that I look back at things, I’m afraid that Worthington might be turning into a lone wolf, and Camp pretty much goes along with whatever Worthington says. But ... they frequently score higher than anyone except Ann and me.”