Chapter 673

The Colonel’s Office Aboard Ship

...”And Worthington. Hear this! If something happens to my wife, I’ll kill you without a second thought. Now get out of my face before I change my mind and do what I know should be done.”

Without saluting, Worthington spun on his heel and stomped out.

Jeff sat thinking. Should I tell his Commander why I’m sending him back? After a moment, he shrugged. On second thought, I asked for his best aviators to give them a chance in my unit. No one, other than us, knew about the interceptors then, and I assumed that he sent me his best people. And ... the rest were, indeed, the best, but I think he might just have snuck a ringer that he wanted to get rid of into the mix.

Realizing that kind of thing tended to happen between sections occasionally, he just grinned as he thought about the General’s Air Commander. You almost got rid of him, but it’s going to boomerang this time because your troublemaker is coming back home. Even as a grin touched the Prime’s face, a sobering thought struck. Worthington knows too much to bust him out of the General’s army. The risk of his somehow overcoming the block is too significant to allow him to go back to a civilian job or maybe sign on with a mercenary group, or worse yet, some other military power who might have the technology to break the block. Shit, most of our personnel can make the leap and understand that they know too much to risk their knowledge getting out to our government, let alone to some other military power. Worthington, however, seems too much of a hothead to realize just how thin the ice he is treading on actually is.

I was going to keep the General out of this, and I was hoping I could put Worthington back into his old unit without too much hassle. But ... after the way he acted just now, I would be a fool to think this is over with. What if he decides he has some extremely valuable information that some of our nation’s enemies might pay good money for? You can bet they would put every effort into breaking the block — once they knew one actually existed.

Jeff eventually returned to the Retreat in search of the General.

Earlier, when Ann and Arlene walked into the room wearing their duty rigs, the interceptor pilots immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were going to have firearms training today. Week upon week of precision flying in the interceptors had taken its toll on their bodies and minds. Also, knowing that Worthington was getting his ass chewed by the Colonel didn’t hurt any of their feelings. Now, they were getting to spend the day on the range. To the last person there this morning, it felt as though they were going to have a holiday, no matter how grueling the firearms training might be.

Arlene and Ann took one look at the expectant faces and figured it out, causing the young Wing Commander to turn to her Second and say, “Check with the Sergeant and see if there is any possible way we can use a range this morning, preferably all day. Handguns or pulse rifles — anything. Tell him I’ll owe him bigtime.”

Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Ann returned and handed Arlene a ring of keys while saying, “These are to the ranges and the ammo bunkers. The Sergeant said he is busy preparing for a new class that starts next week. You can use any of the ranges throughout today and tomorrow as long as you leave them ‘the way you found them.’ He was adamant that he was to be left entirely alone and stressed that he would not be pleased if he were interrupted for any reason. He even detailed someone to get the keys for me.”

“Great,” Arlene said with a smile as she handed the keys back to her Second. “You hang onto these.”

Turning to the aviators who were all sitting quietly as they, no doubt, were trying to hear what the two were saying, “As you have, doubtless, surmised, we are going to take a break from interceptor training and concentrate on personal weapons training today, and possibly tomorrow.”

Although there wasn’t any vocal response, there was a lessening of tension in the group and smiles on their faces. “We’ve been pushing hard, but I have been informed that our world parade will not go off on schedule. The Colonel and General feel that it is too soon for a victory parade, especially in the areas that were hit the hardest. A large part of the world is thrilled with the outcome, but as you would expect, in areas where the death toll is high, the survivors aren’t necessarily feeling so jubilant just now. However, both the General and the Colonel think there will be a point when Earth’s peoples will want a victory celebration, so we will continue to maintain a level of training such that it will only take a minimal effort to be ready again.”

A hand went up. “Yes, Lieutenant White?”

“So, what are we going to do now?” she asked.

Arlene said with a grin, “We’re going to be out of the cockpit for a few days while we concentrate on personal weapons training. Look, all of you know that we’ll soon be leaving on our search for the race that built Ship’s brain. That will almost certainly entail interacting with various races, obviously within their own solar systems, which also means interacting with probably very diverse cultures. As the General has found — sometimes the hard way — there are races out there that, to put it mildly, are aggressive. While some of us are on the ground, there might well be times when air cover would make the difference in deterring or winning an attack. We can’t know everything ahead of time, so we will continue to train for any possibility that we can think of. There is that possibility, though slim, that you might be shot down and need to defend yourself until help can arrive. Who knows? We train and hope that we never have to use some of that training, but if we do ... Well, we want to be survivors, not dead pushovers.”

“Ann,” she quietly said as she turned the aviators over to her Second.

“All right. Dump your flight suits for today and tomorrow and get your utilities. Meet in the designated area outside Ship in fifteen with your sidearms and pulse rifles.” After calling the group to Attention, she dismissed them.

“Well, shall we do the same?” Ann asked her partner, but suddenly, it was a moot point because Ship had changed them in an eyeblink, even returning their duty rigs with everything positioned perfectly.

“You’re going to spoil us,” Arlene said with a smile.

“I enjoy it,” Ship returned.

The two young women walked out of Ship’s main hatch and down the ramp. As they neared the area where they were to meet up with the aviators, a voice rang out.

“Get ready to die, Bitches!” Worthington screamed.

They never knew whether he had planned the attack or was just leaving to return to his old unit when he saw the two walking in front of him. Both Arlene and Ann thought it was the latter, because he had just brought his pulse rifle to bear when each girl, with their enhanced reflexes, spun and fired. Ironically, the distance was far shorter than the two usually practiced — almost exactly thirty yards. He should have fired before saying anything. That way, he would have gotten at least one of the two.

Jeff had warned him, but they were only women, and Worthington could never believe that they could outshoot a man, even if everything were equal. It wasn’t. He had a pulse rifle trained in their direction, and the movement it would take to bring it to bear perfectly on Arlene’s center of mass only took moving the weapon the smallest of distances — plus the time it took his brain to tell his hands to move, aim and fire.

He had never seen either girl draw and fire before, so he naturally assumed it would be an easy kill with their backs to him. It was, but he wasn’t the one doing the killing. They had practiced just this maneuver more times than either could number. They reverted to training, spun, drew and fired — all in one motion. The weapons coming into their hands was only a part of what they had practiced hundreds, maybe thousands of times when they took a break from studying.

Arlene’s and Ann’s sidearms went off as one, just the sound of the discharge coupled with the sharp crack of the nine millimeter rounds as they broke the sound barrier on the way to relieving Worthington of a good portion of his brain.

Arlene remembered cringing when she saw the barrel of Worthington’s pulse rifle, released from slack fingers, slam muzzle down into the ground, then fall over with a quiet thud, even while his body, looking like a puppet with its strings cut, instantly followed. The body didn’t even twitch. Later, she would remember thinking that the Sergeant would not be pleased that the rifle had landed muzzle down and would require a thorough inspection before being returned to the active arsenal.

The bullets, after passing through Worthington’s head, now spent of most of their energy, tumbled to a stop on the ground thirty yards away.

All the interceptor pilots were outside and had been attracted by Worthington’s bellowed, “Get ready to die, Bitches!” So, all saw what happened, along with several of the aliens, including Adrienné.

The Retreat’s AI, monitoring everything inside and out at the Retreat, had immediately informed Diana and her sister-wives in addition to Jeff and the General, both of whom were in the General’s office. The back door of the Retreat was slammed open by the Clan Queen, Glock in hand, on her way to defend her daughter and sister-wife, while the other wives scrambled to keep up. Though relieved when the AI told them that neither Arlene nor Ann were hurt, it slowed their approach not a whit. Jeff and the General were farther but managed to catch up to Diana and all her sister-wives as the group neared Arlene and Ann.

With the alien war and the pilots having to depend on their comrades to stay alive when they went against the Paladins, they had become a close-knit group — other than Worthington. In seconds and with no one giving the order, the group of aviators formed a living barrier around their commanders, all with weapons drawn and facing outward. Not one of them was foolish enough, though, to impede the Clan Queen, her sister-wives, the Prime or the General.

Arlene and Ann’s, “We’re fine. We’re fine,” seemed to go unnoticed as the Clan Queen hugged her sister-wives to her while the two young women were asked over and over if they were okay. Meanwhile, Worthington, or what was left of him, quietly bled scrambled brains and blood onto the thick turf.

Jeff, outwardly calm, hugged his wives as Arlene said, her body now trembling slightly, “He just screamed out, ‘Get ready to die, Bitches.’ I ... I suppose the rest was just reflex. I don’t even remember firing, do you, Ann?” Arlene asked, her voice not nearly as steady as it usually was.

“I, uh, crap,” Ann mumbled as she gagged, then fought to keep her breakfast down.

Jeff was still hugging his young wives. “Breathe deep and hold. Now do it again. Concentrate on your breathing, both of you. You survived, and the scumbag didn’t. The shit is over, but your systems are still full of adrenaline. Anyone who doesn’t shake a bit after his first gunfight just isn’t human.”