Chapter 12

WEDNESDAY May 14

I woke first this morning and slipped out from between my wives to perform my morning ablutions. Once finished, I downed an EB and half an ACCO-L. Vonna was closest to the edge of the bed so I woke her with soft kisses up and down her naked back. “Mmmmm, I could get used to that,” she whispered throatily, rolling over to face me. She spread her legs eagerly and I slid forward, eager to taste her pussy again.

“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked after her first orgasm. “Horny, now, but the soreness is gone if that’s what you’re asking,” she answered, pulling my face up to hers and guiding my stiff cock into her sex.

Helga was next to us and joined in, using tongue and fingers to help Vonna climax. She claimed me next, and we made slow, gentle love. Everyone was awake by now and helped to push Helga over the edge. Jenna jumped on top of me and rode me hard to a quick orgasm, managing to claim my first cum of the new day. I took my time with Renee. Much of our sex was during commands and I wanted to take my time with her so she remembered she was my wife first and a fuck slave second. Penny and Danielle each got a turn, too. The seven of us took a fairly quick shower.

When I went to wake Kelsey and Kateryna, I found that they were already up and gone. Kelsey was in Renee’s office with Beverly, looking over several potential sites for the shuttle dealership. Kelsey told me that Kateryna was off on some kind of a job, which let me know that she had gotten the locations for pirate bases from Marco and was doing recon. I called her and asked her to be back by five a.m. our time tomorrow. I wanted her to survey the area in Cairo where Helga’s graduation would be held. The attitude of men towards women in that part of the world wasn’t exactly enlightened, and Helga told me that she already had a run-in with a snotty rich brat there.

He tried to rape her and only the self-defense moves she learned going to class with me had saved her. It left him requiring surgery to remove a mangled testicle a few months ago. The police had refused to file charges against him. I wanted Kateryna to scan the entire area for explosives, weapons, energy weapons, troops, and cloaked ships. After Helga’s graduation was over, I wanted the same thing done around AIT since both Jenna and Nicole had previous run-ins with guys there, most notably, the now-imprisoned Dirk Bailey. Both graduations were at six p.m., but fortunately, there was a nine-hour time difference between the two cities.

We were playfully shooed out of the kitchen by the domestics who were busy preparing breakfast, but not before we each snagged a plateful of food. We ate as we walked, discovering that the rest of the lawn out front was now concrete tarmac for parking shuttles. The second soccer field was done, complete with a synthetic surface track. I saw that the hardware was in place for the baseball fields, and the synthetic surface had been poured for the basketball, handball, and tennis courts. I told Penny to make sure we had plenty of equipment for each of the sport facilities, and to have several large sheds built near each set of fields to hold it.

My lab was devoid of working androids, as was the android factory next door. I noticed that we were up to 2140 spy AIs on the wall, with 28 different practitioners inside the US. That meant we now had almost thirty-seven hundred androids on the base, not counting domestic, construction, and agricultural androids. I had Danielle check with Gwen and make sure we had weapons for all thirty-seven hundred.

Hangar fourteen still looked like someone had kicked over an ant nest. There were even more androids there now that yesterday. I waved James over when he got a chance to look up. “James, you should appoint one of the guys to oversee each of the major projects you have, and have them report to you regularly.”

“I already do,” he answered. Pointing to three androids in orange overalls, he explained, “Steve is in charge of ship’s weapons systems. Joel is in charge of power supply, cloaking, shielding, shielding detection, and engine retrofits. Zack is in charge of AIs and transponders. If the ship sustained any damage, Danny would be here in charge of repairs. By the way, he says ‘thank you’ for the extra hatches you ordered to replace the ones that get damaged. Jorge is in charge of the AI lab, and Kevin is in charge of additional weaponry. When you assign something to me, I re-assign it to them and then oversee everything. If we need anything, I let Jenny know. She’s an android working with Beverly in the office. Jenny makes out the request and gives it to Beverly for approval. I assign help based on the priority of the job and how much help we have,” he explained.

“I’m impressed, James,” I told him.

“I just followed your example when you had Bree take over the AIs and Katie take over working on the ships. We work with them and take direction from them,” he explained. Okay, so technically, the two girls had just taken over the job and I let them since I barely had enough time in the day as it was. I wasn’t going to argue the point and was willing to accept the credit, even if I didn’t deserve it.

We wandered through the four ships looking at the layout. One ship appeared designed to transport cargo containers. Each of the 1X grav sleds was set up to hold two cargo containers. “Were there any containers on this ship?” I asked, and was shocked at the answer. All eight were there. One was empty, three were filled with food, which James had delivered to the grocery store in La Luz. Two held weapons that had been delivered to hangar nine where Kevin did weapons research and stored any extra weapons for the troops. The other two had each held girls. One had forty-three and the other held thirty-six. The girls ranged in age from eight to twenty-three, most being between thirteen and seventeen.

“Why didn’t someone tell me?” I asked.

“We only found them three hours ago. We called Dr. Marshall to check on them. He sedated them saying that they needed a good night’s sleep and that he would take care of them when they woke up. From what we could gather, most of the older girls were claimed after vagrancy charges. Some of the girls were sold by their parents to get enough money to avoid vagrancy charges, and several were just kidnapped. All of them were from South America,” James added.

“Shit, I can’t imagine having to sell a child to save the rest of the family,” I said angrily. Renee tapped my arm and motioned to Penny who was in tears.

“What is it?” I asked her softly, pulling her to me for support.

“That’s what they wanted Mom to do,” she wailed. “They gave her one week to decide. She could either sell me to them and keep her job, saving her and Brittney, or lose her job and have all three of us end up as their slaves,” she sobbed. “You saved us,” she wailed, clinging even tighter. One of the androids brought me a chair and I sat and held her and rocked her for almost fifteen minutes.

“I promise that they’ll pay for it,” I told her when she finally calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized a few minutes later.

“For what?” I asked, confused.

“For breaking down and crying like that; it wasn’t very adult of me.”

“Look around, love. We were all crying,” I told her.

It had given me an idea, though. I told James to turn all eight of the cargo containers into holding cells. Looking at them outside on the runway, I guessed that each would hold 200 or more prisoners, although probably not comfortably. I wanted each unit to have a toilet, source of drinking water, and a tank of KMG in case the prisoners got rowdy and we needed to knock them out.

We headed straight to the base hospital to check on the girls. Greg had twenty or so androids helping watch the girls. “I want to let them sleep a few more hours. They were pretty traumatized,” he explained. I agreed.

“By the way, when I called about the medi-docs they explained that if we bought twenty-five of them, we were automatically allowed to program as many more of our own as we want for free as long as they worked at the same location as the original twenty-five or were based out of the same location,” he said.

“I guess that means we have hundreds of medi-docs,” I laughed.

On the way to see the Kashmir crew I stopped by the bunker I’d been told Serena was using. She was definitely using it. There were two heavily armed androids guarding the door and thirty women sitting at desks. Each desk had four different computer displays and the women were poring over the information on one display or the other. Serena was walking from desk to desk talking to each woman, occasionally adding a screen that one of the women was looking at to a large display at the front of the room. One of the women pointed us out to her and she grinned and hurried over. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she apologized.

“Serena, not only am I much more thick-skinned than that, but you were working. There is no need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure you were getting settled in.”

“Oh, my God am I getting settled in!” she exclaimed. “Which one of you is Renee?” she asked, looking over my entourage. Renee was practically smothered from the hug and kisses Serena gave her. “This woman is incredible,” she said. “My computers, desks, and chairs got here in only six hours, and they are much better than the ones I asked for. After that, James assigned quite a few of the ... guys to install everything. It only took four hours to set up the entire office with thirty desks, the computers, and to run all the necessary wiring and screens,” she gushed.

“Is thirty women all you could get?” I asked. Serena laughed. “No, I decided that there weren’t any bunkers big enough for all of us so I broke everyone up by section. This bunker covers the North American Economic Union. There’s one bunker with thirty desks for each of the seven Economic Unions. There’s one with thirty desks for the pirates and one with 60 desks for the Russians.”

“Do you have that many people?” I asked.

Nervously, she nodded. “I’ll probably have to turn some away,” she said.

“How many could you end up with?” I asked.

“400?” she asked hesitantly.

“Get them. You can add shifts until each shift is only working four or six hours. You can train androids to work in each section to do any tedious detail work or to do the searching and compiling. You should also assign a supervisor for each section to report to you so that you don’t run yourself ragged,” I suggested. When we left, I stuck my head into each of the other bunkers. Only three were full: the pirate bunker, the Russian bunker, and the North American bunker. The others had women working, just not a full contingent, yet.

Our next stop was the bunker where we held the Kashmir captives and the former sex slaves. There was a contingent of eight androids on guard outside the door and the door was open. Something smelled good as we approached. Stan had definitely been busy all night. There were enough portable tables for everyone to sit at and they were in the middle of breakfast. Somehow, Stan had also procured new uniforms for everyone during the night, complete with name patches and rank insignias. Even the former slaves had new clothing. Most had chosen to wear jeans and T-shirts.

One of the Kashmir crew noticed us and said something to Stan who was seated with his back to us. Stan came over to greet us, hugging me. “Mike, I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” he said emotionally.

“It means a lot to me, too, Stan,” I replied.

He told me that he’d broken the news to them that they’d be staying here and that, while not elated about it, they seemed to understand. There had been many questions about how we did what we did, but he had pointedly not answered those questions. Speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, Stan introduced me, adding that I had legally adopted him and his wife as my parents a few days ago. He gave a brief summary of how we all came to be at the base, telling them that a week ago, at about the same time as they arrived here last night, I had proposed to his granddaughter Vonna, and that there were only four people alive at that point who knew the base was here. Renee explained her part in talking me into taking her and several friends as consorts, knowing that I would be good to them and would protect them from people that wouldn’t be as good.

Then it was my turn. “Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to our community. Your stay in Hell is over. While I realize that each of you would much rather be home with family and loved ones, that’s not possible at this time. Most of you witnessed parts of the battle last night. From what you saw, and from what you didn’t see, most of the Kashmir’s crew realizes that we have technology and weapons far superior to those anyone else has. We’re not ready for the world to know that, yet.

“For what it’s worth to you, you have my word that we have no plans for world domination. I wouldn’t wish that headache on anyone. I’m having a hard enough time running this base and making sure the people here have everything they need. My goal is threefold. I want to eliminate the pirates, I want to bring down the Russian Mafia, and I want to take down the world-wide clique of wealthy families that traffics in the suffering of young, beautiful women.”

I took a deep breath and looked across the faces watching me intently. “Four and a half days ago, I promised Stan that, if he could come up with a workable plan to rescue you, we would. Four days ago, we did not have so much as a single functional weapon. Yesterday you were rescued, pretty much by a single reconnaissance ship. That ship simultaneously captured nine pirate ships, searched every building in the compound, and shielded most of you. In a few more hours, the pirate ships will be refitted to be as good as ours, and we will have in excess of thirty ships in our fleet, along with four thousand highly trained ground troops. It is my opinion we could defeat any military in the world, although, as I said, I have no plans to test that theory. In fact, let me say that the UN Secretary General is a close personal friend of mine.”

That bit of news sparked some interest. “When Stan and I began formulating the plan to rescue you we had very limited resources here. The only way I could think of at the time to keep you from trying to escape was to keep you prisoner in here. Today, with the resources we have available, I have decided to let each of you have the freedom to move about the base. We will set up one of the barracks for the Kashmir’s crew to live in. For you women who weren’t part of the crew, you have two choices. You may move into the barracks with the crew, or move into the mansion with the rest of the women.

You are free to talk to anyone you wish. Nobody will discuss anything about our military or our secrets with you. Any of you that ask about anything related to the military or our secrets will quickly find yourself in a private cell for the remainder of your time here. Anybody interfering with anything related to the military will suffer the same fate. You should assume that every ship and shuttle we have is armed and dangerous, because it is. One two-person shuttle can capture a pirate ship and its entire crew. Fortunately, none of you will be able to activate any of the shuttles. Each has a special interlocking device that would take months for a large computer to hack.

“Having extended our hospitality to you, I must caution each of you in the strongest terms that anyone who attempts to harm someone on the base will find themselves dead very quickly. The same goes for anyone found with any type of weapon, be it a club, a knife, or a gun. There is only one reason you would have it. There won’t even be a trial. If you are considering escape, we won’t even follow you. It’s seventy-five miles to the edge of the shield, seventy-five miles of barren desert. Even if you make it to the edge of the shield, you won’t be able to get through the shield. It’s another twenty to fifty miles of desert beyond the shield before you reach civilization, depending on the direction you’re traveling.

Now I need to explain something else. Aside from you, our pirate prisoners, and the seventy-nine young female captives we discovered inside one of the pirate ships this morning, everyone on this base is here voluntarily and is free to leave any time they want. The young women we found aboard the pirate ship are sedated right now, having been traumatized yesterday by being kidnapped and taken from their families. We will try to return them to their families tonight, and I would like the Kashmir crew and the former slaves to each select two people to assist and witness our attempts to return them. Since the seventy-nine young women are obviously more valuable than a more mature group like yourselves, I’m hoping that seeing us return the girls will help put your minds at ease that you, too will eventually be released, unharmed.

“Sex is allowed with anyone on base if the following conditions are met. First, it must be consensual for everyone involved. Any married man must have his wife’s permission and any married woman must have her husband’s permission. While it is completely permissible to ask another person if they are interested, it is not permissible to pressure them or threaten them. Anyone doing that will also find themselves in a cell, provided I get to them before the rest of the women on the base do. There might not be much left if I don’t.

“I think I’ve covered all the ugly parts, so let me go over some nicer things. Just inside the mansion is a beauty parlor for you ladies to use if you wish. Next to it is a massage parlor everyone is welcome to use. On the top floor of the mansion is a very large pool. All of those things are here for your enjoyment. Near the mansion, you will see sports fields being built. You are free to use them whenever you wish. We should have equipment by tomorrow at the latest. Later today, I will arrange an opportunity for each of you to contact loved ones and let them know you’re safe. I would like each of you to see the doctor today for a complete physical. I see that several of you are pregnant, so unless anyone has a critical medical problem or condition, I would ask you to let the pregnant women go first.

I notice that Stan covered my shortcomings as a host last night and got uniforms and clothing for each of you. Thank you, Stan. I also see that many of you appear to have lost a lot of weight. Eat as much as you want at every meal. There will be snacks available all day in the mansion’s dining room. Eat all of the beef you want at meals. We raise our own here, now. If you have special dietary concerns, let any of the domestics know.

“Having covered all that, I’m tired of listening to myself talk. Do any of you have any questions that I didn’t cover or about something you’re not sure what I meant?”

My worries appeared to be coming true. There was a cowed silence in the room ... at least until one of the former slaves spoke up. Standing boldly and speaking in a tone that was almost a challenge she asked, “What do you plan to do with my baby when it’s born?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I answered.

Another pregnant woman stood. “She wants to know if you’re going to sell our babies like the pirates did.”

Stan and Vonna caught me as I fought off a wave of nausea and almost collapsed. It took a couple of minutes to gather myself again before I could answer. It was with a faltering voice and tears running down my face that I promised that they would be able to keep their children if that was their choice. We would provide everything necessary for them as long as they remained here. If they chose to remain here voluntarily after we released everyone, they were welcome to stay. Considering the circumstances of the children’s conception, any woman that didn’t wish to raise her child would be assisted in finding a safe home and a family to adopt and raise the child.

“What the pirates have done to you and others is nothing short of heinous. I promise each of you that their deaths will be as painful as we can make them,” I said emotionally.

I sat down, suddenly not interested in continuing. Stan fielded a couple more minor questions before asking who the base commander for the Kashmir had been so he could contact them and report on who was okay and who had perished.

Commander Vivian Wallace, ranking officer of the remaining crew stood. “I’m don’t think most of us want to report in just yet,” she said. “The navy would have removed us from active duty nineteen days ago, after a calendar year and one day of being listed as missing-in-action. Our families would have received our accrued pay, as well as a payment equal to two year’s pay, assuming that we wouldn’t be returning. I think only Ensign Garrett Pulver wants to return to the navy. Since none of are technically in the navy any more, we’d like a chance to get a job in the private sector before reporting that we’re safe. Once we have a job, the navy can’t recall us to active duty.”

“Give them all a job and then let them report in,” I told Stan. “They can find another job later if they want.”

I had planned to question the Bailey boy this morning, but the way I was feeling right now, he wouldn’t have survived long enough to answer even my first question.

“I’m going to the lab,” I told Stan. “I need some time to calm down.”

“What kind of jobs should I give them?” he asked.

I shrugged. “What do you feel comfortable having them do?” I replied.

He studied my face for several seconds before answering tensely, “I want to let them help crew some of our ships.” It was my turn to study his face now. I think he started turning a light shade of blue, not breathing, as he waited for the explosion or my answer.

“It’s your call. You know what you’re risking,” I finally answered. Yup, he’d been holding his breath and he released it in an explosive sigh of relief.

“I don’t want that Ensign near a ship, though. I’m getting a weird feeling about him. Have a cloaked android keep an eye on him,” I said, before leading my entourage towards my lab for some peace.

“Hey James, you’re going to need another supervisor, construction. What about replacing the AI in one of the construction androids and then downloading his old memory into the new AI?” I suggested.

“We did that Monday. We also changed one of the agricultural androids and one of the domestic androids. We even did a maintenance robot at each base and we’re doing one for each of the towns and cities under the dome,” James answered.

“As usual, James, you’re way ahead of me. Maybe I should let you run the base for me,” I halfway teased since he was already pretty much doing that already.

Serena caught me as we were passing her new offices. “Guess what?” she asked way too cheerily.

“Hmmmmm?” I answered, my mood obvious.

“We found two more closed, hidden, military bases. Unfortunately, only the underground portion exists for one. There’s one in Colorado Springs beneath the UN Space Command Center. Whoever bought the base missed a camouflaged door when they remodeled it. That door led to more underground tunnels that are filled with weapons. There is, however, an exit that hasn’t been used since before the base closed. Get it open and you can get all the weapons that you want from there. The other base is deep below what used to be Fort Knox. It’s all built over now, but there is a property available near the river right over one of the tunnels. The property is relatively inexpensive because any housing tower built there can’t be more than a hundred stories high, hardly worth building. The lot’s been sitting empty for decades since nobody wants to buy it.”

“Why can’t they build over a hundred stories high?” I asked.

“The soil is too sandy, the upper bedrock is porous limestone, and the only decent bedrock is twelve hundred feet deep. It would be financially impossible to put enough pilings down that deep to hold anything over a hundred stories high,” she explained. I thanked her for the information and decided to try my luck with the unused door in Colorado Springs if I decided I wanted more APCs.

By the time I actually got to my lab, I was feeling better, mainly because my mind was again preoccupied, but having my wives curled up against me helped, too. I thought about last night’s battle. While the APCs would have added additional firepower if it had been needed, it was nothing we couldn’t add to a shuttle. Plus, the shuttles could all be used to capture enemy ships. The APCs didn’t have a lower hatch, so they couldn’t.

The APCs had more armor, but with a level seven shield, who needed armor? The APCs only carried two androids inside, adding a third as a turret gunner if it wasn’t used in space. A shuttle could hold as many or more. The shuttles would be quicker to convert and more flexible. I called Mr. Woo. In a way, I guess it was lucky for me that their shuttles were selling so poorly. It would have been hard to miss the unasked question in his voice as he patiently took my order for 500 ten-passenger shuttles, 1,000 two passenger shuttles, and 500 extra hatches.

Marco was busy when I called but I left him a message that I needed another 2,000.50 caliber guns with ammo and another 2,000 pulse ion cannons to arm more shuttles. I called Mr. Sugiyama and ordered 1000 medium freighter power supplies, and 1,000 two-passenger shuttle power supplies with cloaking hardware. I suggested increasing production of those items and the ten-passenger power supplies because I was buying two and ten-passenger shuttles like crazy. I called James and asked if he could set up eight more of the ships we had captured like Bumblebee. He assured me that he could, but it would take a couple of days.

I suggested that they set up a lab to produce our own KMG, and called Renee and asked her to order 10,000 empty one-hundred-kilo tanks for the gas, as well as the raw materials we would need, sending her a list of what we needed for each batch and suggesting enough for one hundred batches. So far, Marco had supplied most of what we used, but with so many more ships coming on line, we’d need a steady supply. I was finally starting to put together a plan. In many cases, a single ship like the Bumblebee could take down a small base alone. With enough Bumblebees, we could scout and take down twenty or thirty bases simultaneously.

That many pirate base closures meant other problems. I ordered 24 dozen construction androids and twelve dozen domestic plus androids. Calling the five used android clearinghouses in Canada, I ordered twelve dozen male and twelve dozen female androids from each, then did the same with the five outlets in Mexico, the seven outlets serving the Central American countries, and the five outlets serving all of the Island nations of the Caribbean. Those were all of the countries that made up the North American Economic Union, and I hoped to find most, if not all of the families in each of those countries that spied and/or trafficked in slaves. Next, I ordered the same thing from the twelve clearinghouses in South America and the fourteen in Africa.

I warned James to expect almost 14,000 more androids. I also asked him to have his construction foreman study the blueprint for the mansion. I needed to expand the mansion, first building a mirror image on the back side. The only difference would be that the main floor would only have one large living suite: mine. An expanded dining area and expanded kitchens would take up the rest. That would roughly quadruple the kitchen and dining space. Once that was done, I wanted another addition built on the north side that would be the same size as the two combined sections, followed by the same thing on the south side of the estate. There would be shuttle pads on the West, South, and East sides, with the sports fields on the North side. We’d also need a much larger prison compound built. Renee excused herself saying that she expected to be busy the rest of the day with orders for things I just asked for.

Greg found us, and it was easy to tell he was bothered by something, he looked pretty shaken. “Mike, 21 of the Kashmir’s crew and forty of the other women are pregnant. Two are due any day, five in the next couple of weeks, and nine more the month after that. On top of that, they are a mass of scars from being whipped, beaten, burned, and cut,” he said unhappily.

“Can we do anything about the scars?” I asked.

“Between chemical, biological, and laser treatments I think 90% of them can be eliminated. The other 10% will be much less noticeable.”

“What about Nadhu? Can you help with that?”

“I can make it less noticeable, but it would take a plastic surgeon to get rid of it,” he answered. “I think I found one that would come here and stay, as well as an OB doctor. I have a feeling we’ll be able to keep them both busy. Plus, I just ordered treatments for the scars, and seven more lasers.”

“The medi-docs can help with that, can’t they?” I asked.

“Yeah, and I’ve got construction workers busy setting up half a dozen birthing rooms and a neo-natal nursery,” he said. I assured him that I had no problem with everything he’d done, and Greg left in a little better mood than when he had arrived.