Chapter 7

Supper tonight was kind of somber. Harley was gone, and, now, so was Dixie. I couldn't decide whether the situation was more poignant with Dixie gone or with Dixie still here. There was more drinking than dancing tonight; even the girls drank more than usual. Beth and I were kind of slow heading to our bedroom, but it was not for the usual reason. This time, we were both just down a lot over the loss, me, for my friend, the man, and Beth, for her friend, the woman.

We didn't even do the mutual shower thing. I had showered before supper, as soon as I got home, so I didn't need the cleaning. The after dinner shower was strictly a prelude to sex. This time, we just dropped into bed and cuddled, each one of us comforted by the presence of the other one.

The situation was a little more on track the next morning. Beth woke me up with one of her spectacular blow jobs. She informed me that today was to be a day off, so we could spend as long as we liked in bed with each other. That rang a bell with me, so she sucked me to hardness again, and we had a leisurely fuck in the missionary position. I stretched it out as long as I could, partially because it was so emotionally satisfying having my cock in Beth's pussy. She obviously liked the slow loving, too, because she had four orgasms before the final one with me.

We cleaned up and went downstairs to breakfast. It was already mid morning, but nobody complained when Beth went to get our breakfasts. I went whole hog with four eggs, sunny side up, ham, sausage, potatoes, and toast. I also drank coffee like it was going out of style; we even had real cream and sugar to put in it!

We lolled away most of the day, but the other shoe dropped late in the afternoon. Sgt. James Haggerty, the time has come to tell you the real reason for this situation and your position in it. I must tell you that I am not producing a movie or any other entertainment vehicle. Actually, you have been taking part in a very serious training program to get you ready to join forces with a number of other races, from several planets, who are trying to prevent the conquest of our galaxy by beings from a galaxy your scientists call Andromeda.

Well, that was a surprise! I want to talk to all of the men and the wives as a group after they have all given their answers. There are several things that we need to discuss about this job and how we, especially the women, are going to cope with the strain. The one thing that I wonder about the women is whether or not they can become pregnant. I forgot to ask Voice, but maybe the women will know; otherwise, I'll ask Voice about that and any thing else that comes up during the group discussion.

We had the meeting, and everybody has decided to stay. Yes, the women can become pregnant; in fact, Janet thinks that she is pregnant already, since she has experienced some morning sickness. Chester has been walking around like the cock of the walk since hearing the news. I wonder when Beth will catch?

The modified BAR has some great features. It may be that the best feature is that it is only about half the weight it formally was. A lot of the body of the weapon has been replaced by what Voice calls "composites," whatever that is. It has the ammo selector that the other weapons have, and it is now a true light machine gun with the unending supply of cartridges, instead of the 20-round clip it used to use back in Normandy.

My shotgun is a real marvel! It still has the three types of shells it had before, but now it has a single slug, a mortar-like explosive round, and a large incendiary round. I don't know right now what else I could ask for, but I will be on the lookout for any improvements I can come up with.

Now that we know what is going on, the whole squad is facing the day's mission with a new attitude. Before, we were just going through the motions in order to get the reward at the end of the day. But, now, we are all looking for ways to improve our weapons to make them easier to use and more effective against the enemy. In fact, we are all looking forward to this day as an adventure which might help our galaxy against the invaders.

Today's first objective is a cave, naturally, but this time we are expecting more than just a Medusa. Voice said that the monsters would be harder to defeat as we went along, so that's the kind of challenge we are expecting. We were only a few hundred yards from the cave when Joe sang out, "STUKAS!"

They were still nearly a mile away, but high enough to be seen over the intervening hills. Dammit, it just dawned on me, these can't be Stukas. At that range, they would still be invisible. Well, that was a detail that I was not about to argue at the moment. Whatever they were in detail, they were still a grave danger.

They got closer fast as they must have seen us and were vigorously flapping their wings to put on even more speed. Hell, these things were big enough to be JU-88s! Chester had the most range by a wide margin, so I called out to him to try to slow them down with bursts of explosive rounds. There were six of the JU-88s, and Chester was scoring some hits. We could see the explosions as the bullets struck the bodies of the monsters. Unfortunately, the explosion of a single bullet did not do much damage, so I ordered him to switch to incendiary rounds. This helped some, but still not enough.