Chapter 47: At a Standoff

James waved at the ceiling. "End this call," he muttered.

"The communication has ended," the AI replied. "Please note that Major Bonham is looking for ways to conduct surveillance of this side of the colony. Do you wish to block his attempts?"

"I should," James replied with a snarl. "But if he only sees rooms and not the hallways it shouldn't matter too much. Just make sure he doesn't find out about our little hold out tunnel. I'm beginning to fear we might have to use it someday."

Yvette gasped as she entered the room. "James you are talking about taking on trained marines. We don't have the training to do that."

"Tell me something I don't know," James growled. Bethany and I threw ourselves at James and pushed him down into a chair. We covered his face and neck with kisses as we tried to calm him down. Behind us I could hear Yvette inviting Captain Gates and Captain Travis an opportunity to return to their ships. The repairs were ongoing, but it sounded like Cancun was going to be able to leave the system in less than a day. Both captains quietly agreed and left the room, but Yvette remained behind. She came over and put a hand on James' shoulder as Bethany and I sat on his thighs and pinned him in a chair.

"That wasn't very wise," Yvette said quietly.

"That man isn't here just to study the artifacts," James replied. "If this was just a research mission he wouldn't need four dozen marines. And he spends far too much time trying to tell us what to do. Something isn't right."

Yvette reached out to stroke my cheek. I leaned into her arm. "That's a reasonable explanation for why we have an unreasonable idiot pretending he's in charge," Yvette said with a sigh. "But that doesn't mean you should be antagonizing him. The balance of power does favor him at the moment."

"We still have our doors," James replied. "And for now at least the AI appears to support keeping the doors closed unless we order the doors to open. That prevents the man from doing too much."

"Alexis, Terrence and Ed are on the far side of the doors right now," Yvette pointed out. "And the governor has already threatened to hold them until we give them Brad."

"Won't happen," James said. "We can't allow him to believe he is in command. He hasn't shown any interest in helping us run the repair depot. That is our main goal and the real purpose of this colony."

Yvette nodded. "True. Now, you've been dealing with this crisis for more than eight hours. You should take a break."

James pushed me off his knee. Bethany scrambled to stand as well just before our master stood up. He put his arms around us. "I do want to spend time with my children and my ladies, but first we should find out what's happening with Pebble Beach. The last thing I need is for our good governor to claim that I wasn't doing my duty."

"But master," Bethany said in a little girl voice. "You have three children waiting for their father to hold them for the first time."

Yvette and I burst out laughing. The merry sounds must have carried through the open door because Marie, Tina and Janice dashed into the room. Marie just looked at James who joined in the laughter after a moment, but my sister concubines charged into his arms.

"Master!" Tina cried. "It's so nice to hear you laugh."

"What makes him laugh?" Marie asked. "All I'm hearing is that everyone is stressed and that our new governor is a problem."

"Bethany found a great way to break the tension in here," Yvette said. "Now why don't you drag James out to the command area so we can find out how long all the repairs are going to take?"

Tina and Janice immediately started pulling James from the room. He leaned away from them for a moment, but allowed them to drag him from the room. Bethany and I stood there with Yvette and Marie. I was going to follow James, but Yvette held out her hand and prevented us from leaving. "Wait for a moment," she told us.

I paused. The woman who was James' unofficial second in command had a worried frown on her face. She waited until the door closed and then waved towards the chairs. Bethany immediately sat down in the chair that James had been using. I froze for a moment and then climbed into my sister concubine's lap. She put her arms around me as I shivered.

"Oh, it's not bad," Yvette informed us as she sat down and pulled Marie into her lap. "I just wanted to hear what you know. Especially what you thought about Major Bonham when he visited the lasers."

"Did Tina not say anything?" I asked. "She was there as well."

Yvette laughed. "Tina was, and I've talked to her. But she wasn't really paying close attention to the man. She admitted that she doesn't know what to say. She doesn't have much experience with men like Major Bonham."

I shrugged. "He seemed interested. Yet, he didn't really look too closely at anything in the rooms. I would have expected him to take a much closer look at the controls, but Tina got closer to the unit than he did."

Yvette nodded. "Tina mentioned that as well. I suspect he was more interested in trying to look around this side of the colony. He did have his minions move forward when the final door opened upon his exit from our area."

"That's going to become a problem," Tif said as she walked into the room. She found a chair and sat. Jillian quickly ran into the room and jumped in her lap, kissing her face before anyone could say anything.

"Not really," Yvette responded when the kiss ended. "We still have the other three routes and if we absolutely have to we can use the transporter system to bypass the doors. It does show that we can't trust the man, but I think we already knew that."

"I just don't understand why they are making some of the demands we are hearing," I said. "I mean why arrive with no concubines and then demand that James allow them access to ... well..." I stopped and hid my face in Bethany's chest, holding her as I shivered.

"Something that you don't seem to want," Marie observed. "Not that I really want it either. I agree the situation doesn't make much sense."

"The reason they brought no concubines is because this is officially a temporary assignment," Tif said. "The captain of Sir Paridell told me that his original orders were that the scientists would only be here for a few days. He was very surprised to hear that our visitors had paperwork declaring the good Clint Johanes as the acting governor."

"Acting shithead," Jillian said with a pout. "He's got you so stressed you haven't been around to play the last three nights. Whitney and Claire are nice, but we want to have you and Tam to cuddle with."

"I know," Tiffany said with a sigh. "Tam and I wish we could spend every night with you." Tiffany paused and looked at the floor. I could see a blush spread up her face. Soon her cheeks were bright red. "I miss you so much. It's funny, the Tradition that James established would seem to completely violate the spirit of the concubine system. When I was in school everyone talked about how the citizens would have the concubines as nothing more than sex slaves. I watched in school as the few students with good scores created little harems. Many treated the girls they chose poorly, but the girls accepted it for the chance to get off the planet. But now, I know that loving my concubines gives me a reason to strive harder for the Confederacy and everyone here."

Yvette laughed. "I think we all found that. It does seem rather strange. I knew that I'd love Philipe even though he was going to be my concubine, but I never expected to find so much love with everyone. Marie and Esther are family."

"Family you tie up and make lick you until you scream out multiple orgasms," Marie quipped as she twisted around and placed a passionate kiss on Yvette's lips.

Jillian immediately twisted her own body and started to cover Tiffany's face with kisses. Bethany and I giggled. "Reminds me of how we are with James," Bethany whispered into my ear. She followed those words with a teasing nibble of my earlobe. A sound that was a cross between a sigh and an orgasmic moan erupted from my lips.

The other two couples both stopped their kissing. I could see Tiffany and Yvette gazing at me. "Sounds like a good one," Tif quipped. "But I don't think that we're here to have a lesbian orgy."

"No," Bethany replied as she moved her lips away from my neck. I leaned back into her. Her right hand reached up to hold my body away from hers. "I'm fairly sure Yvette wanted to talk about something a bit more important."

"I do," Yvette said. "We just need to work to keep James and that colonel from talking. It seems that our good visiting scientist likes to try to antagonize James."

"The colonel will just try to aggravate you," I whispered. "I don't think he's going to stop. As we've already observed, he's after something. I'm surprised he hasn't ordered James to make all the pods on this side of the colony open for inspections."

"Could he do that?" Tif asked.