Chapter 56: Can it Get More Unfriendly

"Tam, Tif!" James shouted. "What brings you here? And what about the training?"

"Madison wanted to go home and feed her son," Tiffany said. She was wearing a green hockey jersey. I looked at the logo and found that it was a wolf with a red cape in its mouth.

"Diana and Ingrid took over," Tamara said as she skated up to James. Her jersey was the blue of Alice's dress and had a grinning Cheshire Cat as its logo.

Their concubines were making their way onto the ice. None of them appeared to be confident. I could see Janice and Tina skate over. They offered support to the new skaters as they started around the rink.

"We thought it might be fun to come out here," Tiffany said. "Although this isn't a kind of skating I've done before."

"You skated?" James asked.

"Just rollerblading," Tamara replied. "It will be interesting to see how that experience helps or hurts."

James nodded. He seemed about to say more when Diana's voice rang out. 'James, scanners are picking up a new jump point."

"What kind?" James asked. He had straightened up a bit. I glanced over to see Bethany and Kitty skating off the ice. They disappeared down the tunnel before Diana replied.

"The power levels and signature are Confed," Diana said. "But the vector doesn't fit. None of the systems nearby lie on the vector of this jump point."

"Do any Confed planets lie on the vector?" James asked. He started to skate towards the entrance to the ice. I followed.

"Yes," Diana replied. "But they are all on the far side of Earth as far as we are concerned. If the ship came from there, it's been in transit for ten weeks. Oh, wait, two more jump points just opened up on the same vector."

"James!" Colonel Johanes called out. "It's time to stop the games. You will present yourself for court martial in forty-five minutes."

"How many times do I have to tell you that you do not have that authority?" James asked.

"I don't?" Colonel Johanes tone turned suddenly amused. "Are you certain that I can't enforce my orders?"

"James," Diana called out. "We now have a scan of the first ship. It's got a Confed IFF, but I don't recognize the class."

"What do you mean you don't recognize the class?" Tamara called out. "Most of that is handled by the computers."

"Oh, we have that," Diana said. "But it's not one of the classes we've seen before. And I did a quick check, the class is not used in the district. It's some missile cruiser. The class is named after some person; I can't even try to pronounce it."

Bethany came running back from the locker room. She was barefoot and only wearing panties. She got to the edge of the ice and shouted to James. "James, something's wrong. Colonel Johanes has only been on Ishtar for about six weeks. There is no way that he could have sent out a message and got a response from Earth. If he knows what ship that is, the arrival was planned from the time he started on his journey here."

James finished skating over to the edge of the ice. He stepped off the ice and nodded to Bethany. "That finally puts a piece into the puzzle. Diana, can we signal Borneo?"

"I think it's the middle of the night there," Ingrid replied. "But I'll try. Hopefully there will be a quick response."

"What the... ?" Diana called out in a confused voice. "James! The cruiser just launched missiles. Tracking indicates they are targeted at three of the boosters we use to enhance communications and our links to the scanners in the system."

"Can we stop them from impacting?" James asked.

"No," Diana replied. "We don't have any anti-missile defenses out that far."

"Does that impact a communication with Borneo?" Tiffany asked.

"No," Ingrid claimed. "At least not at this time. I've turned off the three repeaters. Perhaps the lack of active emissions will get the missiles to miss. The ones I'll use for the call to Borneo are still over a light hour away from the position of this ship."

"It shouldn't be firing," James growled. "But I'm guessing that this ship isn't here for just a friendly visit."

"Oh, the other two ships have come through. It's a pair of Patrician class corvettes. They are Ravenna and River Oaks," Ingrid replied. "The cruiser has modified its IFF, so I am not getting a name from it."

"What a surprise," James said. He had a smirk on his face. "So Colonel Johanes, I guess we now have proof that your research mission wasn't much about research. Do you even have a scientific background?"

"Of course I do!' The man screamed back. "I worked at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and then later went on to work at Bell Labs."

"Yes," James replied. My master had a smile on his face as he stepped from the ice. "I can imagine they were happy with your abilities as a bottle washer and floor sweeper."

Silence was the only reply to James' last remark. He was walking down the tunnel back to the locker room. I hurried off the ice, following him. Behind me I could hear my sister concubines moving to leave the ice and join us.

By the time I reached the locker room, James was sitting on a bench and removing his skates. I dropped onto the bench next to him and put a hand on his arm. "James?"

He sat up and put his right arm around me. "Don't worry Little One," he said. "We are still protected and the ship cannot fire directly at us."

"But why are they doing it?" I asked. "It makes no sense. They were far from us."

"Someone wants to erase the colony," Bethany said. "Our existence is embarrassing to someone and he's acting to try to get the colony shut down so it will be forgotten."

"Umm ... I thought we met the person who was in charge of colony selection when Ishtar was founded. Doesn't she now command a corvette in this district?" Tina asked.

"I don't think she's the one trying to erase the embarrassment," James said. "Others had to have been involved or thought they'd somehow profit from the founding of Ishtar. I'm guessing that we won't find a direct connection. The commands to Colonel Johanes came through the research departments, so it's a friend of the embarrassed officer pushing all of this."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

James shrugged. "Well, I figured we'd stop by the command post to at least look at the data. Then we have to find someone to be the commissioner of the hockey league."

"But we aren't ready to play!" Kitty cried out. "We've only had the one practice and that wasn't exactly organized."

"Craig can do it!" Tamara shouted. We all turned to look and found her standing at the entrance to the tunnel leading to the ice. "He's probably the best for it anyways, he already organizes the indoor soccer and the basketball games."

James nodded. He seemed about to say more when a screech of surprise rang out. "James!" Diana shrieked. "We have a new jump point. It's in line with Ursus. What do I do?"

"It's time to earn our wages," James called out. "Terrence, get to command and get the defenses up. Linus, Timothy, you should probably join him. Donna..."

"We don't get paid," she called back. "And I'll get medical up."

"James, I'm dropping the attempted call to Borneo. With the repeaters destroyed by the visiting cruiser and a new ship in the area, we need to start shifting the network. The ones that I'd use to call Borneo are going to fill the holes."

"Understood," James said. "Candi, Randi, can you back up Diana and Ingrid? The twins just got off a shift and deserve a short break."

"On it!" both ladies called out over the speakers. I bent down to frantically remove my skates as James continued. "Ingrid, do we have any communications from the three visiting ships? Anything at all?"

"No," she replied. "They haven't sent any messages. And the damaged they did to the sensor network means that Diana can't get a close scan of them at all."

I had pulled both skates off. I reached down to the bottom of my jersey top and was about to pull it up when James put a hand on my shoulder. "Meiko, get to our transporter station by the command post. We might need to teleport someone and I don't want to have Brad running the station."

"I'll go to protect her," Bethany called out. I glanced up at my sister concubine to see her hand her skates to Janice. "The others will finish putting things away. We should go."

Kitty and Brittany pulled me to my feet as Tina ducked down to pick up my skates. My two younger sister-concubines kissed my cheeks and then pushed me towards the airlock that separated the rink from our enclave. I stumbled a step toward it and then took off running. Bethany caught up with me as I reached the door.

We cycled through the airlock door together and then took off running down the corridor. The route from the rink to the teleportal room allowed us to circle the center of the enclave, so we did not run into anyone. We arrived at the room to find Lindsay and Tanya waiting with a gurney.

The duo smiled as we dashed inside. I ran to the console. A moment later, I was entering the sequence to unlock the colony's teleporter system.

At first, the system appeared to be working fine. I was able to power up the pad easily. Then something started to probe at the controls, clearly trying to identify the unique code for our command post pad.