Chapter 5

The king's birthday was an occasion for a lot of pomp and circumstance. There were a lot of people in fancy uniforms that they never wore on any other occasion, and some of them were threadbare, so you could tell how old the uniform was. This was some sort of status symbol, and there were rumors that some of the costumes were brushed with wire bristled brushes to produce that worn appearance.

Well, I even wore a fancy outfit, but I made sure that it did not interfere with access to my pistols. I made the same arrangement for Sinola, and she seemed to attract even more male attention. She reveled in the notice taken, but she only smiled at me. I couldn't help puffing out my chest every time she did that. Her costume never hid her magnificent tits, and she was a distraction throughout the ceremonies. I don't know if that were the reason, but nothing bad happened until the ceremonies broke up and everybody relaxed.

Unfortunately, the relaxing extended to many of the bodyguards. However, Sinola was intent on impressing me, so she stuck to her job. Therefore, she was the one who noticed the man creeping up on the king's back with the knife in his hand. She yelled a warning, but she also drew a revolver and shot the man in the hip. She always claimed that she was aiming for his kidney and missed, but I could not help wondering if that were completely true. The good thing to come of her "miss" was that the king's questioners had a live person that they could question. I always thought that she had that in mind.

The assassin was rushed to the hospital where he could be patched up enough to live until the official questioning. In any case, the situation was out of our hands and we went on to other things. A week later, I was told that this was an isolated assassination attempt by a disgruntled favor seeker, and the assassin was not tied to any other people. I had complete confidence in the ability of the king's questioners to get the truth, so I did not worry about it again.

Meanwhile, Sinola was granted a special audience with King Haran IV in which he presented her with a medal of valor and a purse of so many gold coins that she could not carry it all because of the weight. She wanted me to take the money, but I refused to take it all. Sinola was somewhat miffed at me at first, but she had a conversation with Anslee and calmed down after that. I didn't know what had caused the change in her attitude over the money, but I didn't worry about it: I just gratefully accepted the softening of her stares at me.

Nothing in the way of official business came up for the next few months, and I had the opportunity to spend time with my wives as we waited for Anslee to give birth to our son. Finally it happened, and Henry Jorst Douglas was born. Everybody assured me that he was the spitting image of me, but all I could say was that I loved the new baby no matter who he looked like. As expected Henry J had an excellent set of lungs that he loved to exercise except when he was drinking milk from his mother.

Henry J was a standard boy with all of the usual equipment, so that was all I cared about. Of course, I congratulated his mother over what a superlative job she had done in producing such a fine example of Horurie maleness. Anslee giggled at that and kissed me deeply. I could tell that she was in a hurry to start working on a brother for Henry J, but I was kind of leaning toward a sister. Oh, well, I would be happy with whatever Anslee produced, and I made a point of insuring that she knew that I really felt that way.

Meanwhile, Sinola seemed to work especially hard toward producing a baby of her own. I told her not to worry: I did not think any less of her as a woman because she was not yet pregnant. I insisted that I would be happy when it happened, but she was not to berate herself while we were waiting. During this time when Anslee was recovering from giving birth, she insisted that Sinola get a double dose of fucking to make up for Anslee's inability to serve me. Is that what is known as being loved to death?

It was not long after the birth of my first son that I was called to arms. A far southern estate owner decided that he was far enough away from the king's eye that he could get away with establishing himself as a local warlord. He might well have made a good case for King Haran appointing him as the senior official for the county, but he wanted more than that. Therefore, he was declared to be in armed rebellion, and I was sent to see just how much military force would be needed to slap down this upstart.

Both Anslee and Sinola wanted to go with me, so I took both of them along. A wet nurse was found for Henry J and Anslee took some pills to dry up her milk production. Both women had already demonstrated how valuable they could be in backing me up, so I was glad to take them both.

We departed from home in my special flier and headed south. We crossed the Equator and kept going. The trip took 47 hours because of several factors, but the flier was large enough that we could comfortably sleep aboard with one of us as pilot while the other two slept. We also had food, so we did not need to stop on our journey.

I had hoped to arrive without attracting attention, but that turned out to be a forlorn hope. We were spotted on the local radar and were challenged by four fighters. They gave no reason for it, but immediately began an attack as soon as we got within range. I gave the flying control over to Anslee and concentrated on using the Gatling gun. Meanwhile, Sinola took up the Winchester that she had been practicing with.

With our speed, we could be reasonably sure that we would only face attack from the front because Anslee could easily aim us in that direction. That I could handle with the Gatling gun. Sinola could defend our rear with the Winchester. We simply did not worry about attack from either side.

At the moment, only one ship was actually shooting at us with its Gatling gun. As we got close enough, we could see that there was only one man aboard each of the attacking fliers, so he was going to be directing the flier at the same time he tried to shoot us down. That divided attention was to our advantage.

The pilot who was shooting at us must have had little experience in air-to-air battles because he was still out of range and simply wasting ammunition. As we closed on each other, the two outside fliers peeled off to attack us from the sides or the rear. Anslee laughed at that and sped up to our maximum speed as soon as the two fliers were committed to their turns.

We sped toward the other two fliers directly head to head, and a crash was imminent if somebody did not turn pretty damned soon. We were close enough for me to shoot in only a few seconds, and I loosed about 20 shots at the flier on the left. The one on the right was the one who had been wasting bullets.

Both of them were now shooting at us, but their aim was not as good as mine. My target sprouted a plume of black smoke and slowed down, but he was not fatally wounded. We zoomed past the two fliers and that gave Sinola a chance to shoot. She managed to get off two shots at the smoking flier, but she did not seem to make any difference.

Anslee turned on our inertial dampening and artificial gravity so that we were effectively encased in a ball of our own and not subject to the usual laws of physics. We could not maintain this bubble for long, but it was perfect for surviving a dogfight. She whipped us around and took after the two fliers we had initially engaged. The enemy must not have been equipped with our control of physics, because they looked like they were turning as quickly as they could, but they were making sweeping turns compared to our sharp zigs and zags.

Anslee practically rode up the tail of the wounded flier, and I gave it another short burst of bullets. This time, I must have hit something important because the flier exploded in our faces. Anslee had to do some fancy flying to steer us around the fireball and debris, but we missed it all.