Sentient (8 page)

Stacey woke up on her side and smiled softly.  She was a little jealous at first of how beautiful both Paula and Olivia were, but Kris seemed completely oblivious of the fact.  She didn’t catch him checking them out once, and by the end of the evening she noticed he got a certain look in his eyes only when he looked at her.

She worried a little of course, things were new and they were in their honeymoon phase.  It’d only been two days since he was back.  But she felt a lot more confident about things.  She smiled naughtily, he really did deserve a reward for being so attentive last night.  She wiggled out of his sleeping grip and shimmied down underneath the covers.

---------

He woke with a gasp and looked down.  There was a rather large bulge underneath the blanket and he could see her head bobbing up and down as he felt the heavenly warmth and heat of Stacey’s talented mouth and throat.  He wanted to watch, so threw back the covers.  He groaned when she locked her eyes with his and winked.

She had a naughty look in her eye and she looked as if there wasn’t any where else she’d rather be than between his legs.  She looked so sexy and beautiful as he slowly disappeared into her velvety mouth.  He was on the verge of exploding and she backed off and started to lick his shaft and balls.  Only after the feeling had subsided a little did she take him in her mouth again, teasingly holding him on the edge.

He wasn’t sure how much more teasing he could handle and let out a soft growl.

----------

She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but she didn’t want to stop.  She kept teasing him while greedily licking off and swallowing another surge of precum from his tip.  She was lost in an erotic haze as she kept him on the edge.  When he growled it went straight to her core.  If her mouth wasn’t so full she’d have smiled, instead she teasingly slowed down even further.

She gasped as he reached down and grabbed her roughly by the hair.  She wasn’t scared at all, in fact a thrill went through her at his rough handling as he pulled her up on her knees and pushed her head into the pillow.  She couldn’t move at all and felt her core tighten, a moan of excitement and pleasure was muffled by the pillow as she felt his hard length against her wet silken heaven.

She gasped in both pain and pleasure as he pulled her head back by her hair as he buried himself inside her in one fast hard stroke.  She felt so hot, so desirable, and submissive as he took her hard and fast from behind.

Harder, faster.

She didn’t think she’d said it out loud, but he started pounding into her even faster now and she let out a breathy gasp as he spanked her firmly on her ass.  The sting of the pain radiated straight to her core and she felt her body coil tighter as she locked down on his invader with her silken sheath.

“God yes, Kris” she said in a loud gasp and gave herself over to the pleasure as the tight coil burst into a thousand pieces as pleasure wracked her body.  Nothing else existed but pleasure and the feel of him continuing to push into her tight soft body over and over.

She heard him grunt and felt him expand within her.  She gasped as he spanked her again and she was beyond excited by driving him to such a powerful and animalistic release.  She was completely his and all of that together rolled her into an even more intense orgasm as her body reached rapturous pleasure.

She sighed softly, utterly satiated for now as she came down from her orgasmic bliss.

Kris growled, “You shouldn’t tease me.  Did I hurt you?”

She giggled and looked up at his worried and confused face, “No love, and if that’s your response I’ll be teasing you a lot more in the future.”

He snorted and spanked her playfully again.

She was content as he held her for a while, but they would have a busy day today she knew.  He needed to get to know the bridge interfaces, and they had three scientists to help Aide herd.  Reluctantly she suggested they take a shower.

---------

Aide paced nervously in front of their cabin.  She was being ridiculous, but she felt the doubt and fear of rejection.  What if they don’t like her?  Pure idiocy, she felt a surge of self disgust and froze.  She studied the emotion that fascinated her for some reason.  She finally reached up and hit the pad to let them know she was out here.

She looked down again at the skintight suit.  It was a ship suit that covered everything, had its own internal shielding and atmosphere generator.  It would also deploy a head covering in case of an air pressure drop.  The thing was, it might have covered everything but it left nothing for the imagination.  She was rather… body shy with it being her first full day.

The door opened and Stacey’s mouth dropped open.

“Who are you?”

The strangest thing happened, her emotions settled at hearing Stacey’s voice.  It was pleasant sounding.  There was also a pleasant scent, she’d obviously just showered.

“It’s me.  This is what I’ve been working on for my own private project.  What do you think?” she asked in her trademark bedroom voice as she gestured at herself.  There was no doubting who it was.

Stacey looked her up and down, “You look fantastic,” her voice was still a little shocked.

Aide blushed, “Thanks, there are suits like this for everyone else too.  It’s important for safety to wear them, though they are tight enough to wear something else on top of it if you wanted…”

Stacey grinned, “No, I think I’m going to like Kris’s reaction when I’m in one of those.  Why don’t you come in and join us for breakfast?”

Aide asked, “You sure that’s okay?”

Stacey shrugged and tapped her temple, “You’re already here right, of course it’s okay,” and moved out of the way.

Aide came in and sat at the table.

Kris came out of the bedroom in one of the suits and stared at Aide for a few seconds.

“Aide?”

Aide grinned, “How’d you know?”

He grinned back, “I can feel how nervous you are in my head, or at least I’m getting the backwash of it.  I was afraid it was something bad.”

They sat down and enjoyed breakfast.  Aide felt relieved, she’d grown fond of them over the last couple of days.  It was hard not to.  For a human it was a short time, but two days for an AI was almost an eternity, not to mention she knew everything about them there was to know.

She’d done a detailed scan, but only a cursory scan of the three scientists already this morning.  The idea of someone going through her mind, now that she had this body, was disturbing to her.  But she had to at least do that much to satisfy her protocols.  At the same time, she’d downloaded all the technical knowledge, except the security protocols of course, that they’d all need to try and improve the three technologies they were focused on.

They’d all have a busy day…

-----------

General Bill Nells was in a bad mood.  He hated to fly, but he had no choice.  He had to come to give the president and joint chiefs a report in person.  After everything that happened he was sure their secure network was anything but secure to the alien presence.  He wasn’t sure what good it was though just to keep it off the air, he was certain it wasn’t any safer in their highly guarded computer network that wasn’t hooked up externally to anything else.

The latest information was even more disturbing in his opinion, but he couldn’t understand why aliens would even care about those people.  After multiple security checks and high tech scans for bugs, which he was pretty sure were worthless, he made it to the staff room to give his report.  He reordered his thoughts and focused on what they did know while he waited to be called upon.

The president said with a smile, “Bill, good to see you again, let’s see what you have.”

Bill went over everything.  He started with the initial sighting of the object that appeared to be from outside the solar system.  Next he explained how that the object, along with a retired soldier living nearby had disappeared.  He explained how the satellite was duped, their changed photographs, and other bizarre events without any fingerprint or identifiable hacking attempts such as the failed bug and the burned out CPU for the car.

He talked about their attempt to apprehend Sgt. Kris Miller and subsequently their first look at a genuine UFO, and worse, how it disappeared without a trace.  The room grew too quiet and seemed to fill with a nervous energy as he finished.

The president asked, “So, what do you believe the aliens want?”

He answered, “I’m not sure sir, but after the UFO disappeared right in front of our soldier’s eyes.  I’m still not sure if it was some kind of cloak, or if it simply moved to fast for us to see.  Kris Miller has been seen two more times, caught on CCTV camera’s in Los Angeles and New York all within an hour or two of each other.  In both cases he talked to PHD’s in physics and shortly after both of these people disappeared, one of whom which has been trying to sell weapons to the government for a couple of years.

“My analysts said her designs are brilliant, cutting edge, and better than most of the contractors that we give billions to every year.  I can’t speculate on to why they have them, but obviously they need them for something.  Short of capturing one of them and questioning them about why sir, I believe we are stuck in the dark…” he trailed off.

The president said, “You need to find them first, what are you doing toward that end?”

The general replied, “We have a science team scouring the area, they did pick up something strange.  Some of the metal around that area had been magnetized.  They believe the ship must put off a very powerful electro-magnetic field which we are scanning for now. 

“I’m afraid though there is a good chance they have a cloaking field, it is my belief we only saw what we did because they had to decloak to grab the truck and lift it inside.  Either that or they moved faster than one frame rate on the HD camera’s the unit was wearing.  I’ll do my best though sir, we are using satellites to scour the globe and nearby space now looking for any anomalies in Earth’s EM field.”

The president frowned, “Not having control of our own airspace is not acceptable General, especially without knowing their intent.  If you need anything else for your hunt just ask for it.”

The general nodded soberly.  He’d been worried he would be taken off the case, now he realized he was disappointed he wasn’t.  They were far out of their league; their only hope was if the aliens screwed up.  He was fairly confident that would eventually happen.  He decided they just had too…

-----------

Aide considered the idea of giving a statement to the world governments at the least, especially with what she just heard.  She doubted they would be very happy about not having control of the Earth’s defense, but perhaps they would at least be not as afraid.  On the other hand, if they find out about the attacking aliens, they may panic further.

Aide wasn’t too worried about the scans; they would never find the ship as long as it remained cloaked.  There may be a time though when they had to uncloak, especially if they needed to test new shields.  She took the ship down and into the ocean and headed North, entering the ice deep underneath the Arctic.  They should be safe down here from detection, even without the cloak.

The scientists seemed excited and couldn’t wait to get into the labs.  Aide of course was a lab assistant for all three of them speaking to them with their minds.  There was one obvious problem.  Nate probably hadn’t much of a libido in years, now he found himself at the physical age of forty.  She blushed at the thoughts he had in his head about not only Olivia and Paula, but herself as well.

She wasn’t really interested though, and she knew Olivia wasn’t either, if anything Olivia was attracted to Aide and she thought the idea quite intriguing.  Olivia was easily the most easy going of the three, and smart as well as beautiful.  Paula seemed very focused and not interested in anyone, but something about that felt false, as if she was lying to herself.

At first she thought Paula was ridiculous, if she was attracted to someone she should just go for it.  But then, she wasn’t exactly jumping Olivia herself was she?  She sighed and went back to her cabin.  She felt her real body was probably a distraction to others, and she would just be there to help in their minds.  She didn’t want to intrude on Kris either; Stacey was already keeping him company while he learned the system.

Anyway, her going back to the cabin had nothing to do with those toys she made.  Nothing at all.  But as long as she was there anyway, she may as well conduct more research.  If she happened to be thinking of Olivia’s long blonde hair, pouty lips, and bright blue eyes well… that didn’t mean anything either.

End of the world or not, Kris’s pleasurable morning exertions before and during his shower with Stacey had him feeling relaxed and in a good mood.  Seeing Aide in a real flesh and blood body had been a bit of a shock, but a pleasant one.  It wasn’t as if she was hard on his eyes.  Stacey stayed with him after they finished breakfast and he went to the bridge.

He was startled when he first walked onto the bridge; there were no controls, no anything really except a large room with plain silver walls, luminescent floor and ceiling, and a handful of comfortable looking chairs.  He just stood there for a while, how was this a bridge?

He’d been expecting consoles, blinking lights, and all manner of other devices.

“
Take a seat Kris,
” he heard Aide’s sexy bedroom voice.

He sighed and took a seat.  Immediately he was surrounded by holographic views and displays showing the solar system and where he was in it.  Past the displays in the rest of the room was a three dimensional display that he found hard to read, although he was able to find the ship and Earth easily enough.

When he wondered if he could zoom in because the scale was so small to encompass the entire solar system, it just happened.  He zoomed in on Earth and froze at the view of it.  It looked like he could reach out and touch the planet.  It was so clear and looked so real he’d have thought the Earth had shrunk and was in the room with him.

The clouds were moving and he could see the movement of storm systems.

Aide said softly in his mind, “
I have created a tutorial for you to get used to what it can do, at the end of it we can simulate some battles with the thirty enemy craft.
”

He blew out a breath wondering how long that would take.  Then the tingling started and he laughed, of course the tutorial would be a download, no need to learn things the hard way.  He closed his eyes as he learned how to control the ship, along with any other ships in his control.  He knew though that this was just the easy part, it would still take practice and simulations to make it feel natural and improve his response times.

It was extremely simply, yet impossibly hard.  All he had to do was think what he wanted to happen.  The problem was keeping a clear mind and not thinking about what might go wrong.  The first simulated battle was a nightmare and he got his ass kicked.  Every time he thought of a plan, or counter to the enemy tactics, by the time he implemented it was too late.

He looked depressingly at the burning ball in the center of the bridge.

Stacey who had watched the battle took his hand and squeezed, “Well love, you can only get better from here.”

He snorted at the amusement in her voice and took a deep breath to relax, and then tried again, and again. 

The room paused and Aide said, “
You’re trying too hard.  Don’t try to explain what to do in your mind, just send me a picture of what you want to happen.  For instance, when you sent those two ships to intercept the enemy trying to break through and fire on Earth, instead of thinking about which ships and what way they need to fly, and how to shoot, just think of the ships you want to react to that enemy. 

“I am designed to follow your orders, leave the details to me, just run the battle.  Think of me like your crew, concentrate on the end result, not all the little steps in between, those are what I excel at.”

He considered that for a moment and they restarted the simulation.  This time he prepared a little better, setting three ships in the back with orders to intercept anyone that got through the front lines.  The more he was able to focus on the big picture, and the responses to the enemy’s gambits, the better things seemed to go.

He realized she had been right, he was trying to micromanage and do everything, but his job was to simply come up with a planned overall response.  He worked throughout the day on it, every new trick the enemy, or rather Aide, threw at him helped him learn a bit more.  He also needed to get used to three dimensional tactics.  All his tactics as a soldier involved two dimensions for the most part.  As his focus improved he stopped making as many random thought mistakes as the system became more familiar to his mindset.

Still, he knew he’d be in here every day trying new ideas and responses.

He was depending on the scientists making innovations for the later waves, but the responsibility to survive the first one was all on him.  He had to be ready.  He only quit that day when his mental acuity started to flag and caused mistakes.

-----------

Olivia was rested on the couch in her suite as her mind pondered all the new knowledge.  There was no point to being in a lab until she has some idea of what could be done.  She had been assigned to improving the shields, but right now she was busy catching up to where they were already technology wise. 

Her mind was also a bit awed, she could think of many things with her new complete knowledge of quantum physics that would improve the world.  It was a shame they weren’t allowed to share the knowledge of it with Earth.  She wondered what would happen to them all after, when the threat of the Sthellan were gone.

How could they ever go back to their lives and ignore the knowledge they now had?  It would be difficult.  Plus, she had the feeling if they weren’t already, that most governments would desire to get their hands on the technology, or failing that anyone currently on this ship.  Still, despite those dire thoughts she was excited to be here, this beat modeling any day of the week.

She went over again how the shields worked now in her mind.  There were the shields from physical objects, such as meteorites that she really didn’t have to do anything with.  That field worked much like anti-gravity, the faster and harder the object hit, the harder the shields repulsed the object.

The specific shields she needed to work on improving were the plasma shields.  Like their ships, the enemy craft used primarily plasma to power all their systems, including weapons.  Right now the shield was more of a containment field, similar to the field that surrounded fired plasma balls, or contained the plasma streams inside the ship.

It’s just the containment field in this case kept the plasma out, away from the ship, instead of inside the field.  So an attack could almost be considered the same as an internal plasma surge, if the containment field was breached, they’d all have a very bad day.  So she had two approaches she could take, either increasing power to the containment field, which really was a power issue which is what Nate was working on, or figure out a second way to stop the attacks.

Rather than work the same problem as Nate, she would try to come up with another shield type altogether that could either stop or attenuate an attack.  Right now though she wasn’t sure what that would be.

Her mind wandered to the sexy AI again and she blushed.  She couldn’t help but be attracted to her.  Aide couldn’t have picked a better body type and look to attract her if she tried.  Aide was also smart, so she wouldn’t have to worry about an imbalance there, if anything she was the dumber of the two.  Add the bedroom voice the AI had, Olivia found herself interested, or at the very least attracted and intrigued. 

But she wasn’t sure about the whole artificial intelligence thing.  Even worse she was sure the AI was monitoring her every thought, which made her feel, embarrassed and a bit off balance.

She was here to try and save the human race, not pick up an alien girlfriend for god’s sake.  But her traitorous thoughts kept picturing the woman in that body hugging suit.  She was wearing one of her own now and she thought she looked good in it.  She frowned and tried to clear her thoughts and get back to work, this stuff wasn’t important right now.

-------------

Paula frowned as she went over the plasma weapons.  The containment shield that kept the plasma together as it travelled to the ship was self sustaining for the short time it took to reach the enemy vessel.  If she increased the plasma amount per shot much more than it was already it became unstable and would break apart before it hit the enemy ship in simulations.

Ironically if she made the containment stronger, it wouldn’t fail when it hit the enemy’s shields and would simply bounce back, exploding some distance away from the enemy’s ship and doing no harm at all.  No, if she was to increase the offensive weapons, it would have to be a new one all together.  The tech was too advanced to be endangered by physical damage; those gravity shields were just too good.  So what did that leave?

She wasn’t sure, but off course neither was the Alion so she didn’t think it would be easy.  Hopefully inspiration would strike.  The problem with breakthroughs was they couldn’t be done on command, even if the Earth was in danger.

She had a crazy idea, but the knowledge she was given didn’t cover it.

“Aide?”

Aide replied, “
Yes Dr. Rodriguez?”

She smiled, “Call me Paula.  I have a question, those quantum connections, would they work in or close to a black hole?”

There was silence for a moment, “
I imagine you consider using it as a weapon of some kind?  No, black holes are… an exception in quantum physics.  It’s almost as if the very laws of nature are broken down.  Even if we could open a quantum connection the space around it would be bombarded by deadly exotic particles killing us if the intense gravity waves didn’t crush us.

“They may work close to the event horizon but even then it is risky, and our ships can counter gravity of that magnitude so I’m not sure it would help.”

She nodded and dismissed the idea, she’d come up with something, “Thanks Aide.”

She took a quick break for lunch and ran into Nate in the dining hall and kitchen.  She felt so exposed in this suit that tightly hugged every curve her body had as she ordered a meal.  She could feel his eyes on her.  Last night he’d given her a really bad impression when he was obviously checking out and staring at all four of women on ship.  Though it seems he had eventually settled on her as a target by the time they all turned in.

At least that showed he had intelligence, Stacey obviously doted on Kris.  She’d been a little disappointed herself when she saw that.  As for Olivia, well it was obvious she had a better chance at the woman than any man did.  As for Aide she wasn’t sure why he’d dismissed her, but all she knew was she was his target, despite her sending shots across his bow to back him off.  If anything that seemed to have backfired in a major way.

Lucky her, he was a damned pig. 

The problem was he was an attractive pig.  She considered cutting him some slack, his body had reverse aged quite a bit and she imagined his revived libido had hit him hard.  Even to her who didn’t switch teams at all, had noticed all four of them were quite attractive.  At least he had stopped looking at the others like a dog when he realized they weren’t available.

“Hey gorgeous, how’s your day going?” he asked.

She turned her head annoyed and caught him staring at her ass.  Perhaps she wouldn’t be cutting him slack after all.

“That’s Dr. Rodriguez to you,” she spat out in annoyance.

Her pasta salad was ready so she grabbed it and sat as far from him as possible.

He smiled at her and said, “I don’t bite babe, come join me for lunch.”

She closed her eyes for patience but it didn’t help. 

She muttered crossly, “Pig.”

He shrugged, “I was seventy yesterday, I’m too old to change my ways honey so get used to it.”

She glared, “Where is everyone else?”

He grinned at her, “I imagine that cutie Stacey is shacked up with her man somewhere.  I’m not sure where the other morsels are, but I’m happy with your company babe.”

She snorted with laughter in spite of herself, “You’re incorrigible.”

He nodded in agreement.

She finished her salad in peace and quiet, she was surprised that she was a bit disappointed he hadn’t spoken at all the rest of the time.

----------------

Nate grinned as he watched the short firecracker walk out of the dining hall.  Getting back his libido had been a shock, but it was obvious to him in short order the others were already taken.  That was actually fine with him, he found himself attracted to Paula the most anyway.  He doubted at first she was available, but he was slowly changing his mind on that count.

Oh, the other three were gorgeous, but two out of the three were out because of either sexual preference or already with someone else.  He’d also caught the way Aide looked at Olivia the most last night, so figured if those two ever got a clue they’d be hooking up soon.

He was slightly ashamed of the reason why he was so attracted to Paula.  It was because she reminded him of his wife.  It wasn’t her looks, Paula was a hot and exotic Latina, his wife had been a redhead with porcelain skin and about eight inches taller.  Their body types and looks couldn’t have been more different.

No, what attracted him to her was she didn’t take his shit.  His wife was the same way, a damned firecracker.  He’d always been an irascible bastard and tended to drop offensive comments just for the fun of seeing the reaction.  The other three women just ignored his antics in the hopes he’d go away.  That was no fun at all, and he’d grown tired of the game.  Besides, they were all taken anyway.

But Paula responded with fire and passion, even if she needed to work on her insults a little more.  So no, it was her personality in addition to how much her tight curvy petite body turned him on, and she was so different in looks from his wife he didn’t feel odd about it.  In short she’d be a challenge.

He finished his lunch and went back to the lab.  His job here wasn’t as difficult as it was for the ladies.  He didn’t need to make a breakthrough, he just needed to rework the current power systems to be more efficient.

He could see the problem easily enough, if they wanted more power, the ship had to be bigger.  If they simply added more plasma lines around the ship, or increased the amount of plasma in each line, it would play merry havoc with the electromagnetic fields used by the equipment.