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Fever: The Aftermath

By: julybear7



Sorry this has taken so long. it is not a stroke story. it is an exposition of what happened to Kirk and his family after the invaders took over, and how they eventually drive them out. knowing the last chapter left some with a bad taste, i hope this makes up for it. jb7

Fever 07

Kirk surveyed the field before him. Once it had been a wheat field; now, it was not much more than weeds and wildflowers. On the other side, nearly a half-mile to the west, just barely visible, he could see the remnants of the alien invaders. At the northern edge, the field was limited by a thick hedgerow of gorse running along the highway; the southern edge, a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. 

It had taken nearly four years of forced attrition, but they had slowly whittled the invaders in this hemisphere down to this last force of roughly 300 aliens: officers, troops and breeding drones, plus nearly a thousand fighting drones. Similar results had been achieved in the rest of the world following his game plan.

The invaders had initially come in twelve ships, each with 24 officers and 288 'soldiers,' supported by 600 fighting drones. On each of the ships, there were 12 selective breeding drones, genetically altered so they could breed with up to five human females at a time, producing a viable drone in as little as four earth-months. 

Based on their experience in other, similar, invasions, they counted on being able to fertilize a hatch of women every half hour, to produce up to 240 fighting drones every day. Once a week, barring interference from the female, they expected each breeder to produce another breeding drone. 

In the years following the Vietnam conflict, the aliens had covertly landed advance scouts, surgically altered to resemble humans, who had insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence, where they could identify people with ESP abilities, hoping to breed the trait into the fighting drones. They had also seduced several hundred natives with false promises of wealth and status when they took over.

Erica's advisor had been one such quisling, not only identifying her to the invaders, but also participating in her capture. It had taken Kirk a bit over a year to find her, but he had finally been able to rescue Erica and eliminate the traitor during her third delivery of a drone.

That night, Orion Jones, PhD, her advisor, was serving as midwife, delivering the night's hatch of drones and placing them in the incubators where they would finish their fetal development. Jones had just caught Erica's latest delivery and was carrying it to the mechanical incubator when Kirk and his team suddenly materialized in the hatchery. The quisling opened his mouth to scream, but found his voice cut off by a thought from Kirk. The other members of the team released the women from the cribs where they were kept during their pregnancies, and readied them for their escape, aborting the unborn drones. 

Kirk, with a mental shove, pushed Jones up against the wall and started a telepathic interrogation, gathering information about the drones and their masters. When he was done with the turncoat, Kirk slowly and methodically destroyed the mechanical incubators and their contents. He then sent a mental blast, similar to the blast Sonny had tried to use on him, at the collaborator, incinerating him, leaving only a pile of cinders.

He rushed to Erica, to assure himself she was okay. As he hugged her, one of his team sent him a silent alarm. A second later, two breeding drones walked into the hatchery. One was obviously older, adult. The other, developmentally, appeared to be an adolescent. Kirk felt Erica shrink in his arms, moving closer to him. Reflexively, he sent his killing blast at the two breeders. Seconds later, the hatchery was empty, Kirk, his team, and the rescued women, safe, somewhere in Central Illinois.

Erica still had her arms around Kirk. "Thank you," she sobbed. "Oh, god, thank you. I don't know how much more of that I could have taken." She tightened her grip on his neck, pulling him to her for a kiss of gratitude.

He gently disengaged and stepped back. With a wry grin, he said, "Careful, girl. Those bastards seem able to follow the smell of sex and track down recent participants without any problem. Let's get all of you somewhere safe, then you can tell us about what you've been through."

"Scan us first. Make sure they haven't implanted any kind of tracking devices; especially the non-telepaths, to make sure none of them were cooperating with those bastards. It seemed like some of them had easier times than the two or three telepaths who were caged with me."

"Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. Seeing what they've done to the men, I can't imagine anyone collaborating, but I guess, if conditions are bad enough..." Kirk called two of his team mentally and gave them some instructions. He turned back to Erica. 

"This war has brought out all sorts of latent abilities and strengths. Before the aliens showed up, I wouldn't have bet a quarter that any of the people who traveled with Lorenz's troupe had any ability to teleport, or to blast an enemy, or exert any kind of mental control on an individual. Now, it's rare to find anyone who's been in a battle who can't do all three." 

He had been running his hands up and down her sides and over her back and shoulders. "I don't...wait, what's this?" he asked, running his hands over her lower abdomen. "It looks like they left something in your uterus. Hold on, this may hurt a little."

"Just get rid of it, then tell the others where to look. I knew there would be something. Can you teleport them all to the Great Lakes or the Gulf? The drones don't like large bodies of water; anything over an acre in size, they try to avoid. When they moved us from New York, they could have gone along the coast, but they moved inland and traveled through Pennsylvania. It must have taken them at least a day longer." 

At that moment, one of the members of the rescue team came up to them. "Kirk, all the women have some sort of chip in their abdomen, apparently in the uterus. Two of the women are giving off an aura of anger, like they don't want to be with us. None of us can get through the anger. Will you try? And what should we do about the chips?"

"Remember that subterranean lake up on the Wisconsin border? Send the chips to the large rock in the middle. I'll be over in a moment to check the women." He looked at Erica. "I'm sorry, sweets."

She felt a brief burst of pain, causing her to emit a gasping scream, echoed by all the women who had been rescued. "Oooh, shit!" she moaned. "Thanks, I think. I don't suppose there was another way, but, god!"

"We could have taken them out the same way they were inserted, but by then, they'd have found us. This way, they'll be walking into a pitch black cave with no outside light, and a large, deep lake, with no warning. One of the traits we've noticed is they have no sense of danger unless they can see the source, and with their eyes so deep set, they practically can't see what is in front of their toes.

"Come along and help me with these women." The five members of the rescue team were comforting and consoling seven of the ten women they rescued. Erica was number eight. The two remaining women, apparently of Slavic descent, were standing slightly apart from the others, arms crossed across their breasts, looking angry. Average in size and brunette in coloring, on a beauty scale from 1 to 5 (bulldog ugly to kitten cute), neither would have quite made it to 3. Calling them plain was being kind.

Kirk and Erica quickly scanned them, looking for evidence of either outright collaboration or sympathetic feelings for the aliens. What they found was manifest resentment at being removed from the best situation either woman had ever found herself in.

It appeared that they were one time prostitutes. Getting fucked two or three times a year was, to them, better than the ten to fifteen tricks a night they had to turn to avoid getting a beating from their pimp. They were warm, dry, and relatively well fed. So they had to deliver a baby every six months, and have their breasts milked every day. To them, it was a small price to pay for security.

Kirk scanned first one, then the other. He looked at Erica as he finished the second woman. She had the same puzzled look on her face he was sure was on his. Telepathically, he sent her a query. "Do you sense something odd here?"

"Mmhmm. They are both presenting the same information about themselves. And, frankly, I don't ever remember seeing them in the rape rack. Hang on a minute." She looked at the crowd of rescued women, focusing on the other telepaths. "Were any of you in the rack with either of these two women?"

One of the women, an older brunette,responded. "They didn't get racked with any of us. That bastard, Orion, saved them for him and that hogfaced squid to play with. I heard him hypnotizing them one night, and later saw them with Orion and his buddy. That freak had three of his snakes in one of them and two in the other while she sucked Orion off."

"Yeah," a second telepath added, "and did you see them the night Squido ran that snaky tongue of his up, I think her name is Shirley, her ass while Orion was screwing her. When she started to come, he pulled his tongue out of her ass and slid it in alongside Orion's cock." She laughed. "Big O pulled out in a hurry, with Squido's tongue wrapped around his thing; and O squirting cum all over Shirley's belly. They almost caught me watching, I laughed so hard."

Kirk chuckled. "Okay, ladies, thank you. That helps explain what we found." He turned to Erica. "Hypnotism. They've been programmed to respond a certain way in this situation. Think you can reprogram one of them, or should we just send them back?"

"We have to reprogram them. I wouldn't send my worst enemy's mother back there, even if it meant they wouldn't be born. Imagine if you can... remember the glass marbles you played with as a kid, the aggies, about a half or five-eighths of an inch? Okay, now imagine you have a hard on and someone is pushing one of those into your cock through your piss hole, all the way back into your sack. That's sort of what it was like to be fucked by, what did Minnie call him, Squido.

"Knock 'em out, or whatever you need to do to make them unaware of where we're going, but we're not sending them back. We can find out who they really are later, and put them to work as nurses or something.

"Now, let's get the hell out of here before we're traced."

They teleported to the same field Kirk and Lorenz had landed in a few years before, to approach the farm stealthily, on foot. Using some equipment stolen, errr...acquired from the invaders, one of the old travelers, an optical engineer, had cobbled together a holograph generator they were able to use to hide the farm house. 

It wasn't totally foolproof if you knew what you were looking for, but Lorenz and his followers were well liked in the area, and had been able to keep the aliens out of the neighborhood.

Kirk cautiously approached the top of the rise. He could see the top of the barn and the silo. He hesitated, scanning the site mentally and visually, using binoculars, looking for anything out of place. He received a welcoming thought from his mother and rose up to run to the house. The other people with him saw his actions and followed suit.

Two shots rang out. One kicked up dust a few feet ahead and to the side of Kirk. The other was intercepted by the woman identified as Shirley. Two of the male members of Kirk's team used their mental skill and quickly located and immobilized the snipers. Kirk ran back to see if anything could be done for the wounded woman.

"Kirk," she gasped, as he approached. "I want to thank you for trying to help...I know it wasn't...your choice...to bring us along. Please, take care of...Susie...my sister...Our husbands...were killed...when the invaders...first got to...our town...She's a good girl...a little rigid... sometimes ...but she...does what's...right...when...she knows...who...to lis...ten to...Tell her...I said..." With a final gasp, Shirley joined her brother. Kirk bowed his head, and slowly shook it with remorse, recalling how he had prejudged the women based on no evidence. The sound of someone approaching brought him back to the current situation.

The two team members who had immobilized the snipers were approaching him with two men who were struggling to get free. When they saw Kirk stand, they immediately froze. 

"But, I saw you go down; I got you! I know I got you!" shouted the younger of he two men.

"Sonny! You fucking sonuvabitch! And you, Ron! Godammit! As if it weren't hard enough to deal with the friggin' hogfaces, I have to worry about bastards like you! Tom, Rick, Jim! Move out and back about a hundred yards or so and do a mental search, Make sure these fuckers didn't lead any of the hogfaced bastards to us."

"See, Sonny," sneered Ron. "I tol' you he'd come back here. The hogfaces will pay us good for this..." He stopped, seeing the expression on Kirk's face.

The three men trotted off in different directions and returned a quarter of an hour later. They each shook their head. "Nothing, Kirk," said the one identified as Rick. I went back about a quarter of a mile. Noone behind us."

"Good. I contacted the farmhouse. Lorenz is there. He said to deal with them as I saw fit."

He turned to the would be killers. "Sonny, Ron, your own words when you got here indicated your intent was to kill me. At the very least, you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon. The fact that you killed an innocent bystander elevates that to first degree murder in any state in the world. Nobody would blame me for executing you summarily.

"As much as you deserve it, I'm unable to deliberately kill a relative. Rick, take my cousins' rifles back about ten, twelve yards and drop 'em on the ground." Rick picked up one of the rifles and began to eject the unspent cartridges. "No, leave 'em loaded and charged," Kirk ordered him.

"Ron, Sonny. Here's the deal. You can go, but your rifles stay where they are. If you stop to pick them up, you'll be fried to a crisp. Now, get your traitorous asses outta here," he said turning away. 

"C'mon," he said gesturing to his companions, "let's go." 

As soon as he had turned, Ron motioned to Sonny and they ran back to pick up their guns. They straightened up, turned and were aiming at Kirk when the blast of mental energy consumed them. All that remained were two lumps of steaming, misshapen globs of metal.

"Damn, Kirk," said Jim, "I've seen you do that a half dozen times, and it's still scary as all hell. How come we don't feel the heat? Look at those fuckin' guns!"

"The mental power acts as an energy shield, absorbing all the heat energy and reflecting it back to the target, elevating the temperatures, aiding the process."

"You knew they'd try for the rifles?"

"Yeah. While you were scouting, I explored Ron's head. There's an alien outpost in Ruthorford. There are wanted posters up for me and Lorenz, dead, alive or information leading to capture. He planned to kill me to be able to convince the invaders he could produce Lorenz, to get more money for his information.

"We'll have to do something about that outpost. It's too close for comfort. We can't be too obvious about it; that would just advertise our presence and get them to send more drones. We'll kick around some ideas at the house." As he turned to walk to the farmhouse, he teleported the still hot remnants of the rifles back to the hatchery.

Lorenz was waiting on the porch when the group arrived at the farm house. "They're gone?" was all he asked.

"Like we should have done two years ago." Anger and weariness were evident in Kirk's voice.

"Well, it's done now. The woman was unfortunate, but her death was not something anyone could have foreseen. How is her sister taking it?"

"Talk about bizarre! Just after Shirley died, her sister, Susie, walked up, looked at the body and said, "Shirley's gone? Are you the boss? Tell me what to do." Since then, she's only been two or three steps away from me."

Lorenz gave a short laugh. "The burdens of leadership. Assign her to someone. You can't be a babysitter."

"We were going to send both of them down to the troop hospital in Joplin. Still seems like a good idea. A couple of the other non-telepaths have had nursing experience. She could be paired with them.

"But first, she may have some information for us about the breeders. I got to see a couple up close, but had to nuke them before I could get a real close look. Susie and Shirley were toys for one of the breeders and their human caretaker. One of the telepaths observed them one night and described it for me. Some freaky shit. 

"Also, Erica wants to talk about what happened to her, too. Mostly just to get it off her taboo memory banks. You don't need to hear it unless you want to."

"Of course I'll be there, if she wants me to be."

They turned and entered the house, going to the living room where Erica and the other rescued telepaths, Minnie, Ruth, Anita, and T'sahn were talking with Susie.

She was saying, "I know I can't communicate like you guys do, but I have some information about the breeders I bet you don't have, and about how the eggs are started, and how the drones from that hatchery will be different from ones produced at other sites around the country."

"What do you mean, Susie?" Lorenz asked, alerting the women to their presence.

Susie blushed. "I guess it's no secret that Dr. Jones and Harr-1used Shirley and me for recreational sex, especially Dr. Jones. When we were captured, he told me, the aliens somehow cauterized our uteruses, or something, so we couldn't get pregnant, by anyone. I think it was the first time they raped us.

"One night he explained the whole process to me, and how our hatchery was different. That was the night I learned Harr-1, the one you all called Squido, was a hermaphrodite, with that aggregation of penicles, as he called them, and a vulva, just like ours. 

"He could suck his penicles up into his abdomen, revealing the vulva, exposing it for penetration. That night I saw Dr. Jones..." she shuddered, "I'll say it, it's the only word. Dr. Jones fucked that creature, stimulating it to produce more eggs, but eggs with a human component, from Dr. Jones semen. 

"Our part of the hatchery was to see how they developed and performed. I got the impression from Dr. Jones the aliens weren't very pleased with the results. The human-alien drones developed slower, and were harder to train and supervise in the field.

Kirk laughed. "Good! Erica, does any of this mesh with what you experienced?"

"Pretty much. I didn't know about the hermaphrodite, but it doesn't surprise me. The fertilized eggs had to come from somewhere and be stored in his body, err...her, oh, shit! Its body."

Kirk interrupted. "How did you get caught, Erica. When we talked, just after the alarm, you were packing to leave. You said they were at least a day away."

"Good ol' Doc Jones, that bastard! Right after you disengaged, he knocked on my apartment door and said he had a mini van and offered me a ride to campus where he said I could catch a bus home. I didn't have any reason not to trust him, so I didn't bother to scan him. I followed him downstairs, to the parking lot. 

"There was a minivan with the side door open. I climbed in and everything went black. It was some sort of gas. When I woke up, I was chained in a crib, naked except for my panties. Jones was there, with Squido...sorry, Susie, but that's the way I think of h...it. It was telling the good doctor they had captured a pair or women for him, that he could not have sex with the breeding stock. They were reserved for him and the new breeders when they arrived."


Fever: The Aftermath



"What else can you tell us, Susie, that will help us defeat them?"

"I don't know; they hate human men, think they're weak because they only have one...uh, thing; they like mating with human women because we can do it so often. They can smell us when we ovulate or have our periods. They especially like to mate with us during our period; the flow helps lubricate us for them. My husband wasn't much for foreplay, but next to them, he was Casanova. 

"With Shirley and me, for their recreational sex, it wasn't that different from what I saw happening with the women who were tied up in the rack. They told us what position they wanted, then forced their way into us. They would start out skinny, and then enlarge themselves when we were full. There were times it felt like a softball on the end of a fire hose being pushed around inside me."

"What do you know about the drones which were produced?"

"There's not an awful lot to know. From what Harr-1 told Orion, the ones bred by the aliens are quite frail, subject to damage from exposure to moisture, to, what did he call it, our fucking sand? Yes! They can't stand to walk across a patch of ground with sharp stones or crushed gravel; he said one hatchling of his was destroyed by brushing up against a plant which had teeth on its stem. He said it had a red blossom and smelled so sweet it was sickening."

"Roses!" exclaimed Kirk. "Thank you, Susie! You've been a bigger help than you can imagine. If I can ever do anything for you, just ask." He turned to Lorenz. 

"I think we have enough information now to start planning our takeback campaign. We need to find out what kind of firepower they have access to, and how we can counter them."

Susie spoke up. "The night Harr-1 told all this to Orion, he seemed to be a little drunk, so I'm not sure how truthful it was, but he said because the drones were so expendable, they weren't trusted with anything except what he called 'muskets.' They sounded like shotguns from the way he described them. Even the soldiers, the leaders of the drones, carry only rapid fire pistols, something like an Uzi. The working commanders, officers, carry what looks like a 9mm automatic, similar to a WWI Mauser, but with the clip in the handle." 

She paused and looked at her audience. They were gaping at her, as if they couldn't believe what she was saying. "My husband was a hunter and a gun nut. He talked guns; I listened and paid attention. 

"The biggest worry you will have is their artillery. They have several of what they call compact field pieces. He told Orion they were laser guided explosive rounds, about five to eight kilograms each, which produced upwards of a thousand shards of shrapnel each. But they are still only projectile rounds. They should be easy to sabotage if you can get to them."

Almost unconsciously, both Lorenz and Kirk scanned the woman as she stopped talking. There was no sign of subterfuge; she was telling the truth as she knew it. They looked at each other and nodded. They would accept her account, until it was somehow proven wrong.

"Thank you, Susie. You've made our work easier, immensely. We owe you again." Kirk looked at Lorenz. "It's been a long day, and I'm beat. Can we pick this up tomorrow?" Lorenz nodded and stood to leave.

He looked at Tiffany and held out his hand. "Coming, Tiff?"

"If you do your part right," she grinned and got one in return. Kirk laughed and stood up.

"Ladies, as much as I missed you all, I must bid you a good night. Erica, if you want, you are at the top of my list."

She smiled, and patted Susie on the shoulder. "Second, Kirk. I think there is someone who needs you more than I do."

Susie flashed her a smile which almost made the plain woman pretty. She then looked at Kirk. "Can I speak to you privately for a few minutes?"

He nodded, puzzled. In his bedroom, he closed the door behind them. "What..." he started.

"Please, just let me talk. I heard that you want to send me to work in a hospital in Missouri. Is that because you don't trust me? Because of the relationship I had with Harr -1?" 

"No, not at all. With the exception of you and some of the other women who were rescued from the hatchery, everyone here is a telepath. We communicate that way much of the time. Especially over distances, from several yards to a few thousand miles. At the hospital, you would be with normals, non-telepaths. We thought you'd be more comfortable there."

"You're going to establish some kind of resistance, a guerilla war, aren't you? I can help. I can shoot. Give me a .22 with a scope and I can drive a ten-penny nail at 300 yards. I can do espionage. Women can walk around the towns. From the other women I talked to at the hatcheries I was at, men aren't allowed in towns; you'd be either seized or shot on the spot. I could walk around all day, right along their fences. They might shove their snouts up my skirt, but they wouldn't hurt me. Only the breeders seem to want sex with human women, and since I can't breed, they wouldn't be interested in me. Let me help, Kirk! I know I can."

Kirk looked at the earnest 40-something in front of him. There was something in her eyes. He asked if there was something else she wanted.

She blushed and lowered her head. With a deep breath, she raised her eyes and looked at him. "You said if there was anything I wanted or needed, just ask. As soon as you can, I want you to fuck me. It won't be making love because we're strangers, but I don't want to die knowing that the last time I had sex it was with one of them.

"I know I'm not pretty. Shit, I have to put on make-up to get to plain. When this is all over, women will outnumber men by a lot. A man will be able to have his choice or choices, more likely. In the Old West, they used to have wagons which would carry whores around to line camps, cattle drive camps, mines, places where there were men who wouldn't be choosey about who he was banging. That's what I'm looking forward to as far as sex is concerned; that or an empty bed. 

"I've seen how you react to women and how they all react to you. I would like to have that feeling, even if it's only for a single time. If you're too tired, let me sleep in your bed tonight, and take me in the morning. Please."

"You know, it might be dangerous work," he said, reaching for the buttons on her shirt.

"Which?" she asked, with a grin. "Spying, or getting fucked by you?"

"Both," he answered, smiling, as he pulled her shirt out of her skirt.

"Oh, gawd, I hope so," she laughed, throwing her arms around his neck, capturing his lips with hers.

Kirk was wakened by the bright afternoon sun coming in the windows. From the shadows, he correctly guessed it was a bit past one. His movement to get up disturbed the warm body pressed against his back. "Nooo, not yet. Please. Don't go." Her arms tightened around his chest.

"It's that or a very smelly shower," he laughed.

"Promise to come right back?"

He turned over in her arms and gave her a kiss full of tongue in answer. "Unless the enemy's at the door when I'm done, I'll be back in five minutes."

"That's an awful long time; I'll come with you. Maybe I can help." She kicked off the bed covers and stretched. Kirk groaned, looking at her body in the light. She may not have had a pretty face, but the forty year old body was nearly perfect--36B breasts, a 23-inch waist, 34-inch hips on a five foot seven frame. Her untrimmed, coal black pubic nest was a few shades darker than the hair surrounding her face. Only the visible ribs and hip bones attested to her recent ordeal with the aliens.

He stood up and extended his hand to help her out of the bed. Instead, she leaned forward and slipped her lips over the crown of his prick. "Damn, Susie! You keep that up and you'll get a double mouthful--cum and piss. Let's go do our bathroom thing, then I promise, it'll be better than last night."

"Don't make any promise you can't keep. Last night was probably the best time I've ever had," she said with a grin. "But I'll be glad to let you try."

Ten minutes later, they were back in bed. With a pillow under her shoulders, her head on the bed, she was in perfect position to entertain the cock buried in her throat. Kirk had her legs behind his arms as he probed her pussy with his tongue. Their mutual moans of pleasure filled the room and were easily heard by the people in the hall who had come up to rouse them. 

Lorenz looked at Erica and Mary. "Sounds like they need some more time. I'll come back up in a half hour or so."

Mary laughed. "Meg always said you were an optimist." The three of them grinned as the sounds changed from moans to bedsprings and slaps of flesh on flesh. "From my experience, better make it an hour." she continued.

Susie lay sprawled on the bed, lightly gasping for breath, cum seeping out of her quim, as Kirk pulled on his pants. "Remind me not to doubt you when you make a promise. Harr-1 was able to make me feel full up, and he hit all the right places. It was better in some ways than with my husband, especially toward the end. But this morning and last night—god, you took me places I never even dreamed about. Thank you. I will treasure this memory as long as I live."

"Susie, one of the things I've learned about sex is that unless both people are trying to make it good, it will never be more than mediocre. If this was good for you, it's because you made it good for me. It has been a long time since I enjoyed casual sex as much as I did this morning. Normally, there would have to be some strong emotional connection on both sides. Thank you."

"Well, that explains part of it. I think I love you." When Kirk opened his mouth to object, she put her fingers over his mouth. "Hush. I have no illusions about us. I'm at least fifteen years older than you are; you can have your pick of any woman within a hundred miles. Without putting too fine a point on it, this was a mercy fuck, only because I asked for it, and you felt obligated because of your promise. But it was the best I can remember. For rescuing us and for this, I am allowed to love you, and I will.

"Just, don't send me away. I have several reasons to seek revenge, besides the nightly rape. They killed my brother, my husband, and my son in front of me. They were responsible for the murder of my sister, the only family I had left. Let me help you." 

Lorenz's knock and entry precluded Kirk's answer. "Didn't hear any activity, and I sensed you were talking," Lorenz said as he entered. Kirk quickly teleported a gown from the closet to cover Susie's nudeness, sensing her embarrassment at being caught nude with a naked man sitting on the side of her bed. "Hope it wasn't anything important. Kirk, we need you downstairs to discuss what we're going to do about the aliens in Ruthorford."

"Okay, Lorenz. I'll be right down. Susie, why don't you join us? You might have some information about them which might help." 

"Be glad to. Thank you." she answered, her smile lighting up her face.

The major decision to come out of the meeting was that they needed some intel about the situation in Ruthorford--how many troops were there; how were they deployed; where were the weapons; how were they guarded; where were their weak points; how could they exploit them? Susie came up with the scheme to determine the answers to their questions.

The aliens had landed a bit over eighteen months earlier at this point in time. After a bloody six months during which they had mercilessly shot, on sight, any man or woman who appeared to be 55 or older( too old to father or bear children, they claimed); during which they would challenge any adult male to produce and sustain an erection within four minutes or be shot; during which they seized pregnant women and carried them off to the hatcheries which were being set up to produce the fighting drones, where their pregnancies were terminated and they were 're-seeded' with alien eggs. 

Any show of resistance was immediately met by an withering blast of return fire. If any number of others in the vicinity were also killed, the aliens did not seem to care. A squad could invade a home at any time of day. If any of the family resisted, the entire family was dispatched and the home burned to the ground. By the end of the first six months, it seemed that the natives of Earth were thoroughly cowed, the will to resist frightened out of them. 

So sure were the aliens that Earth was too scared to resist, they had attributed the destruction of the hatchery by Kirk to faulty electrical wiring. In their minds, resistance was futile, therefore, unimaginable. 

Lorenz and some of the men stayed at the farm. Kirk and half a dozen other men were hidden in a grove of trees near the University golf course. Utilizing Lorenz's slow teleport technique, the women teleported, in pairs, into the downtown area, to streets or alleys where they could materialize without being noticed. Each of the women was monitored by one of the men with Kirk; the monitor would be aware of everything she heard and saw, or physically felt. 

Each man was responsible for monitoring two women, not in the same pair. Pairs were paired--during their walkabout, they had to keep their companion pair in sight. One of each pair of women, the bait, was either ovulating or menstruating. If they were stopped by one of the roving teams of aliens, the companion team was to stop and observe from a distance. 

The man monitoring the bait would release his hold on the observer and concentrate all his attention on the bait during the stop. When the aliens were done with their harassment, the bait would visually locate the companion pair so the monitor could re-join with the observer.

Kirk was monitoring Erica and Susie. Back at the farm, he had experimented with having Susie touch one of the other non-telepath women while he monitored her, to see if he could read the other woman through her. He was unsure, until he had the woman silently read an article while she was in physical contact with Susie. He was able to grasp the meaning from Susie as it was read. 

Since the women who had been captive all had a small working knowledge of the alien language, they might be able to glean the answers to their questions from the alien soldiers they encountered. At least, that was the hope.

Susie and T'sahn were the first pair placed on Elmwood Street, the main street connecting the campus with the town. Erica and Anita were next, placed in an alley off the main drag, about a block from the first pair. As soon as each pair was clear of the alley, another pair was placed, until there were six pairs in town, all blending into the late morning crowds, comprised mostly of college age and slightly older women.

Simultaneously scanning both Erica and Susie, Kirk soon identified a pair of alien soldiers swaggering along the street, not far from Susie and T'sahn. He alerted the women and felt Susie increase her breathing rate, along with adding a little extra oomph to her hip sway. Her display accomplished her goal. Kirk sensed the soldier's hand grab her shoulder.

Kirk was immediately aware of the division which occurred in Susie. Part of her brain remained cool and calm, analytical. The rest assumed a fearful attitude, showing extreme anxiety at being singled out by the soldier.

"You, Earth bitch! Stop!" ordered the obviously older one of the pair.

"Wh--wh--what? I'm n-not d-doing anything wrong, s-s-sir."

"Show me you papers! Wait! What's that I smell? Is that you?" he laughed. "Can you smell her, Grog-3?" The alien dropped to one knee and lowered his nose to the hem of Susie's skirt. In his native tongue, he continued, "By Ariadne's sweet sweet, this bitch smells just like home," he said, pushing his snout up between Susie's thighs to her mound. She gave a shiver and pushed her hands down on his head, as if to push him away.

"Take your hands..."

"Don't bother, Grog-3; she isn't pushing hard enough to block a desert worm."

"Still, to think an Earth bitch would have the nerve to put their hands on a Dhogian soldier."

"Fear gives strength otherwise lacking. Remember your training, and I can smell her fear nearly as strong as I smell her moon blood." he tapped Susie's vulva a couple of times with his snout, laughing when he felt her flinch. He pulled his head out from under her skirt. "You should have a sniff, Grog-3. It's nearly as good as a furlough to the imag-i-hold," he said, standing up.

The other soldier gave his friend a cautionary look, reminding him not to talk about their technology. "What, you think this fearful bitch is going to understand what we're saying?" questioned the senior soldier. "Have a whiff of that moon blood and clear your thinking."

The younger alien looked at the pavement, understanding the older soldier's thinking. He bent over and pushed his nose in between Susie's thighs and followed them up to her vulva, where he took a huge inhalation. 

"Unnngh," he growled. "You're right; she does smell like Naihars Sands. Reminds me of the first...but you don't need to know about her," he grinned. He even tolerated Susie's attempt to keep his head away from her crotch.

The old soldier laughed and playfully slapped the younger one on the back of his head. "Let's get back to the base and see if we can wrangle some imag-i-hold time," he growled, pushing his companion back the way they had come.

The whole exchange, less than five minutes, had been rich in information. The old soldier was the equivalent of a Master Sergeant; the younger, a lance corporal. Their companionship that day was based on a familial relationship. 

Between the two of them Kirk had learned that there was only about the equivalent of an army company (roughly a hundred troops and officers) stationed in Ruthorford, to guard the weapons depot located inside the college football stadium. 

The troops were also housed inside the arena. At night, they were usually all sleeping, except for two teams of four guards who manned the entrances to the arena and the football field. 

None of the alien soldiers wanted nighttime guard duty. It lasted from 8:00PM to 8:00AM, switching every two hours, usually following a day of normal duty. This meant that by 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, the on-duty guards were probably falling asleep. 

Falling asleep on guard duty was considered a breach of etiquette, not a failure to perform one's duty. As long as two of the four guards were awake and alert, sleeping on duty was tolerated, if not condoned. Informally, the nap times were staggered so each guard managed a four hour 'nap' while on duty. 

Now they had to find the cannons and inspect them to determine the best way to disable them without alerting the invaders to their presence so close to an outpost. 

Kirk had one of the scouting pairs, Minnie and Ruth, make their way to the football stadium to reconnoiter the area. They found the streets blocked a hundred yards from the stadium, all the way around it. As they strolled around the large structure they were frequently stopped and examined by invader patrols. 

One of the patrols comprised their equivalent of a young first lieutenant and an older top sergeant. When they stopped the human women, Minnie recognized the ranks and correctly guessed it was the first command for the young officer, and the older non-com was teaching him the ropes.

While the two soldiers were examining their papers, she managed to turn her ankle and fell into the older veteran, creating a large area of bodily contact, giving her monitor enormous access to his storehouse of memories and knowledge.

As soon as her monitor realized her intention, he had alerted Kirk, who had tapped into the monitor, using him as a conduit for the information he 'downloaded' from the sergeant. One of the first things Kirk sensed was that the sergeant was not at all pleased at the contact with the earth woman, and started to draw his pistol but was stopped by the lieutenant, who cautioned him that if they shot all the women, they would run out of brood stock, and they would have to use the soldiers and officers in the hatcheries.




Fever: The Aftermath



The old sergeant growled his acquiescence, and stepped away from Minnie, breaking her hold and letting her drop to the pavement. As she started to get up, he placed his foot on her ass and pushed, sending her face first into the street. 

Kirk immediately put a damper on the telepaths' flare of anger, letting them know that the sergeant would be near the top of the list of those who received a lesson in interplanetary relations. He told the team they had all the information they needed for the present and to prepare to return.

The old sergeant had been a treasure trove of intelligence. Coupled with what they had learned from Susie's encounter earlier, they now knew that the stadium housed six of the compact field pieces, one of the largest concentrations of firepower on the two continents in the Western Hemisphere; that at any time during the night, the odds were that there would only be two guards awake; that the artillery was kept in the end zone, furthest from the street.

A major reason for the security precautions was the extremely highly polished surface on the projectiles and the inner surface of the barrel. Both were machined and polished to +/- 30 nanometers (3 ten-thousandths of a micron). Any imperfection on the surface of the shell or the barrel larger than 30 nanometers rendered both useless. 

The artillery pieces were constructed of extremely hard metal, generally corrosive resistant. At least they had been on other invasion sites. Something in Earth's atmosphere, in the acid rain, threatened to corrode the inside of the barrels, so they were kept under special tarpaulins, to filter the corrosive ions from the air. The invaders had learned as little as three hours exposure to the unfiltered atmosphere was enough to disable the compact field pieces.

More importantly, Kirk had learned, this invasion had come with another set of problems not foreseen by the invaders. His destruction of the hatchery, and of the three breeders assigned to it that night, had destroyed two percent of the breeders mature enough to be productive. The breeders 'grown from earthly seed,' so to speak, were taking exceptionally long to mature. 

On other planets, native hybrids were ready in a few as nine months from implantation in their native hosts. On Earth, the officers overseeing that part of the invasion, estimated that new breeders would not be productive for over five years after implantation. 

The genetic code in the human DNA they absorbed from their hosts which controlled the rate of sexual development, necessary to enable impregnation and successful implantation, was interfering with the maturational process of the hybrids.

In addition, it seemed, some human women were able to differentiate between the fighting drones which were implanted in them and the breeding drones. Statistically, some spontaneous miscarriages were to be expected. Breeding drones, which represented about two out of a thousand implantations, were being rejected at a rate where they represented 10 percent of the unsuccessful pregnancies, some twenty times the expected rate of miscarriage for breeding drone fetuses. 

While most of the breeders were relatively young, because of the demands on their bodies to produce viable drones, and to satisfy the sexual needs of the officers, their reproductive life was only about five or six years. Kirk realized that if the alien breeders were destroyed, the supply of fighting drones could be exhausted before the hybrids were productive.

He called his advisors together and reviewed what he had learned, and they made their plans. First, the directive went out to all telepaths: Eliminate the hatcheries and the breeding drones, especially the breeders. The best way to identify them-- they had two extra penicles. Plus, it was suspected that they were hermaphroditic. 

Next, the information about the artillery pieces was sent to the other telepaths, along with the recommendation that the special tarps be removed during nights when it was raining. Kirk reasoned that the hogfaced invaders didn't like the rain any more than they liked other running water, and would not be likely to walk out and inspect the artillery pieces in wet weather. 

The lightly corrosive rain, over time, would deteriorate the barrels, and the shells, making them useless. With such tight tolerances for the surfaces, refacing the projectiles or the barrels was out of the question, even if the invaders had the equipment to do so, since it would require the removal of material, opening the gap between shell and cannon, exceeding the necessary tolerance limits.

Kirk and his team planned a war of attrition--slowly eating away at the strength and morale of the invaders. Over the next few years, they would teleport into a post and kidnap a soldier or officer, using mind control to keep them quiet and compliant. 

Once away from the compound, the invader was either killed outright, or used as bait, to lure the aliens or their drones into a lake or river, where they were immediately disabled and destroyed. Dead bodies, with no visual wounds, were left to be found by garrisons several hundred miles distant.

Invaders in the more arid atmospheres would suffer similar fates as the fighting drones attempted to march across the sharp sands of the deserts, cutting open their feet, and quickly dehydrating and dying. 

It was slow, but it was guaranteed to be successful. Invaders who responded by attacking non-combatants found themselves being used as bait the next day, a lesson which was quickly learned by the officers and soldiers. A lesson taught by the old sergeant who had pushed Minnie to the street.

After the planning session, Kirk went to find Minnie, to see how badly hurt she was. She was lying on a bed with Mary and Tiffany working on resetting her broken nose, and cleaning the dirt from the scrapes on her forehead and cheeks. "Hey, Min, how you doing?"

"I'm alright, Kirk. I just wish I could have fried that bastard."

"I understand. If you hadn't been so close to their barracks, I might have let you. It would have caused some suspicion, but without a body, I don't know what they would do. I came to let you know, he is going to be their first casualty in our war. Ron and I are going in tonight to start to raise some hell. If you want to tune in on Ron, you'll be able to watch what happens."

She smiled her thanks, then winced with the pain caused by the scrapes on her cheeks and the multiple fractures in the bridge of her nose. She grabbed Kirk's hand and pulled it to her breast. "Promise me," she demanded, "promise me that they'll suffer. 

"Not just for what he did to me; I'll heal, but for what they have done to the others, like Susie and her family. Make them afraid, Kirk. They feel fear; I sensed it in that old fart when I fell on him. He was afraid of something in me. Do whatever you have planned, but scare the shit out of them!"

"I don't know if it'll scare the shit out of them, but before we're done, they'll believe in ghosts. That I can promise," he replied. 

After dinner, Kirk and Ron met in the barn. There were some supplies they needed to gather. After reviewing their plans, they slow teleported to a grove of trees just outside of Ruthorford. They were a few hundred yards from the stadium. Ron swore when he landed in what seemed to be a large puddle, except that it hadn't rained in several days.

A light went off in Kirk's head. "Perfect," he whispered to Ron. "This is one of the few remnants of the last Ice Age. Around the Midwest, there are three or four bottomless bogs, left when the ice melted, some thirteen thousand years ago. This part of the country, east of the Mississippi, was a large inland sea. Over time, it has dried up, leaving up to ten feet of topsoil and these swampy areas. 

"Be careful, most of the areas that look like water are really quicksand. These hogfaced bastards don't like water? After tonight, they'll fear it."

Kirk explained his new plan while they waited for the remnants of the sunlight to fade. During his contact with the old sergeant, Kirk had learned that when he was on guard duty, he liked to take the midnight watch. A few minutes before the midnight hour, he and Ron teleported into the center of the stadium. 

Staying in the shadows, they made their way to the artillery storage area. They pulled the protective tarps from the weapons. Kirk had brought enough nitric and hydrochloric acids to make up six pints of aqua regia, the acid compound used to dissolve the so-called noble metals. Highly corrosive, it was sure to oxidize any ferrous compounds in the artillery pieces. 

He and Ron poured a pint down the barrel of each of the pieces. With a grin, Kirk then teleported enough water from the swamp to fill each of the pieces to the bottom lip of the barrel. By morning, they would all be pitted so badly they would be unuseable. 

They found the laser guided projectiles, stored in cases of twenty, a few yards from the cannons. Ron whispered a suggestion to Kirk, who nodded. The next time anyone opened a case of projectiles, they would find them packed, like sardines, in salt water. 

They had just finished replacing the tarps when they heard someone approaching. Kirk grabbed Ron and teleported them to just above the sergeant's head. Kirk entered the alien's mind and seized control of his voice. He instructed Ron to grab one of the alien's arms while he took the other one. 

From the point where they seized him, they forced the old soldier to walk to the edge of the bog with a lurching gait, making it look like he was drunk. 

This bog, situated on the campus of a major university, was the object of study by many departments of the school. It appeared to be a large pond, or small lake, dotted by several small grass covered islets. In truth, these islets were small floating clumps of a grass which grew in water, completely unconnected to any soil, but firm enough to support a man. 

While they floated, they didn't appear to travel about the lake. They were stationary enough that some students had connected several by plank bridges, and would often visit some of the larger ones for picnics and other student activities.

When the sergeant saw their destination, he began to struggle against the invisible forces compelling him toward the water. He had not been garrisoned in Ruthorford long, but he had been there long enough to hear stories about patrols not returning from the lake with the grassy islands. Water, running or not, concealed a number of unseen dangers. 

But in his case, it was the unseen danger he had to fear. Suddenly he found himself floating above the water, unable to use his arms, or his voice. Without warning, his uniform disappeared from his body. He saw it land on one of the small hillocks accessed by the plank bridge while he continued to float over the water, to the center of the bog. 

He felt the block on his voice release. His howl was a combination of bravado, fright and alarm. As soon as the sound emanated from his mouth, his arms were released and he dropped twenty feet into the bog. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the water was only about a foot deep. Under it was a bottomless pit of the colloidal mixture of dirt, decomposed vegetation and microscopic stones known as quicksand. The greater density of the colloid slowed and stopped his descent by the time it reached his waist, but by then it was too late.

Unable to swim, or to move his legs, other than up and down, since he had no leverage, his struggles just drove him deeper into the material which would prove to be his grave. His howls of alarm turned to pure fright. 

They were loud enough to alert the other guards on duty, one of whom immediately alerted the young lieutenant. A quick glance into the interior of the stadium revealed nothing wrong there. It did not take long for the search party to find the sergeant's lurching footprints, and some empty bottles along the path, suggesting that the sergeant had succumbed to the Earthly demon rum.

One of the members of the search party went to tell the Lieutenant what they had found while the others went ahead, laughing, to see what had frightened the old veteran. 

The young officer caught up with them at the edge of the bog. The yowling had stopped, with an audible gurgle. There was no sign of the missing non-com. The Lieutenant played his torch over the grassy islets, looking for a sign of what had happened to his friend and mentor. 

He saw a glint of light reflected back from one of the islets not too far out in the pond. Moving his torch around, he discovered the plank bridges connecting the clumps. He moved closer to shore and pointed his torch back where he had seen the reflection. This time he could make out what looked like a uniform.

He pointed to two still unranked foot soldiers and ordered them to stay on shore. Gesturing to the others to follow, he set off at a rapid trot across the first plank bridge. He cleared the first plank just as the last member of the search party took his second step from shore. 

Perhaps it was all the weight; maybe the rhythmic pounding of the four aliens running on the plank; maybe it was Kirk and Ron, but the plank lost its purchase on shore and slipped into the water, taking the search party with it. 

The splash and commotion distracted the young Lieutenant, who missed his footing on the second plank bridge. The two young soldiers on shore were unable to give coherent descriptions of what they saw, only able to relate that some monster had come up out of the water and sucked their comrades under the surface. No alien ever voluntarily approached the bog again. 

The field pieces were scheduled for routine maintenance two days after Kirk and Ron's 'raid.' The soldier's cry of alarm quickly turned to one of pain as the acid filled water spilled out of the breech and onto his feet, quickly eating through his footwear and flesh. A second soldier was rendered unfit for further field duty when he rashly stuck his Dhog nose in a second piece of artillery and discovered it, too, was filled with acidified water.

With the six field pieces no longer useable, the sealed cases of munitions were returned to the Central Supply Depot in Virginia, where they were opened for inspection. Several fighting drones and soldiers were injured or killed opening the seawater filled containers. Unfortunately, even the explosives had been rendered useless.

Unable to come up with any other explanation, the alien High Command began to consider sabotage, but by whom? Humans had been thoroughly cowed, they believed. There had been no resistance in over an Earth year. Could one of their advance scouts have turned on them? A team of inquiry was sent to Ruthorford. 

To the amusement of Kirk and the others at the farm, the officers in charge of the outpost were charged with dereliction of duty, and reduced in rank from the equivalent of a colonel to first and second lieutenants.

To protect the farm and the people living there, the holograph projector was beefed up so the camouflage covered the entire farm with a hologram of a large swamp. Kirk and several members of his team left the farm, traveling by teleportation, to other states to organize resistance groups to carry out the random attacks Kirk planned.

Bitsy, Doreen and Marilee, and their surviving husbands, the men who had planned on raping Nell, were moved to the farm as a precautionary measure. Jim and Butch were not the brightest bulbs in the pack, and it was not certain they would remain silent about their experiences if questioned by the Dhogs. Susie and some of the female telepaths who had stayed moved into town to monitor the comings and goings of the Dhogian patrols.

It must be pointed out here that the Dhogians had stolen their technology. Like many, they could use machines and technical apparatus without fully understanding the theories governing their performance (think of cars and computers). As they had moved through the Universe, they had adopted and adapted the technologies of the races they had surprised and overcome. 

Because of its lack of significant space-going technology, Earth had seemed like it would be an easy victory, but the flight from their last conquest, and the dog-fights with Earth's various aviation powers during the brief resistance had expended more fuel than expected. 

Their ships utilized the gamma ray emissions from an alloy of promethium and ytterbium for power. However, at any given time, in the accessible Earth crust, there exists only a total of about twenty ounces of promethium. 

The Dhogians did not view this as a problem. On other planets they had conquered, technicians (engineers, scientists, etc) had been able to produce the five pounds they needed by fractionating other radioactive heavy metals (radium, uranium, plutonium) using particle accelerator colliders. 

Shortly after subduing Earth, they had identified the small one in Chicago, a slightly larger one under Indiana, and the super accelerator in Central Europe. They immediately ordered the scientists working with the accelerators to begin producing the promethium they needed. 

The maximum output of the three colliders when the aliens landed was five grams a month of the radioactive promethium isotope desired, a situation entirely unsatisfactory to the Dhogians, who commanded the technicians to find ways to increase production, regardless of cost or safety concerns. 

At each of the three sites, there were at least two telepaths, who kept in touch with either Lorenz or Kirk. Aware of Kirk's plans, and in agreement with them, the telepaths worked to subtly sabotage fuel production.

The two years following Kirk's initial raid were years of irritation to the Dhogians. In addition to the problems with fuel production, around the world they were in a constant state of battling random 'brush fires,' chasing an enemy which seemed able to disappear in the mist. 

There were occasional pitched battles with what appeared to be militiamen, battles which used up the fighting drones faster than they could be replaced, and claimed more than a few of the soldiers who commanded them, plus any officers involved in the foray. What was truly disheartening to the aliens was the total absence of native bodies, or any sign they had suffered any injuries. 

It also became obvious to the alien command that the breeding drones, specifically, were being targeted. They were ordered to remain indoors, and away from windows, unless accompanied by a patrol of not less than six fighting drones and two soldiers of at least non-com rank. Still the number of breeders continued to shrink relatively faster than any other type of alien. After two years of hunting them, the telepaths had reduced the original number of breeders from 144 to thirty, world wide. 

With the miscarriage problem, only about a dozen hybrids had been produced to replace them. Because of the human component, they were not yet ready to breed. One of the older hybrids was captured and transported to Kirk and Lorenz for evaluation. Both of them hoped that the human DNA would also be reflected in the psycho-emotional makeup of the hybrids. 

However, at the end of two weeks, when the hybrid attacked Lorenz and attempted to kill him with its bare hands, they reluctantly agreed that the young cross-breeds also needed to be destroyed.

When the aliens had first landed on Earth, they had had the manpower and equipment roughly equivalent to an Army brigade. Under Kirk's leadership, they had been reduced to a force about the size of a battalion, with a severely depleted officer corps. Instantly recognizable, and universally hated for their initial brutality, the entire human populace was against the Dhogs.

As their numbers had dwindled, the Dhogians had consolidated their Western Hemisphere forces into the American Great Plains, having commandeered Ft. Leaven worth early in establishing their control. It seemed to offer the best location for centrality and convenience.




Fever: The Aftermath



Kirk had not been back to the farm in nearly two and a half years, not since they had dropped the old sergeant in the quicksand. He had been on the move constantly, recruiting and organizing small units to harass the aliens. He would find out where the aliens had established a base and locate someone with telepathic ability nearby. 

It was almost like the aliens had acted as a catalyst, turning on latent abilities in people who often wondered about their ability to know what others were thinking; to guess correctly about what was going to happen; to always get their way in arguments and discussions. Kirk found them, indoctrinated them, trained them and found them committed people to lead. Generally, after a few skirmishes, more telepaths emerged. 

From these, he would choose a few for specialized training--to monitor the officers of the local alien garrison. When the individual was ready, Kirk would take them into their officer's quarters at night to establish the necessary bodily contact to effect the comm link. 

In this way, they were able to keep track of troop movements, and plans to try to locate and identify resistance troops, enabling them to remain hidden. So successful was this strategy, that, in the two years he was gone, nationwide, the resistance had lost fewer than forty soldiers in battle.

Kirk had returned to the farm to recuperate from injuries sustained in a fierce fire fight with the aliens. Kirk's team had ambushed a patrol in Central Colorado. After the initial surprise, the aliens had responded with more fire power than expected, momentarily disorienting the telepaths. 

They had dived for cover behind some rocks. In doing so, Kirk had hit his head, knocking him unconscious. He had fallen on his left arm, breaking his forearm and dislocating his shoulder. The other telepaths had regrouped and returned fire, destroying several fighting drones, and killing the sergeant and lieutenant leading the patrol.

As they usually did, the telepaths had then teleported out of the area, leaving Kirk lying unconscious, unseen behind a boulder. It was not until they were safely back at their base that he was missed. Three of them immediately returned to the site of the conflict.

In the meantime, sensing a lull in the return fire, one of the more authoritative soldiers had deployed a robotic bomb sniffer, mounted with a camera. It was guided into the hot zone to take a look around. When the aliens saw Kirk's body, the first ever to be recovered, they abandoned their caution and the entire patrol ran to retrieve the body, each wanting to be the first to capture one of the elusive enemy.

They had covered about half the distance between their vehicles and Kirk's unconscious body when they ran into a wall of bullets from the assault rifles of the returning telepaths. None of the aliens survived. 

The telepaths took advantage of the annihilation of the patrol and recovered several of their weapons and pieces of equipment, including the mobile camera and its control unit.

The commander of the local outpost noted these facts, and reported that there had been an escalation in resistance tactics to the Central Command in Kansas. They responded by abandoning their perimeter outposts and pulling all the North American troops back to Leaven worth to begin planning how to handle this latest expansion in tactics by the resistance.

Kirk's arm had been treated by a doctor at the base camp of the resistance fighters in Colorado. The doctor firmly suggested he take a month off to let it heal sufficiently so he could get by without a sling or brace. Albeit reluctantly, Kirk had agreed, recognizing the wisdom, and his need for a more psychical, or spiritual, recovery period. 

With the exception of a short visit to see Erica in Seattle last December, he had been in the hot zone of combat most of the last two and a half years. He contacted the farm and let them know he was on his way. He planned to stop and see some of his contacts on the way. 

It took him three days to get home. On the way he heard the news that the aliens had abandoned their inland perimeter outposts and retreated to Leaven worth. The small resistance units were celebrating the retreat as a victory. Inwardly, Kirk was shaking his head, wondering where and when the aliens would break out and resume their brutality.

At the farm, he was greeted by his mother and his four year old son/brother, by Tiffany and their five year old son, by Mary and their five year old triplets, and by Erica, and her six month baby bump. Lorenz, Nell, Eva, and Estee were waiting in the living room. They all greeted him warmly, even the children who had been told stories of his exploits against the aliens.

The afternoon was taken up with catching up. After dinner, over coffee, the two men, sitting on the verandah, discussed the aliens and their latest action. "So, you don't think they're getting ready to leave the planet."

"No. From what the engineers at the colliders tell us, if they combine the output from the three colliders and all the fuel reserves they have left, they might get two ships to Uranus, and then, maybe drift to Pluto's orbit, but they'd be dead by the time they got there. 

"No, I think they plan on making some sort of last stand. I've warned our guys around Kansas City and St Joe to be on the alert for a recurrence of their initial brutality. They have a few breeders left, and we weren't able to wreck all the incubators. I think they'll beef up the fighting drone supply and attack some time in late Fall. 

"I've been thinking, maybe we should attack them, or show a threat of attacking. Maybe we could draw them out to a place we choose, to give us an advantage."

"Do we have enough people to do that? And weapons? The blast is good, but how many can do that, and how often?" Lorenz asked his son, the de facto leader of the resistance.

"People? A couple of hundred, enough, if we discount the fighting drones. We need to find a way to neutralize those, then we can destroy the Dhogs. 

"It's strange. In all my studies, especially in history, and even in my personal confrontations with Big Dick, when I was a kid, I could always find something to appreciate, if not admire, in all the people and sides involved. But not the Dhogs. 

"I've been in personal contact with their top officers and their lowest private. And pretty much everything in between. I haven't noticed a single redeeming feature. They're brutal and ferocious, but not especially brave, or altruistic." He paused a moment. "They remind me of pirates... or pimps."

He drained his coffee cup. "Can we put up a dozen or so folks for a few days. I want to gather the resistance leaders and discuss this. If we're going to move, we need to do it before they get too many of the fighting fuckers made."

"Yeah, you're probably right, Lorenz replied. " Whoever we can't accommodate here, we can find room in the village, now the patrols have stopped. Or we can move Bitsy and her entourage back into town for a week. Food'll be the bind, and cooking."

"That shouldn't be a problem. I'll speak with Mom and Estee..."

"Speak with Meg and Estee about what?" Tiffany interrupted, coming through the screen door.

"A bunch of visitors, to come up with a plan to get rid of the aliens." Kirk stood up. "But that can wait until tomorrow. I'm bushed and need to get some sleep. Want to join me?" he asked, cocking his head and looking at Tiffany.

"I been hoping you'd ask. Even got you a little surprise," she teased, wagging her butt at him as she walked back into the house. 

Lorenz laughed, shaking his head at Kirk. "Be careful with her," he warned, "she'll ride you until you cry uncle."

"You be still, old man. You comin', vanilla?" She held the screen door for him. She slipped her arm through his as he passed her, and walked with him, hip to hip. "I need a favor, if you'll do it. I suppose I could get someone else, but, since you did it once, I thought I'd ask you first." They were at the door to the bedroom he usually used when at the farm.

He cocked his head, looking at her. He sensed her block was up. With what he had learned in the past few years, he could have easily slipped past it, but telepath etiquette proscribed that except in cases of emergency. "Of course, Tiff, if it's something I can do, you just have to ask. You know that."

"I'd like our son, Joshua, to have a brother and sister, full sibs, who look like him. I know there are other black telepaths, but those friggin' sapphire eyes you gave him make him stand out like a sore thumb. With a full brother and sister, he won't seem so alone."

Kirk grinned. "I wish all the requests for help I get were so simple, and so pleasurable to fulfill. Is it close to your fertile time?"

She smiled back. "Can't get much closer. Can you make it twins?"

He opened the door to his bedroom and led her in. "Are you sure you want twins? I remember how worried you were about Mary when she was carrying the triplets."

"Twins won't be so bad. Besides, I'm bigger than she is; plus, I'm running out of time for having kids. As it is, I'll be fifty before they're out of high school. You just do your jobs; I'll worry about the babies and getting them into this world safely." 

"My jobs?"

"Knocking me up, and getting rid of the hogfaces." She surprised him by removing his shirt and pants, telekinetically, one article at a time, then her own clothes, the same way. "How's your arm? How long has it been?"

"The cast is about a week old. I broke it about ten days ago. They said it was a clean break and should heal without any problem."

Their underwear disappeared. "I guess I'll have to take it easy on you, then," she grinned, standing there, naked, before him, letting him examine her. It had been nearly three years since they had been together like this.

Overall, she was a little thinner, like most of Earth's natives, due to the privations of war. The farm had a good sized garden, still some foods were often hard to come by, especially good quality protein. 

Even with the slight weight loss, there was a bit of sag, and enlargement, in her breasts. Maybe half a cup size, enough to be noticed. The sag, just enough, with the additional extra, to make the bottom of the breasts balloon slightly. 

The weight loss was most notable in her hips and the lovely ass she no longer had. Although she still had a bit of a bubble butt, it seemed to sag, and didn't have the firmness he remembered. Nor, he noticed, did she trim her pubes anymore. They were covered by a thick blanket of coal black curls.

Looking at her, standing there, waiting for him to move, he had the characteristic male response. Tiffany grinned, an uncertain look in her eyes. "I'm glad to see I can still have that effect on you. I was worried you... you..." she faltered.

He took the two steps to her and pulled her to him with his good arm. "Tiffany, that is something you never need to worry about. When this is all over, we'll go back to Lone Pine Island, and fuck ourselves silly in the moonlight and say to hell with the rangers."

She threw her arms around his neck and caught his lips in hers. "Can we take a mattress this time?" she whispered. "Those rocks can get pretty uncomfortable, and cold, even in late summer."

Kirk grinned and led her to the bed. She lay down on her back, legs parted, offering herself to him. He got on the bed and stretched out on his side, beside her, head to foot, his face by her hips. She sucked in her breath in a hiss when his tongue touched her labia, then found her opening. She turned on her side to face him, taking him in her mouth with a small moan.

Kirk's good hand found her breast and began to fondle her nipple, eliciting more pleasure sounds. Of her own choice, it had been over a year since Tiffany had engaged in sex other than self pleasure. Since she had made the decision to have another child by Kirk, she had abstained, to make sure he was the father of her next child.

The abstinence was having its effect, as was Kirk's skill and love for his partner, and her feelings for him. Her climax began almost with the first touch of his tongue. It built quickly and spread through her body like fire through tinder. When it passed, they both became aware that Kirk's cock was buried in her throat, her nose pressed against his sack.

It was all the stimulus he needed. Tiff hummed in pleasure when she felt his prick spasm in her throat, pumping his sperm into her stomach. Kirk groaned as his climax peaked and passed, his tongue doing its best to reach her cervix, tickling the walls of her love tunnel.

When the final spasms of pleasure had passed, they fell apart and lay on their backs, side by side, holding hands. "Christ, Tiffany, that was intense. Nobody's deep throated me like that in a while. Thank you."

"You're welcome, but it wasn't me. I've never been able to do that to a guy. It was the suddenness of the climax. But I have to say, it was kinda fun, especially feeling you come like that." She lifted her head and looked at him, discovering he was still erect. She got up on her knees and straddled him, positioning her quim directly over his staff.

"Much as I enjoyed that, oral ain't gonna get the job done. I hope you still got some of that baby juice, 'cause we ain't leaving this bed until I'm sure I got a brother and sister for Josh."

"Uhh, what about potty breaks?"

"Erica tells me you have a way of handling those. And we can have food delivered. Anything else?"

"There are some meetings I really have to attend, and people I have to see."

"One of the things living here has done for, or to, me--I ain't the least bit bashful. You can meet whoever you need to meet with right here."

"Woman, you are shameless!"

"You can betcherfugginass about that," she laughed, and began to move on his cock. Kirk scanned her body and identified two ripe eggs. He gave them a nudge and watched them move to the entrance of Tiff's tubes. With a broad grin which lighted her face, she changed her hip motion so she was moving in a circle, centered on the root of his cock. "Well, I've made my contribution, vanilla boy; now it's up to you."

He pulled her down on his chest, engaging her in a loving lip lock as he began to thrust up into her. She broke the kiss and began to mutter, "ohgodyes, more, do it, vanilla man, fug me, go go yes yes uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh." Soon he felt her sheath tighten on his cock. "Yessssss," she hissed when she felt the sexplosion of warmth against her interior sheath walls. In seconds, she was asleep. 

Kirk rolled her to the side and scanned her body a second time; this time examining his spend. He identified several y-bearers and a few x-bearers at the head of her cervix, being sucked up by the orgasmic spasms of that orifice. He did some sorting and moved the two groups to the areas where they would meet their respective target. He then joined her in Orpheus's sweet arms.

The early morning summer sunlight was just beginning to filter trough the curtained window when Kirk's bladder made its need for attention known. He carefully disengaged from Tiffany, eliciting a moan of objection, and, still nude, made his way into the hall to go to the bathroom. Coming out of his destination, he saw a sight which confused him. He had just left Tiffany in his bed, and here she was coming out of the bathroom.

He shook his head to clear it and looked again. Just then, the confusing apparition laughed, letting him know it wasn't his partner from last night. "Hi there, vanilla boy! I haven't seen you in forever."

"Jasmine! My god! How are you? How's your mom? Damn, you're looking good. What have you been up to?" They stood there in the hallway, both buck naked, talking as if they had just run into each other at the mall, until Jasmine looked down at his piss hard and laughed.

"Is that all for me, or does Ma Nature have a hand in it?"

"I'm afraid it's mostly nature. Give me a minute, then we can go to my room and talk," he replied and hurried past her. She grinned at the sound of his stream hitting the center of the water in the bowl, and turned to move to his room. Kirk caught up with her at the door.

Tiffany was still asleep, sprawled on the bed. With a saucy smile, Jasmine looked at the man who had taken her virginity. Feeling a strong twinge in her quim at the memory, she asked him, "So, vanilla man, tell me, which is it? Do you have a thing for dark girls, sisters, or dark sisters?"

Kirk grinned. "It's not all that complicated. I have a thing for pretty women, no matter what color they are." Under her mocha colored complexion, Jasmine blushed. She knew, from the reaction of the boys she had been dating before the invasion, that she was attractive, and they had told her she was pretty, but she had less than half believed them, thinking it was to get in her pants. But from Kirk, a man who had nothing to gain from telling her that, a man she knew could have had anyone he wanted, including her and her mother, it was almost enough to make her cry.

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. Only then did the fact he was wearing a cast on his arm register. She loosened her grip slightly and leaned back to look at the plaster cast, from his palm to one third of the way up his bicep, with a right angle bend at the elbow. "You're hurt. How..."

"It's nothing. I fell and landed badly. Come, sit; tell me what you've been up to. How did you get here? The farm is under pretty strict orders, no outside communication by wire or radio."

"You left out telepathy," came the thought.

He glanced at Tiffany, still asleep, eliciting a laugh from her sister. "About a year after the invasion, I woke up and heard the soldiers in the street. I could not only hear them talking, but I was aware that one was being very critical of one of the others. I peeked out and there were only two, but I could see one was trying very hard not to loose his temper. What was surprising, I could understand them.

"I tried looking for Mama and was able to identify her and the man she was with, that guy you sent to her that day. It's a good thing you did. After the invaders came, they took his wife and he kinda fell apart. If they questioned him then, he would have told them all about you. Instead, he came looking for Mama, 'n' she's kept him sorta stable."

Kirk frowned. He had forgotten about Dick, his former boss. He wasn't worried about the women he had interacted with, who might have been able to tell the aliens about him. Most of them had been given a hypnotic block where he was concerned, but there were a few men, like Ron and Sonny, who would not be above sacrificing him it they thought it might gain them some favor or freedom.

Jasmine broke into his reverie. "Do you have any idea where they would have taken his wife, Sally? Or if there's a way to find out if she's even still alive. There are some awful stories out there about what they do to the women they take."

"I doubt if any of them are as bad as the reality. We can look for Dick's wife later. How did you get here?"

"When I found out what I could do, I tried looking for Tiffany, to find out what happened to her. I found some other telepaths, some of them resistance fighters. I joined them, and was able to use my ability to help them plan raids and escape or avoid traps. We even tried feeding some of the soldiers false information. That was funny; we made them march a couple of hundred of the fighting drones right into Lake Michigan."

"You're Jamie! Goddam! I've been wanting to meet you for a couple of years, but it was always too ..."

"You know who I..."

"I'm Little Corporal."

"Oh, shit! No! You're the one who's responsible...Goddam, vanilla! And to think you fucked me when..." She laughed. "Mama isn't going to believe any of this when she finds out. When she learns what all you did, have been doing, she might gold plate her pussy and put it on display." She finished laughing and continued.




Fever: The Aftermath



"When I got to Chicago, like I always did when I got to a new city, I did a mental search for Tiff. I was able to just pick up a trace. I volunteered for a mission to Springfield, and was able to contact her. That was about six months ago. 

"When the aliens vacated the area a couple of days ago, I drove down to see her. She said I should stick around because you were due back from out West. The snot didn't tell me who you were." 

She glanced at her sister. "How come she's still asleep? That isn't like her, no matter how tired she is."

"I put a block on her so we could talk."

"Is that all you want to do? Looks to me like there might be something else on your mind," she said, glancing at his crotch.

All the time they had been talking, Kirk had been taking in the sight of the beautiful twenty-something before him; her mocha colored skin, high-lighted with dark chocolate colored nipples and pubic hair, cut short, but covering the whole area. Her nipples were tilted toward the ceiling on BB sized breasts. At her comment, he became aware of the faint odor of arousal. 

He looked up to her face and saw the desire in her eyes. "Where have you been sleeping?" he asked her. 

"At the end of the hall, over the kitchen. There are two single beds; mine was the one next to the window."

In a flash, Tiffany was moved to her sister's bed. Kirk stood up and pulled Jasmine to standing. As he slid his hands down over her ass cheeks, he bent his knees and pushed them between her legs, lowering himself far enough so his cock nestled between her pussy lips. He straightened up, lifting her by her butt. When he was up straight, he gently lowered her onto his rod.

She moaned as he entered her, and wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling him into her until their pubes were mashed against one another. They began to rock against each other, lips and tongues fully entwined. Kirk lifted them and positioned them directly over the bed he and Tiffany had shared last night. Gently, he lowered her sister and himself into the bed, sawing into her all the way down.

As they hit the bed, he attempted the mind link that Erica had taught him so long ago, it now seemed. However, there was a barrier in Jasmine's mind, one he recognized from the night he had rescued Erica from the aliens. 

Jasmine didn't react at all to his attempt to probe her mind. He scanned her body and found what he expected, in the same place Erica and the other women had borne them.

He broke the kiss and leaned down to capture a nipple between his lips. Her guttural response was accompanied by an increase in the speed of her hips as they drummed against him. His hand searched for and found her puckered hole. With no warning, he thrust his middle finger into her rear passage as far as he could. The sudden intrusion was enough to trigger her climax, signaled by her rigor and scream.

Her arms and legs pulled Kirk to her so tightly he couldn't move, in spite of the thrusting of her hips against him. He lowered his weight on to her, pressing her into the bed, holding her down until she was quiet, his finger still buried in her ass.

"You sneaky son of a bitch," she laughed, when she was able to talk. "You can take it out now," she added, lifting the cheek which held down the invading hand. He pulled the offending digit out, having satisfied himself the chip was in the same area as it had been with the other women. Now to find out why.

He pulled his hand free and rolled off the young black woman, to sit up."Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

"Other than surprised as hell, I'm fine. I can't say it's my favorite way to come, but I'll have to remember it for times I'm having difficulty getting off," she answered, smiling, lying back and stretching, showing off her breasts.

Kirk looked at her, an uneasy feeling creeping into his psyche. "Why are you here, Jasmine?" His voice and face reflecting some distrust.

"I came to see you and Tiffany." Tears began to form in her eyes as she began to sense the mistrust.

"No, you wouldn't have known I was here, and Tiffany has no need to use her powers here. Not enough to send signals as far as Chicago. Why are you here? Let me in."

"No, I can't," she began to sob. "They have Mama and that guy. If I can't deliver you, they'll kill them."

"Where are they being held?" He reached out and took her hand, comforting her and monitoring her for lies at the same time.

"In a salt mine, near Piffard, close to Buffalo. There's a group of soldiers waiting for you there. They told me they hope you try to rescue Mama. You could teleport in, but not back out, not with passengers."

"We'll see. How did they involve you in this?"

"At first, when I discovered I could understand them, I was in Syracuse, at Uni. I had a great time, just walking around and listening to their conversations. I guess I got careless.

"They had their headquarters on campus. One day, through a window, I heard one of them talking to an earth guy, talking about a black witch named Tiffany. Tiff had told me about the night you two got together and what you did to that guy in the bar. I wondered if it was him, and stopped to listen. 

"When he mentioned your name, I sort of gasped, letting them know someone was listening. Before I knew it, they had grabbed me. I remember they gave me some kind of shot. When I woke up, they had Mama and Dick. 

"They knew you were in Illinois, so an officer named Crag-3 told me to join the resistance and feed them information, good enough so I'd become a trusted source, and could look for you. They seemed to know who you were, and didn't care about their losses if it meant capturing you...

"I'm sorry. Kirk; it's just...they threatened to torture and kill her."

"Do they know where you are?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

"No, when they all moved to Leavenworth, Crag-3 went back to New York, to Piffard. He said he'd wait for you there. Like he knew you'd try to get them."

Kirk ran his hands over her body, concentrating. As they ran over her abdomen, he smiled. "No fucking originality. Hang on, this is gonna hurt." Jasmine winced at the sharp pain in her belly as the tracking chip was removed and sent to the lake in Wisconsin. "Now, you are no longer being tracked by them, but they do have an idea where you are. They think, I hope, that you're sitting in the middle of a swamp.

"We have some damage control to do. Go get Tiffany for me while I make some plans."

As soon as she left the room, Kirk relaxed on the bed and sent his mental probes out, searching for Rose. It took him several minutes to locate and fix on her. 

" Rose, this is your friend, vanilla boy."

"Friend, shit! It's your fault I'm in this friggin place! When are you gonna git me the hell out of here?"

"I don't know if I can. Is Dick there with you?"

"We're together during the day, but he's kept in another part of the cave at night. When we're together, there's always a guard or two, and they don't let us talk unless they can hear us."

"Anyone else?"

She hesitated. "Just the guards."

"How many guards all together?"

"We've been able to identify a dozen regulars, plus whatever officers there are."

"Any physical restraints? Handcuffs, ankle chains?"

"No, just the threat of force and injury. And there's some kind of webbing across the entrance to the cave."

"Hmmm. Do you have any idea how deep you are, or what level you're on?"

"We're about a half mile from the entrance, on the ground level. They don't like to go into the caves. The guards always locate themselves so they can see out the entrance."

"Good. I'll be there as soon as I can, but it'll be a couple of weeks before I can get there. They're expecting me to teleport in. That means they have some sort of trap set up. We're going to need to make a ground assault. That'll take a bit of setting up. Just relax and don't tell Dick I've been in touch.

"And Rose, I love you."

"Go to hell, vanilla boy," she replied with a smile.

Tiffany and Jasmine entered his room just as he disengaged from Rose. "Good, you're awake. Get ready for a quick trip to upstate New York; we're going to go fetch your mother and my old boss, and a couple of others."

"You talked to her? Is she okay? How about Dick?" Jasmine threw the questions at him rapidly, not waiting for the answers.

"She's fine, just uncomfortable, and yes, Dick is there, too. And if I'm right, the guy that turned us in. Tiff, we're going to need two strong guys to go along. Physically, and telepathically. Who's here?"

"Not Lorenz? There's Roy; he's a bit of a cowboy, but he gets the job done. And Eli, kinda quiet, but good in a fight. I've heard some of the guys he's served with talking about him taking on three or four Dhogians at once."

"Fine; call them and have them meet us in the barn in twenty minutes. You both are going along."

"Kirk, I've never..."

"Then it's time you did, Jasmine. There's nothing like a little fire fight to bring our all your powers. I need you along to point out the officer who sent you after Tiff and me." He smiled. "If I'm right, we'll have a little surprise for him before the day's done."

Before going to the barn, he stopped by Lorenz's room and explained where he was going, and why. He asked the older man to make some preparations for their return. 

At the barn, he explained the mission to the two men whom had been added. "Hi, Roy, Eli. We're going to take a quick trip to a salt mine near Buffalo. The hogfaces are holding Tiff and Jasmine's mother and a friend of mine there. I know there's at least one other man, maybe more. We will be bringing Rose and my friend back here, along with a hogface and the other guy, if he's who I think he is. 

"Getting there will be easiest if you all just piggyback on me. Once we're there, you'll be able to get back without problem. 

"They are expecting us, but hopefully not for a week or so. Are you guys familiar with the neuronal net the Dhogs use. I've run into small applications, across pathways, or blocking doors. 

"The friggin' stuff will let you go through one way, but if you try to go back through, it sticks like a web and begins to spread over your body, tightening as it spreads. If you don't cut it away from its supports in a few seconds, it will immobilize you. 

"From what Rose told me, they've sealed the entrance to the mine with it. They must have a separate entrance near the main one to let them go in and out. We'll go in that way, then we can teleport out through the net."

"Won't the mind blast handle it?" Eli wanted to know.

"No, if anything, it makes it stickier. The only thing we've found to defeat it is a good sharp machete. Eli, that will be your job; can you do it without materializing?"

"Yeah, that's no problem."

"Girls, you get your Mom and Dick, again, without materializing. As soon as Eli lets you know the net is down, get your asses back here. Jasmine, can you do that?"

"I...I'm not sure about the distance. Can I piggyback on Tiffany?"

"Sure, little Sis, but you'll be surprised how easy it is."

"What's my job, Kirk?" asked Roy.

"When we get there, Jasmine will identify a certain Dhog officer. Your job is to capture him, alive, and relatively uninjured. I expect he is the commander of the troops at the mine. 

"I will bring the last prisoner. One last thing, no Dhog is to survive, except for the officer returning with us. Any questions?" There were head shakes all around. "Okay, grab what you think you'll need, and grab hands, everyone."

Three hundred million years ago, give or take a year or so, the Great Lakes region was covered by a huge inland sea. North America was crashing into Europe, forming the Appalachian mountains in North America, and the Atlas, Pyrenees and Alps in Europe. The collision tilted up the East Coast of North America, isolating the inland sea. Over a few million years, the sea evaporated, leaving huge salt deposits from southern New York to southern Ontario, from Vermont to Michigan. 

Early settlers discovered them, and by the time of the War of 1812, New York was supplying salt to most of the country. The salt industry was one of the major factors in the creation of the Erie Canal, known in Central New York as the 'ditch salt built.' It was in one of those early mines the Dhogs held their bait.

Kirk and his crew materialized in a field about 750 yards from the cave. Between them and the mine opening were several clumps of scrub brush and a patch of light woods, screening their arrival. Quickly, and quietly, they made their way to a spot roughly 150 yards from the Dhogs, who, apparently, were just finishing their midday meal.

One, an officer, was making his way toward what was obviously a latrine. Jasmine poked Roy and pointed. He nodded and disappeared. A few minutes later, there was a frightened stir in the camp. The officer, Crag-3, appeared out of nowhere, trussed up like a package--hands and feet bound together, his mouth gagged.

Suddenly, the neuronal web began to visibly separate from the structures holding it over the mouth to the mine. Kirk and the girls immediately teleported into the cavity and found the prisoners. Seizing them, Kirk signaled the two men and the group quickly assembled outside the mine. 

A quick pair of salvos of the mind blast served to remove the alien soldiers. A final blast from Kirk collapsed the mine entrance and the side passage the Dhogians had used, trapping inside any soldier who might have escaped the mind blasts. A minute later, the nine were back at the farm.

Kirk had Roy tie Crag-3 to some hay rolls which had been stacked on poles. The officer growled and gnashed his teeth, shouting imprecations at them in his native language. Kirk looked at him and shrugged. He turned his attention to the other man, Kirk's 'passenger.' Eli had fastened him with some of the neuronal net he had retrieved at Kirk 's request.

"Kirk Reynolds! Goddam! Am I glad to see you! Let me loose so I can thank you. Damn, those fuckers have kept me holed up in that friggin' cave for nearly six months."

"Six months, Big Dick? That's amazing. Most human men I've encountered who've spent more than a week in their company were dead. Why did they keep you alive? Were you selling them something?"

Just then, from the farm house, there was a chorus of screams. "That's him; he's the one who was talking to that officer."

"What's he doing here? Why'd you bring that cowardly son of a bitch along? That bastard ate with the Dhogs two or three times a week. I think he was informing on us. They always seemed to know what was going on, and he could always go where he wanted, not like Dick and me."

"I know, Rose. Don't worry; he's going to pay. First, I want you and Jasmine to meet Susie. Here she comes."

Kirk turned to greet the older woman. "Susie, as much as you have done for us, I hate to ask this of you, but Rose and Jasmine have to know what happened to you. Jasmine is a telepath and will be able to read you, and pass the information on to Rose, her mother.

"Susie, I need you to remember, to relive your experiences with Harr-1 and Orion. Even though you relive them, and experience the feelings again, distressing as they are, you are no longer in danger. And tonight, if you want, you will share my bed. Can you do this awful thing for me?" With tears running down her cheeks, she nodded. 

"Jasmine, hold her hand and your mother's. Everything you sense from Susie, pass on to her. Don't filter anything. Tiff, do you know Susie's story? No? Then you should participate, too."

The four women joined hands. In a few seconds, tears were flowing freely from all their eyes. Kirk felt a tap on his shoulder. "Dick, how are you?"

"Christ, Kirk! I don't know. How the fuck did all this happen? One day I'm sitting at my desk having a cup of coffee, and the next four years are chaos. I have a strange sense that just knowing you saved my life. That officer out there, for the first three or four months, after he learned you had worked for me, he'd grill me for hours every other day..."

He was interrupted by a scream, "You fucking bastard! That's what you had planned for me! And you, you motherfucking cocksucker; you knew what they were going to do to us!" Suddenly, rocks, sticks, and animal waste arose from the ground, anything that was not firmly attached to the soil, flew through the air to pelt and assail the tied and bound prisoners. 

"Easy, Rose. You can have them for target practice in a little bit. I thought you might be able to do that. It would really be strange for both sisters to have the ability if you don't. Where in Susie's story are you?"

"She was being examined for use as a breeder."

"There's more, and I'll warn you, it's worse."

"How could it..." She saw his face, and Susie's, and fell silent. "Ohmigod," she whispered. She rejoined her hands with her daughters. In less than a minute, Rose's face was livid with rage. While her daughters comforted Susie, Rose turned toward the captives. 

Suddenly a large ball of flame seemed to emanate from her and consume them. Before Kirk could react, Big Dick, Crag-3, the hay and the wooden poles which anchored the hay bales, were all cinders. Rose collapsed, sobbing. "Those bastards. Those fucking...animals, that's all they are, animals!" She turned to Kirk. "I want to help you get rid of them. What can I do?"

Mentally, he made the suggestion, "Comfort Susie. Besides what they did to her, they murdered her family, and were responsible for the death of her sister. She is going to need some friends when this is all done.

"And Rose, please don't get angry with me."

"Fuck you, vanilla boy. Just don't make me angry," she replied, the smile glowing in her eyes.

He turned back to Dick. "Well, that sure stops our interrogation. I do have some good news for you. Sally is safe. She is working down in St Louis, at a hospital, treating wounded resistance fighters and civilians who got hurt. I hear she and Monty have become good friends. Don't look so worried. That may well work to your advantage.

"We won't know for sure, but when this is done, we're estimating women will outnumber men two or three to one. Polygamy will be encouraged until there's a more even balance. There has even been some discussion of requiring men to supply sperm to sperm banks each week for women who decide to create their own family units. 

"I heard of one eighteen year old who was thinking of setting up a fertilization function. For a small fee, women would attend daily until they were impregnated. He thought he was brilliant, until someone remarked it sounded a lot like a male brothel." Kirk laughed. 

They had reached the house. "I'll arrange transportation for you to St Louis in the morning. It's about a six hour drive from here. We try not to teleport there, especially now they've located their continental headquarters at Leavenworth. Maybe you could help them get organized and move. It was suggested they use one of the underground nuclear waste storage facilities near Denver."

"Any idea how much longer this will go on? That officer said they had all but wiped out the resistance, and that it was ridiculous for us to hope to be rescued. I have to admit, I was losing hope."

"I'm sorry, Dick; I just learned this morning you and Rose were being held captive."

"Don't be sorry! I just don't have any idea how I'll ever repay you."

"You could always fix me up for a night with Monty." Kirk said, with a grin.

"What? Are you serious? I counted, what, nine women in that farm house..." He looked at Kirk, who had a wide smile. "You're shittin' me, aren't you?" He looked at his rescuer, at the lecherous grin. "Aren't you?"

The planning/strategy conference went off without a hitch. Bitsy, her studs and their wives were glad to get back into the village, even for a short time. The dozen or so telepaths, male and female, were glad to get together away from the constant stress vigilance imposed. With the aliens holed up in Leavenworth, their vigilance could be relaxed, but not abandoned.