Three Square Meals Ch. 070

John caught Irillith staring at the unlit console on the left of the Bridge. She met his gaze, then smiled at him with the hint of a blush colouring her cheeks, her angular eyes reflecting her amusement.

Her smile quickly faded as they approached the House Loraleth border, and she stared intently at the Sector Map, violet eyes darting from side-to-side as she searched for likely ambush locations. Planets, moons, asteroid belts, and even a lonely comet arcing across their flight path all received close attention from the wary blue girl. Despite Irillith's tense expression and repeated warnings of caution, they crossed over from House Loraleth to House Ghilwen territory completely unopposed. Not only that, there weren't even any ships positioned to patrol the border between the Houses.

"This is just too fucking weird," Irillith blurted out in an uncharacteristic outburst, her beautiful face contorted with worry. "No House Loraleth Fleet to check we've left their territory. No House Ghilwen Fleet to lay down the law about what we can or can't do in Ghilwen space. They're not even bothering to defend the border any more for fuck's sake!"

"I take it that's unusual then?" John asked her tentatively.

Irillith snorted with laughter, and replied, "Maliri matriarchs are an obsessively paranoid bunch. They'd -never- trust us in their own territory, much less leave their borders unguarded. Something very strange is happening here."

*Any thoughts Edraele?* John asked his very own Maliri Matriarch. *Should we be concerned?*

*Everything's well in-hand, John,* she replied, her tone calm and confident. *You'll be safe in House Ghilwen territory, all the way through to the Unclaimed Wastes.*

"Edraele says everything's fine," John told Irillith with a shrug.

She laughed again, shaking her head in disbelief as she muttered, "The whole Regency is turned on its head, and mother says everything's fine."

John shared a glance with Alyssa, and she shrugged as she said, *As long as they're not shooting at us, I don't really care why.*

*My sentiments exactly, XO,* he replied, turning to stare at the clear route ahead of them, winding its way through House Ghilwen star systems.

***

Remembering Alyssa's gentle chastisement about tiring himself out, John stayed in bed with her the following morning, while the others went about their tasks. After Sakura had enjoyed a filling breakfast, she left them to relax together in bed, as she was eager to continue training in the firing range. Calara appeared shortly afterwards, bringing them coffee, toast, and a loving kiss.

They waved her goodbye, and watched her leave, before eating their breakfast together in companionable silence. At least it would appear that way to a casual outsider. They were busy chatting away telepathically while they ate, enjoying being able to do both at once. When they'd finished their meal, John lay back in bed, with Alyssa snuggling up beside him.

"This feels so decadent," John said with a contented sigh, as he put his arm around her.

Alyssa was resting her head on his shoulder, and glanced up to make eye contact as she said, "I can't even remember the last time we spent the morning together like this. It reminds me of the early days on the 'Fool's Gold'."

He shook his head in amazement, as he said, "We've come a long way since then, haven't we, beautiful?"

She leaned up on one elbow, so she could look at his face more easily, and grinned at him wickedly as she replied, "You've certainly cum an awful lot since then, and inside plenty of beautiful girls."

John laughed, and said, "You're incorrigible."

She nodded enthusiastically, then laughed along with him, and he enjoyed listening to the lovely melodic sound as it echoed around their bedroom. Her blue eyes shone brightly as she asked, "Feeling happy?"

He brushed his fingers through her long golden-blonde hair, and said, "I thought you could read all my thoughts, my gorgeous little Matriarch?"

"I can, but it's nice to hear you say it," she replied, leaning forward to give him a tender kiss.

"Okay then. I'm deliriously happy, with a strong undercurrent of disbelief that I'm not dreaming," he replied playfully.

She looked unusually sombre for a moment as she said, "That's good, we all want you to feel that way."

Tilting his head to one side, he looked at her curiously, and asked, "What's wrong? Have you got something you want to talk about?"

Alyssa smiled and shook her head, saying, "Don't mind me, I'm just being silly. Maybe we should have a proper XO catch-up while we're revelling in the afterglow? The last couple have been lots of fun, but we keep getting distracted from actually discussing the girls."

He crossed his arms behind his head, and replied, "Good idea, I'd love to know how everyone's doing. Who do you want to start with?"

"Let's start with the new girl," Alyssa said with a smile. "You've been spending lots of time with Sakura, so how do you think she's doing?"

John nodded, and said, "We've been getting on really well. I've loved training her actually, and it's been bringing us closer together."

"I can only read her emotions at the moment, but she seems blissfully happy," Alyssa agreed. She grinned at him then, and added, "Which isn't surprising really, with you screwing her senseless on a daily basis."

John was about to say something, but he hesitated, not sure how to phrase it.

"It's okay, I understand," she purred as she straddled him, before leaning down to press her warm, firm breasts against his chest. "We all have different interests, and hitting people with swords does nothing for me. Now you have a girl who can really relate to you with that, and I'm overjoyed for you both."

Alyssa's lustrous hair fanned around him like a golden shroud, making it seem like she was shutting out the outside world so that only the two of them existed. He wrapped her in his arms, stroking her back, and enjoying the feel of her nubile body beneath his fingers.

"Thank you for understanding," he said simply, leaning up to kiss her, before resting his head on the pillow again.

She smiled at him, and said, "How about we talk about your fiancées next?" When he nodded, she continued, "We were all delighted that you added not just Calara, but Rachel to the fold. I'm looking forward to getting some time alone with you and Calara to celebrate properly, and I know Dana and Rachel feel the same way too."

"I'll look forward to that," he said, with a lusty grin.

"You should," she agreed. "We're all going to be very good girls for you."

John looked thoughtful as he said, "Actually, that reminds me. You mentioned your mental portraits of the girls has changed, and I can only assume it's to do with their new triple-helix DNA?"

Alyssa nodded, closing her eyes as she examined the metaphysical representations of each of the Terran girls. She spoke quietly as she described what she saw, "Their images used to be made out of clear crystal, and were beautiful, but static, just showing the girls looking happy. Now they look alive, their portraits animated and full of vibrant colour."

"Maybe it's to do with them being more psychically receptive now?" he wondered out loud. "You said before it was easier to bond with the psychic girls like Jade and Irillith."

"That makes sense," she agreed. "Now you mention them, Jade's the happiest I've ever seen her. With you proposing to more of the girls, adding Sakura to the mix, your growing fame with Terran forces, and giving all the girls psychic potential... she's been thrilled by all of it."

"I need to spend some more time alone with her," John said, with a rueful frown. "It's been tricky recently, with Sakura joining."

"She'd love that, but she loves seeing our group of girls expand too. If you bring her with you to 'spread the love' amongst the Maliri, she'll be one happy little Nymph. If you ask her to help you start knocking them up, she'll be absolutely ecstatic," Alyssa said, with an excited gleam in her eyes.

John frowned and replied, "That's fun to fantasise about, but I hate the idea of not being there for my children, you know that."

*Remember that Maliri society is very different to Terran society,* Edraele thought to him. *It's actually rare that the father gets involved with his childrens' upbringing, which I'm sure you understand with the heavy disparity between the gender population numbers. That custom has become even more pronounced since the males exiled themselves to the border stations.*

*Yes, but that doesn't make it right,* John protested. *I want to be involved with looking after my children.*

*And you can be,* she urged him. *Let me help take care of any expecting Maliri while you're away fighting this Progenitor. By the time they come to term, you'll be around for them too. You're still planning to settle here permanently on Valaden, aren't you?*

John thought about what she was saying, and he couldn't really counter the logic of her words, or help but get turned on as he imagined what it would be like.

Alyssa's cerulean eyes burned with arousal as she listened to his inner voice, and she said, "I've seen how you look at Irillith and the other Maliri. You're drawn to them, just like they're drawn to you. I think Edraele's right, and we'd all love to see you give some smoking hot Maliri girls a baby."

*Alyssa's quite right,* Edraele said to him, her voice soft and encouraging. *You've already spoken to the engineers who worked on the Invictus, and you know that many of them would never have had a chance at having children before you interceded. There are hundreds of thousands of Maliri women just like that in House Valaden territory alone.*

*How are they doing now, anyway?* John asked, thinking about the Maliri engineers he'd spoken to on Genthalas station.

*They're at Geniya at the moment, and have proven to be tremendously popular with the males,* Edraele informed him, with a sense of tremendous satisfaction. *Maliri men chasing particular women is practically unheard of, so we've created quite the commotion.*

John shared that same feeling, pleased for the kind, lovely Maliri girls he'd befriended on his previous visit to Genthalas. Thinking of his very own Maliri girl aboard the Invictus, he smiled at Alyssa, and asked, "How's Irillith doing? Is she okay?"

"She's excited about the prospect of rescuing her sister, but she's more than a little apprehensive too. She blames herself for Tashana's banishment, and she's desperate to make amends," Alyssa replied, looking concerned.

"Until we can rescue Tashana, we better try and give Irillith as much support as we can. I think this is going to be hard for her," John suggested, sharing the blonde teenager's concern for their friend.

Alyssa smiled at him, and replied, "I've already asked the girls to help keep an eye on her."

"Well done," he praised her, stroking her back. His mind wandered for a bit, and thinking about the dossier of data that Edraele had provided, he asked, "How's our preparation work going for our visit to the Underworld?"

Alyssa looked confident, and replied, "Calara's been reviewing what we have on the facility itself, while Rachel's been drawing up a psychological profile of this Hades character."

*Which just leaves Faye,* he said telepathically to Alyssa, so that the AI wouldn't overhear.

She pulled back from him a little and folded her arms across his chest before dropping her chin on them. With a slight frown, she replied, *I can't help you much there. It's been hard not having an empathic bond with her, let alone a telepathic one!*

*I seem to have cured her of her PTSD over Jade's death at Shinatobe's hands,* he said, recalling the surprising resolution to her problem with the undeletable file.

Alyssa nodded, and after a moment's pause, she replied cagily, *Yes, what you say to Faye seems to influence her a great deal.*

John remembered Faye's expansion of her storage systems while she'd still been running on Irillith's hacking deck, and he could only agree with Alyssa's assessment. He felt a strong surge of gratitude for the upbeat AI, and he said, *Faye's been an amazing addition to the team, helping out in loads of little ways, but the way she's been looking out for us while we're sleeping has been a godsend! Having one of us stay up all night to keep watch over the long-range sensors would have been a nightmare!*

*We should try and do something for Faye, let her know how much we care about her,* Alyssa suggested.

*Now that's a superb idea!* he agreed without a moment's hesitation.

She smiled, pleased at the prospect, then looked at him coyly as she asked, "Would you like to hear another good idea?"

"Way ahead of you," John replied, grinning at her as he rolled them over, so that she was beneath him. "We've got a couple of hours until it's time to feed Sakura. I think we should make good use of it."

Alyssa sighed with delight, then stretched her muscles in preparation. When she felt relaxed and limber, she pulled him down and kissed him passionately, eagerly spreading her thighs for him.

***

Irillith glanced at the fluttering purple girl by her side, and they shared a grin of satisfaction. "You've been amazing, Faye, thanks so much for all your hard work!" she said, reaching out to stroke her shoulder.

Faye trembled with delight both at the praise from her creator, and for the overwhelming burst of tactile sensation she felt at the Maliri girl's touch. When her wings had stopped quivering, she beamed a huge smile at Irillith, and replied, "They were all your ideas, I just helped you implement them!"

Shaking her head, Irillith waved her arm towards the Network that was spread out below them from their vantage point high above it. "You've expanded so much on my original plans, and put in so much hard work!" she said gratefully.

Below them, the entire network was now covered by a second level, a golden defensive lattice which overlooked and monitored the core Terran infrastructure. This upper level was festooned with security programs who were guarding gateways and firewalls between subnets, along with sturdy fortifications installed to protect key points of the digital network.

Roaming freely around the defensive lattice were elegant seek-and-destroy programs, which Irillith had modelled on the Maliri software that had attacked her in Sakura's cybernetic brain. The stalking figures were constantly monitoring the core network, and could drop down to intercept any intruders the moment that they were detected.

Although they had to wait to install copies of the Nexus server at the Gateway, they'd spent days analysing the roaming security towers, and had even been able to construct three inside the Invictus' Cyber Realm. Sadly each one required its own dedicated Terran server, and Dana had run out of spare hardware for them to use.

"Do you think John will like what we've done?" Faye asked, looking out over the digital realm.

Irillith nodded, and replied, "He'll be delighted to hear how much more secure we are now, especially as we'll be staying in Maliri Space for a while." She looked thoughtful as she added, "I wonder if there's some way I could bring him with me on a guided tour?"

"John? Here?!" Faye gasped, staring at Irillith in wide-eyed astonishment.

Irillith was deep in thought, and she murmured distractedly, "It should be possible... he can spirit-walk too."

"You mean I could actually touch him?!" Faye squeaked, her eyes as big as saucers now.

Giving her a gentle smile, Irillith said quietly, "You've fallen for him in a big way, haven't you?"

The purple construct blushed, then nodded, looking downwards out of embarrassment. Irillith pulled her into loving hug, and stroked the quivering girl as she whispered in her pointed ear, "We better spend some more time practicing kissing then, hadn't we?"

***

"Very nice, Sakura," John said as he nodded his approval.

The Asian girl had just unloaded an entire magazine on the distant target dummy, keeping the barrel of her XR75 rifle in a rock-steady grip, and hitting with every one of the fifty rounds.

She turned to face him, and grinned as she exclaimed, "It's so much easier now that I'm stronger! I don't even notice the kick or the barrel climb any more."

He smiled at her, and said, "It's not just that, you've been working hard on your shooting, and it's really starting to pay off."

"Do you want to see something else I've been working on?" she asked him, her lovely almond eyes watching his every reaction.

"Sure, show me what you've got," he replied, smiling at her encouragingly.

Sakura reached over to the firing range controls, and tapped a series of buttons, setting up a shooting program. She loaded a fresh magazine into her rifle, then hit the glowing green button to activate the target dummies. After a ten second wait, a target dummy sprang up from the ground in the furthest lane to the right. Taking quick aim, she fired a three-round burst which slammed into its chest in a spray of tiny polycarbonate fragments.

A split-second later another dummy appeared from way over in the left lane, near the end of the range. She hit that centre-mass with another burst, and quickly changed targets as two more dummies popped up. One after the other she hit them with deadly accuracy, going through her entire clip in less than thirty seconds, without missing a single target dummy.

John applauded enthusiastically when she ejected her magazine, flicked her weapon to safe, and placed the rifle on the firing bench, signifying that her exhibition shooting was complete. "That was excellent!" he exclaimed, genuinely impressed by her marksmanship. "I'd have no qualms on bringing you with me next time we leave the ship on a combat mission. In fact, I'll be glad to have you with us!"

"Really?" she asked him, looking up at him with a proud expression on her beautiful face.

He nodded and replied, "I'm officially declaring you combat-ready, Sakura. Thank you for working so hard for it. I'll go over our typical squad tactics later, and ask Alyssa to brief you on how she coordinates the team's shooting when we're in the field." He studied her eager young face, and added, "Would you like to try the Punisher railgun now?"

She hesitated, then grinned at him as she replied, "I really want to, but can we take a look at it tomorrow morning?" Glancing down at her slightly curved stomach, she continued, "My tummy's gone down enough for us to duel in the Dojo!"

John reached out to run his fingers over her toned abdomen, and she smiled at him, lifting her top so that he could feel the strong muscles beneath her golden-brown skin. She'd absorbed most of her lunch over the last couple of hours, and while he could feel in his mind that he still had an active connection with her, she was no longer full enough to cause her belly to swell.

She stood on tiptoe as she kissed him, then said, "I can't wait for dinner! Just a couple of hours to go."

He looked into her eyes, and said, "We better help you build up a hearty appetite then..."

There was a flash of excitement in her eyes, and she practically dragged him from the Firing Range, eager to face him in the Training Dojo again. Sakura held his right hand with both of hers, walking along beside him with a spring in her step. They entered the grav-tube, then levitated up in the blue anti-gravity field until they reached Deck Three. Stepping around a couple of cleaning bots, which had now added the training room to their intensive cleaning roster, they strolled down the corridor before entering the equipping area.

It didn't take long to get armoured and to gather their weapons, and he led the way through to the Dojo, before they strode across the mat to face one another. They'd spent dozens of hours fighting each other now, and he knew full well how aggressive an opponent she could be. Watching the slender girl warily, he adopted a guarded, defensive stance, and prepared himself for her attack.