Part 2

Stepping through the gate brought me to the edge of a large room where the folks around the gate pointed out into the center of the room and told me to bring my concubines out there and get them to sit down in a group.

Unlike most of the other concubines, all but one of mine was dressed. I'd also inherited seven children when I took them in and they were all happily, for now, getting acquainted. Kate's were certainly well behaved, being fairly quiet, and they got Theresa's group calmed down. Theresa, even though naked, was cooperating well with Kate to keep the kids corralled.

Tami, Bobbi and Alicia looked at me with a bit of confusion.

We made our way, and, instead of picking a spot near the center, I guided us to one of the walls where we would be less likely to be stepped on.

And dragging luggage - a lot like emotional baggage, except mine had wheels - probably stood out. Even so, on sitting down with "my" women and "my" children, I could see that the children would easily get out of control fairly quickly.

Now realize that I'm a bit... ahem... odd. I carry a lot of stuff in my bags that don't make much sense to others. In this case, I fished through my backpack and pulled out a bunch of colored pens and a notebook full of paper. Pulling out the pages that had applied to my job, which were no longer of interest to me, I handed the remaining blank notebook and pens to Theresa and Kate so they had extra weapons to keep their children quiet. It was only a matter of time before the toys the kids had brought would prove boring.

Kate and Theresa smiled at me. I nodded. "I think you may need to keep the kids distracted until we know where we're going. One thing, though. Kate, Theresa, any medical issues we'll need to know about?"

Kate looked sad. "I'm diabetic. I don't have much of my glucophage with me."

Theresa shook her head, adding, "I've no complications... but Tami is on birth control pills to regulate her hormones."

Alicia spoke up, saying, "My dad made sure both Bobbi and I were protected with IUDs. He didn't want to get either of us pregnant."

I think I heard the click as Kate, Theresa and Tami's eyes popped all the way open. I'm sure they heard mine as my eyelids collided with my eyebrows. "Your... father... was having... sex... with you?"

Both Bobbi and Alicia shrugged as they nodded reluctant agreement. "It wasn't anything special, y'know, we belonged to him and it was expected of us."

I looked around at all of my concubines, seeing the shock on three of the five faces, and asked Alicia "Didn't you learn that sex like that is abuse while you were in school?"

Both of their heads shook. Bobbi spoke up, saying, "We've always been home-schooled."

I looked at Kate "I suspect, once these two can get a real education that doesn't include sexual abuse, that they'll cease to be concubines. I'll bet they can re-test in just a few months and get scores over 6.5."

Kate smiled, "Maybe so, but... I think it might be nice if they wait for a year so that we can get children from them before they can leave us."

Tami nodded. "Yeah, what she said."

Tami smiled at me when I turned to face her. "You might also be able to do better in a re-test, too."

Her smile widened before saying "Why would I want to?"

I laughed as Tami got up, planted her butt on my lap and kissed me.

My ex had never been enthusiastic about kissing me and had managed to get me to be less aggressive over the course of our marriage. Tami's kiss damn near ignited me and she was immediately aware that little 'Lex woke up and was interested in her, despite her mothers' earlier oral effort to take him down for the count.

Tami pushed me flat on the deck floor, my head suddenly resting in Kate's soft lap, opened my jeans, and pulled out my erection. Shedding her own jeans, she straddled me and...

Even distracted, I still had just barely enough hand-eye coordination to undo her blouse, exposing her cleavage, held in by a surprisingly sturdy brassiere. It took some fumbling - you try doing this with a limited amount of experience and a serious deficit in cooperative brain cells - but I got it undone and her breasts were in my full view. Her nipples could, I believe, put an eye out, seeming to extend over an inch past the crinkled and raised areolae, and explained the reason for the heavy-duty brassiere. I imagined it wasn't a pleasant prison for these nips... and I imprisoned one of them immediately in my mouth while one of my hands did a strip-search on the other.

Tami wasn't quiet as she rode me. The only reason I wasn't louder was that I had a wonderful pacifier occupying my mouth. Tami had to have been pretty hot to have hit her peak a second time seconds before I reached my first.

And, as I once again got all (or, at least, a quorum) of my brain cells back working as a team, I looked around. We were certainly not the only example of people taking some delight in "free time". There seemed the likelihood that our time waiting would be completed as a Cluster Fuck.

After kissing Tami again, I told her to get comfortable as I sat back up, taking a moment to give Kate a kiss, thanking her for cushioning my head. Kate kissed me back, a warm and affectionate kiss but nothing as incendiary as Tami's. Kate, I realized, was probably more of a cuddler than anything else.

The kids had lost interest in Tami and me and had been watching others, especially other children. I heard Theresa tell Lois that she had to stay with us.

We watched as the sixes came on board with their concubines and Bobbi pointed out when one woman brought her mother on-board, with her younger sibs, and another man.

The flow of arrivals finally stopped and eight marines stepped through the gate. It was obvious that the extraction was over.

"Listen up, people!" a loud voice got our attention. "Sponsors, collect the CAP cards of all of your concubines and bring them up here. We also need to know if there are any dependents left on earth that we need to collect today, meaning that we will, if a concubine's sponsor accepts them, collect children under fourteen years of age. Finally, we need to know about any and all medical problems that need immediate attention that cannot be put off until tomorrow. Once you have all of that, come up here and get in line."

Kate's brightness had her quickly gathering up the five CAP cards. I was only the third to get to the officer running this show.

"My concubine Kate is diabetic and Tami is on birth control to regulate her hormones. I'm not sure if now is the best time to have IUDs removed from Bobbi and Alicia. Oh, and I'm hypertensive and only have another three days of Altace with me."

"All right, here's your link to the ship's AI, which will give you directions. You are in pod Green seven. Get your concubines to the pod, and then bring Kate and Tami with you to medical. This will give you the route. The AI will answer any questions about the pod for you."

I nodded and headed off with the widget that looked like a PDA. I gathered up my new family and we headed off to our new home. This wasn't really all that fast because we had to get the papers the children had been drawing on picked up and packed again.

Once in our pod I soon discovered that I had to tell the AI to respond to my concubines, I told Theresa to take care of all of the children while I got Tami, Kate and myself to medical and that Bobbi and Alicia would have to help her.

Tami declined to wear a shift, preferring to remain naked, but Kate got into her shift without hesitation, smiling at me while she flashed me, and then breaking out in a giggle as I smirked back at her.

Medical wasn't quite a madhouse, yet, but I stripped down and went into a tube, just like Kate. Tami only had to shed her sneakers and socks before she went into a tube.

The fifteen-minute medical, for Tami, and me, extended to over twenty minutes. Kate was waiting for us when our tubes opened.

"Lieutenant Peters, we found you had some medical complications, so we couldn't just pop you out. You had several cancerous polyps that had to be dealt with, now. You will probably see evidence in the next couple of hours before it clears."

I nodded. "Well... that one would've snuck up on me. Because of work requirements, I kept having to put off scheduling a colonoscopy for the last two years."

He nodded. "You're lucky. I had an uncle who died from colon cancer. It is a really shitty way to die."

The pun implicit in what he said wasn't funny enough, so I grunted a thank you.

"It may take a couple of days for all of the rogue cells to be found and destroyed. Now, your concubine Tami, her hormonal issues drove her acne problem and the contraceptive hormones didn't help with the acne even though they stabilized her. She'll be fine... but it will take time for her PCOS to clear up. Pregnancy, by the way, will help more than it will hurt."

"I sure don't mind, she's a nice young woman."

"As for your concubine Kate... her diabetes was easily dealt with and her early onset menopause has been pushed back, though she will likely need to await any enhancement or augmentation before you do anything more. We've suppressed fertility for the next two months to give her time to get full function back."

"Thank you. That helps, I think."

He smirked. "You'll be in better shape, soon, though you can't go through augmentation for a week to give your body time to flush out the cancer. Kate will be a bit fragile for the next month and a half... and Tami will be fertile tonight. Make it count." He winked as I smiled and left with two of "my" women.

When we got back, Theresa had managed to make the pod look very homey and she had used the replicator to feed the kids. Only the two oldest, Joey and Anne, both 13, weren't in bed, instead, they were using the paper to draw anime characters. I found their level of drawing talent intimidating. The best I could do, drawing, was limited to flowcharts.

Kate, Tami and I sat at the table, dinner in front of us, while Theresa, Bobbi and Alicia talked about the plans for Christmas Eve.

Well, we didn't have any presents for the kids, yet, but I talked to the AI and got a holographic Christmas tree set up in a corner, next to where the grav lift was. We then discussed what to have replicated for the children to play with.

We ran across one of the major hitches.

Yes, the replicator could make MP3 players for the kids.

But, no, the AIs would not put music in them. It seemed they were a bit twitchy about offending the RIAA, and, apparently, the various Confederacy races had just surrendered to copyright owners and had banned recorded performances and limited broadcast of such material. This was reasonable, I guess, since, with replicators, the only valuables would be patterns and templates, things that copyrights would cover.

Humans tend to be less sheep-like, however, and this was likely one of the key reasons the Confederacy needed us.

It was pretty late when I finished using my laptop to load music and video into each of the players we had the replicators make for the children. I was pretty glad that I hadn't left my laptop behind.

We managed to wrap all but two of them. The two oldest, Joey and Anne, took theirs off of my hands very happily before they found the rooms their moms had assigned and went to bed.

It was quiet in the pod as I relaxed with my family.

My FAMILY, on a quiet Christmas Eve.

The oddest thought struck me, just then. The pod wasn't "home". It was the family I was part of, now. Home, now, came from being surrounded by family, like the Billy Joel song.

Oh, we may travel... but, wherever my family was, I was home.