Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 26

Mark described the new Sentinel security stations. General Marsbe liked the fact that they would have ship building capabilities scattered all over the galaxy. He especially liked the idea of rotating in management staff on longer rotations and then staffing the Sentinel primarily from the local population. That would significantly reduce travel time and increase family time for the security personnel, plus it gave them light drive capable ships scattered all over the galaxy for faster response times.

When the call ended, General Marsbe sent out orders to transfer all personnel and prisoners from security stations to the Destroyers, so the existing security station could be upgraded to an Orbital Hub. The upgrade would take roughly 3 days and then as soon as possible they were supposed to be receiving a new Sentinel. Everyone seemed to be onboard with the upgrades, since it would increase security and, once the staff were sorted out, they would all get more family time.

The timing of the visitors arrival was actually beneficial in that the crews now being selected to staff the new Destroyers, based on the planets they would be stationed around, would be just about to leave to relieve the previous crews. Their departure was just going to be delayed by a couple of days.

The two men, with Cricket's help in calculations, hatched a plan to send a cloaked Destroyer to the last two predicted jump points before Atlanterra, to get detailed scans of their ships.

When they arrived, there would be 15 Destroyers, 1 Battlestar and 4 Sentinels cloaked and waiting for them. The Poseidon was going to be the only uncloaked ship.

The plan was to communicate with them and determine friend or foe. Hopefully in that first communication they would also be able to determine if they could detect their cloaked ships or not.

If, for some reason they did attack, the plan was to uncloak the fleet and hopefully they would surrender peacefully and they could capture at least one, if not all, of their ships and escort them back to their planet to have a word with their leaders. Maybe even swap them for the bastard?

For now it was just a waiting game, fortunately their timing was such that Mark would still be able to attend Annabelle and Jason's graduation at the end of May, then if all went well, he would be back in Atlantis by the time she was out of school and they could get married soon after.

Since the embassy was already vacant, Cricket had actually already reconfigured it as an Orbital Hub, it was already mostly transformed into a security station when Cricket changed the design to be an Orbital Hub instead, since she knew Mark would agree with her design.

It finished its conversion on the last day of April, so May 1^st would be the changeover day when they could start offloading transports in orbit. Since all the passengers were already citizens they simply had a few immigration booths and information kiosks, and then a couple of people directing people to the shuttle busses.

The month of May was still quite hectic with numerous transports showing up each day, but the transports weren't always full, so it appeared as though the mass immigration period was starting to wind down, as a lot of the visitors to Earth were now tourists rather than immigrants.

So as people found permanent residences, they slowly re-zoned the temporary residence sections down until they just had a single section just off to the side of the south path that was still temporary residence for immigrants. Atlantis had over two million people living on it now and things were starting to normalize. The cities were very Earth-like with larger multi-storey high density residential buildings in the cores and then thinning out as you got to the suburbs.

Annabelle still flew out every Friday night to spend the weekend and then would fly back on Sunday night. She would always spend some time at the new ranch.

May seemed to pass by in no time, Cricket had the shipyards all building Sentinels, so there would have 9 of 14 Sentinels ready by the time the visitors arrived.

Mark was kind of looking forward to the engagement with the visitors. They didn't seem very advanced from what they had monitored from their home planet and they had even taken shuttles down to the surface. So they doubted they could detect a cloaked ship.

They hadn't actually talked to anyone yet, but just from monitoring communications and radio signals, they could tell everyone had an underlying worry about being attacked.

The time to leave to meet the visitors was approaching, as was the graduation ceremony. The timing looked like Mark would get to attend the ceremony, but would need to leave the next morning to reach Atlanterra ahead of the visitors. Nothing like cutting it close!

Maren and Mark flew to the ranch the night before Annabelle and Jason's graduation. It was nice to see Maria and Sofia and the horses again.

Everyone was up early around the ranch and soon they were doing the morning workout. They had been failing at trying to do their workouts regularly at the palace. They did lots of workouts when on the Poseidon, but that wasn't very often.

After breakfast, Annabelle and Mark took Moonrise and Buck on a short trail ride.

During the ride they got to thinking about the new ranch. It turned out that they both felt a bit guilty for riding Candy and Dany on the trail rides, but they never felt guilty when riding the horses.

After discussing it, they figured the source for their guilt was because Candy and Dany were friends and could actually carry on a conversation while they were riding. So riding them was like taking advantage of a friend.

They couldn't help but wonder if other guests would feel the same way? Either way they needed to talk to the centaurs about it. Hear it straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Realizing those thoughts were depressing them, they changed the topic to the graduation ceremony and then her final exams while they were enjoying the peaceful view from the meadow that overlooked the valley.

Annabelle was near the top of her class in nearly every subject, and she said she was relaxed, confident and ready to take all the final exams right now, but unfortunately they were spread out through the middle of June.

They also discussed Mark's leaving to meet the six ship attack party and how long he thought that was going to take.

Mark laughed, "From what we've observed and learned about them, plus what we have waiting for them, I can't see the actual confrontation taking more than 5 minutes. But then it's 10 days back to their planet to meet with their leaders, which could take a day, a week or a month... I honestly don't know! Then once the meetings are done it is 12 days back to Earth. So that pretty much rules out a wedding before the middle of July."

Knowing Annabelle really wanted a date set, Mark suggested, "Tell you what, why don't we tentatively set a date for the first weekend in August. Once I meet with their leaders, I'll have a better idea for timeline, but by then things should be well enough along that I can leave someone else in charge."

Annabelle had a big smile again at having a date set, even if it was a tentative one. She gave him a big kiss, then laid out a blanket on the grass and began removing her clothes. She really was a gorgeous woman as Mark studied her body as he removed his clothes.

Soon Annabelle had Mark lying on the blanket as she rode him cowgirl style. Mark really loved it when the woman was on top. He seemed to last forever in that position as his lover did whatever made her feel good. He was just happy to look into their eyes, watch and fondle their swaying breasts, suck on their nipples and kiss their soft red lips.

She rode him slow and they just enjoyed each other's bodies. Eventually Mark came deep inside his fiancé amid one of her numerous orgasms.

Annabelle then squatted down to pee, and wipe her pussy before putting their clothes back on, folding up the blanket and riding back to the ranch.

After they had put the horses away, they went and had a quick shower and had a chance to sit down and relax for a bit before getting ready for the ceremony which started at 19:00.

They didn't think Mark had any formal attire as no one had ever seen him in anything other than what he normally wore. So when they asked him what he was going to wear, he surprised them when he said, "A tuxedo!"

Knowing Mark would need it for the graduation and possibly other formal events, Cricket had created a tuxedo for Mark in the clothing synth. Knowing it would be a perfect fit, he didn't even bother to try it on.

Mark spent some time talking to Joe and Kat about both ranches. Jason was going to stay and take over this ranch, with Maria, Sofia and Jorge's help, and one of Kat's friends, who was a certified horse trainer, was going to take over the horse training and riding lessons.

Joe and Kat indicated they might travel back and forth between the ranches to help out with group bookings for the larger multi-day trail rides. It took every bit of Mark and Annabelle's willpower to NOT tell them about Solara's campsite kit, as they sat there with big smiles on their faces.

Maria had made a big batch of spaghetti for the early supper and then everyone got changed and ready for the graduation ceremony. To make their entrance Maren took them to the ceremony in the shuttle.

Being a rural school, there was only about 40 people in the graduating class and the class was split almost evenly between males and females, so they walked down the aisle paired off with a member of the opposite sex that was roughly the same height. Two guys were lucky enough to have to escort two girls down the aisle, because there was two more girls than guys.

Annabelle ended up NOT being the valedictorian, likely because she had missed so much school, but it didn't bother her as she had so much other stuff going on that was much more important than being valedictorian.

As the ceremony progressed, they came to the light-hearted 'most likely to...' segment where they had come up with something for every student.

Jason was voted most likely to play in the NHL, and Annabelle had been voted most likely to succeed. They explained it was because she arrived tonight on her own spaceship and she was soon going to be a Queen to billions of people across 11 planets... a title impossible for anyone else on Earth to ever achieve... especially for the guys!

As everyone laughed, they took that time to also acknowledge Mark, by announcing that the King of the Atlantean Federation was in attendance, and that it was because of the Federation, that all teachers and students were still alive and well today.

They finished that segment and the valedictorian speech and then went to the actual handing out of the diplomas.

After the ceremony, was the dance and an hour or so after that many of the graduates had left for the big grad party.

Jason and Annabelle both opted to not go to the grad party and just stayed to dance, since the family weren't really big drinkers. They danced for a couple of hours, until everyone started yawning and suggested they go home.

They only had three more weeks of school left, as next two weeks were the final exams and the remaining week after that was optional for graduates. So Annabelle would be free to roam the galaxy with Mark.

Maren had them back at the ranch in no time and Annabelle made it abundantly clear to Mark that she needed to have as much cum in her pussy as possible to hold her over until he returned.

That night Annabelle coaxed 6 loads of cum from Mark before they were both too exhausted and tired to continue. Then they drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, they joined the workout, then over breakfast they discussed the plan to get the ranch ready to move to Atlantis as well as do some wedding planning, after all it was now scheduled for the first weekend of August.

After the chores were done, Maren was there to pickup Mark, Rayven and Gyges, which is all that was going to meet with the incoming visitors, and take them up to the Poseidon and head back to Atlanterra.