Chapter 1: No peace for the?
Two years went by in a hurry and X-Com never let up. On Cydonia the base was expanded time and time again, new facilities, new hydroponic farms, new labs, workshops and hangars and most recently and perhaps most importantly a new mass collider. The massive cyclotron particle accelerator was the final step in creating Synthetic Elerium on a practical scale. The building of it had all but suspended all other new alien technologies; it had simply used that much Elerium. It was due to go into mass production in two solar days, and the occasion was to be marked with quite some pomp and ceremony. Which is another reason why Nabiki was unhappy.
"This is all your fault Ranma," she murmured, for the umpteenth time, as she waddled around the room. The reason for her ungainly walk was the large protrusion that used to be her well toned flat stomach. The reason it was Ranma's fault was partly because he had a big part in putting the baby in there and partly just because he was her husband and as every man knows its all their fault after the woman gets that ring on her finger. What was worse he had the effrontery to be away on mission as the day approached and so he wasn't here to be told how much he was to blame.
They had managed to spend the vast majority of the time since the award ceremony together, her back in the driving seat on Mars base and him training the next load of commandos for the newest theatre they were expected to face. Zero gravity training had to be done and done well, from the first moment it started it was obvious to any participant that the whole concept was alien to mankind. Humans were just not built to operate in a truly weightless environment without any constant up or down. Of course the idea of Ranma tied to a gym was almost an anathema, after a few months of watching him slowly going wall crazy she had just given up and told Major General Jack O'Neil to find him something to do.
Jack had come back with a job. Still smarting from his own promotion beyond operational work Jack pushed the paper until he found a hole. Lieutenant Colonel Saotome Ranma was reassigned to exploratory work. The new Hyper-drives were allowing the X-Com crafts to reach unprecedented speeds. The new Graviton Conversion engines took a modified Elerium fuel and produced more thrust than anything previously known, including managing interstellar speeds. What this meant was that astronomy became a matter of international relevance and that X-Com had the ability to investigate anomalies.
So Ranma, aboard the Earth Space Vessel Endeavour, was currently on an extended mission to the Cynos star system's third planet to investigate some pyramid type structures that had been discovered there. This left the heavily pregnant Nabiki without the only person really capable of defusing her anger. The truth was that she was just plain scared. She knew that she and her baby could not be in better hands than they were, she knew that the alien surgical techniques could save both of them from even beyond the point of death and she knew her child wouldn't even be traumatised by its birth because of the volunteers from psi-ops. But none of this was Ranma, and that was what she wanted. For months after the Commando rescued her she was unwilling to even let him out of her sight. Over time and with help that fear had all but subsided but she just could not feel really safe without him. Her only real solace was that he was even more worried about her than she was. For a man with first hand experience of the technical brilliance of X-Com doctors he had fussed himself stupid at every opportunity. It had been endearing to begin with and part of it still was, but Nabiki had found the fussing increasingly irritating, and so when the opportunity to send him away had arisen she had taken it, a fact she daily regretted.
On top of all of this Nabiki had several more babies to nurse, economic miracles of blind and bluff. The X-Com high command, urged by Nabiki, had made the decision to hide the extent of the organisation's growing influence behind front companies. Now O'Neil Cybersystems had been joined by a host of other companies, bought and restructured to handle the distribution of alien-human hybrid technologies to the nations of Earth. The latest of these was proving to be more problematic than she had hoped. It was called 'Marsec' and had been hijacked by the right wing 'hawks' who were pushing for greater proliferation and larger pushes into weapon technologies. The truth was Nabiki and Ranma were in agreement with them on a whole range of issues but the personalities in charge just went too far and rubbed the couple the wrong way. Jack and his people Earthside agreed wholeheartedly, and a clash was coming.
Nabiki had just got off the phone with, Monsieur Armand, the interim chairman of Marsec and her mood was positively foul. Normally she would go and watch Ranma for a while, bask in his attention when he could steal a few moments and then return to work relaxed and optimistic. But the idiot had got himself posted away to a whole new solar system. So now instead she was chewing her lollipop stick and muttering curses.
"Colonel," called her aide-secretary, "the experimental transmitter is due to be tested today, perhaps you would like to observe?" It was a blatant attempt to pacify Nabiki, even down to the use of her rank, the poor girl knew that Nabiki had long planned to use the test to call Ranma and was desperately trying to cheer her up with the thought.
"Thank-you Yuka," Nabiki replied, mollified a little despite herself, "Tell them to call me when they are ready to pick a target," she ordered, knowing full well that Yuka had already approached the scientists with her boss's preferred test medium. She also knew that Armand had approached the girl to spy for him, and that she hadn't yet refused. Yet another thing that would require her personal attention when all she really wanted was to put on Ranma's red shirt and bury herself into his embrace.
Nabiki resigned herself to a few more hours of number shuffling and contact sifting, promising herself that she would extract a massage out of that bastard of a husband she had married the moment he got home. Well maybe not the moment he did but as soon as he had recovered from her other demands. She had now entered her final stage of pregnancy and the knowledge that she no longer had to abstain but was forced to by distance was driving her mad with lust. Once again she swore at Ranma for being insensitive enough to let himself be sent away.
-
-
Millions of miles away Ranma sat against a cargo hold wall, absentmindedly bouncing a ball off six surfaces and holding a grounding bar to stop him floating off. He had discovered something: he truly loved zero-g. Not just a little bit but really passionately, here he could fly, soar and glide like he was born to it. The ryu of his youth had been aerial based but none of its masters had even dared dream of the true flight Ranma had found in space. Free of the bonds of gravity he felt like he had shed all the cloying restraints of his damaged psyche and stripped himself down to a purer core, or something. As anyone could tell he had also discovered something else, he really hated long space trips. He had worn himself down three times already today doing aerial katas, he had run his team through three new exercises and raced some of them along the exterior of the ship, and still he was bored.
"Bored, bored, bored" he muttered to himself, all the while knowing that there was more to it than that. Once again he closed his eyes and conjured up her image in his mind's eye. He could never get it right, never do her justice but even the attempt lifted him in no small way. He breathed her name with reverence and pride, Kami he loved that woman. And now, now she was pregnant, that just blew his mind, sure he had always assumed he would have kids when he had been a kid himself but from the day he joined X-Com to the day the alien fortress crashed back into the sea the idea had only come up once and that was a lifetime ago and with a very different girl. Now he was going to be a dad, even if the dumb slowpoke engine blew them all to hell he was still going to be a dad, he just could not get his head round the idea.
Nabiki's wedding (not that he would call it that in her earshot) had been a fantastic success, hardly surprising since she had organised it. All he had been required to do was find the rings, turn up and answer the questions as prompted. Which was a good thing since the sight of her in her wedding dress had blown his mind to pieces. To this day most of the day was a happy blur, and the night was permanently burned into his brain, filed under 'Best Moments of Life.' Of course his father and Soun had still tried a crazy scheme to replace the woman he loved with the worlds most famous closeted lesbian jailbird but the fight that ensued had been just another icing on the cake of a perfect day.
He still remembered the day she had brought up kids. Nabiki had been talking to her elder sister Earthside and cooing over the baby. Ranma had made some flippant remark about her getting clucky and she had hit him right in the face with a sincere "Yes, I think I am." Well he had stuck with what he knew and stammered meaningless uglash until she rescued him. She had wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him and then, with their eyes locked together, asked him in a voice barely above a whisper, "What about it stud, wanna be a dad?" He had looked into those eyes and realised he only had one answer; he whispered his agreement and was treated to a toe-curling kiss. The more he thought about it the more he knew it was the right answer, but that didn't stop him turning it over and over in his head. A dad hot damn!
Predictably there had proved to be problems with the next step but a few doses of the regenertron had fixed that and soon she had been standing there with that look. He had been teaching a morning class, had seen her standing there at the side door as she normally did, and Kami he loved it when she did, but this time her face had been a mask of confused emotions. He rushed over to her, picking out fear and happiness and love and anxiety and all sorts of other expressions from her face. He had immediately guessed what she had learned and her little smile and nod as he took her hands had clinched it. He had whiled her around the room, screaming "Yattai!" so loud they could have heard him I Nerima. T that moment he could have leapt mountains and outrun jets. He felt like the happiest man in the universe, and the thing was he still did.
It had taken days to get the smile off his face, and nobody had wanted that infectious joy to end. Mess mates had started calling him 'dad' just to see the brightening of his smile. Laura and her husband, who had beaten Nabiki and him to it by nearly six months, had teased him unceasingly but they were already lined up as godparents. Just as he and Nabiki were godparents to little Callum.
All in all Ranma was on top of the world, except that he wasn't instead he was out in the black between stars heading for Mars after one of the most uneventful trips of his life.
"Colonel could you report to the sensor deck," came a voice over the intraship tannoy, sounded like young O'Reilly, a good kid but prone to excitability. Ranma nevertheless quickly propelled himself down the corridors to the sensor suite, anything to do was good he told himself, he was wrong.
-
It took nearly an hour to make sense of what the long range sensors were picking up. In deference to Radar O'Reilley, most people would have missed the trace altogether. What they were seeing was at least one small craft on the same heading as them. The energy trail it was leaving was definitely not any vessel launched from Earth.
"Captain" Ranma said, turning to the ex-Naval Air Arm officer, "we need to get closer, damn the reaction mass we must know more."
"Aye-Aye Sir" the man replied, pissing Ranma off just a little with his damn formality.
"Call me when you've got a time to interception," Ranma ordered, heading out to rouse his Commando.
-
The call came quickly on his heels, "ETI ten minutes Colonel" the captain's voice said over the comms. Ranma resisted the urge to tell the man not to call him colonel and set about putting on his battle gear. Worst came to worst it was just another drill.
As soon as he suited up he returned to the sensor suite. His armoured state clearly alarmed more than one crew member along the way.
"What we looking at cap?" he asked as he came in the door. The captain winced and replied,
"Three ships, small single seaters, nothing we have seen before."
"Got a picture Radar?" he asked the corporal. The man quickly flicked up a blurry image of what was undeniably a set of saucers. "shit!" Ranma swore. "I think battle stations are in order," he said to the captain who nodded and set to preparing to fight the ship. "Radar, I don't want you to lose them for a second, the moment you are suited I need you to glue yourself to that screen and probe them raw." Then Ranma jogged off to the bridge, and in doing so he missed the start of the longest distance call mankind have ever made.
-
On the bridge everything was calm, all the stations were manned by space suited X-com astronauts, and the captain was ensconced in his gyro-stabilised seat. Ranma took up position in a corner as out of the way as he could manage.
"Ladies and gentlemen" the captain began over the intraship, "we will soon be engaging unknown aliens in the first ever space battle of mankind's history. Earth trusts that each man shall do his duty." Ranma almost gagged at the pomposity but the men seemed to like it so he kept stum and swallowed his sarcasm.
The captain was distracted by a private call over the comms but quickly returned to the situation at hand. As the Endeavour approached the aliens flipped end for end and came screaming in, plasma pulses leading the way.
The Endeavour took a real pasting, but gave it back in the best measure they could. Systematically the triple gauss cannons spat streams of fire at the enemy, lighting up their shields like it was Christmas.
"Track and fire independently!" the captain ordered, "Give me some feedback damn it!"
The feedback was not good, even the latest shielding technology that X-Com had rolled out was nothing close to good enough to take on three ships. Already hull breaches were being reported. On the plus side one of the enemy vessels could now be seen pin wheeling away into space apparently beyond control.
"We lost sensors Sir" reported the scanning officer, " targeting has been witched to manual"
"Shit!" Ranma swore, that was like trying to crawl across broken glass with your lips, bloody impossible. He took off for one of the weapon turrets at full tilt, figuring there was no way the current gunner could match him for perceptive skills. The ship continued to shudder as he went, hurling himself along from bulkhead to wall, bouncing along like a demented spinning top.
But he got there and he got there before the gunner had finished emptying his magazine in futile streams of rage. Ranma lifted the poor man out from the seat and clocked him with an elbow. He threw himself into the torn straps and set about locating all the controls while desperately seeking Zen-shin. The aliens meanwhile had far from given up, spotting their pursuer turned victim's lack of guidance they closed in all the more, sacrificing their frantic manoeuvring for more straight forward attack runs. Mistake.
Ranma called the other gunner and ordered him to surrender turret control to his station. Not that Ranma had a great deal of experience in a turret but the way he saw it nor did anyone else. Ranma calmly chose his moment and let fly with everything the Endeavour had, turning the second of their attackers into dissipating space trash. The third had got the message though and resumed its more conservative attack and manoeuvring mix. The fight was still desperately one sided but at least with only one opponent the Endeavour was taking a lot less damage.
A sudden shock shook the ship, from forrard, Ranma didn't bother to speculate what had just blown, the lack of command chatter said it all. Instead he fired off another stream of hyper-velocity projectiles, scoring a few hits on the enemy vessel.
"Damage control, sit rep shields and steerage" he called.
"Steerage is fine but I've only got one projector left and its only going to last for a few seconds when I fire her up before the buffers fry."
"On my mark bring her about vertical flip and fire up that shield" he ordered. "All personnel buckle up!" With that he began tracing a pattern for the alien to jump through. The bastard was too quick and too wary to hit but Ranma had a plan. At just the right moment he gave the order and used the ship like a giant flyswat. The shield blew, the hull buckled but more importantly the alien vessel went crunch too, and was now lodged in the side of the Endeavour.
Ranma guided his Alphas to the location but the little grey sectoid pilot was spread all over his seat, his cockpit having been turned into lethal projectiles by the impact. Ranma was honestly disappointed by the outcome, he had a powerful urge to punch someone, he could just tell this was going to make him late home to his wife.
Things were worse than he thought.