Valley Forge

Chapter 7

It has been three months since we last visited our heroes

Rick had his tools and the B units were charged and ready as he stepped up behind her with both of them on the bridge. "Ready."

"Cross your fingers. Applying 50% power to the first maneuvering thruster for three seconds." Kate pressed a button followed by pressing another button. "Works perfectly." She grinned with satisfaction. "Shall we try for number two?"

"Here we go. Applying 50% power for three seconds." Kate pressed the button and instantly a red light and alarm started to sound. Followed by another red light and another.

"It's a cascade effect." Rick pushed her to one side and started pressing buttons. The red lights remained, however, no new ones popped up.

"What the hell was that?" This was her bridge.

"Cascade affect," Rick stated succinctly and looked to see if they had a new hole in their ship. He found nothing and turned to Kate. "Do you remember your grandparents' stories from when they were kids at Christmas? With a string of tree lights, when one light went out all the lights went out and you had to find the one that burned out or was loose before all the others lit back up. This is something similar. The power you activated went to the first thruster before moving on to the next thruster because that thruster wasn't the right one until it reached the right thruster. It malfunctioned and sent that to the one downstream which exploded and down to the next one."

"But that's impossible. Everything has its own connection. Everything." What he was talking about was absolutely not feasible.

Rick shook his head and began to explain. "Budget cuts; revision to the design; it was a Value Engineering request; the contractor took a shortcut and pocketed the difference. Take your pick, but some of the thrusters are on the same line. One blows up and sends a signal to the next one and on and on until it reaches the start."

"Budget cuts. We're in a damn space ship and they did budget cuts." Kate believed his explanation; she blew up and started kicking the closest panel.

He reminded her of some of the latest construction failures. "You remember when that walkway collapsed? The contractor did something different than what the design drawings told him to do because it was easier, took less time, and saved him money. How about the tower that collapsed because the contractor cheated on the concrete? It was little more than powder."

"The Leaning Tower of Pisa." Kate was catching on. "So what else did they cheat on?" She was now really pissed and went over to a screen. "We just lost three thrusters, all three in that sector."

"Is that bad?" Rick was a tree hugger. Yes, he knew electrical because even in his line of work, he had to use, understand, and fix electrical, plumbing, and even environmental systems.

"Bad enough. Even worse, I used up all the kits to make those two. We want any more and we're going to have to make them from scratch." Kate didn't know any other way to replace them.

"I vote no. We blow up anything else and we might not even be able to go straight. Speaking of which, how are the main engines? That's where we get all our power, right?" Rick was still a tree hugger.

"Yeah." Kate walked over to that control screen. "No fluctuations, no deviations, no malfunctions. We're effectively coasting unless I request a burn. Our power is in that area though technically we don't get our power from the engines."

Rick broke it down to what they already knew. "So either way neither of us are going into that section. Not when it's full of radiation."

"Not unless there's a spider in there and it bites you," Kate teased.

"That would be so cool! What's the code to get through the door?" Rick halfway teased back.

"Only my fiancé would want to be a super hero out in space." Kate shook her head and looked for any damage that they didn't know about.

Rick walked up behind her and placed his arms around her. "I want to come to the rescue of the woman I love. How cool would that be?" He started kissing her neck.

Kate tilted her head for a moment to let him because she loved him. Then she shrugged him off of her. "That's enough, Castle, I still have work to do."

"So that's a no to taking you on the table over there." He hadn't actually let go of her yet.

"No, I mean, yes. No sex on my bridge, Castle. Now go find something to do. How about if you feed me?" Kate wheedled and spun around in his arms. "Let me do my job. I need to work out what losing these thrusters means to us. …Lunch, babe." Kate began pushing him toward the door.

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It has been nine months since the loss of the fleet

"Castle, can you come to the bridge, please? Castle to the bridge," Rick heard while on his hands and knees. He was busy harvesting his field of potatoes and had big plans for them.

"Now?" Rick grumbled a bit, straightened up, and dropped his potatoes into his bin. With a heavy sigh, he marked his place, stood up, and headed off to the bridge.

He input his code. Kate heard the door. "Over here, Castle." She raised her arm and waved without turning to look. "We have…" She turned to look at him and began laughing. "What were you doing? You're a mess." He looked like he had dirt everywhere, even in his hair.

"You interrupted me while I was harvesting my potato field, so what's so important?" Rick needed to get back to work. He'd been trying to save his back so he had been on his hands and knees. He'd been crawling along while pulling his bins with him. One bin for potatoes that would be food and others for the smaller ones that would be used to plant another crop.

Kate pulled him up to the table after finding a clear spot. "We need to start making choices. This is us." She zoomed in to show their spot on the table then zoomed back out. "This is Neptune, the planet we want to do a slingshot around to get home eventually." Rick couldn't miss seeing it.

"This line is our present course. I've been trying to get us to adjust course little by little, but it's not easy what with missing the number of maneuvering jets that we are." She put a colored line on the map. Their present course was going to miss Neptune and take them out into space.

"This is the course we need to do our slingshot." Kate showed him a new course that went around Neptune and headed back into the system toward Earth.

"And you need me for this why?" Rick was thinking Just make the course change and let me get back to work.

"Two reasons. First, our ability to change course is a bit iffy. Follow me." Kate took him over to a different screen.

"This is us, as you know, since you've seen this screen before. All of these red lights are the damaged or just plain missing maneuvering jets. …None in this sector, just one in this sector and only one in this sector." Kate paused a moment to let him look it over.

"Changing course is going to be difficult, not impossible but there is a problem. If we lose one in either of these two sectors we might go into a spin that's going to be difficult to stop," she warned.

"Meaning no slingshot." Rick was keeping up. "You said two things."

Kate took him back over to the table. She pointed to a spot on the table. "There's something out here." She put her finger on it. "Over here," she said, then took him to a different screen. "Radar shows that there's something out there. We're too far to get any resolution on it or even just how big it is. It's stationary, though. It's just sitting there in space." He watched as the radar return remained unchanged.

Rick left her and that screen while he went back to the table and looked at everything.

"What are you thinking?" She may be the captain but this was too big for just her and he was her fiancé.

"We might not be able to maneuver enough to do the slingshot. So much so that we might end up spinning out into space. Which means never getting home. Conversely, we still need to make a course change if we want to check out what's sitting out there." Rick tried to think this through.

"If we do nothing, we go out into space. If the slingshot fails, we go out into space. If we go look at this thing, we go out into space." Kate tried to point out that they couldn't do it all.

"So what is it?" Rick put his finger on the unknown and watched Kate shake her head.

"Honestly, I don't know," she replied. "The fleet's gone, not sitting way out here. Is it one of ours? Did we send something out here?" Most of what they did was send ships to Mars; sending anything out here had stopped years ago. She brought up a possibility. "Maybe it's private."

"Or alien," Rick suggested and she glared at him. "It's possible; we obviously didn't put it out here. Even Geoffrey Bazos isn't that rich and how did he keep it out of the press if he did?" he challenged.

Kate wanted to tell him he was nuts, but he had a point. However, she doubted seriously that they sent anything out here.

"You said it's just sitting there, right? So it's not a ship unless something happened to it," Rick remarked.

Kate pointed out the fatal flaw in his affection for this thing. "Going there doesn't get us home, babe."

"Maybe it does." Rick had an idea but saw Kate looking at him like he'd lost his mind. "It's on radar so it's something. Maybe we can stop next to it and take parts off of it to fix us. Then turn around and plot a course to home."

Kate looked at the table and considered it. "Let me think about it." What she really wanted to do was plot where Earth was going to be anywhere from a few months from now to years in the future.

"We could meet aliens!" Rick kissed her head, headed back to his dome, and back to his potato field.

"Aliens." Kate shook her head and tried to think.

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Kate had made her choice and already knew Rick would love it so she didn't tell him, knowing he would approve. She was worried, though, and she ended up in their room, watching a video.

Rick was still a filthy mess and needed a shower so he stepped into their bedroom. The second the door opened he could hear Kate screaming while having an orgasm. He was puzzled; much to his surprise she was lounging on the sofa watching a video. "What are you doing?" He turned to look at the screen.

"Watching us make love," Kate replied and eyed him as he sat next to her in his dirty clothes.

"You know, guys would be sitting here playing with themselves while watching something like this, so what do you see in it?" Rick kept watching while he waited for an answer.

"Don't laugh." Kate loved him and was willing to share.

"Never." He couldn't think of anything that would cause him to laugh about them making love to each other.

Rick waited since it looked like Kate was really thinking this over.

"You promised not to laugh." She took a breath and began to explain. "When we climax together it's the closest we'll ever be to being one. You, me, one. Maybe two bodies but one mind. To not just feel that you love me but to know that you love me because we're one."

Rick tried to think about that. She wanted to be one with him and it would only happen when she and he climaxed at the same moment. His knowledge of a climax told him that it happened in only seconds, if not in an instant. It didn't sound like enough time to actually learn anything and what she wanted was impossible, anyway.

He opened his mouth to ask a question then closed it. She didn't want to be him, she wanted for them to be…well, them or us. "Hold that thought." He got up, kissed her head, and went to take a shower since he was a mess.

Kate finished her video and turned the system off. At least he hadn't laughed at her, though he hadn't actually asked her any questions, either. She was still questioning if she had opened her big mouth when she heard him call her name.

She got up, trying to think of what to tell him so that it didn't alienate him. She wanted to make sure they stayed a couple because she truly loved him. Kate stopped at the door and her mouth fell open.

He was standing there almost naked, wearing a pair of, was it one of her g-strings? He'd also lit a number of candles and was holding the remote for the recorder.

Rick motioned toward the bed and smiled at her. "Strip and get in bed. We're going to find out if I can give you another 20 or more orgasms. You want to be close, let's see just how close we can get."

Kate started crying and never knew she could love anyone this much.

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Rick input his code to gain access to the bridge. He announced himself with, "You rang?" and saw a worried look on her face. "Don't tell me, we lost another maneuvering jet." They seemed to be dropping like flies.

Kate didn't answer him so he moved over to the table she was standing. "I've seen this before." Rick recognized all of the locations. "So why am I here?" She was the captain, she was the one who knew how to pilot this ship. He didn't have a clue and would probably either have them spinning off into space or blowing them up.

"I made a choice. …This is our course." Kate showed him where they were going.

He saw the arc and, brow furrowed, tried to think. "Isn't that our alien ship?"

"Maybe. …This way." She took him over to another screen. "This is your alien." Kate put it up on the screen.

Rick shrugged; it looked like the same blob to him. "It doesn't look any different."

"We're still too far out to get a detailed return. However, this is your alien. And this…is us." Kate pressed a button to superimpose their ship next to it.

"HOLY SHIT!" Rick bent in close to get a good look. "How big is that thing?" He had a vague memory of how big they were so just how big was it?

"I'm not really sure just yet. But…" Kate pressed another button and brought up another comparison.

"NO FUCKING WAY!" Rick looked away and then came back for another look. "It's bigger than our entire fleet!" He walked away again only to suddenly stop. "How have we not seen this thing before? We've had satellites looking this way for what, years?" Anything that big should have been seen by now.

Kate moved over to still another screen. "We can see what's ahead of us. It's not great but this is what we see." Rick stepped over to her since he was interested in just what this thing looked like.

"I don't see anything," he muttered.

"Yeah, neither do I," she agreed. "This is where we are going. I didn't want to take the risk of trying for a slingshot around Neptune. Too much could go wrong. That thing was out there, so as you suggested, I thought we could scavenge what we needed to get home. I thought it was our best shot to not end up lost in space until either our power ran out or we ran out of food."

Rick went back over to the screen to look again. "Unless this is one of those old Super Star Destroyers, this thing isn't a ship." He kept looking at it. "What was that old movie?" He snapped his fingers a few times. "Galactica, it was what, over a mile long?" He stared at it, trying to make sense of it all.

He glanced at Kate. "Do you think it's abandoned?" Because if it wasn't that meant it was manned by someone.

"If it is this might be my last mistake I ever make," she said anxiously and began wringing her hands. "Think about it, babe. As big as it is, how long did it take them to build it? Those ships you mentioned had what, hundreds if not thousands onboard?" Kate was starting to get really worried. "In case you haven't noticed this ship isn't armed. The only weapon we have is the one for personal protection that's on this bridge."

"You're assuming this is bad, Kate. We knew we didn't put it there so someone else did and if they were as dangerous as you're thinking, why haven't they attacked us already? Not just us but our entire planet? Maybe this is one of those old Star Trek episodes. Or Twilight Zone."

"So not helping, Castle." Most Twilight Zone episodes were bad for someone.

Rick walked up to her. "We're not living in a movie and if there's someone on that thing why aren't they talking to us? Because they're afraid of us or that Earth will be listening in. Like they're worried about anything we could do to them." Rick rolled his eyes just like she had taught him.

The corners of her mouth turned up a bit at the look he gave her. "We haven't had a choice ever since that meteor storm. You made the right decision unless you don't want to stop there and just keep flying out into space. I'll fight with you or I'll die with you. Your choice." Rick took her in his arms. "I'm just a tree hugger."

Kate smiled at him. "Not to me." He'd proved he was a whole lot more than that.