Chapter 28(OB)

Weeks later Jen was fast asleep when sudden singing woke her up.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR JEN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" the entire town sang in unison.

Jen put her hands over her heart, feeling deeply touched, this was so nice!

"Happy birthday!" everyone told her at the same time out of sync with each other.

"Thank you! You are all so nice to do this!" Jen said with tears of happiness.

"19 years old today," Seth said happily.

Jen grinned happily and hugged Seth lovingly, her recent trauma forgotten with this happy distraction.

Jen really did feel touched that close to 100 people had remembered her birthday like this. The town had had a lot of birthday celebrations since it's founding, and when she had the time Jen had even joined in with the town in celebrating OTHER people's birthdays, but as always, Jen had assumed that she herself would not have herself included in what other people took for granted.

Seth lifted up her air mask and gave her a great big kiss, which Jen greatly enjoyed.

Jen had never before had her birthday celebrated, on Wsuioo birthdays were not celebrated, it was just a day that said you were a year closer to being sold. She didn't mind this curious tradition other planets had of celebrating birthdays, she actually found it wonderfully endearing, but she still wasn't used to it.

"Thank you all so much for celebrating my birthday. This was wonderful," Jen said happily, assuming that it was all over now.

"Presents!" Someone shouted excitedly.

This confused Jen. Jen was even more confused when people started putting items in front of her.

"What is this?" Jen asked in happy bewilderment.

"Your birthday presents silly," Seth said affectionately.

"These are for me?" Jen asked in astonishment.

"Yes, all for you," Seth said happily.

"Do I give you all gifts today too? I didn't think to get gifts for everyone," Jen asked worriedly.

"No, only the person whose birthday it is gets given gifts, only you have a birthday today in the town," Seth explained cheerfully.

Jen gazed at the pile of gifts in wonder. There were a wide selection of items, with lots of little bits of paper attached. The items were all stuff that the men thought that a woman might like, and some of the choices were a little misguided. Jen was personally not sure what to do with 20 crudely hand carved plastic dildos...

As well as dildos, Jen had been given items of spare bleached clothing that didn't fit her, ammunition for her pistol, crudely hand made ornaments, pretty coloured rocks, small sums of money, and a lot of other things of this nature.

Jen read the beautiful messages written on the attached bits of paper, and with Seth's permission, she gave each man a hug in thanks. Jen politely ignored the ejaculations of some of the more excited men in their see through wet white underpants in response to the hugs, and thanked everyone for being so thoughtful.

The men who had given her the dildos looked at her expectantly to use them, apparently believing the same nonsense in the porno articles that Seth had previously believed. Some of these things were positively HUGE!

With Seth's help, Jen tried on all the clothes, all of which did not fit her properly. She tried on the ornaments happily enough. She wasn't sure what to do with the rocks, but they were quite pretty and she admired them.

Jen waited till last to look at the dildos, and offered them to Seth obediently to use them on her if he wished. This generated a lot of laughter from the more sensible of the men in the crowd, and Seth also laughed at Jen's reaction to the homemade sex toys.

Seth did not penetrate Jen with any of the foreign objects, to her considerable relief, but did make a lot of jokes about them.

"Cake, cake!" People called out.

"Blow out the candles!" Someone added, generating laughter.

Jen giggled as someone then tried to actually light a fire in the anoxic atmosphere with a sparking pair of cables. They predictably had no success.

Jen felt the happiest she had in months as everyone made a huge fuss over her.

The recent months had been the darkest time of her life outside of Wsuioo, been squeezing her more and more into a kind of bottleneck. Now at last things seemed to be feeling happier.

The wet season was almost over now, and the oppressive heat was finally starting to reduce. It had been absolutely hellish, but it now only had a week to go Seth assured her.

Jen was now very heavily pregnant, and due to give birth just after the wet season ended. It was all so close now!

***...

The rest of the day focused around Jen's birthday. Everyone was asking her how it felt to be 19, to which Jen replied that it felt strangely like being heavily pregnant. This always made people laugh.

The recent weeks since the rape had been emotional, but life had been getting steadily better since blackmailing the boat merchant into giving them preferential treatment. They now had a steady supply line and the ability to place orders for the farm, which was a huge help in making life more bearable.

Spermy the slagman was almost gone now, largely converted back into the metals from whence he came. The town now had tens of Terran tons of pure metal like lead, copper, zinc and aluminium, all being stored in a distant shed for later use.

Jen had greatly improved the accommodation problem by making a lot of stiff plastic sheets to build proper shelters from, shelters that actually remained dry and didn't constantly erode in the rain. Raised piles of rocks kept these lightweight structures above the waterline, to stop them simply floating away, and the lead poisoning epidemic was slowly improving now, as was the E coli epidemic.

The farm now had almost every type of plant seed that 1D8V-44 grew, courtesy of the blackmailed merchant, not just normal crops but also weird stuff like pine trees, cotton plants, olive trees, everything that wasn't the same colour as drug plants. The pine trees would be a great help in soaking up some of the soil lead and locking it away in timber that could then be used for construction.

The farm had a growing air of optimism now as life got better for everyone, the pain had peaked with the rape, and they were now on the downward slope down from the heights of pain mountain, heading down into the valley of happiness.

Jen was not working in the lab today, with the entire town insisting that she had her birthday off, so she was instead exploring the farm with Seth, holding hands with him as they went for a nice romantic stroll.

The rainy mist was thicker than it had been, getting steadily heavier as the air temperature gradually got more bearable as the summer wet season drew towards its close. It was currently 34 degrees centigrade, the coolest it had been since the start of the wet season at this time of day, cool enough to actually have sex without lethally overheating.

Jen was still a bit emotionally tender, but she was rebuilding her trust in her husband now. If anything she was building an even closer bond with him now, as nothing builds bonds the way overcoming adversity together does. She now knew that Seth wasn't perfect, and this human failing gave the relationship room to be less about perfection and more about love despite weakness.

Jen was believing the propaganda of her education less and less these days, though still had a long way to go figuring out what was true and what was false. With every poisonous doctrine she dropped, the relationship became more human, more real. The rape had been a tragedy, but it had also allowed her to grow, the way that only adversity and pain can force a person to evolve.

Jen felt a sense of true preciousness as she held hands with Seth and just walked around in the rain. They were still close to the town, but the thick rain gave them the first true privacy they had had in months. They didn't say too much, just enjoyed each other's company as they walked hand in hand.

The sounds of distant explosions echoed across the farm. Jen had been making a lot of high explosive trinitrotoluene, also known as TNT, for the farmers to use, with anoxic atmosphere rated fuses that burned even in the absence of oxygen thanks to copious amounts of an oxidising agent in the fuses.

The farmers had been doing a lot of rock blasting around the farm. Jen hadn't yet seen what they were blasting, but had been told that they were mostly just blasting into the distant cliff to make a sloping vehicle track to access the inaccessible parts of Seth's property, though some of the more optimistic men had been simply blasting holes in the ground in random places in the hope of finding something valuable like gold.

Jen ignored the explosions, and rested her head on Seth's shoulder as they walked. Seth put his arm around her and held her tenderly as they strolled aimlessly in the warm rain. Jen sighed with bliss, this was so intensely romantic.

Seth seemed to be leading her no where in particular, just strolling through the farm. He was however making sure that they didn't stray far from visible landmarks to prevent getting lost.

The new gigantic solar farm came sluggishly into view through the heavy mist, a mighty field of angled very thin solar panels. The panels were on cheap lightweight polymer frames, with heavy rocks resting on the polymer ground bars to stop them blowing away. In time they would be secured more permanently to deter theft, but at the moment the farm simply lacked the resources.

A massive tangle of extremely waterproof wires connected all the panels together into one big power grid, with wires running off to connect it to the town.

Jen and Seth walked between the rows of panels, taking care not to trip over all the wires. The ground everywhere was flooded under a few centimetres of water, as the ground was so flat. Tiny little variations in the flatness directed this water into the canyon at a few points, forming waterfalls down the canyon walls.

The river was now reaching it's highest level, almost 4 foot deep now, and the current was getting stronger as the gravity forced this massive weight of water down towards the lower elevation distant ocean far over the horizon to the East. It would remain deep enough for boats for many weeks after the end of the wet season, as the catchment area that needed to drain was positively huge.

Jen splashed happily through the shallow flood waters around the solar panels, and even made deliberate playful splashes with her feet. She was still only a teenager, and had the energy of youth about her.

Jen playfully splashed Seth's ankles with her feet, giggling as she did so. Seth chuckled adoringly and affectionately splashed her ankles back. Jen laughed and they lifted their masks to kiss lovingly in the rain.

Jen felt very safe and comfortable right now, and felt truly happy for the first time in quite a while. A lot of people had let her down, a lot of bad stuff had happened, and it had not always been handled as well as it could have been. Life had been grim and dark, the way life so often was in the Imperium of Man, but even the blackest suffering has room for a little light, joy could be found if only you endured and looked for it.

Jen had accepted the bad stuff that had happened, had made her peace with the pain of life, and was now getting on with her life, having grown a bit in the process. Her entire childhood had been a nightmare, she was no stranger to pain, and Jen had the strength of character to move past the pain to find all the joy and optimism life had to offer.

Seth was only human, the men of the town were only human, and Jen herself, despite some genetic engineering, was still only human too. Humans mess up from time to time, Jen had been forced to learn. Just because people are less than perfect, you don't stop loving them, you don't just write them off from ever learning from their mistakes.

This applied not just to Seth, whom she had no choice but to love, but also to the people of Jen's Shed. Jen had come to see these men as friends, family members even, but so many of them had let her down so badly during her time of need during the rape, out of fear for their own survival.

Down in the canyon with the boat merchant, a massive crowd of men had stood by and not intervened as they listened to her screams as she was raped. These same men had stabbed their own friends to death in a hysterical frenzy whenever one of them merely grabbed Jen's boobs during the air wars. The reason behind both of these reactions was self centred fear.

Back when they couldn't survive without Jen's batteries, these people had not hesitated to murder anyone who sexually assaulted her, simply because their personal survival NEEDED her at the time. Now that they no longer relied on her for their continued survival, now that they didn't NEED her, they had been too wary of being shot by the security crewman's machine pistol or being blacklisted by all the merchants to risk their own precious hides to lift a finger to rescue her.

After the fact, after it became too obvious that they had no choice but to act, only THEN had they done the right thing, and by then the damage was done. It really was despicably cowardly behaviour, especially given how much they owed Jen their lives.

They had had a lot of great sounding excuses of course, especially saying that entering a merchant boat by force or being violent to a boat merchant would have been insanely dangerous for the farm as they would all be blacklisted forever by the rest of the boat merchants for harming one of their own. And there was some serious truth in this, without being able to sell heroin to the boats or buy anything, they were all dead.

The security crewman had been packing enough firepower to mow them down like grass, and wearing full flak armour to make him harder to kill with return fire. If they had succeeded in killing both men, their absence would be noticed and it wouldn't take too long for some sheriffs to follow the trail to the last radio transmission of the tracking device in the merchant boat.

If they hadn't managed to get the merchant to write a signed rape confession to blackmail him with, then they might have all been cut off from any trade with any cargo boat ever again, which was potentially deadly out here.

SO many things could have gone wrong, the men had been scared, and every man present had waited for another man in the crowd to make the first move. No one had been brave enough to make the first move, so no one had ended up doing anything. It was cowardly, it was pathetic, but it was HUMAN.

These local men were all career criminals, drug farmers heavily involved in organised crime. They were not saints, not great heroes, not pillars of virtue. These people broke the law for personal gain, criminals one and all. These were civilians involved in organised crime, not saintly space marines, and when push comes to shove, they would put their own survival first.

Jen had had a choice of either holding a grudge, or choosing to forgive. Jen had chosen to forgive all these men of the town, to not let a moment of very human weakness dominate her relationship to these people. Jen had learned the hard way that people will sometimes let you down in a moment of weakness, but they were still people after letting you down, merely humans who have an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and grow into hopefully better people as a result.

Jen had forgiven, grown wiser in the process, and was now rapidly finding a happiness that would be impossible if she had held a grudge. Jen had now discovered a vital truth of life that went against everything that the Imperium of Man taught, namely that people who keep grudges are among the most foolish of all fools, people who mentally poison themselves with toxic hostile thoughts that drain energy and happiness for as long as the grudge is held, and all for absolutely no gain.

Jen was naïve, she had been brainwashed with a lot of crazy stuff that she had to work her way through, but she was no fool. She was not going to waste her time and energy holding onto the hurt, not going to poison her happiness by holding on forever to past grievances against her. Jen was far too smart for that, she was instead just letting it all go, making peace with the past, and now enjoying a happy and romantic birthday with her husband who loved her, not letting the past poison the future.

***...

Jen giggled as Seth bounced her on his knees. They were back in the shed after a very romantic stroll, and very affectionate after making love out in the rain. Seth was sitting on an old metal kit chair, and Jen was having a fun time on his lap.

Seth had been bouncing her for 5 minutes now, and she was giggling uncontrollably from the fun of it. Today really was a wonderful day.

Seth got tired of bouncing her, and Jen gave him a very pregnant lap dance, giggling provocatively. Seth admired the show that she put on for him, and Jen discreetly freed his penis from his underpants and gave him a discreet hand job as she danced in his lap.

If Jen hadn't been so pregnant then she would have put the penis inside her, but her pregnant belly got in the way too much to have sex in this position. The pregnant belly was always getting in the way of sex like this.

Jen would be giving birth soon, and get her flat tummy back again. She had no stretch marks, thanks to her genetic engineering, and would have no complications or injuries from giving birth. The swollen belly would get flat again far sooner after giving birth than a "natural" woman's would, and it would stay flat until she got pregnant again.

Jen was extremely fertile, and if Seth and her didn't use contraception then she would be pregnant again very quickly after she gave birth. They currently wanted a lot of sons as quickly as possible, so Jen would probably be pregnant again very quickly.

Seth groaned in pleasure and ejaculated messily all over her hand. Jen giggled and cleaned up the mess with her mouth. Jen savoured the taste of Seth's semen as she swallowed as much of it as possible, getting some much needed vitamin B12 for the growing baby from the swallowed cum.

Meat was still impossible to buy at the moment, and the Eldar stole it at any rate, making it hard to get a steady supply of vitamin B12, which came to humans almost exclusively from eating animal products. Fortunately for Jen, humans were animals too, and semen did contain some vitamin B12...

Seth would eventually need more vitamin B12 in a few years time to avoid lethal vitamin B12 deficiency, but with her cummy dietary supplement Jen had a lifelong supply of this important vitamin. Seth didn't seem to mind this in the least.

Jen finished cleaning up the mess and returned to sitting on Seth's lap. Seth wrapped his arms around her and Jen sighed in contentment. This "birthday" was absolutely wonderful.

Seth's fingers then crept between her legs, and Jen's birthday became even better!

***...

Jen felt absolutely wonderful as she lay wrapped in Seth's arms that night. Today had been one of the happiest days of her life.

She had not done a single chore all day, everyone had made a huge fuss over her, and Seth had been so romantic with her. The day had been perfect, absolutely perfect.

Jen felt a new bond of closeness with Seth, a new romantic bliss that was intoxicatingly intense. He had kissed her so many times today, she felt absolutely smitten.

It had been the perfect day, just absolutely perfect, and she went to sleep blissfully happy that night.

Birthdays really were amazing!

***...