Space Ghost

Chapter 26

Kate caught up to him and watched him take the casing off so he could get into the guts of a real nuke. She really wanted to know what he was doing but he was working on a nuke and if he made a mistake they were all dead. Then she remembered that she'd been willing to die so long as she got to watch Bracken die first. Now she was here instead.

He had the housing off and now he was searching for something when suddenly someone else walked in. She wasn't wearing a hood like he was, however everything else matched his.

"What are you doing, Dad?" Alexis hadn't noticed Kate yet since she was off to one side, trying to stay out of the way. "What's this?" She saw something that didn't used to be there and what looked like parts of it were scattered around it.

"The last ICBM. I have plans for it." He may have lost the fight but he had one more card to play.

"Last, yeah. All of them have impacted. What used to be Russia and the United States no longer exist. The radioactivity is going to last for years and years." Alexis heard someone take in a sudden breath.

She turned to look. "What is she doing here?" Alexis still didn't care much for Kate and it was evident in the sound of her voice.

"We lost. I wanted to save at least something so I chose her. She didn't want to be saved at first." Maybe she still didn't but what was done was done.

"So you forced her to live." Alexis wasn't happy.

"Alexis, be nice." Rick had what he wanted. He just needed to attach it and then test it to make sure it would work the way he wanted it to.

Alexis groaned. If Kate wanted to die he should have just let her. Instead she was on their ship.

"How are we?" Rick asked as he continued working.

"Both power conduits are still down. One of them needs to be replaced. I don't think we dare try and repair it. The other one may only need a couple of new couplings. Our shields are down and a number of the emitters are going to need to be replaced.

"We have a total of eight missiles with eight under construction. But we're not going to be able to build too many more. We just don't have the resources to replace all of them. The force field is in place so the interior walls are no longer exposed to space.

"I've got the bots making us a new cargo bay door first. Our power is still minimal. It's going to take us weeks to recover. If those two Xindi ships find us, we're dead." They were basically sitting there and couldn't stop anything.

The only good news was that the first Xindi ship was in two pieces and their fighters were either drifting and dead or had managed to make it back.

"Which reminds me. If any of those fighters made it back, get refueled and rearmed, and find us, there's nothing we can do to stop them. Especially if there are more than eight of them." Their few missiles could handle fighters but if there was more than eight it could be bad.

"That's what this thing is for. As soon as I attach a timer I'm going to fly it over to the larger of the two sections and let it explode. It should take care of both sections and any fighters in the area. Then we need to find somewhere to go so we can start repairs," Rick explained.

Alexis thought about that. The nuke was likely really big since it came from an ICBM and she had watched what they could do when they exploded.

"Where do we go?" She knew almost nothing about this area. They didn't have the power to go far yet.

"I'll leave that to you for now. …Go check on Lais and Alexandre first for me, please." He thought they were still fine, but a lot had happened of late.

"What about her?" Alexis pointed at Kate who thankfully remained silent.

"We have two spare bedrooms. Show her one of them and leave her there for the time being. …Done! I'll be back." Rick picked up his modified nuke, ready to leave. "Go where Alexis takes you. We can talk when I get back. If you still want to die here I can take you down somewhere and leave you. You can die during the nuclear winter along with everyone else. Or you can go with us." Rick left with his nuke.

Alexis looked at Kate, not really wanting to do anything for her. "This way." Alexis didn't look to see if she followed. If she didn't she would have the security bots track her down. Since they were on the lowest level Alexis took a transit pod to the top level with Kate next to her.

"This is your room. I'm going to go check on Lais and Alex now." Alexis left her standing there and didn't go far to reach the medical bay. She didn't notice Kate following her.

Kate walked into a round room that had a bed in the middle. There was clearly someone on the bed and a woman was on a bed that looked like bunk beds. Alexis, she saw, went straight to the bed in the middle. Kate had no problem figuring out that whoever was in that bed meant a lot to her.

"Who are you?" Lais was awake and had watched Alexis go to her son first. She was happy that she loved him.

"I'm Kate, Kate Beckett. Homicide detective for New York City, 12th precinct," Kate replied but didn't move.

"Oh…, her." Lais had no trouble working out that this woman was or had been her competition for Rick's heart. Though she had won. "What happened, Alexis?"

Alexis mostly only had eyes for Alexandre but she looked at Lais. "We lost. Our shields are down. We have a hole in our ship. Main power's limited. The two parts of the ship you attacked are still on the planet's surface. The first Xindi ship is still here, too. Russia launched all their ICBMs at the United States who in turn launched all of theirs at them." Alexis kept it short and went back to looking at Alexandre who still looked like shit.

Lais lay back. "Great, we blew ourselves up. I lost my ship to the Xindi and we killed ourselves for them." It was a disaster; she was hurt and her son was in even worse shape.

"I'm sorry, what's going on?" Kate wasn't following very well.

"She's a nonbeliever. We don't exist," Alexis told Lais and Kate had no trouble hearing the venom for her in Alexis's voice.

Kate tried again. "I'll admit that at first I didn't believe aliens existed and we could be in space, but I'm past that now. So what happened?"

"Two Xindi ships showed up here. The first one was 3 miles long by 2 miles wide and almost as deep. Rick and I are, or were, here to save Earth from them so we attacked it. Then a second one just as big but a different configuration showed up before we had finished fighting the first one. Then the second one split into three separate ships. One of those three rammed my ship and blew both of us up. I built my bridge to be the safest place to be so we survived. Barely." Lais looked toward her son and groaned loudly as she moved to get up.

Very slowly Lais walked over so she could see her son again. "We lost." Lais looked at Alexis who nodded mutely. "Where's Rick?" He should be here, shouldn't he?

Alexis was silent so Kate answered her based on what she'd heard. "Something about taking a nuke somewhere to blow up something. They talked about there being two parts now." Kate was doing her best.

"The first Xindi ship." Alexis still only had eyes for her son so she looked at Kate who was nodding. "So what do we do next?" It sounded bad to her.

Alexis sighed. "I need to find somewhere for us to go so we can make repairs and get away from the last two Xindi ships before they find us." They couldn't do anything if they did.

"I'll watch them, you go ahead. Alexis, he'll be fine." Lais knew just how she felt.

Alexis glanced at Kate and remembered how badly she'd been hurt. If she could be fixed it should be able to fix him. "I'll send a security bot just in case." Alexis didn't trust Kate for a second.

Lais was using the bed her son was in to remain standing. Her bones were still being knitted back together and her head still hurt. She turned her attention to Kate. "So how did you come to be here?"

"He… Space Ghost just showed up and tried to take me away. So I bit him to stop him." Kate scrunched up her face since she knew how it sounded.

"You bit him!?" If she felt better she would take out her anger on her for that.

"I… He was taking me away from my mother's killer. I needed for him to be convicted of her murder and spend his life in prison. So I bit him to stop him." Kate hung her head.

"Yet here you are," Lais pointed out.

"He came back and I couldn't stop him." So here she was. On a space ship again and back out in space, listening to her planet being killed, not by aliens but by ICBMs.

"Well it sounds like whoever it was is dead now." Wasn't that a victory? It sounded like one to her. Yet an entire planet was dead. Her planet. Friends she had been forced to leave behind. Even family members that she hadn't had time to talk to or even go see were just as gone.

"Yeah." Regardless it felt hollow to Kate. "So are my friends and my dad." She was still angry at Rick for that.

"So are mine now. All of them are in Brazil. They might not be vaporized by an ICBM, but the radiation fallout and nuclear winter is going to kill them; it's going to be hard on them. Your country got off easy. Gone in an instant." Everyone else was going to suffer and die.

Kate knew she'd just been told off. She was hurting and yet these people weren't aliens so they had or were going to lose everyone they loved as well.

"Can't you go get them before it reaches Brazil?" She still had a chance, didn't she?

"In a ship with no weapons, no shields where two Xindi ships still exist?" It sounded like suicide to her.

"Sorry." Kate had forgotten about that part. She wasn't used to being in a space ship or thinking globally or having aliens trying to kill everyone. "This is a big ship." She had seen it from the outside until she was really close and saw just how big it was. "Does it even have the space?" Alexis had taken her to a bedroom that wasn't being used.

Just then Kate saw one of those cones come into the room and just sit there. Alexis had been true to her word. She'd sent a security bot who would shock her or shoot her if she shot it. That had her hand moving to the weapon still at her hip. No one had bothered to take it from her.

Kate watched as Lais hopped over to a panel of the wall. "Alexis, can you scan Brazil for me and tell me where those two Xindi ships are now." Maybe if they were really fast they might get lucky and find her parents.

"Just entering Brazil now and headed south," Alexis replied.

"Shit!" Lais let her head rest against the wall to help hold her up. "We really did blow ourselves up. I never dreamed we would do that. I mean I knew we had enough of them to destroy the planet several times over but I never thought we would actually do it." Now everything was gone. Her reason for being here was over.

"Dad's on his way back. Once he's here we'll start leaving this system," Alexis informed them. "We don't have the power for FTL." Actually it was more fear of a power conduit failure than actual power.

"What are those things attached to your body?" Kate inquired.

"I have a few broken bones. These are knitting them back together." Now that she was talking about it she hopped over to the bed in the middle and Kate joined her.

"Ouch!" The kid in the bed looked like shit.

"His chair broke from its mount and bounced him around all over. I stayed in my chair and had stuff hit me. He's in really bad shape. They assure me he'll recover." It was just so much was wrong.

"I was in that thing for a month after a car dropped on me. If it can fix me it can fix him," Kate assured her since she was finally in acceptance mode. "So what do we do now?" She had no planet to live on. Everyone she knew and loved was gone. Even knowing that Bracken was dead felt a little hollow somehow.

"We need to talk about that. One of the problems is going to be food. I don't know about them, but we had not much more than it took to get here. It took us just over a year to get here." Lais doubted that they had food for five for a year or more.

"Faster than light." Kate was still wrapping her mind around that.

"A different galaxy actually. We may need to go back. The Xindi are winning this one." They were taking over the Milky Way and they couldn't stop them from taking even one system.

| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |

They were both still looking over Alexandre just as Rick walked in carrying something – a body? – wrapped up inside some kind of material and watched him dump it onto Lais's bed she had been lying in. "So what's that, babe?" Lais couldn't help but be curious.

"A Xindi. I don't know about you but I've never actually seen one until now," Rick responded.

"Really?" Lais hopped over to see if she could unwrap it since she had never seen one before either.

"Careful, it's ugly." Rick shook his entire body and wasn't really interested in looking at it again so soon.

That delayed Lais and allowed Alexis to join them. "Autopilot. Your nuke has gone off, Dad. It didn't leave much behind. I've activated the invisibility just to be safe even if it does require power. …What's that?" What had he brought back to their ship this time?

"A Xindi." Lais got to work unwrapping it since she really wanted to see one. These things had destroyed her ship and damn near killed both of them. In addition they had killed her home planet, her friends, and family.

Lais made it part way and then clamped her nose shut. "Eww, does it smell like that because it's dead?" It stank to high heaven. The smell had reached the rest of them by now and everyone was holding their noses closed.

| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |

All four of them were now wearing breathers to block the smell. "I'm taking a bath after this and throwing these clothes out the airlock." Alexis was sure her clothes were ruined and would never smell fresh no matter how many times she washed them or in what.

Lais went back to work unwrapping it so she and the others could see.

Her voice sounded different as had Alexis's when she had spoke. "It looks as ugly as it smells." She was glad she had listened to Rick and put on gloves.

It was slightly smaller than any of them. It had compound eyes and a brightly colored iridescent carapace. There were two short antennae sticking out of its head. It was green and it didn't look like it had skin. In its place there were shells that resembled armor all over its body.

"It's a bug!" Kate said in surprise as she looked it over with the others.

"It seems what we do know about them is right. They're a hive with a queen. The queen lays eggs and when the colony gets too big the queen allows one of the eggs to hatch a queen and lets her take some of her workers and soldiers to create a new colony," Rick commented.

"Two ships from the same colony?" Lais queried since there had been two ships.

Rick shook his head. "Different designs." If they had both come from the same place they would have the same ship design.

"Lucky us," Alexis said dryly since the luck was all bad. "One we could have handled. Two…" That had proved to be one too many.

"What do we do with it?" Lais asked.

"Preserve it until your son's out of the bed. Then it goes in so we can scan it in depth. Maybe we can learn something. Find a weakness we know nothing about," Rick explained. He made it clear why he had brought this thing home to his ship.

"We need to get past their ships first." That was the first problem. They had rammed her ship and blown both of them up which said they were willing to sacrifice to win.

| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |

Lais had learned that the bed she had been on actually slid out. It allowed them to spray a sealant all around it after turning it over to get to all sides. Then she watched as that bed was sealed shut.

"Guess I'm sleeping somewhere else now." She had lost her bed.

"You know where my room is." Rick smiled at her since she had a room to sleep in already.

Everyone had their breathers off now that it was sealed and didn't stink. Lais moved to him and kissed him. "I love you. Never doubt that."

Kate wasn't sure just how she felt. She should be dead yet she wasn't. Everyone she knew and loved was dead. And here she was, watching a woman tell Rick that she loved him when she had at one time decided to actually date him if she could. She really wasn't sure what to do now.

"I'm headed for the bridge to see what's going on. You three might want to take showers and find something to wear. I'll be right there as soon I'm sure we're safe. Then we can meet for ice cream and decide what to do," Rick said. As well as where to go ultimately.

"Ice cream. Here we come, Arthur." Alexis briefly wondered if he was going to be surprised that they had a new person.