Space Ghost
Chapter 35
It is now 6 months later
Kate was back at home and saw Rick outside working with the bots, busy building something for the new ship. They were still using the smaller bots but she'd been told the bigger bots would be showing up soon.
Kate walked inside and immediately heard Lais yell, "Catch him!" Kate saw Lais in an opening to her bedroom then saw Rafael crawling across the floor for all he was worth right for her. Or for the door and outside. The door was essentially stupid. It didn't care who came near it, it would open for anyone.
"Hey, mister." Kate scooped him up and now had a very squirmy baby in her hands. He clearly had a plan and she'd just ruined it.
Lais came up to her and took Rafael from her. "Thanks. He's figured out he can be fast when he wants to be. We may all be on our toes soon when he learns to walk and then run." Lais was sure life was going to get far more interesting.
"How was your date or is it dates? I haven't seen you around here in days." Lais was happy for her but missed seeing her.
"It was fine as usual. I'm sorry I haven't been here." She didn't mean to be gone this long.
"Don't apologize. Just answer me one little question. Do you love him?" They had been seeing each other for months. And Kate was staying at his place more and more of late.
"I…I think so." Kate knew she wanted to be with him instead of here alone. Not that she was ever alone. It was just different here. "I want to, I really do. I just… I need something before that can happen." She even knew what that something was and that something wasn't going to happen until they got back to Earth.
"I'm glad to hear it, I am. But you need to tell him that you love him soon. He may begin worrying that he's wasting his time with you if you don't. I know he's told you that he loves you. You told me he has. You need to get with it, Kate. The sex may be great, but love isn't all about sex," Lais warned her.
"I know, Lais, I know. I'm trying. Honest." She did know that she couldn't make him wait until just before they left to tell him that she loved him. He might actually say no and stay here when she left to go home.
"We have a problem." Alexis came into the room holding a pad. "Where's Dad?" He needed to know about this.
"Outside working with the bots. What problem?" Kate asked as Alexis passed both of them by and went outside. Kate looked at Lais who was looking back at her. Then both of them, with Rafael in hand, went outside to find out what the problem was.
Alexis caught up with him. "We've got a problem, Dad."
Rick held up a finger at her and kept working with the bot. "What's up?" He was done and the bot scurried off and returned to work.
"We've got a problem. I've been reading how this time machine works. It needs a mineral for it to work. It needs one pound of Osmium," Alexis said just as Lais and Kate joined them.
Rick's shoulders slumped in defeat. "You can't be serious!?" Lais apparently knew what it was. "We are so screwed."
Kate looked from Alexis to Lais to Rick. "Okay, pretend I'm stupid. What is that stuff?" Why were they all so defeated looking?
"It's the hardest, stiffest, densest, and has the highest melting point of any metal any of us knows anything about. It's nearly impossible to find and if it is found it's ungodly expensive," Lais explained. "It's nearly indestructible. If we could we would make the entire shell of the ship out of this stuff. If we could even get it off the ground. Though it would likely sink to the center of the planet first." Lais rolled her eyes.
"Okay, so go find some. We still have a ship. Don't we?" Had they started to take this one apart yet?
That had Rick and Alexis looking at each other. "Go pack." Rick looked at Alexis. "Yes, you can bring Alexandre with you."
Alexis squealed and ran off as fast as she could. "You two or three coming with us?" Rick looked at Lais and then Kate.
"I don't even know what it is you're looking for. I'll stay here and guard the place. I have a weapon if need be. Just be back before we get another delivery." She still didn't know how they handled those.
Lais was conflicted. She could be useful but she needed to still breastfeed Rafael and they did have a delivery scheduled to show up soon. If Alexis was going she wasn't really needed. The three of them were more than enough.
"I'll stay, too. But you're making love to me all night tonight." She didn't know when they would be back and if she was going to do without she was going to get an overdose of sex before they left.
"I'll get started packing." Rick left them and headed for their bedroom.
"Where do they find this stuff?" Kate questioned since she really didn't even know what it was.
Lais gave her a clue. "Only one place. Think the planet Mercury."
"Oh, great. They'll fry." That planet was the hottest planet she knew of. Only the sun itself was worse.
"Possibly. My suit and Alexandre's suit can't handle that. Better start praying that Rick's and Alexis's suits can or we're doomed," Lais said. The only chapel they had was on the ship and it would be gone.
"I'm not very religious but I can start," Kate offered since she needed to get back. She had men to arrest and leave to rot in prison for the rest of their lives. So she would do anything it took even if that meant praying to a god that she wasn't even sure existed.
"Good, you're with me. We're going to start now." Lais walked off and made sure Kate was right behind her. She was very religious and she was going to start praying to God now and every day they were gone.
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
"Ador!" Lais was happy to see him here. She was pretty sure this was a first for him.
"You're Lais and this must be Rafael." Ador approached and offered to take him from her and was soon holding him. "Kate won't stop talking about you, little man." Ador bounced him and saw his face scrunch up. Before he began crying in earnest he handed him back to Lais.
"So you talk about him a lot do you?" Lais teased Kate since it was fun and Kate still continued to talk about not wanting children. Or more accurately hadn't ever really thought about having children.
"I do not," Kate countered quickly and both of them glared at her. "I simply keep him up to date that's all. …My room's this way." Kate took his hand and dragged him behind her.
"See you later." Lais was thinking like breakfast. She smiled and went outside to check on the bots.
Kate showed him her room. "It's not much but it's home." Right it was looking rather sparse and unremarkable. There really weren't any personal touches at all. Save for the painting on the wall.
"You hung your picture." Ador walked up to it and looked it over before turning to look at Kate. Really looked at Kate. For the most part she looked the same now as she did then. He was betting she'd pulled her dark coat closed after being teased earlier. Now he had work ahead of him to get her to open it up again.
"I'll let you unpack if you want. The bathroom's at the other end of the hallway. I'm going to go find Lais to see if she has learned anything new." Kate turned to leave him behind but stopped and stepped up to him so she could quickly kiss him. "Thanks for coming."
She more heard him drop his bag than saw him do it and felt his arms around her. "I couldn't think of anywhere else to be." He kissed her with much more passion. "I do love you," Ador murmured after breaking from the kiss.
Kate wanted to answer him back, she really did. She just couldn't get the words to come out. "Go find your friend. You'll find me in the kitchen looking for something to drink." He gave her a quick kiss and let go of her.
"Don't worry that stuff you call coffee is perfectly safe." Ador teases her.
"It better be," Kate replied. She'd been switching between the real stuff and the fake stuff for weeks. The real stuff wasn't going to last much longer.
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
Kate found Lais watching the bots while Rafael sat on the ground next to her, intently watching them. He'd already learned the hard way to keep his hands off of them. He'd seen it as a potential toy and had crawled his way over to it after escaping. However the bot was doing what it was doing and he was soon screaming and crying his head off.
Everyone in earshot rushed out to find him sitting there wailing. There was even a little blood. One of his fingers had a tiny slice and it had hurt.
"Medical, let's go." Lais had picked him up and was holding him and kissing his injured finger and praying. Fifteen minutes later after the auto doc took care of him he was back in his mother's arms and was looking his injured finger over.
He had learned his lesson and was just watching.
Kate joined her. "When do the really big bots show up?"
"Not until they get back. Once we start taking the ship apart to make the new one, we lose the ability to use that one." Lais had delayed their arrival until they returned.
"Sounds like a good thing Alexis did some reading then," Kate commented.
"We'd be in big trouble if she hadn't. We could rent a ship to do a search but that would cost money. Money we might not have," Lais agreed.
"They've already been gone for a month. Think they have found anything?" Kate asked her since she knew more about what they were looking for than she did.
"It's hard to tell. What we need there just isn't a lot of that I know of. Just keep praying, that's all either of us can do."
"Daily," Kate vowed which had Lais hugging her for a moment.
"I'm glad he's here. Have you told him yet that we're leaving when the ship's completed?" Lais inquired.
"Yeah, he didn't say much. He didn't say no or ask me to stay. In fact he didn't say anything at all." Kate had felt her heart sink at his silence.
"Well he's here so maybe that's a good thing." Lais kept questioning her. "Does he know why you're leaving and I don't mean just the Xindi."
She was taking too long to answer that question. "Kate, you're my best girlfriend and I love you, but you need to really talk to him. Let him in, sweetie, or he's going to find someone else soon." Lais was betting he had agreed to come to give her one last chance to love him.
Kate wished it was as easy as that. It was just that nothing ever seemed to be easy for her.
"Come on, let's show him the ship design. Maybe that will help him and you at the same time. …Up you come." Lais picked up her son and walked back inside where they found Ador in the kitchen drinking something.
"Sit him down. I'll be right back," Lais said to both of them.
"What's going on?" Sit him down for what? Puzzled, he let Kate lead him to the sofa and sit down next to him. Lais was soon back and sitting next to him while Rafael was on the floor playing with some of his toys.
"Okay, Kate has told you that we're leaving when the ship's completed." Lais saw him nod. "She's told you about the Xindi?"
"Yeah, something that she had to explain twice. A race that actually empties an entire system of literally everything including the system's sun. Kind of hard to believe any race would be that stupid." Ador didn't understand them. Yes, there were more systems than he could even begin to wrap his mind around, but eventually you would run out of them and kill yourself off.
"Good, did she also tell you that where we're going is in a different galaxy? That it will take about a year or so to reach it?" Lais asked him and he nodded in response.
"I told him," Kate confirmed.
That made Lais happy; so at least Kate was talking to him. "Has she also told you that we lost last time?"
Ador nodded again. "Something about you had two ships and they had four. One of which was of a size that boggles the mind." He meant the one that was 3 miles long by 2 miles wide.
"Yeah, one of them split into three and rammed my ship, destroying both of us. They killed themselves and got rid of me. Thanks to my design and some luck my son and I are both still alive. That and Rick and Alexis." If Rick and Alexis hadn't come get them they would be dead even if they had survived the collision.
"Now their ship has gone to find something we need. And we are working on building a new ship," Lais said.
"Those bots out there and all that stuff." Ador thought he was keeping up. "And why you're out here in the middle of nowhere."
"Yes, this is the new ship. Take a look." Lais handed him the pad that was full of renderings of the exterior and what all of the interior space was going to look like.
Ador's eyes opened wide when he saw the rendering of the ship itself but he said nothing as he changed pages. He saw the park, water park-like place, bedrooms, chapel, theater room, and medical bay. He stayed on the waterfall for a long time. "You're sure this is a ship?" It looked like a ship on the outside but not on the inside. The inside was something else entirely.
"We're going to be on it for just about a year if not a little longer. We wanted to be comfortable," Lais explained, defending the design.
"Comfortable?" In his eyes this thing was way more than comfortable. "Four bedrooms?" Why did they need four?
"We tried to plan ahead. If we win finally and that's the plan, make no mistake, we're planning on building a home on Earth and keeping the ship but we might change our minds and we'll need the space." Lais had no plans to change her mind. She wanted to live in that mountain range and have those views.
Then Rafael announced that he was no longer happy. "Diaper change. Stay here and look it over. Kate knows everything. Ask her what you want. I'll be back in a bit and then start on lunch." Lais left them behind and prayed Kate didn't screw this up.
"You didn't tell me it was a ship that looked like this." He was all over Kate the second Lais was gone. Kate simply shrugged. She hadn't lied; she just hadn't told him everything.
"You guys can actually build this?" Based on the number of rooms alone it was huge. He didn't wait for Kate to answer him and changed pages until he found it again. "Is this what I think it is?"
He'd found a space that looked amazing. It looked like a bar to him. There was a large bar that had at least twelve bar seats. The wall behind the bar was filled with mirrors, lots and lots of bottles, and other things. The floor was part dark tile and red and gold checkered carpet. There were sofas and chairs with small tables that had lights on them. The ceiling was golden with an accent wall that looked like a solar system.
"It's an ice cream and liquor bar," Kate confirmed and smiled at his shocked look and the smile that was forming on his face.
"This thing… I don't know what to say." Ador put the pad down, leaning across to kiss her and wrap his arms around her.
Kate was happy he had said yes to coming out here and was kissing him back.
"Oops." Lais came back at the wrong time and started to retreat back to her bedroom.
Kate stopped her. "It's okay, we're ready for lunch."
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
They all heard a beeping noise. "Delivery time," Lais announced and got up. "You watch Rafael."
"Can I help?" Ador was thinking she might need some muscle.
"Sure." She didn't need him but he could watch and maybe help.
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
Ador felt pretty useless as he watched these flat panels float across from the train and drop off what was on them. They floated back to the train at which time the train left. He hadn't actually done anything but watch. Lais had used a remote to handle everything. He didn't know what any of it was but straight away the bots began putting some of it to use. They actually had quite a bit of stuff already.
"Kate said something about three years. So you've got what, just over two years to go?" Ador inquired.
"Once the ship's back we'll order up a pair of really large bots and the ship will actually start looking like a ship. In addition we're also going to deconstruct the existing ship to make the new one. When we do that we'll be grounded." If they needed something else that required travel they were going to be in trouble financially.
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
Kate was stripping to get ready for bed as Ador was doing the same.
"Tell me more about Earth." Kate had told him the basics. "Why do you need to go back so desperately?"
Still in her bra and panties, Kate sat on the bed. He deserved to know but talking about it had always been hard for her.
She drew a breath and her voice shaking, began speaking. "My mom was murdered. We found out after Dad and I waited and waited for her to show up at a restaurant where she was supposed to join us. Dad became an alcoholic and almost killed himself. I gave up trying to be a lawyer like my parents. I became a cop instead and worked really hard at becoming a homicide detective." She felt him sit down next to her. "The police told us it was just a random killing but that didn't answer my question."
"You wanted to know who had killed her." Ador was following without trouble.
"I did, actually. I found out who killed her, who had her ordered to be killed, and why," Kate said.
"That's great! So what's the problem?" He felt there just had to be something else.
"The Xindi showed up. Rick and Alexis saved me and brought me here. I need to go back and make sure they go to prison. It's what I have to do. I have to." She was really sorry, but she just had to.
"That's why you wear this dark coat that I see. You've hidden yourself away behind it." Now he understood.
"My walls. Dad became an alcoholic and I built walls to keep everyone out so I couldn't get hurt again. I'm really sorry. But I have to go–" Kate was interrupted when he started kissing her. She kissed him back and the kissing got more and more passionate.
| 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
Kate was on top with him buried deep inside her. He had already climaxed while inside her and she had just climaxed and was working on quieting her heart with him yet inside her. Sex with him was still amazing and always had been. She had been scared at first but wasn't any longer.
"I want to go with you," Ador suddenly told her.
"What?" Kate looked down at him. "Say that again." Had she heard him correctly?
"I love you and want to go back with you. You just have to agree to marry me before we leave," Ador told her again.
Kate placed both hands over her mouth and felt tears run down her face.
He looked and sounded serious. She began nodding and leaned down with her hands on his chest and kissed him. She was still crying as she kissed him. She broke from the kiss to look him in the eye.
"I love you. …I really love you." Kate went back to kissing him and felt her walls crumble to rubble that then blew away with the wind. She could really and truly love him and be loved in return. They weren't going to be in separate galaxies.
Then she sat back up with him still inside her. "Yes, yes, yes! I want to marry you." Lais and Rick weren't actually married here yet. Maybe with some luck they could be married at the same time.
She was still looking down at him but he was lying there, his mouth hanging open. "What?" She looked down at herself. She didn't see anything different. Her breasts hadn't suddenly gotten any larger. Her skin color obviously hadn't changed.
"You're beautiful." He had thought she was beautiful before. Now with her dark coat totally gone she was radiant. She was actually glowing and she was stunning to look at.
"You're not so bad, either." Kate leaned back down so they could go back to kissing.
She was getting married and she couldn't love him more. She had already learned that the two of them were compatible. If she stopped using birth control she could end up pregnant. Enthosians weren't that much different from humans.