CONQUERED
Chapter 9
They had two coolers for the fish along with some ice from the kitchen.
Right now, Kate was sitting back smiling as Rick guided them back into the bay and slowly made his way up the bay toward home.
She managed to help him tie the boat against the cover that held the motorized boat, something she had never seen used. She had learned that gas was limited, and they needed it for the motor that would move their home farther toward the entrance to the bay when necessary. The gas had a stabilizer additive to help make it last longer. Kate had learned there was more than one reason to move them eventually.
First was they didn't want to overfish the area. So they used the Catamaran and left the bay to go fishing. However, the main reason was the waste. They had a number of holding tanks based on what was called waste. Gray water went to two different tanks while black water, meaning toilets, went to a different tank.
Each of these tanks went to different systems. The black was cycled through tanks holding sand and then gravel. That was followed by going into a different holding tank. Then what was left was broken down and dumped into the bay. For this reason, they would need to move at some point and allow the water in the bay to recover, albeit slowly.
Gray water was treated and then used to water the plants in the greenhouses.
Kate lifted her cooler and grunted; it weighed more than she had thought. Still, she got it off the boat and onto the dock and waited for Rick to lift his.
"Eight to two, Rick." Kate smiled at him. She hadn't just won the bet, she had wiped the floor with him. She already had four by the time he got his first one. They finally called it quits since she was catching fish so much faster than he was.
"I can count." Rick was sure she had cheated somehow, but he just didn't know how she did it. He had one side of the Catamaran, and she had the other. He didn't see that much difference between their locations.
Rick watched her walk up to him and slowly wrap her arms around his neck. "I'll take my first of six kisses now, please." Kate raised up on her toes and kissed him and then kept on kissing him.
Now they had only officially kissed twice during their entire relationship. Both times had been when Espo and Ryan had the misfortune to be captured. Rick had come up with this stupid idea about how to distract the guard out front. Just when it looked like it wasn't going to work, Rick had kissed her.
It had shocked her, but it had been the best kiss she'd ever had to that point in her life. She wasn't even looking at the guard who was coming their way when she grabbed Rick's head and kissed him hard. That kiss was, to this date, the best kiss she had ever had. It took all the concentration she had to kick the guard unconscious.
Kate finally broke from this kiss. "Wow!" That kiss was better than either of those two kisses. At first she was thinking of kissing him again, but she finally thought better of it. She didn't want to waste them. She needed those kisses to reach Rick and get him to love her again.
She might have managed to say WOW, but Rick was speechless. He remembered those two kisses as well, but this kiss was even better. It left him stunned and unsteady.
"Clean and cook the fish, Rick, I'm hungry. Fishing and kicking your ass has worn me out." Kate piled it on a little and patted his chest. "Remember, I love you and trust you." She would tell him that repeatedly until he got tired of it or repeated it back to her.
Rick didn't know how she did it, but a bet was a bet, and he did want to eat fish for a change. Grunting, he picked her cooler, carried it to the kitchen, and then came back for his.
O~O~O
Everyone was in the dining room, waiting for Rick to come out with the baked fish.
"So who won?" Alexis was curious. They had clearly caught enough, so she and Michael didn't need to go out to hook what they didn't.
"Eight to two." Kate's smile was wide. "Dad taught me. He never actually caught anything, but he still taught me how to fish."
"Well done, Katherine." Martha was all smiles. "So, what did Richard say about that?" Her son had better not have said something stupid.
"Nothing, he was too busy recovering from the kiss I gave him," Kate told them and Laura burst out laughing.
While Alexis still didn't like Kate very much, she had to admit that her dad had met his match with Kate. She wasn't her mother or Gina. She was something else entirely.
"Dinner." Rick came out with a large tray filled with dinner already on plates.
There was a small salad, potatoes, vegetables, along with some fresh fruit. The fish and vegetables were all baked at the same time: potato wedges, sliced carrots, strips of red and green peppers, sliced zucchini, sliced garlic cloves, and a large sliced tomato. Drizzled with lemon juice and baked in foil, it smelled great when Rick opened the packets!
"Looks good, Rick." It was obvious that he knew how to cook.
"Nice, Dad." Alexis was smiling at him.
"I think I've outdone myself." Rick was proud of his work.
"I heard there was a bet," Dean mentioned and was swiftly kicked by his wife. "OW!" Dean glared at her for that and reached down to rub his aching shin.
"The loser had to cook," Kate told them since she wanted to keep the kisses between herself and Rick. She didn't want to embarrass him. She wanted him on her side, so she needed to play nice.
"You should lose more often, Rick." Dean was thankful that his wife didn't kick him for that remark. He would question her later what that was for. It was a simple enough statement.
Kate helped him clean up. "Let me know when you want a rematch, Rick." She smiled at him and lifted up to kiss his cheek. "That wasn't one of my kisses, and I still love you and trust you." Kate retreated to continue cleaning up from dinner.
There was one thing that needed to be dealt with correctly. They did have trash to get rid of. For example, after making bread in the bread maker several times a week, they were left with plastic bags from the bread mix as well as empty foil-lined packets from the quick-rising yeast. And eventually, they would have empty spice containers to get rid of.
Rick even had frozen vegetables in plastic bags. As he said, he hadn't built this place for the purpose they used for now. He had planned to take his trash to Victoria and dispose of it there. Maybe they still could, but that meant using some of their gas to get there and back, and no one really knew if they would be violating one of the alien laws.
O~O~O
Kate came out of the bathroom dressed in a nightshirt and panties as usual. She got in on her side of the bed, moved over to his side, and snuggled close to him.
"I end up over here anyway, so I might as well start here." Kate kissed his exposed chest. Since that kiss wasn't on the lips, she didn't count it as one of her five remaining kisses. What she needed to do was figure out how to win even more. Maybe if she kissed him enough, he would come around to her side.
Kate even felt him put an arm around her and hold her close. She still needed to figure out how to reach him. Laura was right. If she wanted him back, and she did, she needed to fight for him. She had gotten off easy all this time. Rick had done all the work before. Now it was her turn.
O~O~O
Kate woke the next morning to an empty bed. Somehow he had managed to escape without waking her. She didn't like that, not one bit. None of her boyfriends, from the first one, to Will, to Tom, and then to Josh, had ever spent the night. She had never woken up with them. Now she wanted Rick with her when she woke up.
O~O~O
Refreshed, clean, and dressed for slightly cooler weather, Kate headed to the kitchen. She had increased her coffee intake to two cups a day, and it was time for her first cup.
She spotted the sail of the Catamaran as it headed out of the bay. She guessed that Alexis and Michael going out fishing again. Last night's fish had been tasty. Even more to the point was the fact that she had won.
She came upon Rick all alone in the dining room, sitting in front of his laptop. She recalled he had told her that they didn't have Internet access any longer since his service provider had shut down. So what was he doing?
Kate walked past him, and rested her hands on him, and peeked over his shoulder to look. "Reading?" That was what it looked like he was doing.
"Books weigh too much and take up a lot of space, so all the books are on hard drives. Portable solid-state hard drives." Rick stopped reading long enough to look up at her. "Plans for today?"
"Not till after I've had my coffee." Kate leaned down to give him a quick kiss on his lips and then went toward the kitchen. "And that was not one of the five kisses you still owe me."
"Felt like one to me," Rick countered. Her lips had touched his, so that was definitely a kiss.
"Nope, trust me when I kiss you you'll know it. It'll curl your toes." Then she added softly to herself. "And probably mine, too."
Kate returned with her coffee and sat across from him so she could look at him. "So, how many laptops do you have, and how many of these hard drives do you have?" She liked to read and if this was how they read books around here, she wanted in.
"Let's see. There's mine, the one that belongs to Alexis. Then Michael's, Dean's, and one spare. OH, and one in one of the greenhouses. Although, that one is more a pad than a laptop. That one holds information on various plants. I wasn't certain I could get Laura and Dean to come here, so I needed all the information I could get."
That made sense to her. "So where are all your toys? I know you, Rick. You love to play."
Yeah, Kate knew him almost as well as Alexis did. But then she had grown up with him, so naturally she knew him better. "Out in one of the sheds next to the boat. Remote-controlled boat, helicopter, tank, submarine..." Kate held up her hand and stopped him.
"I get the point. It's good to know you haven't changed too much." Truth be told she did like it when Rick pulled her pigtails. He had a way of making her hard work more fun. She just kept resisting, and that was her mistake. One of far too many. If only she had listened to what Royce had said in his letter.
"Don't move." Kate suddenly got up. "I mean, don't leave." She rushed out of the dining room and back to their bedroom, where she dug through one of her bags till she found what she wanted. And then she hurried back and thankfully found Rick right where she had left him.
"I want to change. I love you, and I want you to trust me, so here." Kate handed it over and watched Rick take it.
It was in a very sad shape now. She had opened and read it, and then folded it all back up so many times. Royce knew what she didn't, or more accurately, what she was fighting.
"What's this?" To Rick it looked like a folded piece of paper that had seen better days.
"Just read it. Please? I trust you." Kate watched him carefully unfold it.
Dear Kate,
I bet I've written this letter a hundred times. Someday I might actually send it. There's no excuse for what I did, especially what I did to you. But I'm on a righteous path now, and I hope someday that path earns me your forgiveness.
And now for the hard part, kid. It's clear that you and Castle have something real. And you're fighting it. But trust me, putting the job ahead of your heart is a mistake. Risking our hearts is why we're alive. The last thing you want is to look back on your life and wonder if only.
Kate could tell Rick had finished reading it. He looked up at her. "Royce left me that. Even he knew somehow, but that was Royce. He was right, too. I was fighting it, and I don't have a good excuse, Rick.
"If you hadn't just up and left me. If those damn aliens hadn't shown up and started killing everyone, I still might not be here. I'm stubborn, I admit it.
"I might have one day looked at that letter when I made it to my 60s and finally gotten to the IF ONLY part and realized just what I had done to myself.
"I love you, and I trust you with my life and with my heart. That's why I asked you to marry me. I don't want to look back and have an IF ONLY moment. I want that moment now.
"No one knows me like you do." Kate wiped away tears. "Lanie called it our mind-reading thing. Somehow you were always inside my head, and while it was kinda fun, it was also a little scary. To think that another person could read me so well that they knew what I was thinking was scary.
"But I get it now. You used to love me, and I was learning to love you, too." Kate wiped away still more tears. "I want you inside my head to know what I'm thinking. To know that I'm not lying when I say that I love you." She got up, leaned across, and this time she did kiss him. It was kiss number two, and she only had four left.
Rick started to give the letter back to her. "You keep it, it's yours now. Royce gave me my IF ONLY moment, and this one is yours. From me to you." Kate kissed his cheek to make sure she didn't use up another kiss and then left him. She made her way to one of those quiet, all-alone places, so she could sit peacefully and think and hope and wish.
O~O~O
No one noticed that Alexis and Michael came back quite so soon. They had barely tied off the boat when both of them took off running in different directions.
Michael found Dean and Laura while Alexis found everyone else, and now all of them were standing in the one large open area this place had.
"You're never going to believe this," Michael began to say.
"We saw it slowly sail over our heads. It was HUGE!" Alexis spread her arms wide.
"It had this, I don't know what it was. A capsule, spaceship, I don't know. Attached to it were these massive sails. They almost reached the top of the trees and went way up into the sky." Now it was Michael's turn to use his arms to try and show size.
"It just sailed along. It didn't seem to be doing anything really, just sailing," Alexis said.
"And then we felt it after it had gone past us," Michael mentioned.
Alexis corrected him a little. "More smelled it, actually."
"Smelled what?" Laura asked. She was the biologist around here, so smelled what?
"Fresh air," Michael told them.
"Completely clean fresh air. Not a hint of smog, or trash, or anything. I've never smelled anything like it. I mean, it smelled clean compared to New York City when I got here, but this, this was different," Alexis told them.
"And the water changed color, too," Michael added.
"YES! The water changed color. It's bluer now. There was a hint of brown at the entrance to the bay, though that might have just been the land under the water. But I swear the water looks cleaner somehow." Alexis was gushing since she had never seen or smelled anything like this before.
"It was different. It was like..." Michael needed something to help explain. "You know what you feel when it's 100 degrees outside, and you start to go inside, into a mall or something? Suddenly there's this wall of cool air, and it smells better, too. That's what this was."
Alexis nodded. "It was like feeling this invisible wall pass over you. One second the air, while still fresh, was better, and the water changed color."
Laura looked at her husband. "Removing the pollution, you think?"
"You mean the aliens that killed damn near everyone are now cleaning the planet?" Kate's mouth fell open.
"Where was it?" Rick desperately wanted to see this thing, whatever it was.
"It's gone now, Dad. It's not that slow." Alexis knew it was out of sight.
"Well, shoot." Rick was bummed.
"Like Michael says, there was this," Alexis used her hands to make a ball, "globe, maybe? Except it had all these spines sticking out of it, and then there were these massive sails. Like the Catamaran, only huge." She spread her arms wide again.
"Like a sea urchin?" Laura suggested.
"YES! Just like that, only it wasn't purple," Alexis agreed quickly.
"It changed colors while it moved." Michael tried to picture it again. "Mostly blues and whites, I think, except for the spines. Those looked darker somehow."
"Dad, where's that pad? The one with the stylus that you can use to draw with?" Alexis inquired.
"I know where it is. I'll get it." Michael took off running flat out and used the railings to help keep himself upright along the way.
Martha crossed her arms over her chest. "This is too much for me." First, it was aliens killing everyone. Then her son talked her into moving way out here with him, and now this. It was overwhelming.
"Easy, Martha." Kate put an arm around her. "I have a feeling our lives are about to change again."
"How fast was it going?" Dean questioned Alexis.
"Fast enough to pass us, but still slow. It didn't make much wind when it passed us. I don't know, 30 miles an hour, maybe, more or less." Alexis hadn't thought about that at all.
Laura looked at her husband. "What are you thinking, babe?
"None of us know just how many spaceships there are up there or how big. So for the sake of argument, say there's just the one. A single small core with enormous sails that can be deployed like the Catamaran's. It wouldn't take up much space, so maybe they only have the one.
"At 30 miles per hour, it'll take weeks to cover every square mile of the planet. Now if, just if, it's cleaning all the pollutants from the air, land, and water..." Dean's voice trailed off. He was trying to think.
"What do they do with it all?" Laura saw her husband nod when she finished his sentence.
"Like a vacuum cleaner?" Alexis offered.
"Something like that, maybe. They're advanced enough to do all this, but can the aliens just remove all the pollution and not have to get rid of it? Clean the filters or something?" Laura wondered aloud.
Then they heard and finally saw Michael running back. The sprint had left him winded, so he handed it to Alexis. She took out the stylus and began to draw.
Alexis had everyone around her watching her draw save for Michael, who was bent over sucking in air.
"This!" Alexis held it up in front of her so everyone could get a good look.
Whatever it was that was in the sky, it did have spines, only not as many as Alexis had drawn. She drew some huge sails that covered pretty much all the space around it with little to no gaps. And there was something in the middle, high up into the sky. She had even drawn a little wave of water and a tree to show just how far off the ground the bottom sail was.