Firefly

Chapter 17

It is now one year later

Kate stepped out of the elevator just in time to see Liz go into medical. Kate smiled wide. Her best friend was in the same position she was. Kate put both hands on her belly and walked inside just in time to hear Liara ask her to lie down on the medical bed.

Kate walked up behind Liara. "I'll be right with you, Kate," Liara told her which had Kate cursing internally since she had tried to sneak up behind her.

Kate watched her run the scanner bar across Liz and watched her hand held unit. "You are down six pounds. You are not eating properly. Your baby appears to be perfectly healthy. You can sit up if you like." Liara went to a wall, opened a panel and took something out.

Meanwhile Kate and Liz are smiling at each other since they both had bellies that were going to only get bigger.

Liara was back. "Here are the vitamins I want you to take twice a day. Have you decided on a name yet?" Liara inquired. She asked so she could add it to her file.

Liz shrugged. "Not yet. You told us it's a girl but we haven't agreed on a name."

"Please let me know when you do. Eat just a bit more and keep up your exercises. If I understand your physiology correctly you have approximately three months until the birth of your baby," Liara said.

"You may get down. You are next, Kate." Liara stood there and waited.

Liz got down and Kate hopped up and lay down automatically. They both watched as the scanner bar went across Kate.

"You are within limits of weight, however, you are not taking your vitamins. This is going to force me to give you a shot," Liara warned her which caused Kate to groan. She really didn't like shots. Technically it was nearly painless, yet somehow it was still a giant pole being injected into her arm.

"You are also healthy and so is your baby. Have you decided on a name for your baby boy?" Liara asked for the same reason.

Kate shook her head. "Not yet. We've gotten the list down to James, Caleb, and Eli. We're still talking about it though." They might not end up with any of those names.

"Let me know when you finally decide please." Liara left to go to the same panel and brought back vitamins. "If you do not take these I will be forced to give you another shot.

"You also are roughly three months away from your delivery date. Hopefully you two are not conspiring to have your babies at the same time." She was going to be busy if they were.

"Not intentionally," Kate said.

"You two may go. I expect to see you back here in one month's time." Liara was done with these two.

Kate followed Liz into the elevator and listened to Liz select the Park level so she followed her since she didn't have anything else to do.

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"How do you feel?" Liz inquired as they walked a little while.

"Amazing! My hands are all healed." She put them out in front of her. She knew the design that had been on her hands by heart. If she looked close enough she could swear she still saw that design. Only now they were thin white scars.

"I'm not a slave and I'm actually married. And I still have sex with Rick for a couple of hours each day. I want him so badly. I know it's the drug but I'd like to think its because I want him and not because of the drug.

"He's been so kind and I love him." Kate practically glowed.

"I'm happy for you." Liz put an arm around her for a moment and hugged her. "You're just what Rick needed. Anything to help him get rid of his demons."

"I'm glad you're here. It would be a little lonely without you," Kate admitted.

"Well you're stuck with both of us now. I think we're all stuck here for a very long time. I know we have that Gateway but I don't think these androids are going to let us leave. They're so insistent that this place remain undetected." Liz didn't get the dedication but they were really stuck on that.

"You want to leave? Where would you go?" Kate liked it here. Okay maybe it was small but it had what she needed.

"No where, really. I just like having options. Not forced to stay in one place. Our planet was our choice even if it had less that what we have here. It was just there we had choices. I'm not sure we have one here." Liz didn't know how she felt about that.

"Is Rick's idea going to work?" She understood the idea but not why these three were so dedicated to it.

"It actually stands a pretty good chance if we can just agree to let me choose the targets and not get greedy. We need to hit them where they're weak and make sure we hide our weakness." Liz liked it assuming her husband and Rick didn't decided to try and take over.

"Can I help?" Kate didn't know just what they were planning but it meant a lot to Rick so that meant it meant a lot to her.

"I can handle my husband. I may need your help with Rick one day. This may take a year or more likely two. They may both get anxious and want to speed things up. That's where mistakes come in."

"I'll help. I'll tie him to the bed if I have to. Might actually be fun," Kate chuckled.

Liz laughed. Leave it to Kate to think of sex to gain control of her husband. Maybe that drug he'd pumped her full of just might actually work out. She had initially thought it was the height of stupidity, but now? Not so much.

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Frankie came out of the simulator and was ready to kick or maybe shoot something. "You are not thinking fast enough or you are pressing the fighter too hard. It will be capable of more than you are apparently thinking," his flight simulator trainer told him.

Frankie groaned. He had jumped in, closed on an Alliance warship, and started firing. Amazingly the damage was more severe after just a few shots. Granted it wasn't one of their bigger ships. However, they did have a lot of these so he was sure to encounter a number of them.

It was just that as he was firing he kept closing and ended up slamming into what was left of it. As a result the computer had activated it self-destruct so that the Alliance couldn't gain access to their technology.

Frankie wasn't getting it and if he couldn't get control over this thing, they were going to have to leave the combat to a computer program created by these androids.

Then he had an idea. "How many jumps can I make and in what amount of time can I make them before resting?"

"Jump from here to your target. Close a little on your target. After that you can jump another eleven times. The eleventh jump will need to be here then enter the landing bay to maintain our invisibility," Zillah said.

"Or you will destroy the fighter after cutting it loose like you did Rick's ship." Frankie was still really mad that they had destroyed Rick's ship.

They had decided that his docking with this outpost had indeed compromised their invisibility so after Rick had removed everything he could, it had been cut loose then destroyed. It was now space dust floating around somewhere. It was too big to fit into the landing bay.

"That is correct. Our remaining undetected is top priority over everything else. Now that our primary conduit has been replaced we no longer run the risk of being detected by your technology," Frankie was told.

It sounded like Zillah was insulting him and his technology. But she was right. Their technology was far superior to theirs.

"I want to try this again. I have an idea." Frankie went back inside. The simulator didn't really move since even under maximum thrust he was never going to feel a thing. He could go around a system's sun and not feel the gravity so his simulator was stationary. It did, however, have all the controls he could expect when they finally finished building the fighter that had only recently started construction.

Based on input from Frankie and Liz they had they had decided to place a spinning turret on the top. It would allow him to fly in one direction yet be able to fire his weapons in a 360 degree range. To fire in a Z axis he would need to move the fighter.

Frankie sat back down and reran the last simulation. This time he jumped in and gave the engines a quick kick before killing them. Then he fired followed by jumping to a new location, firing then jumping yet again, and firing again if necessary.

Then he got a location for another Alliance ship and repeated until his last jump was to come home. Then plugged it in to recharge it before going back out to more targets.

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Rick was sitting in the control room with three other androids as he watched what Frankie was doing on one of the monitors. Rick pounded on the table. "Now that's what I'm talking about!" Rick raised his hands in a victory salute.

The fighter was capable of jumping around to reach multiple targets so why not use it that way?

Rick watched the next simulation that was a malfunction which required Frankie to decide what to do to counter the problem without losing the fighter.

Rick was actually thinking they were getting somewhere.

The next simulation was jumping from one target on a planet to another and another before jumping home. It was while he was watching that that he thought up a name for their little fighter.

"Firefly. We're going to call it a Firefly." It seemed perfect for the little fighter.

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Rick went down to the Landing Bay to take a look at what little had been completed, only when he got there he didn't see anything. He had to go into the fabrication shop that was next door to see pieces of it.

"It is Modular Construction, Commander. We build various components then assemble them on the Landing Bay. Once all of those are complete we will fabricate the skin of the fighter. Until then there is not going to be much to see.

"However even then we will have to run it through a series of tests before it can be deployed," Diedra, who was in charge of this project, informed him.

"Rats! I was hoping to see something. Something besides renderings showing me what it will ultimately look like," Rick grumbled.

"Not for several months yet, Commander. We have only just started." Diedra didn't understand why he would expect to see anything.

Rick left there and went looking for his wife. The trick was that their marriage was only recognized by those that had attended it. No planet anywhere would recognize it but that didn't matter to Kate, or so it seemed.

He found her taking a catnap on their bed so he left her alone and went to his work station in the room to do a little research.

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Rick was finding that this place had scanned and studied each and every ship the Alliance had ever launched. They somehow knew each system on each ship and just where each was located. Frankie was going to learn where to fire each and every shot for each Alliance ship. He just had to learn each ship.

What they had was less information on targets on the core planets. Something they needed to rectify if they were going to follow Liz's plan of attack. Rick had his idea of what he wanted to do. However, Liz was arguing for them to let her take command of what targets should be hit and when.

Liz had worked in the Command and Control section. Rick had been a sniper while Frankie had been in overall command of a combined squadron. Air and land assets. Rick just happened to be under his command which was how he got the order to kill that Admiral.

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Rick was still trying to figure out how this place could scan ground targets on the core planets when a pair of very feminine arms wrapped themselves around him from behind. He'd been concentrating so hard he hadn't even noticed her until now.

Next he felt Kate nibbling on his ear. He knew what that meant: Kate wanted sex.

"You're awake," Rick smiled as he stated the obvious. He leaned back in his chair and gave her more access which she immediately took by doing her best to run her hands over his chest.

"You were typing too hard," Kate teased him.

"Typing too hard?" Rick questioned her and teased her back.

"YES! And I can think of better use for those hands of yours. Before you wear them out and become useless to me. Now up, husband of mine. We're having sex." Kate spun his chair around, pulled him up out of it, and over to the bed where she worked at stripping him.

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Kate always felt so much better after having sex with Rick who was now her husband. She was no longer a slave and she'd been sure she was never going to be this happy. Four orgasms later and she was resting naked next to her naked husband.

However, she had a question. "Rick, where's the baby going to sleep?"

Rick thought that was an odd question. "In a crib in our room." Where else was the baby going to sleep? One of them needed to be close by.

"I mean when the baby gets older. We only have the one bedroom and one bed," Kate reminded him.

"Oh." Now he saw what she was thinking about. "I guess I don't know. We have time to figure it out though. Plenty of time." Though he had no idea how to solve that problem at least for now.

While all the sex might not have worn Kate out all that much, Rick was tired and he fell asleep on her. Kate rested comfortably next to him and considered how she came to be here.

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Kate woke up to find Rick gone only he hadn't gone too far. She found him dressed and sitting at his desk typing away again. She didn't even bother to get dressed and slipped in behind him still naked.

With hands going over his shoulders and as far down his chest as she could, she asked, "What are you doing now?" He should be naked and in their bed. She was ready for more sex.

"Trying to help find your parents. It's just that we have so little information to go by. It would help to interrogate the man who bought you. He might know more," Rick muttered in frustration.

Kate felt her heart soar into the clouds. She loved him a little more for this. "And?" She was already going to love him forever but she would love him even harder for this if he could.

"We haven't found them yet and the guy that bought you is dead. From what little I can learn of him he was involved in a fight and was killed. What was written about it is that he took a knife to his kidney and was left to die.

"Apparently he wasn't well liked so no one looked into who killed him. They simply divided up what belonged to him. Any chance they would've moved to another planet maybe?" Rick tilted his head back to look up at her.

"They sold me for the money or we would've all died. Who would take them anywhere for free?" Kate asked him.

Rick could think of one answer but telling her that her parents were dead without proof would only hurt her. Though he suddenly thought of another reason.

"They might be slaves somewhere now as well. No more identification. No way to trace where they are now." Rick looked back down at his screen that had nothing.

"Oh God!" Kate took her hands off of Rick and covered her mouth with both hands instead. Her being a slave as a way to support her parents had been one thing. But the thought that now her parents were also slaves hurt.

"I don't know, love. Until we find them they could be anywhere. Being slaves is only one possible answer of how they could be off of that planet. There are others. The trick is going to be finding what planet they're on now. They might be out here on the Rim." There was just so much space to search for two specific people.

Rick spun his chair so he could face her. He wasn't surprised that she was still naked. He had to hand it to her. She was certainly comfortable in her own skin.

Rick pulled her arms down and took her hands in his. "There's so much space to search. If they made it off that planet regardless of the reason. It just means it's going to take more time."

"They might not ever know I'm not a slave any longer. That I'm married. That I'm pregnant." It was all just too much for Kate to take. Her life had chanced so much and now her parents were missing.

Rick got up and took her back to bed where he lay down with her and spooned her from behind. Even though she was crying Rick was amused that she used a hand to move his hand that was over her onto one of her enlarged breasts as both of them had begun to produce a tiny bit milk for the baby.

Even crying and profoundly sad she was thinking of sex. Rick intentionally moved his fingers to her nipple and rubbed it between his two fingers.

Eventually her crying stopped. It was enough that Rick turned her onto her back, spread her legs wide and got into position to eat her pussy and give her another couple of orgasms. He was hoping this would take her mind off of her missing parents.