Chapter 38:

The sound of the airships brought Red Kate to her balcony. As she watched, three of those massive machines came swooping in over her city, bringing the eyes of the townsfolk skyward. Kate could scarcely blame them. No matter how many times she saw such a sight, it took her breath away.

It was nearly an hour later that steps on the stairs announced the arrival of her lover. The big man strode into the space with the elemental woman, Olesia, at his back.

Regardless of the fact that the curvy elemental was his wife, William strode up and embraced Kate.

It was an effort not to break down in tears. What's the matter with you, she thought? Have things changed so much?

"Things are fine," Kate murmured, with almost no hitch in her voice. Stepping back, her lover asked, "where's this guy? I'd like to get this sorted." "He went back to his ship," Kate replied. "They're moored out near the channel. I'll send a message out there."

Meanwhile, up on the Ark, the trio who'd arrived to regain control gathered around a table in the center of the control room. The space was very familiar to Sarah. She'd spent days here, working with Minerva on the evacuation of the Ark.

I never thought I'd be back here, thought the android. She'd done her best to console Finn on their return to Ooo, and ultimately they'd both settled back into the routine of Ooo's first family.

"The primary electronics bay is here," Minerva declared. "Ok," Blargetha responded, "where's here?" "Two miles that way," Minerva said, as she pointed over her shoulder.

"How do we get the mainframe up there," Blargetha asked? "Same way it was brought into the Ark in the first place," Minerva responded.

Laying out another layer of the schematics, the Finn-mom explained, "the docking collar I chose is near the main cargo hatch. The hatch opens up under Macy's department store in a sub-level. There's a freight elevator that's big enough to hold the modules for the mainframe that we can use to bring them to the surface. Then we just have to move them down to Woolworth's and down their freight elevator to the sub-level. There's a hidden door there that goes into the mainframe room."

Rolling her eyes, Blargetha responded, "just like that? I hope there's vehicles up there to do the moving."

Sarah had a more immediate concern. "We have to do a burn in just days," she remarked. "Do we really have time to do this? Wouldn't it be better to access the auxiliary control room?"

"Auxiliary control got slagged when Finn launched that escape pod," Minerva replied. "I don't know if any of the consoles there even function. I only know that I lost comms with it."

"Aren't there any other options," Blargetha asked? "No," Minerva responded. " "Couldn't we try the propulsion computers themselves," Sarah queried? "I know we'd have to do the computations ourselves, but..."

"They're only accessible through the hot-shop, Sarah," Minerva responded. "Thanks to the broken fuel rods, just a few minutes in the hot-shop would expose you to 8 Gray. While we're not organic, I'm not sure either of us would be unaffected."

"Fuck," muttered Sarah. Eyes narrowing, Blargetha burbled, "this is why you were so anxious to get here!"

Getting in Minerva's face, she said, "you knew this all along! You knew it, and you said nothing!" Pulling on her 'hair', she began to pace.

Blowing out a breath, Minerva sighed, "you have to understand the mentality of a Helper, Princess Blargetha." Shaking her head, the AI said, "we were responsible for not only the safety but the mental health of a million people. Starting a panic is the last thing you want to do on a space station."

Before Sarah could open her mouth, Minerva added, "whether a million or tens of millions, the story's the same, Sarah. I couldn't conscience terrorizing the entire population of Earth... of Ooo for something that may or may not matter."

Seeing that her companions understood the criticality of what they needed to get done, Minerva moved on, declaring, "we need to move the mainframe modules. We need to get the mainframe re-installed. The teleportation spell did a very good job of preserving the connections. I think we'll be fine. If we press, we can get a vehicle running today, get the modules moved tomorrow, and complete installation and checkout on day three..."

"What're we facing," Sarah asked? "There's nobody topside, obviously..."

"The temperatures in the colony are quite low," Minerva declared. "After the evacuation, I reduced the heating and turned off the artificial sun to conserve the power of the reactors."

"How low," Blargetha demanded? The AI responded, "if your suit heaters fault, you have about thirty minutes to return to the core areas under the streets. We won't be roaming far without a vehicle."

"What're the odds that the vehicles aren't damaged by the chill," Sarah queried?

"I know there's things like internal combustion on Ooo," Minerva responded. "Obviously, we couldn't have such a thing in a space-colony..." Warily, Sarah nodded.

"Everything in New York is run off of electricity," Minerva replied. "Given the danger associated with lithium batteries, they were banned fast. Most of what we used were old-fashioned lead-acid. The risk we face isn't the cooling system of a combustion engine failing, it's battery chemistry."

"The battery factory is where we need to go first," Minerva explained. "There're finished batteries there. We can access it from the under-levels. We'll need to fill the batteries with electrolyte and get them charged. It'll take us a number of trips, but I think between the two of us, we can shift enough cells to power a truck."

Bringing up a schematic, she explained, "the battery factory's here... I'll reactivate the subway. We'll ride the subway to the battery factory and load up some batteries to carry to Macy's."

Down on Ooo, Jake the Dog came huffing and puffing up the stairs from his basement in response to the incessant ringing of his doorbell. Finn had been hectoring him by text, phone-call, and letter to get in shape, aided and abetted by Jake's daughters. The stretchy dog was starting to see their point.

Arriving at the front door, Jake jerked it open and cussed the person on the other side to hell and back. Almost, he slammed the door in her face.

"Mr. Jake," the candy-person murmured. "I'm Loli. I have a proposal for you." Jake snorted, "get plenty of ass from my girlfriend, and you're kinda' old..." Eyes flashing, the candy-person cussed him back.

"Not that kind of proposal, dumbass," snarled a second figure. Jake had been so focused on the old lady that he hadn't noticed the young dude standing off to one side. "Uh, hey," Jake rumbled. "Don't point that thing at me. I know I was kind of a jerk t'your ma..."

"Inside," the youth growled, as he waved the gun in his hand for the effect. Jake stepped back from the door. The young man was right behind him. The older woman stepped through, shutting the door behind her.

Nodding at the living room, the boy suggested, "have a seat, Mr. Jake." "It's just Jake," the stretchy-dog responded. "What you want?"

Seeing that they were going to keep him at gunpoint, Jake decided to go along to get along. Sliding over to the couch, Jake sat himself, his mind going over ways to get out of this.

He'd cussed Finn to hell over his endless suggestions that Jake take a powder or get a bodyguard too. That now seemed like another in a string of bad choices.

Taking out a holographic projector, the chunky gal toggled it on, confronting Jake with a picture of Samantha and her family. All of them were tied to chairs in a circle around the kitchen table, and his girl was glaring at her dad.

A voice announced, "please face the camera..." Sam turned to look into the camera. The left side of her face was covered in blood, though she looked more pissed than hurt.

"If you're seeing this," Samantha declared, "my dad's friends have brought you a video of us all being held at gunpoint for his gambling debts... These people want to ransom us for thousands of coins."

The picture clicked off then, and the plump woman stuffed the thing back in her purse. The young fellow took up the thread then. Drawing a similar device from his pocket, he said, "this is a rocket-launching facility built by..." "...Finn," Jake muttered.

Chuckling the candy-person agreed, "yes, built by the King of Ooo." Jake responded, "I don't get it. Who are you guys? Why're you holding my girl...?"

The youth responded, "my name is Chicle. This is Loli. We are associates of Prince Gumbald..." "Bonnie's uncle," Jake murmured. "Yes," Loli agreed.

"You guys got beef with Bonnie," Jake rumbled. "That ain't got anything to do with Sam and me. Whyn't you go down and see her?"

"Bonnibel has formidable weapons," Loli responded. "She has numerous allies. We need an edge." Frowning, Jake muttered, "just spit it out. I don't go in for all this sneaky stuff. That was always Finn's bit..."

"It's quite simple, Mr. Jake," said Loli. "We need to gain control of a rocket to accomplish our goal, but the rocket-base is impregnable. We've looked at it from nearly every angle. There's no way inside that we would survive."

"You guys're geniuses," Jake retorted. "What you want from me? If you can't get in, what can I do?" With a sinister smile, Chicle said, "there's no way for a creature of our size to get in."

Jake's response was a look of utter bafflement. "Your powers," Chicle growled. "Your powers can let you get in, dumbass. Then you can open a door for us."

"And I get Sam back," Jake asked? "That's it," Loli agreed. "We release your companion after you let us in."

Back on the Ark, Blargetha stood in the grand subway station known as 'Central' staring around her in wonderment. It looked much like the trams in Bonnibel's kingdom. She'd ditched Hurletta to ride the trams for hours and hours the first time they'd visited.

"It's hard to believe all this is inside a rock floating in space," Sarah murmured. Blargetha glanced over to find the android-woman staring around her too.

Scuffing her foot on the ground, Sarah remarked, "all the wear and tear you'd expect from centuries of peeps walking through here, just goin' to work every day." Nodding at the wall, she added, "there's even still trash in that bin, though the rats appear to have frozen to death."

"You know, if we both get lost in our daydreams, we'll never get this thing done," Blargetha teased. With a grin, Sarah replied, "why do you think I came and not Bonnie? Initiating focused-science mode... Now."

Just then, the train that Minerva had gone to retrieve came clattering up. Finn's mom was waiting on them at the door, announcing, "sorry for the delay. I had to scrape the windows clear of ice."

Moving with the deliberation that logic provided, Sarah began shuffling tools and equipment without so much as a word. Seeing Minerva's reaction, Blargetha chuckled, "Focused Science Mode. I'll do the gawping... you two do the working..."

In the end, just as Blargetha suggested, she ended up driving the train, with Sarah and Minerva doing the job of going up into the frozen city to collect the batteries they needed.

It wasn't quite the exciting exploration of a forgotten civilization that she'd fantasized over. Sitting alone in the driver's station at the front of the train, was even a little eerie.

Brought back down to earth as it were, Blargetha's keen mind quickly began to realize that what they were doing was actually very dangerous. There was a whole lot to go wrong in a frozen wasteland where a tiny bit of damage to a spacesuit could doom her to an unpleasant end.

I appreciate him, the slime princess thought. After all the ugliness that's been between us, I think... I think I've finally come to appreciate all the things he did.

Her unlikely husband had more than figuratively pushed back the wilderness, not just for Bonnibel's kingdom, but for all the civilized kingdoms. Finn the Human had made it possible for the annual Princess Privy Council to be held annually.

It's ironic, thought Blargetha. Mom and dad would still be alive if Finn had been around to protect them. Her parents had lost their lives on the road to the Candy Kingdom, thrusting their underage daughters into the role of rulers well before they were ready.

At the same time, touching the chill metal of the tram-car was a reminder of what had been taken from Finn—the legacy of his human ancestors. Was there a meaning there? She wasn't really sure.

Call it glob's will, she thought. Somehow, Finn had been plucked from this strange floating city and thrust into the world of Ooo to redeem all the ugliness that had gone before him, restoring some semblance of hope for a future.

I don't know whether to cry or tear out my hair or something, thought the slime princess. He gave up so much, when all I've ever done is complain about being second princess.

A voice from somewhere whispered, do better, Blargetha. You have the power and knowledge to do much better. Finn did his part to fix the world. Now, do yours.

"Ooo to Blargetha," Sarah called out. Blargetha's face snapped up to find Sarah standing there in the doorway. "We're loaded up," she said. "Minerva's back baby-sitting the cargo. We can leave now."

Rising, Blargetha turned to the console and carefully released the brakes. Batteries of the size that they were moving weren't toys. It would be easy to cause an accident that would wreck the tram and potentially cause a catastrophic fire.

"How long do you think it will take to restore the primary reactors, Sarah," Blargetha murmured? She was cheekily taking advantage of Focused Science Mode. "Parameters...," Sarah responded.

Blargetha smiled. "Assume a financial input of approximately ten-thousand gold coins each month," said she. "Assume in-kind gifts of labor from the Grid-Face peeps amounting to two-hundred or more souls..."

"Assuming in-kind labor contributions and resourcing of sufficient cargo rockets to transfer the required nuclear fuel, the habitat can be restored to a stable condition in eight years and six months," the android replied. "Solid," Blargetha chuckled.