The Outer Moon (A Sapphic Sci Fi Adventure)

Chapter 9

"That was so scary!" said a flustered Hermosa once the ship had accelerated out of the Los Angeles area. "But now it feels a lot more real."

"Why were they shooting?" Ara wondered. "Did something new happen?"

"I have no idea," Pepper told them. "We certainly never attacked them." She led the women up to the bridge where Vanessa was rapidly piloting them up to the space station. "Can you get a hold of Jason?"

"I'm doing that now," she replied shakily. "I never expected to have them fire on us. This is becoming much more dangerous than we expected."

Luckily, Jason was quickly available to talk to, and Vanessa explained what happened to him. He promised to find out what was happening, because they certainly didn't want to deal with another attack like that while loading people onto the ships later. That could end up being a disaster!

As it was, today should be a very busy day. Miles and Lena should be arriving in the Cancri system, the delivery of the mattresses and their new recruits would be happening, and down on Earth, Emily would be at her OB/GYN appointment with Xavier to check on their growing little one. Now they had to add in Jason talking to someone in the US government to find out why they had pilots firing on them. They all hoped that all of that would go smoothly, but the way things were going, it didn't seem likely.

"Can I ask a question?" Hermosa asked as she wandered around the bridge, taking in the view. At first, she and Ara just stood there, staring at the view of the Earth below and grinning like a pair of kids, but now they were able to be more inquisitive.

"Of course, ask away." Pepper was standing next to the pair for just such an occasion. She didn't want them to feel uncomfortable and alone, and Vanessa was more than able to do the piloting to dock with the PASSpace station on her own.

"Well, when we took off, why didn't we feel it?" she wondered. "I've been in planes taking off quite a bit, and you always feel the acceleration. We got out of there so fast that I was expecting to be thrown against a wall or something."

Pepper chuckled, as that was a question that they still didn't have an answer to. There was a lot of information scattered on the bridge of the Atlantis, and they had poured over some of it, but that was one thing that they hadn't stumbled onto the answer for yet. One reason was that while there was a computer with a ton of information on the bridge of the fox ship, the computers on the Atlantis didn't have any power. The engines of the Atlantis were probably ruined on the planet, and they'd never found a backup power source. The computers here on the smaller ship didn't have nearly the information they would have liked.

"I wish I knew. There is a lot we haven't figured out about the technology used for these ships. I assume that it has something to do with the way they create artificial gravity in the ship too, you won't be in freefall on our baby, but you will in the space station, and maybe it has something to do with why there is no g force when accelerating to slowing down. It definitely makes things easier when flying though." Pepper added a little smile and shrug as she explained what they knew. "You'll probably want to check out the medical bay too, the beds in there are a miracle. They appear to fix a lot of things, even something from a migraine to period pains, and Nessa and I use them a lot. Kind of like a spa treatment, if I'm honest. If you want, you can try them out and feel the difference."

Ara nodded quickly. "I wouldn't mind it. I'm a little sore after all the moving and then diving when the shooting started."

"Me too!" added Hermosa.

Pepper led the way back to the medical bay, though they had to wheel the refrigerated cabinets out to get to the beds. "Before we start, how long will the cooling work on those cabinets?"