The Outer Moon (A Sapphic Sci Fi Adventure)

Chapter 30

Pepper groaned as she sat down at the conference room table. Her belly was getting larger with her little one growing, and despite trips to the medical beds every morning, by lunchtime she was always sore again. She envied Lena, who seemed to be doing fine with her pregnancy, even though she was just over seven months along, but she had to admit that the pilot had been in better physical shape to begin with, so maybe that helped. Pepper had constant reassurance from Lily that she was just experiencing a normal pregnancy, but it didn't make the discomfort any easier! She knew she wasn't alone either, since there were more and more pregnant women in their settlement every day, and quite a few of them were using the medical beds as often as she was too.

"Here you go, honey," Vanessa said soothingly as she placed a cup of juice in front of her while rubbing her lower back. "You're doing great."

"Thanks baby." Pepper leaned forward to let Vanessa massage more of her and let out a soft moan. "That feels so good!"

"Damn, I thought we were interrupting something there for a minute! No more moaning, it makes me wet," Lena quipped as she came in with Miles, Lily, Emily, Emma, Lexi, Viv, Zay, and Yasmin. Lily quickly slapped her wife's shoulder but knew that there was no keeping Lena quiet, in any way.

There would have been more attendees, but everyone was busy examining and exploring more things, so this would do. It had been a little over two months since Emma found the intact human ship, and it seemed like every day there were new discoveries being made among one or more of the teams.

"Okay," Vanessa started. She was hoping Pepper could just listen and not work too hard today. "How about we go around the room and share what we have so far."

"I can start," Emily quickly piped up, rubbing her own baby bump. If Lena looked ready to pop, Emily was truly due any minute. "I was working on discovering how the human planet was moved, and I think I figured it out. We finally found an intact radar display on one of the derelict Antuhsas destroyers and were able to rewind it to the war. It looks like our little fox friends were losing the war badly but were able to do something a little crazy. They had a small group of destroyers, one of which was the one I was examining, and went and cut a massive cone out of the diamond planet. Then they all got behind it and accelerated it right at the human moon. It was well timed, so even though all of the Antuhsas' ships were taken out before it hit, the momentum kept it going, and it slammed into the moon, which then crashed into the surface of the planet, and jarred it a little out of the habitable orbit. They had waited until it was far from the Antuhsas' gas giant, so there was less gravity keeping it close to the sun. The human ships tried to stop the cone, but it ripped right through their fleet, killing all but one ship, which looked to be the Atlantis, which then followed the colony ships."

"They were willing to sacrifice themselves like that?" Lexi asked, awestruck.

"It fits with what we saw before," Miles chimed in. "In the original battle we saw around Uranus, the Antuhsas rammed an entire colony ship into the human ship to destroy it, which allowed one ship to survive. Otherwise, their entire expedition might have perished."

Everyone who had seen that replay nodded as they remembered it. It was indeed in their character to sacrifice themselves for their families and fellow Antuhsas. "That means we could reverse what they did though, right?" Lena said softly. "Hit it from the other side, probably when it gets close to the gas giant, and move it inward just enough?"

Emily nodded slowly as she thought about it. "I believe so, yes. It would be best to wait until the planet has just passed the gas giant, so it is moving away but still able to be affected. We'll have to calculate the right force to hit it though. Perhaps if we hit it with ice, it would help to get water back in the atmosphere too."