Chapter 26: Homecoming

She drifted for millions of years in the ice rings. Her main defense sensors would come on every day, They would do a system search and then shut down. The ships nanobots and drones kept her in pristine condition while her crew and passengers slept. Asteroids and meteorites were detected, tracked, and destroyed when they came in range.

Five thousand years after the crew went into stasis; a ship roughly two miles long appeared in the system. No name or identity was shown on the bright gold colored ship, and no communications were detected. Scans from the nearby sensors that were deployed couldn't penetrate the hull. Alarms flashed through the ship. The AI was about to awaken the crew when the Golden colored ship passed the gas giant, and went to the third planet. The ship descended into the atmosphere until it hovered five hundred feet over the bare planet. It circled the planet dozens of times. While it did this, the ship seeded the planet with plants, trees, and bees. After it finished, it climbed back into space. It turned and headed to the fourth planet, where it did the same thing to one of the small moons. Then it turned again, and headed out of the system, towards galactic north.

The AI continued her lonely duty of keeping her crew alive. She watched, waited and repaired as time slowly went by. At the same time as she watched, she tinkered with the ship. She making it better then it was. She designed new weapons and spacecraft, which were stored.

One day, she watched as the small seeded moon of the fourth planet was destroyed by an asteroid.

This worried the AI, so she deployed a dozen of her new weapon systems she had designed, to guard the ship. Pulse cannons were built and allowed to float a hundred meters from the ship. Each cannon was tethered to the ship by flexible umbilical cables so she had access to them. She waited and watched over the planet, which was dead, except for the local fauna that had been implanted by the alien ship.

Six hundred years before the ships of Earth were to arrive, another strange craft appeared over the planet. It was six miles long, with dozens of round habitats attached to it. The AI watched as a massive beam from the ship descended from the ship and coated the planet.

The ship did this twelve times, and when the beams had shut off, where life once wasn't, it now was. It turned to the fourth planet. A large scanning beam came on and swept the moons. The beam shut down and the ship vanished, just as it had appeared. However, the life it had left behind, was waking up on the planet.

The AI sent out drones. Hundreds of animal species were found wandering the planet as well as thousands of primitive humans in stasis. A shimmering force field protected them. The wild life exploded for the next five years, and then the stasis shields shut down. The humans woke up. The humans immediately started searching for a home, hunting food, or battling each other over their resources.

Deep in the hull, the ship's onboard replicators kept the power plants fueled with the material needed to keep them running at minimum power. The only time they spiked was when the ship was in danger from rogue asteroids and meteorites. By the time the future humans arrived, the ice on the ship was over twenty feet thick. The temperature inside the ship was a cool thirty degrees, except in the power rooms that kept the ship's onboard systems going. The temperature in the power rooms hovered around seventy degrees, due to the reactors. Of the nine power rooms, all but two were back to working at full power, after running at minimum for so long.

The ships primitive AI followed its orders. Two years, eight months and fourteen days after the human ships appeared in the system, the computer brought her ship's temperature up throughout the ship.

Once the temperature hit seventy degrees, it sent drones throughout the ship, to remove all the water from the ice buildup.

In the captain's cabin, four stasis chambers powered up to full power. Inside the chambers, nannites were flushed into the beds and onto the humans who were sleeping. They infused the sleeping bodies and started repairs on them. Nine hours after infusion, systems checks were run on each of them, and lights lit up on the beds, as they cycled open.

William

I groaned and lay there on the bed. Blinking my eyes in the dim light, I said, "Did it work?"

"I don't know, love, we will find out when we get up. But I don't want to move, it's like I don't have any energy," Nadil replied tiredly.

"Well, if it did work, we've been sleeping a long time. I think we need to get up and move around. Otherwise, our bodies can atrophy, and then we would die," I said as I rolled over and out of the bed. My feet and legs hit the floor, and sharp pains raced through my body as my chest, head and arms hit the floor, too.

"Are you ok?" Nancy asked from her bed.

"What happened? Are we home?" Jasmine wondered.

"I'm fine ... and Jas, I think so ... but I don't know for sure," I replied as I dragged myself up the side of the bed.

"Computer, please send a drone in here to inject us with nanite treatments for long term exposure to stasis sleep," Nadil said.

I looked over and Nadil was sitting up in her bed. Nancy was still on her back in her bed while Jasmine was slowly walking around.

"Complying, drone number 2373XHD6378 is on the way to the captain's cabin," the computer reported.

"Thank you, Computer. Also, please replicate a pot of Irish Cream coffee large enough for all of us, and four mugs," I added as I staggered over to the replicator just as the door opened and a drone the size of a basketball floated in the room.

"I am here to inject stasis exposure nannites," it said in a computerized synthetic voice.

"Drone, inject William first ... then the rest of us." Nadil ordered. "AI, what is the status of all stasis chambers?"

It floated over to me as an arm came out of its side holding what looked like a silver cylinder with a gold ring on one side. It turned and pressed the ring against my arm and I heard a hiss from it.

"Thank you," I said to the drone but it just floated away from me. The replicator shut down and I picked up the carafe and filled the first cup. I was about to take a drink, when Nancy took the cup with a smile.

"Thank you, lover," she said.

"Welcome," I replied as I filled the rest of the cups and passed one to Nadil and Jasmine. I took the fourth cup. I went and sat down in a chair by the dining room table.

My coffee went flying!

I landed on my butt in the dust of the chair, as it collapsed underneath me.

"What the hell?" I asked.

The three girls were standing there laughing as they looked at me.

Nadil wiped her eyes and blurted out, "Everything is so old that it has become fragile. Don't sit on any of the furniture until we can check it," she said.

"Now you tell me," I replied as I looked into my empty cup.

The girls went to the chambers and sat on the gelled mattresses of their beds, sipping their coffee. They looked over at me and snickered, as I rolled to my knees and stood up. Going back to the replicator, I refilled my cup, and leaned against the wall.

"Do you trust that wall enough to lean on it?" Nancy asked.

I jumped away from the wall, and looked at it. Then I looked back at the girls as they started laughing.

"Not funny, ladies. Not funny at all!" I snapped as I set my cup down and went into the shower. I stopped at the replicator and ordered a new towel, soap and clothes. The shower came on. I was scrubbing fifty million years of grime off when the girls stepped in with me.

"Hey, lover, want some company?" Nancy asked.

"Sure, beautiful," I said as I pulled her into my arms.

I started kissing her chocolate skin along the right side of her neck. She sighed as my hands ran across her belly and down to her vagina where I froze.

"Nancy the baby? Is it ok?" I asked.

"Since she is kicking, I will say yes. Now don't stop what you were doing. I want to get home and have our..." Nancy cried out and I felt a warm liquid squirt out of her. "It's time! Oh, no! Not now!" she gasped out as she bent over.

Nadil pulled Nancy out of the shower, gently. Jasmine and I followed them out the door, and into the main cabin.

"Computer, medical transport chair to the Captain's cabin. I need the medical room sterilized for an emergency birth," Nadil said as they went towards the main doors and stopped at the beds as Nancy grabbed one of the stasis beds.

"Medical chair dispatched, thirty seconds until arrival. Medical is already prepared," the AI reported as the doors opened and Nadil ran out.

"Follow the chair!" she shouted just before the doors closed.

I knelt by Nancy as she held onto bed. Her right hand came down and clutched my shoulder as she cried out in pain.

Hearing a noise, I looked up as the doors opened and a chair floated into the room. We helped Nancy into the chair, and followed her out the door. Jasmine and I followed Nancy to the elevator and slipped inside as the doors closed. We shot down into the ship and came to a stop on a new deck.

The doors slid opened and the chair shot out of the room as Nancy screamed, "YOU'RE DEAD, WILLIAM!"

"Sorry," I said as I caught up to her and she grabbed my hand.

"I'll show you 'sorry', when I make yo..." she screamed again, took a deep breath and continued, "When I make you squeeze a watermelon out of your prick! Hurry the fuck up, and get me there!"

I gulped as the chair took off like a bat out of hell down the corridor, ripping my hand from hers. It reached the end, and went through a pair of doors that opened in front of it. I took off running after her. The doors opened again, when we reached them. Nadil was helping Nancy onto another bed. As she lay back, a force field came on, covering her lower body. Beside the bed was a tray stand, and several stools.

"Is everything ok?" I asked.

"Yes. Jasmine, you and William get in a gown," Nadil said as she shoved her hands and arms into two holes in the wall.

She pulled her arms out, and I could see a bluish tint to them as she went to the bed and started checking Nancy. Jasmine went into another room. I followed her. She stood on a silver pad, and a mist had formed around her. When it dissipated, she was wearing a gown just like Nadil's. She walked past me, and I stepped up onto the pad.

A tingling sensation spread across my body as the mist covered me up to and over my head. When it dissipated, I was wearing a surgical gown like Nadil and Nancy's, including the breathing mask.

Stepping off the platform, I walked back into the other room. They had Nancy's legs up in the air and covered with a sheet. Nadil was sitting between her legs and looking under the sheet.

"William, put your hands and arms into the sanitizer," Jasmine said as she placed a tray of surgical tools next to Nadil.

"Thank you, Jasmine," Nadil said as she reached onto the tray.

I did as I was told and felt another tingling process sensation as a mist was sprayed on my arms. When I pulled them out, they were glowing bluely, as Nadil's and Jasmine's were. Turning, I saw Nadil pick one of their injectors and take it under the sheet.

Going over, I asked, "What can I do?"