The Inner Ring (gxg)

Chapter 39

"Lena, you didn't!" Vanessa cried out.

"He tried to escape, its not my fault." She simply shrugged. "Now are we going to go around lamenting him or can we move on and live our lives?"

"What do we tell the Earth?" Miles asked. "They're expecting a trial."

"They'll be fine. Listen to me, as soon as I saw that video, Brody was a dead man. He was never going to make it back to Earth, I was just hoping to get more support on it. He killed Vanessa's father, and tried to kill both of you, a close friend of mine and the man I love. Why this is an issue I don't know. Did you really want to spend four years on a ship with him as he prepared his insanity plea?"

"She has a point," Pepper admitted. "He confessed in the video, and there is no doubt he planned for that situation. That sled didn't blow up on its own, he had to have taken some explosives from the ship with him."

"I had demo charges packed, he knew where they were," Miles confirmed. "He must have grabbed some before the mission."

"See, premeditated murder, and he didn't care who was in the way. The fucker got what he deserved," Lena said with a shrug. "Now, can we please move on to more pleasant subjects?"

"I'm with Lena on this. When I was on my way here with Miles, I had been tempted for you to send Brody over so I could use the ship's weapons on him. That might have been fun," Pepper grinned. "But now that we have some free time, I'd like to explore this ship. We also should decide what to do with Anton."

"I think we should put my father over in the cargo hold with the alien bodies and just bring him home," Vanessa said sadly.

"I was expecting you to consider a burial at sea, or the space equivalent to it, and drop him down on the planet," suggested Pepper.

"Huh, that is actually a good idea!"

It took a few days, but after discussions with Jason back on Earth about both Brody's 'escape' attempt and the funeral plans for Anton, the go ahead was finally given. Emily and Xavier came over, leaving their ship in orbit, along with an assortment of the items they had found. They brought all the memory sticks, a dozen of the guns, two dozen of the tablets and several of the papers and clothing items. In addition, they brought over all the food, water, medical gear, and spare helmets to replace the broken ones from Miles' and Pepper's suits. They even parked a trio of fully charged sleds in the air lock. With all that equipment, they could remain on board for years. It meant that they didn't have communication with the Earth, but based on the speed of the ship, they could easily be home in under a week if they wanted, so that didn't seem like an issue. Pepper also grabbed the tiny gun and all the toys that Lena had loaned them, since she didn't think that they would be back on that ship any time soon.

Once the ship had no more of the supplies and cargo they needed, they launched it back towards Earth at full throttle. Once the engines burned out, it would take almost five years to get back with the added weight of the three alien ships attached to it. By the time it got close, they would be able to intercept it and board it to bring it in to dock at the PASSpace space station.

In the meantime, the crew had the alien craft to use, and the pilots took great pleasure in trying out the helmets and getting accustomed to flying it. They uniformly praised it and would good naturedly argue over who got to fly it next.

Finally, after one too many arguments, Pepper sidled up to Miles. "Just tell her that there is another one of these, and two smaller ones. I'm not sure if they work because they were floating, but they're worth a shot. Then they can stop arguing!"