Chapter 44 A New Home

Using the nanobots, Dustin wrapped Jake into a cocoon.

"I'm going to fly us back to that station now, so don't freak out, okay?"

"Alright, but we are going to have a serious talk when we get there!" she growled, as he sent the nanobots to surround her as well.

There were more than enough nanobots to reform the ship, in fact, there were too many! Flying them outside the hanger, he decided they could afford a much larger, more protected ship on the return trip.

As they left the atmosphere, and approached the ship with Granny and the others, he noticed that the fighting was intense. The mothership was surrounded by the Scuzan, who were destroying the nanobot ships as fast as they could be released.

Electrical discharges were flying through the debris cloud around the planet below them as they flew into the airlock of the ship.

"Dustin, we have a problem," said Granny in his ear as he landed with Jake and Olivia. Jake wasn't looking good. The movement was taking its toll, and his skin was starting to turn blue.

"A little busy right now, Granny," he said, through gritted teeth as he guided the nanobots towards the medical bay.

"Who's Granny?" gasped Olivia, holding her belly and wincing.

"Are you okay?" Dustin asked, sparing a glance her way as they rushed down the hall. She was making all sorts of weird noises and her belly was huge! Surely, she wasn't…

"Aaaggggh!" Her growl turned into a cry as she leaned against the wall.

Dustin was torn between getting Jake to the medical bot, and waiting for her to catch up. Then with a shake of his head at his momentary stupidity, he picked her up with nanobots, too.

Barging into the medical bay, he lay Jake down and initiated the medical bot to start emergency response procedures. Then he lay Olivia down as all sorts of colorful words spilled out of her mouth. He had only been gone a month! How the hell was she already in labor?

"Dustin! The A'Dfukl are preparing to shoot us!" cried Granny in his ear.

"Fly down into the debris cloud to avoid them!" he said, as he typed into the medical bot's console. Olivia was in active labor, according to the scans, so it jumped into making her as comfortable as it could while the baby was delivered.

Several screams later, a baby boy took up the screams, but Dustin barely glanced that way, as he fought to keep Jake alive. If the solar interference wasn't so bad, the PED could have fixed him by now, but his PED informed him that the radiation was multiples worse than it was when they left before.

"Granny, get ready to jump if you need to!" he said as he directed the medical bot to drain blood away from Jake's lungs.

"No, Dustin, I like that planet!" cried Olivia.

"What?" he said, glancing at her, as she held their son in her arms. The sight almost took his breath away.

"Is there anyway we can save it?" She was being impractical, not to mention suicidal, in the current situation.

"I don't need to jump, Dustin, the Scuzan just suicided themselves against the side of the A'Dfukl mothership. I'm pretty sure they're all dead."

Dustin closed his eyes as he was bombarded with too much information. The robot clicked to let him know it was done with the orders he had given it, and he turned to check on Jake's progress.

All of his ribs were broken, with several having punctured his lungs. He was drowning. How the kid had survived to this moment was lost on him, but he had. Even now he was fighting to breath and his color was a little better.

"Granny, is there anyway we could save this planet?" he asked, meeting Olivia's eyes. She smiled at him, and he couldn't help but smile back.

"The only way you are going to save this planet, is by moving it to another solar system," came her dry response. "This sun is about to toast us and everything on the planet below."

Chewing on his lip, he glanced around the room, pausing on the nanobots that were waiting for further orders.

"What about a jump gate?" he said.

"What?" asked Granny, incredulously. Her voice gaining several octaves in disbelief.

Jake was as stable as he could make him, so he patted Olivia on the shoulder as the robot finished cleaning her up, and headed to the deck.

"I have enough nanobots floating around, if I collect them all, and have them create more from all of the debris around the planet, there may be enough we can form a jump ring. We make it right in front of the planet, so that it flies right through it and right into the new solar system."

"And which solar system would that be?" she asked, as he entered the room. It was clear from her face that she thought he had lost it.

His mind was racing as he took his seat and started typing furiously.

"The solar system that had that awesome asteroid belt. There was nothing alive there, so no one would ever think to search it for us."

"Do you have any idea how hard the math for that would be?" she asked, shaking her head. "It took the Quog three decades to do the math for just one jump gate. How the hell are you going to do the math for one big enough for a planet, that far away, in the next two or three days?"

"I don't have to," he said with a grin. Outside, they watched as his nanobots started to pool together into one massive cloud, that descended on the debris around them. Left behind was a central mass that was made up of what he was going to call thinker bots. They were a combination of alpha bots and storage bots, and around them were shield bots to protect from the solar radiation.

"I don't know about this, Dustin. How are you going to fuel it?"

"From that," he said, pointing at a large gas giant as it swung slowly into view.

"That thing is massive, and we don't have the mining equipment, much less the refining equipment for all of that."

"I've got this," he said with a grin.