Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 36

Mark tried the same door and it opened for him. After a quick look inside, the place looked operational, so he asked if everyone was OK with burgers.

The mention of food caused everyone's stomachs to growl. So Mark opened up the burger shack's concession window and turned on the barbecue. He got a bunch of burgers and cheese slices from the food synth and began grilling burgers, as everyone got dressed and sat at one of the nearby picnic tables with an umbrella in the middle.

Once the burgers were on the grill, Mark also got dressed, so he didn't risk getting hot grease splattered on sensitive areas of his naked body.

As the burgers were just about done, Annabelle distributed paper cups and buns on paper plates to everyone, as they then used the exterior accessible drink and condiment dispensers to prepare their buns. Mark then distributed the cheeseburgers to everyone, fixed his own, then turned everything off and sat down to eat.

Once they finished their meal, the put all the refuse into the nearby recycling bin, that's when they noticed there was a donation terminal on the side of the concession window. So they each donated a credit for their burgers. Whoever was going to run the shack would have credits right from the start.

Mark went back inside to clean up the grill, only to find it had a handy reset button on the side. He pressed it and the grill returned to its previous clean state.

They then boarded the shuttle and went back to the Poseidon. Gaderius, the young man he was, said he was still hungry on the trip back, so Solara suggested he could eat her when they got back. That seemed to quell his hunger as he sat with a grin on his face the rest of the way.

On the morning of the 7^th day, Mark awoke and wormed his way out of bed from between 3 women, Ra'ki had become a frequent guest with their nighttime frolicking.

Today was the big day, it was moving day for the Rifters. They would finally have their own permanent settlement on a planet.

As he sat down at his desk with his coffee about to go through the daily reports, Cricket said, "I've lost the Cleito!"

The Sentinel wasn't to reach the nebula for another day, the Cleito had just been floating there. Mark pulled up the Cleito's history and it appeared as though the damaged ship may have drifted into the nebula itself.

It wasn't a large nebula, but over 100,000 cubic kilometres, it would be like finding a big needle in a very big haystack... blindfolded!

"Nebula's are just gaseous right, no real substance?"

"That is the theory."

"If they're just gas, why can't we communicate in them?"

"That is unknown. They just seem to block all communication signals."

"So we need to find another way to communicate. I wonder if sonar would work?"

"I'll do some research and try to design a sonar system for the Sentinel, it should be doing a comm-stop in a few hours. So if I can get it designed, it should be operational by the time it reaches the nebula. We know the exact point it went into the nebula and we have nearly a week of drift data to predict its speed. So I should be able to make a fairly accurate guess as to their position."

"Let me know the second you find them!"

"Will do! By the way, the Rifters just dropped out of FTL and will reach the orbital hub in a few minutes."

"Perfect! I guess I should probably wake the girls so we can meet them there, rather than Orbital Hub, which is more of the function, we should start calling them like the people are calling them, with common names like Thulark Station and either space station or spaceport."

Foregoing his daily reports, Mark grabbed his coffee and went downstairs to the common area. Everyone was just in the process of getting their morning go-go-juices, as Mark announced, "The Rifters just reached Thulark Station, they'll be arriving soon! Who all is going to Rifterville with me today?"

Pretty much everybody said, "Me!", as they picked up their pace a bit to catch up to Mark and Maren who were already walking out the door and heading to the shuttle. Within a few minutes they were flying across the landscape headed toward Rifterville.

Maren could see the shuttle busses from the space station headed toward Rifterville, so she increased their speed so they would beat them to the outreach centre. She dropped them off on the boardwalk to leave the landing space for the larger shuttle busses and then returned to the Poseidon, since she wasn't much for crowds.

The outreach centre was in the very centre of the city, built just off the boardwalk for easy access to everyone coming to and leaving the city. Within seconds of her leaving, the shuttle busses began landing and, it didn't take but a minute or two before people had made their way through the outreach centre and out onto the boardwalk.

The Rifters didn't have much in the way of possessions, so they were packing 50 people to a shuttle bus and those busses were going to be very busy today. There were 50 shuttle busses on the Orbital Hub, but even then, each bus would be making 120 trips to Rifterville today. Packing 300,000 people onto a single ship just wasn't something that was ever planned for at the spaceport. It was just lucky enough that the Sentinel could move up along side and people could walk straight out the landing bay..

As everyone exited the outreach centre, they all had tears in their eyes... tears of joy... they were finally free and about to start new lives, like they had only ever seen in movies or read about in books.

Mark and the group were sitting on some benches beside the boardwalk, just watching all the happy people as they exited the outreach centre and started walking in the direction of their new homes.

Liyana had setup and was interviewing Rifters for AFNN, they'd have that footage edited and being broadcast across the Federation in no time.

The Rifter leaders were among the first people to walk out onto the boardwalk, upon seeing Mark and Annabelle they immediately came over to thank them for all that they had done for their people, and for the wonderful opportunity to create their own settlement. A settlement far better than anything they had ever thought they would have.

When they asked about the status of Commander Northrop and the Cleito, Mark told them, "The Cleito has drifted into the nebula and we have lost their signal. A Sentinel would be reaching the nebula tomorrow and would begin searching for them."

They all expressed their condolences and wished them the best of luck with finding the Cleito.

Of course, Liyana managed to get interviews from all the leaders right off the start, then there was a constant parade of Rifters arriving throughout the day and, as expected, travellers from other cities and towns started showing up when they saw a new destination on the transit system.

Despite the wide variety of species coming into Rifterville, everyone was cordial and welcoming. Mayor Portman, as he was enjoying being called since he won the election, again thanked Mark for the suggestion of settling on Thulark.

It only took a few hours to recover the Cleito from the nebula, the sonar system worked like a charm. The Battlestar was pulled out of the nebula and then brought into the Sentinel's mobile shipyard to be repaired. Originally they were going to return the Cleito to Atlanterra, but since most of the crew was on Thulark, they decided to bring the Cleito to Thulark.

The new plan was to return Hawker to Silica, but by heading to Thulark first, both men had roughly a month, to worry about being punished by the very planet they had nearly destroyed.

Over the next week, Rifterville began to define its identity. A relaxed, beach city that focussed on fun and freedom with beach parties and live music all along the boardwalk and beaches. It was like a constant spring break party, definitely a must-see tourist attraction across the Federation. They had started to receive tourism from around the planet and everyone just accepted them for all the different species they were.

Seeing them so readily accepted, made Mark and the group very happy. Annabelle suggested having a big grand opening party to celebrate their first month in their new home. Coincidently, the grand opening party would match Thulark's spring equinox so, while not one of the official big week long solstice celebrations, Thulark would have a significant date for their grand opening, just like Atlantis, and by having it scheduled that far in advance, it would give ample time for people from many surrounding planets to come visit if they wanted.

Within days of announcing the grand opening party, all the hotels saw a spike in the number of reservations and many were soon booked solid. Seeing an opportunity, they built several more hotels and even opted for some larger resort type facilities similar to the kind found in Las Vegas.

The grand opening beach bash, was a smashing success, with every hotel filled to capacity, mostly from off-world tourists, but quite a few from around Thulark as well and, on the day of the celebration, tens of thousands more from surrounding communities showed up to support their new neighbours.

After a long day of partying, Mark and the group returned to their quarters on the Poseidon to sleep in peace and quiet, but since Mark had skipped his daily reports that day, he thought he would check them over before heading to bed.

One item on the report caught his attention, 'Rift Nebula #5' had been identified and located just beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Sleep did not come easy that night... there was still at least two Destructors out there!