Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 43

Since it was late afternoon and the sun was still high, they figured they might as well get it over with and walked outside to the waiting reporters.

Mark pointed at the first reporter that raised their hand, "So it's true! The Federation is fuelling separatist movements and encouraging revolution?"

Mark laughed, "Revolution usually revolves around violence. We do not promote violence, but if fuelling separation is what they call it to give people freedom of choice, then so be it. All I can say is, 'If governments are doing such a magnificent job, then why would their citizens vote to separate?'"

The next reporter asked, "Rumour has it that, before you became Atlantean and lived in Alberta, you were a supporter of the separatist movement."

"Yes, I was curious about the movement because the government system in Canada doesn't work, unless you live in Ontario or Quebec! The rest of Canada is just the workhorses and money makers that make all the failing social and economic policies in other provinces work. So for western separation, yes I will say that I support it!"

His admission of supporting the separatist movement wasn't something they expected, and it flummoxed them for a bit, until another reporter raised his hand, "So what is your political platform for the separatist movements?"

Mark laughed, "I have none, it's not my political party, and it does not involve us. For everyone's information, the meeting today was an educational seminar more so than a meeting. All the information we discussed is all online in our library for anyone who wants it. We simply went over the various steps that happen when a new region, or an entire planet, joins the Federation. Contrary to what people might think, we don't instantly change everything, there is a transition period.

They will form their own political platform, but they need to know the transition process, and they will need to study our laws and culture. They will spend a LOT of time going through the information in our library, which is all online for everyone to view. It is their responsibility to make sure they don't make promises the Federation can't keep. That is all!"

"So you aren't really helping them with their political campaign?"

"Not a bit!"

Another reporter then asked, "I've also heard that you and the queen have moved out of the palace? Is that true?"

"Yes, it is. I originally didn't want to live in a palace, it was more or less a residence of convenience while Atlantis was establishing itself. We now have a baby on the way and we want to raise the child in a community. Not in a palace where we get hounded by reporters every time we come out in public. The Queen and I built our own ranch out in the country to raise our children."

A snooty reporter mumbled an aside comment, "and how much did that cost taxpayers?"

Mark called him on it, "Our ranch cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing! Unlike most governments, I don't make any income in this position, none of us do! I still own companies and I make money through them. The only perk that comes form having royal blood is that I have free access to all the technology, but none of that costs the Federation a single credit. The only cost to the Federation for royalty is the security staff of the Defender that are always in orbit or on the surface with me. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we take public transit and eat at the meal pavilions. Any extracurricular activities we do, we pay for out of our own pockets."

After that statement and seeing the one reporter cut down, Mark excused themselves as he and Liyana proceeded to the transit stop and called for lift home.

Knowing they were in a private lift, since going HOME costs nothing if you do not live in a municipality, so it was essentially a free private lift, Liyana was horny, as always whenever she got to play politics. Within a minute of lifting off, they were both naked and Liyana was on all fours on the floor of the lift as Mark was on his knees behind her and fucking her relentlessly.

The fast and furious fuck soon had them both in the throes of orgasm as Mark was pumping his cum deep into his advisor and Liyana actually squirted all over the place! It's a good thing the lifts reset themselves between each trip!

By the time they had gotten cleaned up a bit and dressed, the lift was already south of Mount Cleito and in the valley between the two national parks.

A few minutes later, they were touching down at the ranch.

The meeting had been long and boring. Fortunately Laruun and Marta had pulled a recipe for a steak sandwich off the network and made everyone a steak sandwich on garlic bread and topped with mushrooms and then fries and gravy with some coleslaw. It was delicious!

After the meal, everyone relaxed and just looked out over the calm water and setting sun. Once the sun had gone down, everyone stripped off and relaxed in the hot tub. There weren't any sexual overtures, everyone was glad just to relax until bedtime.

***

The next few days and weeks saw many developments on the lake as estates, condos and hotels constructed, as had a few golf courses, an amusement park, two water slide parks, jet ski and board rentals and even a houseboat rental company. The enormous amusement park actually had its own island, which immediately made Mark think of Coney Island, except this was a true island and was entirely an amusement park! They named the park, 'Carnival Island', after pulling the permit as 'Midway Island', but a quick search revealed the famous island in the Pacific, so they renamed it.

Each morning Mark would check his daily reports and then read any news about the impending asteroid. Several news sources mentioned that a coalition of governments had resurrected two passenger space plane prototypes abandoned after Atlantis moved back to Earth and were doing some upgrades to them before sending them out to destroy the asteroid. There were also widespread rumours that the Federation would step in and save them, if the coalition failed.

As launch day approached, they had estimated the asteroid would strike in three days' time, 3.5 kilometres off the Wenzhou, China coast at 21:13 local time or just after noon Atlantis time.

Just like the movies, to gain speed they were going to try this slingshot manoeuvre around the moon to come up behind it.

The news articles didn't say if they were going to land on it, drill a hole and plant a bomb, they just said they were going to destroy it and they scheduled it to launch from the United States this afternoon.

As it neared launch time, they tuned almost every channel around the world to the launch. Even on Atlantis, most people had stopped what they were doing to watch the launch.

Just like in the movies, they launched two ships, just in case something happened to one of them. Fortunately, nothing happened, and the launches were both successful.

Shortly after the successful launches, they were watching a video from the ISS as the ships were refueling. Just as it appeared something was going wrong, Cricket notified Mark that he was receiving a phone call.

Apparently something was wrong with their refuelling system and they were asking for help from the Federation. They needed them to deliver some parts up to the ISS for them.

Within minutes, they were en route to the launch facility in the US to pickup the parts.

They landed near the entrance. The security guard picked up his radio and talked into it, then told them to wait there.

Mark waited in the back of the shuttle with the ramp down, and after a couple of minutes, a man came out with a box of parts and walked up the ramp to hand the box to Mark.

He then looked around the shuttle and asked how they were going to deliver the parts since the ship didn't appear to have an airlock. Mark tried to explain how the force field worked, and that all shuttles had an emergency space suit, but eventually the guy just said they had to get going.

Soon they were racing through the sky and into space. During the flight, Mark got dressed in the emergency space suit and got the helmet connected.

As they neared the ISS, they could see the crew members watching out the windows. One of them was videoing everything, likely streamed to the surface and what people were watching on TV.

Maren lowered the ramp and backed the shuttle up as close to the airlock as possible. Close enough that Mark could step off the end of the ramp and into the ISS.

The air lock hatch closed behind him, there was a hiss of air and the hatch in front of him opened. Mark handed the astronaut the box of parts, shook his hand, and then they closed the hatch. There was another sound, which was likely them sucking the air out of the airlock, and then the outer airlock hatch opened and he walked back onto the shuttle's lowered ramp.

Maren then closed the ramp, as Mark changed back into normal clothes and she moved the shuttle to a safe vantage point to watch the refuelling process. Cricket had also tied into the broadcast and had it showing on the shuttle dashboard.

Soon the refuelling finished, and the ships floated away from the ISS and then used their thrusters to position their ships and then hit the main thrusters to get them moving along their route.

Mark and Maren followed along with the ships until it drove them crazy as the ships were so slow. No wonder they had to leave 3 days before the asteroid arrived!

To make the trip more productive, they agreed to visit the moon factory as they pushed the throttle forward and left the two lumbering ships behind, like they were standing still.

Minutes later they were cruising along the surface of the moon toward the moon factory.

They had since removed the security from the moon factory as they had security drones and they monitored the factory from Atlantis, anyway. Staff frequently visited it, but no one stayed there anymore.

Upon landing at the factory, they wandered inside and jumped around the park in the reduced gravity. They could see most of the fabricators were in use by all the blue lights on the wall.

They stopped by the central fountain, gave each other a look, then stripped off their clothes. Fully naked, they both backed up a bit on the path. Maren took a couple of running steps, jumped high in the air, and rotated almost 6 full times before belly flopping in the water, although in the reduced gravity the belly flop was kind of slow motion and not painful.

Mark, wanting to outdo the bunny, took another step back then took a few running steps and jumped high in the air, but to make his rotations faster he curled himself up into a tight tuck position. Unfortunately, in that position he lost count of his rotations as he straightened out only to realize he had actually cleared the entire fountain.

Maren was laughing hysterically as Mark landed ass first on the lawn on the other side of the pond. Embarrassed, Mark simply brushed himself off and then simply did a dive into the water from about 3 metres away. Maren was still laughing until Mark grabbed her from beneath the surface and pulled her under.

Swimming in the reduced gravity was much the same as in normal gravity as they frolicked in the shallow water, which was only about 1.5 metres deep.

Eventually they pulled themselves up onto the grassy shore and Mark's cock found its way deep inside Maren's pussy. It didn't take long for the bunny girl to achieve her first orgasm, but as she reached her second, Mark reached his, as he flooded her pussy with his hot cum.

After a few more blissful moments of passionate kisses, they eventually separated as a splurge of cum poured out of the bunny's tight pussy.

Grabbing their clothes, they bounced back to the residence, had a shower and then made some vegetable soup in the kitchen. Besides raw vegetables, soup was the one quick thing you make with the food synths, just like the cans you buy in a store, the soup was already in a pot you just needed to heat it up. Most restaurants opted to make their soups from scratch using their own recipes, but you didn't have to if you didn't want to.

Once the soup was ready, they sat on the couch in front of the fireplace to eat, looking out across the moon's surface.

As they finished their impromptu lunch, they got dressed and returned to the shuttle.

As they left the moon, it didn't take them very long to find the two lumbering space ships, they just seemed to go so slow! After waving to the astronauts in the window, they resumed their flight back to Atlantis.

Back at the ranch, everyone was hanging out on the dock, as they asked what took so long since they had seen a video of them delivering the parts to the ISS. Mark just said that they visited the moon factory to see how things were going. If it wasn't for Maren breaking out in laughter, the group would never have known that, in his attempt to show off, Mark had over jumped the pond and landed on his ass on the other side of the pond. Everyone laughed at Mark's expense as Mark pushed Maren off the dock and into the lake.

The next couple of days seemed to pass so slowly as everyone waited with bated breath to see if the mission was going to destroy the asteroid and save the planet.

Finally, the time came for the ships to fire their thrusters, slingshot around the moon, and come up behind the asteroid.

Mark could see why the coming at it from behind was necessary as the asteroid was travelling so fast and for lesser ships they didn't have the speed and maneuverability to intercept head-on.

Rayven was the one that cracked the joke that sneaking up on the asteroid from behind and scaring it would not make it jump off course.

Everyone laughed at the thought, but then resumed watching the broadcast.

Adam, of course, had deployed a couple of fighters and they were shadowing the two spaceships as they approached the asteroid and recording the video. They could see the ships taking damage from the debris trailing the asteroid, but the ships seemed to cope OK.

As they got close to the surface, both ships shot these drill devices that seemed to auto-drill themselves into the asteroid, as the ships dropped back and out of the asteroid's debris field.

As expected, they must've had nuclear payloads as a massive explosion occurred within a few minutes and the asteroid broke into multiple pieces, some of them still half a football field in size.

Unfortunately, the detonation didn't have the desired effect as the trajectory didn't change at all. All they had done was turn it from one enormous chunk into several smaller pieces with a much wider impact zone. Now expected to hit many locations all over that region of the Pacific and far more land impacts in southeast Asia.

The broadcast at that point was from inside mission control, where the mission leader admitted that they had failed and pleaded for the Federation to please step in and save them.

Cricket had already deployed thousands of drones from the Sentinel and, as soon as Mark heard them publicly announce their failure, he told Cricket to destroy all the chunks.

Within seconds, the broadcast from inside mission control now showed people celebrating and saying that the Federation heard them and had saved them.

A few of the smaller chunks still made it to the atmosphere, and people could see them streaking across the sky. Fortunately, none of them made it to the surface.

Mark and Liyana met in his office to make a video.

'People of Earth, upon the admission of failure and the request that we intervene, we have destroyed the asteroid. The Federation is about peace, prosperity and protection... we had no intention of ever letting the asteroid impact the planet, so we already had defences in place, which is how we could act so quickly. We sincerely hoped that the governments of this planet would've been able to work together to handle something this easy. Earth is obviously not capable of protecting itself!'

Cricket soon had the video on the Atlantis website for all the world to see.

END