Keeva finished putting the last of the anti gravity plates in orbit around Mljos Tersa.

Evan’s idea had been to attach a small reactor and some maneuvering thrusters on each plate and put them in orbit, then turn them on just before the field currently surrounding the black hole finished dissipating.

Becky looked at the schematics of the anti gravity plates with a sort of reverence, “So the field this makes doesn’t stop gravity, but weakens it?”

Evan was standing next to her and was pointing at some data on the hologram, “I cannot be certain, but it appears to shunt it somewhere else and one can adjust the field with this device to allow a certain percentage through.”

Becky looked at the data, “How does it do it using only that much power?”

Evan shook his head, “That, I do not know. However, it takes much more energy to activate.”

Becky put her hand on her chin and looked over a nearby set of numbers, “More than the wormhole device at maximum charge tenfold if you count the power usage of all sixty four of them.”

Keeva began refueling the anti gravity plates again, when she noticed several of the Builder’s drones appear next to them and dock, their fuel gages filling not long after, “Huh, looks like the Builder finally decided to help. He’s refueling the anti gravity plates for me.”

Becky looked up, she looked irritated, “About time! Did he let us do all the hard work and only come when things got easy?”

Keeva sighed, “I get the feeling this whole place is a game to him. I mean, he stuck us on a barely working ship in the middle of nowhere, then let some evil spirits destroy something that meant the deaths of thousands…”

Becky crossed her arms and sat on her chair hard, “If I ever meet him, I’m going to slap him, then murder him, then slap him again.”

Evan didn’t look interested and kept looking at the hologram, “Let us focus on the task at hand and not matters that we have no control over.”

Keeva felt just as irritated and angry as Becky looked, “He’s locked himself in his floating house and won’t answer when I try to call him. Heaven knows I want to give him an earful too.”

Becky stood up and turned to leave the room, “I’m going to find Charlotte. Maybe we can use a Gateway to drop in.”

Keeva jumped up from where she sat and put a hand on Becky’s shoulder to stop her, “Um… I’m not sure it’s smart to drop uninvited into a demi god’s house…”

Becky stopped, “He probably knows we’re coming, anyway. He bugged the entire ship!”

Keeva and Anton had gone through and found all the bugs the Builder had shown them, and Anton was checking every other place just in case, “Yeah, probably. But, to be honest, I just want to fix this black hole problem and go back to our universe. Anton’s searching Luna from top to bottom. Even then the Builder will probably always be keeping an eye on us. I mean, he’s got tech that can trap a black hole plus all the other crazy stuff we’ve seen. Heck, he might not even need to hide stuff on Luna.”

Becky relaxed a little, “Alright.” She turned around and headed for her chair, “How long until we need to turn these things on?”

“If the countdown is right, about three and a half hours.”

Becky relaxed a little, “Good. That gives us some breathing room.”

Keeva shook her head, “I’d rather get it over with. The Aos Si have already got all their stuff off Mljos Tersa and we have the plates deployed so…”

Becky stood back up, “I’m going to find Mayu.”

“She’s still in med bay teaching English to Sashae and the fairies.”

Becky smiled, “Wow, I haven’t seen Aoi and that crazy Saki for a while.”

Keeva nodded, “Yeah. They’ve just been hanging out in Niamh’s garden. Saki was pissed I was away from Mikan so much, though. Don’t blame her. Mikan was starving… Aoi said Saki actually tried force feeding Mikan, too.”

Becky cracked a smile, “I can imagine, but not eating for a few days won’t kill your fairy body.”

Keeva shrugged, “It was the dehydration. Mayu got pissed at me when she found out. Apparently Mikan pooped herself too since I wasn’t there to let it out…”

This got a chuckle from Becky, “How’d Saki handle that?”

Keeva giggled, “Aoi said she was flying around in a panic. Wish I was there to see it. ”

Becky nodded in agreement, as she left the mess hall, Keeva following her.

For the next three hours and twenty minutes everyone did their own thing before meeting back in the mess hall, including Niamh.

Keeva activated the anti grav devices, and a few minutes later, exactly when Mljos Tersa’s computer had said, the field containing the black hole failed. 

One second, the broken remains of the Museum of Mythology were there, and the next, the event horizon of a black hole.

Becky cheered as she looked at the image, “They worked! The plates stopped the event horizon from expanding!”

Becky was right, the event horizon stopped right at their constellation of anti gravity plates, “Sweet! Now all we need to do is move the plates towards the singularity and cover them with the shell.”

Charlotte looked relieved and watched the others, “Good job, everyone!”

Keeva began shrinking the constellation of anti gravity plates and moved the metal alloy shell she’d made inwards too.

Anton patted Evan on the back, “Good job, bud! Ya trapped a black hole!”

Evan smiled, “I only did what was necessary.”

Anton turned to Keeva, “Can ya move the black hole? Might make a good weapon to use.”

Becky rolled her eyes, but turned away from Anton, saying nothing, “I’m just glad it’s over.”

Keeva nodded grimly, “Wish we had more time to save everyone.”

Mayu didn’t look away from the hologram, her eyes sad, “We were saving who we could.”

Aoi came into the mess hall, “What’s happening? Everyone sounds happy!”

Keeva turned to Aoi, “We just saved a lot of people.”

Aoi grinned, “Saving people is good!” She turned to Mayu, “Right?”

Mayu turned to Aoi and smiled, “Yes, saving people is good.”

Anton stared at Aoi for a moment, before speaking, “So… ya guys realize we’ve got the last three fairies, right? No more other magic animals, either.”

Keeva had never expected to save any of the animals, and didn’t feel bad about the fairies since it seemed they were controlled remotely by Mljos Tersa’s computer, “Guess we’ll have to get Mayu to clone up a whole new race of fairies, then.”

Mayu didn’t look too opposed to the idea, “There were no boy fairies? That would make making them easier if there are.”

Keeva shook her head, “Not that I saw. They were just cloned over and over again so I guess they didn’t need male fairies.”

Becky seemed happy, “Good. I’m perfectly happy not having any boy fairies.” She looked at Aoi affectionately, “Isn’t that right, you adorable Aoi, you.”

Aoi giggled and rubbed her cheek against Becky’s, “Boys are smelly!” She glanced at Anton, “Don’t need boys!”

Keeva giggled, “You might not, but humans will go away without them.”

Niamh spoke up for the first time as she watched from the side, “As amusing your conversation is, I should report back to the council. I assume you are still planning on heading back to your universe once you finish here?”

Everyone looked at Keeva, “Yeah, but we’ll come back through the Gateway once we make sure there aren’t any Meatballs on Luna and nothing needs our attention, like the Ullians.”

Niamh nodded, “Then it won’t be long.”

Charlotte started fidgeting and raised her hand, “Um…”

Keeva turned her attention to Charlotte, “What’s up?”

Charlotte’s posture shrank as she looked uncomfortable, “When you said every magic animal but the fairies died… um… well…” her fidgeting became worse, “M… Millefuelle has some Gremlins in a cage.”

Keeva remembered her plan with Millefuelle, “Huh… I can think of lots of other magical creatures I’d rather have saved.”

Becky shook her head, “I’ll never understand what goes through those threes heads…”

Niamh looked like she recalled something, “That would explain the noises coming from my daughter’s room.”

Anton looked curious, “Wonder what that loon is gonna do with ‘em.”

Keeva giggled awkwardly, “I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later.”

Niamh thought for a moment, “I will speak with her about it. I do not approve of her smuggling dangerous animals.”

Niamh opened a Gateway and stepped through.

Keeva turned to the others, “Guess we should get ready to leave too.” She turned to the neatly stacked space suits and plasma weapons, “No need to hurry, though.”

This time she was going to be prepared for fighting the Meatballs.

Everybody but Charlotte moved to the table with the suits and weapons, who turned to the still open Gateway, “Umm, I think I’ll go to Niamh’s. I’ll… um… just get in the way.”

Keeva gave Charlotte a reassuring smile, “Alright. See you later.”

Becky waved to Charlotte as she approached the Gateway, “Later!”

Mayu gave Charlotte a smile too, “I will be seeing you in a few minutes.”

Charlotte walked through the Gateway, after which it closed.

Everyone made small talk while they put on their suits, and a few minutes later when everyone was ready, Keeva opened a wormhole to the place between universes.

Becky gulped as the first Meatballs came into view, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that sight.”

Keeva positioned the gatling drones in a sphere around Luna, “We’ve got gatling drones this time, so maybe we can keep them from getting inside.”

Anton patted his plasma cannon, “I want ta shoot at least one!”

Evan pointed to the door, “You can always go outside…”

Luna moved through the wormhole, and it and the drones opened fire on the approaching Meatballs.

Mayu began fidgeting and looking around the room, “This is not taking long, right?”

Keeva shook her head as they approached the ‘bubble’ of their universe, “Nope.” She began looking for the galaxy they’d left in the sea of galaxies using the survey data and found what she thought was the best fit, “But now we have to hope I found the Ullian and Dregasi galaxy.”

Becky raised her hand, “Wait! If we can go back at any point in the universe, let’s go back to the Milkyway. You can control your drones from any distance and we can always go back later.”

Mayu relaxed and turned to Keeva, her eyes full of hope, “I can see Aya and Kazuya again!”

Anton shrugged, “Doesn’t matter to me.”

Evan looked at the others, but his expression showed he didn’t care either way.

Several Meatballs got past Luna’s defenses.

Keeva readied her plasma pistol, “Five got in! Turning off the gravity in three…”

Keeva counted down and turned off the gravity.

Everyone moved away from the floor and they formed a sphere around Keeva to cover every angle and protect her.

Keeva used the Mk. I and II to patrol the outer areas of Luna and managed to take out one Meatball each as they made their way to the mess hall.

Keeva pointed in the directions the Meatballs were coming from, “I killed two. The last three are coming from there, there, and there.”

Everyone raised their weapons.

The Meatballs came in nearly simultaneously. As there wasn’t much room between the group and the floor and ceiling, the two Meatballs coming from there nearly got Becky and Evan with tentacle attacks, before being gunned down. The third came from the side and died before it could get close enough to do anything.

Meanwhile, Keeva was using the survey data and galaxy motion simulations to find the Milkyway and found what she thought was the best fit, “Alright. Here’s hoping I found the Milkyway.”

Becky crossed her fingers, “Here’s hoping!”

Evan didn’t look confident, “I hope your simulations are accurate.”

Anton looked excited, “Maybe we’ll end up somewhere with actual cool aliens. Not robots and Meatballs that want to kill us, or boring alien humans.”

Keeva opened a new wormhole and entered.

No more Meatballs made it in Luna, and none seemed interested in following them through.

Keeva groaned after checking their position and brought up a rough map of the surrounding universe, “Well, no Meatballs followed us through, but probably because we exited nowhere near any galaxies.”

Becky looked over the map, “Hmm…” She brightened, “There they are!” She pointed to a large spiral galaxy, “That’s the Andromeda galaxy!” She pointed to a smaller, but still large compared to the other galaxies in the region, “And there’s the Milkyway.” She pointed to two dwarf galaxies orbiting it, “Those are the large and small Megillanic clouds.” She pointed to an even smaller dwarf galaxy, “And that is…”

Anton groaned, “Alright, we get it… but are we close enough to reach them through a wormhole?”

Keeva wasn’t sure of the distance, “I’ll have to check how far away we are first to make sure.” She highlighted a dwarf galaxy that wasn’t too far away, “But if we can’t we can make a fuel stop here.”

Becky looked at the dwarf galaxy, “That’s… the Tucana dwarf? Hmm… it was… about… three million light years away from the Milkyway?” She pointed to a dwarf galaxy a little closer, “Tucana is still too far away, so if we refuel at the Phoenix dwarf galaxy which is about one point four million light years away, we should be close enough to make it back to the Milky Way.”

Anton hefted his plasma cannon, “Or we go back outside and come back in.”

Becky shook her head frantically, “I’ll pass! All it takes is one Meatball getting through to kill us.”

Anton laughed, “So? We’ll come back after three weeks.”

Becky paused, “Oh… still. Dying hurts and Keeva can’t come back if she dies.” She scratched her cheek, “I also… kinda want to visit them while we’re out here.”

Anton turned to Keeva, his face showing a little bit of embarrassment, “So… uh… Heard back from hunchback or stuffy yet?”

Keeva checked on the communication drone they’d hidden in the Ullian system, “Let me check.” She shook her head in disbelief, “Can’t believe I’m communicating with drones two billion light years away.”

Becky nodded her agreement, “We still don’t know how most of Luna’s tech works.”

Anton put his hands on his hips, and looked proud of himself, “I figured out the tech that Builder jerk hid on Luna to communicate between universes so we can use it too. Probably.”

Becky shrugged, “Wouldn’t surprise me he can do that. He was spying on us from his floating house.”

Keeva got a reply back from the Ullians, “Looks like they’re still testing the virus in simulations and need some more time to work out some issues.” She turned to Sashae, “You okay attacking your old home now?”

Sashae blinked at the sudden attention, “Yes.”

Keeva started making jumps to get distance calculations, “Alright. It’s gonna take a while to get the distances I need to make the trip, so let’s get rid of those Meatballs.”

Keeva switched her attention to the special project she and Anton were working on before the whole black hole thing. A remote drone construction yard, complete with FTL and mining capability in addition to the fabricator specifically designed to make special attack drones.

Anton leaned forward and watched with anticipation, “Still think ten drones are too many. Could probably just do it with one.”

Keeva powered up the drones and checked their systems, “They’re good to go.” She commanded them to cloak, then jump to the breach they’d made, “If we’re gonna do this, I want to be thorough.”

Becky looked a little confused, “When did you two do this?”

Anton laughed, “While you were staring at galaxies Keeva and I were plotting Meatball death!”

Evan raised an eyebrow, “Did you also conceive a plan that will find and eliminate every infested ship that left this system?”

Anton nodded, “Yup! Every one of these attack drones has a hacking tool. If the computer’s still up we can check its logs and see which way any ship left.”

Keeva brought up a map of the system and highlighted every ship she could see at the moment, “Not sure any even left.”

Mayu looked relieved, though still worried, “That would be good.”

Aoi got bored and left the room, “Boring…”

Keeva was kinda relieved Aoi left, but didn’t mention it, “Yeah, I hope I’m right.”

Becky nodded, “I hope so, too.”

Minutes passed and the attack drones finally reached the Dregasi station.

Thanks to the cloaks, all ten of the drones entered without incident.

Inside, there weren’t many Meatballs visible, and it seemed most were on the outer hull or invisible themselves. However, once they reached the command area of the station, there was a sudden increase. Once they reached the computer core, they saw dozens.

Keeva selected a drone at random and readied its hacking tool.

As soon as it connected, the Meatballs began to stir.

One attacked the area near the port the drone had connected to.

Keeva opened fire on the Meatballs nearest to them. She was confident they could kill every one of them in the room, but it wouldn’t be long before thousands more came.

Becky began chewing her fingernails, “Hurry! They’re gonna get swarmed.”

Anton laughed again, “Let them! The more come, the better!”

Keeva grinned, “Yeah, these drones have a present we’ve installed just for this moment.”

Mayu didn’t look away from the feed, a slight smile that grew ever so slightly with every Meatball killed, “Present?”

Keeva did a fist pump, “Got it! Looks like no ships left the system.”

Evan tapped his chin, “Perhaps they don’t know how to read the data?”

Keeva nodded, “I think that’s it. The AI in charge of the station actually gave me the data when it found out what I was doing. Would have taken me a lot longer if I had to crack it. It looks like it’s been fighting the Meatballs this whole time to keep them away from the star charts.”

Becky breathed a sigh of relief, “That’s good.”

Meatball infested ships jumped from nearby areas and dozens more made their way to the drones.

The drones had already killed hundreds of Meatballs with their plasma gatling guns, but were beginning to overheat, “Looks like it’s time!”

Anton cheered.

The feed from the drones cut as Keeva activated the “presents.”

Keeva switched the feed to the probe watching the space station, and moments later, there was a bright flash of light as a massive explosion took out the space station and everything near it.

Mayu looked surprised, then ecstatic, “Bakudan!”

Becky turned to Anton, “Suicide drones?”

Anton put his hands on his hips and laughed, “Loaded with anti-matter bombs!”

Evan’s mouth curled into a grin, “You repurposed the anti-matter synthesizer in the lab.”

Keeva didn’t take her eyes from the now fading explosion, “Yeah. Wasn’t that hard to make the bombs once we scaled it up.”

Anton nodded enthusiastically, “Now I just need to use that anti grav tech in the plates to make black holes into weapons.”

Becky scowled and pointed a finger angrily at Anton, “You better not! You could take out entire systems with something like that!”

Anton pushed Becky’s finger away, “Yeah? Sounds pretty cool. Anyone messes with us, and we drop a black hole into their star.”

Keeva coughed to get everyone’s attention, “Can we not argue?” She turned to Anton, “We’re not making a black hole weapon.”

Anton crossed his arms, “Yeah, fine…”

Becky turned to Keeva after giving Anton some stink eye, “Thanks.”

Keeva activated a set of five normal attack drones, three plasma gatling and two particle beam, “No problem.” She turned back to the map of the system, “Alright! I better get to mopping up the last of the infested ships in the system. After that, it’s back to Earth!” 

Almost done! The computer virus part shouldn't take long, so it'll mostly be a few reunions back on Earth.