Another Crashed Car

[Nick Ryder]

"He got Ajem'dasis tush, that distracted him. I guess we do have one thing in common, strong blonde women distract us." Nick replied with a wink. "So weird... look at that. There should be a Starbase around there. Just a marker. Sol System in about five minutes. Gotta say, sub space at transwarp is so much smoother in this era, it's not so screwed up." he glanced at Gale playing with Froggie. "How many of those did we pack?"

[Alice Ryder]

“I think there are two Rommie said.” Alice replied glancing back at Gale.

[Nick Ryder]

"I'll have to make some more. As well as some of our flame resistant coatings." Nick said to make a mental note. "It's going to feel very good to be back on Earth. As much as we had made Terra Alpha home, it still felt like... there was a part of me that wanted to go back here, but knew I couldn't. I mean, it broke my heart how bad the Imperium trashed things when we were last here. Even Washington DC is not what I remembered it looking like, or San Francisco. Not that I enjoyed Cali that much, Starfleet HQ always gave me a weird feeling in my stomach, guess it was from being basically a prisoner in Starfleet Medical HQ after I was enhanced, having to prove I wasn't a threat. I wasn't the next Khan Singh." he chuckled. "Gee... and now he's my brother in law."

[Alice Ryder]

"Oh how Starfleet would have gone mental over that." Alice laughed. "Wow and Selene was your...niece? Which would make Bella your Great Niece. I don't think she thought about that. Other wise she would have been calling you Uncle Nick all the time just to drive you mad. Oh and Kaitlyn...we should be more involved with Clint and Kaitlyn whenever we go back."

[Nick Ryder]

"I already have a scholarship for her." Nick said casually as he dropped the shuttle out of warp once they reached the Sol System. "Ah, home sweet home... Mars over there." he pointed out the window. "I may need to make a trip there at some point to leave something to mess with the ASDB guys. Some early astronauts left a bunch of 'fake' relics randomly hidden in places, which we'd find when we were building a new yard or when we tore down an old building. Always felt bad that a couple of my buddies never found any of them personally. Found a fake skeleton of a fake alien holding a bong. Tony kept it. Julie wouldn't let me keep 'Bongo the Alien' in my garage."

Approaching Earth, they took a route which avoided Starbase 1. "Wow... never saw the original SB1 before... "

[Alice Ryder]

"It does look nice with Earth as it's back drop." Alice said with a smile.

[Nick Ryder]

Nick tapped a couple of buttons and saved an image of it to a padd. "That's entirely my new desktop wallpaper." he mused. "Alice my dear... we're home." he kissed her on the cheek and sighed. "Now let's find somewhere to eat... " he sped up and broke through the atmosphere. "Oh and we can use our real names, my family didn't use the Ryder name for another hundred years or so. I do feel a little bad that I didn't do as much genealogical research on the Huntingtons as I could have, but so many records were destroyed when London was trashed."

[Alice Ryder]

"Well considering my father wasn't from this reality I'm not sure it matters." Alice said with a shrug. "There may be no relations here at all. We never had family gatherings so he must not have assumed anyone's identity."

[Nick Ryder]

"Or they never wanted to have anything to do with him and vice versa." Nick said with a wince. "The Lei's and the Sasyaki's were like that, Anjali's mother's side of her family wanted nothing to do with her side of the family. Even the Ryders and the Czeski's were like that, there's some Czeski's that were the 'black sheep' of the family. Which happened way back in the mid 20th Century too, even changed the family name. So who knows. In any case, we research a bit more into Huntington, maybe we can use that as well." he chuckled. "Y'know what's funny I just realized this, this is the first time we've been on Earth since we've been married. We were still just engaged, even though we were living together and you were basically the first lady."

[Alice Ryder]

"True." Alice replied. "I did enjoy reading the 'will they won't they' articles. They were hilarious."