Disclaimer: Joss, Fox, Universal Own em’. I’m just playing. No money being made. The situations come from my own twisted mind as do my original characters.

-

AN: Wow. Sorry for the huge delay. My muse moved away without leaving a forwarding address, not to mention the fourteen to sixteen hour days I've been pulling at work. Not a lot of time left over for writing.

Again, my apologies

-

Quest-Chapter Eighteen

-

Allan's prediction of being able to get back to Earth by the weekend was a bit over optimistic.

Now that he had the physics figured out, it took weeks to translate a whole wall's worth of mathematical equations into actual hardware that would allow a normal ship to access Hyperspace.

It also took the combined brainpower of four of the smartest people in the 'Verse to figure out how to put it all together.

Thankfully, all four were all in one place. Between River and her daughter, Rachel refining the math and then Allan translating the data into a workable blueprint for he and Kaylee to fabricate parts from, it still took over a month to get Free Bird outfitted and begin fabrication of the necessary parts to outfit Tranquility and later on, Quest.

During that month, many things happened out in the 'real 'Verse'.

Bob Pace and Dan Reed were the toast of Londinium as the representatives from Earth. However, on the political front, the initial ovations from the Alliance government had fallen a bit flat.

What Secretary of State Pace had requested was both a full and open exchange of advanced Alliance technology for additional Flora and Fauna from Earth that hadn't been brought on the Exodus.

Many species had been transported between the systems and many more reintroduced from the genetic stocks recovered from the Kansas, ten years before.

However, there were still some animals and plants that either didn't survive the Exodus or were too troublesome to transport over the vast distances of the Exodus.

For example, the oceans of Belepheron, Londinium and New Me