John smiled at her affectionately and held out his hand, as she came up the ramp to join him at the elevator. They went down to deck 4 and rallied the civilians, who were eager to disembark, eventually heading down in the elevator as one big group. John strode forward to open the airlock into the docking bay and two medical teams escorted by Terran Federation troopers were there to meet them. A balding middle aged man strode up to John.

"Commander Clive Steeran." he said, throwing John a respectful salute.

‘Commander John Blake, but you can call me John." John replied, returning the salute.

“It's nice to meet the man who was instrumental in removing my predecessor!" the new station Commander said enthusiastically. "Oh and call me Clive, by all means!"

He stuck his hand out, which John took and Clive shook it warmly. "You've become a bit of a hero around here John!"

John smiled graciously and glanced over at the medical teams who were speaking to the civilians, most of whom were waving away any medical attention.

“Don't worry about them, my men will take good care of them!" Clive said eagerly.

“Are you staying at Heracles for long?"

“I'm afraid not Clive, we're on our way to Olympus shipyard. We only came here to carry these people to safety." John replied apologetically.

“That's a shame." Clive said, clearly disappointed. "Let me know when you're coming back this way and we'll roll out the welcome mat.” he grinned.

John smiled and nodded.

Sparks saw Geoff Looking back at her with a wistful expression on his face. When he saw her looking at him, he blushed and then waved goodbye shyly. The redhead beamed a big friendly smile at him in return and waved him farewell.

“Safe travels Commander!" Clive bade them farewell, as John and Sparks turned to board the Invictus.

The Terran Federation personnel and the civilians broke into a spontaneous round of applause, cheering as they made their exit from the dock.

“Well I like him!" Sparks said brightly, as she looked up at John.

“He's a massive improvement on the last guy, believe me!" John said emphatically.

"I'm sorry we couldn't stay for a little while. There are lots of aliens who trade at Port Heracles and it would have been interesting for you to see them." he said apologetically.

"That would have been fascinating. Thank you for thinking of me.” Sparks replied, genuinely touched.

“No problem." John said, smiling at her affectionately.

“Don't say anything to Alyssa, but when she first came here, I thought her eyes were going to fall out of her head when she saw some of the alien species!"

Sparks laughed hard as she imagined her friend gawping at bizarre looking aliens.

4It was pretty funny honey* John thought for Alyssa's benefit.

“Come on, Let's go and see the girls, and then check on Jade." he said, eagerly.

They travelled up in the elevator and strode on to the bridge, where Alyssa had already plotted the course to the Olympus shipyard. The green line showing their course travelled through sector after sector and a readout next to the line helpfully informed them that the plotted course would take them just under 4 days to complete. They reached the nav buoy, Alyssa activated their FTL drive and the Invictus leapt forward into hyper warp.

"Just the final stretch now." John said, smiling at the girls.