Among Stars

Just Before

"Captain Melcey," Quera announced, and Naina lifted her eyelids ever so slightly. "We are now within one light-year of your set destination. Fuel reserves are at 24783 light-years with FTL, and 15 to 20 hyperjumps, depending on distance and current conditions," she continued.

Naina opened both of her eyes and stood up. She stretched and made a sound that some would have called a yawn, but Naina would never admit it. She wasn't tired at all.

"How about our little M-Tech converter?" Naina asked.

"Working at 100% capacity and showing no signs of deterioration, Captain Melcey," Quera answered.

Naina smiled and nodded slightly. The weird seller at Boarhead wasn't a swindler, and the part was good. She walked to Engineering and sat down on the floor, pulling the weird screwdriver from her pocket.

"Okay. Quera, bring us to a standstill and power down the hyperspace circuitry. All of it. I'm going to try something that is potentially very stupid," Naina said and grinned widely.

"I would not advice tampering with the hyperdrive in the middle of nowhere, Captain Melcey," Quera said impassively. "We are 200 light-years from anything else, except a non-functioning abandoned platform in the middle of an unknown sub-space bubble," she continued.

"I know!" Naina said happily, grinned, and started removing panels from the floor.

"Captain Melcey," Quera said, "If I had emotions, I would have sighed right now," she continued flatly.

"For a disembodied AI without emotions, you are surprisingly snarky, Quera," Naina said and continued unscrewing panels.

"You're welcome, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

Naina rolled her eyes, lifted the first panel off, and placed it next to her. She scrunched her nose and picked a weird tool from the resulting opening. She turned it in her hands, shrugged, and then placed it beside her, and proceeded to remove the next panel.

After a few minutes, all six panels had been removed, several random things lay scattered around the floor. There were a bunch of wires coming from the opening in the floor, and Naina was intently poking a box where the wires were going with her screwdriver.

After a couple of grunts and turns of the tool, the box opened, and Naina smiled widely. She removed what looked like expansion cards from the box, very carefully placed them on her other hand, and placed the box on the floor. She got up and walked to the room where she slept. Turning on a computer-like device on the table, and slotting the expansion cards to receptacles on the side, she smiled and sat down when the computer made a satisfied beep.

"Okay, let's see..." she muttered under her breath. "Quera, start the scanner and point it at the sub-space bubble, turn on dynamic modulation and keep the polarity synced with the bubble," she continued and started typing.

"Ok, Captain Melcey," Quera said, and many mechanical noises started to sound at the same time, and dozens of displays sprung to life in the cockpit. In Naina's room, a wall-wide panel turned on and divided into dozen or so sections and charts, texts and images started scrolling across the sections.

Naina glanced at the screen, scratched her left ear and nodded approvingly. She continued typing and occasionally glanced at the wall. After a couple of minutes, she grabbed a data tablet from the pile, started it up, and begun to compare the screen to the panel on the wall.

"Quera, feed this to the primary circuit, and make a backup on the ship," Naina said. "The calculate the coefficient of the bubble, and modulate it with the data we gathered from the bubble at ZX-15," she said and watched the wall intensively.

Numbers changed, and charts moved slightly. A few lines started to overlap and turn green. Naina smiled. She turned back towards the computer, opened a new window, and started typing again.

"Quera, feed the coefficient to the secondary circuit, and modify for our drive. Leave a point seven marginal for fluctuations, and raise the power limit to 150%," Naina said, looked at nothing for a few seconds, and then added "oh, and keep the polarity synced with the bubble. We have to keep it synced at all times, so you'll have to do that on the fly when we're moving."

"Acknowledged, Captain Melcey," Quera said, "It is well withing my capabilities, but that means you'll have to fly with the array open?"

Naina nodded. "Yes. And that's well within my capabilities," she said and smiled. Flying with a sensor array open wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but Naina wasn't a bad pilot, on the contrary. She resumed typing, and after a while, the wall panel started showing READY on all panels one by one. Naina glanced at it and hit a button on the computer. After just a second or so, she grabbed the expansion cards from the side and walked back to the hole in the floor.

Sitting back down, she started re-installing them and replacing the panels. It took less time than it took to remove them, and she was left with an assortment of random bits on the floor.

"Quera, any idea when my toolkit fell through the cracks and ended up in the hyperdrive protective coil?" Naina asked as she watched the charred remains on some tools that the random bits were.

"I have no record of that happening. I am deducting, that it must have happened in the ion storm at Ghellic-2 when you had to turn me off and fly the ship manually," Quera answered.

Naina nodded, kicked the broken parts to a corner, and walked to the cockpit. She sat down, pressed a few buttons, and several displays came to life. She watched them carefully and nodded at each one.

"Okay, Quera," she said. "One sub-space tunnel, coming up. I hope you're worth your salt, Dr. Mizuni, and I hope my research is not wrong," she added and closed her eyes. "Otherwise we won't get a light-second in before exploding all over the galaxy in a spectacular show," she said and took a deep breath. "I wish I could record the explosion. The data would be outstanding," she said and hit GO on her control panel.