Remove ads

Duality

Reader mode
Hiver said:
I stood looking out the window at a workerbee that slowly made its way across my new hull, de-ionizing my hull plating and adding the basic grey base covering. It would be Aanother week or so until I could be installed... I was really looking forward to it.


I really should get a custom paint job this time, just 'ship grey' was getting a bit boring, considering I'd had that color since I first got a ship.

Nothing too garish, maybe a base color of some sort? A nice dark blue or red? I'll check with Rachel in a couple of weeks when her parents' ship arrives in Sol.



Erislia smiled. "We got married on Cait. We would have liked to have you there, but... it was a clan matter. Sorry."

"No... No, it's fine. I understand," I quickly said before I grinned, "Wow... You know both Shran and Rachel is are going to flip right?" For completely different reasons. "So what take you guys to Sol? How was things at Hirrlia?"


"Sorry Ajan, you wont be on the Luna this time either," I said with a grin, "I got a bit of an upgrade." I glanced to the side and out the window.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

First time actually trying to beta something, mostly just tiny grammar corrections.
 
"This is Star. I am assuming direct control."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I really should have seen that coming...

Though I will admit that Star preempting the ship-naming game is surprising. Also like the AI's escape pod system. (Slightly reminded of Gurren Lagann's matryoshka mecha.) That's a good, experience-driven hardware upgrade.
 
I can see the picture fine for what it's worth. Also, it occurs to me that Star could choose to call himself "Fist of the North Star." A bit too violent sounding sadly, but it'd be pretty amusing to me at least.
 
Remove ads
15
  • Threadmarks
    • "...You are kidding?" Rachel asked, staring at me.

    I grinned, shook my head, said; "Nope." and crossed my legs as I leaned back in the couch. I was back in civilian clothes and on board of the Flutterfly in orbit around Earth. The medium freighter reminded me a bit of a flying brick with a couple of nacelles bolted onto the outside.

    My ship self was still in drydock and out of control range, so I was currently in two places at once.

    "Nope. Ajan got married... twice. We weren't invited to either of them." I said with a shrug. "Clan reasons, Erislia said. I believe her, Caitians are somewhat strict on that kind of thing. Besides, it's not like we were not out of known space at the time."

    "But... how did he and... what was her name even... meet?"

    I shook my head. "Apparently, Salia is Erislia's cousin and she introduced them a couple of days after the wedding. They got to know each other over subspace and when they visited Cait again last month... Well..."

    "Where is he anyway?" Rachel sighed.

    "They are currently on Mars with my shipself." I said and got up, walking over to look out through the window down at Earth before looking around the room. "So, this is where you grew up?"

    Even having been gone for as long as she had been, the room was very clearly Rachel. A couple of bookshelves containing mostly romance drivel of varying quality. A wide bed and a couch facing the window. A couple of posters with muscular men wielding swords and wearing archaic metal armor. She knew what she liked.

    She nodded. "Yep... I have kind of missed it." she said and rubbed Porthos behind the ears as he jumped onto the bed next to her, causing the Beagle to almost melt into the attention. "It's... a bit strange too. I had not been here in years. Do you have any idea how it is to go back to a stupid ship?"

    I grinned. "No, actually. But a lot of people have mentioned it."

    "Well, it is." she sighed and got up to look out the window next to me before poking my upper arm. "You are incredibly convenient."

    I stuck my tongue out at her. "Maybe I should stop being so convenient. Can't have my crew get lazy."

    Rachel rolled her eyes. "With all the drills you like running? No risk of that." she chuckled and continued; "So... How is the shuttlebay on the Island class?"

    I chuckled. "Large enough to contain four runabouts in addition to the normal gathering of Shuttles."

    "...Sweet!"

    "Wait until you hear about the park... Bet Porthos will love that."

    "Park!?"


    XXXXXXXXXX


    "Welcome on board, Captains." I said with a smile as Captains Mason and Janeway stepped off my only operational transporter pad. "Congratulations, Kathryn."

    "Thank you, Star." Janeway said with a nod. "It was... surprisingly not that stressful."

    Mason grinned at that. "Wait until you get assigned a ship."

    "I'm not that bad, am I, Captain?" I asked with a grin.

    He chuckled and patted the wall of the turbolift. "It's not you, Star. It's the position in general."

    Yeah, I could see that. The ultimate responsibility for hundreds of lives. I knew exactly what he meant.

    "Any idea what ship you are getting yet?" I asked Janeway as they walked into Mason's new readyroom and I formed a holographic avatar. I really rather liked the new readyroom. Lots of wood paneling and a large fake window taking up most of the right wall, showing the view of space outside. The actual room was located deep inside the ship, close to the bridge.

    My actual avatar was on Earth, meeting up with Rachel to help her pack and such. Having a second AI core was the most practical thing ever.

    Then again, I had no idea what my other self was actually doing but if there was anyone I could trust, it would be myself, right? I just had to trust me not to... come back with a piercing or tattoo or something.

    Even if she got a stupid idea like that, it could be fixed later.

    Janeway nodded. "I have been offered the Starseeker, actually, she can just as easily be operated without an AI with a minor refit of the bridge. That's going to be strange."

    Huh.

    "Well, I'm glad somebody I trust will be looking after my old hull." I said with a smile. "Take care of her, okay?"

    "I will." She said with a smile of her own. "But now comes the hard part."

    Mason nodded. "Picking a senior crew. I have my own problems on that front... I seem to have somehow misplaced a first officer."

    "Any ideas, sir?" I asked as I 'sat down' on the couch, crossing my legs.

    "A couple. Look up Lieutenant-Commander Marcus Flynn."

    A quick search and I brought his personnel file onto the wall monitor while having my avatar look over at it. "Lieutenant-Commander Marcus Flynn. Second officer on the U.S.S. Alexandria. Exemplary record, twenty nine years old, up for promotion to full Commander."

    He was a thin man, wearing glasses and with his head shaved bald. His academy records were good, had high grades, about even with Shran's, if more focused on the sciences rather than security. His career had been a steady rise through the ranks.

    "He is one of the strong contenders. I got to know him back on the Peru... my first posting as Lieutenant while he was a Ensign at the time. The man has a mean backhand on the court."

    Backhand... oh.

    "I didn't know you played tennis, sir?" I asked in surprise.

    He chuckled and shook his head. "I haven't in years. Mainly because I was really bad at it. Marcus wasn't, but he took pity of me at times." he frowned and continued; "I think he was Academy champion or something like it... anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is, that I think he would be a good match for the role."

    Janeway hmm-ed and looked at the screen before Mason grinned.

    "Don't even think about it. I would recommend getting an experienced first officer. I did and didn't regret it for a moment. Besides... I saw him first."




    AN// A wagon of thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • "Backhand at court" made me think of the Captain and this guy screaming at each other in a Phoenix Wright style court, and the Captain getting bitchslapped in the face.
     
    16
  • Threadmarks
    • T'Ro was back!

    I couldn't quite help having a smile on my lips as I headed down the corridor. I really had missed her a lot.

    Her shuttle arrived last night... last night had been fun. Almost as much fun as she was having currently, examining my port engine room.

    She might enjoy 'playtime' as much as I did, but the girl was an engineer at heart. Then again, what could you expect, she was dating a starship after all.

    The dual warpcore configuration was not usually used because it took more room than just one large one. It was mostly just used on massive freighters with the room to spare and to get away with smaller cores.

    I, on the other hand, ran with a pair of two-thirds sized cores for my size. That would allow me to run on either one of them in a emergency and only lose some power as well as allow me to run both cores at fifty percent of their capacity the rest of the time. That meant it put much less strain on the system.

    That also meant I could actually eject one of them in a emergency and not be limited to impulse speed.

    Besides, just because my avatar wasn't down there, didn't mean I couldn't keep her company. That was something I outright loved about this new ship.

    All the semi-finished areas... and potentially all areas of the ship including corridors, shuttlebays and engine room were fitted with soft holographic projectors. Not hard holograms, they didn't use forcefields, just formed an image.

    Only places I could form a solid avatar was the bridge, the captain's readyroom, my quarters, the holodecks and the messhall.

    The equipment was simply too bulky and energy intensive to put everywhere so they were just installed in key areas. Creating an image was enough everywhere else.

    Stepping into the turbolift, I rode it down to the bridge. At least Marvin's design put it at the center of the ship... basically the opposite to general Starfleet design ideas where it was on top of the ship.

    Not that it would actually help much. If the shields went down and you got hit again, you were generally fucked. But there was no use making it easier for them to hit you.

    The bridge was actually located on the same deck as my AI core, just a couple of hundred meters further forward.

    The turbolift stopped and I stepped out of it, looking around the bridge. It was one of the few remaining blind spots still inside my hull.

    A big grey sphere, perhaps six meters across with three chairs in the middle. The middle of the floor of the bridge was transparent aluminum, cutting the sphere in half.

    "Chief Anderson?" I asked as I walked inside, causing the large human in the engineering uniform and the short-cut blonde hair look away from his work behind one of the wall panels.

    "Ship." He answered with a nod. "Don't worry, ma'am, I will have this finished in a couple of seconds."

    I crossed my arms. "It was meant to be done last night."

    He cringed. "I know, Ma'am. There were a couple of minor problems that needed to be fixed with the focusing arrays."

    "I see."

    Turning back to the panel he reached inside and did something with one of the calibration tools before putting it back into his belt. "There. Try it now, Ma'am." he said and closed the hatch.

    Smiling, I looked around. "I have sensor coverage. Activating holographic projectors."

    The grey walls of the sphere shimmered and suddenly we were standing in what looked like space in the middle of the orbital drydock, a small worker bee moving past, carrying one of the last hullplates to be mounted.

    Next I would be painted, we'd decided on a nice, deep red color.

    "Uhm... Ma'am..." Chief Anderson asked as he looked around. "What exactly are we looking at?"

    I turned to frown at him and asked; "What do you mean?" before I grinned. "Oh! Sorry. Didn't realize I dumped raw sensor data into it. Adjusting for human spectrum."

    That was really silly of me.

    I had simply projected raw light data in all frequencies and the hologram was not really meant to show other than the 'visual' spectrum so it really warped stuff.

    "There, how is that?"

    The engineer nodded slowly. "...Better. Is that how you see things all the time?" he asked, looking around, seemingly unused to seeing space all around him without a spacesuit.

    I shook my head. "Not really. It was an oversimplification of the holodeck trying to fit the entire spectrum of EM into something humans could see. It didn't even involve stuff like subspace, gravity and other forms of radiation." I formed a holographic avatar and grinned at myself. "Seems to be working perfectly now." I said, using it.

    I now had full sensor coverage both inside and outside and I happily did a full active scan of Mars Orbit.

    Four thousand five hundred twenty one vessels and structures. Mostly worker bees and tiny shuttles.

    Oh! Awesome!

    I watched a trio of worker bees move up close to my front as they started to paint my hull. Shifting a bit of my attention to engineering, I smiled as I watched T'Ro pull a panel off the controls for my warpcore. "Everything look good so far?" I asked, leaning in to seemingly peer over her shoulder with the holographic image as she worked with the rest to go over my finished port engineering again.

    She nodded and reached in, following a powerline with her finger before pulling out her tricorder to take a reading. "I am not completely familiar with the design, but it seems to be following the schematics. It reminds me of that on a Galaxy class if a bit smaller."

    "I'm not detecting any irregularities... all diagnostics show up clear to me." I said and shrugged. "But it's an untested antimatter plant. I'd rather triple check everything."

    "Indeed."

    I looked around to check that nobody was watching before I moved my holographic avatar to seemingly hug her from behind, even though it was just an image. "Missed you."

    She glanced at me and her lips twitched slightly. "Missed you too."





    AN// ALL the thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • If this version of Trek has anything like the EMH (Emergency Medical Hologram) tech, I'd imagine the medbays (plural; the ship is big enough!) would also have hard projectors?
     
    The not having the bridge in the most exposed place of the ship where Borg can easily cut into it and where a lone A-Wing might crash into it to bring the whole ship down seems like a good idea.

    The holo-emitters all over the place also seem promising, especially if Star takes what the Founders told her about being without form to heart. She can adjust the shape and appearance of her avatar on the fly and in the areas where she can actually touch and not just look she can basically act like a shapeshifter. The potential military and recreational applications are endless.
     
    esotericist said:
    I kinda assumed most of the novel tech in Voyager was fictional, being a holonovel Janeway wrote while bored.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Come to think about it, even if it was fictional, they obviously have the capability for it - and even without a full sapient AI operating it, being able to precisely project forcefields with holodeck-level precision anywhere in a room could be incredibly useful in a medbay.
     
    You know, I think you have actually managed to put a sense of wonder back into the ST universe. Star is a vivacious and captivating character who fires the imagination and makes me (and I bet others) wish to be able to dream at being so awesome. You are pushing the bounds of the ST technology into Culture level amazing and I cant imagine many readers here not loving it to bits.

    I definitely thing Star is my favourite of your many SI's, although I have to ask. do you still consider her an SI of yourself? or has she evolved into something else entirely?
     
    Amrynel said:
    Come to think about it, even if it was fictional, they obviously have the capability for it - and even without a full sapient AI operating it, being able to precisely project forcefields with holodeck-level precision anywhere in a room could be incredibly useful in a medbay.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Dammit I'm a starship, not a doctor!"
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top