Home Is Where You Leave It

Posted on Fri 24th Feb, 2023 @ 4:36am by
Edited on on Fri 24th Feb, 2023 @ 5:02am

1,479 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: A Fresh Perspective
Location: WV Nomad, Bridge
Timeline: MD 6, 2113

Isabella sat in the command chair of the WV Nomad, looking over sector activity reports. She looked up from her PADD and scanned the bridge. She found her crew working on various things.

"Podkayne, time till arrival at our new home?" she asked, excited to see her own bed. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd slept there.

Looking at the countdown clock on her console, the AI responded, "Two hours, 23 minutes, at current speed. We could go faster, if you like."

Isabella paused for a second, to think about the option presented before her. "You know what?" she asked smiling at her pilot. "We don't really know what this girl can do, do we? Henry did make some serious modifications to this vessel, adding two decks and extra cargo space. I think we need to know what her limits are. What do you think, Riko?"

Glancing over at her captain, Riko asked drily, "Are you asking my permission to behave like mad women and fly around attracting the attention of anyone out there looking for trouble?" She winked to let Isabella know she was giving her a hard time, not seriously chastising her. "Cause if you are, I say ... sure, why not?"

Turning to look at Podkayne, McCord asked thoughtfully, "Have you spent any time trying to see how far Isabella's brother upgraded this boat?"

Before Podkayne could respond, Isabella jump in. "I am sure Podkayne looked over all the schematics, but she needs to know how this baby feels inside and out if she is to get out of a jam. Podkayne, I leave it to you. Let's put this baby through its paces. Our own little shakedown cruise, if you will."

Podkayne grinned, and responded, "Aye, aye, Ma'am!" She took only a couple of seconds to have her AI control map out a plan and put it into action. The little ship, in it's original configuration, could cruise at Warp 7, and slightly more in an emergency. What would Henry have given it with his upgrades? Surely, much more! The ship is three times bigger than the original Arrow class, but three times faster doesn't make sense ... so what would he have done?

Riko watched the humaniform as it did lightning fast calculations. How accurately could it predict the actions of a biological? How quickly could it make challenges to the ship-that-is, versus the ship-that-was? She settled back against her seat, not sure whether to prepare for a bumpy ride, or the thrill of a lifetime.

Verrana could see the writing on the wall and figured out what was about to happen. She looked around her seat to see if there were any safety harnesses and to her disappointment, she couldn't find a single one. "There has got to be something around here," she mumbled aloud. And then she found the control for seat restraint on the console to her right. She pressed the input and racing-style seatbelts emerged from the seats down her shoulders. She knew the inertial dampeners would cancel most sensations of movement, but she had never been on this ship and did not want to take any chances.

"Hold onto your seats, ladies. We are taking a fast spin!" Podkayne said gleefully. Although a humaniform shouldn't have emotions, she and her friends had discovered they weren't exactly standard models. Not super intelligent, but other little things, like flashes of a sense of humor, and a sense of irony, as well. She could enjoy what was about to happen, but felt no fear or pride or concern about it. A hit and miss proposition on emotions.

She pushed the last number and the ship did nothing for about a heartbeat. The second heartbeat seemed to be suspended motion, and then ... the bulkheads around them blurred slightly. She felt nothing, but McCord looked a little strange ... actually, everyone looked a little strange ... slightly elongated and then they were all normal again.

Looking down at her console, even she was shocked to see how far they'd moved in those few seconds. "Arriving at ????? in 7.5 minutes, Terran time," she announced, trying to do the math in her head. 2 hours, 16 minutes ... gone in a few seconds? Maybe she didn't want to know how fast that had been, or what kind of displacement system allowed it. Was that even the right terminology?

"What the heck was that?" Isabella asked as she looked over to Verrana and saw that she was belted into the seat. Instinctively, Isabella looked down in her seat to find her seat belt mechanism but knew it to be too late for that.

"This shouldn't be possible!" Verrana said as she looked at one of the many screens in front of her. "We just cleared hundreds of light years in seconds. Podkayne, what speed did we reach?"

"I can't even calculate it," said the AI. "We didn't so much move at speed as ... transport? That's the closest thing I can think of right now. It was faster than a wormhole, though." She was silent, contemplating the physics, which wasn't her strength but she had some knowledge of it, of what had just happened. She turned to look at the captain.

"Just who is your brother, Ma'am?" Podkayne asked.

Riko snickered, "They are a matched set of trouble."

At that instant, a notification popped up on Podkayne's terminal with the simple message of PLAY ME! "Uhm Captain, there is a message from an unknown source that says PLAY ME."

"Who is it from, Podkayne?" Isabella asked as she stood up from her chair, hoping the ship didn't do what it just did without provocation. "Who would leave us a message?"

Podkayne took a moment to run a quick diagnostic on the system and found that the message was embedded into the system itself. "It's been sitting here waiting for a certain action before notifying us of its existence."

Isabella smiled, knowing that there was only one person silly enough to do something this dramatic. "I think we are going to have an answer to your question from a moment ago." She returned to her chair and told her pilot to play the notification.

A familiar face appeared on the screen in civilian clothing. Isabella couldn't quite make out the location from which her brother was leaving this message, but there were a lot of construction sounds in the background. Henry had the biggest grin on his face, and she could tell that he was excited about whatever he was about to relay.

"Bells, if you are seeing this message, it's because you A) needed to get out of a tight situation in a hurry, or B) told your pilot to see what this baby could do and punched it as hard as you could. I vote on the latter. Either way, what you and your crew just experienced is something called the Delta Effect.

"See, when Voyager came back with this new tech, I had been waiting on an opportunity to put it into actual play, but since Starfleet decided not to go forward with the tech, I never got the chance until now."

"The temptations are never refused, are they Henry?" McCord stated, more than asked. "Not the Delta Effect. The Sulu Punch."

"Only use this in emergency situations, though," Henry continued as a diagram of the engines of the ship appeared on-screen, highlighting in red stress points. "This is not meant to be used for long-term travel. O.K. That's all I have for you. There may be a few more of these messages that pop up when you need them. Be safe out there."

Henry's face disappeared from the view screen and was replaced with the image of space.

Verrana looked toward Isabella and said, "So, your brother still has a flare for the dramatic huh? Sheesh!"

"And the forethought to place messages to help us when the need arises. I'm impressed, Captain, but not surprised," Riko said, realizing it was a recorded holo message, not an actual communication. In other words, Henry wasn't actually talking to them in real time.

"I'm still calling it the Sulu Punch," she insisted.

"Sulu Punch it is," Isabella responded. "Podkayne, when in orbit, bring us to these coordinates."

Isabella typed the coordinates into her bracelet communicator, on the hard light display. A simultaneous ding rang through the bridge as everyone's bracelets dinged. "You all have the coordinates to our new home, but they are encrypted and will only respond to your biometrics. If you are under duress, the coordinates will not appear when recalled."

Podkayne checked, and sure enough, she had biometrics. Following directions, she headed for orbit and then the coordinates, taking more time to settle over the place she'd been directed, than it had taken to travel the last distance to their destination.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she unknowingly quoted an ancient story.

 

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