Slipspace

Waking up was hard.

…So was my bed… “Why is my bed hard?”

A modulated voice echoed from seemingly everywhere around me. “You fell asleep while working inside the Oxide, Ma’am.”

“Oh. That… checks out.”

Groggily, I rolled off my stomach and pushed myself to my feet. Rubbing at my face, I could feel the imprinted marks in my cheek from the anti-slip texturing of the deck plates. Looking to my side at where I was, I had apparently fallen asleep next to one of the still open panels that accessed the power conduits. There was, in fact, an interphasic spanner still clutched in one of my hands.

I groaned and stretched. Joints popped and cracked across my body. Fighting off the stiffness and exhaustion, I stumbled to the head and pulled out the medical kit. I took out a small bottle labeled ‘Go-Go Juice’ and drank the contents like a shot. I had absolutely no clue if the blend of unnamable ingredients that were ‘guaranteed to get you going!’ actually worked, but the eye-wateringly sweet and sour slap in the face flavor that puckered my lips and tingled through my sinuses woke me up as well as any bucket of cold water. Real shame that the aftertaste of the stuff was nearly enough to make me gag.

With significantly more awake senses, I looked around at the interior of my ship and found it to be a mess. Judging by the tools scattered about, I had bounced between at least a dozen different tasks throughout the night in my squirrel brain induced fugue state. None of them were done.

“Vox, what time is it?” Another yawn forced its way out.

“Current station time is ten-hundred hours. You fell asleep at approximately oh-two-thirty.”

“Ah shit….” I dragged a hand down my face. “Why didn’t you wake me up and send me home?”

The AI’s voiced response was even, but I swore I heard something more in it. “I did suggest that, but you stated that you just wanted to, quote, ‘finish one more thing’.”

I blinked slowly and sighed. Yup, that checked out too. “Right… sorry.”

“Apologies are not necessary, Ma’am. Might I suggest acquiring sustenance, however? You did not eat after returning to the station yesterday evening.”

My eyes closed and I smiled at the AI, figuratively of course. “Thanks for caring for me, Vox. I don’t know how I’d survive without you.”

Her replying tone was cordial. “As your personal assistant, it is my duty to ensure your wellbeing. It is good to know that I am succeeding in that.”

Not for the first time, I wished I could give Vox a physical form, at least temporarily. She deserved the tightest of hugs. “You most certainly do, Vox. And yeah, I’ll go get something to eat.”

I looked around at the mess and shrugged. Eh, I’d be working on it more later anyways, so it wasn’t worth it to clean up now. After taking a moment to straighten my clothes to be somewhat more presentable, I stretched and left my partially dismantled ship behind.

The door locked behind me and I walked back to the station promenade. I didn’t particularly care what I got to eat and just went to the cafeteria where I picked out an eggplant parmigiana sandwich. It was bland, but filling. Luckily, the food went a long way towards waking me up properly.

Mind significantly more alert, I found myself musing about my ship. With my work-fest the night previous, I was a lot closer to being able to get the nacelles and computer installed. With the needed part, I estimated that it would only take a couple days to have everything ready for inspection. It was really exciting. The Oxide would be leaving the system within a week for the first time ever if everything went well.

A lot of work had been put into putting the FTL drive back together from the wreckage of the transport. Much of it had been intact, but that didn’t mean that all of it would be functional. Sitting in a junkyard for a couple decades with a dead reactor was not kind on the already old components. I hadn’t really modernized anything in the drive itself, but I had put entirely rebuilt field coils in along with plasma manifolds and replacement emergency cut off trips.

Two years was a long time to be working on a project, and that didn’t even include the six months I had spent building the rest of the ship.. So much of my spare money had gone into it. All I could hope was that it would all be worth it.

My musings were cut off as a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind. I yelped in surprise and twisted my head as best I could. A flash of white, pink, and blue hair gave me all the information I needed though. With gleeful enthusiasm, I turned around completely and hugged the person who had quickly become a good friend.

“Echo! What are you doing here?! How did you find me?”

She grinned and I was finally able to see Captain Marcus standing behind her. “Dad told you that we would send an express transport, didn’t he? As for how we found you, I went to your apartment, but you weren’t there. Vox helped us out, though.”

I rolled my eyes. Vox was ‘helping’ again.

The captain spoke up. “Mind if we sit, Miss Matson?” I motioned to the empty chairs at the table and both sat. “We picked up the navigation module earlier this morning by Illume time. My friend was able to finish the conversion interface for compatibility with the older systems. It seems it wasn’t as difficult as he feared. We have it with us in the Hrafn, my personal ship. We have a couple tag-a-longs, too.”

I blinked and took a sip of my drink. “You didn’t have to come all this way personally, Captain. I was going to be coming to Illume as soon as I was able.”

The man glanced around, leaned in and spoke quietly. “You aren’t the only reason I came, Adresta. My daughter and I are happy to see you, certainly,  but I came for another task as well. After reviewing the access logs on the Ratatosk

, Yeager found a transmission from an unknown source that was well hidden within standard radio communications. I can’t be sure, of course, but I suspect that there may be sabotage afoot. And I think you can piece together where it came from.”

A hand went to the back of my neck and I let out a deep breath. “I’ll be honest, sir. I somewhat suspect him too, but I have no proof.”

“Good to know,” Marcus said. “I’m going to be making some inquiries with the station authorities. I have the backing of the Sisko and Yates legal firm as well, so I have a warrant in place. Keep it quiet, though. We don’t need the man getting tipped off.”

I nodded. “Of course. So where is your ship? I’d love to get started… again. I was working on getting things ready last night, I’ll admit.”

“Excellent, we’ll be able to get you flying quickly, then. If you’ll follow me, we have a dock not far from your hangar.”

All of us stood and I quickly dropped my tray into a receptacle. The three of us made our way to the docks on the salvage arm, stopping well short of the Torgal area. Inside of a transient hangar was what I assumed must be the Ericksons’ private ship.

It was a sleek transport, much newer than the old military brick I had built from. It was smaller than my own ship but looked a lot nicer. Much to my surprise, the mentioned tagalongs included the engineer, Gilbert Yeager. He was in overalls just as the last two times I had seen him. The other person present was a woman in a casual but sharp- looking outfit.

Marcus stepped over to her and hugged the woman before turning back to me.

“Adresta, you already know Mr Yeager, of course.” Said man nodded at me. “And this is my other partner, Rachael. My dear wife, this is Adresta Matson.”

We smiled at each other. “A pleasure, Miss Matson. We have not talked directly, but I feel as if I already know you after hearing all about you from my daughter and husband. It seems you will be a welcome addition to the company.”

“Thank you,” I said sheepishly. “I’m glad to be with you. And what brings you here, Yeager?”

The grizzled engineer looked at me stoically. “You helped me with my ship. I want to return the favor.” A man of few words, it seemed.

“I’ll gladly take it if you think you can handle my old ship.” That just got a grunt in return with a small grin. As with most engineers I had known in my life, he didn’t seem to be one to back down from a challenge, rather, he relished the chance to work on something new.

The beautiful girl next to me spoke next. “We have a small cart in the back we can use to move the computer unit when you are ready to get back to work. I’ll help out too. I’m no master engineer, but I can handle a spanner when needed.”

A wide smile graced my lips. All of these people had come together to make a better life for themselves. But they weren’t struggling alone, like me. They were friends and family. These were people that I had no doubt would be sticking together until the very end. Even Gilbert Yeager, the engineer, showed nothing but loyalty, albeit in his own quiet and stoic way. The fact that I would be joining this group was heartening.

“Well then,” called Marcus. “We all have our work to do. Might as well get to it. Rachael, if you’ll join me? Be safe, Callisto, dear. And none of you overwork yourselves, hear? We still have time to work with, but there is also no use taking any more than needed. I’d like to get back home again before the crew gets restless.”

With a pointed glance, the captain looked at me directly. “And Adresta? Before you say anything, we all volunteered for this. We sacrifice nothing by being here. When you told me what happened, I wasn’t about to leave you high and dry.”

I blushed. He had absolutely read me like a book and taken the words out of my mouth. “Thank you. Thank you all.”

“Enough of this sappy stuff! I’m here to work.” I had to laugh lightly at the engineer. He was obviously a very focused man.

The elder Ericksons departed, heading to the spire for a meeting with security, leaving the three of us to begin the work. The aft ramp of the Hrafn lowered to reveal the small cargo hold. Inside was the promised cart and a crate boldly labeled ‘Alterra Shipyards’ along with a string of numbers and a quality control sticker. Impatiently, I undid the latches and opened the crate to see the goods within.

For such a complicated and expensive component, the navigation module was humble in appearance. The entire thing was about twenty five centimeters wide and about half as deep while sitting a bit under a meter in length. While it was large compared to a standard computer, this unit contained enough processing power to calculate the incredible amount of equations necessary for faster than light travel. Everything from power feed to exact spatial coordinates were stored and handled by it. It was a true marvel of quantum computing. Such a unit for a full starship would be well over twice the size, but this one was compact enough to fit within a small transport and made the current primary computer array for the Oxide look primitive for comparative computational power.

It was impossible to hide my excited smile. This computer was the keystone in my years-long project. It solidified in my mind that all of this was real. With the extra help, I could get it done even faster too, so I was basically shivering with excitement.

“Stop drooling over the merchandise, Addy. You don't want to get it wet and ruin something,” Echo teased from behind me. “Come on, help me get it up on the cart.”

I chuckled at her and moved to one side so we could both grab an end. It was definitely weighty. Gilbert had stepped into the cabin and came out carrying a tool box. “Enough flirting, Callisto. There’s work to be done.

Echo reddened but I laughed. “Alright, Gilbert. Let’s get to work.”