Some Surprise

Posted on Fri Dec 8th, 2017 @ 9:34pm by Lieutenant Renee Salchin

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: Renee's Quarters
Timeline: June 30, 2399 1700

ON:

Renee released Thomas's hand as they entered her quarters, this time proper officer quarters. But with an adjunct door to the next room over, which was inhabited by Shirley, but still completely separate, "That was... different. And, might I say, Lieutenant James, the promotion was well deserved." She beamed at him, "Andy is sending me his old original L-T pips, tradition he says, but they should be here within a few weeks, otherwise I would have given you mine."

Spinning Renee around and grasping her by the waist, "What did I do to deserve a woman like you?", he said looking into her eyes.

"You know..." She brought a hand up into a thinking pose, her eyes glittering, "That's a good question. And to think, I was just planning on a quickie before getting back to work that day."

Laughing, "Not in a million years did I ever think that I would fall in love with such a wonderful, witty, and such a spitfire of a woman as you", he said, as he drew her closer. Kissing her long and deeply, he savored her wonderful smell. "God you smell so wonderful", he said, breaking the kiss.

"I'll have to remember to wear that perfume regularly then." She smiled, then pried herself out of his grasp, stripping off her dress uniform jacket and tossing it into a corner piece of floor, quickly walking over to the now completely uncovered computer, "But now, since I'm no longer a Chief P-O, still getting used to that again, had to pretend for that long, got to believe it, but well... Expect me to be a bit less proper?" She gave a lopsided smile over a shoulder, "I really was behaving.

Catching her, "Behaving like what?", he said, catching her and gently laying her on the bed. Slowly laying next to her, he started to play with her hair. "What did you have in mind Renee?", as he laid next to her.

"Why, like a good little NCO!" Renee laughed, "At least I did around everyone in public, because I didn't want to blow my cover. Let me ask you something." She propped herself up on her shoulder to look at him, "And be one hundred percent honest, no repercussions or anything. If I had been wearing my actual rank pips rather than Chef Petty Officer tabs, would you have acted differently towards me at any point?"

"Nope! I would have expected you to act just as you are right now. That down home girl type of woman that a sane man would want in an insane world like ours today. Why do you think I joined the service?", he asked her, as he continued to play with her hair.

She patted his arm, if only... But she'd gone through five other ships before landing on the Wellington, trolling for a good ship for these projects and no, nothing like THIS had happened, but there were only a couple of responses she'd seen and they'd all come in the bad side of things. All that went through her head in a flash, so there was no hesitation,

"My poor deluded Thomas, I am ANYTHING but a simple, down home, farm girl. Oh, I grew up on a farm with Quarters, I can wear those cut off jeans with the tied off flannel shirt and look damned good doing it! But simple? No... Just to warn you, I bring work home with me and I have two bosses, J'Loni and Andy, curse of what I do. And even I'm an experiment. My left eye has a retinal implant that I'm helping to field test. It gives me some decent data storage, can take images I can review after and can receive updates and data. We're working on a transmission issue and increased data storage, but it doesn't disrupt vision or retinal scans themselves."

Thomas smiled at her sudden out burst. He sensed what she was trying to say and it only made him feel more happier in his choice and in his love. "Renee, whoa girl! Slow down...Honey I didn't fall in love because of what you do or what you have done", he said, smiling. "I fell in love with a woman that has a good head on her shoulders and a good wit. You have a sense of humor and decency I could never hope to want. You could dress up in twenty flannel shirts and half a dozen cut off jeans but nothing could compare to the who you are. A funny, witty woman, who is a loving and kind individual", he said, sitting up on his elbow. Looking into her eyes, "Renee, I truly do love you more than you could ever know!"

Renee scrunched her nose up in pleasure as she planted a very light kiss on his lips, "I'm sure you do. But put me in twenty shirts and six pairs of shorts and I'm gonna look sorta funny." She giggled, "But, that's besides the point. I'm just happy I get to share some of the goodies in my computer with you guys, well, at least you guys as consultants and guinea pigs. Are YOU ready for some interesting toys that make us go zoom?"

This piqued his interest of course, but it was not what he had in mind at the moment. He had something else in mind and it wasn't a romp in the bed either. "Renee, can I ask you something?", he started. "What would you say if I asked you to consider getting engaged? I know it is soon and maybe it might be too soon for you to agree but all I am asking is for you to consider it for now, while you show me how to make us go zoom", he said.

She'd opened her mouth to respond, but shut it as he finished what he was saying, then nodded, "I'll think about it." She kissed him on the nose, then rolled off the bed and over to the computer in the corner, activating the virtual keyboard and her fingers flew for the next twenty seconds, then a retinal scanner port opened and she leaned over to let her left eye get scanned and then a holographic screen came up and she also uncovered a small box with five studs on one end. On the screen, she 'pushed' several selections and the image of a wormhole came up on the screen, "As you can see, your 'standard' wormhole. BUT..."

She punched in a shorter code on the small box and inside, a quartet of laser diodes spun up and flashed, then each rotated ninety degrees and inside the box, the distinctive 'flower' of a wormhole the size of a billiard ball formed, the lasers holding at the edge of it. The center stud shot another, very skinny laser shot into the center of the wormhole. Renee input a six digit code into the box, "That's just to let them know this is a test of the system. On the other side of this wormhole is a beacon that's in near Jupiter orbit. Essentially, instead of a week or more of a communications loop, I have a real-time communications connection with the people on Titan Base and they CAN patch me through to Earth if I really really needed that 93rd."

Thomas nearly bugged out!! He fell off the bed, in a heap on the floor with a loud THUD!!!! "What...ooofff!!!....girl what the...wait...", he said, picking himself off the floor. "Wait...you mean to tell me that you have...", he said, clearing his throat, " real...time...communications with...Titan?", he stammered.

"And if something really major pops up, I can probably get us patched into Earth's comm system in real-time as well." Renee's eyes brightened as did her smile, "This is one of my own pet projects from the beginning. Need some proof, or wanna take my word on it?"

"You can send a real time message back to earth...send one to my parents.", he said. "They live on a farm about 5 miles south from Norfolk"

Renee looked uncomfortable about that, "Thomas, I said major... Charlie doesn't like us connecting there unless it's really major. She's our data security head and there is literally no connect between Titan and any major node. There were too many leaks before Titan was put together to external sources and she'll be damned if there's another one."

"Ok put one into Starbase 211 Captain Janice Morton, my old CO. She could help me on this mess in engineering with the magnetic constrictors in the impulse drive that has been plaguing me since we left the bloody Starbase. I can't get them to time correctly even though I have run the damn program ten times through the simulator" he said, exasperated.

"Hmm... I might have an idea about that." Renee chuckled, "But this is still on the secrets list and I can't just disseminate this to just anyone." She tapped a few buttons and held a finger up, "Authorization Romeo Sophie Twilight Original Unicorn Evolved Alicorn Sparkle Two Two One Niner Three."

On the screen a short haired redhead glanced up and smiled, "Ahhh, Renee, good to see you've got your pips on finally, guess that means you're out of the cold?"

"Master Chief Callen..." Renee shook her head, "Yes, I'm in the open, and yes, this is a demo."

The Chief nodded slowly, then glanced over at Thomas, "And besides presumably an engineer, who is this bloke?"

Renee placed a hand on Thomas possessively, "He is our propulsion specialist... And my boyfriend. So looking only, but no touchies. Mine."

Master Chief Lita Callen laughed openly and turned her attention fully to Thomas, "Well, sir, I can definitely answer any questions you might have, well, I can try at least. But one I can answer, though I think you already know, yes, they are real." Renee's cheeks burned in embarrassment.

Bewilderment, shock, and a host of other surprised looks were on Thomas' face. He wasn't sure whether or not to believe his eyes, ears, or what, but stammering, "Um...is...this...for real?...Well I guess so...um...I don't know how to explain the damned thing!!! Shit!", he said, throwing his hands in the air, looking at Renee.

Renee in turn shot a glare at the now openly laughing Master Chief, "Tell Charlie I'm going to need a consult soon. I really think the data security on the ship needs an upgrade." The Master Chief could only nod, words unable to come out. "And tell Andy I said Hi." Before the other woman could respond, Renee had disconnected and the micro-wormhole vanished. "Sorry about that."

Thomas fell almost flat on his ass trying to sit on the chair that was obviously a little to far for him to reach. "Renee...that was real...time...worm hole...communications? But how is that possible? I didn't even know that Starfleet was working on something like that. How the hell did they accomplish that?", he asked her, incredulously.

"Well, I was thinking that since wormholes acted as shortcuts from one point of space to another, what if we could generate them at will? Decades of records of every known wormhole showed us that they actually have a distinct set of hyperspace frequencies rather than subspace, so we could actually access the hyperspace that all wormholes inhabit, but no way to navigate them properly, so our entry points had a purely random exit."

Renee tapped a few buttons and readouts scrolled next to the holographic projection of the wormhole, "So we created hyperspace beacons. Essentially buoys that reside in real-space but transmit into hyperspace. Our wormhole generator seeks these beacons and can lock on to the one with the proper signature. Spin the generator up, the time it takes to spin is exponentially related to the size, and you can open a wormhole to the beacon. Well, to to area of the beacon. The size that can punch a comm signal through has a plus-minus in a sphere of roughly fifty thousand kilometers. The size needed for a starship to pass, however, would deposit the ship in a 20 light year radius of the beacon. Which could drop a starship into the heart of a star, a planet or even the event horizon of a black hole... that is on the other end of a wormhole with entry zones on either side... See the problem?"

"Um...not sure I do...but...I still don't understand...or at least maybe part of it. If you can travel through a wormhole, as we do, then I guess using the correct frequencies, bounced off stationary communications buoys, anchored inside the worm hole, I guess you could send a signal through", he reiterated. Thomas was not even sure he understood his own gibberish. It sounded so far fetched.

Renee went over what she'd said in her head and immediately realized that while it made perfect sense to her. She had the advantage of being on the ground floor of it as well as the actual function of it, "the buoys are actually in real-space, but send out a hyperspace signal, like an emergency signal. The originating source locks onto it and maps it's real space vocational coordinates and targets the exit to there. Of course, our coms are necessarily directional, but we have a small constellation of receivers outside the event radius to catch it." She chuckled, "Sending the signal through this isn't as difficult as targeting the exit wormhole. At some point, soon, we'll really sit down and I can try to work the mechanics of it out with you. But, Titan and I are trying to make this into a workable drive system, potentially cut down on transit times throughout the Federation and if we can work it, set up all ships with a beacon buoy or two so we don't have any more situations like Voyager had."

Now it was starting to make sense. "So you mean, and lets see if I got this right, you have set up a relay type buoy system that targets certain points within a wormhole so that a starship can lock onto and actually exit the worm hole exactly where you want?", he said, beaming at Renee.

"That's the intent." Renee nodded, "But the problem is that depending on the size of the wormhole created, the radius of 'error' is dual-exponentially in relation." She ran through the calculations in her head to the best she could, "While a micro-wormhole could be anywhere in a sphere with a forty-thousand kilometer radius of a beacon, a starship-sized wormhole would be somewhere in a sphere thirty two light-YEARS across. Test probes have shown that matter and gravity aren't inhibiting factors either. It can open into a star, planet or really anything, we can theorize. It's too dangerous until we can narrow down that issue. At least for travel purposes. And forget transporters through the wormhole, signal degradation is too high."

Now Thomas s deep in thought trying to think of how to think on keeping the wormhole open long enough and was coming up empty. He was tried and knew it so he laid down on Renee's lap and was soon fast asleep.

The calming and settling of his breath into sleep just about came as a surprise to Renee She had been nattering on about some of the more intricate details a he'd gone deep into thought and now she trailed off and went silent. A quick glance to the wall showed that it was now rather quite late. How much talking had she done? She sighed slightly, then managed to bend over far enough to kiss him on the cheek, "Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll figure things out.

OFF:

Lieutenant Renee Salchin
Research and Development Engineer
USS Wellington

Lt. Thomas James
Propulsion Specialist
USS Wellington