Joint Post by Capt Pax and Lt Navine
Obsidian Command
1689 words

“It’s so weird, isn’t it?” Elli trailed along with Captain Pax as they disembarked the Potemkin and strode out into the greater corridor. The little Excelsior was dwarfed by the Station it was parked inside of and by the other ships in for service. She slowed, looking through the glass with love, like a mama through nursery glass at her baby. “I mean, she took us through the Quantum Foam to the Great Attractor!” Elli sighed, pleased. “There’s no other ship like her. I have to come back later and check on the work crews. I don’t want anyone miss-aligning our new Protectorate warp coils. I’m going to have to explain the induction transformer flashings.”

Pax smiled, he was somewhat of an imposing figure, he had always commanded with his mere prescience, never having to raise his voice nor chastise anyone. That was until he had encountered the small Grazerite. Elli-Navine was a gifted engineer and had managed to elicit somewhat paternal reactions from him. “Just be careful” he warned “I hear the station XO is rather protective of his crew. Try not to get me into trouble ” He stood at almost a feet taller than her, so he just kinda side glanced down at her.

“Good to know. I’m going to take as much as I can of all our new tech to put under the microscope with the Chief Engineer here, Lance Quinn. Somehow they got a Leading Quantum Theorist out of Daystrom to babysit their fusion generators. Isn’t that crazy? I mean what did he do wrong to get shunted out of the middle of the brain tank? Do you think someone was trying to get him out of the way? Some kind of office politics I bet. Professional jealousy maybe. He has some of the best papers! I’ve been trying to bone up on my Quantum theory and almost everything links back to his work in one way or another. I can’t wait to meet him!”

His young chief engineer did like to talk. “He has made quite a name for himself. As for why he is here instead of Daystrom, its something you’re gonna have to ask him yourself when you seek him out” He knew that Elli wouldn’t pass up a chance to talk to a person who was rapidly becoming an idol of hers.

“Can you imagine if we can reverse engineer some of this tech? The applications!” Elli hugged a padded case against her chest, where she was holding plans to the Quantum Foam Wormhole, the FTL computing device, and the Potemkin’s half of the quantum entanglement communicator. Her heart was practically resonating with the gifts she was hugging.

“Remember” he said “Carter was very clear that this technology remain in procession of the Potemkin, remind anyone who tries to remove it from your care. And call me if anyone does.” He watched as others on the crew filed out, even though the major damage had been repaired the Potemkin still had a number of small parts that needed to be replaced, and the hull needed a new coat of paint. “Where are you planning on going from here?” he asked, he had spent the few days travel to OC going over the plans as well. Much of it was above him, the technology used maths that was merely fringe theory. Maybe Quinn could make some sense of it.

“Right now?” Elli was stumped. She was so busy thinking about her ship and her new Quantum toys that she hadn’t really thought about what to do when she disembarked. “I don’t know. What are you doing, Captain?”

He thought for a moment. He had no idea what he wanted to do. After their last mission they had been ordered for a months downtime. He suspected it was less about the crew and more about the Potemkin, well more than a suspicion given that he had already had to fight off two fleet divisions from getting their hands on his ship. “I think I would like to take a nice cold drink.”

Elli ducked her head into the strap of her precious little carry case and tightened the straps against herself protectively. “This place is enormous. I’m betting they’ve got more than one watering hole.”

Toron had an idea “I wonder if there is a nice cabin down on that planet below, its been an age since i last took any leave.” In fact it had been before he took command of the Potemkin, “Eight years since I last took a holiday, maybe a week in the middle of no where is in order.” It would give him time away from the ship his XO was more than able to take command while the ship was in space dock and he could catch up on some of the more fringe engineering work and theories. He also wanted to write a paper on their experiences with the Wormhole, and he really wanted to understand the technology that the Protectorate had seeded through out his ship.

“Eight years? Wow.” Elli looked intrigued at the idea. “Maybe they’ve got a place you can set up. I read the world’s basically a desert at best and a vicious glassy wasteland every other place. There were a long list of warnings about the wildlife too. I’d like to see Kalara City. Maybe some of the Lava caves.”

“It would figure that the first planet I can have a holiday on is a hell hole” he sighed, rolling his eyes. “However, the Lava caves sound kinda interesting.”

Elli chuckled at his terrible luck as they came to a juncture with lift doors and cued up to wait with other travelers and crew waiting their turns.

“I might go and find a bar, I figure they might have a selection of whiskies I can work my way through.” He wasn’t much of a drinker, not really. After 80 years, a good 65 of those were drinking ones. Toron had built up a pretty good tolerance. “After what we saw and heard from the protectorate a drink is something I could entertain.”

As they loaded into a turbolift with others, further mention of their most recent trip became impossible, so Elli reached a hand out to console her captain with a quietly reassuring pat on his burly shoulder. It wasn’t that the events weren’t equally as dumbfounding and terrifying and wondrous to her as well, so much as it seemed easier when she reached out to comfort someone else about it. And, for whatever small consolation it was, it seemed a little less so because they were in it together, possibly to the end, be it bitter or successful. It was a 50/50 chance, after all.

Toron Pax smiled. “Thank you Elli” He took a deep breath and straightened up, tugging down his uniform jacket. Carter had put a great deal on their shoulders, and had pretty much told them, his senior staff, would be together until their part was done. That was a lot to take in, to process even with 1000 years of memories to access. He smiled as Elli spoken at length about the fusion reactors, and then the computer systems. He really did listen, he had been an engineer in his past, Toron that was and it was interesting to listen to the young officer.

The Lift made a few stops in the upper maintenance ring (where Elli gushed about fusion reactors and power grids for a station this size), before the lift switched into an express setting and shot down through the expansive Environmental deck, where the glass of the lift became semi transparent, and they could enjoy the view of the parks and forest from the ‘sky’ until their capsule plunged into the ground and entered a second maintenance ring. Elli spent another minute talking about the arrangement of the station’s multi linked computer core system with compressed laminate isolinear rods and a super cooling system operating on saturated polydodyclene, meaning the processors could run circles around any ship’s computer you could pit against it, no matter how you overclocked their configuration. “Except this one,” Elli whispered at the last, hugging her satchel.

He grinned, she was treating the FTL computer that Carter had gifted her like a favored pet, protecting it from the world. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had given it a name. The technology was incredible, a faster than flight computer contained within the small device as a pocket universe. It would brute force a solution, no matter how long that took, then a tiny FTL ship would ‘jump’ back in time and deliver the answer to the point the question was asked.

The lift let a few people off at the living quarters decks and then carried the rest of it’s passengers to the promenade, where the car slowed so as not to come to an uncomfortably sudden stop and the walls became smoky-clear again, so as to allow the passengers to preview the levels of shops, services, and businesses lining walkways heading off in every direction. Elli looked at her Captain as if to say she was following his lead and they stepped out into the wide open space where the central lift shaft cut through the great central square.

He looked around, the space was massive, full of shops, cafes and people. He took it all in, he liked people and there were a great many here. That said he did think he would take a trip to the surface, even if it meant he would camp but he could take a runabout or have a transport drop off an outpost for him to use. They had a few weeks and they didn’t need him on the ship.

Elli paused at a display map and picked out a place on the listing. “Obsidian Oasis?” she suggested. “It’s on the second level, just off that walking path.” she pointed to one of the overhead breezeways.

“Lets go” he said leading the way to the Oasis, a nice drink would go down well right now, future plans could be put on hold.
~