Joint Post by Lt Scott McIntyre, Lt Elli-Navine and Lt Cmdr Lancelot Quinn
Obsidian Command
1845 words

Elli still wore a bag cross body, with the padded satchel of treasured tech pressed against her heart. She wanted to waste no time in talking with the Chief Engineer of Obsidian Command, but Scott, having seen her slightly tipsy the night previous, already had to stop her loose lips from telling everyone all of the Potemkin’s secrets, and getting herself court-martialed or jumped by agents of one of the Romulan states, and despite her being sober again, Captain Pax thought it prudent to make sure the Engineer wasn’t going to take any chances with the ultra rare technology or work on it in any unsecured facility or involve anyone who might lack clearance. He recommended Elli take Scott along at least to make introductions.

Elli wasn’t much offended that Scott was babysitting on this errand. She enjoyed the company, and she rather liked Scott, even if he was intense enough that he’d permanently furrowed the bit of his brow right over his nose into a little crease so that it persisted in any expression he made.

“We’re about to meet one of Daystrom’s foremost experts on QSD technology! Can you imagine? Daystrom!”

“Uh huh,” he grunted back.

Elli lifted one protective hand from the satchel in order to straighten back her hair. She felt as if she were back at Academy about to go into the advisor’s office. “I knew of him as a lecturer years ago, but I didn’t have half of the prerequisites for his course! You already had to be a class A brainiac just to listen to him speak.”

“So why am I here again?”

Elli patted him on the arm, and then pulled back her hand looking surprised at the sense of his solid bicep. “Captain Pax said I should have you along to make sure security protocol was followed.”

“Lucky me…”

They came to the broad doors of the corridor leading into Main Engineering, but it was a locked door with a security detail posted. Elli walked right up to one of the security officers, looking up at him with a bright grin. “Hi! Good morning! Lt Elli-Navine. I called ahead to make an appointment with Commander Quinn.”

The Officer looked over a list of names. “You my have called, but I don’t have you here on the visitors list, Lieutenant.”

“Oh,” She laughed, “that’s alright! I’m here now.”

“Ma’am, I’m not permitted to allow anyone in without clearance or appointment.”

Elli looked at Scott and shrugged. “Well,” She said, “I mean that’s smart. That’s the secure thing to do I guess. It’s protocol, so that’s not your fault. Can you just get him a message for me though?”

“Ma’am I’m not a messenger, I’m-“

Elli took out a marking pen and a bar napkin and, pressing it flat against the wall, started to compose an equation furiously in neat lines. She had to open the napkin to continue the lines. When she came to the end of it, she examined the mathematics as if it were a poem and sighed, pleased. She refolded the napkin and put it in the man’s hand with a pat. “Just pass it to him. He’ll understand. If he doesn’t we’ll just be on our merry.”

“Was this your plan all along?” Scott asked, leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed.

“Well, no, not all along. I tried to make an appointment, but the assistant told me it would be a couple of weeks as he’s booked. This was my back up plan. Listen though.” Elli leaned in and lowered her voice, “I’m nervous.”

“Nervous? About what?”

“What if he doesn’t like me? I heard he’s really cold. My roommate signed up for his supplement and she was failed! The mark took her an extra semester to make up for on her GPA. I’m really nervous he’s not going to want to work with me. What if the fate of the entire Milky Way depends on him liking me?”

“You’re being overdramatic. Just how terrifying can the chief engineer of a starbase actually be? I mean…he went from Daystrom to this place. Hardly the most ambitious career move…”

“I was wondering about that too. My best bet is politics, you know?” She launched into her theory, “I’m betting someone was jealous, maybe someone with a competing theory, or someone who was jealous of an assignment Quinn had got ahead of them, and had him reassigned to prevent him taking the Chair of his department or the lead on a big project.”

“It happens more often than you think,” he replied, recalling some of his own past dealings with Starfleet’s internal politics.

“Ahem.” The throat-clearing noise startled the pair of Lieutenants as Obsidian Command’s Chief of Engineering appeared in the doorway. He held the napkin aloft, dangling it between his forefinger and his middle-finger so that it flopped over. “Which of you two is responsible for this?”

Her head snapped up and , like a deer in headlights, Elli froze while she was staring at Lt Commander Quinn. It was like words drained out of her face.

“Uh. She is.” Scott pointed at the Grazerite. “I’m just the muscle.”

“Evidently.” Lance’s eyes tightened on the man before shifting his attention to the young woman standing there in silence. “Well, you have my attention. Care to explain how a completely unknown Lieutenant from a ship whose name I haven’t got the time to learn is sending me…a napkin,” he waved it for effect, “Containing calculations that are decades beyond Starfleet’s advanced engineering bureau?”

“I-I-I…” she worked her jaw until she found something to say and landed on modesty and honesty. “It’s not mine, you know, I mean, I helped with application, but I , I, I,” She exhaled. Her face was already red. Elli looked at Scott for help or any kind of support.

“Is she capable of communication?” Lance asked the other man pointedly.

“Usually…” Scott said, frowning at Elli’s sudden inability to speak properly.

“The Potemkin!” Elli blurted. Her hands gripped the strap of her bag and wrung it back and forth, working out her nerves.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Our ship, her name is the Potemkin. And she matters. Like, a lot, to a lot of people. Maybe to everyone. Maybe even to you and you just don’t know it. Her name is the Potemkin.” Elli needed him to know her baby’s name, even if he didn’t care. “The *Potemkin* needs me to become a Quantum Theorist in four weeks. You have to help me understand.”

Lance eyed her curiously. He wasn’t sure how all of that connected together, but the young woman appeared sincere. If not entirely capable of managing her own faculties. Honestly, they’ll let anyone into fleet roles these days…

“Potemkin,” he responded. “Named for the old Russian Battleship on Earth. Famous for a crew mutiny that led to an entire country falling into revolution.” It was a point not only to show his knowledge, but also how unimpressed he was feeling. “Somehow I don’t relate that to quantum theory, Lieutenant…?”

For a moment, Elli was taken aback at the history lesson. How did he just know that off the top of his head? “It’s related because—” She poked the limp napkin and whispered, partly because of the nature of what she was about to say, but just as much because her voice was hard to keep from breaking. “It’s not just math, Sir. Swapping Exotic Energy for the Exotic Matter in that equation, we re-engineered the Potemkin’s Deflector dish to act as a tunneling drive.” Her eyes were big and serious, knowing commander Quinn would be able to understand the sheer immensity of what she was saying. “We threaded the ship through the Quantum Foam of the universe.”

Lance paused, an eyebrow thoughtfully raised. “How did you compensate for the Wadin-Skorr variable? Presumably a reversed polarity ion field might suffice…that doesn’t explain the inverse nadion revolutions from the exotic energy channelling through the deflector…” he meandered through his own thoughts in a low voice. After a long moment of consideration, his eyes returned to the Lieutenant. “Quantum theory. You want to know what went wrong.”

“Welllll” Elli looked for a moment like a kid caught redhanded. Commander Quinn could see through the numbers and understood the experiment had not worked out as hoped. “It turns out the equation is really reliable for exotic matter. But for exotic energy? Not so much. Since it has no stability factor, the traversing ship gets drawn through millions of pathways instantly and there’s no telling where in the universe you pop out again. The problem is with navigation while the ship is time suspended in the tunnel. I only know the basics, and Quantum Theory wasn’t a focus of mine. I spent all my time in Warp Mechanics and Subspace principles. Most of my Quantum studies were related to computing and more practice than theory.”

“Well you picked the correct disciplines,” Lance reflected. At least she’d stuck to the more appealing courses. He wafted the napkin. “Your calculations are part of the answer. However, to understand the depth of temporal mechanics involved, you would likely require multiple PhDs in an eclectic variety of subjects. Which neither of us does possess. However, what I do understand is that we encountered a similar problem when testing the earlier iterations of the Quantum Slipstream Drive. The novice engineer would be looking at this as a mass-versus-momentum problem, but only in three dimensions. Your equation doesn’t account for the fourth dimension: time.”

Some of the anxiety melted as she was instead engaged in thought. Elli rubbed her ear in consideration. “There *were* elements of time in the formulae,” She admitted, “but it had been balanced and cancelled out, the presumption being that time was on balance ‘zero’ within the tunnel. Clearly the presumed temporal mechanics were wrong. Time can’t simply be cancelled out. Is it possible you can help me walk the formula back, Commander?”

Lance paused just for a moment. Admittedly the young Grazerite and her equations had caught his attention. And propulsion systems in any form were going to appeal to his creativity. “Very well. I can make some space for this project of yours.” He paused, lip curling just very slightly. He held out the napkin to her. “Who knows, this could one day result in the Quinn-Navine Drive.” As she took it, he left that thought stick with the excitable young officer as he turned and headed back into the engineering section to find a space for them to work.

Not only did he not hate her, he’d share a credit to a new technology with her! Biting her lip, Elli looked aside to Scott with an excited grin. She could hardly believe Commander Quinn was going to help her with the Xec math. And she hadn’t even showed him the super tech yet!

“Y-yeah…” Scott blinked, having understood roughly 12% of the conversation they had just had. “Maybe I should go fetch some coffee or something…”