Tour of the Spheia

Posted on Tue Jan 30th, 2024 @ 9:44am by Teevs Dosivi & Lieutenant JG Miraj Derani

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Main Shuttle bay
Timeline: Backpost :: S06E03 MD 9
2544 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

There was banging in her shuttle bay. Miraj could feel the slight tremors from whatever it was making the floor of her office buzz silently. "What is that?" It was more a rhetorical questions, but her security guard shadow-du-jour shrugged anyway.

She put down the list of repairs and resurrections she was supposed to be authorising, and decided to explore, and followed the sound of tapping to the back corner of the main bay, where she found the second new ship no-one had mentioned to her.

This one was about the same size as a runabout, a little bigger. It perched on its landing feet about a meter and a half off the ground, a ramp extending up into the aft section. The ship was a cloudy blue with black and white accents, resembling an elongated trapezoidal shape that was more compact in the front and spacious in the back. Four adaptable thrust chambers were visible on the back, the lack of light in them a telltale sign that the vessel was powered off. The port wing was mangled, a piece of dark grey debris embedded into part of the wing and into the engine, and sitting next to the debris was a figure in deep focus.

It wasn't enitrely alien from the ships of home, Miraj saw, but the poor thing was injured and wasn't likely to be going anywhere soon. And as the figure working on it wasn't in engineering mustard, then they must be the owner, and it wasn't another salvaged vessle. Four thruster outputs at the rear meant it must go like blazes, especially in gravity and atmosphere. She hoped it would be healed soon. She wanted a go. "Hello!" Miraj said very loudly, not wanting to sneak up on anyone.

Teevs stopped his rather noisy attempt at removing the debris from the wing. He looked around, then down to see what at first glance was another Lonian with... pink hair? "Lonia borei!" He called out, sliding off the wing and landing on his feet. It was only then that he noticed she wasn't actually the same species as him. "Ah, hello," he said, slightly disappointed. He gave a polite smile, "I hope I'm not being too disruptive."

"No, just curious." Miraj admitted. "I saw a new boat, and I wanted to have a poke around. Especially of something unknown to science, well, our science, obviously its not unknown to your science, Unknown to our design? does that sound better. Please tell me it sounds better. I'm not trying to be superior or anything. Its just everything out here is shiny and new and I really want to see what your ships are like."

The flood of words took Teevs by surprise, and he blinked a couple of times before giving her --rather, her direction-- a chuckle. He wouldn't dare look at a pelare without her permission, and he still wasn't quite certain of customs aboard the ship. "I can show my vessel to you, if you like," he offered with a smile.

"I would love to." Miraj beamed. "Do they have a name? and a gender?" She turned expectantly to the new ship.

"A... gender?" Teevs asked, while gesturing for her to follow. The uncertainty in his voice wasn't out of misunderstanding, but out of confusion. He led her toward the back of the ship, where the ramp awaited them. "The ship is named Spheia. I'm curious, as I've heard of this practice from others aboard. What's the purpose of giving technology a gender?"

"Tradition, I suppose," Miraj let her fingers trail along Spheia's flank as they walked. "Before that, superstition, I guess. Quite a few species in our galaxy do it. Terrans tend to make their ships female. So are Bolian and Romulan ships, on the whole. On Cort, its the other way around. Ships are typically male. I think its something to do with how much water your world has. Cort & Earth are very wet, around seventy percent of the surface is water, in both places, so ships become very importatn very early. Which doesn't explain Romulans, but they like to be awkward on general principles."

"Interesting... well, my homeworld has one landmass, and I believe it has slightly more water than land, so I guess that makes the ship female, according to your customs." Teevs led the way up the ramp and into the back of the craft. There were a bunch of storage crates stacked on either side, providing a corridor to a door on the opposite side. There was a small metal support at the bottom of the stacked crates that kept the cargo from moving around. "This is cargo storage and engine access."

Miraj felt uncomfortably close to the top of the door hatch. They were definitely shorter than standard. "What do you haul?"

Teevs glanced at the crates. "Some of it is supplies for the ship, food for Kerilia and I, some personal items. Most of it are items I have picked up that can be traded, usually metals, ores, some technology. These," he patted a couple of crates, near the forward section of the space, "are reserved storage for those I do business with. If I acquire something for them, it goes here."

"This and that huh?" Miraj asked. She knew about This and That . "My brother does This and That too."

The response was a quizzical look, since the translator interpreted her words literally, but Teevs then shrugged it off. "The engine bay is under these two floor panels. The ship only needs three drives to function, but there's a fourth as a backup."

"You need three drives to function?" Miraj's eyebrows raised as much as they could. That was something new. "We only run on sublight and FTL. how does it work so you need three?"

"It has to do with creating a stable... bubble, I think is the word, for faster-than-light travel." Teevs approached a wall display and typed on it, and a moment later a graphic appeared. An outline of the cargo ship, with the engine bay highlighted near the aft, was enclosed by a slightly distorted, larger border, almost creating a puffy outline of the ship. "The benefit to more than one drive is that each thruster can operate independently. The Spheia can turn quite fast because of this. Two of the drives create this part of the bubble," he paused briefly to point at the aft part of the ship, "but the ship would tear apart like this. The third drive is a load balancer and it, hm... 'pushes' the bubble forward, to cover the rest of the ship." Teevs tapped on the display again and gestured toward an opening door, an invitation to go further into the ship. "When the Spheia is powered on, you can feel a gentle push when you pass from the cargo hold to the control room." At least, that's what it felt like to those more sensitive to changes in pressure.

Miraj's head tilted as she looked at the diagram. "Your warp field is so much smaller." which must make the Spheia far more fuel efficent than traditonal Federaton warp drives. "How fast do they go, when they're working?" With two ftl drives, then it must turn on a dime, in warp. Miraj's fingers twitched. She sooo wanted to get to the helm.

Teevs nodded at the first part. "It reduces the amount of space that actually has to travel faster than light. This vessel can go about 650 times the speed of light, but a little faster for shorter distances."

It was a very respectable cruising speed, especially for a ship this size. "Will it take you long to get them working? I'd love to go out for a spin."

There was a subtle tension in Teevs at the idea of someone else flying his ship. It became his life, his home away from home, and he already felt bad about damaging it. To say he was protective of his ship was an understatement. "It depends on when I can get the resources necessary to repair the drives. Two of them are damaged, and they are not simple devices."

Leading the way, Teevs continued toward the front of the ship. In the immediate room were a couple of doors on each side, with the command center further ahead. "This is a communal living space, with sleeping quarters behind those doors." The center of the room had seats along the walls, comfortable enough to resemble couches, and in the middle of the floor was a series of square seams. "This is a place to be comfortable, to eat, to play games. If a table is needed, these panels will rise."

"Sounds snug." Miraj looked around the small space. "How many people can you sleep? Everything looks realy...compact..." She fumbled a bit. She was used to long term living space being a little more capacious. Not by much for most junior officers and crew, but even small ships didn't tend be so... collapsible. It conjured images in her head of a closeknit family, small and alone against the void.

"Five," Teevs answered. He opened one of the spare rooms by pressing on a wall panel, revealing a basic set of quarters: a bed, a bathroom, and a closet. "Though you can double it as needed for short periods. Compared to your people, we are smaller beings and don't require as much space." As he walked through the communal living space, his eyes rested on his old quarters, a pang of emotion temporarily hitting him. Ever since Saphse's death, he couldn't bring himself to sleep in those quarters again, knowing that the bed would be half-empty for the first time in years. The quarters were probably a mess after the collision, but he didn't know for sure because he had kept those doors shut. "The control room is up here," he offered to his guest.

She followed him dutifully, eager to see the helm. "So these are just single family ships? Is that common for your people. Being nomads like this?"

"Not really? Kind of?" Teevs finished the walk to the control room until he clarified. "Lonians don't typically leave home. This vessel used to be, um... like a scout ship, for resource mining. It's supposed to be large enough for a team of five and a leader. It took a couple of years, but I repaired it enough to run long-term in space. I still have to resupply every couple of years, but it's better than every couple of months." The room they had entered had two chairs in the forward section, and standing stations along both walls. The glass had three sections, providing about 200 degrees of view. "This is the control room. Flight and sensors are at the two seated stations, and other stations, like propulsion and shields, are controlled by the standing stations. I've rerouted most of it to the two consoles at the front."

Miraj considered the consoles carefully, gravitating to the conn like a comet to a sun, but shoved her hands into her pockets to resist the urge to touch. It only partially worked, her fingers twitching with the urge to sit down and fly, and her eyes darting here and there as she drank in every little detail.

The console sat before present company, providing a temptation that could appeal to many pilots. The curved console was enitrely touchscreen, save a dome-shaped object on the left, conveniently large enough for a hand to rest on it. The touchscreen part had buttons written in Lonian, presumably reflecting their purpose. In the middle of the console and at the top was a small screen, currently showing a much more simplified version of what was directly in front of the ship, a series of teal lines defining the wall the ship was pointed toward and the handful of crates that happened to be nearby.

It didn't take a genius to identify unfiltered curiosity. Teevs turned the chair slightly toward her and gestured for her to sit. "Assuming we can get the ship repaired, perhaps your Commodore would let us do a test flight. Make sure everything is working as it should," he suggested with a smile.

"Oh, I'll make her do that," Miraj's tone was distracted as she sank into the chair, hands reaching for the control before she snatched them back. She wasn't quite drooling, but it was a close thing. "Can't leave this beauty to rot. And if lieutenant Magnus won't help you, i've got engineers of my own for the jolly boats. We'll have your baby up and running in no time. I need to feel them fly."

Teevs watched her hesitate to touch the console and chuckled. "The ship won't move while the cores are offline. It's a safety feature to avoid accidentally hitting something while docked. It's ok to touch." He pointed to the dome on the left, "your left hand goes here. This controls the orientation of the ship. It would have to be calibrated to your hand, since it's currently calibrated to mine and Kerilia's." He leaned forward enough to put his hand on the dome and demonstrated, pointing to the small display that was now slightly shifting, almost like a camera trying to move left and right. "See how the display moves with my hand?" He stepped back to allow her to try it out. "Your right hand goes on these controls," he gestured to the buttons on the right. "And these control your speed and how much thrust you get from each engine. It allows for some quick turns."

Miraj let her hands rested on the domes Teevs pointed out. "Much better than our touch screens. I dont know why Utopia Plentia is so allergic to stick controls." She let the dome roll under her palm and the ship strained slightly, the spirit willing but the flesh, well, machine, weak. The display shook for a moment, trying to antipate movement that didn't happen.

The feedback rushed up her arms, and thrummed from the seat. It was less filtered than even Queen Anne, strained, but honest and Miraj let out a low delighted, surprisingly dirty chuckle. "Oh, I like them. We definitely have to get you airbourne." She was addressing the ship rather than Teevs.

Then she turned to the sip's gaurdian, "are there any repair docks near here? I can try and talk the commodore into stopping for parts?"

"There's one in the next sector," Teevs responded, watching her. The excitement she conveyed was contagious, leaving him wanting to repair the ship so he could teach her to fly the Spheia. "I can show you where on a star map. Though be aware that I still haven't finished my list of what needs to be repaired, so I'm not sure if I'll have enough to trade to get the parts needed to make the ship fly again."

"Make the list." Miraj was thinking about what she could replicate, either as parts of Trade goods. "As soon as we can get there, we'll go shopping."

Teevs gave her a smile and a nod. "I will do that."