Among Stars

Landing Bay

"There she is," Perez said sadly, pointing towards a once shiny-and-white object that was now covered in space dust and debris. They were standing in a doorway high up, and the space below them looked like a great landing area. Not as big as the one where Naina had landed, but bigger than a normal bay.

"ISS Infinity, once the crown jewel of technology", he said. From this angle, it looked like somebody installed two great jet engines on the floor, and left a high-tech cob of corn in the middle.

"Well, she looks better than the Travelstar..." Naina said and tried to smile encouragingly. "Let's see if we can do anything about her. Are all the pods still there?"

Perez nodded. "No way to remove them. They were built in. That's why I had to rewire the station to the ship," he said quietly. Naina nodded at him.

She walked down a few dozen flights of stairs, and then across the landing bay. The Infinity looked smaller than she assumed from high above. It was only three, maybe four times as big as Travelstar. Naina walked around the ship and noted the peculiar engines around the ship.

"What are these projectors that point forward? And what are those two circular... coils for? On both sides of the ship?" she asked.

"Those are Valera's magic ingredients," Perez said, looking like a proud father talking about his daughter's science fair project. "That's the tech that brought us here. She worked on them for years. I have no idea how any of it works, though," he said, and smiled. "She used to call the coils the Donut Drive."

Naina grinned. "Well, they kinda do like huge technological donuts, I have to admit. Let's see what we can find here," she said as she found the entrance. Thick dust covered the ramp, and the doors were slightly ajar, with two chunky cables running from the station floor into the ship.

She carefully opened the door and stepped over the cables. Walking inside, she came into a kind of lobby that housed a door that looked like an elevator, and a door that was open and where the cables were going into. "Sleeping Pods" was written above the door. She walked to a wall that housed what looked like a console and tapped it.

The console sprung to life, but only displayed a single line of text "Minimal functionality. Console not available," it said.

Naina scratched the tip of her left ear and muttered something under her breath. She tapped her wrist, opened the screen, and pointed it at the console.

"Quera, can you interface from here, or do you need physical?" she asked.

"Trying to connect, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

"This AI you have on your ship," Perez said. "Are you sure she's able to control Infinity?"

"I don't know," Naina said without moving, still concentrating on her wrist and the wall console. "It's worth a try. Quera is much more than a ship controller. If we can get her to interface with Infinity... maybe."

"Unable to connect to ship, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "It's running so low on power the commlinks are disabled."

"Daew," Naina swore under her breath. "How do I... wait. Quera. I'm going to suggest something really stupid."

"As is normal, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

"Shush. Let me think through this," Naina said, lowered her wrist and turned to lean on the wall. She closed her eyes and scratched her left ear tip. "There's this great sensor disc on the top of the station. Because of where we are, and the purpose of this station, I'm assuming it can collect sub-space radiation. I'm also assuming it can be rotated."

She stood straight up and started walking back and forth in the lobby. "If we divert the Travelstar's hyperdrive to Sunstar's energy network, and use it to power the station for a short while. We could have maybe fifteen minutes, maybe more. If we can turn the disc into the sub-space stream, and reroute that back through Travelstar, I might be able to use it as a converter and be able to power the station that way," she thought aloud.

"If we can get the station running, we have ourselves much more time, and I have supplies. If the life-support turns on, we have power for years. And when the station is powered, maybe we can get the Infinity running. At least tethered to the station," she said, opened her eyes, and smiled at Perez, who was smiling widely at her.

"Huh?" Naina asked. "I didn't say anything like this would work. I'm just throwing things out," she said.

Perez shook his head. "No, you just remind me of Valera so much. She used to do that too. Being so excited and planning and thinking about things, I have no idea what they could even be," he said and sighed. "I hope we can make this work. You'd love Valera."

"Well, there's no better time than now to try this," Naina said, and grinned. "If you can find me the disc's controls, that'd be a big help. I'm going to go to my ship, fly it here next to Infinity, and get to work making the changes."

"Quera. Start her up and try to make sure we won't blow up the second we lift off," she said and glanced at the doors. "At least the force fields are still working and we don't have to have a battle with enormous doors," she said and grinned.

"Good luck, captain Perez," Naina said. "I'll be back shortly. We'll save Dr. Mizuni and get the rest of you out of here. I have a good feeling about this."