Trekking
5
Seek Out New Life
Lisa looked at the plate of fried chicken in front of her. Cold fried chicken. Why was this still her favorite comfort food, even here, nearly forty thousand kilometers up, travelling over three kilometers a second. Man, you just thought you knew distance until you got up here.
"A little work with the replicator though, and it made fried chicken that would make Colonel Sanders and that Popeye's woman weep. Mashed potatoes and slaw too. And the freaking biscuits! Plus sweet tea. She was going to hell fat as a hog.
Lisa bit into the thigh. All these hard eyed android girls, they saw through her bullshit like it was nothing. They also didn't take any shit, or let her give Taylor any. The girl didn't really need that much protection though. She wasn't naïve. She had been shot in the head after all. Brian being shot in the side had been bad, but a headshot. Lisa shuddered.
They were well and truly away from Coil though. Ha! Forty thousand kilometers away! Plus with the data connections she had from here, Coil didn't stand a chance. As soon as she worked up the nerve to talk to Taylor about it he, and his bank accounts, were toast.
Meanwhile, holy cow, talk about work! Figuring out a syllabus for this crazy ass Starfleet Academy of hers was it. Payback for the pleasure of destroying everything Coil had done or stood for? Even with the Voice of God, or Rose, helping. Many, or millions, of hands did make the work lighter though.
Trekking
Dinah Alcott ran toward her favorite getaway spot, and as she rounded the corner grinned as the sparkling began around her. She looked around where she landed and her mouth dropped open. This wasn't the WaWa by her house? "Holy crap, am I in space? Where did you send me Vendy? Wait, why is there gravity if I am in space?"
Mal rolled her eyes "Rose got tired of moving you around town. Plus we need to shuffle some of your kidnappers to longer term storage away from node thirty eight. How many criminals can gather that close to a middle school? Drug dealers, gang bangers, pedophiles. We may have to start keeping some of these just to keep them away from the schools."
Dinah looked at the woman and blinked "Who are you?"
"Maleficent, and you are Dinah Alcott. Who makes a habit of using the Replicators for personal transport."
Dinah dug her toe in the tight woven carpet of the bridge "Well Vendy, the replicator at the Seven Eleven, snatched me up when some men tried to kidnap me and dropped me off at the WaWa by my house."
Maleficent nodded "Yes, I know. It also took four men into the buffer. Every week or so we acquire four to eight more. I think it's time we sort this problem out permanently.
"Right now you are on the Bridge of the Enterprise, which is in a geostationary orbit over Brockton Bay. For a few more hours. Then we will need to move over the pole to keep both Venus and the Sun clear for the instruments."
Dinah sat in the helm station "Cool. Uh can we call mom? I mean I think I am going to be late getting home?"
Maleficent nodded "Late at the very least."
Trekking
"Mom! Dad! I'm joining Starfleet!" Dinah charged her parents as soon as the sparkling stopped and they were stood on the transporter platform.
Mayor Christner and Melanie Dagget smiled as the Alcott's dealt with their daughter. Danny started making introductions and Taylor led the group to the command conference room off the bridge. Harriet Alcott nee Christner listened to their daughter as they walked and then looked at the head of the conference table surprised as the dark haired teenager took that seat. She was fairly sure, or had been rather, that introduction was to humor Dinah, a teenage Captain? "Sorry."
Taylor smiled "Parahumans, what are you going to do right? Most of us trigger as teenagers."
Charles Alcott shook his head "So Dinah is a parahuman. When the headaches went away we thought it was a phase she went through."
Lisa, in a Domino mask and Starfleet Grey on black with a operations colored light yellow undershirt uniform with black boots. Starfleet blue underwear under it all of course. The best fitting underwear Lisa had ever had, shook her head "Thinker. The scans from the sick bay clearly show a Corona Pollentia and Gemma. Very active. A precognitive of substantial power. Not infallible though." She looked at Dinah, who huffed at her.
Maleficent sighed "No thinker battles please. Dinah's headaches were caused by her power. On her first trip through the transporter connected to the replicator near her school to her usual destination, the WaWa near your house, she was diagnosed and then on her next trip she was modified to prevent damage to her brain."
"Vendy gave me a radiator Mom! Under the skin of my back." Dinah, in a smaller Starfleet uniform, couldn't let the other thinker steal a march, turned her back to her mom "You can only feel the heat, not the radiator at all. You can't see it, or feel it either!"
Maleficent nodded "This modification, and the commensurate increased blood volume, has been developed on Rodenberry, to ease her thinker power and keep it performing at its peak, Tattletale here as she experienced headaches like Dinah and now Dinah."
Charles nodded "I'd like to see the documentation and get an independent confirmation it is OK, none of that answers why you were using the replicators as transporters Dinah? Why weren't you riding the bus?"
Tattletale supplied "My boss, Coil, likes having thinkers on staff. My former boss now. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse, work for him or take two in the head. He had his goons snatch me off the boardwalk to make the offer."
Mayor Christner glowered "That's the one the PRT is unsure even has powers? He uses mercenaries? And he had the Undersiders?"
Lisa nodded "Circus, Trainwreck, he was working on some others, but things were, I don't know if he ever got them hired on. The travelers. He does have powers, some kind of probability manipulation.
"The Undersiders were a bit busy trying to stay alive after he had us rob Lungs casino, the Ruby Dreams. Then well Leviathan and now, we are joining Starfleet."
Mayor Christner nodded "Neatly removing you to a foreign power with whom the US has no extradition treaty."
Taylor snapped her fingers and Melanie waved her off. "I'll finds some retired state department folks. Might have to bribe them with medical treatment. Not like we can't use more help and if they are going to treat you as a foreign power you might as well have a diplomatic corps."
Taylor nodded "We have hundreds of people in the buffers now. Mostly criminals, but some of them were not violent offenders and might pass the academy and psychological screening. Plus the homeless and orphans, might as well educate as many as we can and see if they want work."
Dinah's arm leapt up. Her mother grinned and waved her hand only slightly less enthusiastically "Engineer, civil, but I can study."
"Harriet!"
"Oh hush Charlie. Space! You know I applied for NASA."
Roy Christner laughed then sobered "OK, so Dinah checks out medically. What are we going to do about this list of criminals on this pad Your Mom? Aunt? First officer? Maleficent has on this pad. Mercenaries" really?" He looked at Maleficent. "And where had you planned this academy? The Great Bay College has been in decline and lost a lot of facilities when Lordsport was shut down, the buildings are still there. Community college now. Lots of trades education. I think they had a peak enrolment of five thousand over there. Marine engineering, marine architecture, steam engineering back in the day. Before my time really. Worth looking into. The town owns the buildings. We could probably transfer them to you for nothing, just to get them back in a revenue generating status.
"Are you going to build more of these? How many crew does this beast take? Aircraft carriers take thousands. Maybe homeported in Brockton Bay?
"Say could one of those vending machines do anything with the hulks in the bay, maybe spruce up the docks?" Everyone looked at him. "What? It's an election year. Maybe get the ferries running, they can make anything I hear. I'm told you made this ship with ones out in the bay, a sort of underwater ship building slip?
"You know we own most of those hulks. You could fix them up and get them back moving cargo. Danny you'd know more about that. Since you have the slip and all Rodenberry, or do you prefer Taylor? We could probably sell them to you for scrap." He looked around the table.
Harriet sighed "Excuse my brother please. He is a politician and it is an election year."
Charles grinned "Plus, you know, the tinker who got rid of Leviathan lives in the Bay?"
Roy nodded "Registered as a Rogue too. MIRIS would probably be able to grease the wheels, or the ways, for us. Haha! Little nautical humor. Will my cell work from up here? Great view by the way."
The others sat open mouthed. Lisa rubbed her temples and groaned. Danny chuckled.
AN: just one today, got busy.
