Star Trek: Wings of the Renaissance
A Star Trek fanfiction by Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan-based work of prose. Star Trek is the property of CBS and Paramount. Please support the official release.
Orbit of Valo II
2370
It wasn't as though the stars would ever change when he looked out at them. Yet a small part of Andross Gottschalk always surged up in awe when he broke through the sky into the infinite night. Like it was brand new.
"Andross. Mind the plasma gauge. The prototype might have feedback."
He rolled his eyes, pulled back from his musing into his pilot's seat. "This isn't my first, or seventh time testing your new projects, Keiko. Have some faith."
Being in the pilot's seat, he could only imagine the trim Japanese woman sticking her tongue out at him from behind. She was so immature.
"Yes, but I'm here and it's my prototype and we're following procedure," she replied with a bit of a huff. Andross checked over the sensors of the Peregrine. Yes, they were still on the exact same orbital path he had plotted a minute ago.
"So, when is it going to explode?" He asked.
"It's not going to explode!" Keiko said defensively.
"So we're not following procedure then? That would be nice," he continued. Keiko growled at him. It was a cute sound, and her face was even cuter when she was irritated with him. It was, however, far safer to irritate her when he was doing something that if interrupted, would kill them both. Call it insurance.
"The last time it exploded, it was because you did something wrong! So if we blow up, it's your fault, not mine!"
"Good to know," he said dryly. Keiko took in a deep breath, shaking her head. She muttered under her breath in Japanese, stuff the Universal Translator wasn't getting because she'd turned it off. He was able to pick out a few of her favorite terms for him though: "Baka" prominent among them. He'd have to ask what it meant someday.
The console beeped, and he looked down at the display. "All right. We're at the testing range." He took firm hold of the joystick and throttle, as a cluster of spheres appeared on the HUD. "We set for the test?"
"Just a moment," Keiko responded. Her fingers flew over her consoles, arranged in a strange layout. She'd called it "Querty" or something like that. Apparently a format she was used to back where she'd come from.
The twenty-first century. That still boggled his mind, that the young woman behind him was technically older than his great-grandparents. He dismissed such thoughts from his mind and kept his focus on the task at hand-She had a way of noticing when his mind was drifting.
"All right. Pods are powered up. Telemetry is within expected tolerances. How's the link to the new fire control system?" Keiko asked.
Andross cycled through his weapons options. The phasers were the start, of course. Both torpedo magazines were full of the microphotons. He cycled once more, and the pods appeared with a rather simple icon: A rectangular box with five circles on the front. Up on the HUD was a targeting cursor, that followed his eyes as he looked around.
"Huh! That's actually impressive," Andross commented, marvelling at how the cursor matched his eye movements perfectly. "It won't make me go blind, will it?"
"No, I think your activities in your quarters will take care of that," she retorted. Andross managed a little smirk and snort-It was a good hit.
"Firing control is functioning normally. I'm not seeing any issues," he said. He tapped his control keys. "Pods armed. Safeties…" He hesitated a moment, before pressing down. "Unlocked."
The screens turned green. More importantly, the ship hadn't exploded. He let out a breath. He felt Keiko's smirk, and rolled his eyes again.
"We haven't exploded yet. You can't be smug, yet," he stated.
"Please, I can be as smug as I like," she said cheerfully. "So… Starting up the probe sequence! Just look at the target, pull the trigger, and when you've got all the targets just launch!"
"Roger," Andross replied. The circular probes accelerated towards them, getting into pairs before breaking in all directions around them. Andross hit the thrusters, pulling up and starboard to track one group. He locked his eyes to one and targeted it, before moving to the next and repeating it. He pulled the trigger, and he felt a vibration through the ship. Two burning orange stars erupted from the pods underneath the wings, and shot forth through the vacuum, screaming for the two drones. The microphotons detonated, and both probes were converted into clouds of radioactive vapor.
"Good! Good first hit!" Keiko practically cheered. "I knew you could do it-"
"Well," Andross began.
"-my wonderful little pods!" She finished brightly. Andross let out a long sigh. He immediately spun them back around, finding another pair of quickly dodging probes.
"Targeting. Firing," he stated. Another pair of microphotons lashed out, and another pair of the little drones were violently evicted from life. "This is more convenient, but it's only good at visual range."
"Oh, you can launch torpedoes from range any time, but this is for close range combat! When you can't rely on the sensors as much," Keiko explained.
"And it's from one of your animes," Andross stated wryly.
"Is there something wrong with that?" Keiko asked, a bit brittle sounding.
"I didn't say that," he said quickly. He found the next pair. "Maybe make it more challenging?"
Keiko was silent, her fingers tapping rapidly. Four pairs of probes converged, and began circling around Andross like a swarm of angry bees. Andros got his eyes on one cluster, but they broke and shot off in all directions. He grimaced and began hitting the thrusters faster, trying to get eyes on them for long enough to pull the trigger.
"Better?" Keiko asked. Andros began pulling the trigger rapidly, collecting more and more locks. He jammed his thumb on the launch button-And eight microphotons erupted out of both pods, making the Peregrine shudder. The gray probes darted and scrambled around like frantic insects, but the little torpedoes struck true-One after another after another, leaving a cloud of ionized gas burning around them as the drones died.
Andross nodded slowly. "Much," he replied.
Bringing a Peregrine in for a landing was a far different experience from flying a shuttle or even a runabout. While on paper the Peregrine was supposed to be a heavily modified courier and scout vessel, the changes made bared little resemblance to the slow but agile little thing they were derived from. For one thing, the Peregrine had very little space for the crew: Nothing more than the cockpit module. The rest of its hull was filled to the gills with weapons, sensors, and the General Electric MAMR-451-G warpcore that powered it. As a result, there was barely any empty space in the craft at all unless the fuel tanks and torpedo magazine were empty.
This tended to make the fighter hit the deck not like a gently falling feather, but a rock. Even with inertial dampeners and anti-gravs, coming down onto the runway rocked and shook the little ship. It wasn't anything to be worried about in Andross' mind though: In fact, that was the fun part.
"Bran to tower, landing complete," he spoke out to the tall communications tower near the center of the base. "Taxiing to hanger, throttling down."
"Acknowledged, Bran. Welcome back," was the reply. Andross popped the canopy, letting the warm fresh air into the cockpit. Keiko popped her helmet off, letting her long hair free from the bun she'd tucked it into. She gave him a grin.
"Told you!"
"Not a single thing went wrong… For once," Andross admitted. Keiko huffed.
"I wouldn't say that." She pulled out a PADD and began writing a list on the little tablet. "The reaction times for the controls are still too slow-Even with the optical targeting system, if you can't get a bead on an enemy they might escape. And the interface cycle was slow too: Maybe having something physical for flipping through the weapons options would be better. The LCARs synch rate started to drop when you hit thirty targets, that's another issue-"
Andross let Keiko go on, taxiing the Peregrine over the hot duracrete tarmac. They slid out of the sunlight into the cooler shade of the hanger, and Andross guided the fighter into the nearest cradle. A ground crewmember began waving them in, even as the computers obeyed their pre-programmed commands to guide the ship properly. Redundancy was critical around here.
They settled into the cradle, and Andross went through the power and lock down procedures, barely paying them any mind as Keiko kept going on.
"-and the impulse drivers weren't operating at spec in reverse thrust mode," Keiko finished, tapping the PADD with a flourish of her stylus. She sighed. "I'm not sure why that keeps happening!"
"I think it's because," Andross began, slowly standing up and turning around, "the impulse engines on the ship were specifically designed to run off fusion power, not antimatter. There's always going to be issues there."
Keiko rolled her eyes. "They scaled down starship engines without accounting for the difference in power curves, of course," she sighed, writing another thing on her PADD. "At this rate, I'll have to build entirely new impulse engines."
Andross leaned back, raising an eyebrow. "You can't just tune them to work properly?"
"I have been tuning them!" Keiko insisted, "but I think the reality is that these ships are at the point where just fiddling with them isn't going to get us any better results. It's like turbojet engines in Macross Zero: Insufficient power for everything they have to do."
Andross winced. "Please tell me you aren't still on about the transforming robots thing-"
"Of course I am!" Keiko responded, shaking her head. "You can't tell me it's impossible! I've run the simulations myself!"
"I know. I was there," Andross said dryly. Keiko huffed, slowly rising out of her seat and moving to the ladder.
"You're going to have to let those simulated deaths go: They were just simulations!" Keiko said.
"I just don't know why I have to be the one going through the simulated deaths. With how most of your stuff works in real life, it feels like a preview," Andross shot back. The ladder rattled a bit when Keiko put her hand on it, and he reached out to hold it. Keiko shifted her grip, so that his hand came to rest atop hers. She looked back, a bit surprised. Andross looked at his hand, and back up at her.
"What I mean is-" He started, trying to move his hand away. A cleared throat stopped him, and both he and Keiko looked over at the source. Andross narrowed his eyes.
Commander Shran had two squadron leads who were lieutenant commanders. He didn't know the other one, but he knew this one: Lieutenant Commander Richard "Alpine" Amati, a tall Earth man of French and Arab descent.
"If you're done flirting, Gottschalk," Amati stated in a heavy accent, making Andross yank his hand away like it was on fire, "Matsunaga, we've got a mission. Briefing room, five minutes."
"Yes sir," Andross replied. Amati's eyes narrowed.
"I trust the test flight went well, despite your… History?" He sneered. Andross bit back a retort, keeping his tone level.
"Yes sir."
Amati looked over at Matsunaga, an eyebrow raised. "I'll expect you to have the Chief and myself go over your findings for this test flight before you submit them formally, Matsunaga. After all, you're still adjusting to our time and better to be safe than sorry."
"Of course, sir," Keiko responded with a smile that didn't meet her eyes. "I wouldn't want to make any mistakes in your procedure."
Amati nodded, a slight smirk on his face. "I do have to ask though, Matsunaga. You always pick Gottschalk for your test flights. Wouldn't it make more sense to pick the best pilot for the job?" Amati smiled, his right hand resting on his chest. Keiko smiled back, still kind and polite.
"I always pick the best pilot… For the job, sir," she said. "I believe we had a briefing?"
Amati scowled. "Let's go," he ordered, turning and stalking across the hanger deck. Andross looked over at Keiko, his eyebrows raised. She just shrugged.
"It's his problem, not mine," she said.
"Maybe I should make it his problem," Andross gritted out, glaring holes into the back of the lieutenant commander's head. Keiko gently rested a hand on his shoulder, and he looked down at her. She shook her head.
"There are better ways to prove you're the better man," she said. Andross raised an eyebrow.
"That almost sounded like a compliment, Keiko."
Keiko chuckled and patted his shoulder, turning and heading across the hanger deck. "Fighter pilots. Always the puffing up over a bit of honest appraisal."
"Hmph," Andross replied, but he had to work a bit harder to hide his smile.
More to come.
