USS Tirpitz

Sovereign Class Capital Cruiser NCC 84937

Marine Country, OC-MCT Cabin

Unexplored Space, Beta Quadrant


─•~:~•─


Ginny double-checked her notes on her PADD.

In the last year, she had learned more about science and physics in these daily one-hour sessions than she had in sixteen years of primary school education.

Between all this education and her training as the Officer Commanding, Marine Combat Team of the Lonely Queen of the North, it was enough to make her think her brain was going to explode.

She had to make sure the questions were right, or her teacher might mock her again.

Her teacher – and friend as Ginny had dared to call her – was Star.

Star was…something.

She appeared, if appeared was even the right word, before the crew as a six-year-old little girl, the only difference being that Star was bald, and her eyes were a deep black, as black as the surface of her home, the first Iron Star confirmed to exist in the universe.

On the outside, Star appeared completely harmless. But it was a deception, intentional on her part or not.

Star was ancient, perhaps older than the universe itself. And she was equally powerful.

Coulda used her on Tranbir Nine, Ginny thought to herself as she prepared a coffee.

Operation Outer Heaven still haunted her dreams – what few of them she had – even if Star's Songs weren't the cause of the calamity.

Ginny briefly remembered the faces of the people she killed that day, stopping as she always did on her first kill, a human woman with a torn, white lab coat, and a scorched name tag that read Cla- Athaway.

More than likely, that woman was Captain Scott Hathaway's wife, Clarice, who had been stationed on Tranbir Nine at around the same time as the operation. Ginny felt horrible that she had likely killed the Captain's wife.

But what she still refused to tell anyone, was that she never had any regrets. Killing people was one of the few things that made Ginny feel good.

Not her spa days with Yue, not blowing off steam with Dean, not the cold beer that Cookie occasionally served in the mess hall.

If I wasn't a Marine, I'd probably be dead or in jail by now.

Satisfied with the questions prepared by the ever-excitable Chief Engineer Cyron, Ginny held up Star's Caller and prepared to push the black button in the centre of the white block.

Every scan known to science had said that the caller was nothing more than a piece of Iron-56.

There was no power source, electronic signature, radiation emissions, or anything that indicated the caller was anything more than a metal block with a plastic button in the centre.

And yet, the caller could summon its maker from any point in space.

Ginny pushed the button, and a blink later, Star appeared next to her on her bed.

Ginny had gotten used to Star simply popping into existence, but a part of her still felt her spine run cold every time this – whatever Star was – appeared out of nowhere.

Star, who looked like a little human girl of six years old, wearing a simple white dress and a bald head, didn't look threatening, apart from her completely black eyes.

In a completely non-threatening way, she waved at Ginny and said, "Hi Ginny, more questions from Cyron today?"

Ginny nodded and held up her PADD, "Morning Star. And yep, another series if you're feeling up to it?"

Star sat down and folded her hands, "Of course. You three-dimensional things are always so curious about other things. I'm having so much fun helping you learn."

Ginny was surprised, "You have fun?"

"Mhm," Star replied, "What's the point of existing if you can't have fun?"

"Hey!" Ginny said, "I'm the one asking the questions. I told you last week I'm terrible at these things, Star, give me a break."

"I'm sorry Ginny, and I'm still proud of you for not shooting anything last week. You are doing very well," said Star, reaching across the bed and patting Ginny on her shoulder.

For a reason that she refused to elaborate, Star became incredibly annoyed with the Major anytime that Ginny mentioned wanting to – or having to – shoot anything with her weaponry.

Ginny had asked Star several times just why that was, but Star refused to answer the question, simply saying that Ginny shouldn't shoot things.

"Alright, question number one," Ginny continued, pushing the philosophy of not carrying out her chosen career aside for the moment, "We understand light as an energy that propagates itself at a speed of 300 000 kilometres per hour. But why does this energy behave as both a particle and a wave?"

"Oh, that's easy" Star replied with a smile, but in the same flat and emotionless tone she always spoke in, "The particles, as you call them, must be able to travel to get between their places in this universe. So, they create their own waves every time stars talk to each other, so they can travel between stars."

Ginny immediately wrote that fact down.

Kath, the Klingon Science Officer of Tirpitz, would lose her mind.

She then asked a related question, "Wait, so stars talk to each other? Like we are now?"

"Yes, Ginny. All things communicate with each other, sometimes through songs, or through outside talking like we are now. The objects that you call stars communicate to figure out how to warm up things around them. The large blue stars are the best at warming things, so they teach the smaller yellow and orange ones how to be better at warming."

"Then, sometimes, the red ones collapse into what you call black holes. These black holes are tunnels for the light wave particles to travel more quickly across large distances."

Not for the first time since she had begun her daily Q&A sessions with Star a year ago, Ginny was absolutely mind-boggled.

Every single time she asked Star a series of questions, some massive revelation of the universe was revealed to Tirpitz.

It would take decades – if not centuries – for the scientific community to make sense of all the information they were given in these one-hour meetings.

Captain Scott Hathaway had already been pre-decorated with a Chris Pike for these discoveries, and General Castle had all but promised Ginny a Brigadier's command at the same token.

But what both Scott and Ginny had kept hidden was just where all this information was coming from.

Both had taken the decision not to reveal Star's existence just yet, as there was a very real question of what would happen if they were asked – or ordered – to turn over Star's Caller.

Both the Captain and the Major were confident of their integrity, but could they really trust someone else with access to that kind of power?

For now, all their reports claimed that this information had come from a Preserver library that Tirpitz had discovered orbiting the Iron Star.

Since the mysteries of the first race in the Milky Way were also still largely unknown, it was a cover story that had held up, so far.

"Wow," Ginny said in an understatement, "That's huge. But, uhm, let me move on to the second question. Do you remember the schematic I gave you for our warp core?"

"Yes," Star said, "I never forget anything, Ginny."

"No doubt," Ginny replied with sarcasm, "The question is, is there anything we can do with our current level of technology to improve our overall speed?"

Star took a moment to think about the question.

On occasion, she needed to consider her much greater level of knowledge over Ginny and figure out a way to explain the answer.

Not that it mattered in the end.

Last week's suggestion of auto-recrystallizing Dilithium would take centuries to make workable, according to Cyron.

"Have you developed quantum harmonizers yet? That would probably be the easiest way, unless you can access hyper-space tramlines."

"Uh, no, we can't do either of those things yet," Ginny said with yet another mind-boggling revelation at her feet.

It seriously hurt her brain to consider Star's revelations at times.

Star spoke in – relatively speaking – very simple terms as if any of this information was simply old knowledge for her.

Star seemed to sigh, "Oh. You are much slower at making things in three-dimensional spaces. I can show you how to make a quantum harmonizer, if you want, Ginny."

Ginny was about to say yes and allow Star into Tirpitz's computer when she was interrupted by a grave-sounding message on her wrist comm,

"This is the Captain, all senior officers and department heads, report to the wardroom immediately," Hathaway's voice said.

Ginny sighed. The quantum harmonizer would have to wait.

"Sorry, Star, I have to go to work now. Same time tomorrow?"

Star nodded back, "Of course, Ginny. You know I don't go anywhere outside my home. I'll be here when you call for me again."

A heartbeat later, the strange girl faded away, as though she had never been there, to begin with.

By this point, Ginny had gotten used to Star's sudden arrivals and leavings.

She had simply chalked up to another of her friend's god-like mysteries.