The Really Big Cross-Over
Part 5
A few days had passed and the Stella Navis was completely repaired and good as new. Aeryn and her crew had been traveling along with Voyager now and were currently busy planning a crew exchange. One by one, Aeryn's people would serve aboard Voyager for a while to experience being on a big starship and in return, also one by one, Janeway's senior staff would serve aboard the Stella. At that moment, Aeryn entered the Bridge from her Ready Room.
The only people on the Bridge at this time were Spike and Deyran, Reiko was sleeping as was Angel while Leo kept an eye on Engineering.
"It's done," Aeryn announced. "The crew exchange," she explained on Deyran's questioning look. "Tomorrow Commander Chakotay will come aboard and serve as First Officer for a week. During that time, Deyran, you will be assisting here and there. I think you will mostly want to take over Operations."
"Why Ops?"
"'Cause of Reiko," Aeryn replied.
"But she recovered!?"
"She did, but she isn't up to the full 100 percent, she's hiding it, but I can tell."
Deyran nodded, "Then, of course. At what time will Commander Chakotay be arriving tomorrow?"
"0700."
"Then I'd better prepare some quarters."
"Yeah," Spike laughed, "We don't want him sleeping in between sacks and boxes."
The Stella Navis had eight crew quarters, but normally, with a crew of six, they didn't need the extra two and these then doubled as extra labs and Cargo Storage. This was mainly because, even though the Stella Navis had a lab and two Cargo Bays, there always seemed to be not enough space.
"You'd better take the one next to mine, it's the easiest one to empty," Aeryn replied.
"Will do."
Deyran scurried along the corridors to Room 06, the numerical designation of the Quarters next to Aeryn's. The Bridge was 01, Sickbay 02, the messhall/rec room 03, Aeryn's quarters 04, Reiko's 05, the empty set 06, his quarters were 07 and then there were the Astrometrics Lab, Transporter Room and the Holosuite which had 08, 09 and 10 with Engineering having number 11. The rooms on the Stella Navis' second and final deck; Cargo Bays 1 and 2; Leo's quarters; the second set of empty quarters; Angel's quarters; Spike's quarters and the Shuttle Bay had numbers 12 through 18 respectively.
As he stepped inside, he took in the surroundings and sighed with relief. All there was, was a bunch of scientific equipment. He shoved whatever he could to one corner and brought the smaller loose things to Astrometrics and the storage room in Engineering. That one was actually ment for spare engineering parts, but it could hold the equipment for a week.
After that, he put the furniture, which was shoved in all the other corners or in use as lab material back to their original positions and tested the small kitchenette and the replicator.
Deyran was about to leave when he remembered something and checked the small bedroom. And indeed, he was right, there were no sheets and pillows so he quickly replicated a set and placed it on the backend of the bed. Then, he did leave and headed back for the Bridge. There he found not only Aeryn and Spike but Reiko too.
"Hey sis," Deyran greeted her. Even though Tymion had been her brother and not Deyran, they still often called each other brother and sister.
"Hey bro," she replied.
Before they could do or say anything else, a claxon sounded and Angel's voice, who had returned for duty, came over the comm.
"Engineering here, emergency, warp core breach in 20 seconds!!"
"What!" Aeryn exclaimed, "Leo!"
Leo orbed in from sickbay the moment she called, he had already been on his way.
"Orb me down," she ordered and grabbed his arm. The next moment he orbed both of them down to Engineering and Aeryn made a run for the warp core.
"Warp core breach in 9, 8…"
Aeryn raised her hands and froze it.
"Angel, care to explain?"
He shook his head, non-believing: "There is no explanation. Everything's fine, it just suddenly went from perfect functioning to warp core breach in 20 seconds"
Aeryn turned her gaze to Leo.
"I sense magic," she said. Leo nodded.
"We'll do the searching," Aeryn decided, "you fix this thing before it unfreezes, we'll search here just in case. Leo, can you get the book?"
Leo nodded again and orbed out.
It was quite a commotion aboard the small ship, it wasn't everyday that magic happened, but Aeryn and her gang were used to it. Aeryn was a witch, the last in the long line of Warren-Halliwell-Silverberg witches. Leo was her Whitelighter; and also technically some sort of uncle, he had been married to Piper, one of the Charmed Ones and sister of Phoebe, one of her ancestors. Aeryn had all three of the traditional W-H-S powers: telekinesis; time freeze and premonitions but had developed a bit of telepathy over the years. Its range wasn't very far, she could speak with Leo in her mind; that is talk to him and hear him answer; and she could send messages to Spike and Angel. Deyran and Reiko were not receptive for her telepathy. She didn't know whether or not this was because they were non-magical beings, or if it was a result of Trill physiology.
Leo had been Aeryn's Whitelighter ever since she started developing powers, around her 15th birthday. When she became immortal, both had realized this was the end of the witch's line. Because, yes, she was practically unkillable by demons, but she would not ever continue the line; immortals were sterile. It wasn't long after she became immortal that the four of them; Aeryn, Leo, Angel & Spike; decided to go and explore the galaxy. She had known the two vamps since she was about 18 when Leo had introduced her to them. Leo, by then, had known both of them for about 250 years.
When Leo returned with the Book of Shadows, now twice the size it had been in the Charmed Ones' days, they sat down to do research. All information in the book was also saved in the computer, but when doing research, Aeryn still preferred the Book itself, to feel the tome's ancient pages and the magic contained in it. She went through the book while Angel fixed the warp core and prevented it from breaching after the time freeze wore off.
But after meticulously digging through the Book, they turned up nothing.
"There's just too little information," Leo said.
Aeryn nodded and shut the book.
"I'm going up again," she said, "Leo, you'd better stand by for any more emergencies, I'm sure they will be forthcoming."
"Sure," he replied.
When Aeryn reached the Bridge, she spotted the Funny Phenomenon on the viewscreen.
"Update," she said as she sat down in the Big Chair and nodded towards the viewscreen.
"It has grown," Reiko said, "its size dramatically increased with 29% at the time of the core breach and has grown to a 43% increase in the last hour."
"So it's probably tied in with the problem down there," Aeryn said, thinking, "There's magic in the field, that core breach was not natural, everything was working perfectly and yet…"
"Ya guessing a demon or warlock?" Spike asked.
"I'm guessing that, it's too coincidental to be normal."
"Cool," he said.
"Couldn't it be Q?" Reiko asked.
Aeryn shook her head: "I don't think so, Q's all about games, everything he does is a game to him; and that core breach was not a game, it was a deliberate attempt at our lives."
The rest of the day, they were more alert and ready for anything out of the ordinary to happen, but nothing did.
The next morning, Aeryn and Deyran gathered in the Transporter Room at 0700 to welcome Commander Chakotay to the Stella Navis. Right on time, the transporter came to life and Chakotay materialized on the pad. He stepped off with the small Starfleet Issue bag slung over his shoulder.
"Commander Chakotay reporting for duty," he said as he stepped of the pad in front of Aeryn.
"Commander, welcome aboard the Stella Navis III. May I introduce you to Deyran Yiy; normally the First Officer of this vessel and also the Science Officer. He will be escorting you to your quarters where you can drop of your stuff; after which I'd like to see you in my Ready Room."
"Certainly," Chakotay said.
"Very well," Deyran said, "If you'll follow me."
And so Deyran and Chakotay walked the few meters to the spare quarters as Aeryn turned the other way into Engineering.
"Hey, what's up?" Angel asked from Lower Engineering where he was standing when he spotted Aeryn on the upper floor.
"Nothing, just checking up on things, after yesterday you know…" Angel nodded understanding as he turned around and indicated the space around him and said: "As you can see, everything's fine; but don't worry, I'm keeping an eye on everything here."
"Need assistance with that? Deyran's available with Chakotay being here for the week."
"Could be useful," Angel agreed.
"Very well, I'll send him over in a few minutes."
After this intermezzo, Aeryn walked the 17 meters from Engineering to the Bridge and, once there, turned right into her Ready Room where Deyran and Chakotay were waiting.
"Sorry I kept you waiting," she apologized, "Deyran, I think it's best if you go to Engineering to assist Angel, he would like a second pair of eyes and hands in case of trouble like yesterday."
"Sure," Deyran said, "I will see you this week Commander, but for now, I wish you the best."
"Thank you," Chakotay replied and returned Deyran's parting nod.
"Now Commander," Aeryn said as she sat down behind her desk, "let's talk business." Chakotay smiled and sat himself down in front of her.
"Let's," he said.
"First of all, as you might have noticed, we're a very informal bunch here. This comes mainly out of us being friends above all. Another thing in this is the fact that only three of us are… well, with rank, namely me, Deyran and Reiko; whom you will meet later. I take it you remember the briefing on Voyager about my… unusual crew?"
Chakotay merely nodded not to interrupt Aeryn.
"Well, when I resigned from Starfleet, I didn't really resign as most people do. I retained my commission and have, through the years progressed in rank. In exchange for this, we supply Starfleet with a lot of research and exploration data. This means that Starfleet, or rather, a select group of admirals, is aware of the concept of immortals, vampires and Whitelighters but this is kept on a strict need-to-know base only. My rank, after 117 years of exploring is Captain, I have been one for 97 years. Reiko has also graduated from the academy and carries the rank of Lieutenant as does Deyran. They have both resigned Starfleet in the conventional way and are… well stuck with that rank." Aeryn laughed shortly.
"But to cut to the point I was going to make, we don't really do ranks here, we work on a first name base which works fine for us since we're all friends. Question to you is then, would you mind being addressed as Chakotay and not Commander?"
"Not at all," Chakotay said, "it reminds me of my days in the Maquis, we never called each other by rank either."
"Perfect," Aeryn said, "Now that that's out of the way, I'll brief you about some other things about me and how they relate to the 'slight problem' we had yesterday."
"That 'slight problem'," Chakotay said, "would that be the warp core breach you almost had?"
"Yeah, that would be it."
"Good," Chakotay said, "we were curious how you managed to resolve that so quickly."
And with that, Aeryn began the long explanation of her being a witch and the sudden imminent, unnatural, warp core breach. The whole thing, with questions from Chakotay in between took 30 minutes to explain. By then, Chakotay felt like he was flooded with information.
"Well," Aeryn said after all the talking was over, "let's meet the others and show you around."
"Gladly," Chakotay said, not completely able to suppress the slight excitement, "I'm very curious about the ship and its remaining crew." With that, the two people left the Ready Room and entered the Bridge. There, Reiko and Spike were holding the fort.
"Reiko, Spike," Aeryn said, "meet the new First Officer; this is Chakotay. Chakotay, these are Spike; helmsman and Chief Astrometrics; and Reiko Shren; Chief Operations and Astrometrics Officer."
"A pleasure," Chakotay said as he shook hands with both of them.
"You guys can hold the fort a bit longer while I give Chakotay a tour, right?"
"You need to ask?" Reiko said while Spike just made a noise best transcribed as 'hmmpf'.
"Let's go," Aeryn said to Chakotay as she left and shot a bright grin to her friends.
"Oh, Briefing Room by the way is over there," she said as she pointed to the other side of the Bridge, opposite the Ready Room."
Following that, she showed him Sickbay, the Messhall/rec room; she pointed out which quarters belonged to who and then lead him to Astrometrics, the Holosuite and Upper Engineering. There they took the simple Engineering lift down and checked out Lower Engineering, the two Cargo Bays, the rest of the quarters and the Shuttle Bay with in it the Stella's two small, 4x2.5 meter, shuttles; the Stella Navicula I and II.
"My Latin isn't so good," Chakotay commented, "what does it mean?"
"Well, it's tied in to the meaning of Stella Navis, which means Star Ship. Navicula means little ship, so the shuttles are basically named little starship I and II. We usually refer to them as just 'Navicula I' or 'II' and skip the 'Stella' part. And in the same fashion we usually refer to this ship as just 'the Stella' or 'Stella'."
"Well," Chakotay began, "I must say, I think I'm really gonna like it here, it reminds me of my Maquis days, even though this ship looks about ten times better."
"It is," Aeryn said, not bragging but simply stating the fact. "This ship was built in 2351, it is 24 years old but has been updated and refitted regularly and she's as up to date as a ship can be. She makes Warp 9.9 if necessary and has a stable cruising velocity of Warp 7. And in 2372 we also implemented the same bio-neural gel packs Voyager uses."
"I am truly impressed," Chakotay said as they headed back for the turbolift to return to the Bride and begin work.
Part 5
A few days had passed and the Stella Navis was completely repaired and good as new. Aeryn and her crew had been traveling along with Voyager now and were currently busy planning a crew exchange. One by one, Aeryn's people would serve aboard Voyager for a while to experience being on a big starship and in return, also one by one, Janeway's senior staff would serve aboard the Stella. At that moment, Aeryn entered the Bridge from her Ready Room.
The only people on the Bridge at this time were Spike and Deyran, Reiko was sleeping as was Angel while Leo kept an eye on Engineering.
"It's done," Aeryn announced. "The crew exchange," she explained on Deyran's questioning look. "Tomorrow Commander Chakotay will come aboard and serve as First Officer for a week. During that time, Deyran, you will be assisting here and there. I think you will mostly want to take over Operations."
"Why Ops?"
"'Cause of Reiko," Aeryn replied.
"But she recovered!?"
"She did, but she isn't up to the full 100 percent, she's hiding it, but I can tell."
Deyran nodded, "Then, of course. At what time will Commander Chakotay be arriving tomorrow?"
"0700."
"Then I'd better prepare some quarters."
"Yeah," Spike laughed, "We don't want him sleeping in between sacks and boxes."
The Stella Navis had eight crew quarters, but normally, with a crew of six, they didn't need the extra two and these then doubled as extra labs and Cargo Storage. This was mainly because, even though the Stella Navis had a lab and two Cargo Bays, there always seemed to be not enough space.
"You'd better take the one next to mine, it's the easiest one to empty," Aeryn replied.
"Will do."
Deyran scurried along the corridors to Room 06, the numerical designation of the Quarters next to Aeryn's. The Bridge was 01, Sickbay 02, the messhall/rec room 03, Aeryn's quarters 04, Reiko's 05, the empty set 06, his quarters were 07 and then there were the Astrometrics Lab, Transporter Room and the Holosuite which had 08, 09 and 10 with Engineering having number 11. The rooms on the Stella Navis' second and final deck; Cargo Bays 1 and 2; Leo's quarters; the second set of empty quarters; Angel's quarters; Spike's quarters and the Shuttle Bay had numbers 12 through 18 respectively.
As he stepped inside, he took in the surroundings and sighed with relief. All there was, was a bunch of scientific equipment. He shoved whatever he could to one corner and brought the smaller loose things to Astrometrics and the storage room in Engineering. That one was actually ment for spare engineering parts, but it could hold the equipment for a week.
After that, he put the furniture, which was shoved in all the other corners or in use as lab material back to their original positions and tested the small kitchenette and the replicator.
Deyran was about to leave when he remembered something and checked the small bedroom. And indeed, he was right, there were no sheets and pillows so he quickly replicated a set and placed it on the backend of the bed. Then, he did leave and headed back for the Bridge. There he found not only Aeryn and Spike but Reiko too.
"Hey sis," Deyran greeted her. Even though Tymion had been her brother and not Deyran, they still often called each other brother and sister.
"Hey bro," she replied.
Before they could do or say anything else, a claxon sounded and Angel's voice, who had returned for duty, came over the comm.
"Engineering here, emergency, warp core breach in 20 seconds!!"
"What!" Aeryn exclaimed, "Leo!"
Leo orbed in from sickbay the moment she called, he had already been on his way.
"Orb me down," she ordered and grabbed his arm. The next moment he orbed both of them down to Engineering and Aeryn made a run for the warp core.
"Warp core breach in 9, 8…"
Aeryn raised her hands and froze it.
"Angel, care to explain?"
He shook his head, non-believing: "There is no explanation. Everything's fine, it just suddenly went from perfect functioning to warp core breach in 20 seconds"
Aeryn turned her gaze to Leo.
"I sense magic," she said. Leo nodded.
"We'll do the searching," Aeryn decided, "you fix this thing before it unfreezes, we'll search here just in case. Leo, can you get the book?"
Leo nodded again and orbed out.
It was quite a commotion aboard the small ship, it wasn't everyday that magic happened, but Aeryn and her gang were used to it. Aeryn was a witch, the last in the long line of Warren-Halliwell-Silverberg witches. Leo was her Whitelighter; and also technically some sort of uncle, he had been married to Piper, one of the Charmed Ones and sister of Phoebe, one of her ancestors. Aeryn had all three of the traditional W-H-S powers: telekinesis; time freeze and premonitions but had developed a bit of telepathy over the years. Its range wasn't very far, she could speak with Leo in her mind; that is talk to him and hear him answer; and she could send messages to Spike and Angel. Deyran and Reiko were not receptive for her telepathy. She didn't know whether or not this was because they were non-magical beings, or if it was a result of Trill physiology.
Leo had been Aeryn's Whitelighter ever since she started developing powers, around her 15th birthday. When she became immortal, both had realized this was the end of the witch's line. Because, yes, she was practically unkillable by demons, but she would not ever continue the line; immortals were sterile. It wasn't long after she became immortal that the four of them; Aeryn, Leo, Angel & Spike; decided to go and explore the galaxy. She had known the two vamps since she was about 18 when Leo had introduced her to them. Leo, by then, had known both of them for about 250 years.
When Leo returned with the Book of Shadows, now twice the size it had been in the Charmed Ones' days, they sat down to do research. All information in the book was also saved in the computer, but when doing research, Aeryn still preferred the Book itself, to feel the tome's ancient pages and the magic contained in it. She went through the book while Angel fixed the warp core and prevented it from breaching after the time freeze wore off.
But after meticulously digging through the Book, they turned up nothing.
"There's just too little information," Leo said.
Aeryn nodded and shut the book.
"I'm going up again," she said, "Leo, you'd better stand by for any more emergencies, I'm sure they will be forthcoming."
"Sure," he replied.
When Aeryn reached the Bridge, she spotted the Funny Phenomenon on the viewscreen.
"Update," she said as she sat down in the Big Chair and nodded towards the viewscreen.
"It has grown," Reiko said, "its size dramatically increased with 29% at the time of the core breach and has grown to a 43% increase in the last hour."
"So it's probably tied in with the problem down there," Aeryn said, thinking, "There's magic in the field, that core breach was not natural, everything was working perfectly and yet…"
"Ya guessing a demon or warlock?" Spike asked.
"I'm guessing that, it's too coincidental to be normal."
"Cool," he said.
"Couldn't it be Q?" Reiko asked.
Aeryn shook her head: "I don't think so, Q's all about games, everything he does is a game to him; and that core breach was not a game, it was a deliberate attempt at our lives."
The rest of the day, they were more alert and ready for anything out of the ordinary to happen, but nothing did.
The next morning, Aeryn and Deyran gathered in the Transporter Room at 0700 to welcome Commander Chakotay to the Stella Navis. Right on time, the transporter came to life and Chakotay materialized on the pad. He stepped off with the small Starfleet Issue bag slung over his shoulder.
"Commander Chakotay reporting for duty," he said as he stepped of the pad in front of Aeryn.
"Commander, welcome aboard the Stella Navis III. May I introduce you to Deyran Yiy; normally the First Officer of this vessel and also the Science Officer. He will be escorting you to your quarters where you can drop of your stuff; after which I'd like to see you in my Ready Room."
"Certainly," Chakotay said.
"Very well," Deyran said, "If you'll follow me."
And so Deyran and Chakotay walked the few meters to the spare quarters as Aeryn turned the other way into Engineering.
"Hey, what's up?" Angel asked from Lower Engineering where he was standing when he spotted Aeryn on the upper floor.
"Nothing, just checking up on things, after yesterday you know…" Angel nodded understanding as he turned around and indicated the space around him and said: "As you can see, everything's fine; but don't worry, I'm keeping an eye on everything here."
"Need assistance with that? Deyran's available with Chakotay being here for the week."
"Could be useful," Angel agreed.
"Very well, I'll send him over in a few minutes."
After this intermezzo, Aeryn walked the 17 meters from Engineering to the Bridge and, once there, turned right into her Ready Room where Deyran and Chakotay were waiting.
"Sorry I kept you waiting," she apologized, "Deyran, I think it's best if you go to Engineering to assist Angel, he would like a second pair of eyes and hands in case of trouble like yesterday."
"Sure," Deyran said, "I will see you this week Commander, but for now, I wish you the best."
"Thank you," Chakotay replied and returned Deyran's parting nod.
"Now Commander," Aeryn said as she sat down behind her desk, "let's talk business." Chakotay smiled and sat himself down in front of her.
"Let's," he said.
"First of all, as you might have noticed, we're a very informal bunch here. This comes mainly out of us being friends above all. Another thing in this is the fact that only three of us are… well, with rank, namely me, Deyran and Reiko; whom you will meet later. I take it you remember the briefing on Voyager about my… unusual crew?"
Chakotay merely nodded not to interrupt Aeryn.
"Well, when I resigned from Starfleet, I didn't really resign as most people do. I retained my commission and have, through the years progressed in rank. In exchange for this, we supply Starfleet with a lot of research and exploration data. This means that Starfleet, or rather, a select group of admirals, is aware of the concept of immortals, vampires and Whitelighters but this is kept on a strict need-to-know base only. My rank, after 117 years of exploring is Captain, I have been one for 97 years. Reiko has also graduated from the academy and carries the rank of Lieutenant as does Deyran. They have both resigned Starfleet in the conventional way and are… well stuck with that rank." Aeryn laughed shortly.
"But to cut to the point I was going to make, we don't really do ranks here, we work on a first name base which works fine for us since we're all friends. Question to you is then, would you mind being addressed as Chakotay and not Commander?"
"Not at all," Chakotay said, "it reminds me of my days in the Maquis, we never called each other by rank either."
"Perfect," Aeryn said, "Now that that's out of the way, I'll brief you about some other things about me and how they relate to the 'slight problem' we had yesterday."
"That 'slight problem'," Chakotay said, "would that be the warp core breach you almost had?"
"Yeah, that would be it."
"Good," Chakotay said, "we were curious how you managed to resolve that so quickly."
And with that, Aeryn began the long explanation of her being a witch and the sudden imminent, unnatural, warp core breach. The whole thing, with questions from Chakotay in between took 30 minutes to explain. By then, Chakotay felt like he was flooded with information.
"Well," Aeryn said after all the talking was over, "let's meet the others and show you around."
"Gladly," Chakotay said, not completely able to suppress the slight excitement, "I'm very curious about the ship and its remaining crew." With that, the two people left the Ready Room and entered the Bridge. There, Reiko and Spike were holding the fort.
"Reiko, Spike," Aeryn said, "meet the new First Officer; this is Chakotay. Chakotay, these are Spike; helmsman and Chief Astrometrics; and Reiko Shren; Chief Operations and Astrometrics Officer."
"A pleasure," Chakotay said as he shook hands with both of them.
"You guys can hold the fort a bit longer while I give Chakotay a tour, right?"
"You need to ask?" Reiko said while Spike just made a noise best transcribed as 'hmmpf'.
"Let's go," Aeryn said to Chakotay as she left and shot a bright grin to her friends.
"Oh, Briefing Room by the way is over there," she said as she pointed to the other side of the Bridge, opposite the Ready Room."
Following that, she showed him Sickbay, the Messhall/rec room; she pointed out which quarters belonged to who and then lead him to Astrometrics, the Holosuite and Upper Engineering. There they took the simple Engineering lift down and checked out Lower Engineering, the two Cargo Bays, the rest of the quarters and the Shuttle Bay with in it the Stella's two small, 4x2.5 meter, shuttles; the Stella Navicula I and II.
"My Latin isn't so good," Chakotay commented, "what does it mean?"
"Well, it's tied in to the meaning of Stella Navis, which means Star Ship. Navicula means little ship, so the shuttles are basically named little starship I and II. We usually refer to them as just 'Navicula I' or 'II' and skip the 'Stella' part. And in the same fashion we usually refer to this ship as just 'the Stella' or 'Stella'."
"Well," Chakotay began, "I must say, I think I'm really gonna like it here, it reminds me of my Maquis days, even though this ship looks about ten times better."
"It is," Aeryn said, not bragging but simply stating the fact. "This ship was built in 2351, it is 24 years old but has been updated and refitted regularly and she's as up to date as a ship can be. She makes Warp 9.9 if necessary and has a stable cruising velocity of Warp 7. And in 2372 we also implemented the same bio-neural gel packs Voyager uses."
"I am truly impressed," Chakotay said as they headed back for the turbolift to return to the Bride and begin work.