Season 1 - Episode 10: Emanations
June 24, 2371 (3 Months, 10 Days in the Delta Quadrant)

'1966 seems to be the lynchpin,'

I thought to myself, looking through the ship's musical directory and seeing a great deal of music I was more than familiar with. While I was a student of history in my old life, and no slouch in this one, I was more intimately aware of musical genres and styles over the decades than I had been at random trivia about when the first computer chip was manufactured or the events leading up to the Eugenics Wars. 'I suppose this is an example of irony? Or just something being obvious?'

Since I had first heard of Star Trek I had been curious about what might have been the historical point-of-divergence in this universe. The point in time when a decision or event changed the universe as we know it, our time line, into this parallel, alternate timeline. My idea was a well documented fact in this universe, and still a likely possibility in my old one, well supported by quantum mechanics with actual evidence of the multiverse having been experienced and explored in Voyager's databanks. It was part of the reason why there was a Temporal Prime Directive after all. What could have happened on this Earth to make the events of Star Trek happen?

I hadn't sat down at my desk this evening hoping to crack open the mysteries of the universe. My goal had been just to pick some music out and get back to tinkering on my projects. Instead, as I took a stroll back and forth through the musical library of twentieth century Earth, I began to notice how everything I saw was recognizable at first, but the closer one got to the lost years of the 90s, the more the music changed.

So I looked closer. There were a lot of songs released in the last few years of the nineteen sixties, and I wouldn't claim to know all of them, but when I started seeing names for bands I'd never heard of before suddenly showing up in sixty-seven, but none in sixty-six, I felt like I'd narrowed down the date as close as I could. They were just small divergences at first. "Light My Fire" by the Doors and "Soul Man" by Sam and Dave were still popular songs in sixty-seven, but there were a few new artists added to the list I had never heard of before. Sam Pin and his hit song "I Need You" was something I'd never heard before. It fit the time period, and wasn't half bad, but to my old self it was completely new.

Every song on the sixty-six list was one I recognized, having liked that time in music, which just made the discovery more jarring. At least I narrowed it down to a time frame.

At first I was wondering if it had something to do with Braxton's time ship. I knew that event would have changed things, and the events from the show credited the tech-boom of the late twentieth century due to the time ship being present and recovered by a local in the late sixties or early seventies. However, the effects of that wouldn't get started until at least another decade at the earliest, and wouldn't have propagated changes backward in time.

It took me a bit longer to figure out the more likely, and simplest, answer was that the point-of-divergence was in sixty-six because that was the year Star Trek first premiered. I groaned in tired vexation when hit by that moment of clarity.

At least I could still enjoy Brain Johnson.

"Computer," I directed, listening for the acknowledging chirp, "play album; AC/DC. Live at River Plate. Nineteen seventy-six."

I don't know why I'd been so surprised. It wasn't like any of the time travel episodes of Star Trek ever showed any serious ramifications from all the meddling that occurred. Carbon Creek happened in fifty-seven, and the Vulcans had been careful to not change anything. Even the Velcro T'Pol's grandmother sold off could be argued to have been a weird fluke since hook-and-loop fastener material like it had been patented in fifty-five, I'd looked it up when I first saw the episode.

'Now that is an amusing thought. T'Pol's granny sold a finished product to a US patent office, and the man gave her a ton of cash for it. All the while being unaware that the patent was held by a Swiss man and thus worthless to him.' I chuckled to myself, 'Vulcans: fleecing Humans since 1958.'

As the first of the "oi" chants in "T.N.T." began, I smiled to myself and leaned back in my chair. Rather than pick up a padd, I pulled up the afternoon reports on my computer screen and began to read through them. A few hours ago Voyager had entered a star system that may have a new element to add to the other two hundred and forty-six on the list, so most of the reports written today had to deal with that.

Torres had found me at lunch and was almost gushing at the prospects. Atomic weight of the element was registering at five hundred and fifty, which seemed kind of insane to me. Doubly so when they said it was stable, and not breaking itself down like many of the heavier elements tended to do. First clues were that it was a naturally occurring element as well, which made this a first since anything with an atomic number over ninety-five, Americium, had been synthetic with only a few exceptions.

She'd been espousing all the things that could be made with the material all through the meal we'd shared in the mess hall. Probe casings that could go into the core of a star, and ultra-thin reactor shielding being only two of a dozen solid ideas she came up with in a few minutes of thought.

I'd been of like mind with her all through it, interested in the applications, including armor for my power armor project, until I recalled an episode of the television series that had started out very similarly. Remembering the events that would have followed, Kim and a 'dead' woman switching places due to subspace vacuoles thus throwing an entire species' belief system into chaos, I had to force myself to smile and play along while I waited for everything to unravel.

Somehow, to my utter disbelief, that never came about. Ensign Kim, Torres and Chakotey all traveled down to the asteroid, along with security officers Wood and Ensign Lang, and nothing happened to them.

Chakotay reported that they had discovered twenty-one bodies on the asteroid they picked - eleven male, ten female. Each of the bodies were in various stages of decomposition, some having been there for years and others just a few days. They couldn't determine from where the bodies came from, but the element our sensors picked up was excreting itself from the dead. At Chakotay's recommendation, they decided to leave the bodies in peace.

From what I gathered later Mr. Kim disagreed with that idea, but didn't fight too hard against leaving the potential anthropological discovery when he was outnumbered four to one. They took some passive scans of the cave and bodies, notes on likely belief systems based on visual evidence, and then left without incident.

I suspected that, without a subspace vacuole opening at just the right moment like it did in the previous timeline, allowing the transporters pattern sensors to switch someone living with one who was dead, there was no reason for anything else to happen.

Hilariously, not ten minutes after they transported out, a vacuole did open on that asteroid and deposited a body. We knew because our sensors detected the riff, and the increase of the new material. A quick math check of the amount of the new element on each body, versus the total amount that could be found, showed that there must be at least two hundred thousand corpses.

The Doctor was kind enough to submit a report that explained that the new element we were detecting was a natural result of death for this species. It was secreted by the epidermal layer of the skin as they decomposed, forming a natural mummification-like wrapping. Why this happened he couldn't explain from an evolutionary standpoint, but the chemical process was easy enough to understand and with some time an artificial way to replicate it could be devised.

Sadly, you can't just plug in a chemical formula into a replicator and get something similar. Not unless you were interested in cheap knockoffs that aren't as good as the original. You could throw the right atoms together, but without understanding how something was made you couldn't replicate how the atoms bonded, their correct order, or placement of protons. Replicator Engineering was much, much more complicated than that. It required a great deal of time in a laboratory discovering and learning how different compounds interacted together. After all, graphite and diamonds were both just a collection of carbon atoms, but how they were aligned together changed their purpose greatly.

What interested me more was the asteroids themselves. A class D planet was a small rock, like our own moon, usually cratered all to hell and with next to no atmosphere, if it had one at all, and few natural satellites. In this case, this one had a ring of asteroids around it that would have made Saturn jealous with rage. That interested me because it, to be frank, should be impossible. Small rocky worlds like that didn't have enough gravity to hold on to tiny rocks like that, and so they should have either dispersed or impacted the planet by now.

And, on top of that, some of the larger rocks in the ring had Class M atmospheres inside them despite being barren of any method to produce air of any kind. Even the vacuoles couldn't be popping in enough oxygen for someone to breath when inside them, as they lacked the gravity to hold the gasses down to them. Not unless they had been depositing air here for thousands of years and it never managed to escape until we cracked one open.

Though, thinking about it, I had to admit was a possibility. That also made it that much weirder, since that means the crew was inhaling the last breaths of the dead.

"Someone forgot to tell the writers of this universe that that is not how stellar mechanics works." I mumbled to myself, closing the reports after reviewing them for anything interesting and instead opening up my CAD program to get some work done. I was sure if I stared at it long enough I'd find some celestial quirk that explained it all, likely something that didn't exist back home, but I had more pressing needs than astrophysical anomalies.

The holographic padd on the end of my desk came alight with life as the last project file opened, and I frowned at the sight of the failed armor. It had been a little over a week since I'd last opened this project, and after I grabbed that Iron Man armor data I could now easily see how many things I was overlooking or forgetting. I looked at it sourly, knowing I was going to need to start over from the beginning.

Worse yet, I knew I'd barely scratched the surface. I realized my mistake, now that I'd spent the points. To put it simply, I'd made the data request too broad, too open to interpretation. I collected basic information for everything that went into anything that could be considered 'Iron Man Armor', from carbon-ceramic vests and Uru infusion, to the god damn Extremis suit and fucking Fin Fang Foombuster. Not enough information to build any of them, but enough that I could picture the armors in my mind as clear as glass. The last thing I needed was to waste points on information for the gargantuan Godkiller Mk II armor.

For one thing, I doubt there are Celestials in this universe. For another, it wouldn't do anything against a Q, so why bother with it.

What I needed was more information on armor, but something more focused. A specific suit of armor that I wanted to build, which I could then improve as I learned more, needing something serviceable soon, instead of something amazing later.

A quick glance at the Cerberus armor I had been basing the design of my first run at the subject ruled that specific suit of combat armor out. While good for a general design, it was too tactical for the Federation, too focused on combat, and thus would never get past the veto power of the 'peaceful' Captain Janeway. I didn't doubt that it would be useful, but perhaps it was too early in the journey home to be throwing out combat-dedicated suits of armor. Most people didn't really realize that they needed something until it becomes obvious anyway, but it would be better to have something close to what was required, and point out the need for something better, than to have nothing, and have to pick up the pieces. Especially if I was one of those pieces. Or B'Elanna.

Thinking about it, normal Mass Effect armor wouldn't be the right way to go in this case. The armor in the first three games was designed for strict combat operations, almost to the point of hyper-specialization. It was also designed specifically to be used in a galaxy where, if damaged, you could easily replace it. Not repair or swap out parts, but just flat out buy a new suit of armor. For a top-notch special forces unit with a federation's resources to draw upon, it actually made sense. However, what worked for my namesake was stupidly wasteful to me, and would be counter-productive in our current situation where resources had to be managed.

Andromeda, on the other hand? Now that had possibilities.

'Of course, no matter how nice the Remnant Armor would be to have, it would be a bitch and a half to explain.' I thought, downcast. It would also be a complex tech-tree to navigate, which meant a lot of points, which was the very thing I was trying to avoid. That armor was designed by a remnant species, as the name suggested, long since gone. Its servos, microframe computer, kinetic barrier generators and everything else was dependent on Remnant science and artifacts, not the unobtanium that was Element Zero. It would be resilient, and regenerative making it easy to repair, but difficult to properly develop, assuming I wasn't overlooking something and it required something entirely different, also not available here.

Standard-issue Andromeda Initiative hardsuits, on the other hand, were designed for exploration as much as combat. They had jump-jets for easy maneuverability, high-grade external and internal sensors that were on par with Federation technology if not exceeding it in some regards, a variety of atmospheric filters, and the usual kinetic barrier generators that I'd have to either ignore or swap out with something more fitting. The key thing, however, was that people wearing one of these could enter and leave alien biomes or empty vacuum without fear of contamination, and a number of them didn't look military at all.

Those hardsuits were designed, from the very beginning, to be used away from civilization. They were were easy to repair. They were available to species with a great deal of variety in size and chemistry. They were everything I needed. Heck, knowledge about them might even potentially provide me with additional technology to filter contaminants out of the ships atmosphere, and it would certainly offer me options for later improvements. If Initiative armor passed the Janeway sniff test of unoffensiveness, then I can eventually upgrade to Pathfinder or other armor types.

There were other sci-fi universes I could pull the required technology from, a few of them might even be usable without a significant biological upgrade to their users, unlike the wonderfulness that was Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor, but why take a chance on maybes when I could see a sure thing in front of me?

Steeling myself with a deep breath, I brought up the mental display. I never knew how much something could cost, or if there was even a maximum amount of points that could be spent at all, but with how tenuous our position was, I couldn't waste the large amounts of points it'd take to find out. Knowing what I wanted, I paid the price…

Mass Effect: Andromeda: Initiative Armor (1 Charge)

Mass Effect: Andromeda: Initiative Armor (2 Charges)

"...Wow," was all I could say.

Technical plans flowed into the vast pool of knowledge I had been accumulating like a rainbow of various inks into a swirling pool, completely distinct from each other at first, but quickly mixing into something else entirely. They merged into each other, combined, separated, and merged again in a technicolor maelstrom. Information existing as it should be, alone and solitary, while also building on the collective data of previous downloads.

I didn't know that omni-gel development was a technological branch one needed to travel upon to design hard suits in the Mass Effect universe, but I did now. At least for Initiative Armor and its Recon and Spearpoint derivative models. Beryllium, fluorite and titanium were all required materials as well, although the only item in that list that surprised me was the fluorite. At least until the technical specs revealed that fluoride glass was required for some semiconductors as well as the various sensor systems. Fortunately they were all items easy to replicate.

The technical specs weren't limited to the base suit either, but included the Recon suit as well as some initial parts of the Spearpoint suit. Technical specs for the under-armor were also included, but truth be told there wasn't a lot of innovation in that besides how to integrate biosensors into the material and meld it with the armor systems. The inner layer consists of a fabric armor-weave that provided kinetic padding. Areas that didn't need to be flexible, such as the chest or shins, were reinforced with sheets of lightweight ablative ceramic.

The designs included how to ensure that the suits were sealable to protect the wearer from extremes of temperature and atmosphere, as well as standard equipment such as onboard mini-frames for support and communications, navigation, and sensing suite. The mini-frame was designed to accept and display data from a weapon's smart-targeting system to make it easier to locate and eliminate potential obstacles and enemies. What's more, they interfaced extraordinarily well with Omni-tools, as the armor had been developed with them in mind as well. But that was just the beginning.

Everything built on one another into a cohesive whole, schematics tweaking themselves, ever so slightly, to work together. Questions I had about how to power the suit were answered by the previously downloaded Arc Reactors, the points I spent entwining the two designs. I knew it wasn't the best way to connect those two, but the fact that they showed a basic connection at all was amazing, and would cut days, if not weeks, off of the design phase.

I wondered about the onboard kinetic barrier system since I had no idea how to build one, nor power it, without eezo, but my own, self-studied knowledge of Federation shield technology filled in for it and actually made everything better since I could use that to provide protection from energy weapons as well as direct its efforts inward towards structural support, instead of the simple physical deflectors the armor came with. Even that single point I had in Planetary Escape Pods, that for so long had been sitting on the edge of the informational sea of my mind, left alone, was able to reach a confluence alongside the others and provide insight on the life support systems. There'd be no silly 'your mask is broken, one of us must die so the other can survive' with these suits, thank you very much.

However, it was the Iron Man technology that provided the most substantial additions. Suddenly incomplete servo designs popped into my mind in full working order, integrating into the Initiative armor and providing a thin exoskeleton that could assist in movement. Some of the small hints of what would be required to build the Mark I armor were given new life and surged ahead in development as there were direct correlations and overlaps between the two fields, the end result still incomplete, but far more sleek and serviceable than that scrap-iron monstrosity. I might not be able to yet design a J.A.R.V.I.S. or S.A.M., but I could at least design around them, making adjustments and room for future inclusion. Some of the material sciences also overlapped, built on the Federation basics I already possessed, and derived new replacements that would have made Stark or Reed Richards green with envy. Well, until they spent a long weekend coming up with something even more ridiculous.

However, I hit a snag. Omni-gel. Almost useless in the game, only good for recycling gear, repairing the Mako, and somehow opening electronic locks if you slathered enough on it, it was a key component in the construction of the armor. Without it, I could still do what I needed, but several key systems would need to be entirely re-worked.

I was once more back down to five points, but while I would normally be loath to go below that threshold, I knew this point in the plot. With Seska dead, the Kazon wouldn't be hounding our trail, and the Sikarians were actually as peaceful as they claimed, so technologically hyper-dominant they could afford to be so in these lawless lands. With that in mind, I spent the point.

Omni-gel (1 charge)

The knowledge burst forward, covering everything. It seemed so small, just industrial grade plastics, ceramics, and light alloys kept in a usable suspension, but it was the basis of so much. Rapid construction, repairing of damaged systems, even limited regeneration of armor, it all came from this. The reason the armor in Mass Effect could repair itself? Omni-gel, kept in small amounts throughout, acting dual roles as both kinetic cushioning. The way small things could be spot-created as needed? Omni-tools flash-forging things with Omni-gel and mass effect fields. I'd need to make a work around, but the holo-projectors should be able to approximate a great deal of it.

But it was more than that. Planetary Escape Pods? Omni-gel forges could help create basic survival items, and omni-gel systems could seal small breaches. Iron Man armor? Tony had developed something similar at some point, but it was over-engineered and incredibly specialized, par for the course with him. While I didn't know how to make that, Omni-gel hooked into enough things to approximate it, with leading ends of data, floating like smoke in the wind, with the possibility of more, that Tony never thought of, so I didn't receive data for. It was so simple, so basic, that the single point had helped everything. Best of all?

Through the entire process, Efficiency contained and coordinated everything like a skilled conductor before an orchestra, but a weak one, only enough to affect things slightly.

'Now that is a thought.' I mused. I still had four points available. My point about the Sikarans and the lack of Kazon still stood. I could drop down to three, though I felt that, even as much as this had paid off, I was entering dangerous territory. Three points had given me Initiative Armor and Omni-gel. I could save three to handle any threat I faced until I was back and safe at five. With that in mind, I reached out once more, the last time I would do so for at least two more weeks, I promised myself, and spent one final point.

Efficiency (2 charges)

Such a broad subject meant that the investment's pool only grew by a barely noticeable amount. Like adding a drop of water to a bucket of liquid. By itself, it did very little. However, it wasn't a drop into a single bucket, it was a drop in a thousand. Every single thing I knew tweaked slightly, realigning ever so much. For a single system, it would've been disappointing, but for this, it nearly drowned me. Arc Reactors produced slightly more power. Initiate Armor was slightly faster, stronger, had more field life. Iron Man actuators with less of a power draw. Omni-tools had boosted range and power. Omni-gel could be created and used with slightly fewer material loss. Voyager systems running one or two percent less energy intensive. Primary phaser arrays being just that little bit more powerful. A full two percent loss in fuel consumption from the warp core.

Yes, spending points there was less useful in a direct way, but points spent there were far more versatile with wide ranging results.

With a smile, I opened my eyes and turned back to the holographic suit of armor on my desk. A scowl crossed my face as I stared at the equivalent of a preschool art project. My pride and joy not even worthy of being put on a refrigerator. I could almost see the macaroni and glue holding it all together. Didn't even have the good grace to add glitter or paint, just raw noodle.

Ignoring the feral grin that crossed my face, I deleted the project file with glee. Instead, I opened a new file, and got to work.

==/\==

It wasn't until late in the evening that a tone at the door, automatically silencing my music, got my attention and pulled me out of my work. A glance showed me how late it actually was, and I blanched at the hours that had passed me by so easily. It was going to take weeks at least, maybe closer to two months, to design this suit of full-body Federation-Inspired Initiative Armor that utilized Trek-tech to the fullest, judging by how I hadn't got much further than designing the left boot, even if making the right would be far easier now that I knew what I was doing.

Standing up, I stretched my back, receiving a fire-cracker-like series of pops running up my spine in return. Sighing with pleasure at the sensation, I turned and walked the few steps to the door, the chime as someone rang my metaphorical doorbell again. With a swift tap at the control panel, the doors slid open and revealed the waiting, tense presence of B'Elanna.

"Come on in," I smiled, lighting up at her presence and invite her inside without preamble.

She offered a quick nod and mumbled thanks as she walked past me. Torres came to a stop in the middle of my living room, eyes darting around, likely at the lack of changes these past few days. I watched, interested, as the door to the room slid shut and her face turned towards the computer and its displayed project.

Torres looked between the boot on the screen, me, then back to the monitor before shaking her head and visibly put whatever questions she had aside for the time being.

Before she couldn say anything I jumped in, "Can I get you anything to eat or drink? I'd forgotten to get dinner and now that I'm aware of the time I'm feeling a little peckish."

"Uh, no, thank you," Torres said, voice faltering. "I just came over to talk."

I looked at her more closely now, hearing the little bit of indecision in her voice grow, and seeing a small amount of fidgeting in the way she rolled her hands across each other. Classic signs of apprehension or distress, my training told me. Signs which I had come to recognize far too easily.

Considering we hadn't seen each other very much since our romp the other night, aside from today's lunch, I had a dark feeling about what this late night meeting would be about. A little bit of surprising dejection settled into a pit in my stomach, but I pressed on.

Moving to my replicator, I tapped the button, letting the internal capacitors spool up from the imbedded arc reactor, hitting a base level of power. With the new modifications I'd made this morning, when I requested, "Raktajino" it only took an extra second to pull the extra power needed. After the acknowledging chirp, the drink was made without the telling pause it had before.

Taking my drink in hand, I turned back towards my guest and added, "If you came straight here from your quarters on Deck 9, I hate to tell you that someone likely already saw. This Deck is busy no matter what time of day."

"That is kind of why I'm here," she said, confirming my fear. One night was enough to make her give me the we-are-just-friends, talk? Ouch.

I directed her to the couch where she sat down and I took the small chair to the side. Taking a long pull of the hot beverage in my hands, I cast my eyes over the attractive woman and lamented how brief the relationship was. It'd been foolish to expect anything more. "So, what did you want to speak with me about?"

Torres steeled herself, and for a moment I thought she was going to make a run for it, before she asserted, "About this… thing, between us. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with keeping it a secret, just between us."

I blinked at her, surprised by the turn this conversation was taking already. She must have mistaken my reaction for something else and immediately started to backpedal, "Imeanjustfornow" came out of her mouth all at once, and I had to fight to break up what I heard versus what she meant. More slowly, she took a breath and said, "I mean, I just want to keep this between us. For now."

Buying time to mentally jump tracks, I stared down at the cup of klingon coffee in my hands and asked, "Why?"

From the corner of my eye, I could see her face tilt down a little, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Because I don't want to mess this up."

When I looked at her, she slowly continued, not looking at me, "I, always, managed to ruin these things. No matter what I do, or don't do, relationships don't really work out for me. They tend to end with the guy running away while calling me a 'crazy klingon' or something worse."

After a quiet moment, she added, "Maybe in some ways I am."

"Anyway," Torres pressed forward, leaning back in her seat and seemed to be trying to wrap her arms around herself like a shield. "I guess I just want to keep things quiet between us because… then it won't matter as much when… it won't matter."

This was almost painful for me to watch, but I could tell it was worse for her to admit to. She was normally so forceful, full of personality, with hints of the furious passion bubbling just under the surface. Like a dormant volcano just waiting for an excuse to erupt beneath a lake. However, the woman before me was currently scared, worried about what is and what might be, and asking for help.

I took a quick sip of my drink, before setting the mug down on the table and moved over to the couch. She froze, like a scared rabbit. Sitting down next to her, I put an arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her closer. She didn't fight it, and seemed to relax into me a little at the contact.

"I'll keep this quiet," I began, softly, "if that is really what you want. I don't care if you announce it in the mess hall, but I'll let you decide that. I will point out, however, that this ship isn't so big that secrets stay secret. The crew is small, and with the journey we have to look forward to it won't be long before all sorts of secrets get out."

Or at least, any secret that was shared. After all, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Like hell I was ever going to tell anyone about my greatest secret.

"I know," she acknowledged, "but for now, I would like to just keep this between us. Only us."

"Only us," I agreed, moving in to seal the agreement with a kiss. Her lips were warm, and the push back of her deepening the contact told me all I really needed about her thoughts.

She was scared, but not of others finding out. It was the fear of loss. B'Elanna was anxious because she really did want this to work out, but had been burned far too many times in her youth. A father that left her and her mother because she was a Klingon, a bully who made fun of her cranial ridges and called her 'turtle-head,' boyfriends in the Academy picking fights and going for one-night conquests with the 'token klingon' on the campus, it all added up over time. If she wasn't pushing people away, they were throwing her away and casting negative light on her heritage. A heritage that had been the only constant thing in her life.

By the time she had joined the Maquis, it was as much an attempt to run away from herself and a hated past than it was a need to right wrongs. Torres just turned all that poorly directed hate away from herself and towards the more deserving Cardassians. Without a target around, it had swung back towards herself.

As I looked down at her, I thought, 'She has more experience with loss than acceptance,' and resolved to do something about it.

Abruptly kissing her cranial ridge, I declared, "It is late. We can keep this quiet from the rest of the crew however long you like, but in these quarters? You are mine." In a single, smooth gesture, I slid from the couch and threw a now giggling Klingon over my shoulder. "Time for sleep," I declared, moving us into the bedroom.

==/\==

Waking up, I was a little too distracted by the extra weight I felt atop my torso for anything like a normal day break response to filter through my system.

My eyes opened in a flash, focusing on what was wrong, only to soften at the sight of a spider monkey most people call B'Elanna staring back at me. She hadn't moved from where she ended up last night, and after a moment to take stock I realized neither had I. It's not unusual for me to barely move during the night, but, oddly enough, that wasn't the case whenever I had a companion. Normally the presence of another person tends to set off all kinds of mental alarms that had been ingrained in me by training and experience. I'd always been something of a light sleeper, in both lives.

Torres was awake, but I could tell that she hadn't been for very long. Her sleepy eyes took a few moments too long to focus if she'd already been awake for a while. A second or two more for recognition to set in, and she smiled back at me as she raised a hand from my arm to run across her face.

She started to shift a bit, maybe trying to move away from me, but I brought my arms around and hugged her tighter while lazily greeting, "This is nice."

B'Elanna, now that her passions had cooled, groaned and buried her face in my chest. A small bit of yesterday's awkwardness returning. "Morning," I heard, mumbled into me.

I was a bit too distracted by her presence halfway atop me to really care about comfort at the moment, instead focused on the feeling of her against me. The blanket was lazily draped across us, a welcome luxury that did nothing to hide us from each other. The lights were toned down, but there was still just enough illumination to clearly see and appreciate the sight of each other.

Torres was fit. Much more so than Dawson ever was on the show. She still looked like the person I remembered, still acted like them, but physically she reminded me of these two lady Marines I was friends with once upon a time, rather than the image of merely average health from the show. Strong, densely packed muscles across her torso felt more like solid rubber under my hands than anything soft or supple. My fingers traced across her back and the barely-there ridges that crossed from shoulder to shoulder and down to the small of her back, a successive series of ever smaller arrows following her spine.

"So," she started, crossing her arms atop my chest and laying her head down to look up at me, "what were you working on when I showed up last night? It looked like a boot."

Pulling my arms a little tighter, a gently squeezing around her waist, I countered with, "This is really what you want to talk about as soon as you wake up?"

Shooting me a teasing smile, Torres shrugged, "Well, I'm sure there's a lot we could talk about, but I've noticed that you tend to be a very creative person. You're always working on one project or another, and as an engineer that has me curious. Where do you come up with some of your ideas?"

I fought the urge to still, and keep up my ministrations as I thought quickly. The possibility of people recognizing the odd things I was doing had been a constant source of worry for me, and I thought I was doing well at spacing things out and keeping the new inventions trickling out. Apparently I wasn't doing as good a job as I had hopped. Or maybe it was just because Torres had an inside look at my process?

Quietly, I answered, "I'm working on designing multipurpose protective clothing that can absorb or deflect attacks as well as work across a variety of different environments."

Torres was quiet for a long moment, thinking, before she finally guessed, "Body armor?"

"Well, if you wish to label it," I teased, "the correct terminology would be 'environmental hardsuit.'"

"We already have EV suits."

"And if all I wanted to do with them is walk around on the hull of the ship, that would be fine." I softly countered. "What I'm designing will do the same thing as an EV suit, be rated for combat, and comfortable enough to wear all day."

I looked away for a moment, thinking about how I wanted to word this, and continued to stare off as I explained, "In my life, I've seen a wide variety of different species and different technologies. Prior to getting marooned on Voyager, I worked for a subsection of Starfleet Intelligence. They sent me out to all kinds of worlds, some of them not even within known space, and on my travels I picked up all kinds of things. Ideas and new uses for existing technology. Those omni-tools I developed?"

"We developed," she countered. "Mostly you though. Something you saw before?" I nodded. "I thought they seemed a little… complete for experimental tech."

"Saw a pre-warp species using something similar and took the next logical step," I explained. "Tried to bring them back to the Federation, but was told they'd be a 'disruptive technology'. Wasn't the first time I was told that either. Because I was often alone or with only a small squad of two or three people, we developed new combat tactics and devices, but they were always crude. No cute and brilliant engineers to help the process along," I teased, and she rolled her eyes, but smiled. "Some of those things I'm trying to develop and make a reality for us, because out here in the Delta Quadrant we're going to need every edge we can get."

"Okay," she drawled out, only to shortly add, "you know that people have tried to develop body armor for a long time. Up until the late twenty-third century, security teams wore some, but it eventually fell out of fashion."

"Fashion had nothing to do with it," I grumped at her, poking her ribs in good humor. "That body armor was designed to handle kinetic weapons and absorb a single shot from a phaser on stun. We stopped using them because it was more common to run into a species using disruptor weapons than chemically propelled bullets. If the armor did nothing, why wear it? Pragmatism, not fashion, killed off armor. Although I will agree they looked stupid."

Torres smiled at me, pausing a moment to squirm up and kiss my nose. "Oh, and you think you can do better?"

"I know I can," I declared, offering a lopsided grin. "But if you are so certain that I shall fail, you could always help me."

"I could," she conceded, "but I don't think you have anything you can bribe me with this time. This was already the bribe for the new computer you are setting up in my quarters."

Offering her a nod, I gave B'Elanna's waist another squeeze and asked, "Why can't it be both?"

Groaning as she stretched her back, doing wonderful things for my view, Torres sat up straight and declared, "We only have two more hours until our duty shift starts."

"Sounds like we have plenty of time to negotiate this then."