Chapter 3

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"Trip, hang back a minute would you?" Jon said as he stood up from his desk watching the rest of the officers leave the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Erika give him a look before leaving as well. She knew exactly what he wanted to talk about because she had been treated to the midnight version of the same conversation the night before. She had been so interested in what he was saying that she threw not one but two pillows at him until he finally let her fall back asleep. Now he watched as she gave Trip a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and closed the door behind her.

"What's up?" Trip said, easing himself into one of the chairs in the office. He casually rested his foot up on his knee and began absently playing with Jon's beloved water polo ball.

"Can you help me understand why something called the FTL engine project wants me to approve a massive resource transfer?" Jon asked, handing Trip a padd.

"You mean the jump drive."

"The what?"

"Didn't you ever pay attention in school?" Trip chucked the ball at him and Jon was beginning to feel like this conversation was going to go the way of the one he had with his wife. "A jump drive is a faster-than-light engine that allows for instantaneous transit from one point in space to another."

"Like a transporter?"

Trip buried his head in his hands and groaned. Obviously not, Jon thought to himself.

"Try and think about it this way. Our warp engines allow ships enter into subspace while still encasing our ships in a bubble of real time."

"That part I remember," Jon snapped sarcastically.

"Listen, it's been a long time since you've had to think about this stuff," Trip held up his hands defensively.

"Like when I helped design the ship that broke the warp 2 barrier," Jon countered.

"Right," Trip rolled his eyes. "Because you weren't spending all your time with AG and Erika breaking the ships that I was trying to build. Anyway, the jump drive is different. It compresses your plotted course trajectory and shoots the ship through it instantly." He snapped his fingers. "Point A to Point B in the time it takes you to say 'Warp factor 3.'"

Jon nodded, actually understanding something for a change. "So why now? Why is this project coming to me now?"

"Well, I'm assuming they finally got the thing to work."

Jon felt his jaw drop. "It's never been tested?"

"Oh sure it's been tested. It just hasn't ever worked."

"Trip…"

"Sir, you gotta understand that while your daddy and old Doc Cochrane were playing with warp drives and pissing off the Vulcans, there were other teams that were established to deal with other modes of transport. There was a very real chance back then that the warp drive wasn't going to pan out and we were going to need to find something else to power our ships at faster-than-light speeds." Trip picked up a model of one of the first commercially built warp engines that Jon had on his desk and looked it over approvingly.

Jon frowned as he watched Trip. There had never been any doubt in his mind growing up that the warp engine would succeed and that it would change the world that he lived in. His father had been so whole-heartedly devoted to the project that Jon had never even considered that it might fail. It was only when he joined Starfleet and later the NX program that he began to realize that others didn't share his confidence. In fact, some openly doubted whether the warp two barrier could even be broken.

"But we built the warp drive," Jon said pointing to the model in his friend's hands. "We broke warp 2, 3, 4, and 5 and we've got people working on warp 7 right now. Why should I care about this antiquated project?"

"Instantaneous short-range transport would be an incredible asset to our fleet," Trip said as he nodded over at a nearby plot board where tiny bluish holographic models of all the ships in the fleet hovered, scattered all over the map. "Short jumps could be used for resupplies so ships wouldn't have to be pulled out of formation when they needed to reload," Trip continued. "You could do multiple jumps in a row to create a line from Earth to any of our bases in as little as a day. Crews that would be away from their families for months could jump home for leave. Take your pick. There are plenty of benefits."

"So why haven't we used it yet?" Jon asked but he had a feeling he knew the answer. When Starfleet put development on the backburner it meant that there was a major hang up.

"The stresses that one of these ships would be under are incredible. You remember those beam problems you had on Enterprise a while back? This is ten times worse. Instantly slamming back and forth between real space and subspace requires inertial dampeners, gravity compensators, you name it." Trip smacked his hands together for effect. "And that is just to keep the ship from smashing in on itself during reentry. Now imagine what we would have to do to keep people alive in those conditions. We are talking extreme physical stress with the possibility of inadvertent time dilation and gravity compression, not to mention the fact that none of our ships currently have seat belts." Jon laughed but Trip went on. "Admiral, these ships have to be built like tanks. Flying tanks."

Okay, Jon thought to himself, the jump drive was about as safe as putting a firecracker in a garbage compactor. Not that one of his kids had recently done that and not that he had spent the better part of yesterday trying to clean up the mess on both the walls and the luckily uninjured child. And not that he had managed to get the kid into the sink to be hosed off and collected the majority of the shredded, smoking bits of garbage, only to have another child turn on the ceiling fan and send everything up in a cloud of debris. And not that it was at that precise moment that he had received a report about a project with a weird name that wanted his full support. None of that had actually happened.

Jon shook his head trying to focus again on the report. His eyes trailed down the page until he saw a distance chart that had been left empty. "What is the range on these jumps?" he asked.

"Not much," Trip admitted. "A couple lightyears right now, maybe. Nothing like what we are going to need to make this a serious component in the fleet. Last I heard they had a serious overheating problem that forced them to minimize the distance of the jumps."

Jon frowned as he kept reading, growing a frustrated with the lack of practical information the report actually contained. "What about computing power? How much does it take to calculate a course like that?"

Trip shrugged. "No more or less than our ships use now for warp trajectories. But there has to be safeguards built in, no doubt about it. With a warp drive, you can fall out of warp any time you need to. With a jump drive, you hit the button and that is it. There is no opt out."

"So if you plot a course directly into a sun…"

"… you're dead before you know what happened."

"Great. This sounds like a fantastic way to travel." Jon shook his head and sighed. "Would these things be able to run on ships that currently already have warp reactors or would it be one mode of transport per ship?"

"You could probably retrofit some of our ships to have jump drives. The older ones, most likely the Intrepids, might not be able to handle the stresses but the newer classes like the Hellenics should be okay."

"Should?" Jon raised an eyebrow.

"No one really knows."

"Not until I authorize an expansion of their project."

"Are you going to do it?"

"I really don't know, Trip. I'm still not convinced that they are safe or that they can meet a need in the fleet that our engines currently are not able to," he looked down at the report. "And I'm not sure what to make of a project that hasn't made really any substantial contributions to space travel in over 80 years."

"Have you talked to any of the project directors yet?" Trip asked.

Jon shook his head. "I'm going down there tomorrow for the official tour but I wanted to talk to you before I did."

"So you didn't look like an idiot when you asked them if it worked like a transporter?" Trip laughed.

"Something like that," Jon admitted.

"One other thing you should consider is that with the warp drive, we had the Vulcans," Trip said. We had other allies who used this form of interstellar transportation and we could turn to them for guidance when we came up against a problem."

"Whether they actually helped or not was another thing," Jon muttered.

"But my point is that we had help. We don't have help on jump drives. We have yet to find another species that has developed this technology so when something goes wrong or we run into a serious issue, there is no one to turn to. We are figuring this one out all on our own. And that is bound to take a little longer." Trip ran his hand through his hair and looked up at Jon. "I know you think that our warp development was held back but think about how much worse off we would be if we had done this flying solo. It took us a while to get where we are right now and we had a lot of help along the way, some of it requested some it forced down our throats. But it was help all the same. Jon, I'm betting these jump drive guys have been alone in the basement of the engineering building for god knows how long and they think we've all forgotten about them."

"You sound like you think we should support this program," Jon said as he watched Trip stretch his legs up on the chair next to him.

"What harm could it do?" Trip shrugged. "Let them experiment. Let them try new things. Let them use their creativity. If you don't, you're no better than the …"

Jon held up his hand. "Don't say it."

"Well," Trip gave him a half smile. "You know what I mean. Think about it this way. The FTL program has continued to exist all these years because the men and women who sat in that chair before you all thought it was a worthwhile idea. Who are you to go against what they started?"

"An arrogant ass who thinks that warp engines are the end-all-be-all?" Jon offered.

"Is that what your wife called you last night when you bugged her about this?"

"How do you know I talked to her about this last night?" Jon asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Please. I've known you two long before any of these ships had engines. I know what 'that look' means," Trip rolled his eyes imitating Erika's most annoyed expression. "You woke her up in the middle of the night so you could complain about how it was a waste to bother with any other type of engine, didn't you?" Jon just reached for the water polo ball."And I'll bet you are going to do the same thing tonight. Only this time you'll say 'Hey hon, Trip was telling me about this great experimental engine but I sure don't know if it will work right. What do you think?' and before she can even open her mouth, you've already started talking again."

"Don't you mean before she can answer I've already been smacked on the back of the head?" Jon rubbed his head and frowned. Trip laughed and Jon threw the ball back at him only to have Trip catch it in one smooth motion.

"Let her sleep tonight," Trip advised. "Let her rest and don't worry about this thing. You can make up your mind tomorrow."

"Thanks, Trip."

"You can bug her again tomorrow night." Trip ducked instinctively, only to realize he had the only thing in the office that Jonathan Archer was legally allowed to throw at him.

"In all honesty, do you think this thing will work?" Jon asked quietly.

"I really don't know. I don't know if it will work and revolutionize the way we build our spaceships and structure our fleet. I don't know if it will even be able to jump a full lightyear. I don't know if in 100 or 200 years any one will have ever heard of the jump drive. Sometimes, you just gotta take a chance."

"I think you're right," Jon sighed.

"That's why they let me have my own ship," Trip said as he stood to go. "Let me know how the tour goes. I'll be interested to see how they are doing."

"You want to come with?" Jon asked.

"You betcha," Trip said with a smile.

"Good. Because chances are, I'm not going to be able to explain any of it to you when I'm done."

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