Chapter 4

A/N: This wasn't at all what I had imagined I was going to write when I sat down today. But I think it came together nicely. As always, please read and review and feel free to let me know if you have any requests that you would like to see in this series!

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"Everyone asleep up there?" Jon asked as Erika sat down on the couch with him, a stack of padds in her hands.

"Mmm hmm," she nodded but then stopped. "Well, they are all in their beds with their pajamas on and the lights off. So that has to count for something."

"I say we see the first one in fifteen minutes," Jon shook his head with a smile.

"Ten and you'll do the dinner dishes if you lose." Erika held out her hand and Jon shook it.

"Deal." He peered over her shoulder at what she was reading. "What do you have for tonight?" he asked.

"An analysis of quantum mechanical theory as it applies to long range real-time communication strategy," Erika said without looking up. "And you?"

"Definitely not that interesting."

"Hmmm." Clearly, his wife wasn't really paying attention but that didn't stop him. He had been waiting all evening to talk to her about this.

"I'm reading an assignment for Jeff's starship mechanics class," he said.

Now Erika did look up. "You're the Starfleet Chief of Staff and they have you grading papers?"

"They've already gotten their grades. I'm just looking over their work to see if they have any new ideas. They were asked to design their own starship, nacelle layout, quarters configuration, the whole thing. I guess Jeff has been talking to them about operational efficiency and design technique so he wanted to see how much they picked up."

"And?" She was actually paying attention now.

"And they came up with some very cool designs. I mean look at this. Instead of having the nacelles hanging behind and above the main part of the ship, these kids have them lowered and running parallel. This one has them aligned vertically with one nacelle above and one below." He smiled as he watched Erika examine the plans.

"Can they still generate a stable warp field?" Erika asked, leaning over his shoulder and pointing to one of the schematics.

"They've got the projections right here. It makes for a tighter field but it should be able to exceed warp 5.3 without having the same structural issues that we currently face. But it isn't only the external designs that they are working with. They've got all different layouts for everything from the bridge to the engine room. Take a look at this one," he handed her a padd with a sketch of an engine room but instead of having a warp reactor lying across the bay horizontally, it was standing upright. "They've got the core vertical. The lines go straight in and out through the main conduit channels. This engineering room is two stories high but it is less than half the diameter of the current configuration."

"So these kids want us to build taller starships?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe," he shrugged. "It is worth looking into." Before Erika could even respond to him on that he had handed her another padd, this time displaying various bridge layouts.

"I don't understand this one," Erika said examining the plans closely. "They put in a secondary pilot's station." She traced the two consoles with her finger. "One for each nacelle?"

Jon smiled but shook his head. Engineering had never really been Erika's specialty. "The second one isn't for another pilot. It is for the navigation officer."

"The what?"

"Think about it. We've always had our pilots also charting our courses by programing it into the main computer and waiting for it to spit out a proper course."

"Unless they are idiots like you and decide to do it themselves." Erika leaned over to give him a kiss on the forehead.

"Right," he said, giving her a look. Back in the NX program, he was known for being incredibly impatient with the then state-of-the-art nav computers that they had as they slowly crunched data and calculated course corrections for the faster-than-light engines. There was one trial run in particular where he had refused to wait for his data and instead just punched his controller up to full throttle and went for it. When he dropped out of warp three seconds later after someone back on the ground had implemented the emergency shut off procedure, the first thing he heard was Forrest yelled that it was a miracle he hadn't killed himself.

"You could have flown into a damn sun, you raging lunatic! You have got to be the stupidest idiot on the face of this planet or any other one. I ought to have your ass canned so fast not even a warp drive could beat you!" Jon could almost see him sputtering, his face getting redder by the moment. From the way A.G. had told the story, everyone else in the control room had been fighting back laughter as the Admiral yanked a headset off of the Capcom and started talking directly to one very stunned Commander Archer. Normally, procedure required that only one person communicate directly with the pilot in the spacecraft so as not to overwhelm them with a barrage of commands and typically that one person was another pilot. That had been one of A.G.'s legacies. He had said over and over that the only person who could understand what was going on in the mind of a pilot was another pilot. The only person he wanted shouting orders at him while he was flying faster than the speed of light was someone who had flown a ship faster than the speed of light. So one of the other pilots would serve as a conduit through which all the other controllers and technicians could funnel orders to the pilot. But even with that sort of efficiency, the pilots occasionally didn't give a damn what anyone on the ground was telling them to do.

That had been exactly what had happened that day. The controllers had placed Jon's test on a hold for what seemed like hours as they worked on correcting the nav computer so it wouldn't keep spitting out absolute junk. In the meantime, Jon was trapped in a spacecraft floating in between Jupiter and Saturn and bored out of his mind. Every minute or so he kept getting on the line and arguing that he really should be able to do his test even without the correct coordinates because for the love of god his flight was going to be incredibly short so why the hell did he need a computer to tell him what to do.

Apparently he needed the computer to tell him quite a lot, he realized when Erika had wrestled the headset away from Forrest. Somehow Jon had forgotten that the entire point of the test had been to see how the nav computer worked with a pilot actually controlling the engine. Without the nav computer, the flight was worthless. And dangerous. Incredibly, stupidly dangerous.

After Forrest had stormed out of the room barking that Erika had better figure out how to deal with Jon, she had guided him through the reentry procedure and brought him back down to Earth. For the moment, it had just been the two of them on the line as she calmed him down and the rest of the control team had faded away. It wasn't until Erika slapped him on the back of the head as he was getting out of the cockpit that he remembered that he had actually screwed something up.

"It's a wonder no one booted you out of the program right then and there," Erika said now, shaking her head and scrolling through the designs.

"Hey, if they let me stay after the little stunt A.G. and I pulled, I figured I was golden," Jon said with a cocky grin. "Anyway," he turned back to the padd, "these students think that we should have one officer control the pitch, roll and yaw as well as the speed of the engines over all, and one officer in charge of navigation."

"Do you think it makes sense?" she asked.

"I'm not sure yet. But it is a neat idea. It would definitely fill a need that we have on the bridges of our ships." He paused for a moment, remembering their days in the NX program. "Do you ever wish that we could design ships again?" Jon asked, suddenly wistful.

"No, but I bet you do."

Jon smiled. "I've got to thank Jeff for letting me read this things. These kids have some very imaginative ideas."

"Do these kids say anything about long range, real-time strategy?" Erika said, picking up her neglected report.

"No," Jon muttered, "but I think that one does." He pointed up at the stairs where their youngest was standing at the railing, looking down at them.

"How did he get out of his crib?" Erika whispered, leaning over to Jon.

"He probably had help," he shook his head as he stood up. "Ben? What are you doing, buddy?" he said as he walked up to the stairs and lifted his son over the gate. "Trouble sleeping?" Ben nodded. "And did Addie get you out of your crib?"

"He was half way out on his own!" Adalie called as she ran down the stairs.

"Well, at least he didn't jump like Frankie did," Erika sighed. "All right, let's go. Back to bed, everyone," she said, pointedly looking at their middle daughter who had now joined them downstairs, eager to witness any excitement. "Frankie, go. Ads, you too."

"Come on, Addie. Let's get these two to bed and then go watch a movie." Jon said as he ruffled her hair and carried the toddler back upstairs.

"Jon!"

"What?" He scooped up Frankie with his free arm.

"Don't take too long with her," Erika nodded at their eldest who was following behind him dutifully.

"I won't," Jon muttered obediently.

"Besides," Erika called after him, "You have to do the dinner dishes."

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