ID Chapter 7
Once strapped into their seats, Jon and Rose went down their pre-flight checklist, checked in with the tower, and started the engines while Arianna squirmed impatiently. After ascertaining that everything was go and radioing the tower again, they were finally instructed to take off. As Jon ramped up the thrusters Arianna was hard-pressed not to squeal with delight, but she kept it bottled up inside, she knew this was not the time. Jon punched the throttle and they lifted off. Arianna could stand it no longer, and her parents joined her in whooping in exhileration. Steadily they rose through the air, and as the Earth grew smaller beneath them and they reached a safe altitude, Jon pointed Voyager's nose to the sky and engaged the engines fully, and they roared out of the atmosphere and into space.
At about a thousand miles away from earth, with the planet still looming hugely behind them, Jon and Rose removed their helmets and gloves and Rose turned her seat so she could help Arianna off with hers.
"Now it's not safe to get up yet, but we can talk better now, yeah?" She smiled at her daughter's excited expression. There wasn't a lot that truly amazed her little girl, and she savored the excitement in Arianna's eyes.
"Will it always be this much fun, Mummy?"
"It always is for me!" she assured her.
"Just look, Arianna," Jon gestured dramatically, "all this space out here, all this universe, and hardly any of it really has been explored by humans. It's all ahead of us, just waiting to be seen and heard and smelled and tasted... you're part of history now!"
"So when will we meet the Krillitanes?" Arianna asked.
Her parent's expressions darkened a bit and Jon answered, "Weeelll... they'll be waiting for us to get quite a bit further, so thet Earth's sensors can't track us in a timely fashion, and then they'll act. So once we're a few hundred thousand miles along, which won't be long now, we'll get up and make sure you know what to do when we hear from them, OK?"
"OK!"
True to his word, when they had traveled just beyond the moon, Jon verified they were on course and left the controls and he and Rose unbuckled themselves, then Arianna.
"We're going along slowly, coming close to every planet that we can on the way out, getting a really good look at them," he explained. "It'll look like we're investigating them, but really we're just biding our time until the fleet can get waaayyy ahead of us and hide out in an asteroid field between here and the Gliese 581 system. From there they'll monitor us as best they can, as well as any other ships that come through. When the Krillitanes do make contact with us, you go into hiding. You know where?"
"Yep-p!" Arianna assured him confidently.
"Ok darling, show us!" ordered Rose, and Arianna ran off to the ship's living quarters, looking behind her to make sure they were following. Opening a storage space she walked in, pressed on the wall, and an opening appeared. It was a box, adapted from the transdimensional delivery box that the Doctor had sent through one of the small cracks in the wall between the universes. That box had been bigger on the inside, and John had used scrap alien tech he picked up at Torchwood, plus a drop of the contents of the precious vial that the box had contained - among other things - to turn the box into another small ship within Voyager, undetectable to anyone who didn't know it was there - or who didn't have a properly calibrated sonic screwdriver. It was a lot like a TARDIS, except that it couldn't travel through time, and its ability to travel through space was limited - it wasn't much more than an undetectable, and virtually indestructable, life capsule.
"Now hopefully we'll be right behind you. But if we aren't, what do you do?" Rose asked firmly.
"Stay put. Never leave the capsule." Arianna replied dutifully, "And if they destroy Voyager, or go away and you don't come for me within five and a half hours, I'm to put in the coordinates for the Lupus constellation, find the wormhole, and contact the Doctor with your cell phone."
"Right!" Rose picked up her daughter and squeezed her tightly. She had to keep reminding herself that Arianna would have been no safer on Earth. At least - hopefully - they were taking the Krillitanes away from the planet by putting themselves at risk.
"And where is the cell phone?" Jon asked Arianna.
"In the console of the capsule." Jon had installed it there in its own socket so it would not be misplaced.
"Alright then, that's all setlled, what say we get something to eat? Space travel always makes me hungry!" Jon teased.
"Everything makes you hungry, Daddy!"