Among Stars

Food

Naina stuffed her mouth full of a Proxian fruit and leaned back in her chair. She was sitting at a smaller table in a cozy room, where Mizuni and Perez had carried part of the food supplies from Travelstar. Mizuni was sitting opposite of Naina, her elbows on the table, and she was leaning her chin on her hands, looking at the elf with a smile on her face.

Naina sighed contently and closed her eyes as she leaned backwards. "I just realized I haven't eaten well in like a week," she said. She straightened, and opened her eyes, then looked down at herself. "Which reminds me, I probably look worse than an Ulleain's arse at the moment," she said and grinned nervously.

"No! You look absolutely beautiful!" Mizuni said, slightly too eagerly, and blushed, then continued with a lower voice, "I mean, you look good. Uh. I mean, not bad. Like. Mmh. Nevermind," she said and turned her gaze down.

Naina shook her head. "Thanks, but no need for pleasantries. My hair looks like it'll take me fifteen weeks to comb it again, and I'm so dirty you'd think I've been crawling on the floor for days," she said.

"Haven't you been doing exactly that, though?" Mizuni asked, smiling.

Naina stopped, lifted her finger, and opened her mouth. She closed it, opened it again. Closed it again, and then chuckled. "You have a point there, Dr. Mizuni," she said.

"Please. Valera, or Val, is fine," Mizuni said. "You crawled there because you were saving me, so I kinda feel I owe you something."

Naina shook her head. "You don't," she said, smiling. "I would have done this anyway, and your... uh, nevermind," she said.

"My what?" Mizuni asked. "Spell it out, you were going to say something about me."

Naina sighed. "I'm sorry if this is opening some old wounds. But it was your adoptive father, who asked me to come here."

"Wngai'th?" she said, raising her eyebrow. "Why in the world would he want anything to do with me? Let alone anything good. He was VERY adamant that he never wanted to see me again when I left."

"That's just it," Naina said and took another bite of the fruit. She gulped it down and continued, "He was very sad, and he looked like he regretted something."

"The only thing he regrets is that I wouldn't work in his company and make him money," Mizuni said, scrunching up her nose.

"I... Hmm, how do I say this?" Naina mused. "This is going to sound weird, but he was selling space-junk in a Marauder space-station two-hundred light-years from here, and the last thing he was concerned about, was money."

"Impossible. The only thing that man ever cared for, is money," Mizuni said, rather pointedly.

"Well, the only thing I know, is that he asked me to get you, take you back to the Empire, and he promised to give me everything he had," Naina said, putting the last bit of the fruit in her mouth.

"He... said that?" Mizuni asked, not believing her own ears. "That... he'd give you everything, and didn't... didn't even want you to bring me to him?"

Naina nodded. "He said, and I quote," Naina said and took a deep breath. "Go there, take my daughter with you and take her to the Empire. Give her a second chance at life, and I'll give you everything I have," Naina said, trying to mimic the man's speech.

Mizuni looked at Naina for a long while, then shook her head slightly. "It's hard to believe," she said quietly. "He was so mad back then... so mad..."

"Maybe he realized he was wrong?" Naina said, grabbing another fruit and biting into it. She swallowed the piece and took a swig of water from her glass next to her. "I mean, people change. Maybe he realized something while you were gone?" she guessed.

"Doesn't sound possible, with him, but..." Mizuni said. Then seemed to realize something. "What were you doing in Marauder space? Isn't that dangerous for you elves?" she asked.

Naina shrugged. "It was a Valkyrie station, and I'm from Quenstar. It was a pretty safe bet. And it's not like I had any choice. My hyperdrive's power converter popped, and I had to get a new one."

She lowered the fruit on the table as she seemed to remember something. She smiled at Mizuni. "Which reminds me strangely enough," she said. "How did you figure it out?"

Mizuni's eyes flew open and her eyebrow shot up. "The what now?" she asked, surprised.

"I saw the cylinder," Naina said and smiled. "You didn't tell anyone, didn't you? I saw the parts-list. It was all just listed under generic names, but I know those frequencies. I know the values you had requested."

Mizuni looked down, smiled, and a blush crept onto her cheeks. "How'd you know? Nobody else had any idea..."

"I've spent the last ten years researching anything and everything I could about them. But you crazy woman, you figured out how to create one. That's genius. Can't figure out how, though," Naina said, smiling. "But why come here, unless... unless you were missing pieces of the puzzle! You wanted to come here to complete the puzzle! You knew the bubbles have variable internal frequencies, but you didn't have a way to measure them from the outside!" Naina said, with her eyes wide.

"I spent the last two years plotting a route and finishing the Polarizer, so I could come here and take the measurements and complete my theory," Mizuni said. "I figured that if I was able to accurately measure the values..."

"You would have all the pieces of the puzzle! Of course! But how would you create one?" Naina said.

"If you open a hypergate backwards..." Mizuni said, and Naina's mouth opened.

"You're crazy," Naina said laughing, "You're mad and genius and outstanding , but you're crazy. Of course! If you drive the hyperdrive signal through a backwards-hypergate..."

"It creates a sub-space bubble," both of them said simultaneously, and giggled.

"That's crazy genius," Naina said, shaking her head and smiling. "You could power this station for all eternity with that."

Mizuni nodded. "Yeah, I knew we couldn't last here without a power source that was powerful enough," she said. "The others thought we would just use traditional power, and maybe the generators from the Infinity, but I knew we could last only a few years, maybe seven or eight... hold up!"

"Perez said it was eight years! How are we still here?" she questioned.

"I sort-of kind-of borrowed your tech and Sunstar is now running on the external bubble's power," Naina said and grinned.

"How the hell were you able to do that?" Mizuni asked.

"I reversed the energy stream from the bubble that the sensor antenna gathered, then fed it through my hyperdrive that works on the same polarity as the bubble," she said and laughed. "Actually, we're all alive because your adoptive father sold me a decades-old hyperdrive converter at a way too steep a price."

They both laughed and chatted about all things science long into the night.