Cerulean Stars - Chapter 138

Chapter 138 - The Birthday Party - Part 5

They’d made their way to the underground hanger the escape shuttle was berthed in without incident. Jellaa’s rebellion plot apparently having emptied out of the castle of pretty much everyone but D’Erika, the guy Shona had secretly left to keep her daughter safe, and one unfortunate janitor who they had apologetically locked in a closet.

The escape shuttle itself, though that was really something of a misnomer given the vessel was half again as large as a runabout, possessed an arrowhead shaped primary hull with the odd series of revolving globes at its rear that early era Orion ships had used in place of warp nacelles.

From there, they’d split up to check over the small ship, with Sisko leading Bashir and Jake to the engineering compartment while leaving Raine to head up to the small cockpit with the two girls in tow.

“Just so you know.” D’Vana put forward as Raine plopped herself into the sole pilot's seat. “I don’t actually know how to fly a spaceship.”

“That’s all right.” Raine told her, glancing across the analog controls before flicking the power switch. “It looks like it’s a standard Orion type seven helm design, which is the same one used for the hero’s raider in the Greenlit Stars holonovel series.”

“I’ve never heard of that one.” Saya said, eyeing her suspiciously. “Is it one of those weird adult romance holonovels you don’t want me to know about?”

“...Yes.” 

“So Aunt Raine…” D'Vana suddenly interjected, thankfully saving Raine from having to further defend her recreational choices. “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”

“Go ahead.” Raine cautiously agreed, a little bit fearful about what the Orion might consider a personal question given what the conversation had moments ago been edging on.

“Thanks!” D'Vana chirped. “I normally wouldn't ask this cause I'm usually really good at figuring out that sort of thing on my own. But how old are you?”

Raine twitched.

“Normally I'd guess twenty.” D'Vana continued on, heedless of the near frantic motions Saya was making to try and get her attention. “But that would mean you would have had to have been like six when Saya was born. And while I know there are some species like the Ktarians that mature really fast. Saya looks my age instead of older, so I don't think that's the case with Asari.”

“I'm thirty-six…” Raine admitted tiredly, knowing there was likely nobody to blame for this line of questioning but herself since she hadn't bothered to put on her makeup with the expectation of the holoemitter covering everything.

“Asari aging slows drastically after puberty.” She continued explaining. “And our average lifespan without medical intervention is somewhere around a thousand years. So it'll probably be a hundred years before I look like I'm in my late twenties.”

“A thousand years!?” D'Vana squeaked. 

“And we just kind of stop getting older appearance wise after a certain point.” Saya interjected proudly. “Mom says there weren't any Asari who looked older than their late forties on the homeworld.”

“Of course.” Raine added in. “That comes with a pair of downsides I'm not going to mention.”

She had gotten enough teasing from Jadzia about her future rack as it was.

“Why did you mention them at all if you were just going to say you weren't going to mention them?” D'Vana asked, tilting her head slightly in clear confusion.

“...It's been a long day all right.” Raine admitted, flushing slightly in embarrassment at having her lack of logical reasoning called out like that by a teenager.

Saya gave a judging stare. “You've been up since yesterday, haven't you?”

“I haven't gotten a full night's rest since you were kidnapped, young lady.” Raine scolded, meeting her daughter's stare with one of her own. “Infiltrating the Orion homeworld doesn't just happen, you know.”

“Technically Orion's not our homeworld.” D'Vana interjected. “It was just our largest surviving colony world after the great plague wiped out everything else.”

“All right.” Raine said. “That's moderately interesting, and leads to several questions I'm sure Federation xeno-historians will be asking your people sometime in the near future. However it misses the point that putting together a dozen workable plans for infiltrating Orion and getting everyone back, wasn't particularly simple.”

“Oh.” D'Vana muttered, blushing slightly for a moment before a confused look flashed across her features. “Wait, does you not knowing Orion wasn’t our homeworld mean you don't know about the great plague?”

“I have the bare knowledge of how it pushed your people towards their current culture of pirating.” Raine explained dryly. “Which is probably more than anyone else outside of Starfleet Intelligence knows, and for whatever reason they’re not sharing with the rest of us.”

She shook her head and let out a sigh. “Honestly, you Orions are nearly as bad as the Romulans when it comes to the accessibility of your history.”

“Sorry?” D’Vana offered uncertainly.

Raine rolled her eyes. “Unless you’ve had a personal hand in intercepting whatever history books clandestine Federation cultural scientists have tried to smuggle off your world you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

‘We don’t really have those.” D’Vana said before seeming to catch herself and hastily expand on what she meant. “I mean history books, pretty much everything’s passed down verbally through each family’s lorekeepers.”

She tilted her head slightly in thought, thankfully missing the full body cringe those words caused Raine to have. “Well… There’s always been rumors that the Pirate Queen keeps actual record records. But nobody really believes them because of how unOrion it would be.”

“And suddenly a small part of the great mystery is solved.” Raine muttered under her breath, willing to bet most of her small fortune that a significant portion of the Orion’s cultural woes could likely trace back to the Queen’s ancestors doing a truly impressive job of setting up various cultural control mechanisms after the great plague.

“All right.” She digressed as the last of the checks finished. “It looks like everything's coming up good to go on this end.” She glanced over to D'Vana. “I don't suppose you know any departure codes that might make this whole thing easier?”

“Sorry.” D'Vana apologized again. “It’s usually mom, or dad, or Aunt D’Rana who handle that sort of thing.”

“Eh.” Raine shrugged. “Didn’t really expect you did, but there wasn’t any reason not to ask given we have you here.”

“Well…” D’Vana hemmed, wringing her hands together and shuffling awkwardly in place. “Even if I did know it's sort of expected that I wouldn’t tell you since you're kind of stealing our ship.”

“Borrowing.” Raine corrected. “In cases where the theft of a vehicle is necessary to preserve the life of Starfleet officers all reasonable attempts must be later made to return said vehicle back to its owner's possession.”

That particular regulation had come about because Starfleet officers tended to be the types to keep everything they brought back from alien worlds. And while Starfleet didn’t really want to do away with the practice entirely given how much valuable scientific data was regularly gained from it. For a number of reasons there had needed to be limits.

“So, um, what's it actually like being in Starfleet?” D’Vana asked.

A dozen immediate public relations approved answers flashed across Raine's mind, none of them however were likely to mean much to the Orion teen currently staring with the type of rapt attention one would normally reserve for a religious leader about to dispense some bit of true wisdom.

“It's mostly up to the person.” She finally began. “I joined Starfleet Academy because I wanted to travel the galaxy and see the wonders of the universe. While going to the Academy I discovered a love of dealing with and figuring out alien cultures that led me to try and join the diplomatic corps. When I turned out to be a bit too out of the box with my diplomatic problem solving, I switched to the security tract.”

Smiling, she tipped an imaginary cup of tea into the air. “Which I turned out to be surprisingly compatible with. Since then I have saved thousands of lives, visited hundreds of different worlds, traveled across time and dimension, ended up with strings of friends and enemies across dozens of different sectors, been in a respectable number of relationships with hot aliens, earned a small fortune through smart investment deals, and raised my adorable daughter into a well rounded teenager.”

“So all in all?” She finished with a grin. “I've never for a moment regretted my choice."

“Well said.” Sisko offered as he walked into the cabin. “Though that reminds me, we have yearly performance reviews coming up.

“I never for a moment regretted my choice until I had to handle all the paperwork that comes with being command staff.” Raine corrected in a deadpan tone.

“Curzon used to call it the curse of competence.” Sisko grinned. “But he also made me handle most of his paperwork.”

“So what you’re saying is that I need to find a reliable junior officer to hand off most of my paperwork too.” Raine joked.

“That’s what I did.” Sisko nodded, leaving Raine to shoot the man a stink eye at the knowledge that she was that reliable junior officer. “The engines are old but good to go.”

“Great.” Raine exclaimed, focusing back on the controls before beginning the start up sequence. “I just need to find hangar door access and we’re good to go.”

“Um…” D’Vana put forward, causing both Raine and Sisko to glance over. “Those have to be opened manually.” She pointed out the cabin window at a small wheel to the left of the large hanger doors. 

“Seriously?” Raine muttered before looking  over to Sisko for help.

“I'll tell Bashir to get it.” He said before heading back out of the cabin.

Several minutes of somewhat awkward silence passed before the small form of Bashir could be seen walking down the gantry towards the control mechanism, at which point he spent several more minutes struggling with the wheel before seeming to give up. Raine let out a sigh of exasperation and began drumming her fingers while Saya and D’Vana began having a hushed conversation about their fight.

Finally Bashir returned with Sisko, the man himself carrying a large looking tool of some kind that they leveraged together to try and get the clearly stuck mechanisms to turn.

“Hey, D’Vana?” She called out, turning back to the girls as the pair seemingly gave up. “Do you know what the hanger doors are made of?”

“A magnesite duranium alloy.” The Orion teen answered helpfully.

Mentally crossing out the ship's disruptor banks as an option that would take too long, Raine moved onto the other quick and dirty possibility. “Anything important on the other side?”

“Not really?” D’Vana returned, clearly uncertain of where the Asari was going with her questions. “But I’m pretty sure the doors are too thick for the ship's disruptors to blast through unless you want to spend a couple hours at it.”

“I figured as much.” Raine confirmed, waiting a few minutes more for Sisko and Bashir to join them in the cabin.

“I’d guess there’s a problem with the hydraulic system.” Sisko said. “But we passed by another escape tunnel that looks to lead further away from the castle we could use instead.”

“That goes to the safehouse in the forest.” D’Vana offered.

“That can be our plan b.” Raine said, eyeing the large doors for a moment before turning to Sisko. “The lights are a bit low here for me to be sure, but those open horizontally, right?”

Sisko nodded.

“All right.” Raine stood, taking a moment to stretch. “Jake is inside, right?”

“Bathroom.” Sisko confirmed.

“Then let's see just how good those doors actually are.” Raine grinned.

If this were the reality of the mass effect games the Asari knew she would probably be an extraordinarily lopsided biotic, having put most of her experience into developing her barrier, lift, and throw capabilities. In real life however those three abilities were a lot more versatile than they had been in the game.

Focusing, a blue biotic glow began leaking off her as sent out the strongest throw she could muster at one half of the large double doors. The ability hit, engulfing the structure in the same blue light her body was putting off and then a loud screech of breaking metal rang out as the hundred times multiplied weight of the door forced the mechanism open.

She plopped back into the pilot's seat, ignoring the wide eyed stare D’Vana was giving her to turn a tired grin to Sisko as the cumulative energy loss from the day's actions reminded her she was currently missing lunch. “Looks like I win.”

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Author’s Notes: Yes D’Vana, Raine actually could have crushed your family's castle. But hey, look on the bright side, now you’re getting to go to SPACE!