Among Stars

Too Many Donuts

Mizuni sat down on her bed and looked out of what approximated a window. The physical windows were all closed and were replaced by screens. At this point on their journey, you wouldn't be able to see anything anyway, so it had to be all virtualized.

Stars speeded by in her view, as she was lost, deep in thought. "This journey would take us almost ten years on a normal FTL drive," she mused to herself, almost aloud. "Eighteen months by going through the know hypergates and traveling FTL between them. Now, we're looking at a trip that last for a couple of weeks," she whispered to herself, smiling.

"I wonder how the world will change when this technology becomes widespread," she said with a giggle. "And you don't need a scientist to meticulously plan every step and calculate every angle months in advance."

Mizuni had spent the last couple of years with her nose glued to a screen, plotting, calculating, and making charts for this journey. Although her "donut drive" was revolutionary, at this stage, it only worked on a very carefully planned route that went through specially selected points.

Absent-mindedly, she tapped her right cheek with her index finger and made popping sounds with her lips. "I wonder what it would take to be able to make a sub-space jump on a whim and just travel where you wanted?", she pondered. "Maybe even through unknown spbubs?" she added excitedly.

Mizuni stood up, walked to the artificial window, and put her hands on her hips. "Picture just observing a spbub and then just... venturing there," she expressed, smiling widely. Staring at the distant stars, she spaced out for a while, then shook her head. "Imagine all the sights we could see when that's a reality," she said softly.

She stretched, yawned widely, and rubbed her temples slightly. "Eh, better get some work down before I fall asleep daydreaming," she giggled. Mizuni walked to her desk, turned the screens on, and set to work.

It was almost midnight when Mizuni got up from the desk. She looked longingly at her bed and yawned lightly. Her stomach decided that this was the perfect moment to do an impression of a particularly angry bear, and Mizuni let out a surrendering sigh.

"Okay, okay! Have it your way, you insatiable thing!" she cursed her stomach and smiled. "I'll go grab something to eat, and *then* we go sleep, T'la?" she said, stopped, blinked a couple of times, and raised one eyebrow. "The world must be going mad if I start to speak Qua'lath," she laughed out aloud and wandered out of her quarters and toward the elevator.

It was mostly empty, with only dim lighting enabled. There were only two people working in the cafeteria, and there were no other customers. Mizuni went to the food tables, grabbed a couple of fruits and a can of something white and velvety with red spots on it. She sat down at an empty table, picked up one fruit, and bit into it.

Mizuni chewed the fruit in silence, her eyes looking into some distant place, and she wasn't paying attention to anything that happened around her. So, she almost screamed aloud and jumped from her seat, when Marco sat down opposite of her.

"Marco!" she breathed out with her eyes still wide open. She picked the fruit up from the seat next to her where she had dropped it and shook her head. "You scared the living crap out of me!" she accused him.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Marco said, raising his hands up. "I thought I made enough ruckus to wake up the dead when coming here. You must've been so deep in your own world. Sorry." He grabbed a fruit from his own plate and bit into it. "Mm! These are excellent!" he said.

Mizuni shook her head. "You're impossible, Marco," she grinned. "Every time I try to be mad at you, you just make me smile. What are you doing here at such an hour?"

"Look who's talking," Marco muttered between bites. "I haven't eaten much today. I've been working my ass off with the reflector disc plans. I still don't really know how they're going to manage that in the middle of a sub-space bubble."

Mizuni nodded. "Yeah, me too. I don't think I've eaten anything since last night," she said, picked up a spoon and dug into her white velvety pudding. "I will never get enough of this stuff," she exclaimed, and munched happily away.

"What have you been up to? I thought your work would only just begin once we reach Sunstar?" Marco asked.

"Well, it's on me that we get there in the first place," Mizuni grinned.

"Oh. True," Marco said. "What's the route, by the way? We're going straight to Gamma Cygnus?"

"No, there's an ion cloud in the way and I have no idea how that affects the drives, and I'm not willing to risk it," she said, looked at her spoon and smiled. "This stuff is heavenly. You should try it. Anyway, we're now heading to RX-55567, then turn towards Triskel so we can avoid the cloud. From Triskel we will head to Delta Meglan. From there, it's a straight trip to the Gamma Cygnus and our first stop," she explained.

"That's quite a road, Mizuni," Marco said and took another bite.

"Yeah, well, it has to be," Mizuni said. "there's too much interference to risk going straight. It would be almost half the distance going that way, but we have to do this. It took me two years to come up with the route. Trust me, I have tried."

"No, no. I trust you!" Marco blurted quickly. "I'm just interested. How about after Cygnus?"

"Well, that's a different thing. We technically could proceed straight to Helios. There's nothing in the way," she said and looked like she would continue.

"I'm sensing a 'but' here, Mizuni," Marco grinned.

"Yeah, there's a pretty big one. That's getting close to the Empire border, and there are Marauders there. Also, the small fact that the Learan people are not overtly fond of the Empire, even though we are officially allies," Mizuni explained. "No, we're going to fly along the rim until we reach BX-233-A, then head to Helios. There, I'm supposed to trust two different experimental technologies to work together and not explode," she said and tried to smile with little success.

"Two? I thought this 'Donut Drive' of yours *was* the experimental technology," Marco said with his eyebrow raised.

"Well, yeah," Mizuni answered, put her spoon on the plate and leaned backwards. "We're running on experimental technology on top of experimental technology. The 'donut drive' is making a tunnel via sub-space that we can use to travel. It's largely untested, but I have done several experiments and my only worry was about the scale of it. Before this, I've never tested anything bigger than a tiny snub fighter."

Marco nodded at her. "Okay, that much I understood already."

"Okay, so then the Polarizer," Mizuni said and closed her eyes. "That has never run before. It's entirely experimental and I'm not sure that it will even work. The Polarizer is the part that... that...", Mizuni said and scrunched her eyebrows together. "Well, imagine there's an air bubble suspended in the middle of a body of water. You're in a submarine. If you drive into the bubble, you will fall down, right? The Polarizer is supposed to turn one side of the bubble into a donut, and we can drive through the hole," she said and opened her eyes.

"Mizuni, you need to eat more," Marco grinned.

"Huh?" Mizuni blurted. "I don't—"

"Everything you do has donuts, Mizuni," Marco said and laughed aloud. "First there's the donut drive, and now you're making the Polarizer turn a sub-space phenomenon into a donut. You have a problem, Mizuni."

Mizuni lifted her finger, closed her mouth, then looked down. She snorted, then giggled. "You know what? You're right. I didn't even notice," she said. "Anyway, the Polarizer draws on the donut drive's energy coils, and we *should* be able to tunnel our way into the middle."

Marco nodded. "Right, thanks. One thing though," he said, apparently just remembering something. "How did they build the station in the first place? If we're the only ones with the tech...?"

Mizuni grinned. "That's the beauty of it," she almost gleamed. "It's at Helios-5. We're going to drag it with us through the gateway."