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Rutherford was in engineering, humming while he ran a report on plasma usage for the Cerritos's last warp journey when Billups approached him. He stopped at about a meter's distance and cleared his throat.
“Ensign, we have a problem.”
“Oh no!” Rutherford's head snapped up. “What is it, sir? Has something happened to the dilithium matrix? I was going to run a diagnostic on that right after this! Did—”
Billups waved a hand. “No, the Cerritos is fine. There's been an atmospheric event on Banub III, the planet where our next second contact is scheduled.”
“Oh no! Is everyone okay? Is the mission compromised? Are we—”
“Everything's fine,” Billups said.
“But you said there's a problem, sir? How can we fix it? Is it one of those anomalies where—“
“Ensign, if I could just finish—“
“Of course! Sorry, sir!”
Billups took a long breath. “There's been an atmospheric event on Banub III that's made ship-to-surface transportation inviable. The Cerritos is going to need to deliver the subspace beacons to the Banubians manually, using our shuttlecraft.”
Rutherford was nodding along vigorously.
“However, this same event caused an ongoing disturbance in the ionization of the planet's atmosphere and our shuttles' standard impulse drives won't function in the environment.”
“Ooh,” Rutherford's eyes sparkled, “that is a real puzzle! How are we going to get the subspace array to the Banubians, sir?”
“Well, that's what I want you to help me figure out.”
“Me, sir?” Rutherford's voice pitched high with excitement.
“Yes, Ensign. You're one of the most promising engine theorists on the Cerritos. You could really bring a unique perspective to the task.”
“Aw shucks, sir, thanks!”
“Meet me in shuttle bay two at 1300 hours.”
“Okie dokie!” Grinning, Rutherford turned back to his report.
---
Billups walked into shuttle bay two at ten minutes till 1300 hours. The back of the Death Valley was open and Billups could hear humming coming from inside. He strolled up to the shuttle, tool kit in hand. “Ensign Rutherford?”
There was a loud bang from inside, followed by a yelp, and then Rutherford was standing in the entrance. “Hello, sir! I thought we could work on the Death Valley since it has a blast shield installed. If the atmosphere's swirling around like a Tarkalean Dervish the shuttle will need all the structural integrity it can get.”
“Good thinking, Ensign. What have you been up to in there?”
Rutherford jumped into a long list of alterations, and finished with, “I've stripped the little guy back to basics. It doesn't know up from down now. Any modifications won't conflict with already installed software or hardware because there practically isn't any!”
“How long have you been here?”
Rutherford rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, not long, sir. Just since I finished my duties in main engineering.”
“From what I've seen of your work, that means you could've been here for hours.”
“Not quite hours.” Rutherford blushed.
“Well, let's take a look.” Billups stepped into the shuttle's interior. More than half of its engine components were laid out neatly on the floor. It looked like a technical manual come to life.
“So, I'm thinking if we take the driver coil,” Rutherford spun the part on the floor, as inertia slowed its rotation it clicked like dabo wheel, “and reconfigure it to carry the magnetic charge of the constrictor, that should adjust for the issue of atmospheric polarization.”
Billups knelt on the floor in front of the arrangement of engine parts. The driver coil was cool to the touch, though when it was in use it would be so hot his hand would scald before it even came within a meter of it. He stared at it, contemplating Rutherford's recommendation.
“Your portraits were all wrong, sir,” Rutherford said.
“What?”
“Your portraits? On your mother's ship? I mean, they were very impressive, and you looked very regal and everything, but you were just sitting there holding random doo-dads, or, I mean, maybe they were very important and ceremonial doo-dads, but you should've been holding something like that,” Rutherford gestured at the driver coil, “and working, if they were going to capture your essence or whatever it is royal portraits are supposed to do.”
Billups chuckled and set the coil back down. “I won't tell my mother you called the Hysperian Scepter of Monarchical Lineage a doo-dad. And the portraits aren't about essences, they're about appearances. So only people like my mother ever look like themselves in them. I always hated sitting for those. And she made us sit for them, even though the artist could have worked from a holo-image easily enough.”
Billups leaned through the paneling Rutherford had opened to look at the uncovered manifold. “I haven't been this close to an actual shuttle engine since I became chief engineer,” he said. “It's easy to forget what's behind all the diagnostics.”
“That's why I love rotating the EPS capacitors,” Rutheford said. “It's like being part of the Cerritos, like, an actual mechanical part.”
Billups hummed in assent. “If we're routing the constrictor's magnetic charge though the driver coil we're going to need to channel the plasma some other way.”
“Don't you mean the wyvern's venom, sir?” Rutherford laughed.
A quick grimace crossed Billups's face, but since he was still shoulders deep in the Death Valley's hull Rutherford couldn't see it. “A few phase modulators should do the trick, keep the ol' plasma in the right pathways.” Billups pulled himself back out into the shuttle's interior. He was flushed, the residual waste heat of the manifolds warming him.
“You know, I didn't even know what a wyvern was! I had to look it up. I don't know how you remembered all that stuff.”
“When you grow up with it it's hard to forget.”
Rutherford was tinkering with a phase converter. “If we write a new subroutine for this guy we should be able to use it in place of the anodyne matrix, and that should account for the magnetic shear in the atmosphere.” He looked up at Billups excitedly. “Ooh, ooh, what would you have called the atmospheric anomaly? What about Ice Giant's Breath?”
“I wouldn't have called it anything. Other Hysperians might have called it something like that.” Billups reached over to rearrange the way Rutherford had laid out the isolinear chips on the shuttle floor. “That's a good idea about the subroutine.”
Billups knelt on the floor examining the engine parts Rutherford had laid out, thinking through different configurations to imagine which would be best for steering through the Banubian atmosphere.
Rutherford tapped away at the phase converter, coding the new subroutine. He was humming again.
“What song is that?” Billups asked.
“What? Oh, it's not any real song, sir. Sometimes I just make up little tunes when I'm working. It helps me concentrate. I'll stop. I didn't mean to bother you!”
“It's not bothering me.”
“Okie dokie!” And Rutherford went back to his humming and programming.
Billups could feel himself closing in on the perfect engine configuration when Rutherford tossed the phase converter at him. “Here, sir! Take a look at the incantation I etched on this unicorn's horn. Do you think it'll work?”
Billups flinched, both at the flying object and the terminology being used to describe it. Rutherford had gotten the terminology exactly right. He really must have done some research into Hysperian culture. Billups was kind of flattered, but mostly embarrassed. “It looks good to me.”
Rutherford grinned.
“Where should we install it?” Rutherford moved around the cabin so that he was looking at the engine parts from the same angle as Billups.
“Between the nacelle casing and the torque buffer.”
Rutherford's face list up. “That's genius, sir! The vacuum pocket will keep it stable!”
“And if it's filling the extra centimeters in the vacuum pocket then we won't have to install a null field generator—“
“Which means the pilot will have more power for the maneuvering jets!”
Billups and Rutherford grinned at each other and high-fived.
“Well, alright then,” Billups said, “let's get started.” He crawled back into the open panel.
“Okie dokie!”
“Hand me the coolant diffuser first.” With his head buried in the ship Billups stretched his hand out blindly for the part.
“One snow gem coming right up!” Rutherford passed Billups the part.
Billups’ knuckles went white as he gripped the diffuser and gritted his teeth. He inserted it in its temporary home, securing it with two stem bolts. The hissing of the bit of coolant that leaked out muffled Rutherford's humming a little. Billups inhaled deeply. “I've always kind of liked the smell of coolant.”
“Haha, me too! It's like grape cotton candy.”
“Last time I got to do a full scrub of the warp core T'Ana made me come in for a check-up after. Apparently I have a bit of a reputation for getting a little woozy during engine cleanings.”
“I get it. The stuff smells so good. Like an ice cream cone on a Risian beach.”
“Well, I'll remember not to put you on scrub duty any time soon, then.”
“Aw, man.”
Billups paused in his tinkering. “If we put the phase converter next to the torque buffer that will interfere with the blast shields. The storm could tear right through the hull.”
“Hmm.”
“Well, we can keep installing the new engine configuration for now,” Billups said, “but we'll have to keep thinking about how to account for the sonic shear.”
Rutherford handed Billups the next part and started humming again. Billups froze. That tune he knew.
“Wait,” he said.
Rutherford's humming immediately paused.
“Where'd you learn that one?”
“The song? I can't remember sir. It might have been—No. Maybe it was—wait, nope. Oh! The celebration feast on Monaveen. The bard sang it during the roast mutton course. Or maybe it was the braised mutton course? It's really catchy.”
Rutherford started to sing:
The young prince's staff was raised aloft
and all the stars their caps did doff.
For now at hand was the ship's dock
found by the heir's unerring—
“That's enough, Ensign!” Billups shoved himself out from under the shuttle's engine and sat up rigidly, glaring at Rutherford.
“I'm, uh, I'm really sorry, sir. I didn't mean to...” Rutherford trailed off.
Billups scowled at Rutherford, but as his breathing slowed he recognized the befuddled look on the ensign's face. “Look, just, stop talking about Hysperia. It's a silly and backwards place. Everyone uses stupid names for things and I've spent years making sure I don't slip up and use one so I sound like an illiterate serf. It's got retrograde customs full of useless pomp that make everything wildly inefficient. Just drop it. Let's get back to work.”
“Of course, sir.”
They worked in silence. Their understanding of the task at hand was clear enough that they didn't need to talk about it. Billups hadn't meant to lose his temper. He tried to focus on the satisfying sound the driver coil made when it clicked into place, or the comforting weight of the micron spanner in his hand, and eventually his face didn't feel so hot.
In the cabin Rutherford was silent as he continued to pass Billups the parts he would need, and adjust the programming on the isolinear chips Billups handed him before returning them.
They were about two-thirds done with the engine adjustments when Rutherford said, “Sir?”
“Yes, Ensign?” Billups
“I'm really sorry, sir. I just thought maybe you'd like talking about Hysperia a little bit. Or talking like a Hysperian. I felt bad when I messed it up on the Monaveen and I wanted to do better. I mean, I'd never even heard of Hysperia before. I thought it might get really lonely. It seems like not many Hysperians join Starfleet and I can't imagine what it's like to learn a whole new way of talking to do your job! And you're still the best engineer in the fleet! So, I'm really sorry. And I'm really glad you asked me to work with you today. And I won't use any Hysperian names for things. I promise.”
Billups pushed himself out into the main cabin again. “That's, well, that's really thoughtful. But there's really not much I miss about Hysperia at all.”
“Ok.” Rutherford looked deeply embarrassed. “I won't mention it ever again. Unless, you know, you do want to talk about it.”
“I really don't.” Billups reached over and grabbed the next engine piece he needed before maneuvering back into the shuttle's paneling. “But if that changes I'll let you know.”
Rutherford smiled.
They tinkered in silence for a while, but a much more comfortable one.
“Hand me the altimeter,” Billups said. “I have an idea.”
Rutherford did. “Are you thinking that we could fuse the phase converter and the torque buffer?”
“Yes! Then the vacuum pocket won't encase it on all sides. The blast shields won't read it as an isolated object.”
Rutherford could hear Billups tapping the altimeter against the shuttle's paneling thoughtfully. Then, at the same time, they both said, “Wait...”
“The phase converter needs—“
“equal pressure on its whole surface or it won't—“
“hold a charge.”
“Darnit!” Rutherford frowned and scratched behind his ear.
Billups handed the altimeter back out into the main cabin. “We'll think of something.”
“Oh, I know that! They haven't invented the engineering puzzle that could stump you.”
The quiet chorus of humming machines and humans filled the shuttle cabin again.
After a while Billups said, “It was hard at the academy at first. And don't even get me started on the entrance exam. I stayed up all night drilling myself on terminology, but an engine is an engine at the end of the day. And I'm good with engines.”
“That's an understatement, sir!”
“I had a really great professor. Corpul. He was a Benzite. He knew what it was like to be the odd one out. There aren't many Benzites in Starfleet. A lot of them can't handle the adjustment to an oxygen atmosphere, even with the breathing apparatus. I don't know if you've ever tried to learn Benzite.”
Rutherford shook his head, even though Billups couldn't see him.
“They don't really have generic object nouns. All of them come with the history of the object attached, so this isn't a coil spanner,” Billups reached his left hand back into the cabin to wiggle the tool around, the rest of him stayed buried in the paneling, “it's the-spanner-of-coils-that-was-crafted-seven-years-ago-now-homed-on-the-Cerritos-and-being-used-by-Engineer-Billups.”
“Jeez.” Rutherford swapped the coil spanner in Billups's hand for a phase reader. “How do they even get through a sentence?”
“And that doesn't even get into recursive nouns. If I was following proper etiquette I'd have to give the full noun for the Cerritos within the full noun for the coil spanner. You get nouns stacked inside nouns and sentences get exponentially longer.”
“That makes Lieutenant Kayshon's soliloquies sound like haikus!”
“To compensate, sometimes Professor Corpul's lectures were very short. I don't think he even realized it. He just started cutting out all information he thought we'd think was irrelevant, and, well, sometimes it was pretty relevant.”
“How'd he end up a professor if he was leaving things out of his lectures all the time?”
“He's a really brilliant theoretical engineer. One of those guys who works at the academy to research as much as to teach.”
“Oh, yeah,” Rutherford encoded the last bit of programming on an isolinear chip and tossed it in the air a few times, waiting for Billups's empty hand to emerge from the shuttle's side. “I know those sorts of guys.”
“Well, it meant that getting assigned to his lab was a real stroke of luck, and, let's just say, I got lucky.” Billups reached out for the waiting isolinear chip. “Once I figured out why his lectures were so brief I started asking him questions even if I knew the answer to let him know he'd left out some details that another cadet might need to know. It got to the point where all I had to do was raise my hand and he'd know he'd skipped over something important and double back.”
“Like you had a code!”
“I guess. Sort of a shorthand way of reminding him to use longhand.”
“That's, uh,” Rutherford paused and twisted the magnetic charge cable back and forth in his hands, “that's another reason I was learning the Hysperian names for things. I liked the idea of having a shorthand with you sir, even if it was really kind of a longhand. I mean, I didn't want to exclude any of the rest of the engineering department, I just—“
“We already have a shorthand. We haven't had to finish a sentence all day.”
“I guess that's true.” Rutherford sounded as giddy as if he'd just finished scrubbing the warp core.
Billups laughed. His chuckle bounced against the metal of the shuttle's hull and echoed in the cabin.
“Woah. Do that again!” Rutherford hastily added, “Sir.”
“Do what again?”
“Laugh! I think I have an idea.”
Billups forced out a rough guffaw and Rutherford listened to the way it reverberated through the Death Valley, head cocked to the side.
“That's it!” Rutherford said.
Billups immediately picked up the idea, “We use a sonic resonance to vibrate the shuttle's hull—“
“At a rate that will negate the waves of the atmospheric event—“
“So that the shuttle's charge will be unaffected by the ionization!”
Billups pushed himself back out into the cabin. He and Rutherford grinned at each other.
“We just need to find a vibration that's an inverse of the atmospheric event's.”
Billups looked down at the shuttle floor. It was mostly empty. “We're almost done.”
“We just need to install these two guys under the control panel,” Rutherford waggled one of the plasma mergers he was holding, “and then we're good to go. All that's left after that is tuning the hull's resonance.”
They paused for a moment, neither wanting to admit their disappointment that the task was almost done.
“Well, why don't we take her for a test flight?” Billups asked. “I already know what a fine engineer you are, but I hear you're quite the pilot, too.”
“Thank you, sir! It'd be my honor.”
“I'll teach you a Benzite song that runs through three octaves naming just one stembolt. We'll for sure find the right frequency in there somewhere.”
“Okie dokie!”