"<Captain, I really think you should leave that for the Humans to fix.>"<br/><br/>Rega had started to go stir crazy and had resorted to pacing the bridge as she barked orders to repair things but Kit's army of drones were always three steps ahead. It had gotten to the point where Kit had nearly automated the entire ship and was doing a better job than she could ever do. She remembered even sitting around all day on the bridge without doing anything, yet at least now she was doing something. Even if that something was lodging her thin body inside a bulkhead somewhere on the Human's ship, with a lamp attached to her forehead and a wrench in her hand. It had become hot in the cramped space and she was perched above the deck below with one foot on a large power conduit, and the other pressed to the opposite wall. Needless to say, it wasn't the safest of positions and she could understand the warnings Kit gave her through the earpiece she wore.<br/><br/>"<This needs to be done. The faster we get this ship fixed, the faster we can save Dren.>" she replied.<br/><br/>"<Who's going to save him if you fall and die?>" He retorted.<br/><br/>"<You worry too much.>" she said with a smile. The panel in front of her slid open and a blast of warm air made her fur dance on her cheeks, but she waved away the steam and started tweaking the pipe inside with her wrench. A moment later, the steam stopped billowing out of the pipe and she closed the access panel, attaching the wrench to her belt.<br/><br/>"We have pressure again!" The Engineer called from the hatch below. He had stuck his head inside and craned his neck around to look upward, only to see her legs and bottom splayed across the tight space, nearly ten feet above his head. Shining a light upward, he quickly noticed her compromising position and quickly withdrew from the hatch, "Thanks for your help, Captain! Neither of us would ever fit up there."<br/><br/>"No problem!" She called down, her translator pendant lit for a moment in the darkness of the crawlspace, then she began carefully lowering herself to the hatch. She felt a couple of the crew grab her ankles when she was in position and she was yanked out into the cool hallway air.<br/><br/>Then they started to laugh...<br/><br/>"What?" She inquired. A crew member just raised a terminal, hit a button, then turned it around to show her a picture of herself, her tail and most of the fur around her head and neck had puffed up and she looked like a large children's plush toy. It would be somewhat adorable, if it wasn't for the skin tight jumpsuit she always wore. Instead, it made her look like an afro attached to just a neck, "Oh, Ha. Ha. Very funny. You Humans don't have to worry about something like this happening. Have some sympathy! I just fixed your damn plumbing for the whole deck!"<br/><br/>"And you have our thanks." One man said, "Speaking of showers..." he added, then started chuckling as he handed over her lab coat she always wore.<br/><br/>"Yes. Yes. I'm going for one now." she said with a smile. "Let me know if there is anything else I can do. You're lucky I'm not claustrophobic."<br/><br/>"Oh, by the way. The captain wanted to see you." He said. Rega's eyes lit up. Finally!<br/><br/>With a wave, she trotted off for the airlock to her ship to clean herself up and get ready to see the Captain.<br/><br/>--------------------------------------------------<br/><br/>It has been a week since she had met this ship. It took a while for them to get used to her, yet some still weren't. She wondered how Dren coped with it and hoped he had a better time of it than she has. After consulting the computer, she took the lift to the bridge, where she was directed into the ready room to wait for the captain. Kit's drone silently bobbed in the air behind her chair and she nervously clutched a terminal from her ship, the writing on it was translated into the Human's language. After a week of waiting, she was ready to make a leap of faith in trusting these Humans. She had it all planned out in her head, but remembered Kit's doubts and warnings about proceeding. She hoped he was wrong. She somewhat felt that she needed to offer something to them to help her get Dren back, but after working with the crew, they spoke of him highly. Like a friend. They needed a plan, but first, Rega thought she needed to confirm that she could trust them. She laid the terminal on the table and waited for the Captain to arrive.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFFF00">They were ready to go, just about; all that they needed now was to find where the Rapture was hiding. A cold mug of hot chocolate sat on her desk amidst a strewn mess of various datapads that held charts, schematics, a list of their supplies, map of the nearest star systems, etc. It was like the database of the ship had exploded on her desk and nothing there held the answer that she wanted at the moment. Unable to stand the sight of anymore numbers or figures she now stood before the window in her quarters that allowed her a view of the stars. Sure, in times of combat this would be the worst place to hide, but at the same token she never expected anyone to be there either. <br/><br/>When the proverbial shit hit the fan, she expected everyone to be where they were supposed to be. Including herself, which meant she would be on the bridge with the rest of her officers doing all that she could to ensure the safety of those in her charge. The most the window did was allow her mind to wander, which is what she did now. As her cerulean eyes stared with no focus out at the endless expanse of space, it held limitless possibilities but none of the answers that she sought. <br/><br/>A welcomed escape to the world around her, when she just needed a moment to collect herself and be without the pressures of being in command; a place where she could live the life she currently fought for. There in that world they had a new home world and her sister’s children could be free to grow up without fear of deformity in clean air and with fresh water. It was a dream that often felt too far to be real and though she fought each day to obtain that dream it did not always feel close at hand. <br/><br/>The alert of someone waiting for her in the ready room roused her from her thoughts and dreams. Unshed tears danced in her eyes as she gathered up a couple of datapads and headed off to meet the Nekan Captain. <br/><br/>“Sorry I’m late,” she said once she arrived and entered the room. She looked tired, if determined as she set her pads down on the table and took a seat across from the Nekan. “Ok, so you had a plan you wanted to discuss with me?”</span><br/><br/>Rega smiled and nodded when the Captain entered the room and laid a stack of pads on the table. She could tell that she was stressed and struggling to find answers. More than likely to the same problem she faced; to find Dren.<br/><br/>“Ok, so you had a plan you wanted to discuss with me?” she asked. Rega sat quietly for a moment, her face clearly showing the nervousness and indecisiveness of what she was about to do, yet she was not ready to change her mind now. One last look to Kit's drone hovering eternally at her side and she leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the smooth glass table.<br/><br/>"I have the beginnings of a plan to rescue Dren, but there's something else I want to discuss. Call it a plan for your main issue, if I'm not mistaken. I would like to put forward a suggestion as a token of good faith and as a first step of trust."<br/><br/>"Captain..." Kit began, yet stopped when Rega raised a hand.<br/><br/>"Now I understand we, as Nekans, have no place in your war and should not be involved. However, my experiment has displaced one of our kind from our sector, and has thrown him into your feud here." Rega explained, still trying to delay saying it, but she knew she had to. She moved her hand over the pad before her, hesitated, then pressed the connect button. Behind her, the view screen lit up displaying a detailed schematic of Mauna Kea's most precious cargo, a large ring shaped structure: A fully functional gate that will return anything that passes through it back to Nekan space. The final piece of her experiment. The first bi-directional Stargate between sectors of space. Maybe even different Galaxies. She still had no idea where this space was in relation to her home space. She wasn't even sure the gates would connect, but all her theory points to a resounding yes. She was confident this experiment would work.<br/><br/>"Now this gate is currently in large pieces inside the Mauna Kea. The ship is designed as a large industrial platform, with on-board factories capable of producing just about anything you have a blueprint for, and a construction platform for deploying this gate. I am willing to provide access to select members of your crew that would treat this information with confidentiality, as I hope you do. I understand that this information in the wrong hands would be bad for the chances of a successful deployment."<br/><br/>Rega stood up and hit a few more controls on the wall display, the rotating schematic of the gate retreated to the corner of the screen, giving space for a star chart to appear in the middle.<br/><br/>"Now, this was the most up to date star chart I had before leaving Nekan space." She hit a control and many planets were highlighted, "These are planets that are currently habitable, or have been terraformed to be so. From my research, they are very close to your own Earth." She hit another button and about three quarters changed color, displaying numbers beside them, "These are the planets currently occupied by Nekan populations and displaying their population density. The unsettled planets are currently not under any claim, except as territory of the Nekan Empire, so they are available for settlement by anyone, provided they fill out the proper paperwork and immigration procedures." Rega took her seat again and sighed heavily, her brow still lowered in worry, "I doubt there would be issues with Humans coming through and settling on one or several of these planets, granted you adhere to our laws and not cause issues. I'm sure something can be arranged. This could mean a new home for your people, Captain. I also want you to understand that this offer is not reliant on the safe return of Dren, but I would request we try the rescue first before we try and deploy the gate. I would also request that you determine the best place to do so as you know the safest areas of space. This is delicate machinery and will be susceptible to Children attacks."<br/><br/>Rega leaned back in her chair and waited for the Captain to process the information, hoping she wasn't making a mistake. Still the worry made a lump in her throat that wouldn't go away.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFFF00">A new home. The words echoed in her mind like the whispered hope of a dream that had nearly been lost in the wake of all the bloodshed and pain. A place where they could thrive once more, a place where they could live once more and recover from the folly of their own mistakes; it was almost too good to be true. <br/><br/>The Nekan spoke and Troy listened, her face expressionless when as the spark of hope kindled into a small fire that threatened to consume her. Images and data passed before her eyes and she drank it all in, already her mind at work with how she would pitch it to the rest of the Federation only for all those plans come to a crashing halt at the mention of the Children. If one, just one of them made it through the gate they would stop at nothing in spreading their hatred and conviction. Then not only would humans be at risk, but their alien allies as well. Which lead to the thought of how they would even be able to launch such an offense and not have the Children ruin the plan? Or worse, have them take over the gate and journey through on their own. <br/><br/>So many things could go wrong with this that all Troy could do was feel that fire of hope die back down to the low ember it had become. There was just too much at risk for them to try it, at least with how she saw it now. <br/><br/>“My people are…well…lost and afraid,” she began once the other Nekan Captain finished her explanation. “We are dying, slowly but surely and a new home is something that we desperately need,” she paused and looked to the various highlighted planets and star charts. “However, the Children are too great a threat to even consider bringing them into your space…” another pause as she chews on her bottom lip and drums her fingers on the table. “Can your gates be used to just jump us to another location in this system?”</span><br/><br/>The question caught Rega off guard. She and Kit's drone slowly turned to look at each other, yet for the cylindrical robot seemed quite pointless. She glanced up at screen where another tap of her finger brought up the full screen gate schematics again. She started typing on her pad for a few moments and calculations streamed across the screen behind her. She finished and leaned back in her chair with a huff and spoke rather half halfheartedly.<br/><br/>"Yes, I suppose so. With some re-calibration, we can simply point it in a random direction and jump through just as I did before back on Neka, however, this would cause many, many more issues." she leaned forward, crossing her arms on the glass table, "For one, If I build the gate here and we go to a random place with it, I won't have a gate to get back here, or go to Neka. Two, we would have no idea where we end up. We could end up in a sector with no habitable planets or meet a threat worse than the Children we could even end up in a void between galaxies where there's nothing. It's extremely dangerous."<br/><br/>Rega paused for a moment then leaned back in her chair once more.<br/><br/>"I understand you don't want us to get even more involved in your war, Captain. And I'm sure I don't have the authority to bring you to our space if it would expose us to it. But, if by some slim chance I reprogram the gate and we get sent off to a lucky spot in the universe where there are untouched paradises of planets, without another gate again to come back, it would be one ship that goes. It would only be the Elyandra that would be spared from the war. If another ship were to go through afterward, it would not end up in the same place as the last one. For me to end up here this close to Ren was a drastic fluke. A second gate is needed for the first to lock onto and transport to a specific location."<br/><br/>She paused for a moment, then stood up from the table to wander over to the window, looking at the foreign stars outside.<br/><br/>"It can be done, but it's risky, unpredictable, and a one way trip. Doing it also removes any chance to return to Nekan space. I will leave the decision up to you, but I'm just advising you of the consequences." she said, "Again, there's no guarantee the Children still wouldn't follow us. At least if we go back to Nekan space, there is a considerable Military force for defense. The Mauna Kea fared somewhat well in our last encounter with the Children and she was barely damaged. She's also a Science vessel with a fraction of the combat capabilities of actual Military ships. I think we can take them."<br/><br/>She paused and turned away from the window with a sigh.<br/><br/>"Again, though, I'm in no position to be authorizing such force. This would be a lot easier if we could speak with the Nekan High Council and discuss our situation. We could have security set up at the gate and maybe post a Dreadnought in the area perhaps?"<br/><br/>"A Dreadnought would be overkill, Captain Rega." Kit chimed in. The first time he spoke since they started talking.<br/><br/>"Regardless, I will leave the decision up to you." Rega said.