firstofitskind | Spaceship Parking & Beyond, Sunday Afternoon

Spaceship Parking & Beyond, Sunday Afternoon

Liam had made plans with Kaidan and Verity to go on something of a joyride today, so he'd shown up at the junkyard early to give himself time to do an extra-thorough pre-flight check.

The virtual glass shimmered and became permeable as the shuttle recognized his biometrics, and he sat down in the pilot's seat and brought up the HUD.

ID core, optimal; conventional drive, optimal; weapons, optimal; communications, online; backup controls, online... everything seemed to be in working order. Now he just needed his passengers.

[ooc: for them what's mentioned!]

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"Wonder if it's anything like our Mass Effect drives," Kaidan wondered. Or a hyperdrive. So many ships, so much fun new tech.

He wished Tali were here to see it. Granted, Tali would get in trouble trying to see inside everyone's ships..

"How's a Mass Effect drive work?" Liam wondered. "With ID drives, you enter your destination co-ordinates, and a portal brings you in to Interdimensional space, and then back out into normal space in a fraction of the time it'd take with conventional drive."

Kaidan listened, "It sounds oddly similar. It generates a mass effect field and basically blips you from one spot to another almost instantaneously. They're mostly used in local systems. Traversing the galaxy, we do with much larger Mass Relays. Same thing, longer reach."

"Huh," Liam said with a nod. "Do you need a ship to be able to make use of them?" He wondered. "And what is a mass effect field?"

"Only if you're trying to transport something," Kaidan said, "For that, you need a drive core that can burn Eezo. In space, low-mass fields allow FTL travel and inexpensive surface-to-orbit transit. High-mass fields create artificial gravity and push space debris away from starships."

He hesitated for just a moment, "Did I ever explain biotics to you?"

Interesting. There were definitely some surface-level similarities, anyway. Although it sounded like they didn't have anything like the Portal Network.

"You didn't, no," Liam said, his tone curious.

"So, where I'm from, there's a whole different type of energy, like a sublayer to everything. We call it dark energy, because people are super creative I guess," Kaidan began, "There's an element called Element Zero or Eezo - again, look, creative - that can interface with that energy stream and allow it to be used. For ships and weapons, you'd use a mass effect field spun up by a mass effect drive, which would use Eezo."

"In my galaxy, several species evolved on Eezo-rich planets and it changed their DNA and their evolution. They can natively use the dark energy. They're called 'biotics', and it gets confusing because the effects are also called 'biotics'." He leaned back against the seat, "Humans are late to this game, and there is no native Eezo on Earth. About forty years ago, they noticed that pregnant women exposed to Eezo dust had a very high rate of birth defects and mutations. Occasionally, the kid lived. Even more occasionally, the kid was carrying warped DNA that made them a biotic, able to harness and use dark energy. A company, Conatix, tried to figure out how to make the kids useful to the military, created implants to help them better store and use everything."

"Remember my weariness at the idea of super soldiers?" he added quietly, "Hi. My name is Kaidan Alenko. I'm one of the first human biotics to survive to adulthood."

Liam had a vague memory of his days spent as a 'teenager', the younger Kaidan telling him something about being called a mutant at one point. He hadn't pressed the subject, because it wasn't really his business, but he certainly hadn't expected something like this.

As someone who was, himself, partially composed of energy, the idea of experimentation in that direction seemed pretty damned unsettling.

"Shit." He finally said. Very succinctly. "But you're- okay?" he checked. For a loose definition of 'okay', he was assuming. Like... not about to dissipate in to nothing if he used those dark energy fields, or whatever.

Kaidan laughed a little, "Yeah, I'm ok. I get headaches from the implants sometimes, but I mean, I got off light compared to some of the others. I can do a whole host of things other humans can't do but some of the other species in my galaxy can. Where I'm from.. there's a level of xenophobia about it. Here, nobody cares, so I'm trying to make a better effort to not be weird about it."

He was still totally weird about it.

And Liam understood that- all of that- maybe a little too well.

He wasn't quite ready to share that part of himself with anyone not-Verity, though. His hybrid status was something he'd hidden for so long from most people that the idea of telling anyone still made him nervous.

"What kind of things can you do with this 'dark matter'?" he asked, instead. "You don't actually have to answer that if you'd prefer not to," he added after a moment.

Kaidan thought about that for a minute. Liam was the sheriff - but more importantly, Liam was his friend and Kaidan trusted him.

"It's a complicated answer," he said finally, "But the basics - lift things, throw things, freeze things, make electronics explode, and create a barrier around myself that keeps damn near everything out. Don't ask me how oxygen gets through when nothing else does, because damned if I know." He lifted a shoulder, "Those are the things I trained with the most. That's nowhere near the range of biotic effects available."

Liam was still working on the trust thing; historically speaking, the whole 'I'm part-alien and also only a few years old' conversation had a pretty small success rate.

"Makes sense, if you were being trained to fight," Liam commented, one hand moving in a semicircular motion to slow the shuttle down to a near-crawl as they approached the asteroid belt. "Those all seem like pretty useful abilities in a combat scenario."

"They're effective as hell," Kaidan agreed, "Though I didn't sign on as a biotic with the military. I worked my way up from grunt, same as everyone else."

Looking out the wall, he breathed a sigh of relief when the planet was well behind them. "It's weird, being a civilian again. Never expected to retire. Hell, didn't think I'd make it through the war. Here I am, running a business on the strangest island nobody in my world would ever have believed.."

Liam nodded. "Same here." And if there was a significant glance in Verity's direction at the phrase 'never expected to retire', well.

It was complicated.

"The time travel bit alone is a bit much for some people," Liam said, shaking his head and smiling slightly. "At least I only hopped sideways, rather than backwards."

"Finding myself on antique Earth hasn't been the best thing ever," Kaidan said with a small frown, "Things are a lot better on several levels, my galaxy. I can only hope they'll advance here along a similar mien."

"It's far from perfect," Liam acknowledged. "But for me, at least... I can't go back, so all I've got is forward. And like I was saying before, this is somewhere where I can make my own choices about what happens to me."

"Yeah, that's been the one nice thing. No preconceptions, no expectations," Kaidan agreed. A chance to breathe. A chance to not have all eyes on him, the last human SPECTRE.

"It's an adjustment, though, realizing that things ..aren't an issue here. Nobody treats me like I'm contagious." A beat, "I'm not."

"I didn't think so," Liam assured him. "What happened to you sounds pretty close to what happened with the hybrid program on my Earth. And none of them were ever contagious."

And Kaidan didn't seem like the type to go around teleporting babies out of the womb to make more biotics, so.

He was going to take a moment to put the shuttle's navigation on autopilot, though. Because his palms ached, and he needed a moment to just... press a thumb into the palm of one hand, and then repeat the process with the other.

He caught the gesture and threw Liam a look, "You ok?"

Kaidan was definitely not doing anything to make more baby biotics, no.

"I'm good," Liam said quickly. "Old injury." He was well aware the mark of the shaqarava on his palms looked like a burn scar of some sort, and wasn't averse to letting people continue to think that. "Flares up sometimes, is all."

Kaidan frowned, "Do you need anything for it? I have painkillers, or medigel."

Liam bit his lip to hold back a laugh at the idea of him and painkillers. Because you did not want the only person who knew how to fly this thing high as a kite. "No," he shook his head. "Me and painkillers don't generally get along very well." A vast understatement. "It's fine, it'll pass."

Edited 2018-09-10 02:37 (UTC)

Kaidan eyed him, "Alright. As long as it's not some macho bullshit."

Liam didn't seem the type, but still.

It wasn't! At least, not in the way Kaidan was probably thinking. But even if he hadn't been flying the shuttle through an asteroid field, Liam really didn't like having his inhibitions loosened the way painkillers had a tendency to do.

"I promise it's not," Liam assured him. And the ache was starting to fade, now that he wasn't thinking so much about the energy pathways that ran throughout his body like blood vessels.

He was probably going to go find a quiet spot on the beach and blow holes in some rocks when they got back to Fandom, though.

See, Liam, there's so much fun you two could be having together.

Kaidan shrugged a shoulder, "Ok. If you change your mind, hit me up."

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