Short Story: Seeing the Stars

(This was a writing challenge also. This one takes place in 2360, when Felicia Quinn was ten years old.)

"Felicia! Mom said stay in the cabin while she was gone!"

"What Mom doesn't know won't hurt her. Come on, Liv, this is boring!"

Olivia crossed her arms and stood in front of the door, glowering with all the meanness she could muster. "Mom said."

Felicia shrugged and turned around, darting over to the couch and scrambling up on its back. "You can't stop me." She stuck her tongue out at her sister and pulled the air vent cover off, dropping it on the deck before she hauled herself up into the vent. She paused, scooting around so that she could look at Olivia through the opening. "You coming?"


Olivia pouted at her, plopping down on the floor with her arms still crossed.

"Fine. Stay here and be bored." Felicia grinned and wiggled around until she was facing the right direction and started crawling through the vent. She didn't know where it would lead, but anything was better than sitting at home doing nothing.

The air vent system on a starship was a lot like a maze, with twists and turns leading all over the place. That was fun for a while, but Felicia soon felt like she was just going in circles. Besides, it kind of hurt crawling everywhere on the hard metal. Spotting a square of light at the end of one of the vent conduits, she rounded a corner and went toward it.

Since she'd come into the system well above the ground, she paused at the vent grate and looked around. This was a room of the ship she'd never seen before, and her eyes grew wide as she pressed against the grate to look around. Spying a table below the grate, she popped the vent cover off into the room and turned around to drop out of the opening feet first. She landed on the table with a thump, dropping easily into a crouch to absorb the shock.

With no one around, she was free to explore the area by herself, and the thought brought a grin to her face as she slid off the table and walked up to a huge holographic stellar map display. "Wow..." she said under her breath, just looking at it for a few minutes. Liv would never believe this!

She was just big enough to see the top of the console, but she couldn't reach the entire surface. Looking around, she saw a chair in the corner and ran over to it. It slid easily over the deck when she pushed it, and she positioned it carefully in the center of the console, climbing up on it once she had it in place.

Curious about how the display worked, she started playing with some of the controls, sliding things around the touchscreen and tapping 'buttons' at random to see what happened. Soon she had the display enlarging, shrinking, and rotating. She even got it to zoom in on a single planetary system. She wasn't sure which one, but it sure was pretty.

So enthralled with what she'd found, Felicia didn't hear the door open, or the footsteps coming up behind her. She jumped about a foot in the air when someone's hand came to rest on her shoulder. Aw, man. Busted.

"What are you doing in here, Flick?" Derek Quinn's voice was smooth, with no hint of anger. "Aren't you supposed to be at home?"

"Well...yes." Felicia blushed a little, looking down at the deck. "But it's so boring there! Liv's no fun at all."

"But your mother wants you at home."

"Yeah, but..." Felicia sighed at him. "But you're here. So now it's okay, right?"

Her father chuckled, patting her shoulder. "Okay, you got me. What are you looking at?"

"I...don't know." Felicia looked at the display again. "Not Earth."

"No, it's not Earth. Here." Derek reached over and pulled up the coordinates of the star system that Felicia had found. "Type it into the computer."

Felicia painstakingly copied the numbers into the entry field and waited patiently while the computer completed the search and 'painted' the name of the system into the holographic display. Tilting her head to the side, she tried to read it a few times. "How's it pronounced?"

"Kronos."

"It's spelled funny."

"It's written in phonetic Klingon, kiddo." Derek tousled Felicia's hair. "Come on. Your mom will be looking for you."

"Okay." Felicia climbed down from the chair, and together they left the Stellar Cartography bay, animatedly chatting about what she'd found.