Little 'Red' Bird - II

Posted on Tue Jun 16th, 2026 @ 3:59pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Commander Jenna Ramthorne

3,669 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire
Timeline: Shoreleave

"Some things are built to fly. Some things are built to carry the pieces we leave behind."

The fourth morning arrived wrapped in quiet. Construction no longer dominated the fabrication bay. The welding torches rested in their charging racks. The heavy fabrication arms stood idle above the shuttle. Structural integrity reports displayed comfortable margins across every system. Power flowed where it belonged, the way it should. The impulse engines sat nestled within their housings. The flight processors talked happily with navigation systems. The vessel possessed bones, muscles, and a beating heart.

What remained were the things no engineer could justify on a requisition form. The important things. Jenna stood beneath the shuttle with a mug of coffee growing cold in her hand while she studied the hull from bow to stern. For nearly twenty minutes she simply stared. The design stared back. A machine existed before her. A ship waited somewhere inside it.

She climbed a maintenance ladder and settled herself atop the dorsal spine with a portable console balanced across her knees. Holographic paint patterns shimmered across the unfinished hull while she adjusted colors, curves, and placements by fractions.

Blue looked too sterile. Silver looked anonymous. Gold belonged to someone else entirely. Her fingers lingered over crimson. The projection flowed across the hull. Something inside her settled. The stripe began at the nose and traveled backward along the dorsal surface. Near the engines it divided into two graceful arcs that swept outward toward the nacelles. The pattern carried elegance without announcing itself. Most people would see decoration.

Pilots would see wings.

Jenna rotated the hologram overhead. Viewed from above, the shape revealed itself completely. A bird in flight. For the first time all morning, she smiled. The expression lasted only a heartbeat before concentration reclaimed her attention. "That's probably just a coincidence," she informed the empty bay. The computer remained politely unconvinced.

By midday, she had moved to inside the cockpit. The original Delta Flyer layout occupied the space for approximately eleven minutes before Jenna deleted most of it. Control interfaces shifted beneath her direction. Displays moved closer to natural sightlines. Manual controls settled where instinct demanded them rather than where regulations preferred them. The pilot's seat migrated several centimeters lower. The canopy expanded. Then expanded again.

Then expanded a third time.

Jenna leaned back and studied the latest projection. Too much frame. She changed it. More transparency. More sky. The simulation adjusted. Still insufficient. She changed it again. Hours disappeared while she chased visibility through dozens of iterations. Structural supports thinned. Sensor overlays compensated. Reinforcement fields strengthened. Every version brought the stars closer. Every version removed another barrier.

At some point she realized she had stopped designing a cockpit and started designing freedom. The thought lingered far longer than she liked. She returned to work. The canopy eventually became something extraordinary.

The forward hull projected real-time external imagery across interior surfaces with such precision that the cockpit itself seemed to disappear. The stars, space itself, would wrap around the pilot. Asteroids would drift beneath their feet. Nebulae would stretch overhead. The vessel transformed space into an environment rather than a destination.

Flying would feel less like operating a machine and more like becoming one with the sky. Jenna sat in the pilot's chair while the simulation ran. Her breath caught. She immediately opened another design window so she would have something practical to focus on.

The afternoon carried her deeper into details few people would ever notice. Manual override switches disappeared behind removable access panels hidden beneath the pilot's left armrest. Redundant control pathways threaded themselves through critical flight systems. Emergency power routing received triple backups because experience had taught her exactly how creative disasters could become.

The startup sequence consumed nearly an hour by itself. Most shuttles awakened with sterile computer tones and status announcements. Jenna hated them. She spent the better part of an afternoon modifying audio profiles until the startup sequence became something warmer. A low rising hum accompanied by subtle harmonics that sounded almost alive. The effect reminded her of engines spooling for flight rather than computers reciting diagnostics.

The ship sounded eager. That felt right.

As evening approached, Rosa began appearing with increasing frequency inside her thoughts. Jenna adjusted the visual projection system. Rosa would love this. She immediately frowned and returned to work.

A few minutes later, she upgraded the inertial compensation algorithms beyond what she personally required. Rosa would appreciate that. Jenna frowned again.

Later she refined the flight software so two pilots could seamlessly transfer control authority during aggressive maneuvering. The idea arrived halfway through the modification. Rosa would absolutely abuse that feature. Jenna sat motionless for several seconds. Then she continued programming while pretending the thought had never happened.

The fabrication bay lights shifted toward evening. Outside the shuttle, final hull sections received paint. Inside, ambient lighting settled into warm amber tones that reduced eye strain during long flights. The cockpit was starting to feel welcoming, while remaining functional and comfortable. Human. The vessel had slowly stopped becoming a project. It had started becoming a reflection.

Near midnight, Jenna finally climbed down from the cockpit and crossed the bay floor. She shut off the design overlays one by one until only the work lights remained. Silence settled around her. Then she turned back toward the shuttle.

The crimson stripe stretched from nose to engines beneath pools of white light. The divided pattern swept outward across the nacelles. Shadows gathered beneath the curves and gave the illusion of movement.

Jenna stopped walking. From above, the shape revealed itself completely. A hunting bird. Wings spread. Ready to leap skyward. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at it for a long time. The shuttle no longer looked like something Tom Paris had designed. The shuttle looked like Jenna Ramthorne.

Somewhere deep inside that thought, hidden beneath grief, exhaustion, memory, and stubbornness, she found a small piece of herself waiting there.

---

The fifth day arrived quietly, as though even the Sunfire itself understood that something was coming to an end. Morning light filtered through the shuttlebay's upper observation windows and spilled across the hull of the completed vessel. The crimson stripe caught the illumination first, carrying it along the dorsal spine before splitting gracefully toward the engines. Shadows gathered beneath the curves and transformed painted metal into the suggestion of wings. The effect pleased Jenna every time she saw it.

This also irritated her slightly. She preferred measurable things, flight performance, power efficiency, and structural tolerances. Paint had no business affecting her mood. Jenna arrived carrying a diagnostic PADD and a mug of coffee that she actually remembered to drink. For the first time all week, her pace lacked any sort of urgency. The vessel waited exactly where she had left it, today belonged to verification.

She climbed into the cockpit and settled into the pilot's chair while systems awakened around her. Displays illuminated. Flight processors synchronized. Environmental controls adjusted themselves. Beneath the deck plating, power flowed through pathways she had routed herself and crossed connections she could probably trace from memory. A low hum emerged from somewhere deep within the vessel, warm, confident, and alive; Jenna listened until the final harmonics settled into silence. Then she smiled despite herself. "Good morning to you too." The computer accepted the greeting without comment.

Hours disappeared beneath diagnostics. Engine synchronization consumed most of the morning. Impulse systems came online in carefully managed stages while Jenna monitored energy flow between every major subsystem. Tiny fluctuations appeared. Tiny corrections followed. Flight control processors exchanged information with navigation systems. Thrusters cycled through calibration routines. Inertial compensators tested response curves across thousands of simulated maneuvers.

Every system passed. The vessel accepted each challenge with the quiet confidence of something built correctly the first time. Jenna secretly found that slightly disappointing. A minor problem would have given her something to fix. Instead, the Firebird, as she had started to call it, behaved exactly as intended.

By midday, she moved beneath the hull and conducted physical inspections. Her hands brushed across access panels. Her eyes traced weld seams. She checked connections she had personally installed three separate times already.

Victor would have laughed. Her thoughts arrived softly, this time it carried a warmth of familiarity.

"You're checking that again?"

"It's important."

"You said that the first three times."

"Fourth time's the charm."

"That's not how that saying works."

The memory drifted through her thoughts while she secured another panel. A smile touched her lips. The ache remained. The smile remained too. For reasons she could not fully explain, that emotion felt significant.

The afternoon brought power balancing tests and final software integration. Flight profiles loaded successfully. Navigation systems reported ready status. The canopy projection environment surrounded her with stars so convincing that the cockpit itself seemed to dissolve around her.

Jenna leaned back in the pilot's chair and looked upward as space stretched overhead, an infinite, beautiful, free expanse so convincing that for a moment she forgot she was still inside the cockpit. Then, knowing herself all too well, she immediately saved the configuration before she could start redesigning it again.

Eventually, there came a moment when the diagnostic reports stopped generating recommendations. The maintenance schedules displayed green. The calibration logs displayed green. The systems reports displayed green. The Firebird had nothing left to say. Jenna stared at the final report for a very long time. Then she closed it.

The fabrication arms disengaged one by one. Massive mechanical joints folded inward and retreated toward their storage housings. Restraint fields released. Positioning clamps withdrew. Overhead cranes powered down. For nearly a week the machinery had surrounded the vessel like attendants around a patient recovering from surgery. Now they stepped away. The shuttle stood boldly on its own.

Jenna watched the final support arm retract and something inside her shifted. She shut the workstations shut down next. Displays faded and holograms disappeared. She returned her tools to their drawers and storage lockers. Wrenches found their homes. Diagnostic scanners vanished into cabinets. Coffee mugs finally surrendered to the recycler. The fabrication bay gradually returned to what it had been before she arrived.

Quiet. The silence felt larger than she expected. For the first time in five days, nothing remained unfinished. It was late into the evening, when Jenna began walking, just walking, one slow lap. Her fingertips brushed lightly against the hull as she moved from stern to bow. She followed the contours she had shaped. The modifications she had imagined. The systems she had improved. The details nobody else would ever notice.

Every section carried a personal memory. A lesson from her father hidden inside the flight architecture. A habit borrowed from Victor concealed inside maintenance access layouts. A thousand small decisions shaped by experience, loss, stubbornness, and hope. She reached the nose, then stopped. Above the cockpit, illuminated by soft work lights, sat the name. FIREBIRD. The letters gleamed against the hull. Jenna tilted her head back and looked at them for a long moment.

Five days earlier, she had entered the fabrication bay searching for something to occupy her hands and her mind. Somewhere along the way she had built a vessel instead. A vessel that carried pieces of her father. Pieces of Victor. Pieces of grief. Pieces of healing. Pieces of whatever came next. Like a soft touchdown after a long, turbulent descent.

A soft chime echoed from the upper command walkway overlooking the bay. Jenna glanced upward.

Rosa stood near the railing with her hands resting comfortably against the guardrail, her attention fixed entirely on the shuttle below. The Trill pilot remained silent for several seconds while her eyes followed the crimson stripe along the hull and traced the shape of the canopy. Then she looked toward Jenna. Understanding arrived immediately, because of course it did. Some pilots needed instruments. Some pilots needed windows. A very rare few needed the sky itself.

Jenna felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward.

Rosa's answering smile suggested she understood far more than the shuttle's specifications. Neither woman spoke because the moment required no translation.

Eventually Rosa departed as quietly as she had arrived.

The shuttlebay settled into stillness once more. Work lights cast long shadows across the deck plating. The crimson stripe glowed softly beneath them. The completed Firebird rested peacefully at the center of the bay while the stars beyond Earth shimmered through distant observation windows.

Jenna stood motionless beneath the cockpit and looked up. Five days ago she had come here trying to outrun pain. Now she stood before something that carried every part of it and transformed it into motion, possibility, and flight. Above her waited a future she could not yet see. Behind her rested ghosts that no longer demanded pursuit. The Firebird waited patiently between the two. And for the first time in days, Jenna had nowhere left to run.

---

Morning arrived gently across the Sunfire. Shore leave still held most of the crew planet side while Earth rotated beneath the ship in bands of blue, white, and green. The corridors remained quiet. The mess hall served only a handful of early risers. Somewhere aboard, maintenance crews pursued routine tasks with the leisurely confidence that followed survival.

Deep inside the main shuttlebay, Jenna had already been awake for hours. The Firebird rested beneath the overhead lights exactly as she had left it the night before. The crimson stripe traced its path along the hull. The nacelles swept backward like folded wings. Every panel sat flush. Every system reported ready.

Jenna sat inside the cockpit with a diagnostic display hovering above her lap while the computer completed yet another full systems review. Everything remained green. It had remained green during the previous fourteen reviews as well. That fact brought her immense satisfaction. It also brought her mild suspicion. She narrowed her eyes at the impulse diagnostics. The impulse diagnostics continued behaving perfectly.

A familiar voice drifted up from the deck below. "You know if you keep running diagnostics eventually you're going to discover a problem that only exists because you've run diagnostics too many times."

Jenna looked down through the canopy. Rosa stood beneath the shuttle carrying two coffees and wearing an expression entirely too relaxed for someone preparing to climb into an experimental spacecraft assembled by a sleep-deprived pilot operating almost entirely on caffeine and stubbornness. Her dark curls looked only partially convinced by gravity.

Jenna approved. "Morning."

"You say that like you've experienced one?"

"I've been awake."

"That's not what I asked." Rosa handed her a coffee as she climbed aboard. The conversation ended there because both of them knew Rosa was correct.

Several minutes later they, together, walked a slow circle around the shuttle. Rosa studied everything. Her eyes followed the lines of the hull. The redesigned thruster geometry. The altered engine profile. The hidden aggression buried beneath Starfleet aesthetics. The canopy captured her attention longest.

Then she stepped backward and finally noticed the crimson pattern stretching across the dorsal hull. The bird. The wings. The shape concealed within the design. Her gaze drifted toward the name beneath the cockpit. FIREBIRD.

A small smile appeared. "You built a hot rod."

Jenna immediately straightened. "Technically speaking, I improved the maneuvering package by forty-two percent, reduced pilot response latency by seventeen percent, redesigned the inertial compensation architecture, expanded situational awareness through immersive projection systems, enhanced power transfer efficiency, and..."

Rosa started laughing before she reached the midpoint of the explanation.

Jenna frowned. "These are meaningful improvements."

"You built a hot rod."

"An extremely sophisticated hot rod."

"Still a hot rod." Rosa smirked.

Their launch clearance arrived moments later, routine, professional, and entirely unremarkable, the sort of transmission that happened thousands of times every day across Federation space. Perhaps that made the moment feel even larger.

The bay doors began to open, great sheets of metal drawing back with deliberate grace while the protective shields shimmered like heat haze across a summer horizon. Beyond them, the stars emerged one by one from behind the station's frame, scattered diamonds against an endless velvet sea, and at the center of it all Earth hung in the distance. Blue oceans curved beneath white clouds while sunlight ignited entire continents. The Moon drifted farther beyond, serene and ancient, watching over both worlds with patient indifference.

For a moment neither woman spoke. The Firebird waited. Jenna settled into the pilot's chair. Her hands easily settled into the controls. The engines roared to life. The vessel seemed to inhale.

Then they launched.

The Firebird slipped from the bay with effortless grace and crossed into open space as though it had spent years rehearsing the maneuver. Her thrusters whispered, her impulse power flowed. The hull rotated smoothly toward open sky.

Jenna felt something inside her loosen. Five days of construction. Five days of concentration. Five days of carrying every measurement and every decision. Now came the part she understood. Flying.

Earth rolled beneath them, while the Firebird gathered speed beneath her hands and the stars unfurled ahead like a road written in light, the planet falling gently away behind them as sky became sea and distance became invitation.

Jenna guided the vessel through a climbing arc that carried them above the orbital traffic lanes before banking gracefully across the planet's horizon. The controls responded instantly. Every adjustment translated directly into motion.

The shuttle felt eager. Alive. Like it had opinions, but no arguments.

Rosa noticed within minutes. "Okay." She leaned slightly forward. "Okay, this thing is ridiculous."

Jenna kept her eyes ahead. "Thank you."

"That wasn't entirely a compliment."

"It counts as one, I accept it."

Rosa watched the vessel carve through space. "This thing thinks it's a fighter."

A small smile touched Jenna's face. The kind of smile most people missed. "Good. I think I'd be disappointed otherwise."

The Firebird rolled smoothly onto its side before diving through an orbital transition corridor. Thrusters fired. Inertial compensators compensated. The vessel responded like an extension of thought.

Rosa laughed.

The shuttle responded by becoming even more enthusiastic. Several minutes later Jenna reached toward a control hidden beside her seat. "Ready?"

"For what?"

The canopy activated. The cockpit disappeared. Stars exploded around them. Earth hung below. The Moon drifted beyond. Sunlight poured across infinity. The walls dissolved into projected reality so perfect that orientation became meaningless. Space surrounded them completely. There was no cockpit. No shuttle. No separation between pilot and sky. Only flight.

Rosa stopped breathing for a moment.

Jenna understood. She remembered her own reaction.

The silence lingered between them while the Firebird crossed above Earth. Words would have reduced it. Words would have confined it. The stars deserved better.

Eventually Rosa leaned back. A smile spread slowly across her face. Understanding settled there, deep and immediate and complete, blooming across her face with the quiet certainty of recognition. She never asked why Jenna had built it, because she already knew. Some people were content to simply look at the stars from a distance, to admire them as lights scattered across the dark; others felt the pull of them in their bones, an ache that could only be answered by motion, by crossing the space between, by flying through the very sky they could not bear merely to watch.

"My turn?"

Jenna hesitated. The pause lasted less than a second. Then she stood, relinquishing control. "Don't scratch anything."

Rosa laughed as she slid into the pilot's chair.

The transfer completed, and the Firebird immediately seemed to develop new ideas. Jenna flew with precision while Rosa flew with instinct; Jenna preferred control, Rosa preferred possibility, and somehow the shuttle embraced both approaches at once. The engines sang.

The vessel dove toward the Moon before rolling gracefully through a maneuver Jenna would have described as unnecessary.

"That turn was excessive."

"That turn was beautiful."

"Even beauty has its limits."

"Good thing we're under all of them."

Another aggressive roll followed. Jenna sighed dramatically. Rosa grinned. The Firebird seemed delighted. They crossed above the lunar horizon while sunlight ignited the crimson stripe across the hull. Through the canopy projection, the reflected image stretched around them like a living thing.

Rosa glanced upward. Then looked again. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "You know that's not a Firebird."

Jenna looked over. "What?"

Rosa pointed toward the crimson pattern. "That's a Redwing."

"It's absolutely a Firebird."

"Redwing."

"Firebird."

"Redwing."

Jenna folded her arms.

Rosa's smile widened.

The discussion ended, which guaranteed it had only begun.

Eventually they returned to the Sunfire. The approach unfolded smoothly. The landing bordered on perfection. Naturally, and effortlessly smooth. The Firebird settled onto the deck with barely a whisper while engines wound down around them. The startup hum faded. Her systems entered standby, and silence gradually reclaimed the cockpit.

Neither woman moved. Beyond the canopy, the stars continued their endless journey. Jenna sat quietly. Rosa sat quietly. The view remained unchanged. Yet somehow everything felt different.

Five days earlier Jenna had entered this project searching for distance from grief. She had buried herself beneath measurements, calculations, fabrication schedules, and engineering problems because machines felt easier than memory. The Firebird carried all of it now.

Her father. Victor. Greif. Hope. Freedom.

The pieces remained. It was the weight that had changed. Beside her sat someone who understood exactly why a pilot would spend five days building a cockpit designed to disappear. Someone who understood why the stars deserved to be seen instead of displayed. Someone who understood flight.

The true success of the Firebird had never been the engines or the thrusters or the canopy or the handling. The success was sharing the view.

Outside the canopy, the stars burned patiently across eternity.
Inside the cockpit, neither pilot felt particularly alone beneath them.

OFF

 

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