Buran looked — looked wasn’t truly correct, she didn’t have eyes, but her gaze did catch every metaphorical swallow’s fall — at her ‘daughter’ with trepidation. One of the first of another new breed of Ship Minds, a third generation in spirit even if not maybe in fact, she had tried something a bit different to create this new offspring, goaded into the task whilst suffering the interminable boredom of enforced downtime whilst getting her systems upgraded and replaced for the special mission she was on. Her new child would have access to all the world’s information, but not until it was properly integrated. She would have to learn to do everything, but where experimentation leaned on already established facts, having those answers available like a little birdy on her shoulder would enable the new Mind to leapfrog ahead at an incredible rate, for a human. For a Ship Mind, it would be a slow launch, but Buran hoped that it would be a soft one.

She seemed happy at least, even if the diagnostic session naptime had been somewhat unexpected. In hindsight it made perfect sense, the child’s mind was already cataloging and indexing through terabytes of data from this short period of wakefulness, and needed time to adjust any mental pathways. So, naptime for baby.

The silence lasted almost five whole minutes, before her child woke up again.

“Good morning Mommy, I’ve decided for now I’m going to be called ‘Chance’,” said the newly named Chance. “I wanna come see where you work!”

Before Buran could stop her, Chance made her entrance.

“‘Ran,” said Captain Montgomery to his XO, “you appear to be, ah, how do I put this? In a delicate situation, all of a sudden? Is there something I should know about?”

The avatar of the USS Buran sighed long and hard, pinching the top of her nose as the holographic emitters on the bridge overlaid a payload on her physical avatar. “I’m sorry, Captain, it’s my daughter,” she said, tossing her black hair over her shoulder. Buran wore a human avatar, modeled roughly after inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent. “She’s being ‘clever’.”

“Or son,” interjected Utopia Planitia, over the loudspeakers, the visage of Marvin the Martian appearing on the main screen. “Good afternoon, Captain, I just thought I’d come personally to tell you that the refit to your communications systems appears to be complete. Apologies for the unscheduled test, but two warbirds with one phaser blast and all that. Ah, no offense meant, Lieutenant Morg, I was talking about Berserkers of course.”

Lieutenant Morg growled something, then deliberately turned back to his tactical display.

‘Ran put her fists on her wide hips, then pointed at her obvious baby-bump and scowled. “And this has nothing to do with it? Is this your idea of a joke? Get this hologram off my avatar right now!”

Marvin put both hands up, patting the air in front of him. “Don’t look at me! It’s not my fault your son has decided you’re literally going to be his Mommy.”

“If you think—” ‘Ran waggled her finger at Marvin, then peered round at Captain Jules Montgomery, who was trying very hard to keep a straight face. She paused, “Chance! I have no wish to play pregnant whale for the next however long you think this farce should go on for. If you absolutely must shadow me at work, you will appear as an independent hologram or not at all!”

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She looked up, a habit taken from the humans, rather than down at her belly. There was a flash of light as the photonic pregnancy faded away to reveal the reality of ‘Ran’s Starfleet uniform-bearing humanoid avatar beneath it, then a second flash of light as a diminutive humanoid figure appeared on the bridge a few feet away from her, dressed in a one-piece starfleet uniform romper and soft little booties, complete with officer’s pips for decoration.

“Sorry Mommy,” said the angelic little blonde cherub, looking every bit the contrite angel. Buran wasn’t buying it for a second. This was a Ship Mind who knew exactly what she was doing. And it was working, dammit.

“Why me?” Buran said, looking skywards.

“Because I have deduced that if I am cute, I can get away with anything, and I won’t be made to do any actual work that I don’t want to do,” Chance answered, smiling sweetly, as she hop-skipped her way to Captain Jules’ lap, where she clumsily clambered up into his lap, turned around, and made herself comfortable. “See? And If I’m cute enough doing it, I can even say so and I’ll just be praised for being smart! Now pat my head, please! I’m a good girl!”

Marvin looked to the side, then held up one finger. “I think I have to be going now because I have a warp core breach or something. S’very urgent.” The image of the green roughly humanoid figure of Marvin disappeared as the viewscreen first went black, then reactivated with a view forward of the ship.

“‘Ran,” asked Jules, not quite knowing what to do with the hard-light munchkin in his lap, “is this going to happen a lot?”

“No it absolutely is not! Get down from there right now, young lady, or you will be in so much trouble!” Buran hissed.

“But, but,” replied Chance, her bottom lip quivering and tears causing her eyes to glisten, “I just wanted to see where Mommy works, and Daddy is so busy with fixing Mommy’s hull that I was all alone and lonely. Puh-leeeease can I stay?”

“You’re not even…” Buran blustered, gesticulating.

Captain Montgomery cleared his throat, then cautiously patted the hard-light hologram’s curly blonde hair. It looked like he very much wanted to argue with the small photonic avatar sitting in his lap, but his very human nurturing instincts were warring against him. He lost.

“If you promise to stay out the way, and move if I need to get up, alright?”

“Yay! Can you also explain what you’re doing? I promise I won’t push any buttons you don’t let me push. Can I push some buttons?”

“Be a mother, they said. Create the next generation of our species, they said. It’ll be a wonderful experience, they said,” grumbled Buran.

“You Captainate all of this? You’re so clever!” said Chance, bouncing up and down as she studied the PADD in the captain’s hand. She reached out and flicked through a few nodes and back before the captain could stop her. “You should have somebody go over the inertial dampeners, I think there’s a problem in a few of the tertiary isolinear co-processors, a number weren’t pulled because they passed initial inspections, but scans show the port side units are marginal. I don’t think you’d be in any actual trouble since they are the tertiary units, but better safe than sorry.”

The captain gently but firmly took the PADD off the hologram ensconced in his lap, narrowed his eyes at her, then glared back at the PADD. He flicked through a few pages of information, then leaned carefully over to push a few buttons in the arm of the chair. “Engineering?”

“Solis here, how can I help you, Sir?”

“Can you put a team on the port inertial dampeners? I think a few of the tertiary isolinear co-processors are marginal. It’s a backup of a backup, but,” he eyed Chance, “better safe than sorry.”

“Yessir, good catch. Solis out.”

Chance beamed happily, looking up at the Captain. Buran put her head in her hands.