After her recuperation at the Starfleet Academy medical centre, Inzjana got a call from her ever present and very busy friend, Professor Andre Offenbach from the Daystrom Institute, who wanted her to help in with his ongoing project and personal obsession of making the Quantum Slipstream Drive a viable replacement for the failed Transwarp Drive. It had been an obsession of his ever since the return of the USS Voyager and would suddenly become giddy as a school girl every time someone brought up the subject which usually came from the higher echelons of Starfleet Intelligence and Section 31. In fact Andre was so obsessed by the QSD that he even called it PROJECT DAUNTLESS, he even wanted the first QSD equipped ship to be called the USS DAUNTLESS, "for real" this time, he used to say...constantly.
DAYSTROM INSTITUTE FROM ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY - THE HIVE - SYDNEY AUSTRALIA
The Hive was a special projects arm of Daystrom underground in the middle of Sydney, not far from the Harbour Bridge. It wasn't a secret by any stretch of the imagination but it did require Admiral level security clearance to get in to except for the many scientists that worked there, by invitation only of course. It was nicknamed the Hive simply as a joke, because it was built similar to a beehive with honeycombed passages and the first scientists to work there, used to say they were as busy as bees. The reason why it was underground was simply because of the many deep Earth sensors that were set up on the lower level. Seismic scanners, gravimetric sensors, thermal variance detectors and the like made up the many scanning devices that were built there.
A Hyperloop tube train connected the Hive to the Daystrom Institute in San Francisco for cargo that were too sensitive to Transporters and for the scientists who were too sensitive to be Transported, or more to the point, hated it and wanted a more fun way to get around; the Hyperloop tube went underwater.
Currently Inzjana and Andre were working on the biggest problem when it came to viable Slipstream travel and that was having a navigational computer system fast enough to work out the minute course corrections needed due to the phase variances in the quantum field.
"EUREKA!" Andre yelled at the top of his lungs, making his normally stoic research partner jump despite herself. Gathering her composure, Inzjana stood and went to his side, "have you found something Professor?" She asked.
"Hmm!" He said looking up to her from his glasses, that sat awkwardly on his jolly, chubby face. "Yes my dear," he said, "I found my glasses."
Inzjana raised an eyebrow and affectionately looked at him for a moment, "professor, you have been wearing them the whole time."
Walking back to her console he giggled cheerfully and said, "yes quite right."
Of course he didn't have to wear glasses, after all it was the 24th Century, but he hated the idea of being poked and prodded be those he called "Witch Doctors."
"Inzjana" he said in all seriousness but with a childlike undertone, "do you like working with me?" Inzjana knew him very well and despite his obvious brilliance, he quite often had moments of self-doubt.
"Of course I do professor, very much so," Inzjana said gently.
As Inzjana turned back to her algorithms Andre started playing HALO 117 on his computer, a game that was released last year and was meant to be played in a holosuite but Andre was a bit old fashioned and always played games on his computer. "It helps me focus", he would say, usually to himself because everyone new what he was like and never asked anyway.
Inzjana was preparing the last batch of data and inputting it in to the simulation of the USS Dauntless Andre had created and went to to the holosuite to run the patch but before she did she looked back at her friend and mentor who was currently trying to fry a Ghost, she thinks it was called, around what must of been a particularly difficult map of the game given the tongue slightly sticking out of his mouth and the deep concentration on his face. He deserved it she thought, after all they had been working on the USS Dauntless design and Quantum Slipstream Drive for what seemed like ages but was actually just a month and a half. Inzjana turned and left for the adjoining holosuite proud to have Andre Offenbach as a friend, despite, or even because of his eccentricities.