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Beta'd by ArtisticMom2, to whom all due thanks!

Right. Run that simulation again. Now that I've changed the parameters there, I should get...

Perfect. So much for 'it won't make a blind bit of difference,' Commandah Tuckah. Which of us is the armoury officer around here?

0.000002% is a lot of difference.

You'd make enough of a fuss if your bloody engines were 0.000002% out.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes. The Mess Hall at lunchtime.

Ensign Sato.

Very pretty woman, Ms. Hoshi Sato. I know people don't think I notice these things, but that's something that's a bit hard to miss. Especially when her station's almost directly opposite mine on the bridge.

God damn it, I am human. Even if I am English.

I don't know what made me look up at that particular moment. I just get this sense, sometimes, that I'm the object of somebody's attention. It's saved my life once or twice – usually anybody whose attention is fixed on me that hard is aiming something unpleasant in my direction.

Sure enough, so was Ensign Sato. But what the hell she was doing it for to start with is a mystery I'm still trying to fathom out.

Good job I'm pretty good at keeping a straight face, though I have to admit that even I struggled. She blushed like a sunset.

A very pretty sunset it was too. Perfectly framed by the horrified faces on either side of her.

Give her her due, she was going to apologise, but I couldn't have held on much longer. I pretended that I had something urgent to do in the armoury at that moment. I didn't even laugh till I was in the turbo-lift, though i had to hurry a bit to get there in time.

I suspect from the colour of what I can see of her neck from here that she's still a bit pink. (And yes, it is a remarkably attractive neck. That's another thing I've noticed. It leads with just the right amount of curve into... well, somewhere there are other things with just the right amount of curve. Memo to self: stop thinking about curves, or you won't stand up without causing a riot on the bridge.) She's paying far too much attention to those updates; she hasn't looked up once in the last hour.

And I have been watching. Unobtrusively. Just in case I've caught on to something here.

Ensign Sato, you are a marked woman.

You have been warned.

The End.

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