— Chapter 26 —
The dinner party was finally done with, and Ensigns Merrick and Philby had just departed the Captain's Mess, when Trip stood and excused himself to head back to Engineering, followed a moment later by Ayvok.
"I wonder if I could accompany you to Engineering, Commander Tucker," said Ayvok. "I have a request to make of that department."
Trip nodded, and said, "Sure, SubCommander. Let's walk and talk."
Moments later, the room was cleared save for Erika, T'Fel, and the captain's steward.
"Looks like it's just us gals, T'Fel," said Erika. "Some coffee?"
T'Fel nodded, and said, "And perhaps something sweet?"
Erika smiled, and said, "I knew there had to be a reason we get along so well, T'Fel."
"So what do you think, Commander Tucker?" said Ayvok, who'd just proposed an idea to integrate some Vulcan components into the Columbia's phaser cannon banks in order to improve their performance.
"In principle I like the idea, SubCommander," said Trip, just stepping into Engineering with Ayvok by his side. "My first priority is getting the Columbia out of space dock, but it would be foolish of me to overlook any advantage we might create for ourselves. This thing with the Romulans will turn into a shooting match any time now, and it's my duty to make certain that this ship is ready for war."
"Our duty, Commander Tucker," said Ayvok. "I am after all, the ship's Tactical officer."
"Right, SubCommander. By the way, you can call me Trip if you like," said Trip. "It's my nickname."
"Ayvok," said the Vulcan.
Trip nodded, and said, "Well, let's crunch some numbers, Ayvok, and decide if the gains we'd get from the suggested upgrades is worth doing now, or if we should put them off 'till later."
Ayvok nodded, and gestured that Trip should lead the way.
Four hours later they were still at it, having decided that the changes Ayvok had proposed were indeed worth doing now, rather than later, and the two men were deep in the process of putting everything in motion, requisitioning the proper Vulcan components, scheduling time for Tactical's crew to do their part, the engineers to do theirs, all in order to upgrade the Columbia's phaser cannon batteries. This preparatory process would consume most of the night, so Trip eventually called for a coffee break in the Mess Hall.
It was there that T'Fel saw Ayvok and Commander Tucker working in the Mess Hall, each man focused on their own PADD (Personal Access Data Device) unit, even as they occasionally exchanged some bit of information pertinent to the task at hand, and T'Fel took her coffee to a corner table, from which she could watch Ayvok and Commander Tucker quite discreetly, while seeming to be doing no such thing.
There was an interesting dynamic between the two men, as most Humans found Ayvok somewhat intimidating, and though Ayvok was too disciplined to show it, the Vulcan didn't really click with most Humans either. It was a matter of body language, and Ayvok's mannerisms, his absolute stillness unless he had reason to make a gesture, his glossy black eyes, and his intense look seemed to put most Humans ill at ease. Not Commander Tucker though.
And Ayvok responded in kind, clearly comfortable with the man, and it was telling of that fact when the Vulcan stood and walked to the beverage dispenser, only to return to the table with two cups of coffee, though Commander Tucker had not asked for any. Regardless, the Human spoke a few words to express his gratitude to Ayvok, took a sip of coffee, and the Vulcan simply nodded and returned to his work. They made a good team.
And yet Commander Tucker dislikes me, thought T'Fel. Why?
While speaking with the man earlier, at the captain's dinner table, she'd found the man to be intelligent, pleasant enough to be agreeable and possessed of a good sense of humor, though he seemed to direct it at the other diners gathered round the table… In fact, he'd been somewhat distant with her. Oh, he was polite enough, but there was a wall between them, and it was clear that he'd chosen to share nothing of himself with her.
T'Fel would have normally assumed that the commander was off-put by Vulcans, but he seemed comfortable enough with Ayvok, and T'Fel knew that Commander Tucker had been one of the passengers offloaded from the crippled Vulcan passenger liner which had just narrowly escaped disaster, so she knew the Human had no problems with Vulcans, else he'd have taken a StarFleet vessel back to Earth.
Most curious.
Just then Ayvok and the Human commander stood, seemingly intent on returning to Engineering judging by the content of their chatter, so T'Fel stared into her coffee cup until the two men had left the Mess Hall.
Dieter Muller entered his townhouse in an upscale neighborhood of Berlin, and breathed a sigh of relief. His day as one of a legion of mid-level bureaucrats in EarthGov's governing body was stressful, but a bright beam of light had come into his life lately, in the form of a lovely Vulcan woman named Zeja.
They'd met ten months ago, when he'd suffered a tire blowout on a rainy day. He'd controlled his car and pulled off the road immediately, though he'd plowed into a guardrail in the process, losing his right headlight and screwing up the front of his car during the impact. That car was in no shape to make it home that night, but Dieter was simply relieved to be in one piece at the end of it all. Fortunately, another vehicle driver had noted his distress and pulled up next to Dieter's auto, in order to offer the man a ride into town.
The driver of that auto had been Zeja, and she'd been a godsend that night. In truth, Dieter would have taken assistance from the devil himself on that stormy night, but the fact that Zeja had the face of an angel had made his decision a foregone conclusion, and so Dieter accepted that ride, just as Zeja later accepted an invitation to dine with Dieter the next night, as thanks for her assistance.
From that night it had all fallen magically into place for them, with feelings of such chemistry that they ended up in his bed after their first date, where Dieter came to discover that the common belief that Vulcans were passionless creatures was a lie. Within weeks, he and Zeja were constant companions, and just months later, Dieter was in love. They'd eventually have to firm things up, but for now, Dieter was content to simply enjoy it all.
"Zeja. Are you here?" said Dieter, setting his keys on the kitchen counter, his briefcase on the coffee table, and his jacket across the back of a chair.
He'd given Zeja a key to his place months ago, and though she still had her own apartment, she spent most of her off time here.
"Ah, Dieter," said Zeja as she entered the living room, and giving the man a slight smile. "How are you, my dear? I did not hear you come in. Give me a few moments to start the laundry machine."
Dieter nodded and collapsed in his overstuffed chair. It had been a long day. A few minutes later, Zeja came back into the room, poured them each a tumbler of Scotch and handed Dieter a glass, then sat on the coffee table, looking directly at the man.
"Thank you, my dear," said Dieter.
Zeja nodded, and said, "How was your day?"
"Exhausting."
"You do such an important job, Dieter," said Zeja.
"I'm just a bureaucrat, Zeja," said Dieter. "Others collect the data I handle, and which I evaluate before passing on to others. A necessary task, but no more."
"Not so, Dieter," said Zeja. "Not so."
"If you say so," said Dieter after polishing off his drink, and in truth, the data he handled was dealing with civilian contractors and sub-contractors to EarthGov and StarFleet: important, but hardly exciting.
"I do," said Zeja. "Now, go take a shower, and we'll eat, after which we can either vegetate, or copulate."
Dieter chuckled at Zeja's typically Vulcan directness, then stood and said, "Good ideas, one and all, my sweet."
Zeja spent the next few moments sipping on her drink, until her sensitive hearing made out the sound of running water. She moved quickly then, kneeling on the floor as she fiddled with Dieter's briefcase. The case had a good combination lock, which was a laughable precaution when Dieter was so lax with security procedures around her.
Not that it would have mattered: she was trained to bypass all manner of security devices. Anyway, it was true that the data in which Dieter dealt was not critical at first glance, but fitted into a larger picture along with many other data points from various sources, it all contributed to a tantalizing, if incomplete vision of Earth's ongoing preparations for war, and the best places and ways in which to throw a wrench into the midst of such preparations.
A moment later, briefcase open, Zeja took Dieter's portable harddrive out of it's carry case and set it on the coffee table, and then detached her watch face from her wrist, and set it atop the harddrive. A moment later, the device which passed for a watch lit up, and the harddrive began humming as every bit of information was sponged off it. Twenty seconds later, the process was complete, and ten seconds later the harddrive was back in the briefcase, and the case back where Dieter had laid it down initially.
She'd make an excuse later to pop out for a bit, and pass the encrypted data to one of her contacts, where the data would be decrypted, and passed on to her superior Tal Shiar officer, and then it would pass to the Imperial Shrikes and Marines, to make use of the data as they saw fit: even the Tal Shiar had learned to not meddle in the affairs of the Imperial Shrikes, though it had taken a nasty little private war a few years past, between the two organizations, to settle that matter… for now.
Just then Zeja heard the bathroom door open, and a moment later Dieter entered the room, and Zeja gave a slight, but agreeable smile. Mating with these inferior Humans was just part and parcel of the current assignment for Major Getta of the Tal'Shiar, but Dieter was amusing enough that she had no complaints. She could have done much worse.
As the turbo-lift came to a stop on D Deck, T'Fel pressed past two people to exit there, and headed for Engineering, arriving there minutes later. There was a palpable air of motion and excitement there, created no doubt by the presence of the XO, who'd taken to his mission to see the Columbia out of space dock with a proper vengeance, since he'd boarded the ship, some four days ago.
She'd seen the man about the ship, though they'd spoken only a few brief words, given how completely occupied he'd been with the ship, and Ayvok's phase cannon batteries, but T'Fel had tracked the progress the man was making, and she had to admit that he was making things happen.
Case in point, he'd located one of the primary causes of failure in the warp engines when he'd studied the deep scans of the engine compartment which she'd provided him, and he'd determined that one of the major components in the warp containment chamber had been improperly manufactured. Oh, it was as perfectly drop forged as all the other components, but the composition of the metal fell somewhat short of specs, whether through a mistake on the manufacturer's part or a purposeful attempt to squeeze out a higher profit margin from the order, but the metallurgical error was responsible for a number of micro-fractures in that casing before the ship had even left dock, and furthermore, the impurity of the metal affected the magnetic resonance of the matter/anti-matter chamber, making for an unbalanced warp field. All in all, T'Fel was a bit put off with herself: she should have spotted that flaw herself, before passing the scans off to the XO.
In any case, the XO was pissed now. The faulty component was deep inside the engine, and there was no easy way to get to it as T'Fel saw things, but it was something which had to be done properly. A new component had been ordered, but it would be at least two weeks in the making and machining, and then would come the time to crack the engine open and make the swap, with all of the headaches such a task entailed. And that was not the only problem with the Columbia. Still, the XO was a sensible man, and had requisitioned additional engineers from Earth, lest he burn his own people out completely, and things were getting done with engineering crews working on the ship around the clock.
One of the engineers had noticed T'Fel, and he'd approached the Vulcan.
"May I help you, Sr-Lieutenant?"
"I have some data the XO might find of use," said T'Fel. "I was just looking for the man."
"The XO is on F Deck, Forward Armory, sir. I'll take that data, and make sure the XO gets it first thing."
"No, need. I was heading that way on another errand," said T'Fel, stretching the truth a bit: she would have indeed headed in that general direction, though she'd have been nowhere near F Deck, or the Forward Armory.
"As you wish, sir," said the engineer, returning to his duties.
Five minutes later T'Fel reached the Forward Armory to see a half dozen engineers taking phaser cannon battery B apart, while the XO and Ayvok supervised the procedure, and as T'Fel approached the two men, their discussion became audible.
"…that should not be necessary, XO," said Ayvok. "The power requirements won't be that extreme."
"Listen," said Trip, "I won't tell you how to aim your cannons, you don't tell me how to power you cannons. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said Ayvok.
"Good," said Trip. "You'll thank me if you ever fin—"
"Excuse me," said T'Fel, and both men turned to face her.
T'Fel held a PADD unit out towards the XO, and said, "Some of the data you've been requesting of the science department."
"I appreciate it, Sr-Lieutenant," said Trip. "This will come in handy. Thank you."
T'Fel nodded, expecting the man to say more: Humans were usually so talkative.
"Anything else?" said the XO, looking at T'Fel.
"Ah… no," said T'Fel.
She spun on her heels and headed for the Bridge, her mind racing: had she offended the XO somehow? Oh, he was always so perfectly polite, but still…