An hour later, Kirk and Kelly being the only two in the transporter room, another beamed board. When the swirling sparkles of energy faded, a tall, thin black man stepped forward carrying a pair of suitcases, a dufflebag, and a guitar case strapped to his back. His facial features were long and thin as well. He looked to be in his late thirties with alert, brown eyes. His hair was cut close to his scalp and he sported a thin mustache. He looked around with a look of confidence.

Kirk stepped forward. "Commander Richards?" The dark man nodded with a smile. "I'm Stephen Kirk. Welcome aboard the Warlord." He extended a hand.

Richards stepped off the transporter pad and dropped most of his luggage to shake Stephen's hand. "Nice to meet you, Commander. Sorry for all the mixup."

"Hey, it wasn't your fault they didn't check what time zone you were in when they told you fourteen hundred hours." Kirk replied with a smile. "Unfortunately, Captain Bolerov is still schmoozing the peace delegation, so you're stuck with me."

Kelly cleared his throat loudly.

"Oh, yeah... our engineering guy is here." Kirk added with a laugh, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

"Yeah... I'll keep that in mind the next time you want your atoms sent thousands of kilometers away." He remarked with a wink.

Kirk and Richards chuckled. "Commander, I'd like to introduce you to the best engineer in the fleet, Lieutenant Tom Kelly. Tom, this is Commander Kenyon Richards."

The two shook hands. "Pleasure to meet ya." Tom said.

Richards lit up. "Hey... an Aussie. Where you from?"

"Just outside of Brisbane." He said with a nod.

Richards nodded. "All right... I went to a jazz concert in Sydney last year."

"Let me get one of those," Kirk said, pointing to his luggage.

"Thanks," Kenyon replied, handing Stephen one of the bags. He picked up the rest of his bags.

"You're on deck five with most of the rest of us. Follow me."

The two headed out. "Take it easy, Tom."

Lieutenant Kelly made a mock salute. "Catch ya later."

They walked down the narrow hall towards the turbolift. Kenyon was actually quite excited to be aboard the Warlord. True, it was more of a horizontal move than a vertical move. He had been the second officer aboard the USS Hood for three years. However, this was a completely different scenario. To go from an eighty year old ship that should have been retired decades ago to a state-of-the-art warship, the first warship ever commissioned by Starfleet... this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Ever since he heard the great grandson of James T. Kirk was aboard, he had been dying to ask him a few questions. Now would be a good a time as any. "So..." he started cautiously. "I know you've got royalty in your blood. That either means you love talking about it hate talking about it. Which is it?" He asked, still smiling.

Kirk nodded, grateful that Kenyon was willing to ask and not assume. "Generally, I hate it... but a question or two here or there I don't mind."

Kenyon nodded. "I can respect that."

The reached the turbolift and stepped in. "Deck five, section three." Kirk announced. The turbolift gently accellerated as it maneuvered this way and that.

"Okay... give me the info. What can this thing really do? Whenever I asked at Starfleet, all they'd say was 'Just wait'."

"Jeez," Kirk remarked, thinking hard. "Where to start? Well... for starters, it has a primary and secondary drive system. The secondary drive normally powers the main defenses; the primary shields and the neutron cannons."

"Yeah... start with those," Richards said expectantly.

"I don't know the details, but the shields are regenerative dispersion shields. Anything fired at them gets dispersed throughout the entire shield grid... and they regenerate, so they're awfully hard to take down. We also have a secondary shield system that works like the shields we're used to. The neutron cannons... there are two of them. They're variable frequency, rapid fire cannons. Not much more I can say on that... except... at half power, they ripped through a warbird with power to spare."

"Nice... I can't wait to see those babies in action," Richards commented with a twinkle in his eye.

Kirk grinned. "It does give you quite the feeling of safety. Well, that and the ablative armor on the outer hull. And... there's a static field between the outer and inner hulls. That prevents scanning and transporting to... sensitive... parts of the ship."

"Nice touch." Richards cocked his head. "How many crew does this beast have?"

Kirk's smile grew. "About two hundred eighty."

Richard's eyes bulged. "You're kidding! This thing is bigger than a galaxy class!"

"Well, that's deceptive. The outer hull makes it look a lot bigger than it is. And, we've got redundant EVERYTHING and automated systems and... well... all kinds of junk that takes up space. I've been told this ship can function normally with a crew of thirty."

Richards shook his head and whistled. "No wonder they want to keep this things specs under wraps."

"Yep... and we haven't even really touched the secondary weapons systems yet."

"Yeah, I saw the phaser array rings from pictures."

Kirk gave a wry grin. "Those are pulse phaser arrays."

Kenyon looked incredulous. "Nuh, uh. You can't put pulse phasers into an array emitter."

Kirk nodded. "Oh, yes you can."

Richards shook his head and smiled wide. "This is going to be fun."

"It's interesting. I'll give you that."