Star Trek Sim/ Star Trek RPG
USS Eagle, NCC 2185

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CPT Kematsopoulos & LTjg Richards

JOINT LOGS
Joint Logs by Myth, Stoffe and Nouri

Title: O, What a Tangled Web We Weave, Part Ten
Location: The USS Eagle
Setting: Captain's Quarters


"Do you know who took the phaser from Hanson? CMO or Tsundra? Or did you?" he asked hoping that information would limit the choices of where the phaser could be.

"I knocked it out of his hand is all," Leah said, "and that time he was gonna kill the intruder."

"That was a very, very good use of force - to save someone's life," he said. "Better than to loose a life. You can't get that back,"

~I wish I knew the CMO as well as my counterpart does. Then maybe I'd know where she might have put it,~ he thought. Aloud he said, "I'll try and figure out where my Yeoman might have put it. You can work on the CMO perspective." He headed towards the furthest room, one in which he had discovered all kinds of interesting equipment. It was a tiny workroom for various engineering and mechanical type projects.

"Aye, sir." Leah glanced around wondering where the CMO would have had time to stash the phaser while keeping an eye on three patients at once. It seemed more likely that she would have slipped it out in her boot or among her gear rather than leave it behind.

Musing that over reminded Leah of the mess of glass and plant bits from before. She hadn't gotten a chance to hide any of it with the CMO in the same room with her the whole time. She looked around to see if anyone else had removed them . . . lo and behold, teeny plant bits on the rug.

"Whoever cleaned up didn't vacuum that well. You still have leaf bits here." Leah commented.

"I'll check the backroom," he said as he entered the nursery. "Anything that might still grow?" he asked hopefully, poking his head out of it for a second.

Leah had no idea. "Er... maybe? I'm not much good with plants."

"Just stick them in some dirt then in the nursery. Give them some water. Maybe they will grow," he said sticking his head back in and exiting the plant room to enter the next.

"Aye, sir." ~Great. I've been demoted to assistant gardener...~ The few moments of quiet reflection let Leah calm down considerably and she recognized how rude she had been. Embarrassed by her behavior, she tried all the harder to stick to the formal persona a Starfleet officer was expected to maintain at all times.

She gathered the plant bits and brought them back to the nursery. Leah picked an empty pot of dirt and scattered the bits. She wondered about covering them with dirt, but decided just water would be enough. She finished and wiped her hands on her pants. That was when she looked up and noticed Hanson's gear across the room. ~Ah ha!~ Leah hurriedly pulled the gear out and opened the satchel hoping the phaser might still be there. They were in luck. "Sir, I found Hanson's stuff, and the phaser!" She grinned despite the gravity of their recent 'discussions'.

"Good work," replied the muffled voice of the Captain. The voice got closer to the security officer. "Where?" he asked.

"Back here in your nursery." Leah waited for him to join her again, since she had no idea what he planned to do next. It was not long before he did.

"Good," he said. "Any unusual mods?" he asked wondering if there was anything obvious to tell that it was Hanson's phaser and if he had altered it in anyway.

Leah examined the phaser and shrugged. "Nothing that I can see, no, sir." She looked back up and just blurted out, "...I'm sorry I was rude earlier." She knew she was fortunate it was the Captain and not, for instance, CDR Unstoffe she'd blown up at. No one else would be as understanding. Plus, she probably would have wound up hitting someone else.

"Good. Apology accepted. I am trying to help you. I've seen people in your situation before. You can make it but you have to be willing to work hard and be honest . . . especially to yourself.  Let's get this over to the other room."

"Ok." Leah followed him to the other room, though she was tentatively agreeing to both parts of what he'd said.

~Oh boy ... what did I get into now?~ she wondered. The room was filled with all kinds of gadgets and equipment. For each item she knew something about there were at least three that Leah had never so much as seen before. However, none of the gizmo's were as odd as the thing Hanson had made and left by the captains bed. ~At least it's all kinda normal looking,~ she thought.

"I'll get set up here. Can you find his gear? I'll check that for possibilities to make something up first," he explained.

While Leah left to get it, the Captain opened the casing for the phaser and scanned it. ~My word!~ He quickly shut it and hurriedly took the phaser elsewhere in the room before she returned.

"I have his satchel of stuff here, if that's what you want, sir," Leah said from the nursery. There might have been other things that Hanson had brought in, but she didn't recall seeing him with anything else.

As she said this, a bot came in to the nursery. When she left for the backroom, it followed her there also.

The Captain heard her enter. "Yes, is that everything do you think?" he asked.

"I didn't see anything else."

"OK. What's in there?"

Leah sighed. She named the few that she knew, but, "I don't know the rest...sorry I can't tell you more." For this kind of work she was virtually useless, having next to no background in engineering at all.

"OK, that's hard," he paused to think of someway to modify a phaser to malfunction to power those tools. He didn't think it likely to work with those. "Let me see the other tools," he said setting out the special scanner again. It was apparent that he had been using the time he was supposed to have been resting to tinker with quite a few projects and had a good set up to minimize his temporary blindness.

"Ok... " She laid the tools out on an empty section of the work bench and set the first of the many unknowns near his scanner.

The scanner emitted its familiar hum which was followed by a string of high pitched chirps as the data was relayed to the Captain's earpiece.

"Ok, that's good, what's next?" he asked as a picture formed in his mind as to how to modify the phaser so that it would appear to have really malfunctioned the way in which LT Richards had told LCDR Unstoffe that it had.

Leah mutely switched to the next tool.

They repeated the same cycle until all of the tools had been scanned.

She noticed that using the ear piece had worn the Captain out a bit further. He also looked very worried and concerned.

"OK, this is not good. I figured out how to make the mod you described plausible to cause that kind of damage, but...it's extremely dangerous and my adaptive equipment here isn't going to give me enough detail to do it safely. There's some fine soldering work that I'd need to do in Engineering or a Science lab to do it by myself," he explained, wondering how best to handle this. He wasn't coming up with any other options.

"If we take it to a lab someone's bound to notice. Is there any way I can help so we can do it here?" Leah asked. LCDR Unstoffe was suspicious enough already - she didn't want to give him anything else to question her about.


"It's very dangerous. This is tricky, delicate work even if you can see."

"I'll help, just tell me what to do," Leah offered. She doubted she'd be much use to him, but she was willing to try.

"OK. I'll give you a crash course in phasers and what to do and not to do with them," he accepted with a wink.

"Right, and which end shoots again?" Leah was surprised to find herself joking back.

"It's usually best to stay away from the pointy parts, whatever it is, " he quipped back.

"Got it."

It was painstaking and difficult work. Leah followed each direction to the letter, very carefully. She didn't particularly want to screw up and blow one or both of them up. She learned a lot about phasers and how to modify them in both good and bad ways.

The Captain rechecked and scanned. "It's done and ready to misfire."

~Phew!~ It was a relief to be done.

"You did very well. Now we have to let it sit. It's too hot and recent work to take out. We'll say the phaser is draining in case we can't get it back right away. It will need to be drained shortly before transport. I am not letting that thing loose on the ship." he said setting a timer.

"Sounds good."

Beep! It was done.  The Captain checked a few things again and wiped the parts. "OK. Need to drain it and I'll separate some parts for safety. Can do that now without tipping them off," he said, wishing he could have done that first instead.

"Ok." Leah set the phaser up to be drained.

"Thank you," he said hearing the phaser draining. He let out a sigh of relief.

"No problem. Thanks for showing me all that." She was glad the Captain was a patient teacher. It could have been a real disaster otherwise.

"You are welcome. If you are interested in learning more, I can teach you later or get someone to teach you. It would be great if you wanted to learn some basics of repair, etc., for Engineering that could really help in a crisis and the department is overworked right now," he offered.

Leah shrugged cautiously. On the surface it did seem like a good idea and a harmless one. "Long as there's not much reading involved - I'm not that into that." His programming lesson had been interesting, but the data pad of reading he'd sent her off with was more than she'd bargained for.

The Captain briefly wondered if what she just said was part of or the root of her situation.  "Yes, it can be all hands on. Schematics and such can come on later if you want after you understand the basics. In many ways that's much easier, like a child learning an instrument before reading the notes," he said. "That's largely how I learned when I was young," he said.

"Sounds like a plan..." Leah wasn't too sure about the schematics stuff, but there'd be time to decide on that later. At least if he was being serious, it must have worked for him - there were a bunch of instruments around the rooms, including a Vulcan lute. She looked back down at the bench and noticed the phaser was finished. "Oh, it's done draining." She removed it from the draining equipment.

"Excellent. You did very well. Thank you," the Captain said.

Leah grinned sheepishly. "You deserve the thanks."

"Going to take the phaser now and put it over here," he said smiling.

"OK." Leah handed the drained phaser back.

He felt it and put it in one of the odd machines he had and pushed some buttons.

The machine whirred into action creating an odd sequence of unusual beeps, clicks, dings and an occasional thunk.

Out of habit, and a little curiosity, Leah watched over the Captain's shoulder.

With a final beep, the machine finally stopped making noises. The Captain took it out. "There you go. Tell CSEC it's drained and permanently disabled, ready to be scrapped." he said.

"Sure, just hafta hope LCDR Unstoffe buys it." He hadn't believed most of what she'd said so far, but maybe the phaser would be proof enough. Maybe.

"Yes, but the bigger problem will be CENG buying it," he said.

Leah hadn't thought of that and she didn't like the idea of having to try and convince her, too. "That's true ... Let's hope we get lucky then."

"Indeed," he replied.

Hail the Captain of the USS Eagle

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