Stardate: 60702.1702
Title: Stage Management
Author: Lieutenant Kal Vilmer
Time: After "The Goddess Athena & Forgotten Decks"
Scene: Main Engineering


Even though the blonde engineer had his head and torso stuck underneath a piece of equipment Kal felt the Commander's presence as soon as she stepped onto the engineering deck. Kal's already extraordinary sense of spatial awareness had been heightened immeasurably by the time he spent in the nexus. The fact that Abigail bore such a close resemblance to the engineer's long dead wife only made it easier for him to sense her presence.

As Kal made adjustments to the piece of equipment he was working on, he tracked Commander Winters' movement across the deck. In his mind's eye Vilmer saw her pretty lips turned down into a slight frown as Robbins' made another attempt at ingratiating himself with the command structure. Kal's perceptions were not so refined as to allow him to actually see the Commander's expression, but he had a pretty good imagination and Robbins' behavior was getting predictable.

Abigail's progress became more determined and the blonde felt her approaching. He resisted the urge to slide out and greet her. Instead he waited until she'd called his name a third time with an increase in the volume of her voice. Vilmer slid out from under the machinery on his mag-creeper and looked up into her pretty green eyes.

The XO as usual was not amused. Kal was stripped down to his under shirt, an a-frame t-shirt with the ships registry emblazoned upon it. The engineer had a well-muscled build and the t-shirt gave Abby her first view of the two tattoos on the blonde's right shoulder. The first being some kind of steel colored bird and the second a barcode.

"Lieutenant, have you had a chance to consider the task the Captain has assigned us?" Commander Winters asked.

Kal wiped his hands off on a rag and stood, he motioned for the XO to follow him and said, "I have, take a look at this."

So intent were the Engineer and XO on their work that neither noticed Robbins maneuver for a position where he could both see and overhear the plans unfolding.

"I figure it like this sir, with our ablative armor we could shrug off several direct hits with quantum torpedoes. Voyager took direct hits from two Cubes and shrugged it off like water. We could detonate several torpedoes in close proximity to the hull and perhaps use Captain's yacht, to fake phaser scoring on the hull."

Vilmer was able to say 'Captain's Yacht' with a straight face; Abby contained her snicker, barely. "Sounds good," Abby mused, "the phaser scoring and proximity detonations should fool any cursory scans and give credibility to our story, but what about other warp signatures?"

"That's easily taken care of, I just got the report from Ensign Levi. Some joker outfitted us with some older shuttles to get our complement done on time. In order to save ops some time I suggest we take a couple of the older shuttles and configure their warp cores to burn dirty and inefficiently."

"Making the signatures appear much larger than they actually are," Abby said finishing the engineer's thought.

"Exactly."

"How long?"

"Eight hours maybe ten, outside."

"Make it so," Commander Winters replied taking leave of the CEO.


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Lieutenant Kal Vilmer
Chief Engineering Officer
(and general pest)
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
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