"Pause in the Action"

[Guest Laarell]

The organized state of main engineering belied Excalibur's weakened condition. Although most of the damage was--thankfully--superficial, it was tedious work repairing it. The one-line summary Tandaris had included in his report was, "Excalibur is ship-shape but not battle-ready."

 

Tandaris was most concerned with the destruction of the command processors on Deck Twelve. The Engineering Corps. had planned for that, of course; Excalibur's processing functions were distributed throughout the entire ship, so ordinarily this wouldn't constitute much of a problem. The Engineering Corps. hadn't planned on the computer housing the archival data of an entire planet, unfortunately. With so much demand placed on the computer systems, the processors had already been running at reduced efficiency. The increased load from the destroyed processors would only slow the computer down more, risking a system-wide failure.

 

As Tandaris stood in engineering -- surveying his domain, so-to-speak -- he pondered if assigning the task to Asyle had been the right call. He still didn't like the Starfleet wannabe, of course, but he had to admit she was a diligent engineer. And besides, Marius would keep her straight.

 

He sat down at a console and brought up the mainframe task subroutines. In addition to jury-rigging new processors, he'd have to try to streamline the prioritizing algorithms again. As he set up a sandbox environment, his commbadge chirped.

 

"Teykier to Commander Admiran," came over the communicator, a little too bouncy. "Commander, I could use some... assistance."

 

At the sound of that voice, Tandaris' mood brightened. "What kind of assistance?"

 

"Well..." The Orion lounged back in her chair, invisible to the Trill. "There are some... energy imbalances up here that you need to attend to."

 

Even his sandbox environment was running more slowly. Half-listening to Laarell and half-cursing the compartmentalization protocols, Tandaris replied, "From what, a scanner? Are you in the lab?"

 

"I'm in my office. There are some... very sensitive things up there that could use an engineer's touch."

 

"You're going to have to be more specific than that, Laarell. I can't just put down 'sensitive things' on the work order," Tandaris said. He winced as he heard his tone and then added, "That is, we're stretched thin down here with all of the repairs. If you're more specific, I can fit you in better."

 

"Hmmm..." She considered for a moment. "Well, let's see. Imbalances in critical scientific reasoning systems that could use around... I don't know... say... a half hour of some work in close proximity?" The Orion grinned, trying to imagine the Trill's reaction.

 

The trouble with Laarell, Tandaris had often thought to himself, was that sometimes it was hard to tell when she was being serious or only teasing--more so than any woman of any species he'd met in his considerable lifetime. Distracted as he was by the repair responsibilities, not to mention the console demanding his attention, all he could say was, "Ah, I see. I think I could spare some time for that, sure. Give me about ten minutes to finish up what I'm doing here, then I'll put in the work order."

 

"Lovely," she commented. "It should be a... breath of fresh air from your usual engineering repairs, I should think."

 

Ten minutes later...

 

There was a chime at the door to Laarell's office.

 

Laarell grinned, lounging back and trying to restrain her smile. "Come in," she purred, trying to strike a casual-yet-sexy pose in her chair.

 

The doors swished open in the manner to which they had instantly become accustomed, due to their programming and design. Through these doors stepped Ensign White, repair kit in hand. "Cdr. Admiran said you were having a problem with your computer? Computer's been runnin' slow all day, but I'll see what I ... can ... do...." His voice trailed off as he saw Laarell's pose. His expression flickered from one of boredom to bewilderment. "Commander? What are you doing?"

 

Laarell blinked, eyes wide. "Ensign! I thought... Commander Admiran was attending to the... computer problems!"

 

In the weirdest staring contest ever, White replied, "No, the chief's busy keeping one step ahead of the computer malfunctions. As soon as I came back to engineering after finishing with an EPS patch up, he thrust this PADD at me telling me to come here, and ..." He swallowed audibly. It took all his concentration keep his gaze on her eyes. "May I go now?"

 

She rolled her eyes, sighing. "Yes, go, and tell your chief... actually, tell your chief nothing at all. I'll see him later."

 

Perspiration forming on White's forehead, the ensign nodded and quickly backed out of the open doors, which closed behind him before he whirled and fled the Orion's lair.

 

In Engineering, Tandaris exclaimed, "Got it!" as he finished modifying the subroutines to improve the processor speed. He then remembered his brief conversation with Laarell. Replaying it in his mind, certain nuances suddenly became clear. Grimacing, Tandaris knew he would have to talk to both Ensign White and Laarell....