The Insubordinate Subordinate

[Connor 0]

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Aaron had only been in Engineering for a moment, and already things were blowing up. It wasn't equipment blowing though....

"There is /no/ way I'm spending the rest of the week studying the SIF, Laz!" hollered Connor "Seniority or no!"

"Why not? You have something better to do?," Montague growled.

Connor adopts a more sarcastic tone. "Yes, I have something better to do. Let me see, I could digest lunch, stare at the ceiling.."

Aaron looked at Montague, wondering what he would say.

"You can do all three, you know." Chided Lazarus.

Connor shakes his head "You, Laz, don't get it, do you? I know more about this ship than /you/ do, why on earth do I need to learn more?!""

"You need to know it because it is a critical part of this ship."

"So /you/ learn to keep this 'critical part' running! You're an engineer too, y'know!"

"I already know, it is just a simple tune up, honestly if you are not capable of that I wonder what else you can do other than fiddle with that computer. You will learn to keep this component at full capacity, and it will be in one week or less." Menaced Montague.

"Will it now? Or what? You'll tell the captain on me?"

"That's enough!" Aaron looked at Connor, then at Monty. "Who the hell do you think you are Connor?"

"I think I'm Stephen Zarius Connor, the guy who's saved Montague's ass more times than he can count, that's who."

"That's well and fine, but do you not see the freakin pips on his shoulder?"

"Yeah, I see the bloody pips! He nearly gets killed on a damned daily basis, and gets /promoted/ for it! Meanwhile, I, the one who keeps the 'nearly' in that sentence, get to stay an ensign and get bossed around!"

Montague shook his head, "Yes, thats nice, if you had what it takes to get even one more pip on your uniform we would not be having this conversation. If you have problems with the chain of command, you can just take a walk... through an airlock."

Aaron held both hands up.

"Monty has a point. How do you expect to get promoted when all you do is disregard the CoC? You almost screwed yourself over with that spying business a while back, and youre not even trying to help yourself!"

"I'm disregarding the goddamned CoC because /he/ got promoted!"

Aaron glared eye to eye at Connor. "Oh, how selfish of you."

"Yeah, with that attitude we could replace you with an infant and still get more done." Grinned Lazarus.

"This coming from the one who sits around drinking coffee half the day?"

"Certainly, after working for several days straight, I need a kick more often than usual, how do you think I finished the work on power distribution?" shrugged Montague

"Which any comptetent engineer could have had done in, oh, four hours. It took you a whole bloody /day/?"

"And instead of working on your repair assignments, you did what?"

"/After/ working on my assignments, Laz. /After/."

"I seem to remember a certain SIF generator timing problem on the roster that you seemed.. to gloss over..."

"And I seem to remember that same timing problem being on /your/ duty sheet until today. Gee, I suppose it got up and wandered over to mine, hm?"

"Correct, I traded the sensor tuning job and the SIF glitch from the rosters, as subspace fields are my major. Dont worry yourself over the conspiracies."

"Did it ever occur to yo-"

The three fall silent as the engineering doors slowly grind open..

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Edited December 6, 2005 by Connor