"The Vulcan Smiled"
written by David Moody
based on a plot the characters S'Konn and Talnar Ray
Captain Lenti Utex

Lieutenant Ray had been released to active duty following his semi-recent bout of medical and apparently psionic difficulties. He was chipper as a sparrow now and heading toward Engineering. He heard the footsteps behind himself and noted the regularity; the pace, and made the assumption that the person nearing him was likely –

“Mister Ray,” Chief Operations Officer S’Konn requested, his pace rapid but slowing to match the Chief Engineer’s. “If I may have a moment, sir,” the Vulcan requested.

Ray stopped in place and turned to his left ninety degress, allowing Mister S’Konn to approach from the same direction. “Don’t really have much of a choice do I is that a padd you’re handing me then I thank you and will read it now Lieutenant.”

Ray’s consistently rushed manner of speaking caught the Vulcan off guard for a moment, as he had not had much contact with the man. He stared at the man for a second, his head tilted at a fresh angle for a moment before distractedly handing the man the PADD, staring at the Chief Engineer as if he had just turned into a sehlat before his eyes. “Here you are, sir,” he explained. Returning to his normal state of poise, he explained, “I have run some scans on the systems you upgraded.” Watching Ray’s face change consistenly, the Vulcan continued. “The,” he paused, effectively placing his next word in quotes, “Mistress,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Does not seem to be,” the quote/framing move again here; “happy,” he continued. “With some of your changes.” S’Konn crossed his arms before himself. “I have found the subspace field harmonics have moved slightly out of phase due to your enhancements of the warp coil assemblies. The six micron adjustments you had your team make caused the ports to fall out of alignment, thus pushing the magnetic constriction units for the plasma dampening systems off kilter by point zero seven degrees. This has caused the,” he paused, leaning his head down to catch the Engineer’s eye, and gaining it, continued. “Separate fields to fall away from one another,” he finished.

Ray looked rapidly to S’Konn to the PADD, to S’Konn, then to the PADD. Talnar peered at the Vulcan, the flat information device, then the pointed eared man before him, then, after glancing quickly at the small handheld computer once more, at the Chief Operations Officer. “I don’t need help on my engines the field harmonics are secondary to maintaing the field in the first place and I am certain that the speed will help us to overlook the harmonics they are just a small part of the entire warp field theory of this class of vessel anyway and should we ever have to separate the ship into its constituent parts then the harmonics will be better than they are right now anyway maybe you should look into that,” Talnar Ray actually took a breath and paused, before subtly spitting out the last two words: “Mister S’Konn.” Lieutenant Ray smiled wide, hading the PADD back to the Vulcan. “And thank you,” he reassured the man.

The Vulcan opened his mouth to speak, having accepted the PADD, but Talnar Ray was nowhere to be seen. S’Konn walked a few steps forward and turned the corner to find the Chief Engineer with his back to the main corridor, running a diagnostic on his warp field drive system.

The Vulcan Smiled.