"I not believe I could manage to bore a man whose primary job is standin' in one spot fo' a real long time."
This was N.C.'s standard joke about working in Security. "There's more to it than that," Paget replied, carefully coating a small ball joint connector with lubricant before handing it to the engineer. They had finished with the tri-splits in record time and had moved on to a long row of coolant injectors.
"Oh, yeah." N.C. was laying on his back under the unit. "I forgot the walkin' in big circles."
"There's the overlap with Weaponry and Damage Control," Jer reminded him, snapping the connector into its casing before handing it to him.
"Yeah," the engineer replied, unimpressed. "Forgot 'bout the thrill o' polishin' phasers."
"I likes 'em shiny," Jer affirmed with a grin.
"I not count all th' trainin'." N.C. selected another under-performing ball joint for extraction. "'Cause you do that even if you was an accountant."
Paget smiled at the thought. "I'd be one hell of a kick-ass accountant."
"An' the sittin' 'round lookin' at holos of bodies an' bloody remains is jus' a disgusting habit."
Starfleet Security was part of a vast Federation criminal investigation network. Understaffed and overworked law enforcement agencies from hundreds of worlds submitted unsolved cases to the net. Professionals like Paget and even a host of certified amateurs reviewed evidence in cold case files and submitted analysis and recommendations.
Although this was one of Jer's favorite parts of his job, he had to be careful not to bring his work home - not even mentally. N.C. didn't mind him puzzling over a robbery. However his roommate had less than politely requested he absent himself from their quarters while he was engrossed in a murder or other violent crime.
"I thought you liked my disgusting habits," Paget replied, putting on a devilish pout as he snapped the connector apart and began to clean it. "And yes, believe it or not, all that is somehow more exciting that sitting around all day greasing widgets for you."
"Oh?" N.C. replied in kind. "I thought you like greasin' my widgets."
Before a suitably salacious reply could leave Paget's lips, he saw his roommate's face suddenly change.
"Oh, hell," DelMonde groaned.
"Kane's on her way?" Jer guessed.
"She on th' warpath," N.C. confirmed, pulling himself out from under the coolant unit. "An' comin' fo' my scalp."
"DelMonde!" the Lieutenant's voice rang out as soon as she stepped off the lift with the faithful Mangini trailing behind. "That transduct unit on J-12 just destabilized and went into overflow."
"Shit," the engineer swore, reaching for his toolkit.
"Oh, no." Kane blocked his path. "You're not going anywhere near it. You're going to get your ass down to L-23 and do diagnostics on each and every one of those tri-splits you flew through in an hour and a half less than it should have taken you."
The Cajun drew himself up to his full height, and glared down at his immediate superior. "What th' fuck you tryin' to say?"
"Watch it, DelMonde," Mangini warned, stepping forward.
"You sayin' I do shitty work?" N.C. pressed, ignoring the security guard.
"I don't have to say it." Kane put her hands on her hips, her wide mouth drawn into a frown. "Your work speaks for itself. First you lose a carb valve..."
"Oh, you best stop right there, girlie." DelMonde shook a finger in the red-head's face. "I did not fuckin' lose...
"I said watch it." Mangini forcibly inserted himself between the engineers.
"Okay, okay." Under a cover of geniality, Paget put his hands on the would-be combatants' shoulders and gently but firmly pushed them apart. "Let's all just take a deep breath here," he advised, then turned to Kane. "Lieutenant, I assure you that Ensign DelMonde is not being negligent."
"And how would you know? Huh?" Kane challenged. "How much do you know about re-aligning a transduct?"
"I know that the first thing is that you can never go by the factory specs," Paget recalled readily from his hours of unsolicited tutoring. "You have to check the dicarbonite levels in each tank..."
DelMonde crossed his arms in grim satisfaction. "Tell her each part that went into th' main assembly - in order."
"Centrifuge, carb valve, fulcrum, electronizer, o-ring, redactor," Paget replied, surprised to have a chance to put the Cajun's "clever cocks fill every orifice rapidly" mnemonic to use.
"Very impressive," Kane replied, unimpressed. "The two of you can work on the second act of your comedy routine while you do diagnostics on those tri-splits."
"If I dickin' 'round wit' those tri-splits fo' the next two or three hours there no way I can get these coolant injectors done on schedule," DelMonde pointed out heatedly.
"The schedule's blown," the Lieutenant announced accusingly. "We've got malfunctions in almost everything we touched yesterday."
"An' how that my fuckin' fault?"
"Your insubordinate, disrespectful, careless attitude is infecting this whole team..."
"Oh, now here's some bullshit," the Cajun observed irately. "First none of y'all want shit to do wit' me 'cause you not know me. But now the shit hit the fan, I turn out to be the motherfuckin' ringleader o' the whole gang..."
"It's not Ensign DelMonde," Paget asserted. "It's sabotage."
Kane turned and blinked at him. "What?"
"Oh, he bored," the Cajun explained dismissively. "He been t'inking shit like that all day."
"You've done a lot of resupply and repair missions like this one, haven't you, Lieutenant?" Paget asked.
Kane snorted an acknowledgement. "This is turning out to be more of a resupply and destroy mission thanks to..."
"Are there usually this many repairs?" Paget interrupted.
The Lieutenant shrugged. "I've seen worse."
"But that was on emergency calls, right?" Jer pressed.
"This is turning into an emergency thanks to..."
"And what's going to be your recommendation?" Paget asked, cutting her off quickly again.
"What?"
"We're off schedule. You're going to have to make a report to Jacobs at the end of this shift," the Security guard asserted. "The repairs to the Hood will be completed in four more days. If we're not able to find a way to get back on schedule before that, you're going to have to make a formal report to the Captain. Will you recommend that we extend our stay or that this installation shut down until the Federation can send in a full team?"
Kane shook her head impatiently. "We're supposed to rendezvous with the Constellation in a week. I'm not going to delay two starships just because your pal here can't..."
"But why?" In a surprising move, this time the interruption came from Mangini.
His lady love narrowed her eyes at this faux pas. "What?"
"Why would anyone want to sabotage a played out mining colony?" Mangini asked, too puzzled to notice.
Paget had to give his fellow security professional credit for at least asking the right question even if he didn't seem to have a clue to the right answer. "Is it?" he prompted.
"Is it what?" Kane demanded impatiently.
"Played out."
"That's what the briefing material said," Mangini reported. "This place will shut down in four or five years anyway."
"Barring..." Paget supplied leadingly.
This seemed to turn the lights on for everyone.
"...Barring discovery of a new vein of mineral deposits," Mangini finished.
"So maybe some asshole discover a new line o' somet'ing an' be fuckin' t'ings up so the company controllin' the minin' operations gonna hafta abandon this place," DelMonde summarized.
"Then the asshole buys the mining rights at a firesale price," Kane concluded.
"Or just waits for the lease to run out and stake a claim," Mangini speculated.
"An' start into milkin' this fuckin' rock like it a twelve-titted dilithium-squirtin' cow," the Cajun concluded colorfully.
Kane mulled this over for a moment before beginning, "Interesting theory..."
"...But I've got no evidence," Paget finished for her.
She sighed and shrugged. "I'll be sure to mention it in my log."
"Or..." Paget suggested.
She blinked at him. "Or?"
"Watch it, girlie," DelMonde warned. "This where it start t' get hairy."
"We could gather some evidence and catch this asshole," Paget said, ignoring him.
Kane shook her head. "Ensign, I'm already two days behind schedule..."
"It doesn't have to interfere with the schedule," Jer promised. "What are you planning to do now?"
"Fix these screw ups," the Lieutenant replied with another dangerously accusing glance at the Cajun.
"And after that?" Paget put in quickly.
"What do you mean?"
"You're gonna go around and kick ass, right?" the Security guard asserted. "If we're hip deep in malfunctions on units we repaired yesterday, your team is screwing up. You're about to go to kick their asses. You just started with N.C. because he's your favorite."
Kane frowned. "You're saying I shouldn't?"
"Oh, no, by all means, kick ass," Paget replied adamantly. "If I thought our people were responsible for this kind of shoddy work, I'd not only line them all up for you to kick their asses, I'd kick their asses to get their attention, stand and applaud while you kicked their asses and then kick their asses again to make sure they got your point."
"I would too," Mangini volunteered emphatically.
"I can't say how impressed I am by ya'll's tender regard fo' the Engineerin' staff," DelMonde commented wryly.
"Then what?" Kane asked, ignoring him.
"Instead of blessing each team out individually," Paget suggested. "Gather them to some central, public location to bawl them all out at once in front of a crowd of locals."
"Oh, what fun," DelMonde observed.
"If there is a saboteur, let them think their plan is working."
Kane was still frowning. "And if there's no saboteur, we look like jerks."
"Then your staff actually needs to be bawled out," Jer pointed out. "And it will light a fire under them to fix everything that's broke. And you're the hero."
A small, wry smile briefly twitched the corners of the lieutenant's mouth. "And after I heroically humiliate my team?"
"Not so fast." Paget held up a hand. "During the humiliation, you just happen to let it drop where we're going to focus our frantic efforts to get back on schedule."
Mangini was nodding slowly. "Which would make that equipment a target for your theoretical saboteur..."
"We monitor that area," Jer confirmed. "And my bet is we'll have someone to question by tomorrow morning."
Kane crossed her arms. "And exactly where do you suggest we focus all our repairs, Mr. I-Hold-A-Toolkit-For-A-Day-And-Now-I'm-An-Engineer?"
"It doesn't really matter as long as the saboteur is convinced that those operations are critical to our completing on time."
Despite their differences, the two engineers shared a significant glance. "Lemme have a word wit' my apprentice, Lieutenant," DelMonde requested, before turning back to Paget. "You like breathin' an' havin' gravity, Jer?"
The Security officer gave a disappointed sigh. "So choosing one thing to repair makes a big difference, I'm guessing."
"With all the additional malfunctions, we need to be in a hundred places at once - not focusing on one area," Kane confirmed.
"But," DelMonde said slowly as an idea hit him. "It would make sense to push hard on that J-23 line 'bout now."
Kane lifted an eyebrow. "The transdactor assemblies?"
The Cajun nodded. "That way, if there are cascadin' failures in enviro..."
"...We could tap power reserves from the neutronium drilling operation," the lieutenant finished. "That could give us some breathing room."
"Literally," DelMonde agreed wryly.
"All right." Kane nodded. "We'll give your scheme a shot, Mr. Paget. I'll order everyone the plaza on K level. Assuming there are no new disasters to take care of, we'll hit J-23 as a unit for the rest of the day. No way we could finish that job today, but it should make a pretty tempting array of targets for your theoretical saboteur."
"Thank you, Lieutenant."
"And so you can have a plausible cover for your surveillance," she said with a fairly cruel smile. "You and DelMonde will pull an extra shift while he runs those diagnostics on the J-12s."
The Cajun was less than pleased. "Oh, you bi..."
Both security men turned to him with an identical silencing gesture.
"Now, that was cute," DelMonde observed unappreciatively. "You always travel wit' your own private army, Lieutenant?"
"It's a convenience, but not a necessity," she replied with lethal cheerfulness, as she turned on her heel and headed for the lift. "See you on K level in ten, gentlemen."
After she and Mangini disappeared behind the heavy metal doors, Paget could feel a rather heated glare focus on him.
"What?" he asked with assumed innocence.
"'Stead o' bein' cussed out in private an' wastin' the rest o' the day runnin' fucking diagnostics," his roommate pointed out. "I gonna be cussed out in public an' run fuckin' diagnostics half th' damn night."
Paget patted the Cajun on his arm, before turning to gather their scattered tools. "No need to thank me, pal."
DelMonde gave him a growl. "Wit' fuckin' friends like you, who need a fuckin' enemy?"
"Adversity builds character," Paget asserted, lining up the valve covers that would have to be replaced before the coolant injector could be safely abandoned.
"You an' me get any more character," the Cajun snarled as he lowered himself back under the casing. "We gonna be a fuckin' novel."
Paget grinned "Damn, that'd be a helluva read."
"Mais, it need to read a li'l less like Crime an' Punishment," DelMonde requested adamantly.
"And a little more The Joy of Sex?" Paget asked, handing him a valve cover.
N.C. sighed and rolled his eyes. "I can't take you nowhere."
"How about a little My Blue Heaven?" Jer promised.
The Cajun raised an eyebrow at this veiled reference to sapphire. "How 'bout a fuckload o' My Blue Heaven?" he countered.
Paget shook his head beneficently as he handed the engineer a laser wrench. "Suffering, my man, lends untold depth to the individual."
"Sweet Mary, here we go again," the Cajun groaned. "You improve me much more, you gonna kill me."
"Look on the bright side," Jer advised. "Think of what a gorgeous corpse you'd make."
"I shoulda known it come down to necrophilia," the Cajun replied in kind. "Now it all start to make sense."
Paget smiled. "See how a little detective work makes everything all better?"
DelMonde sighed at the prospect of the very long evening ahead of them. "Promises, promises."
"So you stir up this shitstorm," N.C. was saying as they neared the meeting place on K level. "Make sure I got th' front row seat, then you wanna know if I gonna mind droppin' the li'l shieldin' I got to eavesdrop on these droolin' knuckledraggers?"
"If it wouldn't be too inconvenient?" Paget requested nicely.
DelMonde gave a long exasperated sigh. "You got a set o' brass ones, son."
"You'd know," Jer returned pleasantly.
There were already four of the six other redshirted Security/Engineering pairs from the Hood present. Mangini was in attendance, but Kane was missing - which probably meant that they'd arranged for her to make a grand entrance once the entire contingent was assembled. Paget silently awarded them several style points in advance for the idea.
"If you look over at me durin' this," the engineer was grumbling. "An' you wonder to yourself, "What ol' Del t'ink o' this shit?" jus' know that I calculatin' how much you owe me to the last motherfuckin' decimal."
"I've been a naughty, naughty boy," Paget confessed lasciviously.
"To hell wit' that," N.C. returned grumpily. "Jus' know that when I reach fo' that bottle o' sapphire tonight, you so much as lay a finger on it an' I bite your damned arm off."
"Promises, promises," Jer teased after him as DelMonde stalked off to get a cup of coffee.
Lieutenant Russ Feingold, another member of the Hood's Security crew, broke away from the engineer he was shadowing and stepped over. "Hey, Paget. You know what's up?"
"Kane's got a bee in her bonnet about these repairs," Jer replied, deciding to keep his saboteur theory on a need to know basis until he got more evidence to back it up.
"Hmm." Feingold was a little short for a security guard, but made up for it in muscle. He scanned the small crowd of locals taking breaks around the replicators disapprovingly. Then again, Feingold always looked at everything disapprovingly. He just had that kind of face. "From what I hear, your guy is responsible for a lot of that."
Paget was glad N.C. was out of earshot - and hoped the engineer was also out of brainshot. "That's just some interdepartmental jealousy and bickering," he replied dismissively. "And I wouldn't let your guy say anything in front of my guy if I were you."
"Really?" The artificial light reflected off of the top of Feingold's bald head. "Fifty credits says my guy can take your guy."
Jer glanced over at the short, skinny engineer Feingold was assigned to and then back to his colleague. Feingold's red-gold beard was cut in such a way that made it hard to tell if he was frowning or smiling.
"Really?" Paget replied dubiously.
"Yeah, sure," his colleague replied. "That is, if my guy catches your guy in a dark corridor from behind with a pipe wrench."
Paget made a show of looking back and forth between the two engineers once more. "Really?" he repeated.
"Yeah, sure," Feingold asserted. "That is, if my guy has me swing the pipe wrench for him."
Jer smiled. "I guess we could just cut through the middlemen and fight it out ourselves," he said with the very lightest hint that if Feingold wasn't joking, he wasn't joking either.
"But then think of all the fucking paperwork that would generate," the other guard returned with a discernable grin. 'Too much paperwork' was the standard justification for foregoing mayhem in jokes between members of the Hood's Security staff.
While Paget was still puzzling over whether or not he and Del had just been threatened, Kane made her entrance. The click-click-click of her boot heels on the deck was audible above the idle chatter of the break plaza.
"Okay, people," she ordered. "Front and center!"
"Front and center! Front and center!" Mangini echoed for her, gesturing his shipmates into a rough formation near the information kiosks.
N.C. tossed his coffee cup into a waste receptacle and came up to stand by Jer with 'YOU FUCKING OWE ME' written in invisible block letters over his forehead.
"Listen up, people!" Kane's voice was the sharp bark of a terrier. "I could do this one on one, or team by team, but frankly, that would've taken me days, and we haven't got days." At the immediate murmurs of protest that began, she snapped out, "Yes, I said DAYS! There are more malfunctions on this station than there are bottles in some engineers' cabins - or maybe that's the problem."
There were a few chuckles from the Security personnel, a few scowls from the engineers, and the locals didn't seem to appreciate the joke at all.
"Now..." she went on, "I know that's what we were called here for - equipment malfunctions that the good techs here weren't equipped to handle."
Paget watched her take a look at the crowd that was gathering behind her. He thought she might be considering putting in a good word for the hard work of the residents, absolving them for the problems with machinery. The looks on the faces of the civilian crowd said they were taking her 'good techs' designation as a not very subtle jab.
He saw her decide to skip the 'make-the-populace-feel-good-about-themselves' crap and turn back to the contingent from the Hood. Frowns on the faces behind her deepened. This suited Jer just fine. The more pissed off the locals were, the better.
She took a breath, scowling at the engineers as one. "But their problems are now OUR problem - which is getting this machinery in working order within the time allotted to us. And guess what we AREN'T doing? Not at all. Not even half-assed. We're breaking more things than we're fixing. Don't believe me?" Kane held up her statboard. "This is a list of all the repairs we've made since we've been here." She punched a few buttons and the small screen started scrolling. "And THESE are the things we're being called upon to re-repair. You know what that tells me?"
"Here it comes," Jeremy whispered to Del.
"Oh, goodie," the engineer mouthed back.
"It tells me that far from being the professionals Starfleet expects us to be, far from being the competent engineers these good people rely on, far from being a credit to our ship and our Captain, it tells me that I'm in charge of a bunch of lazy, smart-assed, haphazard, shoddy, careless, bone-headed, FUCK-UPS!"
There were a few ragged shouts of "Yeah!" from the civilians.
The Security people edged closer to the engineers, who were staring at their mission chief in slack-jawed dismay.
"I've listened to all your panty-waist excuses," Kane continued, her eyes boring into her crew one by one. "I've heard all your whining and back-biting and finger-pointing. And you know what people? I don't CARE! I don't care if you THOUGHT you fixed that coupling yesterday. I don't care of you were SURE the piece you replaced last night was in top working order. I don't CARE if there's no reason the conduit you cleaned this morning should be corroded again so soon. All that tells me is your quality-control is for shit. These people are relying on us, and we've got limited time here. We've got a reputation to uphold, people, not only our individual asses. We're the representatives of the Hood, Starfleet, and the whole fucking United Federation of Planets! Do we WANT these people to think that this half-assed, behind schedule, mediocre shit is all we've got?"
As she glared ice into the eyes of her engineers, there were mutters of unwelcome agreement from the crowd.
"And if any one of you so much as suggests that that's acceptable, I WILL find a way to reintroduce keelhauling on a starship!" Kane growled, leveling a lethal finger at her team. "So we're going to fix this problem, people. We're going to do our jobs with proper professionalism - with the attitude, respect and honor expected of us as Starfleet officers. Time is of the essence here, and because of that, we're going to push and push hard on the transdactor assemblies on the J-23 line. We WILL get those assemblies in top working order by the end of the day, or the next time I have to talk to any one of you, it will be with my boot so far up your ass you won't be able to sit for a week!"
"Quit grinnin'," N.C. warned Paget out of the side of his mouth.
"I think I'm in love," the Security guard whispered back.
"All right." Kane put her hands on her hips. "Anyone have any questions?"
A very few hands were raised.
"Shove 'em up your asses," the lieutenant advised. "Now get back to work!"
Laying on top of a tri-split, prepping parts, Paget was beginning to be more worried about N.C. than about his saboteur. During their three hours of overtime, the engineer had gone from cranky and irascible to sullen and uncommunicative. Jer had first given him a couple analgesics and then risked a mild sedative. In response to the stress opening himself up to the hostility of the crowd from this afternoon, DelMonde seemed to be withdrawing, losing himself in his work like a hermit crab crawling up into his shell.
When the engineer rolled out from under the machine and silently reached for a component, his eyes appeared to Paget's covertly expert gaze to be a little more glassy and bloodshot than they had before.
An unexpected smile quirked at one corner of DelMonde's mouth. "My only consolation in all o' this is that you feel guilty as hell," the engineer said, impudently shaking a finger at him. "Which you should - 'cause this all your fault."
"Noel Christopher DelMonde." Paget closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. "I swear to God if I get one hint you are faking me out, my boot is gonna be so far up your ass, you'll have shoe leather for eyelashes."
The engineer managed half a grin as he activated the component. "Now, there th' tender regard I come to expect."
"I'm serious, man." Paget said, handing him a spanner. "You're startin' to scare me."
"Enough fo' you to break down an' get me a bottle o' bourbon an' a half tab o' sapphire?" DelMonde asked pointedly as he inserted the tiny piece of machinery into a slot.
"Enough to call Dr. Donleavy and have him certify you unfit for duty," Paget replied, as the tri-split hummed back to life under his friend's expert fingers.
"Fo' what?" The engineer scoffed. "Bein' sick in th' head?
"At least that would be plausible." A new voice chimed in.
Turning, Paget could see Lieutenant Kane coming towards them carrying what looked like a take out box from one of the local eateries. He reflected that DelMonde had to be pretty far gone for her to get that close before he realized it.
"So th' Bitch from Hell decide to play Lady Bountiful," the engineer said ungraciously, wiping off his hands.
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Kane said, unwrapping the box.
"If them's ribs from Di'Adonat's," DelMonde replied, "I might pretend I not say it."
The food was indeed from that establishment, but turned out to be honey-brazed Bengarian bat legs instead of their equally delectable roast ribs. "Well, nobody's perfect," Kane said, generously handing the small feast over to her fellow officers. "Speaking of, as of your last update, out of the 10 machines you've run diagnostics on, 7 came back with malfunctions."
DelMonde tapped on the tri-split behind him with the hand that was not bringing a leg to his lips. "We 8 fo' 12 now," he reported in between bites.
"You must be proud," Kane said, with casual rudeness.
"Actually," Paget said, managing to snag a leg before his companion inhaled all of them. "We think we have concrete evidence of sabotage."
The lieutenant nodded and took a seat on the tri-split. "I thought you might."
"'Cept fo' number 6." DelMonde pointed with a leg bone. "Metal fatigue."
"Which you flagged in your initial report," she conceded.
The Cajun snarled at the condescension in her tone. "You can jus' stick that..."
"Can we show you what we're talking about, Lieutenant?" Paget interrupted, tactfully pointing her towards the back of the machine next to them.
"What have you got?"
Paget, deciding this demonstration could work better as show rather than tell, took the opportunity to munch on another delicious brazed leg as he pointed her to seemingly identical areas on that machine and the one beside it. "See a difference?"
Kane looked back and forth between the two machines for several moments, then bent down to run her finger around a plate on the unit on which DelMonde had been working. She rubbed a critical finger over a collection of irregularities in the smooth surface. "Someone's been wasting sealant."
"No, ma'am," DelMonde rebutted firmly, licking honey-sauce from his thumb. "That not waste. That there my signature."
"Signature?" Kane repeated.
The Cajun silently directed her towards a few more examples of "signed" plates as he finished the morsel he was rapidly consuming.
"In my former employ," he explained as she found identical patterns of dots on each machine. "It was important t' be able to distinguish 'tween my own work an' that of whatever jackass had been at the job site 'fore or after me. I add th' dots as jus' by force o' habit now, but you can see..."
Kane raised an eyebrow. "Former employ?"
"Yeah," DelMonde replied shortly, tossing another stripped bone into the box.
"You were..." Kane paused, as if she couldn't quite believe her own conclusion. "... a mechanic?" The expression on the lieutenant's face was something like a prima ballerina might display if suddenly informed that the dancer on stage with her had started out as a stripper.
There were, Paget figured, two primary ways of interpreting such a look. One would be that the metaphorical prima donna was thinking, 'I cannot believe that someone as obviously talented as you are would ever have to work as anything other than a professional ballet dancer at the highest level.' The other translated into, 'Ewww! Stripper.'
Even without turning to look, he knew which interpretation his friend would choose to see.
"When I was a teenager, I work fo' a repair shop," DelMonde confirmed in a defensive growl. "You happy now?"
Kane shrugged. "Makes no difference to me."
"So," Paget said, preemptively interrupting any discussion of whether or not DelMonde's past employ did make a difference to the lieutenant or not and whether or not she needed a good smack upside the head for feeling such a way. "As we were about to tell you..."
He turned the box of legs over to the Cajun to hopefully appease and distract him while he wiped off his hands and broke out his tricorder.
"As you can see in these pictures, the three dots N.C. puts on his seals are absent on the seals of the malfunctioning units." Paget called up a display on the small screen. "Spectro-analysis, however... shows that the dots were present yesterday on these same units."
"So we're not just going on Mr. DelMonde's word that they were present," she said, putting the matter a little more offensively than was absolutely necessary. "Good work, Paget. After we catch this bastard tonight, we're going to have 'em solid."
"Not to undermine my own plan," Jer said, re-claiming his tricorder. "But this is enough for me to go to Rabinowitz right now and initiate an investigation."
Kane frowned. "Right now?"
"Hmm..." DelMonde sniffed the air significantly. "You smell that?"
Paget blinked at him. "The legs?"
"Nope." The Cajun smiled cynically as he tossed the last bone into the empty box and wiped his hands. "Somebody t'ink she catchin' th' sweet scent o' promotion in th' air."
Kane acted as if she hadn't heard him - which, to Paget's practiced eye, was a resounding affirmation of the truthfulness of his assertion.
DelMonde made a 'tsk, tsk' noise in her direction. "Not often that an engineer get th' chance to catch th' bad guy, is it, sugar?"
"Your name will, of course, figure prominently in my report, Lieutenant," Paget began respectfully, but firmly. "But I'm going to have to turn it in by the end of this shift.
"You not see it, man?" DelMonde asked, starting to pack up his tools. "End o' this shift be right now if you play our cards right."
"Oh." Paget frowned at this implied bribe. It would be a very be a very good thing to get N.C. off duty before he keeled over, but... "I'm not going to purposefully delay my report on a program of sabotage that I think is on-going..."
"But..." his cabinmate prompted pointedly.
Paget blew out a deep breath. "But, recommending we open an investigation is a more involved procedure than reporting on an ongoing case..."
"So it may take a few hours?" Kane said, careful to keep any hopefulness out of her tone.
"And I'll need to have my findings confirmed by the lab," Jer admitted.
DelMonde was already closing the cover of his toolkit. "An' his boss done in th' bed fo' the night anyway. "
Paget frowned at Kane. "You're not planning on staying here by yourself?"
"Mangini is getting a couple coffees and a tirasuchii from Di'Adonat's." Tirasuchii was a tasty combination of pastry/high energy snack, beloved by people wanting to stay awake and alert for extra hours.
"See, Jer." The Cajun stood and patted him on the shoulder. "They got it all worked out."
Paget gave her another frown for the extent to which she had obviously had this plan to get around him worked out.
"You ever go fishin', Lieutenant?" DelMonde asked, seemingly untroubled by such concerns, as he tossed her one of the components Paget had prepped.
"Once or twice," she replied, easily catching it.
"Just remember, girlie," he said over his shoulder, as he sauntered off towards the central beam down location on this floor. "You ain't never gonna catch a bass if you keep pullin' the hook out the water t' check that your worm still there."
"Goodnight, gentlemen," she said, collecting the rest of the prepped components.
"Be careful, Lieutenant," Paget warned with a frown.
"Don't worry, Paget." She smiled. "Your name will figure prominently in my report."
Around two hours later, Jer was waiting for the lab report in his cabin. He was watching Del sleep. The engineer was sprawled face-down on the bunk. He'd taken off his tunic before he dozed off, but hadn't managed to get out of his boots. A single lock of his hair had broken free and was lolling lazily against his forehead.
Jer smiled. Before he going to bed himself, he would put a blanket over his friend and perhaps smooth back that rebellious curl. For the moment, though, he enjoyed the engineer for the glorious mess that he was.
Although they were just friends, it was hard to not be at least a little in love with Noel DelMonde. He was really a magnificent creature - beautiful, often brilliant, gifted in ways that put him almost in the realm of myth. It was easy to imagine DelMonde as a fairytale prince sitting on a silver throne. And yet he was here, a fallible mortal, sleeping with one foot dangling off the side of the bunk, who got stomachaches when he felt like people disliked him and blamed it on bad food, who left clothes next to the shower and dark hair in all your combs and brushes, who liked his privacy but usually forgot to lock doors, fearless but with a strange aversion to sleeping on the top bunk he wouldn't discuss... A hundred and one contradictions all rolled up into one arrogant, vulnerable, beautiful, and frequently fucked-up package....
The object of his gaze suddenly yawned and rolled over. "Quit starin', son," N.C. said, stretching and rubbing his face. "Your eyes gonna burn a hole through me."
"I thought you were out for the night," Jer replied easily, as he turned back to his terminal and checked the status of his lab results.
"Wit' that li'l hit?" DelMonde snorted derisively as he sat up. "Hell, no. That jus' a nap so I could wake up ready t' kick your ass if you try t' worm your way out o' givin' me th' real dose you owe me."
"We're probably going to have an early morning after this report gets in," Paget warned.
N.C. folded his arms stubbornly. "That why you need to be givin' my sapphire right now."
"You're not gonna take a shower first?" Jer asked, not saying 'yes.'
DelMonde yawned again. "I guess that not kill me," he replied, tugging off one of his boots.
"You feeling any better?"
"I not feelin' no worse," his cabinmate replied parsimoniously. "The lab not get back to you?"
"Shouldn't be too much longer."
DelMonde smiled wryly as he tossed his boot lazily in the general direction of his closet. "Kane prob'ly catched herself a whole ring o' saboteurs by now, non?"
"Oh, definitely," Paget agreed facetiously. He paused and considered how to phrase his next question in a sufficiently challenging enough manner to guarantee he'd get some response. "Why did you let Kane pull attitude about you starting out in Maintenance? Doesn't that make you better at it than her?"
"It make me a whole fuckload better'an her," the Cajun answered with obliging readiness.
"So why'd you give her a pass?"
DelMonde shrugged diffidently. "The primary career goal o' th' average Starfleet Engineerin' officer is design. Maintenance is just sorta what we do to pay th' bills - to most of 'em. People like Kane - people wit' parents in Engineerin' - They start learnin' th' math an' th' theory when they still little kids. Go to prep schools in design when they teenagers..." The Cajun paused to toss his second boot after the first. "You know I not done none o' that. Never so much as thought o' what I did as 'design'... Jus' makin' stuff that would work. That all."
"N.C., you're a galaxy-class Maker," Paget reminded him gently but firmly. "The best of the best. None of them can say that."
"Yeah." He rose, retrieved a brush from his dresser, and began to roughly comb his unruly locks into a semblance of order. "But you know the 'galaxy-class Maker' you introduced to everyone in Rio wasn't not'ing but a two-bit, semi-unemployed, uncertified, cut-rate repairman wit' five credits in his pocket who not never been more than five hundred miles from his front doorstep."
Paget rose and crossed behind his friend. "What I know," he said, gently stopping DelMonde's hand. "Is that I was lucky enough to find a Galaxy-Class Maker who was working as a repairman because no one within a five hundred mile radius of his front door had yet realized that he was one of the most talented engineers born to his generation."
As the Cajun's expressive black eyes played over his face, Jer could feel DelMonde's naked affection and ever unspoken gratitude seep through his skin like warm, delicious honey.
"Oh, quit tryin' to sweet talk me," he said gruffly aloud, reclaiming his brush.
The intercom whistled.
"At last," Paget said, hurrying back to his terminal. "The poker game must have finally broken up in the lab..."
To his surprise, the face he saw when he activated the screen was that of Carlos Mangini.
"Paget?"
"You catched all them saboteurs already, man?" DelMonde called, not turning from his mirror.
"Paget," Mangini repeated, looking grimly distraught. "Serena's gone."
"She could have just lost it," Paget concluded for the third time as the three men stared at the communicator that was lodged deep inside the inner workings of a transduction unit.
"I know, I know!" Mangini snapped back. "That's why I called you and not the chief."
DelMonde shook his head. "Carlos, man, you panickin'."
"I'm not panicking," the Security guard insisted before his gaze returned inexorably to the abandoned communicator. "She could be dead right now..." he muttered to himself.
Paget gave DelMonde a reproving, 'And whose fault is this?' look which his roommate pointedly ignored. "Just keep cool, Mangini. You said there was nothing on the surveillance cams for this area?"
"That's why we were down here. Half the cameras on this floor are out."
Jer frowned at this seeming confirmation of his sabotage theory. "They all went out at once?"
"No. Like everything else, they're just old and in bad shape. We had a couple brown-outs and Serena got agitated..."
"...Charged in like a bull in a damn china shop," DelMonde finished for him. "Stuck her snooty nose into somebody else's business, opened her big mouth, an'..."
Paget silenced this supposition with a sharp 'not helping' glance. "Okay, Carlos, here's what we'll do. We'll take an hour, checking in with each other every fifteen. You make another sweep. N.C. and I will see what we can find. If there's still no sign of Kane at the end of the hour, we wake up the ship. Okay?"
Having a plan and timeframe seemed to steady Mangini. "Yeah," he nodded. "What about her communicator?"
DelMonde scowled unhelpfully when both of the Security Officers turned to him. "It stuck. It not broke."
"I'll get it." Mangini quickly clambered down in to the piping.
"Where we gonna look?" the Cajun asked his cabinmate.
Paget blew out a long breath and considered. "I'm guessing we can assume Carlos has hit all the obvious places..."
"Like th' hospitals an' all?" the engineer replied unthinkingly.
"Oh, God," the other Security Officer groaned as he emerged from the machinery, clutching his lady love's communicator as if it were a holy relic. "I'll kill myself if she's hurt."
"Don't lose your head, Carlos," Paget cautioned, reaching down to help him to his feet. "Stay focused."
"Like a laser," Mangini replied grimly before heading off for the turbo lifts.
After he was out of earshot, DelMonde put his hands on his hips and frowned at his cabinmate defensively. "Don't be givin' me that look."
Paget crossed his arms mercilessly. "What look?"
"The look that say it my fault he done gone out his damn mind."
"Because you've had nothing to do with it?"
"Where th' fuck we s'posed to go look fo' Kane now?" the engineer asked instead of acknowledging any guilt.
Paget shrugged uncooperatively. "Where do you think we should look?"
The Cajun returned the gesture. "Some place where a body can sit down an' have a damned drink sound good to me."
"Me too," Jer agreed unexpectedly.
DelMonde blinked. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Like I was sayin', Mangini has probably covered all the most likely locations... and is headed back to obsessively cover them again." He paused while the Cajun stubbornly ignored the 'obsessively' part of his statement. "So now we need to scare up some new leads. When you've scanned the locals, did you get anything that might point us to a bar suitably shady enough for people who might be saboteurs and kidnappers to hang out and make plans?"
The Cajun took a long moment to consider. Jer knew this wasn't a normal way that he used his giftedness. It was much more usual for him to forcefully block out as much of other people's random thoughts as possible, not to sift through for bits of potentially useful information.
"There might be a place a few levels up," he finally put forth tentatively. "Called Donnant's or somet'ing..."
"Donner's Dive?" Paget asked, cross checking with a list of businesses supplied by this tricorder.
"Yeah. Somet'ing like that..." The engineer considered for a moment more then made a face. "I t'ink it in th' bottom floor of a brothel."
"Yep." The Security Officer smiled as he snapped closed his tricorder and headed off for the lifts. "Perfect."