Leave It To Me (No, Seriously) [Backpost]
Posted on Thu Mar 5th, 2026 @ 3:06am by Commander Ichika Misono & Captain Maho Takahashi & Lieutenant Ami Rori
2,496 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
The Breen
Location: USS Myogi (NCC-65918)- Main Engineering, Deck 14
Timeline: March 14, 2397- about 5 hours after "Times Like These"
"Nice and easy, fellas- we've only got three of these and we pretty much need all of them!"
A small cadre of Eifie and Rheuysian engineers shuffled their way into Engineering, lugging with them a large, rectangular cargo container with distinctive Klingon markings. Applied to the top of the crate, where it would it be visible to anyone who so desired to access its contents, was a secondary label, which in bright capital letters was inscribed with the words "ON LOAN- HANDLE WITH CARE!"
Fronting the precession was a tall, surly blonde in his early forties, the marks of age already beginning to show around the corners of his eyes, but nonetheless in peak physical health, and still with a commanding presence to boot.
"Right- I think this should be a good place to set it down," he remarked as he surveyed the area and made sure they wouldn't be blocking any major systems. "Gently now."
With a grunt, the engineers gently set the crate down, taking care to place it in a small alcove adjacent to where its contents were set to be installed.
"Nice job, Fellas," the blonde congratulated as he went and patted the engineers on the back. "Now, then- anyone happen to know where we can find Lieutenant Rori so we can get her to sign off on this?"
A small groan came from the open office door as something woke up from within the darkened room. She'd left the door opened while she'd waited for the devices to arrive, after she'd gone through the blueprints of the ship to arrange how they'd be installed, then laid down to take a nap while having a way to be alerted when it'd finally arrived. Ami emerged from the office rubbing her eyes, "'m here. She said with a yawn, "It's time to get this party started."
"Uh..." the blonde cast an awkward glance at his cohorts before shifting his attention back towards (what he assumed to be) Lieutenant Rori. "Do you need a moment, Lieutenant?"
"No, no, I'm good." Ami waved the concerns away as she stopped and stretched, "Don't worry about me, this is all normal. I'm only a half-blood but it was an emergency and so I was Joined. Rori's a leech and steals all my energy because I'm not built for it, so I tend to catnap whenever possible." Her stretch ended on the tips of her toes, "Don't tell the Captain though, she'd be annoyed that I do it."
The blonde raised an eyebrow. "I take it you're Lieutenant Rori, then?"
"The one and the same." Ami confirmed, her hazel eyes blinking a few times and finally focusing on the blonde, "And you are? And that's the cloaking device, right? Just so that we can get to work."
"Hold up, hold up, one question at a time, please," the blonde implored, raising his hand. "To answer that first question- Captain Phillip Cox, Director of Yard Operations for the Algonquin Fleet Yards; to answer your second question- yes, this is the cloaking device, but since it's on loan from the empire, we'll just need you to-!"
"Be careful installing it, right." Ami butted in, shouldering her way past the Captain as she ignored what he was about to say as she ran a hand across the top of the container in some wonder. One hand went to each side and released the latches as she opened the top.
"Excuse me!" Phillip huffed indignantly.
"Don't worry, I know Klingon, well, at least a fair bit of it, though that was over a century ago so there have been a few dialect changes." Ami interrupted him again, "I've got a couple of teams that are standing by to assist in this. How familiar are you with the Project Jomo subvariant of the New Orleans class?"
"We read up on it before the cloaking device got here," Phillip replied. "It should've been listed in the work docket that this was a sub-variant."
Ami gave him a flat look, "You read up on Myogi before the cloaking device got here." She held her hands up in between them, "Fine, first rule about this ship: Touch nothing unless you know exactly what you're touching. If in doubt, you ask me. This isn't a negotiation, this is an order." She shook her head slowly, "Now, do I WANT to know where you were planning on hooking this into?"
"The Matter/Antimatter intermix chamber?" Phillip quipped, rolling his eyes. "No, obviously we were going to hook it up to the deflector grid!"
"With you Fleet Yard types, I never know what is being thought of." Ami gave a very measured smile, "Invariably something is wrong with the ship whenever we get released from yard hands, even if it takes some time to find out what got screwed up. In this case, I've been considering the most effective location and I've already set up Auxiliary Deflector Control with a housing for this baby," She peered into the container whose lid she opened, "I'll have to add a little additional vibration insulation, I see, but once we have it seated properly, it's going to be pretty straightforward if time consuming to hook up all the feeds. I've gotten redundant links to all shield sectors mapped out so that any damage won't make us lose coverage with a single hit."
"Then how about we stop discussing it and get to installing it?" A Rheuysian standing next to Phillip asked impatiently. "The longer I'm away from my post, the more likely Captain Shokuho is to perform dangerous stunts with that prototype ship in yard limits!"
"K'Raus, we've already spoken with Captain Shokuho about this," Phillip calmly interceded. "She's been made aware of the fact that if she pulls that shit in my yard again, she'll be answering directly to Admiral Hokaze, alright?"
"You don't know Captain Shokuho like I do, Mister Cox." K'Raus said.
He shifted his attention back over to Ami. "You'll have to excuse my Foreman, Lieutenant; K'Raus here's a very proud man, as well as Captain Shokuho's final Chief Engineer on the Forrest Gump before her 'retirement.' He knows just as well as I do that Captain Shokuho's a hot pile of shit and needs a reminder every now and then to rein it in."
Ami closed the lid of the container and latched it again, safety first after all, "No need to forgive, I can understand the anxiety of someone else playing around with the ship we let others borrow and usually break." She gave a smile at K'Raus, "But you're right, we need to get this installed and run some tests." She gestured to the doors of main engineering, "We've gotta go up two levels and if you see anything I may have gotten wrong? Find a gentle way to bring it up?"
"Of course we need to move it up a couple of levels," Phillip sighed before turning his attention over to the engineers. "Alright, fellas, you heard her; let's get this loaded up in the turbolift and head up to deck 12. Nice and easy, like before."
The engineers nodded and began lugging the crate back towards the turbolift, with Ami and Phillip taking up the rear.
[Deck 12]
Up on deck 12, which housed several important systems such as the deuterium injectors and the secondary computer core, the squeeze was quite tighter as the engineers carefully maneuvered the crate to the desired position.
"Careful now, mei'in frheuyn'di'nin: (my friends:)" K'Raus instructed. "One wrong move could damage something important here and cause more delays..."
Phillip chuckled. "It's almost as if you don't trust them, K'Raus..."
"Hey, remember who served under Captain Shokuho and her unrealistic deadlines?" K'raus challenged. "Seems to be a running theme with Starfleet Captains: Lofty expectations with no application of reality."
"The difference is that I can usually meet Maho's expectations, but doing so is somewhat of a trade secret." Ami gave a brief laugh, "It's just a matter of predicting what they want next and putting the initial pieces into place to make the job easier. This one I couldn't predict until she told me what was going to happen, so I spent most of the trip back getting ready. We should be about six hours ahead of schedule if we get a meal sent up here and try to power on through to get all of the testing done. Could even have a celebratory poker game after we're all done, so the Captain doesn't realize we didn't need all the time given."
"Might not be anything fancy, what with wartime rationing and all that," Phillip shrugged. "Speaking of, you wouldn't happen to know where we could find the nearest food-grade replicator? Once we get situated, I can see about sending one of my engineers to fetch us something."
"Benefit of being on a starship, much less a senior officer, less of a rationing situation unless we're away from any sort of resource replenishment." Ami made a gesture to the carriers to point them in the right direction on where exactly to go with the device, "There's a lounge two decks above, but it's in proximity to a lot of science labs. The other alternative is to just send someone the way we came and to use the replicator in my office. I can get a bit busy to make a multi-deck traipse to the mess, so I just use my own."
"A solid system, for sure." K'Raus agreed. "I used to do something similar on the Gump, especially when working a long damage control shift after Captain Shokuho pushed her vessel beyond its design capabilities..."
The engineers placed the crate down by the cradle and Ami did another once over to make sure that nothing had been changed or damaged before they settled the device in, “I think we’ll need a quarter turn from the way it’s oriented in the crate. Let’s check the fit first to see if I need to add any extra padding for it to sit right.”
"Got it," Phillip nodded as he pulled out a couple of straps and began to gently feed them through a small gap running underneath the device. "Mister K'raus, see if you can give me a hand over here?"
"Surely, there has to be a better way of doing this..." K'Raus grumbled as he fetched the ends of the straps from the gap and began to pull them up. "Centuries of technological innovation, and we're still lifting heavy parts from crates like savages..."
"I'll get back to you once I've mastered telekenesis," Phillip joked as he brought the straps around and fastened them together. "Alright, fellas, on the count of three- and nice and gentle, I can't stress how delicate this thing is."
The engineers nodded and moved into position.
"Alright, you ready? Alright- one, two... three!"
with a grunt, the engineers gently hoisted the device out of the crate and began to rotate it into position.
"Alright, easy, easy, easy- wait, hold on, you guys gotta twist it!" Phillip directed. "No, hold on, stop, twist it the other way!"
"We are:" K'Raus responded to Phillip's direction. "What do you want us to do?"
"Alright, just..." Phillip moved over to one of the ends to demonstrate. "Look what I'm doing over here; you see how I'm twisting it? You guys wanna turn it that way from your end!"
"Okay..." K'raus said, attempting to follow Phillip's directions and twist, but failing to consider that the motion actually needed to be reversed. "Right...Here-!"
"Wait, hold on, just... nononono, that's gonna hit a conduit!" Phillip exclaimed. "Alright, let's just set it back in the crate for a second and figure things out..."
Ami had tucked herself mostly underneath the cradle where she would have been able to first check the fit and then release the straps after it had been fully seated, but now instead of crouching, she let her legs fall out from under her and sat there, "It's like a dance, gentlemen, a really non-intuitive dance." She crawled out from underneath the cradle and pointed at opposite corners of the device, "To twist it right, the corners have to move together, maybe quarter steps so you don't unbalance. Outside, inside, not left or right."
"Good idea," Phillip nodded. "Alright, let's try this again- quarter steps this time, and we're going to try and twist it on a z-axis, rather than an X-axis; it's easier than we're making it."
Ami began to retreat underneath the cradle again and did her best to guide the 'labor' engineers to the right position until finally it was poised above her and she nodded to herself, "All right, start to lower it, slowly, slowly..." She kept on, "Stop right there." She activated her tricorder and made some measurements, pulling out a few bits of padding of varying thicknesses and securing them to the cradle, "All right, bring it down all the way."
The cloaking device settled into the cradle softly and Ami reached up to undo the straps from the bottom and eased them out, "I'm going to get working on the connections, you guys take a break, go get something to eat, just bring me back um... A Rori-three from the replicator." It would be a strawberry-chocolate shake, but they wouldn't know that.
Phillip glanced over at his colleagues, then back at Ami. "Um... are you sure, Lieutenant? We did read up on the connections for just this occasion..."
"I'm sure." Ami said in a flat tone as she looked at him in the eyes, "And I'm sure that I'm not going to be finished by the time you get back, so there will be plenty more work for you guys to do. I need to talk to this thing and Myogi, reassure her that it's going to be all right and that she should just let this happen. She can be a bit tempermental and if I get things started, rather than let a bunch of unfamiliar men start pawing around, I think she'll give us much less trouble."
"Well, in that case, I think that frees me up to go back to monitoring Captain Shokuho?" K'Raus shrugged.
"Go on ahead, Commandant," Phillip nodded, before turning his attention back to Ami. "Well, seeing as the rest of us have got nothing better to do, might as well try that Rori-three you mentioned earlier..."
Posting by:
Captain Phillip Cox
Director of Yard Operations
Algonquin Fleet Yards
Lieutenant Ami Rori
Chief Engineer
USS Myogi (NCC-65918)
Commandant K'Raus Vir'Sch
Yard Foreman
Algonquin Fleet Yards
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