"Let's bugger everything up before a big fight"
 by Lieutenant jg T'Kang
 Chief Engineer - USS Intrepid


T'Kang let out a frustrated growl.   He'd just gotten off the 
channel with Lieutenant Commander Steven Davis, the 
ship's first officer.  It seemed he and Lieutenant Shadow 
were still advocating the merging of the green goo with the 
rest of the Intrepid's systems.  The Klingon rolled his eyes 
and sighed.  He couldn't believe Starfleet would allow this 
kind of experimentation on an active duty Starship.  Such 
tinkering and experimentation is typically carried out in a 
laboratory on some distant asteroid facility somewhere under 
controlled, scientific conditions.  Not on board a 
sophisticated Prometheus class starship that could be called 
into battle against the Panthers at any time. 

The Chief Engineer slammed his fist on the console.  First 
his inability to conjure up and information on the Mugarri and 
Nharwak, which he later learned from Calenzie was due to a 
data purge by Starfleet, and now the Exec and Lieutenant 
Shadow want to screw up the Intrepid's systems by releasing 
a lime green alien organism into the ship "to see what will 
happen."   It didn't make the Klingon feel very easy over their 
current assignment of escorting the Mugarri Ambassador to 
the conference.  Everyone knew that the Nharwak or 
whoever was behind the prior two attacks were not going to 
be scared away by the Intrepid on this attempt.  Especially if 
the starship was dead in space because of Lieutenant 
Shadow's telepathic goo.

To make matters worse, according to Nal, the Mugarri 
contained something that the Nharwak desperately wanted.  
Some weapon or power that would potentially allow the 
Nharwak to take over the entire quadrant.  Knowing how 
desperately the Nharwak wanted this, as of yet unidentified 
thing the Mugarri possessed, made the Klingon engineer 
even more apprehensive about conducting experiments with 
the Intrepid's systems.    T'Kang made mental note to bring 
these things to the attention of Commander Davis and 
Lieutenant Shadow when they arrived in Main Engineering.

Moving to his office, T'Kang began clearing his desk of all of 
the clutter that has accumulated there.  He was not one that 
would ever be accused of being overly neat.  When it came 
to the administrative reports Starfleet required to be filed for 
each operation, the Klingon had a propensity towards 
procrastination.  This resulted in piles and piles of padds 
accumulating on the Chief's desk.  Padds which he neatly 
slid into the open drawer of his desk now, to get them out of 
view.   In the end, it would probably have been more 
painless to fill out the reports as the day progressed, rather 
than letting them accumulate until the end of the month 
when reports were coming due.  But somehow the Klingon 
always managed to find some excuse to get out of doing 
them right at the moment.  Even if it did ultimately result in 
two days of all night hell that Felgar himself would cringe at.

After disposing of the stack of padds and closing his desk 
drawer, T'Kang removed the tools and spare parts from the 
two seats opposite his desk.  He knew Commander Davis 
and Lieutenant Shadow would wish to sit down, not 
preferring to stand as most Klingon officers would.  Glancing 
around, T'Kang gave a satisfied nod.  His office was not a 
flashy place.  It was rough and functional, much like the 
Engineer himself.  But at least now it looked a bit more 
presentable for the XO's visit. 

T'Kang sat behind his desk and waited with his hands folded 
and fingers steepled before his face.  Inside he went over his 
arguments *not* to incorporate any alien life form into the 
Intrepid's systems while such an important mission, with 
almost certain tactical implications, loomed just a few hours 
away.

A low growl could be heard coming from T'Kang as he bared 
his teeth at the thought of a Nharwak attack against an 
unprepared ship.