Strategy and Planing

Posted on 16 Mar 2015 @ 10:55pm by Ensign K'os Beaumont & Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones

2,957 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7, Callisto Bar
Timeline: MD -02 1630

ON

K'os walked into Callisto Bar. Not much had changed since he'd last been onboard the Galileo. It was a little busy at this time of day, with Alpha shift having finished half an hour ago. K'os had changed out of his uniform and into a pair of brown pants that hugged his legs and a black button down shirt, tucked in. He had debated with himself during the entire trip to the bar whether to leave his top button done up or not, in the end he had decided to leave it done up. He found a somewhat quieter spot in the corner of the bar, ordered himself a drink and waited for Grayson to join him.

Grayson on the other hand, left the top two buttons of his black polo shirt undone. That and jeans were his go to look at the bar, even for friendly, get to know you drinks. Grayson always dressed to impress (and by that he means show off tight clothing), you never know who you might meet when you are out and about and for a small ship, he was still always running into new people and potential new matches.

Grabbing his usual fruity, colourful and wonderfully alcoholic concoction Grayson went to sit down beside K'os. "You picked one of my favourite spots," he said, sliding into his seat.

A dimpled grin crossed K'os' cheeks as he took in Grayson's outfit. He always felt slightly stunned when seeing colleagues in civilian clothing; pleasantly stunned in this case. "I picked it so you can people-watch the comings and goings." He nodded his head towards the entrance, before looking back. He had to slightly turn his body towards Grayson to meet his eyes. "What's that?" He asked, scrunching his face in curiosity and pointing towards his drink.

"You are starting to know me too well already, I like it," Grayson laughed. "This?" Pointing to his drink, "It is my usual cocktail, an Aqua Blue Cruise, but with a few twists, so I call it The Perfect Man." He laughed a little. "What have you got?"

"The bartender called it an Old Fashioned." K'os picked it up smoothly and sniffed it. "Part of me thinks he was teasing when he said I reminded him of the drink." K'os couldn't help but continue to stare at the other man. It was hard to admit, but the relief of knowing that he wasn't a telepath made him more relaxed, and he shifted to be a bit closer to him.

"Oh I am sure not. Probably just teasing, and, if it was Doyle...probably flirting with you." Grayson grinned, thinking of the antics of his best friend, he was sometimes as bad as he was, but looking over to the bar, did not see him working. Of this, Grayson was thankful, Doyle needed no more ammunition on him and he was quite enjoying this time out so far.

K'os propped his head on his hands as he leaned his elbow on the table. With his other hand he took a long slow sip of his drink as he watched Grayson's lips move, not really registering the words. As if shaking himself out of a daydream, K'os sat up. "So, Lieutenant Kita thinks it's a good idea for us to get to know each other. I guess, we'll be working pretty closely during the wargames?

"Yeah, I know am going to need you," Grayson took a sip of his drink to clear a scratch he was feeling forming in his throat, "during this mission. I will admit, it feels a little daunting to be in charge and I will need to get to know the rest of the team pretty well." Grayson gave his best charming smile in the hopes to help hide his nerves. He was hoping to be on the good side of most of the Engineers as the next mission progressed, or at least, most of them.

K'os couldn't help but mimic the smile, though it very quickly became his usual tight lipped grin of his again. He put his drink down and self-consciously tried to smooth his dimples out of his cheeks before lowering his hands again. "You seem far too confident to be shaken by daunting tasks." K'os quirked an eyebrow at his own words and squinted his eyes slightly. He was only empathic through touch, but his intuition was finely tuned enough to hazard a guess. In his usual blunt fashion he asked, "Are you feeling confident?"

"To an extent. I just hope I can keep the team as together as they are while the Chief is away," Grayson continued with his drink, taking a large sip this time around and feeling the cold touch of the liquid on the way down, but the warmth of the alcohol running through his veins. "We'll get there though, I am sure of that."

K'os chuckled lightly at the duality of Grayson's feelings. Self conscious questioning smoothed by optimism. "Of course we'll get there. You have a lot of good specialists in this department and they all know their jobs well. If not, I'll get them there for you." K'os took another sip, savouring the colours the flavours brought to mind. Feeling heady, and maybe a little silly he raised his eyebrows towards Grayson. "Have you ever played 'two truths, and a lie' before?"

"Is there any good member of Starfleet who hasn't?" Grayson asked jokingly.

K'os laughed loudly, throwing his head back. He stifled it when it drew attention from another table. He grinned instead, "Okay. I'll go first. Which one's the lie? I started my Starfleet career as an Impulse Systems Specialist, I was born on Vulcan, and I've never ridden a horse."

Pretending to ponder for a few seconds, eventually Grayson guessed, "Riding a horse?" He always went with his initial gut reaction, but gave the illusion of thought so not to throw people off, but also to give himself time of what to think up for his round. His mind began to wonder how long and after how many drinks would this begin to get personal.

K'os chuckled and shook his head. "I've always been too nervous to try to ride a horse and I was born on Earth, not Vulcan." He gave a satisfied grin as he waited for Grayson's turn. He was practically beaming that someone had gone along with his spur of the moment idea.

"Okay, my turn. I have a fear of arachnids, I've slept with a superior officer, I used to be allergic to alcohol." Grayson replied, him tone, almost like he was thinking aloud.

K'os scrunched his eyes up as if the answer was written somewhere on Grayson's forehead. He took a long sip, practically finishing his drink as he pondered the options. When he placed his glass back down he puckered and bit at his lip in thought. "I want to say fear of arachnids is the lie because, well, who's afraid of arachnids except maybe someone with Trill heritage? So, I'm going to say...urm...sleeping with a superior officer is the lie?"

"You were right with your first guess. Should have stuck with your gut. Even as a Trill, I hate them. When it comes to symbiont? That's something left until more drinks are consumed. Safe to say, one of them will never be in me."

K'os raised his eyebrows and gave a grin in a 'oh I see how it is' sort of way. He signalled to the server to bring them another round. "I've never slept with a superior officer. Not that I wouldn't, I've just never felt compelled to get to know senior officers or senior staff enough to get that far before. I'll stick with POs, Chiefs and junior officers." He scrunched his face up in thought, except Andreus he thought, "Ok, I've got a good one. I once wrote a ten thousand word essay on the systems framework for waste reclamation units, I've been reprimanded for writing pithy and scathing reviews of the A79 style sonic driver, and with the right amount of number crunching and tests I might have come up with a way for us to target, damage, and possibly destroy a cloaked ship using our new deflector dish and a transporter beam." K'os couldn't hide the dimpled smile that forced it's way on to his face as he watched Grayson's reaction.

Again, his gut took over, all be it with a slightly puzzled face. "The last one, the thing has just been installed and still integrating into our systems fully. That and news that big wouldn't stay hidden for too long, especially not to your new acting Chief Engineer, would it?," a devilish grin took over Grayson.

Which found K'os mimicking the grin in return, while his cheeks turned slightly pink at holding in a laugh. K'os reached out and briefly squeezed Grayson's arm affectionately as if they were old friends, "Grayson, as much as I dislike the A79 do I look like I've ever been reprimanded for anything? Except maybe by my father. But yes, a project that size wouldn't stay hidden for long, so--" The server arrived to put fresh drinks on the table and K'os waited for them to finish before continuing. "Just hear me out for a moment. It's just a theory that hasn't been run through simulations, so keep that in mind. I've met with CPO Tyrion Faye and with a little digging he managed to send me all the sensor data he could on the scans of the types of Klingon vessels we'll be encountering. As you already know, Klingon cloaking devices give off various emissions, different neutrinos, protons, tachyons, or...antiproton, okay?. So in the past we've been successful in tracking cloaked vessels by scanning for these emissions, but what if we were to use those emissions as a weapon against the cloaked vessel?" K'os quirked an eyebrow, "Let's say, by tracking and locating a cloaked ship, and bombarding it with the right amount of protons in the right spot to interact with the sizeable anti-protons the device emits? I have the data, I just need to crunch the numbers."

The hybrid pulled a small PADD out of his back pocket and slid it towards Grayson. It was as far as K'os had got during his shift, but really, that was as far as he could take it too. His job was to come up with ideas, present them, then implement them only when directed to. At the very least, it would give Grayson and the Command staff something to use in their back pocket if they needed it.

Grayson began a glance over, the theory was fine, but there were a few problems he could see, "I like this, it is bold, very well thought out. I wish all the Engineering department were like this." The tone of his voice would indicate a, however, coming in and it was a big however.

"There are some problems I can see though. Maybe things I can point out? Things to think about, run some simulations and come back to me?" He wanted to tread carefully here and not squash the ideas or inspiration. "The main problem is, a similar plan has been tried, so the Klingons will have expected it in the past and adapted it ever since. As much as we can joke about having better ships, from what I know, their Engineers are just as good. Look through some of the classic Engineering Logs, look for the Excelsior, the time it teamed up with the Enterprise-A and the work the great Spock did. It is very, very similar.

"I do like the idea of looking for something though, keep in mind the ships we will be up against will be new...we will need to tune the sensors to look for things out of the ordinary. I have a feeling the normal sign posts of a cloaked ship will be nigh on impossible to fine. That doesn't mean though that there won't be something.

"With that though, we can be more devious. Their shields are down, why not just use the transporters and beam a weapon over? I don't think that has ever been used with the Klingons before though." Grayson finally stopped for a breath and began to plot out and plan his next words. "Don't be disheartened though, I am very impressed with this. Keep digging, keep researching and keep bringing me ideas. With a passion like this, you are going to crack something huge one day, my job is to help you refine your thinking a little and get you there a little sooner." Grayson gave a large encouraging smile. He meant every word he said.

K'os patted Grayson's arm again. "Listen, provide constructive feedback, and encourage further development." K'os smiled, "Like right out of a textbook from my leadership course. You're very good at this, Mr. Jones." He took back the PADD and jotted a couple notes down, though they were shapes not words, which would have seemed odd for anyone other than K'os. "You haven't worked with me long enough to know -- Lieutenant Kita certainly knows -- I will be bringing you more ideas. Lots of them. Some more ambitious than others, and I require honest and direct feedback on which projects to continue developing and which to throw away." K'os reached up and tapped at the side of his head. "This never stops thinking."

Appreciating the touch, putting his nerves at ease, Grayson gave a small, internal, sigh of relief that he hadn't messed things up. If anything, it was a small step on the way to the confidence boost he needed in running a department. "Please, do. I will be disappointed if you don't. Be expected though, to be dragged into some ideas of my own. Nothing I am ready to talk about yet...but in time I shall."

K'os flopped dramatically on to the table, careful not to knock over his drink. The fact that it was very Ellsworth-like, was not lost on the half-Vulcan. He buried his head into his arms with a groan, that quickly became a muffled laugh before he turned his head and looked over at Grayson with a mirthful expression. "You can't just say," K'os lowered his voice in a mock impression of the man when he quoted, "'nothing I am ready to talk about yet.'" K'os laughed, "And then you just drop it?. You can't leave an engineer with a cliffhanger like that." K'os sat up again and chuckled.

"You'll come to learn, the best engineers keep their best plans very close to their chest, and they stay there until the last possible second. That way we can pull them out in a show of brilliance and keep up the tradition of being miracle workers."

"Ah yes, the miracle workings of a brilliant young Officer." He said teasingly. His smile was still playful, and he poked Grayson gently in the ribs, "And who makes all those miracles happen, eh? Crewman and Petty Officers." His smile pulled tight into a grin again. "But Okay," K'os took a sip of his drink, "I'll let you have this secret." He pointed a finger with the same hand that held his drink and he wiggled it at Grayson, "And when the time comes, Mr. Jones, for you to pull that idea out of your tight pants pocket I'll still be right there to help you implement it." His grin folded back into a boyish smile.

"Why Mr Beaumont, should I not know better, I'd think you were trying to flirt with me, get in my good books to reveal the plan early," Grayson teased back just as much, "Should the time come your skills are needed, you'll be called upon. But until then, as you say, my plans shall remain in my tight pants pocket."

"Well I'm glad that's settled, then." K'os smirked then finished his drink, he was feeling the warm buzz from the sugar the drink contained - an annoying trait he'd inherited from his mother, but the alcohol was doing very little against his Vulcanoid resistance. As if just clueing in to the first part of what Grayson had said, he returned his eyes to the other man's face. "Flirting? Is that what I'm doing?" K'os quirked his head as if in thought, "Huh. Well that explains a lot of awkward conversations I end up having."

K'os wanted to order another drink, but Grayson was still his superior officer even if they were off duty, so he deferred that decision to him. He shifted in his chair again. He didn't have a concept of a personal space and shifting to face Grayson better brought him even closer. He craved eye contact when he spoke to people -- indeed it was almost a necessity for K'os and the new position allowed him to gaze into the man's stunningly teal coloured eyes. He leaned in a little more and in a quiet conspiratorial tone he asked, "Why, is it working?"

"Let's just say if it wasn't for this whole, kinda being your superior officer thing, it would be. I'd be saying let's skip the next drink and head somewhere," Grayson replied, feeling the warmth from his own drink race around his body lowering his already pretty low inhibitions. "But as it stands, another drink it will have to be. We can't get into trouble so soon."

"No, not so soon." K'os agreed, with a grin.

OFF

PO3 K'os Beaumont
Engineer's Mate
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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