Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount. No infringement intended.

Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom all due thanks!

Silliness Warning! This story was not written in a serious vein, nor should it be read in one. Please bear that in mind if you decide to read on!

The OC Bernhard Muller is borrowed from Volley, with her permission - thank you for the loan!

Malcolm sighed.

It had been a very long day. The targeting sensors on the starboard phase cannon had suddenly seemed to have developed a life of their own – and a very bloody-minded life it was too. As fast as he fixed one of them another went haywire. Even when he'd finally swallowed his pride and got Bernhard Müller in to help him, the two of them working in unison couldn't track down the gremlin and murder it.

This was not a Good Thing. OK, so the day had been quiet so far. In fact, they'd had a pretty quiet week. But that wasn't to say that at any minute now something large and grumpy wouldn't materialise out of the nearest cloud of stellar material and refuse to take 'go away please' for an answer.

And that would not be the time to tell Captain Archer that he couldn't be absolutely sure of hitting the aforementioned large and grumpy visitor with his starboard cannon. Besides, these problems were well-known to be catching.

What if the port cannon developed one too?

So. Talking of gremlins... It appeared that it was unfortunately time for him to call Engineering and speak to the Chief Gremlin in person.

"What can I do for ya, Malcolm?"

Did the man just have to sound so bloody breezy? "I've got a problem."

"'Could'a told you that. You gotta lighten up."

"If you could spare me the humour for once, Commandah. Perhaps I should have said the starboard cannon has a problem."

"Lemme guess. The expert can't fix it."

Was it that far beyond protocol to wish he could try just a small test blast on a Chief Engineer's arse? "The 'expert' has been trying all day to 'fix it.' Unfortunately, it appears to have reached the point where the problem is beyond my limited expertise."

"So now you're callin' in the real expert?"

"Actually it's more a case of desperate situations calling for desperate remedies, Commander. Or more possibly 'Send in the clowns'," he added under his breath.

The chuckle carried clearly over the comm. "'Be there in a minute. If there'll still be anythin' left worth salvagin' in a minute, that is."

Reed closed the link. "Someday, that man is going to choke to death on his own wit. That's if I don't strangle him first."

"But not before he fixes the cannon," stipulated Müller, looking out from where he was still half-buried in the console.

"No." The captain would certainly not approve of that series of events. He would ask awkward questions about why they hadn't organised things in a more orderly fashion, especially if something large and grumpy actually did turn up and the port cannon decided not to play either. "So I'll strangle him afterwards."

"Run a few tests first, Lieutenant," advised his second, who was known to be of a cautious disposition.

"I don't need any tests. I know how to strangle him. God knows I've spent enough time planning it."

"I meant tests on the cannon," said Bernhard patiently. Across the room, Crewman Danaher caught his gaze briefly and rolled her eyes heavenwards.

"Oh. On the cannon." Their superior's yearning expression faded, but brightened again. "The captain might agree to find an asteroid field so I could try one or two shots. Then I could murder him."

"Perhaps you could find some reason for the Commander to be on the one you're aiming at first."

"Oh, definitely. What a splendid idea: killing two birds with one stone. Combining business and pleasure." He rubbed his hands gleefully. "Though come to think of it, it'd be more like pleasure and even more pleasure."

"Ja." This amendment to the plan evidently satisfied Bernhard, who returned to industriously re-routing power through yet another set of relays. After a moment, however, he poked his head out again, looking dubious. "Better make sure that Lieutenant Hess would be able to help us instead, though. In case something else went wrong afterward."

"I think it'd be worth taking the chance." He instigated a diagnostic for what felt like the fortieth time, and hissed an imprecation as a series of warning lights lit the console like a Christmas tree.

"I take it that means we're not taking the chance on Anna after all." There was a bang as all the relays failed. "Nein. I don't recommend it. Better leave the Commander alive a little longer."

"You guys tryin' to blow up the ship?" asked an indignant voice behind them. "That's delicate stuff you're playin' with in there!"

Reed struck his forehead theatrically with his open palm. "I just knew there was some reason why I shouldn't be hitting it with a mallet." He glared at the ship's very own pet gremlin. "Though of course if we'd been allowed to have that teeny bit of extra power I asked for, I'm sure none of these problems would be happening in the first place."

"Loo-tenant, if you had your way this ship'd be a great big weapons system with an itsy-bitsy warp drive attached to it!"

"So what's wrong with that? We might not get anywhere very fast, but I'd bloody well make sure anyone we did bump into spoke to us politely."

Ensign Müller sighed. The first time he had been privileged to witness one of these exchanges he had almost expected fisticuffs to ensue at any minute. By this time, it had reached the point where he could silently rehearse the conversation with an expectation of at least eighty percent accuracy. That said, the first time these grievances had been aired there had been some animosity behind them; over the many occasions since, it had dwindled into the sort of acrimonious exchange that might be heard between an old married couple arguing over whose turn it was to do the washing-up.

"Yeah. I can see the sense in that. We could just dawdle around the solar system at impulse with passin' traffic givin' us a real wide berth. Some explorers we'd be then!"

"Do you invariably take refuge in absurd exaggerations, Commandah?" The Lieutenant crossly ran another diagnostic test and breathed fury when even more warning lights lit up.

Behind him, Trip smirked. "Yep. Looks like you really do need someone who knows what he's doin'." He dropped to his knees and crawled in alongside Müller.

"That's an excellent idea. Do you know anyone we could call on?"

"I know one we can't."

Malcolm glanced down at the portion of the chief engineer's anatomy now placed in an extremely vulnerable position and wished momentarily for a handy cattle-prod. However, given that he was unfortunately dependent on Trip's expertise to get his targeting scanners back online, such wishes were best kept in the realms of fantasy. At least for the present. Though in actual fact he didn't even possess a cattle prod, which made employing one a bit difficult. He wondered how feasible it would be to requisition one so that it could be waiting for him next time they called in at Jupiter Station for an upgrade. Or if not, perhaps he could download the schematics and make one for himself? Oh, the possibilities...

"It's probably something electrical, at a guess," he said sarcastically. "If you're not sure where to start."

"Who the hell changed the polarity of this interface couplin'?" cried an indignant voice a moment later. "If I hadn't checked it first it could'a fried me!"

"Suggestion, Commander. Next time, don't bother checking it first." He bent and glared into the confined space. "I changed the polarity. It was a perfectly sensible precaution given the way I had to reroute the relays after someone around here wouldn't give me the extra power I needed to run it the way I designed it to work in the first place."

"Well, God save me from amateurs!" For a man who liked to describe himself as a perfect Southern gentleman, Trip certainly knew a surprising amount of profanity, which he proceeded to demonstrate, much to Bernhard's admiration. "Unless you actually want to blow up the ship, Loo-tenant, will you quit tryin' to pretend you're intelligent?"

Reed closed his eyes and mentally adjusted his cattle-prod requisition from 'standard' to 'deluxe,' with 'express delivery' thrown in. "I shall endeavour to match my intelligence to yours, Commander," he replied bitingly. "Even if it does take a substantial amount of lowering to reach that level."

"Aw, go tell the Klingons!" Trip spared the energy to wave a very rude gesture from under the panel before dragging his toolbox into convenient range and delving into it, muttering intermittently. "Now, watch what I'm doin' here, Bernhard," he said presently, rather more loudly than was strictly necessary given that the Bavarian was less than half a meter away from him. "It needs someone around here to understand how these things actually do work."

"I hope you find that someone then. And they work better than some bloody engineering officers do," said Malcolm, the latter part ostensibly to himself.

"I heard that."

"Oh, so you're not deaf, just dumb."

"'Dumb' is the description for whichever guy wired this up to blow the cannon sensors to smithereens."

"No, the word you're thinking of is 'desperate.' When I'm starved of the power I need to do the job properly, then I have to improvise."

"If this is the best shot at 'improvisin' ' you can come up with, next time the Suliban come callin' we'll be reduced to throwin' sticks at them!"

"We won't bloody need to throw anything at them. With all the power being routed through your bloody engines, we can just run away. They won't stand a cat's chance in hell of catching us."

"Will you just quit arguin'?" cried Trip in exasperation. "Which of us is the goddamn engineer round here, anyway?"

"Neither of us, by the look of it!"

There was a pause while Tucker digested the unparalleled impertinence of this riposte and tried to compose a crushing enough comeback while his fingers were busy and deft deep in the console's innards. Nevertheless, those skilled fingers composed a quite unanswerable one for him: one by one all the warning lights on the console went out. "Ah-hah!" A loud and vindicated snort indicated that he was watching the relay lights settle into a placid and orderly pattern as opposed to the frantic and disordered blinking that had greeted him when he went in. "Now whoever put these to run in that kinda sequence..."

"...ran every possible simulation to test it!"

"Yeah, that's why the damned console damn near blew up!"

"And if you'd just made a few minor bloody modifications, which, as I recall, I even suggested to you at the time, and given me the extra power in the first place...!"

"Oh, why don't ya just wire the goddamn armory straight into the reactor, and have done with it!"

"Gentlemen, is there a problem?" Captain Archer stood in the doorway, an expression of polite enquiry on his face.

Lieutenant Reed spun around, trying to wipe the consternation off his face. "Problem, sir? Certainly not. Commander Tucker and I were just ..."

"... Gettin' an upgrade the lieutenant installed workin' to full capacity, Cap'n." Trip and Bernhard emerged hurriedly from under the console. "I was just showin' Ensign Müller here what a brilliant job Malcolm'd done with the wirin'."

Archer nodded. "That's pretty well what I thought. It's amazing what a sense of confidence I get from knowing you two have so much confidence in each other." And he turned around and walked out again.

There was a momentary silence.

"I heard Chef was making pecan pie for dessert this evening," offered Malcolm.

"Yeah. And the movie's goin' to have lots of explosions." Trip looked up, wiped his grimy forehead and grinned as he got to his feet and helped Bernhard to his. "Care to come along and watch it?"

"Are you by any chance asking me on a date, Commandah?"

"Hell, no. If I was that desperate I'd ask Porthos."

"He'd probably prefer the company of a cube of Cheddar. And the conversation he'd get from it would be more intellectual."

"Commander, Lieutenant, I ... if you do not stop arguing I shall report you to Sub-Commander T'Pol and Ensign Sato." Müller stood up straight and folded his arms sternly.

There was another moment's silence. The two officers looked back at him incredulously.

"Jeez, who rattled his cage?" Trip asked Malcolm, who shook his head in wonderment.

"And you think Anna's bad. Look what I have to put up with. Insubordination at every turn."

"God damn. Look, if it gets too much I can always find a place for ya in Engineerin'..."

"Come and tell me about it over dinner. If we don't hurry up all the pecan pie will have gone."

"No, don't even think about it."

"And that movie you mentioned...?"

"Explosions. More'n you could imagine." Trip spread his arms wide to give an idea of the magnitude.

Malcolm frowned. He could imagine quite a few, if he put his mind to it. "And a plot?" he asked hopefully.

"Not even a hint of a one."

"Now you're talking my language, Commandah."

And, after a brief hiatus caused by their being excessively polite over who should precede whom out of the Armoury door, they wandered off together.

The End.

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