Alone once more, K’lev returned to his desk and his coffee, picking up with where he’d left off in the reports.  However, he stopped after a few minutes, tapping his combadge again.  “K’lev to sh’Livo.  When you have a moment, Tyrisa, please meet me in the ready room.”

As all was quiet on the patrol, the young Andorian tactical officer soon stood before her captain in the ready room.  “What is it?” she asked, a tinge of apprehension in her voice.

K’lev motioned for her to be seated.  “You’re not in trouble!  Quite the opposite, actually; we could find ourselves in a fight at any time, so I wanted to hear from you what you might need to make sure we’re ready.”

The ensign sat, visibly relaxing.  “Is it too late to ask for extra torpedo launchers and phaser arrays?” she asked, cracking a small smile.

K’lev chuckled.  “Probably.  But who knows, maybe if we ask really nicely, the Tholians and Sheliac will stop fighting for a bit so we can go get a refit?”

sh’Livo grinned at that, glad that she hadn’t been chewed out for attempting the mild joke, though the smile did fade as she and K’lev returned to the business at hand.  “In all honesty, we’re in pretty good shape.  My only complaint is that the targeting scanners sometimes take a moment to lock on, so a small enough ship moving fast enough is something we’ll have trouble hitting should we need to.”

“Do you think it’s a configuration issue, or a hardware issue?”  K’lev asked.  “And how long has this been happening?”

sh’Livo shrugged.  “Just been seeing it in tests the last couple of days.  I think it’s hardware, but I’m not sure; controls seem to be fine, though.”  She was starting to look nervous again.  “I thought it was just in my head at first, which is why I didn’t say anything…”

K’lev nodded.  “It’s understandable; this mess we’re in’s a stressful thing.  But let’s be safe, just in case; see if Pelix can have someone check the hardware, both in your console and in the targeting array, and let me know what he finds; my guess is, it’s a data conduit or transceiver assembly that’s starting to fail, but hasn’t given out fully just yet, but he’ll be able to do the detailed inspection.  Okay?”

She nodded, nerves easing now that she could tell she wasn’t in trouble.  “Okay,” she said.  “Other than that, I think tactical’s all good to go, even if we’re still short a half-dozen torpedoes.”

“Excellent!” K’lev said with a smile.  “That was all; I’ll keep an eye out for your update.”

With that, sh’Livo left the ready room, and K’lev returned to his reports once more.  Over the next day, updates came back.  The probe took around 15 hours to build and test, but it was ready; Pelix had even installed an accelerometer, to (hopefully) allow Culver City to track the speed of whichever Tholian ship ended up carrying the probe in addition to its course.  In the meantime, sh’Livo confirmed that the issue was a failing ODN relay in the targeting array, which was hiding a loose power coupling; an easy fix, the ship’s targeting scanners were back up to snuff within an hour of the problem being identified.  Culver City continued her patrol, more ready now if things should happen, and possibly even to go on the intellectual offensive.