It was 0100 hours on Leviathan, most of the senior staff had retired to their quarters, and the ship was on a skeleton crew. This left very few crewman to walk the corridors of deck 16. If any did traverse that part of the ship, they would observe that the Weapons and Research lab on that deck was locked. Behind the sealed door was the ship’s Chief Engineer. 0100 hours was the perfect time for Hampton to get some real work done.

His heavy degree of mistrust for the rest of the crew, particularly those from the RTF division, had led to his current predicament. Hampton understood that on their own, the starfleet side of the crew was overwhelming outmatched by their counterparts. Increasingly, as Hampton read through the ships crew manifest, he noted the most critical positions were not in the hands of his captain, who, compared to the rest of his colleagues, he had placed a reasonable amount of trust in. Instead, the resident borg had control of the ship when dealing with ARU activities, which would be most of the meetings. The XO trill, who was second in command, had been involved with the ARU before this posting. The Betazoid Counselor who could read minds was a member of the RTF who also happened to command a weapon that had lethal capabilities. The Doctor, Kastil was some sort of monster on her own, and Hampton had no idea what to expect from her, he couldn’t be sure she wasn’t a spy either. And most recently he had learned the Captain had his own yeomen. A position which he believed was nothing more than a ruse for a shadow agent to monitor the captain and keep him in line, although he could not prove it.

Indeed, this ship was crawling with potential enemies, and not being a member of security, Hampton felt vulnerable. However, he did have one edge over all of them, his mind and his ability to solve problems. The Counselor had told him to make a weapon to disable the KAI-9 uni, and he would, along with a weapon to neutralize most of his potential opponents. The robot dog’s weakness was easy enough, Hampton had already designed the blue prints to a small emp grenade, that would not effect organic material, but would overloard the unit’s internal data core, and cause the unit’s programming to be erased, thus rendering the bot a hollow robotic shell. He smiled at himself as he began assembling the parts and building the device. He picked up his padd and put the KAI-9 unit’s name on a new list under the file name BABEL PROJECT. Hampton hummed as he worked, building weapons was his passion, and despite the late hours of the morning, he could not help but have a juvenile energy and excitement build inside him as he worked. “Tick tock tick tock.” He hummed through a grin. “Your mechanized life is on the clock.” He hoped he would never have to use the grenade, but, he wanted to badly.

Lt. William Hampton- CE