Posted by Lieutenant William Hampton (Chief Engineering Officer) in Side Sim- Babel Project- Weapons/ Research Lab

Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Side Sim- Babel Project- Weapons/ Research Lab

Posted by Lieutenant William Hampton (Chief Engineering Officer) in Side Sim- Babel Project- Weapons/ Research Lab
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

OOC: Some really great character-building going on here. Hampton is certainly intriguing!

IC: Across the corridor, in the machine shop, shipyard engineers Copper and Clark were replicating another batch of self-sealing stem bolts, ready for tomorrow’s repairs.

“Man, we sure as hell drew the short straw, being left onboard this ship,” Copper moaned, as he held a stem bolt up to the overhead light and inspected it for imperfections.

Across from him, punching commands into the replicator itself, Clark laughed. “Quit complaining, will you? For the first time in our lives, we might actually get to see some proper action, instead of being locked away on the base the whole time.”

“Action?” Copper spat back, incredulously. “Remember the time that thing they had captive at the base escaped and melted five engineers into the deck before they could catch it again? Remember Windows’s face? How it was six days before someone could prise his eyeball out of the grating and he was just there, watching us, the whole time? If that’s your idea of action then I’d rather be without it, thanks.”

Clark shook his head, then removed another bolt from the replicator and tossed it at Copper, missing the other’s left ear by a fraction of an inch.

“Hey! Careful with those things!”

But Clark had already turned away from his colleague, his gaze directed out of the machine shop and across the passageway onto a different door, underneath which a thin sliver of light was breaking out into the gloom.

“He in there, still?”

Copper shrugged and kept his own attention firmly on the metal bolt between his fingers.

But Clark’s curiosity had not yet been sated and his questioning of the other continued. “What do you make of him? Lt Hampton, I mean?”

With a clatter, the stem-bolt hit the deck at Copper’s feet. Almost instantaneously, the man was up and over to the open door of the machine shop, where he closed and then sealed it before turning back to Clark and lowering his own voice to barely a whisper.
“I’ve heard that he’s making shock collars in there. For the crew to wear. Heard that’s how he keeps them all in line. You don’t move quickly or efficiently enough, then…zaaap!”

Clark laughed and once more studied their now closed door, as if his eyes could penetrate the metal and gaze still into the corridor beyond. “That’s ridiculous, Copper!”

The two men lapsed into silence, the only evidence of their continuing presence the clank of stem bolts into the replicator and then, via Copper, into their packing cases. Until after five minutes had passed, Clark could no longer contain his thoughts within his own head and finished his sentence aloud. “Isn’t it?”

• NEs Copper and Clark

It would be several late nights later before Hampton could find time to get back to his lab, which he had made his own essentially. His frustration at his present situation continuing to build. It had been almost two weeks since he had boarded, and the isolation that he had grown accustomed to had followed him to Leviathan. The kindred spirits he had hoped to meet were nowhere to be found. Instead, he was surrounded by officers with secrets, and who he could not trust. If he actually stopped and thought about the loneliness he felt, it might actually make him sad. Nonetheless, he had a job to do.

The EMP device had worked perfectly in testing, so he moved on to the rest of the RTF senior staff. His first focus was on the counselor, not for any particular reason, but the gadget he had for her was simple and he did not expect it would take him long to assemble. Even though Hampton was not exactly a medical physician, he knew the basic effects of the Alpha wave inducer had on telepaths, too much alpha wave could be harmful. He smiled as he drew the specs on his lab table. The weapon he had for her was simply an alpha wave amplifier. The only reason he had to build a device and not just simply keep one on him at all times was because he wanted this device to have ranged capabilities. He worked for several hours, fetching the tools and parts needed. Finally, around 0300 hours, he sat back onto a lab seat, holding his newly crafted weapon. It was shaped like a small rectangle that had a small opening in the front to emit the alpha waves. It’s range was roughly fifty yards. And it was no bigger than a hand phaser. “All your training, all your abilities, and all your strength’s.” Hampton grinned, marveling at his creation, “will do you no good when your brain feels like it is about ooze out of you ears.” Perhaps it was the late night, and Hampton felt drowsy, or maybe it was his own wonder at his creation, that sparked the small chuckle from the chief, a chuckle, than in a few moments turned into a cackle that only be described as malevolent. It echoed in the empty lab. As quickly as it started, it stopped. Hampton regained his composure. He silently stood up, placing the device in a small safe he had installed behind one of the lab’s wall panels, and left the lab. Just in time to grab two and a half hours of sleep, but it was worth it. As he walked to his quarters he held up his padd, and placed the Counselor’s name on it under the KAI-9 unit. ‘two down,’ he thought, ‘ten to go.’ The ship was crawling with monsters, secret agents, wannabe bad asses, and numerous people with their own agendas, and they had all one thing in common. Hampton simply smiled. If the time came where he had to face them, they would ALL, every last one of them, be under his heel.

Lt. William Hampton- CE

The chief engineer may actually be the most powerful member of the crew, Hampton considered as he worked. He was on to target three, the captain of the RTF, Erve Manhattan, his plan for the Captain had required more than a few evenings, but rather a week of programming and supplanting ship sub-routine programs. Erve was just a human, so a single phaser shot could put him down just as well as the next man. The problem, Hampton had surmised, was not Manhattan himself. It was his additional weaponry that the man possessed. His private little office arsenal. It had taken Hampton two nights just find the exact area of the armory. And another four to implement his plan. It was similar to the method of dealing with KAI-9 unit. Hampton had simply modified the emp grenade he had used to a device which could be remotely detonated and he had added a small cloaking gadget that made the explosive reflective of any surface it was on. The seventh night had been the longest, as Hampton transported the device to the office without having internal sensors pick up the activity. He decided to put it in between the bulkheads, that way it could never be visually spotted. If the captain became a problem, Hampton could simply activate the device, fry his gadgets, and leave Manhattan’s armory just as equal as every other Starfleet officer’s. This was not a sure fire way to put the man down, but in this case, all Hampton could do was to level the playing field. His trap was designed to do just that. Picking up his padd, he put Manhattan’s name on the list. A week well spent, he grinned. Off to get his regular three and a half hour sleep.

Lt. William Hampton- CE