Diitov was a pleasant location mostly because it was quiet and Michelle had the whole planet pretty much to herself. She had decided to come up to the surface for a bit. She was there in the sand just thinking life had not gone how she had expected, but that seemed to be normal for anyone she knew. She began to think back to when she and Michael were friends and the good times they had shared, as she thought about it a smile started to form. She immediately pushed those thoughts out of her head and began to remember what he had done and there it returned the fire in her eyes. Michael was going to pay for what he did, but first, there were other plans that needed to be enacted. 

She had ordered for Ajis’s prize to be brought back to the base and to not be followed. She looked up to see the ship being towed into the atmosphere. She heard a voice come through on her earpiece. 

“Overlord this is Falcon we are on approach with the package you requested.”

An evil smile formed on her lips as she knew things were finally shaping up. It was time to do the much-needed refit for the weapon that would be causing many problems for the crew of the Tesla. She pressed a button on her wrist pad and the beach began to rumble as a hole opened up to reveal a landing pad. On the pad stood the eager Ajis waiting for his prize. She looked over at him and nodded.

Ajis had been in the bay finishing up the final touches to the deck plans for his ship when he got the notification that a vessel was entering the atmosphere. When he accessed the visual sensors, he saw what was coming through the clouds and a smile formed. Now he was on the landing pad, looking up at the relic and watched as it was brought closer to the landing pad. He felt someone was looking at him, so he moved his head till he saw her and simply nodded his head right back before looking back up at the old romulan bird of prey.

With the relic coming closer to the landing pad, he had instructed the recovery team to install some power packs so that the landing sensors would detect the pad and begin to deploy the landing legs. Ajis would then see that his instructions were followed as the relics landing gear deployed into position before being gently set down onto the landing pad. Ajis pressed the com button on his wrist, “You’re good!” And he watched his ship be released, prompting him to hit the button that would have the landing pad start descending into the bay. “All right. We’re going to have to replace the hull plating with the latest and standard of the 24th Century. Or we could reinforce the hull plating with good ol’ hull polarization systems in case the shields were ever to fail. Then…” Ajis began to explain the next few steps, replacing the power grid, relays, removing equipment, etc.

With all the help from Angel, the work was going a lot faster than any shipyard that Ajis could think of. What could have taken well over a month to do, was taking about a week since Angel didn’t have to sleep and Ajis contributed to that by sleeping a minimum of four hours a day. He knew how important his ship was going to be for his new boss and for the things that they were most definitely going to end up pulling off, so he wanted to waste no time screwing around when he could be getting his ship reborn. Plus, he’s read about how the Humans used to take old non automobiles and enjoyed putting all the time, sweat and blood into restoring those automobiles. This was the same feeling for him, restoring an old vessel from the 2260s. He knew two others of this type survived up until the 2380s but this was definitely not one of them.

So the week went by and Ajis was just applying the final touches while Angel was calibrating and adjusting various systems for maximum efficiency. “All right then, are we good at bringing the singularity core online?”

Michelle was fuming she had just found out that Michael and the crew of the Tesla was transferred to a bigger ship and one that was considered the best of the best, the new Vesta class. She had to accelerate the time table and began following the ship. She quickly made her way from her office to the area where Ajis had been working to bring his ship back to life from the dead.

The halls bathed in the same light was somewhat darker, but that could just be because of her mood. She stormed into the bay and looked for Ajis, after not finding him she yelled. “Ajis stop tinkering with your ship and come here immediately.” 

The mood of Oliver was obviously known by the others in the bay, because of the sudden quiet and look of dread on their face.

Ajis blinked when he heard her voice through the intercom and then saw the look on Angel’s face, or in this case, on several of them. “Wonder what got on her bad side.” He stepped away from the main terminal in engineering and headed on down for the ramp. “Whatever it is, I trust that the rest of you can get her systems running.”

She waited tapping her foot impatiently as he quickly made his way to her side. 

Ajis came down from the ramp, where he could see her standing there, tapping her foot away. “Tap any harder and there will be a dent in the floor.” He joked, hoping to ease the tension.

She glared at him for the remark, it was not a good time to be joking around with her “I bet you think your funny Ajis…well it’s not the proper time. I just discovered that Michael and his crew were given command of a new ship, a Vesta class, USS Neptune. Do you still think your ship could keep up with a vessel like that? If not, we need a new plan and fast because I am tired of sitting around and waiting. It seems that every turn has just added more difficulty to this plan and now they have the most advanced ship in Starfleet.”

Ajis sighed, now understanding where her frustration was coming from. He stroked his chin as he went into thought. He then snapped his fingers, “Angel, be a dear and give me the latest diagnostic results on the Falcon. And give me a side by side comparison with this latest Vesta, if you don’t have it then give me any Vesta in your database.” Ajis asked for and waited for Angel to appear with the data.

While he waited, he looked at Oliver. “I do apologize for the unfortunate wait, but you knew that we had to do a complete overhaul if we wanted this ship to work. If you wanted to strike right away, we could have just bought a ship. Or stole one.” He confessed while still patiently waiting for Angel’s return. “But the Falcon should be ready to go soon. The singularity core should be online and all that’s left is making sure all systems were installed properly. But after spending time with your amazing AI here, I have zero doubts. The Falcon will be ready.”

Angel then appeared beside them and up came a holographic display showing a Vesta, whether it was the latest or not, and the Falcon. Ajis tapped his chin. “Hmmm. Speed shouldn’t be a problem, especially if we used both auxiliary generators to boost efficiency of the warp engines, which will let us catch up to the Neptune…that’s if they are at maximum warp. So unless they are answering some sort of crisis, I don’t think we will have a problem. But even with the best cloaking device in the galaxy, if we push our engines beyond their limit, the cloak may not be able to keep us concealed perfectly, something will escape the cloaking field.” Ajis tapped his chin some more. “I suppose we won’t be able to get a full structural analysis on the Neptune before we engage it. Such a process takes time, especially if we want to find any kind of weakness to the ship.”

Ajis clapped his hands together. “Honestly, it would fall right down to the basics. Take out the shields, main power and auxiliary power, and the Neptune will hardly be a match for the Falcon. But we need to knock all three out in one salvo. If any of those three are still functioning, the Falcon will have a hard time fighting a vessel like this. We would have to rely on the cloak, and that’s as long as they don’t figure out how to track us.” Ajis stared at the data a bit more before looking at Oliver. “Does this news make you feel better?”

Michelle didn’t look convinced “How would it make me feel better to know the Neptune could still discover us. We have to find out more information about the Neptune before we dare try to engage with the ship. I do not want the Neptune to survive this.” She looked at the diagrams “Angel contact Sparrow and have them follow the Neptune.” 

“Yes, Ma’am.” Angel replied, as she disappeared to complete the task given to her.

“Alright, Ajis let’s go look at the inside of your ship and determine the exact plans for its refit.” She said looking at her new compadre.

“Technically everything is done already. I pushed the limits of this base, probably hardly a push at all, to see how many worker like holograms I could get online and after that, ever since the ship was brought here, we spent best part of the week getting it ready. Just waiting on Angel to finish the latest diagnostics.” Speaking of the devil, Angel appeared and brought up a display for him. “Well look at that. The entire board is green. Falcon is ready to fly.”

Michelle looked at Ajis “I see you messed with Angel, which is prohibited by anyone other than me. I told you that you could use her, but not like that.” She said her voice as cold as it could have been. Ajis had been pushing it and he was starting to push a little more than she liked.  

“I don’t mind you using my stuff, but in this case I don’t appreciate you using Angel that way. We can drop the matter. If the Falcon is ready shall we go do some silent observation?”

Ajis raised his brows. “Oh no. Think you misunderstood. I used what workers and holograms you had to get this baby ready as quickly as possible. I mean, you already had all the equipment, plus the manpower. Really just came down to time. But yes, we can absolutely do some observation.” He smiled at the end and showed her the way inside up the ramp and all the way to the bridge.

TBC