Live Bait "
By: Ensign Philips, Operations Officer, [NPC]
Craig Witmore, Engineer, [RNPC]

Stardate: 58204.21 0900

Ensign Philips had hardly been in the operations office for more than an hours when he started getting complaints about the environmental controls in the marine section. He must have taken 10 complaints already. Philips was certain that Whitmore was behind it. He started to open up a repair request to engineering but then thought about how the Marine CO had treated the medical staff. "It could be operations next time," thought. Philips decided to add the repair request to his list of things to do later, much later. "The marine should have at least apologized," thought Philips.

Philips pulled up the list of new crew members. He was surprised to see a Ferengi on the list. He pulled up his list of replicator patterns. Philips thought it was revolting. There were things like tube grubs, snail juice, millipede juice, grilled snail and a revolting drink called Slugo-cola. Philips began programming the ferengi food into the ship's main replicator system when he remembered the conversation at the poker party about reprogramming the marine replicators. "...you are afraid to take risks.." The comment echoed in his mind.

Philips pulled up the main replicator system and isolated only those replicators in marine assigned quarters. He carefully backed up all of their programming and placed it in protected memory. Then he carefully re-initialized their database and uploaded only the Ferengi patterns he had just done for the new crew member. Finally he locked out new changes to their replicators so that they could not add new patterns themselves. As we was finishing Craig Whitmore walked in. "Hi Craig," said Philips quickly like a kid caught with his hand in the cooking jar. "I have been busy taking complaints from our marine crew members. It seems they had a chilly night. I don;t suppose you could check on that for them," said Philips, a sly smile crossing his face.

Craig looked at his padd his face did not give anything away. "Geez, I don't know, Chief Silvio has given me a pretty long list this morning. Guess I could look at it once I'm finished but I ain't promissing anything." Inwardly Craig chuckled, phase 1 completed, now phase 2.

"You better ask the supply master to deliver some extra blankets then."

"Yeah, I will get right on that," replied Philips just at the comm system chirped.

"Private Solas to operation."

"Operations here. How can I help you," said Philips.

"We are having problems with our replicators. Every time we order something all we get are a plate full of worms. WORMS! Yuk."

" I am sorry, you are having problems. I will open a repair request and get someone down there too look at them as soon as possible.

"Thank you!."

"Man those marines sure do know how to whine," said Philips. "Do you suppose you could look into that as well?"

" Humpf, you have been programming the replicators you sure you did not do anything wrong," Craig asked with an innocent look on his face. He sighed, " Boy and I thought these marines were tough ones. I mean they do know how to survive in harsh environments but eating worms is out of the question? What a babies, they probably are afraid that it might upset their delicate stomachs."

"Besides they can always use the worms to fishing on the holodecks." He laughed picturing the overflow of worms in the replicator.

Craig slung his toolkit over his shoulder. "Anyway Philips I will see what I can do."

"See ya later Craig." Ensign Philips smiled. It was fun to take risks.