A ship reborn

Posted on Thu Oct 9th, 2025 @ 4:14pm by Captain James Stewart & Lieutenant Callisi Veera

767 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Milk Run
Location: Captain's R & R Room

On:

=Captains Ready room-USS Churchill=

After the shambles that had been the Churchill's shakedown cruise, James sat behind his desk in his ready room, He started to look over all the reports of how bad the work had been done. He was to send the report to Admiral Jensen, he needed an update on the ship’s operational capacity before he sent in the report. He knew the Admiral had not been a happy camper when the Churchill had limped back to port.. He tapped the Com channel and said =/\= Lieutenant Veera, please report to my ready room=/\=

Callisi looked to the ceiling at the request, a holdover from previous days that never seemed to go away. =/\= I'm on my way. =/\= she replied, tapping the comm badge on her chest as she did so. "Jenson," she turned to look at one of the others in the operations department.

"Sir," he responded sharply. Crisp and professional, as she trained.

"You have the room. The captain has requested me. She handed the room over as she departed, barely present for the reply of "Aye, sir, I have the room." from her second in command, in essence. Callisi navigated the hallways with a PaDD in hand, no doubt the Captain wanted to know the latest progress report in tracking down all the errors and deficiencies from launch. To her credit, they had tracked down most. To her shame, that was not "ALL"...

She arrived at the Ready Room and came to attention even as she pressed the chime to announce her arrival.

James leaned back in his chair and said, "Come" as he knew that those crewmembers who had died due to the result of the faults lay at his door as Captain. His Wife was in talks with the Engineering Corps about how this Mistake happened in the first place, He hoped that this would never happen again.

The door swished and Callisi stepped in. In the presence of the Captain she held herself to a higher standard. Measured steps, crisp motions, nothing left to waste on approach. She walked to the desk and stopped in line with the seats, but didn't take one. No offer, no assumption.

"Reporting as requested sir. You asked for me?"

"Yes, I did, Lieutenant," replied James, looking at his Chief Operations Officer, " I noticed that you have not taken any R & R since we arrived back," He knew that burnout was a bad thing since he had taken five years to get over his own burnout before taking command of the Churchill. He finished "and I wanted to know about the faults on the ship."

"R&R stands for rest, sir. No time to rest when there's work to be done, and I can relax when the mission is over." if she was working herself too hard, it didn't show in her eyes...

Eye.

"Of the multitude of errors and failures present in the system at launch, we have brought the number down from more than three hundred to nineteen. Of those, twelve can be solved within six hours. The remainder can be solved during a full reboot of the system," she stated, and produced the PaDD, which held a schedule of the events in question. "Six hours to resolve twelve of the nineteen, the system reboot will take three hours, and then clean-up maintenance will take roughly half an hour. Hour tops. The final estimate is that one hundred percent failure-free is ten hours."

"Once I give the all-clear, we will present our final report to you. Once you give the all-clear, we can rest."

"I see," replied James, looking back at the Chief Operations officer. He continued, " You know the Admiral wants a copy of the report before we get the green light," he finished, "after what we've just been through, she wants everything double checked," as he leaned back in his seat.

"Understandable," she agreed with a nod. In that case, once it meets my standard, the report will be in your hands. From there, when you say it's ready, the Admiral can have it from your hands." She declared, a statement of the order of operations—from her, to him, to them.

"Very well, Lieutenant dismissed," replied James. He knew that now the ship was being seen to and hoped that a new CEO would be in place soon.

 

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