Academy - Operations 101

Posted on Thu Dec 8th, 2022 @ 4:59pm by Lieutenant Myne Redal

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Deck 22 - Cargobay 4
Timeline: Prior to current mission
1038 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure

//ON//

Myne walked into the cargobay with her trusty custom PADD held in one hand and a joyful smile on her lips. Her class was already present and waiting for her, the cadets turned to face her as the doors slid shut behind her.

"Good news everybody! Today we are going to take a bit of a hands-on approach to our lesson. Reading and memorizing are all good, but terribly boring. And I'd rather you do the boring stuff on your time. On my time, we're going to have fun!"

She chuckled and looked around the cargobay. It was a mess, kind of a nightmare of organization really. And that was no accident, Myne had coopted a few of her ops crew to make this cargobay an operations officer's nightmare as best as they could. Lots of supplies were hidden, placed in the wrong boxes, mixed together, the logs were a jumbled, useless mess, and so on.

"Now, I told you from our very first lesson together that Operations is the best and toughest department on any Starfleet vessel that is smart enough to have such a department. Two pieces of wisdom I wish to give you from some of the notes of a few renowned operations officers in the fleet. One of them once said that Ops is a very different challenge from Tactical. While another, and my favorite quote honestly, said Ops is clearly the best, we never had to take a spa vacation like Engineering."

Myne let the chuckles of the cadets die down before continuing with her broad smile still on. "Both are very true, Ops is a different beast. As a ops officer you will need to be able to step in for science, engineering, tactical and even security. We are the jack of all trades of any ship and our work is really never done. For those of you who are Human, we are the red blood cells of the ship in short."

Motioning to the cargobay around them, Myne held her PADD to her chest and offered them the most innocent expression and smile she could muster. "That is why I want to give you all a taste of some of the mundane tasks the ops department is responsible for. Such as supply management, we are the quartermasters of the ship after all. So, the reason I asked you all to bring your PADDs with you today is that this cargobay is a complete, chaotic mess. And you are all tasked to work together to sort everything out."

She saw the cadets looking around as well, some with shocked expressions as they took in the absolute chaos of the cargobay around them. Some looked at Myne to check if she was serious or not, and she nodded eagerly at those. Giving them a minute extra to get used to the herculean task ahead of them, Myne clapped her hands together.

"So, first of all, I recommend you all elect one of you to be the chief in this situation to coordinate. Do it fast, because I will be grading the whole class based on your overall performance. I have the original manifest and I will be comparing it with your final result. So do a poor job at it and you all will be getting really really bad sad grades. I want every item accounted for, everything in their proper storage containers, and all containers then secured in place in an efficient manner. Chop chop, get to it while I am going to play some games on my PADD or something like that!"

That last part was a bluff, a poor one at that. Myne could see it in their eyes that most of them didn't believe she wouldn't be watching them with hawk eyes or through her PADD. And they were right, but she had to at least try to give the impression of no oversight on her part. There was nothing hazardous stored in this cargobay, except maybe a few dummy items placed on purpose to teach them the value of conducting their task while adhering to proper safety protocol.

But Myne had all intention to tap into the sensors in the cargobay to keep track of each cadet individually. She had a program set up just for that, to see how they worked and how they handled themselves. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't the most important task an ops officer had to do, but it added up. This is what operations was all about, the Chinese drop as the Humans said. An endless list of small tasks that added up to the point where one shift never felt like it was ever enough to finish work.

And Myne wanted to teach them just that. Just because a task seemed boring and lacking in importance, it didn't mean that it should be treated lightly. "An operations officer that does a good job is one that no one ever notices." She muttered to herself, a bit surprised a few of the cadets caught onto it. And it was true, when ops did their job right no one noticed because everything was running smoothly aboard the ship. When ops did a bad job, every other department felt it and they were often not too happy about it.

The young, well old, Trill officer had planned many such lessons in the future for her cadets. Ease them in over the next few cycles into the life of an ops officer. Show them what it entails as best as she could. Sure, many wouldn't like it and certainly won't pursue a career in operations. But those that did, hopefully, would hit the ground running when they got their first assignments.

It was what Sudra did for her after all, how he prepared her and the other cadets at Starfleet Academy when he was an instructor there. She could feel the part of her that was Sudra now teeming with pride. And that made her smile a little bit more genuine and happy as she leaned against the wall next to the cargobay door to watch her cadets get to work

//OFF//

Lieutenant Myne Redal
Assistant Chief Operations Officer
USS Elysium