Saffiya inhaled as she entered Engineering, feeling right at home between warp core and consoles. She enjoyed being a Commanding Officer, but remained an Engineer at heart, and had once or twice considered spending her breaks crawling in some Jeffries tube. For the nostalgia of it.

She approached the woman pointed out to be Chief Engineer. Lieutenant Commander Lorra had, thus far, an impressive career, and Saffiya was actively looking forward to working with her. 

“Commander.”, Saffiya said, approaching. “Captain Nassar. Good to meet you.” 

“Ah… the new Captain of the week,” Niala remarked, her voice cutting through the low hum of the Warpcore. She glanced around, catching the raised eyebrows, and exchanged glances among the crew. Since her arrival on the Valkyrie a month ago, this revolving door of captains had become a familiar routine. With a hint of sarcasm in her smile, she stepped forward and extended her hand. “Welcome to the Valkyrie, Captain!”

“I thought it’s best to just come here rather than drag you out of Engineering. Anything specific you are currently working on?”

“With all due respect, Captain, our last CO took the same approach. He met me here in my den, engineering, and asked a similar question.” Niala’s eyes flicked to the gleaming machinery around them, her hands lightly brushing a spotless console.

She paused, then continued, “I told him we’re severely short-staffed.” She pointed to a chart displayed on the wallconsole, filled with names and duties, many, many empty slots. “The Valkyrie is in pristine condition—I make sure of that, even if it’s the last thing I do.” She tapped a panel, revealing a meticulously organized maintenance log, each entry a testament to her dedication.

“But logistics has made a mess of our spare parts inventory.” She opened a storage compartment, revealing a chaotic jumble of misfiled crates and missing parts. She didn’t expect the Captain to recognize what was what, but she liked the dramatic effect. “Finding what we need is like searching for a needle in the Briar Patch.”

Saffiya stepped closer to the chaotic storage compartment. Her eyes scanning the jumble of crates and scattered parts, which made absolutely no sense to her at all, and was about as organised as her personal quarters right now. And her office. And, by now, also her ready room. 

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she sighed. She pulled out her personal tricorder, set it to inventory mode, and cross-referenced the ship’s parts database with the physical items in front of her, overlaying digital tags and identifiers on the display. It really looked like a random assembly of items, but Saffiya noted a small, unassuming crate buried under larger, bulkier containers.

“This should be the batch of Type-4 EPS conduits that were logged as missing.”, she noted. “I am assuming this is the rest of items that were also logged as missing, which isn’t great, but considering where they’re delivered from, I am assuming from the rest… looks like the much-needed update to our cooling systems for the shield generators.”

Niala blinked, her eyes widening as the Captain pinpointed the exact issue among the disarrayed crates and scattered parts. She hadn’t expected anyone outside of engineering to grasp the complexity of the mess. Her skepticism softened into genuine surprise.

As she looked at the Captain, her lips curled into a faint, approving smile. “That’s… actually correct,” she said, a note of astonishment in her voice. “I didn’t think anyone outside of engineering could make sense of this chaos. Maybe there’s hope for you Reds after all.” Her tone carried a mix of admiration and unexpected respect.

“I’m more red-gold. Basically orange.”, Saffiya noted. “But I will say I am not thrilled at the delays this type of unnecessary chaos causes. I’d rather have our systems up-to-date.”

Niala then gestured to a blinking light on a nearby console, signaling another pending maintenance task. “So, despite her perfect, sexy shape, if we were to face a crisis now…” She sighed deeply, her eyes heavy with concern. “I’d fear for the worst.”

“We will get to it. I’ll prioritise the pending transfers to Engineering and you should be able to get it sorted before the next big crisis.”

Unless they were sucked into a random subspace aperture. That would be unfortunate. 

“Yes, he said that too,” Niala replied, her eyes scanning the cluttered corner of engineering where half-empty toolboxes and misplaced parts were strewn haphazardly. She kicked aside a stray hyperspanner with a frustrated sigh. “And yet, I’ve got even fewer staff now than when I had that conversation with him. To top it off, Logistics has somehow managed to turn our tool inventory into a chaotic mess too.” She opened another drawer to reveal a jumbled assortment of mismatched tools and empty slots.

“Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical,” she continued, her voice tinged with weary resignation as she looked up from the disarray. “But you’ve just earned yourself the benefit of the doubt, Captain Nassar.” Her trademark blunt honesty hung in the air, but a flicker of reluctant respect softened her stern expression.

“I don’t mind skepticism, and I would be too.”, Saffiya admitted. “All I can do at the moment is try to get this mess sorted, and hope that the reason for the frequent changes of Commanding Officer wasn’t because of the crew or the ship itself. That said, we are definitely awaiting transfer for Engineering, one of them the former Systems Engineer of the USS Kongo. I am cautiously confident that there will be improvements.”

Niala glanced at her new Captain, her eyes brightening as a tentative smile formed. Her voice wavered with cautious optimism as she murmured. “This almost sounds too good to be true at this point,”

“We also got a transfer for Ops, but there are some shifts in that department too. Ensign Nadir, I believe. I’d say grab him and let him sort the mess.”, Saffiya suggested. 

Niala chuckled, the sound light and infectious. Her chuckle shifted into a mischievous grin, her eyes sparkling with amusement. 

“Oh, I’ll let him sort out the mess, alright,” she said, her grin widening and her nose ridges deepening as she spoke.

“I am intending to keep us on shore leave as long as it’s possible, with the justification that we are understaffed in several departments. Even my XO works two jobs at the moment, and that’s generally a bad sign. But you know what it’s like – we can get an assignment at any moment, understaffed or not. I just hoped it’s later rather than sooner.” 

Niala nodded. “I understand, Captain. I’ll ensure the Valk is poised and ready, whether that time comes sooner or later.”