Elizabeth walked into her office in main engineering after unceremoniously dumping her belongings in her quarters. From the visitor’s side of her desk she flipped the computer terminal to face her and glanced over the systems status, and then picked up a random PADD tossed casually on the surface of the desk she downloaded the engineering roster.

Armed with that essential information she turned and walked right back out of the office and stood in front of the massive master situation display.  “Okay, gather round folks. Let’s make this quick.”

She waited several minutes for the crew to gather around her. They stood in loose formation.  But, they were engineers, not soldiers, and military discipline would be lost on them, and in truth not completely useful in their day-to-day jobs. 

“My name is Elizabeth Kyle, and I am the ship’s new Chief Engineer.  This isn’t my first rodeo folks. I have heard every excuse in the book.  I expect every one of you to do your jobs to the absolute best of your abilities.  If you prove that you cannot or will not perform your duties at a satisfactory level I will find a duty that more suits you such as sanitation duty in the mess hall and the public heads. Any questions?”

There was a sea of blank faces, but no one spoke.  

Elizabeth nodded in approval, “Very good. Okay I promised a full readiness report to the captain by the end of the day and seeing that it’s already approaching mid-day we have our work cut out for us.” She lifted her PADD to look it over, “Brooks, De Havilland, and T’pin: you are assigned to deflector control.  “Burke, K’vren: you are on both main and auxiliary computers. DeSantis: shuttles. Lindsey, Jurok, Thelvian, and Georges: environmental support. Batiste: coordinate with Security/Tactical on weapons.  Holstead: coordinate with operations on sensors. Garza and Smith you are on shields.  That leaves Leisten and Groka with me on warp engines, shields, and structural integrity. Let’s get on it people.”

The engineering department spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon going over the ship’s systems with a fine tooth comb.  For the most part the ship was in tip top shape. There were a few areas of note, chiefly the warp core efficiency numbers.   The yard engineers tended to take a conservative approach to the tuning of the warp core, but Elizabeth knew she could improve it with no ill-effects.

Ordinarily Elizabeth wasn’t one to hide in her office,  but when it came to writing reports,  something she hated doing,  being walled off from distraction was a necessity. 

She finished her report and sent it off to the captain making sure to CC the XO, and checked her watch: 18:04. She resisted the urge to yawn, and made her way into main engineering.

“Evening Ensign Carter,” she greeted the night shift lead.

“Good evening ma’am,” the Ensign replied.  “What are your orders?”

Elizabeth appreciated that the Ensign asked without being told.  “There’s not much to do.  There’s a list of issues we found today on my computer in my office. You can get started on them,  or we’ll take care of it in the morning.”

“Understood.”

“Very good,” Elizabeth replied.  “Have a good night.”

“Night boss,” the Ensign replied before getting down to work.