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Tachyon

Dear Mom and Dad

“Dear Mom and Dad”

Scott Coleridge

-------------------------------------

 

I got promoted again.

 

I don’t know what I did wrong.

 

Well, I have an inkling. Captain Ramson said something about being familiar with Aegis. Truth is, I’ve just been here for so long now I guess I’m a bit of a fixture. I had hoped that if I kept my head down and just rattled around engineering they’d leave me be. All I want to do is fix things, build things. Well, that and research more applications of Kalubi-Yau geometry to subspace transporter technology. You know. The usual.

 

But I screwed up.

 

See, I’m not really a good manager of people. That’s why I avoided taking over the engineering department in the first place. I’m all right in a crunch, but day-to-day, I have trouble delegating. I tend to get caught up, start micro-managing, and before you know it, I’m off somewhere in the lower decks. But the deal was that Jorahl could still deal with a lot of the management side while also being king of the shipyard. I should have known that would be too good to be true at the time, but what other choice did I have?

 

The good thing about station engineering is that the department structure here is a lot looser than on a starship. Out there, in deep space, with anomalies and enemies nipping at your heels, everything has to run smoothly and—well, ship-shape. Here, it’s more like a rolling schedule of replacing the thing most likely to break next. Now combine that atmosphere with a larger proportion of enlisted personnel, as well on Aegis as a small corps of Romulan volunteers, and you get something very different from the hierarchy aboard a starship. Surprisingly, this actually worked in my favour. Everyone has their specialties; I just had to make sure people showed up on time and kept everything running. Truth is, I discovered that the less I managed, the more we all got done.

 

Where was I? Right, the screw-up.

 

My mistake was trying to distance myself from anything that felt like being chief engineer. That light touch ultimately did me in. Instead, I should have made myself so indispensable, made the smooth running of the department depend on my presence there. Then Ramson would have had no choice but to pass me over and … I don’t know. There must be someone else on Aegis better qualified than me for this position. Mimi was in command while we were off skulking around a mining planet. Then again, she’s probably the only one less interested in such a promotion than me.

 

I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Literally, I don’t know. Being executive officer has always seemed like a chore: all those reports, personnel tasks, etc. Maybe Dad can recommend some of those biographies of great leaders he’s always reading. Or biographies of great managers, hmm?

 

Well, if you excuse me, I need to sneak into my old office. I have to retrieve my personal effects before Nijil clues into the fact I left him all the paperwork that accumulated while we were away and booby-traps it or something.

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