"Afterwards"

[Col. C.E. Harper 0]

"Afterwards"

Harper Log 07.06.05

April 3, 2397

Departing Vechwa

 

Cleaned up, Harper now sat in her office with a short stack of PADDs resting beside the computer console. The screen was presently showing the battle bridge visual log from the past couple of hours.

 

She was torn about the exercise. On the one hand, the teams had worked well together, and it seemed the crew had learned a thing or two about cooperation. On the other hand, nearly everyone involved had been 'killed', and while Harper admired persistence and dedication, she appreciated it more in living, breathing people. Ninety-two percent casualty rates were not something she wanted to encourage. All of which left one persistent question: was the exercise a success or a failure?

 

It was partly for that reason that she had questioned the teams afterwards. If they had learned something, then it was successful enough, and hopefully the other scenario would go better.

 

The other reason for the questions was simply to find out how they thought, an observation that would continue at the formal debriefing. But Harper had hoped to get a less filtered response in those first few minutes after the stuns wore off, in a more casual setting.

 

Tomorrow morning she would have to meet with Robair to compare notes, before the entire group met in the afternoon. Then, most likely, yet another meeting with Robair, some fine-tuning of the holodeck scenario… Somewhere in there she needed to find time to review the mission logs, and to get caught up on the personnel assignments. And find time to call home, or she'd be hearing about it for the next year.

 

It bothered her that she was less than pleased with her own performance in the exercise. Yes, she had made a conscious decision to step back and see how her officers would handle the situation, but at the same time, she felt she should have exercised greater authority. Perhaps she'd been out of the field too long. Time to put the teaching mindset behind her and step up to the plate.

 

On the screen, the view shifted to Main Engineering.