18-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars
January 18th, 2552 Close Call
Jr. Wrench Monkey in Training, Pilot, beast of burden Katherine ‘Kat’ James, Reporting
This is going to be short, I’m too tired to last too long writing.
Today was another day of detection and overhauls, and proof that the different ship board units do not talk to each other— at all.
I started off the day as we conscriptees usually do -police up our barracks, report to the commissary, fix breakfast, clean up after breakfast go to our assigned tasks.
I don’t know about the others but my tasks included, schlepping for the senior mechanics, getting read-outs and doing guided repairs on non-critical damage, shoring up bulkheads, retesting my work, getting yelled at for not reporting to the hangar and shuttling parts, getting yelled at for not returning to the commissary for lunch prep, getting yelled at for taking a break from repairs— Didn’t I know there was a crisis on? Getting yelled at for… you get the idea.
It kept up until I was called into the Admiral’s office— can’t have a crew-member, especially a convict goldbricking during a crisis.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he had no less than five reports filed against me, one for each section and one from the guards since they didn’t know where I was off to.
We had a long talk, over dinner which he insisted I sit, eat and enjoy before we finished our business. As near as I can tell, it was the only way he could guarantee I got my mandated rest period.
Once we finished, he had his aide write up his findings and my disposition, which he filed a copy of with the Captain of the Valkyrie, Cookie, Colonel Bridges of the Einherjar, Ship’s Guard Captain Mateo, as well as my direct supervisors at the Commissary, the flight pool, and Ship’s Liaison Officer Daniels so my education didn’t suffer.
From now on, all requests for my services and location are being routed through the ship’s Liaison officer, who actually met with me and talked to me and asked what I wanted to do.
It’s nice to have a buffer.
Leave a Reply