Schedule Changes

Posted on 20 Jan 2026 @ 2:48am by Lieutenant JG Ryan Collingway
Edited on on 20 Jan 2026 @ 3:26am

360 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Lathira Shoreleave
Location: Engineering

///Engineering///

The change was subtle, but it was there.

Ryan frowned as he studied the tasks for the day, sipping a cup of coffee. Tasks which would under normal circumstances, not change at all. Yet a lot of them did, seemingly overnight. He was supposed to be running maintenance on the warp core, a task that would take three or four hours. Yet now he was reassigned to help fix a phase calibration in transporter room 2B.

It wasn't just him, either. Everyone else had been shifted, moved around. Who had changed the schedule? Evans? She was currently enjoying shore leave, but was still technically CEO and could be changing things remotely. The new impending CEO seemed unlikely. He didn't think it could be anyone else.

He studied the schedule in more detail. It didn't take him too long to find a pattern. The critical systems that had scheduled maintenance were simply unassigned for the time being. Most of them did have maintenance recently, so it wouldn't have been a significant issue to reschedule them. Maybe Evans was trying to look for efficiency. But at the same time, the lesser important systems such as deflector control had two engineers assigned, not one. Even for menial tasks. Ryan went through it all in his head, and came up with only one conclusion.

"She thinks we're burned out," he said out loud to himself.

It was true, several of them had deliberately put off shore leave, burning the candle at both ends, to make sure Engineering was pristine. But they could still be trusted to do their regular duties. Right?

Ryan stared at the schedule bleakly. Maybe if he left for shore leave-and came back quickly-he could be restored on a normal schedule. But no, it was too late. They had to get ready for the new CEO. That was any day now. And it seemed his schedule opened up, at least.

Shaking his head, he went to get his tools. He didn't like this, but had to go along with it.

Understandably, the idea of an imposter among them never crossed his mind.

Lt (JG) Ryan Collingway
Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn

 

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