7 minutes after the horn had blared, signalling an end to Alpha shift, everyone headed back to the lockerroom. Calling it a locker room was a massive understatement, in reality, it was a massive room filled with rows upon rows of lockers for the shipyard operations crews, each row had bench running down the middle. Even the perimeter of the room was filled with lockers. The Repair and Construction crews from the shipyard had indentical locker rooms further down the corridor on either side of theirs.

As Traan and his little group of 9 were approaching the entry to the lockerroom, they saw the Director and Deputy Director. They were standing there and chatting with the staff as they were all coming off duty, before they went into the lockerroom. It was a bit of a tradition for the pair of senior officers to do this from time to time. They would greet and thank the crews, and ask how their shifts went and if they needed anything, making themselves available to their people. They also never entered the lockerroom, or would ever send an aide into the lockerroom to get them. The lockerroom was left as a ‘crews only room’.

“And there’s our new guy. How was his first day?” The upbeat Director asked.

Chief Horvath instantly replied “Not too bad for an old guy, sir. He was actually a big help after lunch when that hauler broke down loaded with hull panels and created that big traffic jam. Traan here jumped in his workbee, latched onto to the hauler and dragged it the rest of way into position, waited for the rest of us to empty it, then pulled the haulers back to the maintenance yard. Saved us atleast an hour, sir.”

Ensign Trusk, the young Zybalian who had been in charge of Traans crew that day added “Yeah, and he gave some of those cry baby repair guys what for about an hour ago too. That was quick thinking there Traan, without you we might have waited the rest of the shift for them to finish installing that phaser emitter.”

Traan tried to deflect the praise, as he felt it was unwarranted. All he had done was hollered at the repair crews and reccomend that they cut out a hull joint that was blocking the emitter from fully seating in its housing. He had encountered this problem several times back at Luna.

The issue had arose due to the new type XIIc emitters being slightly longer then the a and b models. The fix was easy enough, chop out the hull joint that was in the way, rotate it 180 degrees and place on the interior angle of the hull joint instead. Then send a note to the hull techs and have them reattach it. In this case his advice had allowed them to finish the attaching of the hull panels in that section and stay almost on schedule.

“It was a simple fix, hull techs dont care who or what they are blocking when they install those reinforcing joints. They just put em in and shift them around as needed. They have to do something keep themselves useful and appearing busy haha…but it was your detail Ensign, the credit should be yours. You were the one calling the shots and keeping the flow going” Traan knew he wouldn’t make many friends if he came across as a know it all.

The Director smiled and nodded “Sounds like you’re fitting in already Lt. Grab one of the lockers in the Alpha shift section, we’ll keep you on the day shift for now.” He then turned to everyone else “Nice work today all, getting those 2 ships hulls finished today is going to be a big help clearing this backlog we have.”

The crew of 9 then shuffled on into lockerroom with a chorus of “Thank you sirs” and “Our pleasure boss”.

Chief Horvath, one of the Senior Shipyard Ops Specialists gave Traan a pat on the shoulder and said “Come grab a locker over with us, we got a prime spot in row 2, its a shorter ‘commute’, and theres still a few unclaimed ones.”

“So Traan, we know you can handle yourself in the yard, but can you handle yourself in the bar? A bunch of us always head to the Golden Apple for a few drinks after work, care to join us?” One of the petty officers on the crew hollered as he took off his overalls and hung it in his locker.

“Oh Traan, dont do it man” a voice in the back of his mind warned him.

“Sure, a nice cold Ale sounds great about now.” Traan said, intent on actually limiting himself  to a few drinks this time.

The voice in the back of his mind retorted with “oh no, here we go again.”