Traan got stuck with the ‘tow duty’ today. As usual the shipyard was busier then all get out. A call came in during alpha shift for a tow from Mellstoxx III back to Starbase Bravo. Since the ship would be towed back for repairs at the main Bravo shipyard, this meant that taking a runabout out and towing the ship back was a job for, yep, you guessed it, the Shipyard Operations team, the jacks of all trades.

Though it was still true that on any given shift a quarter of the people he was in charge of were gantry/articulating crane operators. And another third was operating skiffs, haulers, barges and workbees, repairs, scheduling, communications, and material handing. The responsibility for in-system towing and starship safety inspections were also their bailliwick.

“Traan! Call Horvath, get him to take over for you and get in here.” The Deputy Director called from the door to his office.

‘Oh Kirk me…’ Traan thought to himself. Whenever this happened, its always meant that his portly and overly sweaty boss had a little side job that he needed done. It was happening more frequently as time went on too.

Since he had helped figure out the power issue when they were installing the new cranes several weeks back, Traan had quickly become the Deputy Directors go to guy to get things done.

As the door closed behind Traan, the Deputy Director tossed a padd on his stack of padds that was on his desk.

“Ship called from Mellstoxx IV on the other side of the system, needs a tow back for repairs. Sounds like they lost a power coupling or plasma manifold as they were retreiving some scientists. Gotta send someone out to get them. So grab a co-pilot off the standby list, head down to Aux vessel bay, grab a runabout and bring em back. Errrrgh” he stretched his arms and craned his back which was always sore thanks to riding a desk all day.

“Yeah, and just pop em into bay 11 down there. Your shift’ll likely be over by the time you get back, but take tomorrow off, come monday, I wanna shift you into the top Repair Docks role. Replicate yourself a new pip too, I’m bumping you up to full Lt.” It was a fairly standard way in which Traan had recieved promotions in the past, so that lart traced. But Head of Repair Docks? That wasn’t really his specialty at all.

“Sir? I appreciate the promotion, but Repair Docks? You’re puting me with the ‘sloppy joe’s’?” Traan used the shipyard slang term for the repair crews who were known to cut corners and be slack with safety regs to get their jobs done.

“Yep, I know you’re not a repair guy by trade, but you were a maintenance chief once upon a time, and you know how to lead leaders. You’ve molded alpha ahift into a great team, best in the quadrant in my opinion, and you’ve done in less then 3 months. Yeah, I’m puting you with the sloppy joes exactly because you ain’t one. Get their shifts, their procedures and their processes worked out. Get them in order over there. Do for them what you did for alpha shift. And don’t worry about not knowing all the highspeed lingo your repair techs use. I’ll let you in on a little secret as an officer, since I know were a chief for so long. Once you get a jod, that has a title that starts with Head/Director/Sector/Fleet or Commanding, you actually dont need to know shit about the actual shit anymore, you need to know how lead people and have them get stuff done. They reapect you Traan, havenr you noticed them responding a bitnquicler to your requests since since you stopped on of them from causing that near miss a a month or 2 back?” He said as he shoed Traan out of his office.

“And I start Monday? What about Lt. Skelly?” Traan asked.

“Yep, and I’m bumping him up to Lt Cmdr and making him the new Deputy Director.”

“But…”

“Director decided to cash in his vacation time and retire early. Heard he booked flight to Risa this morning. Lord help us all, but I’m his replacement.”

((USS Tangrut, cockpit))

“Silly civvies.” Traan chuckled and spoke as they rematerilized on the runabouts transporter pad after beaming over doing a damage survey and preparing the large civilian freighter for towing.

“Tell me about it.” Traan co-pilot replied. The lights suddenly flickered before resuming full intensity.

“Whats uh, that about.” He went to the pulotsnseat and tapped in a  few commands. We got several fault in several system Jinetti, somethings up.” Traan said before hearing the distinctive cooing sound.

“Oh no…no….you gotta be kidding me. I thought the flight deck crews had cleaned all thentribnle out of the runabouts after the last time.” Jinetti exclaimed.

“The last time? What, this is a regular thing? Tribble infestations on the stations runabouts.” Traan groaned.

“I mean, people be crazy bro. And tribbles are so cute, some folks just cant helpnthemselves when they’re on vacay man.” Jinettin retorted. Just then the lights when completely out.

After scrambling for the emergency transmitter in the survival trunk of the runabout Traan and Jinetti were able to get in touch with Starbase Bravo and had then send out 2, non tribble infested runabouts to haul them and the stricken civilian ships back to the base. The last person to sign out the Tangrut was actually arrested and eventually reprimanded for illegally acquiring and trading some designer tribbles they had bought from a dealer on Nimbus.