It had been 4 days since they had returned from the mission to Pyrithia. Traan had actually jumped right into his work as the Head of Repair Docks. It was true that they were a bit rougher around the edges then the by-the-book Shipyard Ops crews, or the fast moving, precision Auxilary Craft Maintenance techs, but they had alot of great specialists and technicians on the repairs crews. And Traan had thought he had identified one of the biggest issues that was often causing them to miss deadlines and never quite be on schedule.

There was a group of veteran Chiefs and LtJG’s that had all been on SBB and in the Repair Docks for atleast 3 years or more. They had become comfortable and complacent, and even though it was only about a third of the team leaders that were causing the problems and all seemed to be friends with one another, the specialized and segregated nature of the teams themselves caused logjams constantly.

Traan sat in his spartan new office, figuring out what he was going to do about it. It was the middle office along the back wall on upper tier of offices. To its left was the office of the Auxiliary Craft Mainainence Chief. To the right was the office of short, portly, newly promoted Director, the man who kept promoting him and giving him all the tough jobs.

After a few more moments he tapped his padd against the edge of his desk a few times and said.

“Screw it, if they all quit, they all quit…” he sent a message out requesting that the 8 stick in the mud experienced team leads to report to Shipyard Conference Room 2 in at 1600h.

Traan saw Alonzo walk past the open bay door infront of Shipyard Central, and was instantly brought back to moment he and Kip had brought Tarsins body back to the runabout on the Pyrithian station.

Petty Officer Alonzo and Traan had held Nico directly responsible for Tarsin’s death in their own minds due to his decision to send him off on his own unnecessarily. Traan, noticing that Alonzo wasn’t processing the death of his friend well, and approached him one day in the Repair crew locker room a few days after they had returned.

Alonzo and Tarsin had been close and worked on the same crew for many months. Traan on the other hand had only known Tarsin in passing. Traan asked the young petty officer if he thought that a change of scenery might help him move on and cope better. After taking him up on the offer, Traan pulled a few strings and arranged a transfer to Starbase 72 for him.

He’d seen his fair shair if death in nearly 3 decades in the service, but this was the first under his command, and it all still seemed so senseless. What had the Kzinti been doing there? Why had Nico sent him off on his own. And what was Nico’s deal during that whole incident in the comms office the other day? Nicos ramblings after coming to about his mission and doing something for ‘Intel’ when they had been on the old Pyrithian station seemed like very bad omens to Traan.

Traan decided to made a quick call to Anderson and tapped his comm badge.

“Traan to Anderson.”

“Anderson here,” came the reply a moment later.

“You got a second? I’ve got a few questions for you. I can come meet you wherever you want.” Traan said knowing coffee break was about to start in about a few minutes.

“I’m overseeing a training holo-exercise right now, but it’s nearly finished.  My office or yours?”  Anderson replied.

“I’ll come to yours sir.”

“So. I was witness to the weirdness in the comms office the other day, and I’m just curious about what happened to the psycho guy who was hiding in the comms router room. It all seemed pretty surreal.” Traan said.

Anderson turned to his console, calling up recent incident reports.  He then frowned.  “Hmmm…  It looks like someone was arrested there recently, but that’s all I can see.  Is there anything else you can tell me about this psycho guy, or about what happened?”

“Well, after hearing that…I don’t know if I should say anything about it…” Traan said, his mind racing.