First Day at Work
Posted on Sat Aug 15th, 2026 @ 4:15pm by Lieutenant Talia Renn & Commander Erris Sudis
541 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission: Preamble
Commander Sudis Erris emerged from the Turbolift onto the Galaxy-class bridge module. This was by far the largest bridge configuration he had seen with spacious amount of duty stations. He counted fifteen duty stations on the bridge. The brain of starship operations. He found himself by the Security station, "Morning, Lieutenant. I am first officer Commander Sudis."
Talia looked up from the Security station, one hand still resting near the manifest overlay she had been reviewing. The display was dense with cargo scan results, origin tags, and a short but growing list of items marked for secondary verification.
The Commander’s arrival gave her a reason to straighten.
Her eyes took him in quickly, with the practiced restraint of a security officer who noticed details without making a performance of it. Rank first. Bearing second. Human, at least at first glance. Then the Bajoran earring caught the bridge light.
Talia registered it, filed it away, and did not let her attention linger.
“Lieutenant Talia Renn,” she said, offering a crisp nod. “Chief of Security.”
The console chirped beside her, highlighting another line in the cargo review.
She glanced at it, then back to Sudis.
“Welcome aboard, Commander. You’ve arrived during my ongoing attempt to determine whether three identical agricultural processors from three different supply chains are a miracle of logistics or someone’s idea of creative paperwork.”
She touched the control, narrowing the report to the amber-tagged entries.
“The Captain asked for a thorough legitimacy check on everything coming aboard. My teams are cross-checking cargo scans against the manifests and loading records. Anything with an incomplete chain of custody gets a secondary review.”
"Would you like me to take a second look?"
She did not need a second look. What she needed was another hour, two additional security teams, and manifests that had not apparently been assembled by five different people with competing definitions of accuracy.
Talia kept that assessment to herself.
For the briefest moment, her eyes returned to the amber-tagged entries. Inviting the first officer into the review would almost certainly mean explaining the entire process, defending decisions she had already made, and possibly discovering that he preferred a different system entirely.
Still, he had offered, and refusing would be both unhelpful and unnecessarily territorial.
She looked back to him with a small, resigned smile.
“Of course, sir,” she said, shifting aside enough to give him a clear view of the display. “A second set of eyes may help determine whether the discrepancies are administrative or intentional.”
Talia brought the three flagged processors back onto the main screen.
“This one seems the least convincing.”
Sudis found himself looking over the processor which the Security Department had flagged as suspicious, "You are right to be suspicious. Do we have a Security doing an in-person inspection? Let's have a team from OPS and ENG join them."
Talia gave the slightest nod, "Yes sir my team is on it now. I will have others join in."
"Please keep me up-to-date, Lieutenant." Sudis ordered and continued on his rounds of the bridge.
"Will do Sir." Talia replied quietly, having already redirected her focus to routing requests for engineering and operations to take a look at the cargo she flagged.
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