Training Debate

Posted on Sun Jun 15th, 2025 @ 4:48pm by Lieutenant JG Alicia Santos & Lieutenant Kev Walker

821 words; about a 4 minute read

Kev stepped through the open doors of main engineering, the rhythmic hum of the warp core greeting him like an old friend. He took a moment to scan the room, taking note of the controlled chaos of the midday shift. Systems checks, EPS grid diagnostics, and a few crew members deep in panels working on support systems. It seemed to be business as usual, but it had been a long time since he had worked in engineering that he could barely keep up with it at times. That fact almost made him sad, the fact that he actually missed the controlled chaos of engineering. He spotted Lieutenant Santos at her usual post near the master systems display. With a PADD in one hand and a stylus in the other, she was unsurprisingly focused on work. Kev approached with a nod. "Santos. Got a minute?" he asked, lowering his voice so as not to draw attention.

Without looking up, Alicia held up a hand in the classic 'one second' gesture before tapping her stylus against the PADD with a final note. Only then did she raise her gaze and meet his eyes. "For my superior officer and overlord department head? Always," she said with a faint smile, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Let me take a guess and say that this is about Ensign Banner?"

Kev chuckled and folded his arms. "Yeah, I noticed his scores on the last round of tests. And I couldn't help but notice the training times as well," he said. Pausing for a moment, he sighed. "He seems bright, eager, and motivated," he began, before pausing again. "But he seems to still be thinking like an ops officer. Like he's watching system performance from the outside instead of understanding what's happening under the hood."

He exhaled, glancing toward the Jefferies tube access where an engineering officer had just awkwardly exited, smudged with something he definitely wasn’t supposed to touch. "I’m not expecting him to reroute EPS power blindfolded, but if we hit a crisis and he hesitates, someone gets hurt."

"Or the ship blows up," Alicia agreed, leaning against the console. "I had him run a plasma flow calibration on Junction 4-B first thing this morning. It took him twenty minutes to remember to check the magnetic constrictor alignment. He admitted he forgot it because 'it wasn’t flagged in the checklist'." She rolled her eyes, but it was clear it was more frustration at the process than at the ensign himself. “He’s used to protocol and surface level interaction. In ops, the system reports tell you what’s wrong. In engineering, you need to feel what’s off before the readout catches up. That kind of intuition takes time, unlearning all of that Academy Ops course training, listening to the person trying to teach you, and getting burned once or twice.”

Kev nodded thoughtfully. “Exactly. I don’t want to break his confidence but I’m also not interested in sugar coating it. If he freezes mid response during a warp core breach for any reason, we’ve got a bigger problem than a bruised ego.” He paused, then raised an eyebrow. “Think he can take the pressure if we turn the heat up a little?”

A slow grin tugged at Alicia’s mouth. "Oh, you want me to take the training wheels off and throw him to the deep end?"

Kev shrugged casually, but there was a small gleam in his eyes that was all the answer his lead engineering should nee.

Alicia saw the spark in Kev’s eyes and laughed quietly. "Alright. I’ll oversee it but he’s going to hate both of us by the end of it. But, he’ll also come out sharper. Or at least understand why we engineers do things differently.”

Kev smiled, satisfied. “Hating us is part of the process. So is learning he won’t always have a checklist to lean on. One of these days, he might be all that stands between us and the destruction of this ship.” He turned to leave, then glanced back. “I know Banner is probably hating both of us right now, but he needs to know that there's a reason he's going through all of this. The lessons the Academy teaches you can only take you so far. He needs to learn that."

Alicia nodded, her smile faded in complete understanding of what Walker had said. Glancing at the time, she raised an eyebrow. It was getting late, and she was sure that Banner was going to hate her but she could live with it. She gave an evil smile as she reached for her commbadge. "Santos to Ensign Banner. Meet me in the holodeck in fifteen minutes." She smiled to herself as she turned back to her console. It was time to make an engineer out of an ops officer.

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