The outgoing operator had brought her meal to the duty review. The lid stayed shut on her knee while David Rivera worked down Defiant’s watch assignments at the small table beside her live traffic console.
Every required position had a name beside it. The readiness exercise fit between the end of one watch and the beginning of the next. Twenty minutes for a simulated loss of a communications path, ten to review the response. No maneuvering, no interruption to the ship’s live traffic. He had added it that morning.
Across the table, the incoming operator rested both hands beside his tablet. He had already opened the exercise sequence.
“You can start at the handover,” David said. “The traffic desk stays covered throughout?”
“Until he takes it,” the woman said.
The younger operator lifted a finger from the tablet. “After the exercise.”
David stopped scrolling.
The woman turned toward her replacement. “I thought you were taking the desk while I ran the faults.”
“I’m running the faults. That’s the assignment.”
Their two tablets lay side by side. On one, she covered the live desk through the handover. On the other, she monitored it throughout the exercise and the review. Both entries assigned a qualified operator. Together, they kept the same woman on duty after her watch ended. Neither included the time she would need to explain what was still waiting on that desk.
The meal container shifted on her knee. She steadied it with a palm.
“I can stay,” she said. “It’s half an hour.”
David opened the complete watch rather than the exercise roster. There she was again, at its beginning, taking over from the operator before her. The extra half hour had looked like a narrow strip of empty time until he followed her name all the way across.
He pulled the two schedules onto his own display.
“Let me see where we can move it.”
The young operator sat back a little. The woman set her meal on the floor beside her boot, freeing both hands for the tablet.
David moved the exercise earlier. That put its preparation inside the live watch. He could delay the review until the next shift, but the fault sequence still required someone to keep real traffic separate from the simulated failures. He tried exchanging two assignments. One of those operators would then be unavailable for another required station.
Three changes, and the woman’s name remained at the traffic desk.
She leaned forward. “I know what’s pending. Someone else would spend most of the time catching up.”
That was true. It made keeping her the easiest answer each time he moved a name.
David put both hands flat on the table. He had come into the review expecting to settle the exercise order and leave. His next appointment was already close. He could approve the extension, thank her, and have the readiness entry complete before the end of the watch.
The young operator turned his tablet so David could read it.
“I’ve checked the simulated faults against the live channels. Nothing in the exercise can change the actual routing.”
His notes were detailed. He had marked where the expected response could be mistaken for a real acknowledgment and changed the wording. Useful work. David had selected him for this precisely because he checked things that other people hurried past.
“The sequence is ready,” David said.
“I can cut the discussion afterward.”
“You still need someone at the desk while you run it.”
“She’s offered.”
The woman reached for her meal, then left it where it was.
“I have,” she said. “Nobody’s making me.”
David looked again at the assignment he had added. He had allowed time for the exercise. He had allowed time for the review. Between them and the watch change, he had allowed nothing at all for two people to speak about their actual work.
He could make the plan fit if she gave him the missing time.
“What would you be handing over?” he asked.
She brought up the traffic queue. “One reply waiting for confirmation. Two routine packets not yet cleared. The second packet needs a corrected attachment. I sent it back.”
“That should be quick,” the younger operator said.
“Usually. The sender might return the whole packet instead. Don’t release both copies.”
He drew his tablet closer.
“Which reference?”
She showed him. He read it, returned to the exercise sequence, and held his finger above the screen without selecting anything.
David’s next appointment appeared at the edge of his display. He dismissed the reminder.
“The exercise comes off this watch.”
The young man’s finger dropped to the table.
“Captain, I can run it.”
“I know.”
“This is the first one you’ve assigned me.”
There it was, said plainly. David had been looking for an opening in the roster. The man opposite him had been protecting something else.
“Your sequence stays with you,” David said. “Keep the preparation. I’m removing the time slot.”
“When do I get another?”
David almost offered the next watch. He had not checked it. Promising an empty square on a different screen would get him out of this conversation with the same mistake intact.
“I don’t have one yet. We’ll need a slot with separate live coverage.”
The operator’s mouth tightened. “It will show as incomplete.”
“Yes.”
The woman shook her head once. “You don’t need to lose an exercise over my supper.”
“I scheduled it across your relief. You offered to cover what I left out. That doesn’t make the time available.”
He removed the exercise from the watch and left its status incomplete. In the explanation he entered that the acting captain had withdrawn the slot because the plan depended on extending the outgoing operator’s duty. He read it once and saved it under his own name.
The younger operator checked his tablet. The exercise had disappeared from the watch view. His preparation remained in its separate file.
“The real desk is still mine?”
“After you take the handover.”
He nodded, though he did not look pleased. David could leave him that much.
David put his tablet down beside the traffic console. Its task light illuminated a worn patch beside the controls where an operator’s wrist would rest. The outgoing woman lifted her meal from beside her boot, set it on an unused shelf, and turned back to the controls.
The incoming operator stood beside her while she worked through the queue. He asked about the confirmation, then read back the reference for the returned attachment. A reply arrived during the explanation. She opened it, checked it against the pending item, and moved her hand away so he could follow the change.
David stepped back from the table. He could not hurry this part to recover the minutes he had already spent.
The operator taking over adjusted the display and checked the two remaining packets. “I have the queue. Corrected attachment still pending.”
“Correct.”
“I have the desk.”
She secured the spare headset on its hook, collected her meal, and stepped clear. Her replacement was already opening the packet notes. Nothing on the live display required her to remain.
At the doorway she paused with the container tucked against her side.
“You need anything else from me, Captain?”
David glanced at the incomplete exercise on his tablet. It could stay there.
“No. You’re relieved.”
She went off watch. The door closed before he opened the next appointment.
Author’s note: This story takes place aboard Defiant before the campaign in The Reclaimed Stars.
David Rivera’s next campaign is in The Reclaimed Stars, Book 5 of The Vethrak Requiem. Preorder the Kindle edition for December 1.