Lt. Nenyaht stopped just inside the sliding doors of Main Engineering, getting a feel for his surroundings. The department was huge, easily two or three times the size of its counterpart on the Enterprise, which was several times larger than the engineering department on the Zenith. Moving up and moving out, he thought with a small smirk as he made his way slowly along the workstations, glancing at the various consoles he passed. Sooner or later, they were going to run out of larger ships to transfer him to and were going to have to make him a chief engineer somewhere. At this rate, it was looking like later. He had never considered himself to be particularly ambitious, instead preferring to do the best job he could with whatever job and position he had been given, but the further he got into his Starfleet career, the more he found himself working to distinguish himself, hoping to get noticed enough to get that next accolade, promotion, and position.
Knowing that no amount of bitter feelings about not being a chief engineer were going to change his current situation, he focused instead on his surroundings and what he remembered about them from his introductory memos. There were over a thousand engineers assigned to the engineering department, about two hundred of which were officers and would be at this meeting. He knew that the chief engineer was a commander with quite a few years in grade, but he had no idea what the rank breakdown was the remaining officers. For all he knew, as a full lieutenant with one year in grade, he could have been one of the most senior officers—or one of the most junior.
His eyes lit up when he found what appeared to be the auxiliary controls for the deflector, his personal specialty. His mother was known throughout the Federation and its allies—and mostly likely, a number of its enemies as well—for being the foremost expert on navigational deflector arrays and quantum mechanics, regularly teaching advanced courses at the Academy as well as often serving as guest lecturers at colleges and universities around the Federation, working as a private researcher with the Daystrom Institute, and consulting for Starfleet and many other organizations. Even before he was a cadet, Nenyaht had spent hours a week working in one of her labs, first doing routine technical work and later developing his own projects, which grew in complexity as his knowledge increased. By the time he graduated from the Academy, he was known unofficially in Starfleet circles as someone who knew his way around the deflector; when he finished his master's degree through Daystrom's distance learning program a year before, that distinction became a little bit more official and his opinions carried a little bit more weight.
The deflector of the Kirk had obviously been built with all of the latest advancements in mind, probably using his mother's latest research, if not her consultations in person. Although nothing on the Enterprise was certainly nowhere near what he would consider out-dated, the Kirk seemed to be leaps and bounds ahead. In fact, if he was reading it correctly, it looked almost as if it was set up for a quick conversion to transwarp, which was an experiment his mother and Captain B'Elanna Torres had been playing with in their limited free time.
"Quite a set-up, isn't it?" a lilting voice with what sounded like an English accent said from right behind his shoulder. He glanced behind him, seeing a tall and very thin woman with skin the color of chocolate milk, thick straight black hair pinned up, almond shaped blue-gray eyes, and the teal uniform of the sciences. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Yeah," he agreed with a slight smile. "But you don't look like you're in the right place."
She gave him a wide grin, showing off two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth. "Lt. Marjorie Shin," she said, offering her hand. "Biomedical engineering."
"Lt. Nenyaht," he replied. "Quantum mechanics and physical engineering."
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Quite the resume."
"No, just a long title," he replied with a grin. He cleared his throat silently and looked back down at the console when he realized he had been holding her gaze too long. "So you're BME, and you work for the engineering department?"
Shin nodded, her eyes still on Nenyaht. "Yeah, we are pretty much the red-headed stepchild of the department." He looked at her askance with the phrase, which she took for confusion. "It is an expression," she explained with a small laugh. "I don't know where it comes from, but it means the member of the family nobody wants to claim as their own."
"I've heard it," he told her. When Abbey went through her old novels phase, it was one of the expressions she picked up, in addition to 'rain check'. "You're only the second person I've heard it from, though."
"My mum is a professor of English literature," Shin said. "She has passed along a number of strange idioms over the years." She grinned. "My youngest brother has red hair. I got my other brothers and sisters to tease him about it and tell him he is really a red-headed stepchild."
"I bet he appreciates that."
"No, not really," she said with a laugh. "Where have you heard the expression? From a red-headed stepchild?"
"Hardly," he replied, thinking that Abbey Paris was anything but. She may not have always fit in with the rest of her family, but that didn't mean they loved her or cared about her any less. "My friend growing up loved old Earth novels and would pick up on the vernacular. She used phrases that none of us really understood all the time."
"Old girlfriend?" Shin asked teasingly, her eyebrow raised again.
"No," he said, shaking his head with a laugh. Abbey was always a friend, never anything more. He couldn't help but wonder if that was his decision or hers. "Just a friend."
She looked like she was about to say something in response, but at that moment, Commander Aquene Noe walked into Engineering, his light green eyes scanning the room and silencing everyone. As a Mizarian, a species known for pacifism and non-confrontation, he hardly inspired fear, but many people found his vast intelligence to be somewhat intimidating.
He waited patiently for his engineering officers to quiet and gather around as best they could, which was not an easy feat when two hundred people were gathered into one space, even a space as large as Main Engineering. "Good evening," he said, his voice booming through the communications system. He bowed down slightly, the covering over his gray head hardly moving. "Welcome to the U.S.S. Kirk. I am glad to have each of you here. Over a thousand officers were considered for your positions, and I have selected each of you individually on the belief that you will prove to be an asset to this crew and this ship. I believe that each of you possess an intelligence that will complement my own."
"They aren't known for their modesty, are they?" Lt. Shin whispered to Nenyaht, prompting a shushing from him, although he did agree with her.
"You come from a mix of backgrounds," Commander Noe continued. "Some of you are recent graduates from Starfleet Academy, and I congratulate you on such a prestigious posting for your first position. I have no doubt that many of you will go far and will soon find yourselves to be chief engineers of your own vessels." Way to rub it in, Nenyaht thought bitterly. "Others of you are coming from other ships," Noe said, "and thus possess experience that will prove to be invaluable to our younger crewmembers. Do not hesitate to share your experiences with others, and help them learn from your successes as well as mistakes." He blinked slowly, the deep lines running vertically down his cheeks moving as he did so. "And finally, I have selected a number of you known to be authorities, if not experts, in your fields, some of which are leaving their own chief engineer positions to be here with us on this mission. You will be my advisors, my eyes and ears to your work and the work in your field. You will help me make the Kirk the finest engineering department in all of Starfleet.
"After serving for several years at Starfleet Research and Development, I am not accustomed to the politics of running a ship's engineering department," Noe admitted. "I am confident that I will have no problems picking it up quickly," he added. Shin barely contained a snicker at another blatant reference to his own intelligence. "To help me ease into this transition are my two assistant chief engineers, Lt. Commander Walter Ng and Lt. Commander Quinn Taro," he said, nodding to the two officers standing just to his right. Ng nodded solemnly, and Taro gave a wide smile and wave. "Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro and I will each be leading a duty shift. This pattern, which I believe to be most efficient—" another snicker from Shin—"will continue throughout our mission, except in times when duty shifts must be lengthened for necessary repairs or refitting.
"With two hundred officers and over eight hundred enlisted personnel, the engineering department of the Kirk is the largest of any Starfleet vessel by several factors. We are also the newest ship and have the most advanced technology, and I believe, the most advanced minds as well. Although I know a great deal about all aspects of starship engineering, I also know enough to realize that there are some who know more than me. For that reason, I have divided this department into ten smaller sections, each with one commanding officer. The junior officers will rotate through the sections in shifts that Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro and I deem appropriate, with the goal of each engineer gaining at least proficiency in each field of a starship engineering department. As I mentioned earlier, many of you junior engineers are not long for commanding your own engineering department. To do so, you must know each job an engineer may be called to perform intimately. The senior officers whom I have assigned as section heads already know this. For each section in the engineering department, there is another entire department on the ship with experience in that field, and these section chiefs must work closely with those departments to ensure proper communication and ease of operations. After I have announced the section chiefs, I ask these ten officers to stay behind and conference with myself and Lt. Commanders Ng and Taro. The rest of you are free to go until your first duty shifts as already assigned. Of course, I expect the beta shift personnel to stay and complete their shifts. As one final note, I hope you all are aware that I expect punctual arrival times from each engineer, from myself down to the lowest crewman. I expect your attention to be fully on your task while on duty, and while perfection would be ideal in any situation, I do realize that the most I can realistically ask from any individual would be your best effort, and I ask that of each of you in every duty shift. I know any change of scenery may be difficult, but I ask of each of you patience and understanding in this transition. I am confident that we will quickly all learn to work together efficiently and effectively.
"As far as the ten section chiefs, as I mentioned earlier, these are known experts in their fields, and I trust each of you to defer to their judgment in these matters. For propulsion, Lt. Commander Uday El-Lachem; weaponry, Lt. Loic; computer core, Lt. Ruchira Nishant; deflector controls, Lt. Nenyaht; auxiliary controls, Lt. Dwi Masters; support systems, Lt. Commander Nancy Fox; transporter systems, Lt. Mason Iriwanti; observational equipment and sensors, Lt. Commander Ontibile; structural engineering, Lt. Gesine Fergus; and biomedical engineering, Lt. Marjorie Shin. These ten, please stay. The rest of you may leave."
The announcement of the section chiefs came as a surprise to Nenyaht, who had never heard of a starship engineering section being organized in that way, but he did have to admit that he saw a certain logic in it. Just based on the number of people working in Engineering, it was more of a station or research facility than a traditional starship, and stations were typically set up in that manner, with "expert" officers leading smaller groups assigned to one specific task on the station or on repairs of visiting ships. He was also pleasantly surprised to hear his own name called out as one of the section chiefs, thinking that it almost made up for the fact that he wasn't a chief somewhere.
As commanded, he lingered behind with the other section chiefs, wondering how this was going to work out. Of the ten chiefs, he knew Lt. Masters, a classmate from the Academy, and had once heard a presentation from Lt. Commander El-Lachem, who had been considered a rising star in propulsion engineering even four years ago. Of the others, he didn't know anything, other than Lt. Shin's mother was a professor of English literature and she had a younger brother with red hair. And there's something strangely familiar about her, he reminded himself. He frowned as he followed the crowd into the Engineering Conference Room, wondering if he would ever be able to figure out what that was.