<snip!>

“Plans for a Starfleet career? You’re running well ahead of me here,” Katie said as she packed up the remaining items from the toolkit. “My sister always told me that if you look too far down the road, you’ll trip on the cracks right in front of you. Fleet yards would be nice. Chief Engineer… that’s a possibility. Probably not Chief Engineer on a Starbase… that seems like a terrifically mundane assignment. No. At the moment my focus is on the next few years. Promotion to LtJg seems like an appropriate event horizon to me.”

• Cadet Katherine Hobbes

Dael picked up the toolkit after Katie was done packing it up with a small smile at her remarks. “I agree, look too far ahead and you’ll miss the warpcore breach right in front of you, but it pays for us engineers to think ahead. Both in terms of repairs and prevention, and also in careers. Especially when you’re just starting out in the Fleet as a cadet.” He began walking back to the main area of Engineering. “A troubleshooting job goes a lot easier if you have a blueprint to fall back on, same principle can be applied to anything. Just something to think about.” He paused and thought about what next to say, even as a Betazoid he’d always been more reserved and focused on tasks at hand. But he had come into his own some more since taking on this larger role. “If what you showed me just now is any proof, I think you’ll be good addition to the team. Any team, really, and I want you to remember that when thinking ahead. Oh and Starbases aren’t all that dull sometimes. That depends on the same three key factors as any Ferengi business, I was once told. Location, location, location.”

Katie stifled a laugh. Laughing at your immediate supervisor when he wasn’t trying to be funny was seldom the optimal move. In her view, “location” had to take a lower tier than the “people” in determining whether a Starbase was dull. Her tour with the jerk who assigned her continuous sanitary waste systems duty would have been dull even if it had been in orbit around Risa. Or perhaps Dael was right. Perhaps awful people tended to get assigned to dull locations. She would have to think about that one later.

He leaned slightly on the readout table console in the middle of the Engineering deck and crossed his arms. His continuous work at trying to be appear casual to his crewmates. “So, I’ve asked quite a few questions of you. Have any for me, Cadet?”

-Lt. jg Dael Stadi, Chief Engineer

“Just one really. Well… perhaps that is over-simplifying,” Katie said. “Where do I start? Yeah. That will do for a start. We can add my other questions about shift rotations and such later.”

=/\= Cadet Katherine Hobbes, Engineer

OOC: I saw you already started your counselor thread and that’s going well, if you wanted you can also go ahead and get your sickbay check-in thread done and out of the way since you’ve gotten a great handle on our posting system

IC:
“One of the best of questions in my opinion.” Dael replied with a grin. “I always like people on my team who are ready to go. Being on a starship for the first time can be intimidating, but honestly, if you put in the effort and focus on what’s in front of you things will feel all the more comfortable. So the sooner you dive in, the better.” He thought for a moment. “Barring questions of shift placement and the like, the first thing you should do is meet the ship’s counselor. I’m sure they’ve already setup an appointment in the system for you once you were ‘on-boarded’ by the quartermaster. After that, a quick trip to medical to make sure all your parts are in working condition, and then you’ll be released to my department and I can add you to the duty roster. From there, well, whatever this tour of duty throws at you.”

He grabbed a PADD off of the Engineering readout table, and made a few quick inputs. “And....there. Like I said earlier, now you’ll have access to our ship’s schematics from any authorized terminal you need. Just don’t go showing them to any Romulans or Cardassians and you’ll be fine. Anything else I can help answer?”

-Lt. jg Dael Stadi, CE