MJ had been busy during his week working with NE Velez to get up to speed.

One of the first things he learned was that despite the fact that Starfleet had attempted to standardize tactics and shipboard procedures, no two ships ran the same.

Ensign Shau had served on the Pickett for two years under the same Chief of Security. Once he’d learned how the woman liked to do business, things pretty much stayed the same.

Velez had more varied experience than him by far, having served on two ships and under a whopping five Department Heads. Even on the same ship, the personality of the department head changed the tone of how things operated. Some were very mechanistic with a top-down leadership style, while others were more organic with a flatter hierarchy.

And that wasn’t even counting the difference in ship classes. Velez had gone from a Memorial-class Battlecruiser to the Chimera, a Mjolnir-class Dreadnought. The size of the Starfleet crew on the Chimera was more than four times the size of the Battlecruiser, which required additional layers of supervision to manage that many personnel. On a smaller ship, MJ got to know everyone on board to one degree or another. Velez said that was almost impossible on a larger ship, with crew transferring in and out all the time.

And that didn’t even take into account the addition of around 700 Marines, which required further refinements to procedures and new personality types to account for.

The one blessedly similar thing was the weapon and defensive systems. Though the number and classification of the systems onboard were different, their operation was familiar. Unfortunately, there was a whole slew of additional tactics, techniques, and procedures he needed to learn due to the Air Wing onboard. The Chimera had to fight differently when launching fighters than when it was recovering fighters. There were also different procedures for when the Wing was attacking, conducting long-range strikes or patrols, or when they were maintaining a defensive screen.

Suffice it to say, Ensign Shau had been a little naïve about being able to jump right into the swing of things on the Chimera.

He had not thought Lt Reid’s requirement frivolous by any means, but MJ had failed to understand the scope of the knowledge gap he possessed. That first day working with Velez had opened his eyes, and he’d put in long hours to learn everything he’d needed to learn.

The Chief of Security had afforded him a reset, and he was determined to take full advantage of that opportunity.

Ensign MJ Shau - Security Officer - USS Chimera