Ship-Wide Tactical Drill
Posted on Thu Aug 13th, 2026 @ 7:49pm by Captain Connor Nolan & Lieutenant Talia Renn & Lieutenant Jennifer Richardson M.D. & Commander Nasra sh'Zarath & Commander Erris Sudis & Lieutenant Commander Saori Takebe
Edited on on Wed Sep 9th, 2026 @ 1:14pm
1,731 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Preamble
Timeline: 0412 HR Mission Day 11
The ship's chronometer crept up from 0411 to 0412 while Commander Sudis Erris sat in the command chair with a skeleton crew. He had pressed a button on the chair's console to bring up the readiness preparation drill. The bridge began to glow in a yellowish orange hue and the klaxon began to sound off.
He opened the ship-wide comms, his voice steady, carrying the calm authority of someone who had lived through enough real emergencies to never panic during a fake one.
"Yellow alert. All hands to duty stations. This is a drill."
Throughout the Venture, the sudden, rhythmic thrum of the klaxon shattered the artificial night. Deep in the crew quarters, officers were jolted from heavy, deep sleep, rolling out of their bunks into the jarring amber light. There was the frantic rustle of fabric as half-awake crew members scrambled for uniform tunics, the slapping of boots against the deck plates, and the low, collective groan of a crew realizing what time it was.
[Deck 17 - Talia Renn's quarters ]
Talia had been awake before the alert sounded.
She lay still in the darkened quarters, listening to the low, almost subliminal presence of the Venture around her. A Galaxy-class starship never truly slept. Even at 0412 there were hundreds of minds aboard, softened by sleep but never entirely silent to her. The hour before her alarm was one of the few times the weight of them receded enough for her own thoughts to feel entirely her own.
Then the amber light washed across the room.
“Of course,” she murmured as the alert followed.
She was out of bed before the announcement finished, pulling on her uniform with practiced speed. Her hair was gathered and twisted into a ponytail as she crossed toward the door, fastening the last closure at her collar.
By the time the turbolift doors opened near Main Security, there was little sign that Lieutenant Renn had been summoned from bed at all.
Talia stepped through them at pace, eyes moving immediately across the duty stations and personnel assembling around them.
“Status,” she said, sharp enough to cut through the remaining haze of sleep. “I want every security section accounted for, response times logged, and armed teams ready for deployment. Treat it as real until someone tells you otherwise.”
[Deck 14, Jennifer Richard's Quarters]
Jennifer jerked away as her quarters filled with the alert sounds and the amber lighting cut through the darkness that had cocooned her before. Partly bewildered and partly panicked; it took moments more for the Doctor's consciousness to catch up to the situation.
Adrenaline pushed through her body as the memories of times before like this came back to the surface of her mind. A time when instinct took over, an instinct that had never wyned in her time away.
Cursing under her breath, Jennifer quickly pulled on her uniform; wrapping a hair tie around her wrist before virtually running from her room. Her fingers worked their way through her hair even as she entered the turbolift, muttering the word bridge as she attempted to tame the strands back into a bun.
As the doors slide open, it took little time for her to remember the direction of her position on the bridge, taking a seat beside Sudis as she finished pulling her hair tie to secure her bun, "Commander...what can you tell me?"
Sudis turned to Jennifer while he maintained professionalism. She could catch a glimpse of a smile from his lips before returning to his stern facial gestures, "Drill. Note the response times from Medical."
The move from soft back to professional didn't escape before she relaxed subtly, now there was an understood the ship wasn't in a big level of danger. Easing down into her chair beside Sudis, the counsellor began to run her fingers across her screen as she logged medical staffs responce times; frowning a little as her old training as Chief Medical Officer on previous ships kicked in.
Having not served on a Galaxy before, the counsellor split her screen as she brought up the responce times coming in from medical and a comparison of the ranges required came up beside. Everything was based on a persons position on the ship at the time of the yellow alert alongside their required duty station.
Chewing on her lower lip as the information scrolled by in matters of seconds, she couldn't help the slight frown on her features as she begun to interpret the data.
[Deck 08, Captain's Quarters]
Nolan had not yet found the optimal setting for his quarters air conditioning settings, and as a result had spent the entire night tossing on turning on top of the luxury bed trying to get somewhat comfortable. He'd only really just fallen in a decent sleep, when the chirp of the communication system, followed by yellow alert klaxon snapped him from a recurring dream about his recent love interest, into the stark reality of the life of being a starship Captain. He let out a low, frustrated growl as the automatic lighting rose the ambient light level to something he could move around to.
As he swung himself out of the bed, and towards his dresser, he noticed strips of yellow alert lighting that he'd not previously noticed in the ships decor. He sucked his teeth, following by a deep sigh.
"Computer, Coffee." he ordered as he pulled himself into his duty uniform. He quickly checked himself in a mirror to ensure he was presentable and then made his way to one of his quarters two exits, grabbing the freshly replicated mug of coffee enroute. "Nolan to Bridge, Report."
"Drill, Captain. Yellow alert readiness assessment, 0412. Response times being logged." He glanced at the chronometer. "All sections reporting in."
[Saori Takebe's Quarters]
Saori groaned as she reluctantly opened her eyes. Slowly the blurriness of the room around her started to sharpen into focus. "And I was just getting to the part where he was going to kiss me...' she complained as she swung her legs out from under the covers. Crossing the room she grabbed her uniform and quickly changed out of her nightwear.
Only moments later she was wiping the sleep reside from her eyes as the turbolift sped towards deck one. "I hate middle of the night drills... Its ride for the universe to disturb any womans sleep, let alone mine!"
[Deck 1, Main Bridge ]
As Nasra entered the bridge she heard the captain's call but having not been present for the start of the event she had no answer for them. She proceeded to see who was the senior officer in charge for the moment and to see if it was her place to take command until the CO arrived. Seeing the XO was standing near the command chair she made her way to the operations console and signed in after relieving who was present and began going over the systems.
"Lieutenant, I need power distribution readouts across all decks. Show me anything that spiked in the first ninety seconds," Sudis ordered.
Nolan strode out of the rear port side turbolift, mug of coffee in hand. He surveyed the bridge as he made his way down the slight gradient and towards the command horse shoe.
"Well Commander, how are we performing? To your exacting expectations?" he stood rather than forcing the Executive Officer from the center chair, taking a long draw from his coffee mug.
"We are performing in the thirtieth percentile range," the Commander repositioned himself out of the Captain's chair for his own. He access the control panel on his chair to pull up information in regards to the drill he was presently running. "For a Galaxy-class with a new and unfamiliar crew that's better than expected."
The Captain’s eyes narrowed, as he computed what the Executive Officer has just told him. “I’m not sure I would agree Commander. I want this ship in the top ten percent of the fleet, we are after all supposed to the the flagship in the Gamma Quadrant. Keep monitoring the stats as they come in. On the back of this drill, I want all Department Heads to submit a lessons identified report and action plan for improving our performance.”
Rather than take the seat the Commander had vacated for him, he turned and headed towards his Ready Room and entered it without with saying another word.
A very tired Saori emerged from one of the rear turbolift. She was slightly slumped and her hair didn't give off its usual shine and wasn't styled as most people saw. She held up a hand lazily. "Reporting, I'll go boot up the science console." She yawned.
The drill continued for another ten minutes. Simulated failures and damage reports continued to arrive, forcing departments to react to changing conditions rather than simply completing the actions expected of them at the first sounding of the alarm. Response times were recorded, communications monitored and mistakes allowed to play out rather than being immediately corrected. Only when the exercise had gathered enough useful data was the order finally given to stand down, bringing the ship out of its simulated emergency and returning it to normal operations.
Alert indicators disappeared from consoles, compartment doors reopened, and personnel returned to whatever duties had been interrupted by the exercise… or for Alpha Shift, back to their racks.
The drill had exposed no single catastrophic failure, only the accumulation of small delays, missed acknowledgements and moments of hesitation that, taken together, had left them some distance from the standard expected of them.
The data would be reviewed, the weak points identified and the lessons folded into the next exercise. Then over the coming weeks and months, they would do it again, shaving seconds from response times and turning conscious actions into instinct. There would be complaints, tired eyes and more than a few muttered curses directed towards whoever had decided that readiness needed to be tested before most of the crew had finished their first coffee.
Nolan expected nothing less. He had inherited a capable crew, but capability and readiness were not the same thing, and he had no intention of discovering the difference when lives depended upon it. The numbers from that morning would give him a starting point; what followed would determine whether they could meet the standard he expected of them.
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