2953-11-26 – Tales from the Service: A Personnel Maneuver 

The silence in Captain Sven Danielssen’s duty office dragged on for some seconds after the lieutenant’s departure. For his part, Sven sifted through the files on the desk’s holo-display, as if searching for a form that he would need for what came next. He had no intention of ever finding that form, of course, but the two spacers didn’t know that. 

“Are we really getting transferred, Captain?” Halloran finally asked, his voice trembling. The poor spacer looked really terrified, though Sven didn’t see why. It wasn’t like a transfer was a death sentence. He was terrified enough, at least, to forget himself and speak to someone several ranks up the chain of command without being spoken to. 

For his part, the second spacer – Sung – nudged his fellow and shook his head curtly, evidently remembering protocol better. 

“That’s Lieutenant Ahmetov’s recommendation.” Sven shrugged. “But spacer, we’re out on a patrol. You’re not going anywhere for at least a month, and you’ll get plenty of notice to pack your things before you're transferred off the ship.” 

Halloran shook his head. “Is there some... form of appeal, sir? I like this ship. This crew.” 

Sven arched one eyebrow. “I suppose if you have something you’d like to add to the lieutenant’s report about the incident, that might alter things.” Sven, as the skipper, of course had to approve any transfer request, and his approval was all but guaranteed to be decisive with the Replacement Bureau. These green spacers were unlikely to know this, however. 

“Sir? Add to...” Halloran frowned and looked down at his boots. 

“No, sir.” Sung saluted. “I’m sure Lieutenant Ahmetov’s report is exhaustive.” 

“That’s sort of the problem.” Halloran muttered. 

Sven fixed the spacer with one of his signature wilting glares. “Pardon?” 

“That’s, ah, the bulk of the problem, sir.” Halloran looked up. “If the lieutenant writes his reports like he dresses us down, he'll find no shortage of things to color our dossiers with. It’s going to make it hard for me to land another field posting.” He hesitated, then continued. “You see, it’s, well. This will be my third transfer in less than a year.” 

“Ah.” Sven nodded. He knew only too well how, even if nothing else made it into a spacer’s personnel file, three transfers in a short span would mark him as a liability. This wasn’t precisely fair, of course, but since a skipper couldn’t usually see the full personnel file of a spacer he was being offered as a replacement, such arbitrary metrics were important. No combat commander wanted to take a risk on a potential liability. Sometimes the Bureau wouldn’t even send them out anymore; they’d relegate such spacers to duty on logistics haulers or depot stations. 

“Neither of us did anything to earn that second transfer, Captain.” Sung shook his head sadly. “The XO was just making room to try to get his nephew aboard.” 

“What about this one?” Sven leaned back in his chair.  

“Well...” Sung glanced at his compatriot. “We don’t think so. But the lieutenant is correct. We weren’t at our post in time at the start of the second shift drill.” 

“It was my fault, not Sung’s.” Halloran shook his head. “I, ah. When the alarm sounded, I jumped, and I dropped my datapad into the maintenance panel we’d been working on when the alarm sounded. Sung should have gone ahead without me, but he stayed to help me fish it out.” 

“That seems like a relatively minor infraction.” Sven turned to Sung. “But the report I read indicates a string of incidents leading up to this one.” 

“Well.” Sung swallowed. “We were also the lowest scoring gun crew team in three of the four drills prior. Not by much, you understand. Ten percent or so. If I may be so frank, sir, I think he was looking for any reason to write us up because of that.” 

Sven knew that ten percent was indeed a large value to be worse than the other gunners, but given that the pair were the most inexperienced members of the entire crew, it was a perfectly reasonable value. What they needed was better mentorship and more practice, not a transfer. “He assigned you together as a team?” 

“He said he didn’t want to break up any of the veteran teams, sir.” Sung nodded. 

Sven hid his displeasure. It did no good to show the ratings any dissention in their chain of command. Still, Ahmetov had gone too far this time. “Do you think you could meet his standards if you had more practice?” 

“Er.” Sung looked over at his companion, who shook his head. “N-no. I think the lieutenant has already made up his mind about us.” 

“I mean, spacer, if you had the opportunity to practice for a few weeks, could you consistently score within two or three percent of the other gun crews?” 

This time it was Halloran who answered. “I don’t see any reason why not. It’ll take some time, and some pointers from the other gunners.” 

Sven nodded. “Then I will suspend this transfer request for one week.” Melirose Diver wouldn’t have any way to transmit signals back to Sagittarius Gate for that long anyway, but they didn’t need to know that. “Consider yourselves on punishment duty. Until further notice, you are off the department duty rotation. You have no duties except the gunnery-sims for the next week. I’ll see if Ahmetov can spare a veteran gun team to come down and see what they can do to help you out.” 

“T-thank you, sir!” Halloran saluted. 

“But.” Sven held up one hand. “If those performance scores don’t improve by at least two or three percent, I am going to approve Ahmetov’s recommendation. And if there’s any action in that time, you’re both on damage support duties. Stay away from the gunnery stations.”  

“We understand.” Sung nodded. “We’ll get started right away.” 

Not every captain or every ship has the luxury of bringing up the marginal performers to the high degree of excellence which is important in combat. It seems Melirose Diver was not expecting much action when it took aboard the replacements its gunnery chief so disliked, but if the ship was expecting to go into combat the next shift, I think Captain Danielssen might have treated them very differently. Not everyone has the head to be a good gunner for any of the weapon systems aboard a ship of war, and those who simply can't get it right away are unlikely to grasp it over time.