Determining the Crew Roles
“I’ve requested it, but it seems it will take some time to confirm.”
“In that case, let’s wait. But since just waiting would be boring, I’ll introduce you to my crew. Meyrica, could you call Kate and Maria here?”
“Understood, Acting Captain.”
“Acting Captain? Isn’t Lieutenant Bruce the Captain?”
“Yes, I received my appointment from Her Highness earlier, so I became the Captain. However, they haven’t seen me until just now, so they probably don’t know.”
“I see… Could this be the reason for the delay here?”
“Ha! That might be it. If even they don’t know, the palace guards certainly wouldn’t. It makes sense. They probably wouldn’t let anyone but the Acting Captain through, and since I’ve been promoted to Captain, I no longer fit that description. I guess this is another drawback of bureaucracy. Ah, it looks like Chief Shinome has arrived.”
Meyrica brought Kate and Maria.
“Let me introduce them. Although we haven’t officially decided on roles yet, this is Second Lieutenant Meyrica, who will be my Executive Officer. This is Adjutant Kate, who I intend to put in charge of attacks, and this is Adjutant Maria, who will be in charge of engineering. These three are my officers. I’ll introduce the others later. Lieutenant Meyrica, Adjutant Kate and Maria, this is Captain Ford, who commands Her Highness’s space cruiser. He’ll be accompanying us on the inspection voyage of the [Shunmin].”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I’m Ford, just introduced by Captain Bruce. I look forward to working with you.”
“Meyrica, he didn’t say ‘Captain’ just now.”
“Maria, be quiet for a moment. …I apologize. I’m Meyrica, entrusted with the role of Executive Officer.”
As Meyrica was greeting them, Chief Shinome came alone from behind the gate.
“Acting Captain Bruce, what’s going on?”
Chief Shinome immediately asked me upon seeing me.
“I’ve been promoted to Captain, so it looks like we’re causing trouble for Chief Shinome.”
“Huh? That’s…”
“I just received my appointment from Her Highness earlier, making me the Captain. That seems to be the cause.”
“I… I’m sorry, Captain Bruce. It seems my instructions were incorrect. Hey, I vouch for these people. Let them through. And since the crew is returning, lower the alert level to normal. Got it?”
Chief Shinome was issuing new orders to the security personnel at the gate.
“Well, well, we can finally pass through.”
Maria grumbled to Meyrica as they passed through the gate.
Since we had a bit of a scuffle at the gate, Captain Ford’s subordinates were able to join us, and Chief Sardar arrived with his assistant.
This worked out well.
We were finally able to meet up with everyone.
I briefly greeted the gathered people and then led everyone through the gate.
As soon as we entered the ship, I asked Meyrica to gather all crew members in the rear hangar.
Fortunately, since we were all moving together, there was no need to gather them.
I spoke to the crew gathered in the rear hangar about what was to come, and then introduced Captain Ford, Chief Sardar, and the others.
Earlier, I had introduced Captain Ford to the three officers, but here I wanted to introduce him to the entire crew at once.
As for future plans, I informed them that Her Highness would visit again tomorrow to issue appointments to everyone, and that we would depart for the inspection voyage as soon as resupply was complete.
After that, I dismissed everyone, but we needed to prepare rooms for our guests, so I took them to the lounge that serves as the officers’ mess hall.
Originally, Meyrica had no intention of holing up in the officers’ mess hall for their own benefit, so this place was hardly used.
Let’s consider this a good use of the space.
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“This is the area that serves as the officers’ mess hall. I’m not sure if you’ve heard the report, but this ship’s interior uses recycled parts, and we used lounge components from a luxury liner, which is why it looks like this. Please feel free to use this area. We’ll guide you to your individual rooms after this.”
“Captain, I had heard about it, but this ship is amazing. It has a more impressive lounge space than my cruiser, and no one would complain if we held a small party here. I think Her Highness made a good purchase.”
“So we can use this freely? Then can I spread out my documents and do research here?”
“Yes, but please cooperate with others who might use this space. Meyrica, we can’t put the Captain and Chief in the suites, can we?”
“That’s right. We have one more room besides the one for Her Highness’s use, but we also have some deluxe rooms that we use, which are slightly less luxurious. We still have some of those available. To be honest, I think those rooms are too luxurious even for me, so I believe they should be satisfactory for someone of cruiser captain class.”
“Oh, then let’s do that. But how many rooms did we make for officers again?”
“We have twenty deluxe rooms, forty first-class cabins, and sixty second-class cabins. There are also three multipurpose halls. Since we’ve reduced the crew to two-thirds of the pre-renovation capacity, we have plenty of living space.”
“Then let’s guide the Captain and others. Maria, could you come with us? I’m honestly not sure about the rooms we haven’t used yet.”
“Captain… right? Understood.”
“Now then, Captain Ford, Chief Sardar, let me guide you to your individual rooms. Please feel free to use them starting today.”
I said this and led our guests to the officers’ individual rooms, but both of them refused.
They said it was simply too luxurious.
No matter how much I explained that even our three officers use them, and that my room as the Captain is even more extravagant, they wouldn’t accept it. In the end, the two of them settled for first-class cabins used by non-commissioned officers, and their subordinates took second-class cabins.
Why is it so exhausting just to assign guest rooms?
Anyway, after registering their names on the monitors at the entrance of each room, we returned to the lounge.
“Captain, Chief, we’ll always have someone accompany you, so please feel free to explore as you wish.”
“Captain, if it’s not too soon, could you give us a tour of the ship?”
“Maria, I’m sorry, but could you guide our guests today? Feel free to show and explain your favorite places on the ship.”
“Huh? Is that okay? Alright. Then, everyone, I’ll guide you around the ship. I’ll show you everything from the weapons control room to the engine room, and since I was involved in the renovation, I should be able to answer most of your questions.”
“Oh, that’s helpful. Then, shall we?”
With that, Maria took the guests somewhere in the ship.
“Meyrica, could you come with me to the Captain’s office?”
“It’s about the ship’s organization, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve officially received my appointment, and even the ‘acting’ part has been removed. We need to get things in order.”
“Understood.”
After that, I and Meyrica secluded ourselves in the Captain’s office and began consulting over personnel documents.
We already know that the Executive Officer, Attack Chief, and Engineering Chief can only be those three, but we need to decide on the rest.
Above all, our second-class space soldiers are all just cadets, and we have many makeshift first-class space soldiers and non-commissioned officers.
Arranging their positions is… giving me a headache.
It took three hours for the two of us to finally come up with a plan.
We decided on our ship’s formation.
“Of course, I’m the Captain, Meyrica is the Executive Officer. And Kate as Attack Chief, Maria as Engineering Chief. That’s settled.”
“Yes, there’s no other choice, and more importantly, we can keep Maria’s regular station on the bridge.”
“Indeed, we want to keep those two where we can see them. Not that I have any complaints about their abilities, though~”
“The rest is the problem. Next is Kasumi, but…”
“If we put Ryoko, who was treated as a rookie, with Kaori and Ai, there shouldn’t be any problems. For the second-class space soldiers, we can rotate them through various departments. After all, they’re still cadets.”
“We don’t need to decide on the rotation right away, but yeah, let’s have those two who seem to have free time decide on that.”
“That’s a good idea. Then I’ll inform Her Highness about the decided formation.”
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