Post-Crisis Crisis

Posted on Sat Sep 20th, 2025 @ 2:01pm by Lieutenant Commander Jalay Prinnet

988 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Pilot - "The Gate"
Location: Main Engineering
Timeline: MD001, immediately after the battle

”All stations stand down to Yellow Alert.”

Commodore McEntyre’s voice over the comm still sounded excited, but relieved, at least to Jalay. The accent lights around Main Engineering flickered back from red to yellow and the overall illumination brightened. Some of the alarms continued, but others subsided.

“Department heads, submit damage and casualty reports to the XO. XO to the Bridge. Commodore out.”

The warp core had been pulsing at an elevated rate to provide power to all of the Guinevere’s combat systems. On the Master Systems Display, the shield generators began to stabilize. As the weapons powered down, the core automatically slowed its heartbeat as the ship demanded less of its awesome power.

So why was Prinnet's heartbeat still racing?

Heartbeats are palukooshit.

Jalay hadn’t actually had to do much combat engineering in her past, and even less of it had been as the chief of anything. Maintenance, improvisation, jury-rigging, adaptation—the fabled Starfleetturning rocks into replicators—these things she knew. But overseeing an entire department of non-Bajorans was still challenging.

“Alright, everyone,” she raised her voice to be heard over the hubbub of engineering. It cracked a little, which annoyed her. “We’re activating after-action protocols, level 2—no, level 3. Check on your teams, make sure injuries are taken care of. Work in teams of at least two and keep sidearms on, just in case the Romulans left us any surprises.”

Those Romulans were probably surprised when you incinerated them in a plasma trap. It was a nasty thought. And strangely, Prinnet’s internal voice pronounced Romulans with the syllable cadence of Cardassians.

“We’ve got reinforcements on the way, but don’t assume we’re out of the fire yet. Focus on restoring critical systems before comfort systems or cosmetic damage—we can live without a replicator for weeks, but one phaser power relay or control link could be the difference between life and death.”

She wasn’t doing well, she could see it in the crew’s faces. Their expressions said: Do you think we don’t know what to do? Or, ’Life and death’ is awfully dramatic and not a Starfleet way to say things. Or, Is our former terrorist chief engineer the right person for this job?

Brusquely, she finished, “Stay safe and let’s keep our side of the street cleaned up.” She turned around and went back into her office before she could see their annoyed, judgmental, worried expressions, the ones she just knew they would wear.

Something got in her eye, and she swiped at it angrily. Her hand came back red again—oh, right, that cut on her forehead from when the ship was first fired upon and she failed to brace herself, like a novice spacer on their first trip off-planet, not at all like an officer with decades of experience. Like a fool.

Prinnet knew she needed to get a grip before anyone came into her office and realized that she was out of her depth on a ship like the Guinevere and deserved to be transferred back to something like a remote monitoring post or drummed out of the service entirely. She sat heavily at her desk, its bulk between her and the door, like a barricade from the outside world.

Her eyes landed on the little crocheted momento that Lieutenant Rell had given her the first day that she’d come aboard the Guinevere. She kept it displayed on a stand on her desk, one of the very few personal items in the office. If the Rell from February 2388 knew that Jalay was going to be a dud of a chief engineer the instant the ship came under serious enemy fire, would she still have given her this little relic? Would Rell have given this gift to someone worthy, like Commander Vale, who to Jalay’s mind was everything a Starfleet officer was supposed to be?

Elen Rell would be kind to you even if you were in the brig for dereliction of duty, she thought. She likes you. She considers herself your friend.

Her nasty side returned, Elen Rell is incapable of being unkind. It’s genetic. But she wants your job, she’s just waiting for you to fail so she can move up.

But her logical mind rebelled at that thought, which helped calm her racing heartbeat a little. It was unworthy of Elen Rell to ascribe such malicious ambition to her. Prinnet’s panic turned more towards shame. By some measure, an improvement.

Cressida and Alina and Elen and the Commodore—even internally, she couldn’t call him Elias—none of them want you to fail. They want you to be better than this. So be better.

It felt strange to center herself around the crew instead of the Prophets. During the Resistance, when she got like this and her heart was going to beat out of her chest, she could reach out to the Prophets, and she knew that they reached back to her. She knew that her actions were justified, that every trap or bomb or act of sabotage brought the Prophets’ chosen people closer to divinity, and freedom from the Cardassians.

But there were no Prophets. There were only Wormhole Aliens. But could the Guinevere’s crew fill the hole in Prinnet’s soul that the Wormhole Aliens had left behind?

She wasn’t sure. But it was a spark of an idea, and she seized on it.

She decided to take her own orders and head to Sickbay for some biological maintenance on the gash on her forehead. Taking care of herself could be a good example for the crew.

For her crew.

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