A day in the life of Renai Khan

[mrjonesandme]

Renai Khan sighed heavily as he stood in his office behind his desk. Well, technically it was his office-he was the CEO, after all. In actuality, it was a shared office space, his station manager was currently seated behind the desk. It would be nice to be able to have a seat while I update the personnel rosters, he mused to himself. Renai was currently undergoing perhaps his most arduous task of the day. One of his modified Selene freighters, the Sea Serpent, had successfully completed a boarding operation on a meandering SCA Behemoth. While this was good news for the company, it meant a rather grueling process for Renai.

I just can't believe that there isn't a better way of doing this yet he thought to himself, as he picked up his data pad. Well, time to get this over with then. Renai comm'd the new Behemoth-it was time to tell the marines aboard to fly the ship to the nearest dock that the Selene waited at, so he could transfer the crew about. He tapped his datapad, selecting the ID for the Behemoth, and attempted to open up comms with it. No response. "Ah." Renai said aloud, "of course-no-one is in command and the marines are ignoring the calls". He poked and prodded a few more times at the datapad, installing a marine with the least abysmal flight skills to be the temporary captain of the Behemoth. He attempted to open up a comm line again with the destroyer.

"Hello!" the marine said cheerfully to Renai. Renai tapped one of the pre-recorded messages to send to the neanderthal, instructing the marine to dock at the closest station. He hadn't had the time of day to say anything further to him. "Yes sir!" the marine replied, beginning what would be a long task of piloting the damaged ship back to the dock.

Some time later, the marine managed to successfully dock the new Behemoth at the shipyard. An annoying pop up appeared on the data pad, interrupting Renai from the claytronics station he was designing-perhaps with more money coming in, he could afford more competent managers. "Awaiting orders!" the marine said briskly. Before Renai had a chance to tap the pop up, it disappeared. "Argh! What ship was that from-the new behemoth, or the freighter?" Renai yelled. On days like today, he often wanted to fling the datapad out of the nearest air lock. He stopped, glancing over at the manager. The station manager continued staring hollowly at the nearest wall. Renai sighed again and looked down at the data pad. It appeared the freighter had already docked, but it's captain had decided not to inform him of this progress, whereas the idiot aboard the destroyer felt it necessary to announce completion of his task.

Now, Renai thought to himself, time to begin the real work. Renai stretched his fingers, he had a lot of tapping on the datapad to do. He comm'd the first marine on the Behemoth. "Hello!". A picture of the marine appeared, he was wearing a suit and tie. Renai frowned-he thought he had put out a memo regarding the dress code for all company employees to abide by, be they workforce slaves or station managers. Yet, here was one of his marines, appearing before him with a stupid grin and in a business suit. He cleared his throat, precious time was ticking away. "Yes yes, new position" he muttered, first clicking the marines name, then tapping at the freighter, then tapping to confirm the marines assignment as a marine on the freighter. Thirty nine assignments later, Renai sighed a sigh of relief as he admired his work on the data pad below him. The marines were finally back aboard the Sea Serpent and someone with a little more captaining experience was now behind the helm of the Behemoth.

"And now I need to transfer the fighter escorts..". Renai tapped again at the datapad, moving the squadron leader off the Behemoth and back onto the freighter. He stared at the screen in anticipation, waiting to see the little blue lines representing his orders appear on the map. No lines appeared. "Why...why would you do that" he muttered, tapping his way into the docked ships list of the Behemoth. The fighters had not moved. He checked the known orders list for one of them. "Dock..and wait.." he made a noise of frustration as he cleared the order. Suddenly, another pop up appeared on his datapad. 'I'll wait for you to tell me to take off!". "TAKE OFF!!!" Renai yelled, hurling the datapad at the desk. It was going to be a long day indeed.

[linolafett]

If all reports were like this, Florian (sitting next to me) would not be able to continue working because of an acute lack of oxygen...
Thanks for the nice read

[mrjonesandme]

I actually had a few more of these planned, the (mis)adventures of my space CEO as he works with the technical limitations of his planning tool and occasionally insubordinate/incompetent employees.

Sometimes the player owned AI behavior is funny and makes for I think fairly entertaining self-writing story content. I honestly find it amusing how it's usually my low level pilots in combat ships that tend to wander off from fleets/patrols with minds of their own, bite off more then they can chew, then turn tail and run (or explode). It's to the point where it is hard to tell whether that is supposed to happen or not, or if it really is based off sticking 0-1 star pilots with low morale in fighters lol.

[SumUser]

+1

Very entertaining short story --- had me cracking up

I think a story like this one based on a low pilot / low moral captain and his/her misadventures would be great

[mr.WHO]

I actually had a few more of these planned, the (mis)adventures of my space CEO as he works with the technical limitations of his planning tool and occasionally insubordinate/incompetent employees.

Please more! It's well written, funny and I feel related to every bit of it.

[Techedge]

I've been some days off and was nearly missing this! Very well written, hilarious and real!

It really deserves more glory than this few comments so I'm happy to bring this up again.

Thanks, I really hope to read some more. I'm eager. to.

[Ezarkal]

[...], installing a marine with the least abysmal flight skills to be the temporary captain of the Behemoth.

Aaaand you just made me realize that, as I'm currently about to start building up my boarding team, I should include 1-2 former pilots and a handful of engineers among the marines so they can efficiently patch up and maneuver the ship back to the docks.

The devil is in the details, as they say.

Thanks for the read.