"I expect a list of names to reduce this roster by ten percent by 0800 hours tomorrow. Do not be late!"
Qiln's voice boomed, caught in the threshold between the bridge and the conference room. It wasn't a suggestion; it was a sentence. He threw the words back over his shoulder for the benefit of the entire bridge crew before storming toward the turbolift.
Yeoman Ja'el stood frozen, her furry Caitian hands clutching her datapad against her chest as if it were a shield. She took a shuddering breath as her worst fears crystallized into reality. Around her, the bridge was silent, but the air was electric with shock. Every officer—from the helmsman to the tactical station—watched the flashing hiss of the transporting Zakdorn.
The second the flash cleared the deck, Ja'el ducked into her workstation and tapped her commbadge. Her voice was a frantic whisper. "Guys… it's true. It's happening. Qiln just ordered the Captain to cut the staff by ten percent. That's five hundred people! Five hundred of us are going to lose our commissions!"
As she spoke, the sheer weight of the number hit her, and her whisper rose into a thin, anxious wail.
—
In Main Engineering, Ensign Thomas let out a sharp, jagged gasp. "Ten percent? Five hundred crew members? They're going to can us!"
His outburst caught the rapt attention of every lower-decks technician in the power-grid alcove.
Work stopped. The steady hum of the warp core suddenly sounded like a ticking clock.
Rumors of the dreaded Rank and Yank spread faster than a plasma fire through a dry grassland. From department to department, deck to deck, the news mutated. What started as a staffing audit in the conference room became a whisper in the Jefferies Tubes, which became a frantic debate in the break rooms.
By the time the news reached the lower storage bays, the rumor had inflated into a nightmare: twenty-five percent of the crew was to be purged, and the bottom performers were being sent to Federation penal colonies for "dishonoring the Alliance."
The atmosphere aboard the TGC Nexus shifted from a home to a battlefield.
Pride in craftsmanship vanished, replaced by a desperate, frantic scramble for "completion marks." Crew members no longer took the time to ensure a relay was perfectly calibrated; they hurriedly slapped components together and logged the task as "finished" the microsecond they were done.
Cooperation died. Tools were no longer shared between stations. The fear of helping a colleague—and thus allowing that colleague to outperform them—poisoned every interaction. Helping a friend now meant risking your own spot in the "safe" percentile.
Casual greetings were replaced by anxious collisions in the corridors. Apologies were forgotten, replaced by jagged outbursts of anger and redirected stress.
—
Even the ever-cheerful Nurse Palmer—the ship's beloved "Nurse Heart"—was not immune.
The warmth that usually defined Sickbay had evaporated. Instead of taking the extra time to ensure her patients felt comforted, Tessa hurriedly applied dermal regenerators and hyposprays, then moved on without a word. In her rush to improve her "turnaround time," her hands shook.
She misread a medical padd. A decimal point was missed. A dosage was doubled.
Within the hour, the very patients she was trying to "efficiently" heal began suffering from unwanted reactions. Untreated symptoms flared as incorrect medications took hold. The medical staff, already on edge, suddenly found themselves buried under a wave of new emergencies created by their own frantic haste.
—
In the Melting Pot, Tuvix stood behind his counter, shaking his head in utter dismay. The ship's self-appointed Morale Officer watched the chaos through the eyes of a man who saw his sanctuary collapsing.
The lounge, once a place of laughter and cross-cultural exchange, was now a hall of ghosts. Crew members sat in silence, stuffing their faces as quickly as possible before bolting back to their stations without a moment to rest. No one lingered. No one shared a story.
Tuvix tried to wave down a passing technician, but the man didn't even look up. Every attempt at conversation was dismissed or ignored.
"What has gotten into everyone?" Tuvix whispered to the bustling room. He looked at the frantic faces of his friends and saw only strangers.