Warning: The following contains EXTREME geekdom, seriously folks, geek^2 at least. I've watched a LOT of Startrek in my life. Clicking on the pics should give you the full resolution version.
Stardate 87720.42 Ensign's Log.
Name: Simmus Tethys Etako
Role: Starfleet Engineer
Ship: U.S.S. Determination, NCC 93545
Race: Tucanean
Age: 34
Gender: Male
My name is Simmus, most of my friends call me Sparky. I'm an engineer. How good an engineer am I? Well, you know transporters? Ever notice how when you beam something there is a cool sparkly effect, blue and white sparkles, with a sort of bright white light wiping across? Well, that's my job. Not the actual beaming, as such, no, that's really insanely complicated. My job is to ensure that the effects that go along with it are done properly.
The actual beaming process without the sparkles just looks like people fading away. It turned out that psychologically this put a lot of folks off using the equipment, so Starfleet Engineering Corps leapt into action. Anyway, it's harder than you'd think. Well, probably not much harder I guess.
So, this particular trip was a doozy! I was in the bar of the Determination, there wasn't much going on. Well, there was a Borg attack happening, but there were other people hanging around, so I figured everything was under control.
Well the bartender is a bit of a medium (on the small side of medium, actually). Rather than being able to "tear the veil" and speak to the dead, she said she could speak to someone from another alternate universe! I flipped some credits over and lo and behold, I hear Ambassador Spock's voice! He said how he had done the whole red matter thing and then proceeded to tell me what had happened since his disappearance.
I knew something was dodgy when he started talking about what had happened here, in MY universe! We're at war with the Klingons, the Romulans, the Dominion, the Borg... Yeah, good one "Spock" you told me stuff that I already know when you're supposed to be in another universe in another time.
I demanded my money back. She just pointed out the window to distract me.
Okay, there's now a Borg Cube outside. Shooting at stuff. Just then I get a hail from the Captain. He needs to see me! Alright!
Of course, things are never that simple. Get this, he wants me to beam over to the Khitomer to help out over there. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for serving to the best of my abilities. The Khitomer's namesake was a massacre, soooo what does that tell you. I'm not sure I'm really happy about the trip. Apparently things are so bad over there that the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) is nominally in charge. Great. Well, I beam over anyway, how else will I ever get promoted.
You may notice in the above image, the TX-423 version of the transporter effects, note in particular the vertical bright strips of... right, you're not interested really are you. Well, the EMH, believe it or not, also uses some of my work. When holograms usually glitch you just can't see them, but Betazoid empath testing found that this was psychologically harmful to patients. So we engineered a little effect, similar to beaming, to sort of fill gaps when required.
Not bad, huh? I went with horizontal stripes for this type of effect because when you're transfoobulating the photonic extracombobulatorial matrix... Right, sorry, back to the story.
He needed me to do some leg work for him, no problems, I can scan stuff, and fix stuff. There were some Borg shut in behind a force field that needed beaming out into space. Hehe. No sweat!
Of course, after that I had to actually do a little combat. Now I'm not afraid of my phaser or anything, and I guess I need some practice. I've gotta admit, I'm a fan of the old roll across the ground, jump behind cover, leap onto tables. I've gotta be careful though, sometimes my latex falls off.
Oh, right, I didn't mention that. I AM actually an alien, seriously, from the Tucanae globular cluster. Well, one of the many stars therein, but Starfleet just labels everybody from there by the one name. To get into Starfleet I wanted to take advantage of their Equal Opportunity program. My species look absolutely identical to humans though, so I took the liberty of adding some latex to my forehead and nose. Now I look like an alien (which I am anyway) and it made my application much more likely to succeed.
After a quick Borg bashing expedition I made it to the warp core, helped defend it and then was urgently called back to the Determination. Fortunately these Borg were malfunctioning and weren't as dangerous as normal Borg. Unfortunately they were still pretty tough. While I was on the Khitomer a Borg boarding party had attacked the Determination and killed every single officer that was of a higher rank than me.
Sure, ordinarily that would have me crying in my Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster for weeks, but in this particular situation, I had to hold it together for the betterment of all - also it made me acting Captain - woohoo!
I quickly promoted a first officer, Anthi. She's the one on the left in the picture below. And no, I didn't pick her because she was the hottest, I would not make my first act as Captain something so blatantly sexist. Why then? Um. She's got a red top on, that means she can fight stuff better than me. That's why. Yes. Absolutely.
Without putting too fine a point on it, being a Captain is way cooler than being an Engineering Ensign. I immediately sprang into action, rescuing people from damaged ships and blowing up Borg ships left, right, center, up, down, you name it!
Sure, there's danger, but I have a good feeling about this. I even helped, in my first mission as Captain, to assist in taking out one of the Borg cubes. Sure it had already been massively damaged, and sure, there were many other people helping. All of whom were also Ensigns that had been fortuitously (for them, not for the previous crew) promoted in a similar way to myself.
We also managed to save some colonial types who had a bit of a Borg infestation going on.
After rescuing so many people, the Admiralty back on Earth wanted to personally thank me. We warped back to Earth and, as always, were happy to see that blue and white planet. It reminds me of home. Sigh. Except for the blue, my planet didn't have much of that. Oh, and not so much the white. Actually, we all live underground and the planet just looks like a massive browny black rock. But you know, the poetry of the moment and all.
I detoured slightly to buzz over one of my good friends, he lives in Australia, a large island continent on the bottom of the planet. For some reason, the Earth people always build things in space lined up with the North American continent. Go figure.
Well, I figured that was it for my all to brief captaincy, so reported to the Admiral. He has fish. In a tank. And some space ship models above his desk. I'm not sure if he's so old that he's reliving his childhood or what.
Well the good news is that with all of the recently deceased officers, they still need good men *aliens* like myself, so I get to keep the ship! Plus I get to refit it and got a promotion to Lieutenant!
After visiting my mates in the engineering department I upgraded the Determination and got set to do some galactic exploration of my very own!
My first port of call was to stop in at a freighter that had been having some difficulties. It turned out that it was also under attack by Orion pirates. Of course, that meant I had to leap into action and use more photon torpedoes and phaser blasts. The new refit proved extremely reliable.
I quickly turned pirates into ex-pirates.
Of course, that wasn't all. There were pirates actually on the freighter, so I beamed down to take a look. Their warp core was not doing so well, although it looked very large and way more purple than most cores I'd seen, my keen engineering skills told me that it was on the way out. Notice my away team in their neat, clean, red shirts. They don't have names. For some reason I find this to be very disturbing and have a bad feeling about their future safety.
Mission accomplished, people saved, time to move on to my next patrol. A nice planet, a few asteroids.
Upon beaming down I find that there's a strike going on. The miners are worried that holograms are going to take over their jobs, that they don't have the best tools and equipment, that their holodeck is busted, that there are pirates nearby etc. Whinge, whinge, whine whine. Still, I used my supreme diplomatic skills to save the day.
I am sure that Anthi and her rifle were of only minor influence next to my Vulcan hand signy tricks. I did a little scanning with my tricorder before we left and found some interesting information.
Apparently some Klingons were planning to make a move! Sure diplomacy is good for mining disputes, but I wanted to show the Klingons what REAL diplomacy is all about.
They won't be causing anybody any problems from now on, that's for sure. Well, that was a successful day, by anybody's measure. In review. I started out as an Engineering Ensign. Everybody that ranked higher than me died. I became acting Captain! I battled Borg bravely and brilliantly. I am now officially the Captain of the U.S.S. Determination. All in all a complete success. On my to do list: write letters of condolences to the 230 officers who died. Warp on to the next mission... Engage!
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