James Madison Mission 01: "Lost in Space"
The James Madison, newly assigned to Special Operations, is sent to covertly observe a meeting being conducted by the Breen and an unknown party. With the objective complete the James Madison was detected and disabled by the Breen vessel. Without power the crew found themselves being boarded by pirates. Luckily, three of the boarders turned out to be friendly and the ship managed to return under her own power. Heading back to Star Base Alpha a threat was being received to the Federation.
Captain's Logs
Commander Torkav
Stardate 21107.27
Star Fleet Intelligence has sent us, via Special Operations Command, to observe, covertly, a meeting between the Breen and an unknown party.
The journey here was mostly uneventful. Our newer crew members seem to be integrating into the crew okay, and Lieutenant Mihar seems to be an adequate First Officer. I have asked her to keep an eye on our former spooks, Mitchell and Dawson, to see if they may have alternate agendas. Thus far they seem to be working out well, and I have just assigned Mitchell a task. We will see how he performs.
The system we were sent to seem to be flooded with Thalaron radiation, which is of some concern. If our shielding were to fail we would likely all perish in a matter of seconds. It is not encouraging.
End log.
Stardate 21108.25
After arriving at the system in question, we approached the anticipated coordinates of the Breen meeting. We did so with excellent stealth and I commend our tactical officers for achieving this.
We monitored the Breen meeting with Ferengi, and detected enough of their conversation to reveal a very troubling situation. The Breen and Ferengi appear to be planning to mine the Thalaron particles from this system, to likely sell on the black market.
We began our withdrawal with this information, but were detected. The Ferengi fled, and the Breen entered pursuit, damaging us as we attempted to warp away.
And then, rather than finishing us off, they withdrew.
I am confused by this, as it is neither honorable nor logical.
We are affecting repairs and setting course for the nearest Star Fleet base.
End log.
Stardate 21109.12
We are dead in space.
Someone will die for this.
End log.
Stardate 21109.27
Something is happening here, and I do not like it.
We are still dead in space. Our batteries are starting to deplete noticeably.
An object of unknown origin is approaching.
And now the lights and temperature are misbehaving, at least on the bridge.
And I am certain I heard someone nearby slamming something just now, yet the bridge has only myself, Aldren, and McKenzie on it and none of us made the sound.
If I find this is sabotage, I will personally remove the lungs of the individual who caused it.
End log.
Stardate 21110.12
My crew are hallucinating, my ship is being boarded, and we STILL have no power!
And the worst part is, I suspect it is going to get worse before it gets better.
In my century of life, I have survived closer calls that this, so I have full confidence that we will make it through this. I would just prefer it to be not as prisoners of whomever is attacking the ship.
We have had our first casualty, a Crewman Recruit named Justin Hargreaves. Hargreaves was a good crewman, and his skills in Engineering will be missed. I hope that we can stop this action before I lose more good people—I don't have many to spare.
End log.
Stardate 21112.15
We are regaining power. This is the good news. We have casualties, and more than I had feared. With such a small crew, every individual casualty has a much greater impact on the whole than it would on a larger ship. Conversely, we gained three new crew, at least temporarily, from the pirate ship. They were apparently prisoner/slaves of the pirates who were recently captured Star Fleet officers, and they were working together to escape, and overthrown the pirates.
The pirates... they attacked while we were without power, and had it not been for our new arrivals they may have had some level of success.
In any event, we are back to almost normal now, however with little explanation as to how we lost power in the first place. Perhaps it was a new weapon employed by the pirates—if so we may never know as their ship was utterly destroyed by something. I am awaiting warp power to come online so we can resume course for Star Base Alpha to offload the data we collected.
The COMM system has indicated several priority broadcasts from Star Fleet. Once we verify authenticity—for such a series of messages, all at once, is extremely irregular—I will decide our next course of action based on the information received. As we are currently operating under condition black, I am not inclined to immediately respond to them...
End log.
Stardate 21201.01
We completed our mission, with a few interesting findings.
Apparently we had encountered some sort of out of phase planet or star system, and that is what caused our power failures. As the ship lacks ability to properly investigate, we recorded the location and data and turned it over to Star Fleet Science.
Our mission was mostly a success. We collected the data and Star Fleet Intelligence will be processing it.
On our way home we found out about a horrible calamity. Bajor, Star Base Charlie, and Station Sierra-18 are all destroyed, as well as several other assets.
It turns out that three members of the pirate ship that attacked were actually Star Fleet, and they have been added to our crew. This will help make up for some of our losses.
I have been promoted to full Commander, and will shortly be presenting the crew with their promotions and commendations at a meeting we are having aboard base.
I look forward to our next mission, and to hopefully bringing the fight to the enemy, be they Dominion as many of us suspect, or something else.
End log.
Crew Logs
First Officer
Lt Mihar Kata
Stardate 21107.12
So things are not going like I'd imagined they would.
Firstly, I'm no longer assigned to the USS Pegasus, which isn't entirely a shock. We all knew that it was only a matter of time before Starfleet Command noticed that they hadn't arbitrarily moved me to some Hell hole and decided to rectify the situation. I'm sorry: I meant to say, they realized that I haven't been forced into a COS position somewhere and fixed the gap in my experience.
However, command has gone one step further than that. I've been assigned to the USS James Madison as her First Officer/ Chief of Security. I don't even want to be a COS…so why would my desire to be an FO be any different? Of course, I must mention that the Madison has a crew compliment of 23…my last department, which was the smallest I've ever served in, almost had that many people just in our officer category. During our hayday on the Nova, I had that many people in my division, and my division was one of the smaller ones in the department.
I really don't see how this was a logical move. I'm sure there's someone with more applicable experience who is dying for an FO position anywhere. My skills are in reading people, and assessing situations, and while I understand those can both be useful skills, I don't think they're directly applicable, especially since all my experience is in one department.
I'm sure I'll adapt to my new duties, but I feel that this situation is not something I'm prepared for. I don't think that's a concern I should express to my CO. He's a Klingon/Vulcan hybrid, and I'm still not certain how to read him. It's like he has multiple personalities…which I guess he almost does. He certainly makes some of the senior members of my old assignment look entirely stable.
This new mission of ours seems like it holds some promise. We're doing reconnaissance of a secret meeting between the Breen and someone. We don't have a lot of intel, and honestly, after Carraya, I'm not sure how much faith I'd put in any we had.
There is something interesting I've encountered on the Madison. A 1Lt Dawson was listed on the manifest, and my new CO, Torkav, expressed concerns about her having a intelligence background. After having seen her in the mission briefing, I'm entirely certain that this is the same 1Lt Dawson that was briefly the MarCO on the Getty, and who was revealed to be part of the intelligence team Grant had on the Getty. The problem is that she supposedly died with the rest of the team, which obviously isn't correct if she's wandering around the ship. She's done a fairly good job of avoiding me to date, and I'll be honest, I'm fine with letting her continue to.
I prefer things to be clean cut, so unless it becomes necessary or I have an attack of curiosity, she can keep her little secret.
We have a rather long journey ahead of us, so we'll see how things shape up.
End Log.
Stardate 21112.11
This mission has not gone like it was suppose to, at all.
We were able to succeed in our mission to intercept the communication from between the Breen, and their partner, who unsurprisingly turned out to be the Ferengi. It turns out that they've managed to discover a way to harvest Thalaron particiles, which is extremely dangerous.
Torkav felt it was necessary to engage them, which is in direct opposition to our orders. He ordered weapons online and before I could countermand and get them offline, the energy spike led to our discovery. The Breen detected us and pursued us. McKenzie did an adequate job, but we weren't able to avoid damage. I'm not sure whether we were shot out of warp or whether we just stopped, but somehow, we managed to exit the galactic plane…or something along those lines. There's a reason I have ventured out of security often in my career.
Regardless, we began to lose power, which is a significant problem when our CEO has been incapacitated, as has our CMO. For a while, we were entirely powerless before it was fixed.
Sadly, losing power isn't our only problem. The crew has been seeing things, and I'm inclined to think that we're not hallucinating. Something about this plane seems to distort our reality from time to time, unless it really is haunted. The entire ship will go blue and we'll see these ghostly figures. It was unnerving to begin with—seeing a dead Kyber, and the ghosts—but now I've begun to adapt to the distortions. I just wish I could say that for everyone.
The youngest person in my department, Jon Martin, saw something that must have been more than he could handle. In his fear, he killed an engineer. In reality, Martin might have been able to keep his career—it was an accident—but he just snapped. I've seen it before, but never that suddenly.
He attacked Kyber, who had taken him away from the scene, and ran away. He captured and assaulted a young engineer named Alondria. She didn't deserve anything he did to her, and from what I'm told, he brutalized her. I sent Aldren, Shelmer and Dawson after Martin, and when they came upon him, he attacked them. Aldren was forced to kill him, and I believe it was a justified kill. However, that doesn't make it any better or easier to swallow. I suspect it'll bother Aldren for some time, but hopefully, he won't let it drive him crazy too.
Prior to realizing that Martin had snapped and escaped into the ship, a pirate vessel docked with the Madison and attempted to board us. We held them off until three individuals entered, who claimed to be Starfleet officers captured by the pirates. With our computer down, we had no way to verify their stories, which one of the men, Merawdr, couldn't seem to understand. I'll be honest, if there was one of them I wish I had shot upon sight, it was him. He seems to consider all security officers as shoot first and ask questions later, which I feel is grossly inaccurate but if that's how he wants us to act, we can definitely oblige.
Fortunately, the captain agreed with me—other than my irritation with Merawdr --, but because Torkav remembered Merawdr from our original roster and we were pretty desperate for help, they were released from the brig and allowed to assist. That's fine by me, but I still don't trust them, which I think is mutual.
Now, things have slowed down. We're trying to get underway, which I hope happens shortly...I really don't want to stay on this ship much longer than necessary.
End Log.
Tactical
CTO Lt JG Adam Shelmer
Stardate 21112.15
The current mission began as many do with a briefing in the Common Room. Torkav announced that Star Fleet had decided to permanently deploy the USS James Madison as an independent vessel attached to the Fourth Fleet and to Star Fleet Special Operations. He also announced a new, permanent, First Officer, Lieutenant Mihar Kata.
As a result of the Madison's Special Operations designation, she will be assigned missions often requiring secrecy. Such was the case with our current mission, assigned by Star Fleet Intelligence. The Madison was to travel under stealth to a star system in which the Breen were meeting with an unknown party. The purpose of this meeting was not known, but Star Fleet Intelligence felt that it was important to covertly monitor it.
The Madison was modified with an enhanced sensor array. Its transponder was deactivated and its engine and other emissions were dampened and altered to help hide it. The COMM system was locked down following a strict communications silence protocol.
During the briefing, I found out that my department would be responsible for the lives of everyone on board. This was a bit daunting, but I was happy to have the assistance of Lt[JG] Burke whose duties as communications officer would be underutilized.
Several weeks were to pass as the Madison preceded using unconventional and therefore less traveled corridors to the suspected destination of the Breen meeting. I was happy to spend the time training Burke on the nuances of the Tac station.
Upon arrival in the system, I worked closely with the helms officer to keep the Madison from being seen. We made sure that the Madison did the seeing and any other ships in the area saw nothing.
While hiding on the dark side of a centrally located moon, the Breen ship and a Ferengi vessel where spotted. The static filled transmissions from these two ships were received, which seemed to cause much agitation on the part of the CO. Torkav announced, "So... the Breen have devised a method of harvesting natural Thalaron particles and effectively containing them... And it sounds as though the verenganpu' have found a market for selling them."
I had been monitoring possible vulnerabilities of the Breen ship, but before I could report, Torkav decided an attack was in order. The FO countermanded the CO's orders to "Prepare the ship for battle" and requesting a course plot to exit the sector.
Apparently the Madison's call to arms had alerted the observed ships causing the Ferengi to warp out and the Breen to arm and adopt an attack vector. Again the Captain ordered, "Power weapons, shields and engines. Set course for the edge of the system, maximum safe speed." The CO's attempt to evade the Breen using an exploding gas cloud and an unusual move outside the galactic plane did not work, as the Breen were able to follow the Madison and get off a glancing blow which set the ship to spinning.
With the ship out of control and artificial gravity disengaged, the bridge personnel were tossed about like so many leaves in a mini tornado. I had been ordered to plot a course to the nearest Star Fleet base, but before I could pass the information to the helm, all power was lost.
Luckily the Breen had abandoned their pursuit, but the Madison was dead in space... no power, no engines. The CO couldn't take sitting with nothing to do, so he left the bridge in my hands. With dead consoles and hurt personnel, I took the center seat, scratching my head as to what to do.
Somehow the spinning stopped and bridge personnel were being cared for by Mitchell, the only medical aid available. In the dark, I called out to see who was still active and functioning on the bridge.
Luckily, the CO was only gone a short time. At his return, he ordered me off the bridge and to the nearest window, using whatever I could find to see what was going on outside the ship.
After acquiring what loosely could be called visual enhancement devices, I proceeded to the Common Room window. At first only a small indication of a vessel with flickering purple lights could be seen. Then it became clear that the vessel was on its own power and approaching the Madison. Once the vessel was close enough to describe, very strange things began to happen; a bluish glow could be seen and crew seemed to appear and disappear.
I was joined in the Common Room by Aldren, McKenzie and something that everyone thought was Chief Kyber. Realizing that the faux Kyber was grievously injured, Mitchell was called. Then Mitchell and Mihar arrived.
Once the real and original Kyber appeared, the faux Kyber disappeared and shots were heard coming from the starboard aft section of the ship. Everyone but Mitchell went toward the shots, leaving me to watch over Mitchell as he, hopefully, came up with a solution explaining the odd happenings on the ship.
Standing guard outside the Science Lab, I'm wondering what in the begeebies was going on in the Port Corridor, while Mitchell hunched over a rudimentary investigation. Strange sounds were coming our way, but things seem to quiet down and I decided to try to find Burke, the missing Tactical officer. Only her uniform was evident, Burke was nowhere to be found.
I later slipped into the Forward Corridor trying to lend a hand with what now can only be described as a pirate invasion, though strange things continued to happen on the ship with little explanation.
I was called to lend assistance with closing the airlock before all the ship's oxygen escaped. That being successful, I was assigned to a team looking for another missing officer, CMR Martin.
The ship, floating in space with no power save what little the backup batteries could provide, was not out of danger. Though the pirates were repelled or at least the ones not claiming to be Star fleet officers were, and the air lock secured, all power was eventually lost and some outside force set the ship to spinning again.
In the dark and floating without gravity, the team of Aldren, Dawson and myself eventually found CMR Martin in the CO's stateroom. Martin was in primal mode, disfigured and insane with pain and anger. He had tied up and hurt another crewmate, Alondria. Aldren and I try to subdue him. Both of us were hurt in the process, but Aldren finally stopped the mad man with a knife in his neck.
Engineering was finally able to restore power and gravity to the Madison while Dawson administered to Alondria and Aldren moved Martin's body to the corridor. I, having been more gravely hurt than I realized, wonder into the corridor with a mind set to locate the ship's First Officer.
I found Mihar in Security and she administered to my wounds. At the time my addled brain remembered little of what had happened to me or around me when a message came over the Comm System, [Bridge crew, report to stations.]
Terminate Log
Security
Ens Jebediah Mitchell
Stardate 21109.21
Perhaps I should have started this 'acting chief medical officers' log... as that seems to be the role I've somehow fallen into. The Madison doesn't lack for excitement I'll grant you that. Anyway I digress, there's quite a story to tell before we get to that part.
The Intel team I was part of has been disbanded and I have been assigned permanently to the Madison. Which is a major relief to be honest as I like being part of this crew and I wasn't happy conducting a surveillance opp against my crew mates. As an added bonus I was able to come clean to the Captain... and as you can see I haven't been thrown out the airlock... so I'm an 'honest' man once again.
I'm still wearing a security uniform, it doesn't suit me as I much preferred my marine colours (I never did like the Intel grey) but it'll do I suppose. The Captain knows my skills now and has been happy to call upon them; regardless of my uniform.
Speaking of which I'm not the only Intel refugee aboard ship. Somehow, and I have no Idea how, Sierra Dawson of Alpha team has survived their 'disappearance'. I don't know the exact details, and I'm not sure I need to know. Perhaps Sierra will tell me someday. Anyway it's good to have another marine aboard. She's a nice girl. Which is a pretty strange thing to say about an assault specialist I guess; Sierra is definitely a 'life taker' as well as a 'heart breaker', but I like her style. In time I think she could be a good friend. But then again I'm biased... I do love my fellow marines.
So back to the mission, basically the Breen and a second party have been exchanging data in an 'out of the way' rendezvous and Star Fleet have sent us to observe and if possible intercept the transmissions. The Madison's size and her stealth profile make her a good fit for this kind of mission. The irony is that this is basically an Intel mission... so I guess I didn't escape entirely.
The rendezvous point proved to be an uninhabited system that featured a great many planetoids and an unpleasant amount of deadly Thalaron particles. Our helmsman, Lt Eli McKenzie, did an excellent job of a very difficult approach route skirting the planetoids, I don't think I could have done much better, and we found ourselves in a position to intercept the Breen signal. The mysterious second party turned out to be a Ferengi ship, which was kinda predictable when you think about it, Ferengi will buy and sell anything.
The Captain asked me to intercept the signal between the two ships, which I managed with a little help from some Intel software I still have, and soon we were listening in. It turned out the Breen have devised a method of harvesting natural Thalaron particles and effectively containing them. Given the illegal and dangerous nature of such particles this was not a good thing. But I doubt you could explain that to a Breen, they don't seem to understand or care about the rules the rest of us play by. Their Ferengi partners were a different story entirely, but since when have Ferengi allowed the laws of other species to interfere with acquisition? They only pay lip service to their own when all is said and done.
The information we had captured was Intel gold... unfortunately the Breen detected us. Running was our only option really, so that's what we did. But it didn't go so well. It seems that we did manage to loose the Breen but we took a considerable amount of damage in the process. The Madison has dropped out of warp somewhere above the galactic plane and we are in a bad way.
Actually its worse... before all that happened our CMO and our CEO have been struck down by some sort of mystery illness. It's so damn inconvenient that it could be foul play. They seem stable enough but the Captain wanted them watched over. I was treating minor injuries on the bridge when the Captain sent me down here to do just that! And that pretty much explains how I got to be acting CMO around here.
Life sure is strange... and now I need to go and check on my patients.
End Log.
Supplemental
There's no denying that things got worse before they began to get better. But then again this is Star Fleet. There ain't no mileage in flogging that horse. I found out later that after the Breen attack we developed serious engineering problems and were left effectively 'dead in space' far above the Galactic plane.
But I guess I better Take up where I left off. After receiving a call telling me there was injured in the common room I left sickbay to join Lieutenant Shelmer, Ens Aldren and our First Officer Kata Mihar. Also present, or so it appeared appeared at the time, was Chief Kyber who appeared to have been grievously injured. To make things worse Kyber seemed a little less than rational; and he was packin to boot. I have to say Kyber wasn't a pretty site... no Sir! But with modern med tech he was certainly treatable and so, as the others 'covered me', I trusted that the Chief wouldn't take me as an varmit and went over to him careful like to help however I could.
Which was when the weird •••• really started. We had gotten his weapon away from him and I was about to treat him when suddenly his uniform was empty and collapsing to the floor! To make matters even more confusing the real Chief Kyber chose that moment to enter the common room carrying a tray of coffee!
I gotta tell ya... this ain't my first Rodeo... but if that situation was a snake it'd have jumped up and bit ya... no kiddin!
To say I was stunned was an understatement, Kyber seemed equally confused by our reaction. The FO asked me and the L Tee Shelmer to head over to the science lab and see if we could look into whatever the hell was going on. Arriving at the Science lab I hooked up the JGG's portable to a tricorder and began to take some readings. It turned out we had a bad case of 'Triolic Radiation'. This in turn may have been the reason for the apparition of Kyber we saw... but I can't say that with any certainty. After that the FO sent me and the L Tee down to the Science lab to try and find out what was going on.
That wasn't the only apparition seen around the ship. Kyber told me that after he left the common room he came across young Crewman Martin. Apparently he was 'mad as a box of frogs' and babbling on about blood coming out of the walls. The COB tried to restrain him and they had gotten down to some serious fighting, when a plasma line had ruptured near the security office and killing one of our enlisted men instantly. Poor Martin was also badly burned and as a result he went completely insane and ran off. Later it seems he took one of our female crew hostage. All I know is that when Sierra and Aldren went after him there was no reasoning with him. so Aldren and they had no choice but to 'put him down' in order to save his hostages life. It's sad, I can't say I knew Martin well... but he seemed pleasant enough.
As if all this wasn't enough it wasn't long before the mission took another unexpected twist in the form of pirates. Naturally a Federation ship hanging dead in space proved to be too much of a temptation to them and the Madison soon found herself being boarded. But would you believe the twist had a twist of it's own? It seems that there were three Federation folk who had been more or less pressed into joining the pirate crew. They were a very diverse bunch consisting of a Mirak, a Vulcan hybrid and a Caitian. It seems that they saw their opportunity to escape and opened fire on the boarding party from behind. I don't quite know how things would have turned out if they hadn't... but it was a welcome turn of fate from our perspective.
Fate continued to smile on us as our engineering problems were solved shortly after the boarding action. It seems the impact of the Pirate vessel literally pushed us out of the Triolic field that was plaguing us. Which was just as well because the situation got pretty darn bad all things considered. We even lost gravity at one point. It was a hell of a time to be without a CEO and a COS! But I'm getting ahead of myself... before things began to straighten out engineering wise I worked for a little while with the Caitian; Argent Merawdr. Astonishingly Argent is actually one of ours! A Midshipman on his way to assignment with the Madison when he was taken by pirates and had he and the Vulcan (Rehu) pretend to be criminals themselves and managed to persuade the pirates to take them on rather than kill them! The Mirak it seems was already working undercover in the crew. Quite a story! Anyway Argent's a scientist, so the FO sent he and I back to the lab to continue my work. He built some sort of gizmo and modified my phaser to affect the Triolic apparitions we had been seeing. On the whole he seems OK, if a little full of himself, but then again who wasn't fresh from the academy? I like him.
We were just beginning a tour of the ship when the Madison drifted free of the energy field and our engineers started to get us back to normal. I decided to take Argent up to the Bridge in case the Captain could use our help. At that point we received an 'all points broadcast' from Star Fleet command.
I cant find the words to express what I'm feeling right now. Bajor and Charlie are gone... and so is Sierra! But I'll tell you this. We're gonna fight those people... and we're gonna stop them!
But I guess that's a log entry yet to come.
End Log.
Ens Aldren
Stardate 21107.05
We have left Starbase Delta. At present I have no idea of where we are heading. I have looked over the crew manifest and it appears I am not the only new comer to the crew. Surely there are others here who feel the same as I do.....yet I can’t help but feel alone.
I have had no contact from anyone on Sierra-18. To be honest I wasn’t expecting any. Seems I have been shipped off here, a problem hopefully lost amongst the stars?...I’m not sure.
A new ship, new crew. Time that I could start over. I have thought that I could put the past behind me.....forget my wrong doings and square away my feelings...( laughter ).....not that simple. Every time I close my eyes I see them......Rutha and him.
Part of me is excited by this new posting, the ship is so different to Sierra-18. My transfer has happened so quickly. I arrived at Delta and stayed there for a short time before the Madison arrived. I met someone on Delta.......Angel. She is beautiful, I almost found myself opening up to her.....almost.
Since I boarded the Madison I have tried to busy myself with duty reports, anything to keep me focused. At one point I started trawling through the Starfleet briefing entries......I am still searching for any hint as to where He could be.......still trying to confirm his identity. I know that he was Angosian, male, roughly 40 standard Earth years of age, ex-Soldier, I traced a print found on the hovercraft after it had been recovered, once I had been discharged from the hospital. I know that at some point he must have had some connection with the Government......why would they be hiding him?
( noise of somebody moving about )
I should get back to these reports now, once I have completed these I should head up to the bridge.
Sign Off.
Stardate 21110.12
The ship still has no power, despite the best efforts of our Engineering staff. We are adrift, a cold tomb. Or that is how it feels.
I cannot explain logically some of the occurrences that have been happening. Firstly there was Kyber. I now little of the man, having met him for the first time when I came aboard. During our journey out here he was every bit the CoB that I would have expected. A reliable fellow, unofficial right hand of the Captain. I saw him in the common room with my own two eyes.....
I did not imagine it, I couldn’t have, and Shelmer was there too....he reacted to the injuries to the Chief the same way I did! His eyes…or I should say lack of will no doubt follow me to the grave. Even now I can see the jagged holes were his eyes should have been…the dried blood from virtually every hole in his face......
Then nothing.....the Chief walked into the room, as crazy as that sounds and when I looked back to the chair, Kyber was no longer there! What could cause that? I have never heard of such a thing...unless, and I don’t wish to think about it, it was some sort of temporal rift...the Kyber that walked in first to the room, the one with the injuries was somehow a future Kyber.
That would mean of course, and I don’t proclaim to be any kind of expert on the matter, that whatever happens, Kyber will receive those injuries. We could try and divert it, but if that was the case, then Kyber, the future injured Kyber would not have been able to come back in time...it’s a complete mindfield and I get confused just thinking of the temporal physics and when you throw in alternate timelines...well...
Now Martin has panicked and fired, killing another crew member. I knew Martin was strung tight, but I didn’t think he would have snapped like that. I take full responsibility for him, I should have seen the signs and tried to do something different. Mihar was busy elsewhere, it fell to me. When he was lead away, by Kyber no less, I could see the look on the young mans face. The fear there and I’m sure that there was something else.....like a light that has gone out behind his eyes. I think we need to watch him carefully, the friendly fire incident may will have hit him hard....
But now there is something else, we are being boarded…no time to dwell on the past events, I must remain focused on the present.....listen to me, I sound like a Star Fleet Officer....maybe there is hope for me yet???
End Log.
Stardate 21112.05
Just a quick log, I don’t have much time. The ship seems to be back under her own power now. I have no idea what has been happening if I’m honest. We had been eavesdropping, as part of our mission, then came under attack. The next thing I knew we were dead in space, adrift.
There has been some pretty unusual things happening since then. The CoB in the common room....I saw his injuries, then he or another He walked in through the door....sounds crazy, but I know what I saw. There was an attempt at boarding us, which I think at the moment we have managed to fend off.
Then there was Martin. A good man....boy really. Something happened to him in this very corridor, something that seemed to tip him over the edge, crack his mind.
( Pause )
I killed him. Martin. Myself, Dawson and Shelmer went looking for him, found him in the CO’s quarters. He wasn’t alone. He had tied up Alondria and from what I saw, which wasn’t much, had tortured her. She is with Dawson now, I have no idea if she will make it. Martin attacked us and I had to put him down.
I don’t know what will happen now....I have killed a fellow Star Fleeter. Yes, he was attacking us and had already injured Alondria....could I have done something different? Could I have incapacitated him in another way......? Probably. Did I want to?........no.
I feel pretty empty about it.....pretty distant. He died whilst trying to kill me....you would think I would feel something, anger, guilt?.....I feel nothing. I’ll answer the questions if an investigation is run, if Mihar or Torkav wish to punish me...fine.
Both Shelmer and Dawson were there, they can verify my story.....but to be honest, I am not bothered. The moment I pushed his own blade into his neck, the moment I felt his blood pumping warm over my hands.....I lost something.......
Log Terminates.
Science
Mid Argent Merawdr
Stardate 21112.10
This is the crew log—my first!—of Midshipman Argent Merawdr aboard—finally!—the U.S.S. Madison.
As I’ve often heard Humans say, it’s been a long strange trip. Upon graduating from the Academy, I found myself assigned to the Madison, and transit had been arranged aboard the Hermanus. It was shortly after that when everything went skew-whiff!
The Hermanus was making another scheduled stop in the Enkidu system on the planet Beowulf. When I learned that there was a nearby nova forming, I requested permission to go and observe it. A half-Vulcan/half-Romulan named Rehu volunteered to pilot the shuttle, so the Hermanus’s captain granted permission. It was while we were observing the nova and recording data on it that the pirate ship appeared.
We were an unarmed shuttle, so there was no chance of withstanding the pirates. Instead, Rehu came up with a brilliant (or so it seemed at the time) ploy—he pretended to be a criminal who’d stolen the shuttle and brought me—a fellow criminal—along as navigator. Someone, he managed to convince the pirate captain of this. Of course, the shuttle was sort of an entry fee into the pirate crew.
I’m not sure the pirate captain ever really trusted us, but we managed to make ourselves useful. I think that one of the pirate crew, a Mirak named Aereson, helped with that, though I have no idea why. Anyway, Rehu and I were essentially trapped aboard the pirate ship for six months! Rehu told the captain I was good with the sensors, so he let me tinker with them a bit. They didn’t seem to have a decent engineer or sensor tech aboard the ship, though, so the sensors were in bad shape: inferior quality, improperly maintained, jury-rigged, held together by chewing gum and star-duct tape! It was easy to ‘fix’ them... improve them... but I only did that because I was able to tap into the sensor feed to the computer and bridge and alter them. That way, the captain only saw what I wanted them to see. I let them avoid ion storms and subspace fissures and whatnot—mainly because I was on the ship, too!—but I kept all other ships, unless at extreme range, off their radar... so to speak. There was one time when the pirate ship passed with a dozen miles of a potential target and never saw them!
I was able to keep this up for six months. The pirates were getting frustrated, and I think the captain was getting suspicious. Well, he’d never really trusted me anyway. Rehu and I were both trying to figure out how to get off the pirate ship at that point; that’s when we detected the Madison! Imagine how surprised I was to find the ship I was actually supposed to have been on all along!
It looked like it was having some problems, but I still thought it was the best chance I had. I altered the sensor feed again to make the Madison look like it was abandoned and dead in space. Naturally, the pirate captain wanted to loot a Federation ship, even if it was such a small one.
The Madison seemed to be trapped in some sort of energy-nullifying field—duonetic is my guess—but the pirate captain also seemed to be aware of this field. We approached cautiously and boarded. The captain sent Rehu and me on the boarding party, just in case it was a trap. But he sent the Mirak along to watch us, I guess. Next thing I know, the Madison crew is shooting at us and then the Mirak shoots the rest of the boarding party!
We voluntarily surrendered at that point, and I tried to negotiate with a hard-headed security officer, but got thrown in the brig for my efforts! I was then able to contact the captain directly, and convince him that we weren’t the enemy, and that, in fact, I was part of his crew… albeit a bit late getting there. He sent me to the science lab with a watchdog—a nice guy named Mitchell—to try and work my mojo on the ship’s problems. That’s when the ship seemed to be struck by something large, possibly the pirate ship, and began spinning out of control.
As near as I can tell, the nudge knocked us out of the duonetic field so power quickly came back. We’re temporarily out of the woods, so to speak, so I thought now might be a good time to record my log... before things go skew-whiff again!
End log
Stardate 21201.03
We've been running silent for 17 days on our way back to Starbase Alpha, and I do mean silent. No one has had much to say since we got the news about Bajor and Starbase Charlie and Space Station Sierra-18. Not surprising.
No one is talking about the mission either since it was classified and I'm not quite sure anyone trusts me yet. On top of that, there was an incident on the ship that caused the death of two crewmen and injury to a third. Nobody is really talking about that either even though it apparently had nothing to do with the mission.
One more day will get us there, so I've had plenty of time to mull over events since my last log.
Even with the sensors back on-line, I was not able to detect any sign of a duonetic field in the area where we experienced complete power failure. I still think that's what it was, but no cause was determinable.
On the other hand, after using triolic energy pulse, I was able to detect what appeared to be an out-of-phase star system with at least one habitable world. The world was the size of Mars and inhabited by... phantoms. They were out of phase, too, of course, and we saw them aboard the Madison when, presumably, the ship was occupying the same real-space location as the planet.
These phantoms could hurt us by touch, but it is unclear if this was intentional or not. They may have been trying to get our help, or they may have just perceived us as phantoms as well and were curious or frightened.
We didn't have the equipment or resources to investigate further. I've gone over the sensor readings a dozen times now, but I wasn't able to pull any more data from them. I can't even confirm that the star and planet are really there, since triolic radiation is still a relatively new and unknown phenomenom. Nor was I able to confirm that the system is static, though we've recorded the location where we 'discovered' it.
It'd be nice to go back there and help those people, assuming they need it. I can only hope that they realized that we are now aware of them... and will return. They may have to wait until the current 'war' is over, though it now occurs to me that they may possess some knowledge or technology that might help us against these new invaders.
End log.
