Captain’s Log: First Contact Crisis

Description

Starfleet has encountered countless new civilizations, but not every first contact goes according to plan. A diplomatic envoy aboard your ship or station has gone missing, an alien species has declared you a threat, or a simple greeting was misinterpreted as a grave insult. How will you navigate this delicate situation and prevent an interstellar incident?

Your challenge is to write a Captain’s Log entry, or a series of entries, describing how your character (or a Starfleet officer of your creation) handles a high-stakes first contact scenario. Will you rely on diplomacy, deception, or daring heroics to resolve the crisis? How will your choices impact future relations with this species?

Criteria

  • Submission format: 500-3,000 word narrative, submitted in the submission field directly.
  • Perspective: Must be written in the style of a Starfleet Captain’s Log (first-person reflection).
  • Generative AI: The use of generative AI in this competition is forbidden.
  • Conflict & Resolution: The log should present a clear problem and resolution, with compelling stakes.
  • Judging & Tiebreaker: Entries will be judged in accordance with the Bravo Fleet Fiction Rubric Ties will be broken by time of submission.

Winners

Submissions

User Content Date Entry
Cressida Brennan (#2765)

She kept waiting for the Captain to walk through the doors, but the longer she sat, the more she knew he wouldn't. Ceixs’ cup of coffee, now cold, still stood on the table, as if he had just gotten up and headed to the bridge. But it had been days since he’d left the Callisto.

The slow, creeping nausea – the kind that comes from knowing that what’s next is worse – had become unbearable, as had the silence that pressed in on her like a physical force, threatening to take her breath.

“Computer.”, Una said slowly. Her own voice sounded wrong, too loud in the empty room. “Start a personal log.”

The affirmative beep was jarring, and Una shifted uncomfortably in the Captain’s chair before she rose. It was too big, too empty, and more accusing than any living stare.
“I…”, she started. “I do not know if this will reach anyone. And if it will matter. I am trying to tell myself that this is a means to convey information. Perhaps, it is simply an attempt to keep me sane. To remind me of what happened.”

Una leaned against the vacant desk, momentarily focussing on the sensation of cold metal beneath her fingertips. She took a slow, shaking breath before she continued. “It is… difficult to know where to start. Not only because I can scarcely believe that we have only been here for five days, but because I feel him eroding my mind, adding himself to my memories. Meditation does not work - but then, it never has for me.”

Memories flashed through her mind, those of a kind mentor encouraging her attempts at vulcan meditation techniques, advising her when she needed it, and-...

No. She shook her head, and told herself to focus. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t real.

“We were sent to check up on the USS Givens. They… had not returned from their own rescue mission in response to the disappearance of the Qualle, a civilian vessel researching the pre-warp civilization native to Asada.
When we arrived, we found both the Qualle and the Givens unresponsive to hails, with no life signs on board. We feared the worst. But our away teams quickly determined that the crew had not been killed or succumbed to illness. Instead, they… they had beamed down to Asada.
All of them.”

For a moment, she fell silent, letting the weak hum of the ship’s engine fill the void left by her voice.

“We were unable to locate them on the planet’s surface, and the prime directive prohibited us from sending shuttles to search. We were considering ways to retrieve them, but… but in that time, something happened.”

Una found a chair at the conference table, and sat. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the others sitting beside her - Keller with his cold glare, Brennan with her kind smile, Pereira with his quiet wisdom.

“Members of the crew began talking about someone they called Naeric. He had not been mentioned before, and was not found on the crew manifest. People described him as Human, Trill, or even Andorian, unsure what his function aboard the Callisto was.
But within hours, they talked about nothing else.”

It had felt so odd to be excluded from the other’s excited accounts. Una had felt hurt, and now, she wondered why the sense of dread she was now feeling hadn’t set in earlier.

“Jonathan Keller was the first. He decided to leave Starfleet, and requested to beam down to the planet. I was made acting Chief of Security. Of course we did not oblige his request, but soon, the numbers of those wanting to leave grew.”

“This… phenomena seemed to spare the ships’ telepaths, myself among them. We took it upon ourselves to find the cause. Our scans showed traces of psionic energy, and our research into the personal logs of the Givens revealed Naeric referenced there, too. We… came to the conclusion that Naeric is a telepathic entity. Unlike anything we have encountered before.”

Una’s shoulder slumped as she recalled the conversation with Ceix, and how disheartened she had felt when their concerns were dismissed. She should have known then, she had known, and yet…

“Captain Ceix did not listen. He assured us that we were wrong, and that Naeric had been part of the Callisto’s crew for years. When… when further groups wanted to leave, we were overwhelmed, and had no other choice than to allow it. The Captain decided to go with them. He assured that he was unaffected and had no desire to leave Starfleet. It… was my mistake. I let him go.”

Her fault. She raked her fingers through her hair, pulling just a little too firmly, hoping that the sensation would ground her. It did nothing of the sort.

“My fault.”, she echoed her own thoughts. “I allowed the Captain and our First Officer to form an away team and beam down with the rest. They have not returned, and their badges are deactivated. Only Ensign Leski who made it back, and he talks of a strange settlement, far away from Asada’s mainland, where Naeric is worshipped as a deity by the lost crews.”

Her eyes closed. She was tired. Too tired.

“I see him now. He comes to me in the form of a Vulcan, and I… I seem to remember him being my mentor. I know this not to be true, but… for how long? I spoke to him - a first contact if you will. It took… every ounce of energy to try and explain to him that what he was doing was wrong but he… he is apathetic.”

Una’s delicate brows knit together in a frown. She shook her head. No, that wasn’t the right word.

“Not apathetic. He… doesn’t understand. What he offers, he says, is true happiness. A calling beyond what traveling the galaxy can offer, a place that is safe, a community that is family. It is… an enticing promise.” The words came slower now. “I.. miss… the people I have come to call friends. And knowing that it would be so easy to see them again is… it is difficult to resist following them”

She opened her eyes and rose from her chair, startled by her own thoughts. By saying out loud what she had felt for a while.

“I broadcasted a distress signal. It is… risky, I know, but I had no other choice. We are no longer able to escape, and I fear that soon, the Callisto will be just another lost ship - and a trap for those who come to help us unprepared.”

2025-03-09 19:04:42
Kirok Skyrunner (#2986)

Captain’s Log: First Contact Crisis

[Ship's Log, Stardate 522030. Commander Kirok Skyrunner reporting for Captain Sophia Rodriguez, USS Thunderdragon.

The Thunderdragon has been on patrol, in Sector 8790 of the Beta Quadrant, near the Federation border, for several weeks now. This is the first time I have had the chance to decompress and report on the results of a First Contact mission we had while on our patrol duties.

On our patrol, we encountered a new alien species on a Class M type planet, called Zhil’Koria. Hope I pronounced the name of their homeworld correctly. The Zhil’Kor, though they are very peaceful, can be very easily offended with the slightest mispronunciation of their names or their world. I led the away team that went to see their ruler, who goes by the name of Chancellor Zha'thik. Captain Rodriguez decided to have me go on a First Contact mission, to “get my feet wet” for my upcoming command soon.

The Thunderdragon arrived five days ago and I just got back on board an hour ago. After a thorough medical screening checkup, I went to my quarters for a long hot shower. The smell of being in a Zhil’Kor prison for four days is horrible, but thankfully Doctor Wade cleared me. I'm still trying to go over in my head exactly what went wrong that landed me in an alien prison. Well, it started off like this…

***

‘My away team beamed down to the alien planet after receiving permission from their Chancellor. We exchanged greetings with the Chancellor and started to build dialogue with them for possible future discussions. The Chancellor was kind enough to give my team a personally guided tour of the government building that serves as the planet’s governmental center.

Chancellor Zha’thik is a skilled diplomat and strategist, who is able to navigate the intricacies of interstellar politics with ease. From what I managed to learn from her, she has been reaching out to the stars for years now, but because of their remote location, no one knew of their existence until we arrived.

Due to the time we arrived, which was just before high sun, local time, the Chancellor invited my team to join him for lunch. On behalf of my team, I graciously accepted. Me and my team all acted well within Starfleet protocols and regulations, a testament to Captain Sophia Rodriguez’s leadership and command style.

The Zhil’Kor are a peaceful, enigmatic species that value knowledge, cooperation, and mutual understanding. They live in harmony with their environment, harnessing advanced technology to sustain their planet's ecosystem. Their society is structured around a complex network of interconnected city-states, each governed by a council of respected elders. Lieutenant Saunders, who is the ship's leading Astrobiologist, managed to take detailed tricorder scans, after receiving permission from their Chancellor.

So I gave the Lieutenant permission to conduct her scans on her own. I guess that is where things started to go wrong for me, my away team, my ship and the Federation.

Apparently, while I was engaged in opening dialogue with Chancellor Zha’thik, Lieutenant Saunders and Ensign Smith, from Security and assigned her escort, got into trouble with a group of natives who I guess were somewhat xenophobic and attacked them. Ensign Smith reacted as he was trained and defended the Lieutenant and himself, within regulations.

When word of the incident reached the Chancellor, she became enraged and ordered her guards to imprison me, according to their laws. Lieutenant JG Amanda Davis, an assistant engineer, was told, by the Chancellor, to go back to her ship or risk being imprisoned as well. Davis is the one who immediately reported to Captain Rodriguez about what happened. She immediately recalled the rest of the away team and contacted the Chancellor herself to try to resolve this conflict.

I didn't know this at the time, the Captain had to tell me when I got back to the ship, that it took her awhile to get ahold of the Chancellor. The Captain even had to consider hostile actions to rescue me. It was about 24 hours after I was tossed in the slammer before the Captain was able to even talk with the Chancellor in person. My Captain is a very persuasive woman. Once they met, it didn't take long for things to cool down between the Chancellor and the Captain.

The Captain even convinced the Chancellor to apologize to her for jailing me. I was told by the Captain that it was one of their laws that should anything happen to anyone, on their planet, the responsibility goes to the person in charge of the offender. I guess I was responsible for giving Saunders permission to go take scans of the inhabitants.

So, since I was released, which feels more like on “parole” I have to go back down to the planet tomorrow at high noon, local time, and personally apologize to the Chancellor for offending them. So, tomorrow I will be a goodwill ambassador and take one for the Federation. While I was locked up, the Thunderdragon was able to take passive intense scans of the planet and found that the Zhil'Kor possess advanced technology that is deeply integrated with their natural environment. They have developed innovative methods for harnessing energy from their planet's core, as well as sophisticated systems for recycling and reusing resources. Their spacecraft are designed to blend seamlessly into the surrounding space-time continuum, making them difficult to detect.

Needless to say, forming a friendship and possibly an alliance with these people is critical to the security of the Federation. Starfleet is still rebuilding from the devastating Dominion War and the latest Borg incursions. So my day tomorrow is going to be very long indeed, but it comes with this uniform. I accepted that long ago when I chose to enter the Academy.

Commander Kirok Skyrunner,
Executive Officer,
USS Thunderdragon.

[End log]

 2025-03-03 04:01:29

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