As Time Goes By…: [Phase 2]: ‘The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!’ – Log Entry Writing

Description

 

Another fiction piece of writing, this time players must pick from a particular battle that took place in Starfleet’s past and to write their own log entry after it took place. The battles include:

  • The Xindi probe attack on Earth which started the Xindi War in 2153;
  • The Battle of the Binary Stars which started the Federation-Klingon War in 2256;
  • The M-5 Drill in 2268;
  • The Battle of Khitomer in 2293 between General Chang, Captains Kirk and Sulu once the conspiracy was revealed;
  • The Setlik III Massacre in 2347 during the Federation-Cardassian War;
  • The Battle of Wolf 359 in 2367, the first major conflict between the Federation & the Borg;
  • The Battle of Sector 001 in 2373, the second Borg incursion into Federation space;
  • The Second Battle of Chin’toka in 2375, the battle during the Dominion War that brought the Breen into the war;
  • The Voyager Homecoming Incident in 2377 where the USS Voyager arrived in the Alpha Quadrant with the Borg

Entries should be no longer than 1000 words long and will be submitted to the Bravo Fleet Forums. Links should be included in the competition submission.

Entries must be made in the first person/past tense. Please no massive egos, e.g.: one-character defeating all of the bad guys in one go!

Criteria

  • How they integrate their character in the battle.
  • use of detail from what we know about the battles (using sources of information like the episodes they were in as well as other sources like Memory Alpha).
  • The quality of originality and description that makes the reader believe the character was there.

Winners

Submissions

User ID Content Date Entry
Khaled al Rashid 1732

BEGIN RECORDING

Personal log, stardate 4733.1, Lieutenant (junior grade) Lloyd Nolan, junior engineering officer, recording.

In my very first week on board the Enterprise I saw the Federation on the brink of war as we stared down six Klingon cruisers near Organia. In the year since then, we’ve nearly been destroyed by an ancient spacefaring planet killer, stopped dead in space by the hand of a Greek god, and attacked by a giant space amoeba. When Starfleet Command ordered us to Starbase 6 to be fitted with an experimental computer for the purpose of testing it, I thought we’d finally gotten a mundane assignment that would allow us to decompress. When the word was passed that most of the crew would rotate off the ship for the duration of the exercise, I had high hopes to be in the lucky number, but no such luck. I have lived to regret that.

Fortunately.

Of course, I had heard of Richard Daystrom, and transtator technology and duotronics were part of our training at Starfleet Academy. But the level on which he was thinking…I can’t even imagine. Geniuses, right? At the end of the mission, however, I remember seeing him escorted to transporter room three by a couple of sickbay orderlies when we arrived back at Starbase 6 after the wargames. After the carnage. He was mumbling. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he definitely did not live up to the self-assured and confident reputation so many had ascribed to him. I’d have pitied him in that moment if I weren’t still angry.

I haven’t talked about this with anyone since it happened. When the rest of the crew rotated back on board Enterprise after we returned to Starbase 6, they started hearing rumors about what happened. They all knew I was on duty in engineering during the exercise. They kept asking what I’d seen. I just shrugged off their questions, but they didn’t stop. It got to the point that I started taking meals in my quarters. I haven’t eaten in the mess in at least two days.

Yes, I was on duty in engineering after the M-5 had destroyed an automated ore freighter. I can’t remember the name of the ship. Doesn’t matter. That was the first red flag. But no one had been hurt. Not yet.

I was on the upper level in main engineering when Daystrom, Captain Kirk, Scotty, and Mr. Spock came in. Ali Harper, another engineer who’d been asked to stay on board for the exercise, was down on the main floor. I had stepped into a storage locker to put a spanner away, but I heard a heated discussion between the captain and Daystrom. Harper climbed up the ladder, saw I was in the spanner locker and asked me for a trident scanner. I got it for him. What happened next was…well, there’s not enough Saurian brandy in the galaxy to erase that memory.

Ali Harper and I transferred aboard the Enterprise about the same time. He was just out of the academy, but he had experienced the same twelve months I had, and as a result, he had gotten his space legs in a hurry. He was up for promotion too. I’d been helping him study for it. He wanted it so badly. You could tell by the way he performed his duties, double-checking everything he did, cleaning up after a few of the lazier officers who left their spanners laying about. We all knew Scotty would never abide that, and Ali could have let them get in trouble, but he didn’t. I also think he felt a little ashamed of himself. A few of his close friends at Starfleet Academy had already made lieutenant junior grade, and he was still an ensign. He didn’t say it out loud, but I could tell it irked him. Being on the Enterprise, though, was the kick in the butt that he needed.

So…with the trident scanner I had just handed to him, Harper went to the aft bulkhead to disconnect the M-5 from the ship’s power supply. He hadn’t even turned on the scanner when a beam shot out of the computer. And then Ali was gone. Vaporized in an angry flash of orange light. I thought of all those other things that had happened in the past twelve months: the planet killer, Apollo’s hand, the space amoeba, and none of those things wrenched my gut as much as seeing Ali Harper incinerated out of existence.

Before the rest of the crew came back onboard at the Starbase, Doctor McCoy tried to recover any remains from the decking, but there were none to be found. It was as if Ali had died in a transporter accident. As senior officers go, Doctor McCoy is perhaps the most approachable, other than Scotty. This clearly was not the first time he’d been in this situation. The Enterprise was famous for its dangerous missions. I told McCoy I hated that there were no remains to send to Harper’s family, and asked if he’d speak to Captain Kirk about allowing me to send a letter to Ali’s parents along with Kirk’s own condolences and the official death certificate. He said he’d see what he could do. I’m going ahead and drafting one anyway.

In time I may start opening up to my crewmates, because I don’t think I can bear not talking about what I saw. There’s a shrink on board. She doubles as a dentist. That’s just life out here in the cosmos. You take what you can get.

In the meantime, I do my job. Every so often, I glance over at that spot on the deck in engineering where Ali Harper’s too-short life came to an abrupt and unfair end. And I pray to the Great Bird of the Galaxy to take that memory away. And to take away my anger.

But I know that’s not how it works.

END RECORDING

 2020-08-29 04:55:54 View Image
Maxwell Stafford 837

Personal Log of Lieutenant Commander Peter Blair: https://forums.bravofleet.com/index.php?p=/discussion/88/as-time-goes-by#latest

 2020-08-27 11:55:18
2167

Posted my entry, 08-23-2020

 2020-08-23 22:38:57
Jackson Porter 2115

https://forums.bravofleet.com/index.php?p=/discussion/88/as-time-goes-by/

Post by trumpetmaster29 on August 17, 2020

 2020-08-18 02:17:46
Gar'rath 73

https://forums.bravofleet.com/index.php?p=/discussion/88/as-time-goes-by#latest

Entry made by jonileth on the Forums.

 2020-08-16 20:18:44

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