Week 1 Journal Entries

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pksullivan
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Re: Week 1 Journal Entries

Post by pksullivan »

Personal Log Yeoman Third Class Baran: Parallax
Life aboard Voyager has certainly been nothing less than exciting. Sadly, that excitement is largely the surface emotions covering the fear, isolation, and helplessness we are all experiencing being stuck some 70,000 light-years from home. Still, I try to keep my spirits up and to look on the bright side: this is, without a doubt, the longest Starfleet mission on record and not one that will likely be surpassed. If we survive that long.

This excitement du jour all started when Torres, who I gather was the engineer for the Maquis ship, lost her temper and assaulted Lt. Carey. That woman can throw a punch! Carey was taken to sickbay and treated for multiple fractures. The rest of us in engineering were left with the uneasy feeling that the situation was going to deteriorate. To put it bluntly, Torres doesn't seem like a people person and it's hard to imagine that changing any time soon. I heard some of the argument they were having before she clocked him good, and she had some points, but those are certainly undermined by her violent outburst while in the course of routine duties. When Lt. Carey returned to engineering, he was in a right foul mood. Like I said, none of us held much hope of the situation getting better any time soon.

A few hours later, the ship encountered some phenomenon and it was all hands on deck. It ruined a perfectly good dinner of freeze-dried rations shared with the Delaney sisters Jenny and Megan. No one really explained the phenomenon to the enlisted crew, but I'm told now it was a singularity whose event horizon trapped Voyager. Torres and Carey were called to an officers' meeting and the strangest thing happened when they returned. B'elanna had taken the lead. She'd worked up some idea of using the ship's deflector to create a dampening field around the ship. Carey, to everyone's surprise, went along with it and was even... helpful, if a bit hesitant. None of us can explain what happened.

The latest scuttlebutt is that Torres and the captain are taking a shuttlecraft toward the event horizon. My shift starts in a few minutes. If this ever reaches you, mom, I love you.

Yeoman Baran out.
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Senda
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Re: Week 1 Journal Entries

Post by Senda »

Ensign Seagrin, Ep. 5 - Eye of the Needle

A Message home:

Orlu Beyour
Aryana III

Orlu, my love. I am safe, but very far away. We are trying to find every way that we can to get home, but if we have to fly straight, it will be 75 more years before I reach the Alpha quadrant again. I want you to be happy. I love you. You do not have to wait for me. Only know that I am thinking of you, always, and I want nothing but your happiness. Be well. Plant seeds. Watch them grow in the honey sunlight and know that I would give anything to be there with you — anything. I will come back, someday, and I will find you. I will stand with you again in your carefully hoed fields. We will look out over them and watch the sun set as the ships come in from the mining rings, and then I will finally be home again.

Please let my family know what’s happened. Tell them I love them, even though I know they are still angry with me for leaving Starfleet. Ironically I seem to have rejoined. Maybe that will soothe my mother’s feathers when she hears it. At least I won’t end up facing off against her.

Again, I love you. Be well, and be free. I hope to see you again some day.

----------------------

I only hope this message can get through. My heart lifted at the potential that we could send people through, but that didn't work. We have to keep trying. We will keep trying.
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JimLikesGames
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Re: Week 1 Journal Entries

Post by JimLikesGames »

Ensign Thressal Zh'tyvar Personal Log, (Pre-Caretaker Episode 1) Stardate 48315.6

Awoke at 0530 ship time precisely. Metabolic diagnostic scan indicated all major physiological markers within 1 standard deviation of Andorian baseline, allowing for pre-mission physiological feedback.

Dmitri calls this physiological feedback loop ‘The Jitters’. He has an entire lexicon of fanciful human idioms for various physical and psychological states, and seems to enjoy my skepticism at some of the more outlandish ones. He is as skilled at in-courtroom dynamics as I am inept, and as hopeless at research and interpretation as I am gifted. Our acquaintance has proven fortuitous to us both.

I have Reported For Duty aboard the USS Voyager, a long-range exploration/tactical vessel. Our current assignment is classified, but given our respective specialties in Colony Charter Formation and Amendment and our posting at Deep Space 9, I have my suspicions. There are only so many possible mission profiles that might require Advocates with our portfolio and a shared Thesis on Advocacy for Recalcitrant Defendants.

The presence of a dedicated research and operational office for JAG personnel underlines the Federation’s commitment to the Rule of Law, and lends credence to my decision to pursue a career in Starfleet.

Dmitri is kind to regularly remind me that Andorians are the finest legal minds in the Federation ‘because of all the practice.’ He is right of course that the way to further hone my legal instincts is not to pore over The Ushan-Andor for novel interpretations or obscure uncited codicils, but to see real law as it is being made and lived in the Galaxy.

My only regret is that I will be spending most of my waking hours baking in human baseline ‘room temperature’, though having my own quarters, modest as they are, will afford me the luxury of setting my own environmental controls for sleep.

Thus far, I lead Dmitri 37 to 35 in our teg-ushann* to publicly ingest foodstuffs in quantity that render the other nauseated. I was most delighted to actually identify an Earthling delicacy that actually deserved the word: “Kæstur hákarl” is an aquatic predator prepared by brining and burying for several Terran weeks before being dried and served at a perfect temperature (what Dmitri regularly refers to as “chilled, which you are not, my friend”). At 5 degrees FC, it was aromatic and entirely sublime, reminiscent of Summer Urchin-Rose, but with a robust chewy texture that the more gelatinous Andorian dish lacks. I consumed 3 plates of it, but Dmitri managed only that many bites before vomiting so explosively he was transported to DS9’s medical facility. It nearly exceeded my own reaction to his nightmarish ‘Volcano Cake’.

We leave the dock at DS9 later today, I will maintain logs as security protocols allow.

------------------------

*Computer cultural footnote: Ushann is the Andorian ritual duel employed in place of mass-casualty war to settle cultural disputes on the planet. Ushan-Andor translates roughly as ‘The Duel of/for the World’, the massive, ancient body of law and custom attached to the practice of Ushann.

A teg-ushann is an interpersonal duel involving non-violent competition, formalized by contracts and guidelines as with a formal Ushann. They form the basis of many Orion non-familial kinships.
POST-EPISODE

Ensign Thressal Zh'tyvar Personal Log, Stardate 48317

Security Protocols preclude being able to fully detail the events of the past 24 hours, but Commander Tuvok has declassified aspects of our mission that I would otherwise be reluctant to record, even in an ostensibly secure personal log (as I know they can be remanded by the Captain as deemed necessary for Federation Security, or compromised by adverserials).

Dmitri is dead. We were both in the office when the ship was struck by an energy wave and the bulkhead in the JAG office ruptured. We were both ejected into space. I lost consciousness nearly immediately, and awoke in Sick Bay with the Emergency Medical Hologram telling me how “fortunate” it was that my “resilient Andorian physiognomy and relative youth” had allowed me to “retain sufficient undamaged cell membranes to be revived” and that it was “touch and go for a while there, but since you’re conscious, we need the bed, so you’re dismissed.” Apparently our Chief Medical Officer and our Nurse were killed in the incident as well.

Dmitri was in the diagnostic bed next to me, blue and still, but only for a moment, when a couple of Security ekethians* hauled his body away to make room for another casualty. My final memory of him before we were spaced was of him espousing the wisdom of a pre-Warp Human military leader named ‘General Tso’ who was somehow going to impact our teg-ushann.

COMPUTER CULTURAL REFERENCE FOOTNOTE: The Eketh is the most numerous of only three original strains of pre-Warp conifers that have not been harvested to extinction on Andoria. As such, it enjoys Protected Flora status in the Federation. It has adapted to the harsh Andorian Upland climate so efficiently that high-energy photonic cutting torches are required to penetrate its bark. In translation, the suffix ‘-ian’ appended to Andorian words denotes origin or possession: of the, from the, belonging to, etc. Ekethian translates roughly as ‘like an Eketh tree’ and is generally construed as an insult labelling an individual as extremely tough but equally dim-witted and slow to react, what Terrans might call a ‘blockhead’.

LEGAL FOOTNOTE: Dmitri Zalokov’s death prior to Acquiescence hereby nullifies our life-duel, and I withdraw my claim for the objective superiority of Andorian over Terran cuisine.

As I was returning to my quarters, still in pain and disoriented, there was a ship-wide event that I feel I am not at liberty to specifically discuss. It was bizarre, disorienting, and in keeping with the most fanciful leaked reports of Xenomorphic Crypto-Intelligence.

PERSONAL FOOTNOTE: Research Earth musical instrument: Banjo, for ritual/cultural significance.

Our current coordinates and radically-altered Mission Profile will test the limits of everyone on the ship. I have been informed that I will (ironically, given why I left Andoria in the first place) be cross-trained in Security. I have requested a Cultural Amendment to Security Uniform Protocol and been granted permission to carry my ushaan-tor as an accessory. Preparing it for use, sharpening it using my only family whetstone, it felt heavier than I remembered, but it still fit my hand perfectly, as if it knew this day would eventually arrive even if I denied it. I begin my training with Commander Tuvok tomorrow.
Jim Crocker
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