Re: March Fiction Writing Contest
Very atmospheric! It gave me chills. Great job!
Propecius
Commander88
Re: Star Trek: The Journey
Actually (to show you how old I am), you could get the full ep. on VCR tape (with parts of it in the broadcast B&W) before '88.
But, if you're talking original "broadcast" dates, you're correct.
But, if you're talking original "broadcast" dates, you're correct.
Unknown Person
Re: Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
Firstly, I have never played BotF.
Secondly, Master of Orion 2 is awesome :) I had that game installed on my pc for the longest time.
Secondly, Master of Orion 2 is awesome :) I had that game installed on my pc for the longest time.
Snownova
Re: Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
Firstly MOO3 does not exist, I refuse to acknowledge that abomination.
Secondly, BotF was an awesome game, every now and then I get the itch to play it, but it doesn't run under windows XP or 7, so it makes me sad :( and I go play Galactic Civilizations instead. (there's probably a star trek mod for that out there somewhere, but I can't be arsed to find it).
Secondly, BotF was an awesome game, every now and then I get the itch to play it, but it doesn't run under windows XP or 7, so it makes me sad :( and I go play Galactic Civilizations instead. (there's probably a star trek mod for that out there somewhere, but I can't be arsed to find it).
CapnBranFlakes
Re: Star Trek: The Journey
:tng:
Episode 210 - The Next Generation - "Silicone Avatar" - 10/14/1991
The crew, with the help of a scientist whose son lived on Data's home world, attempt to communicate with the Crystalline Entity.
Enjoy!
Re: Feedback: Welcome Center Restructure
It comes up when you do the search, it's just really low for some reason, #37.
The link is http://www.stonewallfleet.com/diplomacy-guide.
The link is http://www.stonewallfleet.com/diplomacy-guide.
RobyHardsmith
Re: Ventrilo headset suggestions
Thanks for the suggestion Mark. Appreciate it and looking forward to tomorrows episode.
colivia
Re: Feedback: Welcome Center Restructure
Where did the Diplomacy Guide go? Shouldn't that be linked to in the welcome center? Even doing a search for "diplomacy guide" isn't linking me to it.
captainbrenden
Re: March Fiction Writing Contest
After several days of edit and redraft, here is my entry; "Connor." Hope you all enjoy. :laugh:
--------------------------------
Connor slowly forced his eyes open, ignoring the combination of grogginess and searing pain that made him wish he were still unconscious. As he continued to struggle, stars replaced the blackness that had clouded his vision. The young man panicked for a moment, instinctively holding in his breath as he waited for the rapid decompression to boil his blood and burst his capillaries.
It was a moment or two before the realization that the vacuum wasn’t pulling him apart took hold. With a moment to relax, Connor became aware of the low frequency hum of the force field that patched the breach in the hull like a whispy, warm, blue membrane. He looked around, slowly, at the rest of the compartment—deck seven, section twenty-two gamma. This area of the ship was an engineering section, just aft of main engineering and mostly a junction for various electro-plasma power system conduits supplying power to the secondary computer core.
The entire section was in shambles. No lighting except for the occasional shower of sparks and a few small fires. Many of the power conduits had been severed, causing the occasional bright flashing pop as a surge of power attempted to complete its circuit and instead grounded out through either one of the ships structural members or the various metallic plating intended to house the conduits in the first place. The air burned Connor’s eyes and lungs, a combination of smoke and oxidized durainium from the arcing power conduits. Debris littered the floor—shards from destroyed computer access terminals, panels from the walls and ceiling, and even a structural member that had collapsed into the compartment.
Connor slowly rolled to his side, attempting to get to his feet. The pain was excruciating, each movement knocking the breath out of him for a moment. Warm, sticky blood flowed from a gash above his left eye and down the side of his face and partially obscuring his vision. His black and gold uniform as tattered and burned where shrapnel had torn through and imbedded itself in various places all along the left side of his body. As he continued to lift himself up, grappling with the remains to the bulkhead beside him, he was becoming more convinced that he had fractured at least a few ribs. Masked under all the pain, he was also becoming increasingly aware of a peculiar tingling sensation throughout his body, like when he had consumed too much coffee.
He couldn’t immediately remember what had happened. Why had he come to this part of the ship? How had it become so damaged?
The young technician looked around to see if there were any other survivors with him. The lighting was poor and all the clutter made it difficult to discern any humanoid forms, but he thought he could just make out a foot or boot near a massive collapsed beam that obstructed the corridor. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard voices coming from that direction the eeriness of it set the hair on his arms and neck on end.
“Is the anyone else in here?” Connor called out, his voice dry and scratchy from the harsh air. He coughed a little, a hint of copper on his tongue.
Connor had grown up in central Montana, the middle child of three. His parents were ranchers tending buffalo on the Canyon Creek Nature Preserve along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Connor had never loved ranching or the rural lifestyle, even if it was the earth twenty-fifth century. Death was a regular cycle of life on the ranch, and he had seen his fair share, but every time he would help his father or older brother dispose of a dead animal he felt uncomfortable. During his enlisted technical training, he was squeamish around the holographic corpses used in the disaster response exercises. It didn’t really matter that they weren’t real. The thought of now seeing the lifeless body of a friend or peer was already beginning to knot up his stomach.
Timidly, he crept closer to the motionless foot.
As he reached the beam, the dancing form of the nearby fires cast a faint and ghostly radiance across the unmoving body that was still mostly attached to the foot. The realization of the sight struck Connor with an almost physical impact—he would have screamed if he weren’t immediately throwing up his breakfast instead.
After the coughing and spitting subsided, the young human stared down through teary eyes at the lifeless form of a Borg drone. Most of the drone had been smashed by the collapsing beam, but its pale and leathery looking skin infused with various black metallic components was impossible to mistake. None of the components showed any sign of power or activity, which allowed Connor a moment of relief even if the sight of its circuits and entrails across what remained of the deck plating simultaneously nauseated him. The odd tingling sensation Connor had noticed before ran down his spine and intensified his anxiety as he stood over the deactivated drone.
Seventeen months ago Connor had turned eighteen years old and immediately enlisted in Starfleet. As a child, he had visited the Cochrane Memorial near Bozeman dozens of times and dreamed of breaking away from Earth and the placid, country existence of his family. Though he had never been particularly passionate about machines or warp drive, being an engineering technician had seemed interesting enough—within the first few weeks of technical school he already was playing with his first injector assembly. Besides, he had no desire to spend four years in school studying science and whatever else Starfleet made its officers learn. Worse, now that the Federation was at war with the Klingons he didn’t want to end up in a foxhole on some obscure planet in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a phaser rifle and his wits.
The U.S.S. Valefor had been his first posting out of tech school. She wasn’t a very spectacular ship, just a run of the mill Nova-class science vessel. But Connor loved it. She was a small ship with a small crew—a small family. Everybody knew everybody on board and, for better or worse, everyone’s business. It was impossible to keep secrets on a ship like the Valefor. Connor liked it that way; it reminded him of the small towns near where he grew up. As much as he had spent his youth dreaming of escaping home, sometimes he would catch himself missing it.
Connor had never actually seen a real Borg drone before. Six weeks ago, the Valefor had been reassigned to Starfleet Battle Group Omega—a contingent of starships tasked with fending off the Borg advance in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block. The move had made everyone on the ship nervous, even the officers. Connor had grown up to tales of the horrible things the Borg were capable of and the atrocities they had committed. Seeing this one, squashed on the deck like an oversize insect, somehow gave him a sense of disappointment.
Though his head still felt foggy and he did not recall an encounter with any Borg ships, Connor was beginning to piece together a scenario. The Valefor must have encountered a Borg vessel during a standard reconnaissance patrol. Maybe they had been attacked and he had entered this section to repair something—Connor was a warp engine technician and this section was near to the magnetic-constrictor assembly on the anti-matter side of the warp reactor.
Suddenly he became aware of how bad off the ship must actually be. There was no lighting to speak of, none of the computer terminals along the wall were online, and the fire suppression system was not activating. Even the placid and melancholy voice of the computer was silent; he’d not heard it utter a single warning yet. His training began to take over and he began running through what he could remember of the trouble-shooting tree for damage control. First thing first, he was going to need to find a functioning computer terminal.
Connor began stumbling through the compartment, making his way deeper into the ship. He was starting to feel lightheaded and maybe even a little short of breath. Somehow he had the sensation that his blood felt thicker, like it was turning to jelly in his veins and his heart was having to work much harder to keep it all flowing. Was this part of the ship still venting atmosphere? Perhaps he had another, more serious, injury that adrenaline was hiding from him?
“Oh crap,” he gasped to himself, having finally reached the bulkhead.
At the compartment bulkhead was a doorway into the secondary computer core control room. The doors themselves were shifted diagonally ajar. Connor immediately realized that the only way that could happen is if the number six lateral member of the Valefor was twisted. The ship, quite literally, must have broken its back.
With the distortion to the door’s frame, Connor wasn’t sure he would be able to force the door open enough to gain access. He searched around through the rubble for a moment; finally settling on a tritanium cylinder used to route optical data conduits through the walls in this section. It wasn’t as long as he would have hoped and the ends were jagged and sharp, but he knew it would be strong enough to pry the door.
Connor wedged his new lever in the small separation in the door and gave it several strong pulls. The doors did not immediately budge at all, but suddenly broke loose sending the young man crashing to the floor in surprise. The tritanum conduit scattered off in its own direction accompanied by metallic clamor.
“Dammit!” Connor yelled, staring up at the ceiling.
Again, he climbed to his feet. His body still racked with throbbing pain.
The doorway had only opened up a small bit, but Connor was a small framed human and not very muscular. He managed to wiggle his way through the gap. Several times he thought he would pass out from the pain as the doors pressed against his various injuries.
Once inside the control room, Connor finally got a decent look at the secondary computer core itself. For the most part, the core seemed intact and operational. There were even a few terminals with fractured, but active, displays. Additional light flickered around the room from diminutive, dancing flames lining some of the conduits that supplied the core. Based on the damage pattern, Connor guessed that an overload had begun here and spread into the adjoining sections. Shielding around the core had protected its primary functions, but the rest of the conduits had not faired as well. From his new vantage point, he could vaguely make out the distorted form of the lateral member that ran right through this compartment and served as an anchor point for the core itself. The damage seemed awe inspiring in its extent.
Almost as if the fates were affirming his conclusion, the ship gave a creaking shudder that sent the already unstable technician tumbling forward from his tenuous footing. He managed to catch himself with his hands before his head collided with a protruding deck plate.
“What the…” he muttered as he stared at his own hands.
At first, the young crewman thought his eyes had begun to play tricks on him. Maybe he had lost enough blood that he was becoming delirious. Connor desperately hoped that was the case because already his mind was racing to another conclusion that terrified him far more than death. Sinister blemishes were visible on his skin. The thick veins that ran across the backs of his hands were dark and swollen. In the flickering light of the fires, he thought he could discern movement beneath the skin surface, like twitching muscle where none should be.
Despair and self-pity began to overwhelm him and take hold of Connor’s conscious thought.
“No. No…” he began to half burble and half sob.
“What’s wrong?”
Connor’s head snapped up, mid sob, searching for the source of the voice. It was familiar to him, but at the same time completely impossible. His voice echoed around the core, “Kelsi?”
He searched around, finally finding her seated at one of the consoles. Her clean appearance and pristine clothing were a stark contrast to the devastation around the rest of the ship.
“Don’t cry, Connor. You’re the brave one, remember?”
“What?” He stuttered. “But… how? Am I dead?”
Connor blinked his eyes a few times in confusion; sure that he must be imagining his fourteen-year-old sister trapped with him in this tomb on the far side of the galaxy. Still she sat perched on the stool and fussed with her auburn pigtails. She had always been a fidgety young girl.
“Tommy always bullies you, but you never cry.”
A sharp pain pierced through him and the young man doubled over in agony. He felt like his internal organs were being rearranged. In dismay he worried it might actually be the case. The nanoprobes were efficient little assimilators and he had no idea how long they had been at work.
“Be strong, Connor.” Her voice was soft and soothing.
Looking up at her, he fought back the pain. In a whimper, he replied, “I’m not stronger than this.”
“Yes, you are. You have to be.”
That was when he noticed it. The terminal beside his baby sister was not functioning as intended. Instead of the usual placid blues and ambers of standard issue Starfleet LCARS, the terminal was illuminated in a kaleidoscope of green and yellow circles.
“They’re going to find me, Connor.”
Her words carried with them a horrifying realization, sending a shiver down his spine that he knew wasn’t Borg nanoprobes commandeering his nervous system. Connor climbed awkwardly to his feet and stumbled forward into the terminal beside Kelsi. Resting on the remaining broken stool, he tapped clumsily at the panel and sifted through the fractured remains of the secondary processor. Buried within all the digital carnage was his worst nightmare.
The Valefor had indeed encountered a small Borg scout vessel near the edge of the B’Tran Cluster. It had been hidden among background radiation and the ship’s sensors hadn’t immediately noticed it. By the time they did, it was already too late. Some quick thinking by the Captain had managed to destroy the Borg aggressor, but not before massive damage had been caused and drones had swarmed every major area—main engineering, the bridge, the main computer core, deflector control; all were lost.
Very few internal systems were still functional. As far as Connor could tell, there weren’t more than a dozen or so life-signs left on the ship. Of those, he couldn’t be sure any weren’t drones. However, of greater concern, he could see that an invasive program was chewing its way through the secondary computer core desperately trying to gain access to what was left of the sub-space communications array. Already it had access to the navigation logs—including the position of the task force.
“Please, Connor, you have to hide me from them!” the girl pleaded.
Connor looked at Kelsi, remembering the day he hugged her for the last time right before departing for Earth Space Dock and the Valefor. A small tear welled up at the corner of his eye.
“No… I’m going to protect you.”
Turning his attention back to the panel, he did the only thing he knew for sure he could. The chief engineer, a boisterous Bolian who had an opinion for everything, thought he would make a great engineer someday—something Connor had taken a great deal of pride in. For right now though, he was still only a crewman second class that only really knew his way around magnetic constrictor coils. Hours on end were spent navigating the jefferies tubes of the lower bowels of the ship; Connor knew that system almost as well as the chief. His whole time aboard the Valefor had been spent keeping the coils functioning properly. Even a slight imbalance in the field geometry and the anti-matter would escape it confines and destroy the ship. All it takes is a faulty constrictor coil, a surge through an unshielded power conduit, or a corruption in the computer safety controls…
Connor felt strange undoing his own handiwork now.
The whispers of the Collective were slowly starting to grow in the back of his mind. None of the voices were distinguishable yet, but Connor felt like they were in the room with him now—hiding in the shadows like the monsters under his bed as a child. Connor stopped tapping the flickering panel, partly because he had done what he set out to and partly because he felt somehow compelled to stop. Resting against the console, he felt tired. He focused on his baby sister, wrapping himself in fond memories to fend of the approaching storm.
More than anything, he missed her smile.
“I love you, Sis…”
--------------------------------
Connor slowly forced his eyes open, ignoring the combination of grogginess and searing pain that made him wish he were still unconscious. As he continued to struggle, stars replaced the blackness that had clouded his vision. The young man panicked for a moment, instinctively holding in his breath as he waited for the rapid decompression to boil his blood and burst his capillaries.
It was a moment or two before the realization that the vacuum wasn’t pulling him apart took hold. With a moment to relax, Connor became aware of the low frequency hum of the force field that patched the breach in the hull like a whispy, warm, blue membrane. He looked around, slowly, at the rest of the compartment—deck seven, section twenty-two gamma. This area of the ship was an engineering section, just aft of main engineering and mostly a junction for various electro-plasma power system conduits supplying power to the secondary computer core.
The entire section was in shambles. No lighting except for the occasional shower of sparks and a few small fires. Many of the power conduits had been severed, causing the occasional bright flashing pop as a surge of power attempted to complete its circuit and instead grounded out through either one of the ships structural members or the various metallic plating intended to house the conduits in the first place. The air burned Connor’s eyes and lungs, a combination of smoke and oxidized durainium from the arcing power conduits. Debris littered the floor—shards from destroyed computer access terminals, panels from the walls and ceiling, and even a structural member that had collapsed into the compartment.
Connor slowly rolled to his side, attempting to get to his feet. The pain was excruciating, each movement knocking the breath out of him for a moment. Warm, sticky blood flowed from a gash above his left eye and down the side of his face and partially obscuring his vision. His black and gold uniform as tattered and burned where shrapnel had torn through and imbedded itself in various places all along the left side of his body. As he continued to lift himself up, grappling with the remains to the bulkhead beside him, he was becoming more convinced that he had fractured at least a few ribs. Masked under all the pain, he was also becoming increasingly aware of a peculiar tingling sensation throughout his body, like when he had consumed too much coffee.
He couldn’t immediately remember what had happened. Why had he come to this part of the ship? How had it become so damaged?
The young technician looked around to see if there were any other survivors with him. The lighting was poor and all the clutter made it difficult to discern any humanoid forms, but he thought he could just make out a foot or boot near a massive collapsed beam that obstructed the corridor. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard voices coming from that direction the eeriness of it set the hair on his arms and neck on end.
“Is the anyone else in here?” Connor called out, his voice dry and scratchy from the harsh air. He coughed a little, a hint of copper on his tongue.
Connor had grown up in central Montana, the middle child of three. His parents were ranchers tending buffalo on the Canyon Creek Nature Preserve along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Connor had never loved ranching or the rural lifestyle, even if it was the earth twenty-fifth century. Death was a regular cycle of life on the ranch, and he had seen his fair share, but every time he would help his father or older brother dispose of a dead animal he felt uncomfortable. During his enlisted technical training, he was squeamish around the holographic corpses used in the disaster response exercises. It didn’t really matter that they weren’t real. The thought of now seeing the lifeless body of a friend or peer was already beginning to knot up his stomach.
Timidly, he crept closer to the motionless foot.
As he reached the beam, the dancing form of the nearby fires cast a faint and ghostly radiance across the unmoving body that was still mostly attached to the foot. The realization of the sight struck Connor with an almost physical impact—he would have screamed if he weren’t immediately throwing up his breakfast instead.
After the coughing and spitting subsided, the young human stared down through teary eyes at the lifeless form of a Borg drone. Most of the drone had been smashed by the collapsing beam, but its pale and leathery looking skin infused with various black metallic components was impossible to mistake. None of the components showed any sign of power or activity, which allowed Connor a moment of relief even if the sight of its circuits and entrails across what remained of the deck plating simultaneously nauseated him. The odd tingling sensation Connor had noticed before ran down his spine and intensified his anxiety as he stood over the deactivated drone.
Seventeen months ago Connor had turned eighteen years old and immediately enlisted in Starfleet. As a child, he had visited the Cochrane Memorial near Bozeman dozens of times and dreamed of breaking away from Earth and the placid, country existence of his family. Though he had never been particularly passionate about machines or warp drive, being an engineering technician had seemed interesting enough—within the first few weeks of technical school he already was playing with his first injector assembly. Besides, he had no desire to spend four years in school studying science and whatever else Starfleet made its officers learn. Worse, now that the Federation was at war with the Klingons he didn’t want to end up in a foxhole on some obscure planet in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a phaser rifle and his wits.
The U.S.S. Valefor had been his first posting out of tech school. She wasn’t a very spectacular ship, just a run of the mill Nova-class science vessel. But Connor loved it. She was a small ship with a small crew—a small family. Everybody knew everybody on board and, for better or worse, everyone’s business. It was impossible to keep secrets on a ship like the Valefor. Connor liked it that way; it reminded him of the small towns near where he grew up. As much as he had spent his youth dreaming of escaping home, sometimes he would catch himself missing it.
Connor had never actually seen a real Borg drone before. Six weeks ago, the Valefor had been reassigned to Starfleet Battle Group Omega—a contingent of starships tasked with fending off the Borg advance in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block. The move had made everyone on the ship nervous, even the officers. Connor had grown up to tales of the horrible things the Borg were capable of and the atrocities they had committed. Seeing this one, squashed on the deck like an oversize insect, somehow gave him a sense of disappointment.
Though his head still felt foggy and he did not recall an encounter with any Borg ships, Connor was beginning to piece together a scenario. The Valefor must have encountered a Borg vessel during a standard reconnaissance patrol. Maybe they had been attacked and he had entered this section to repair something—Connor was a warp engine technician and this section was near to the magnetic-constrictor assembly on the anti-matter side of the warp reactor.
Suddenly he became aware of how bad off the ship must actually be. There was no lighting to speak of, none of the computer terminals along the wall were online, and the fire suppression system was not activating. Even the placid and melancholy voice of the computer was silent; he’d not heard it utter a single warning yet. His training began to take over and he began running through what he could remember of the trouble-shooting tree for damage control. First thing first, he was going to need to find a functioning computer terminal.
Connor began stumbling through the compartment, making his way deeper into the ship. He was starting to feel lightheaded and maybe even a little short of breath. Somehow he had the sensation that his blood felt thicker, like it was turning to jelly in his veins and his heart was having to work much harder to keep it all flowing. Was this part of the ship still venting atmosphere? Perhaps he had another, more serious, injury that adrenaline was hiding from him?
“Oh crap,” he gasped to himself, having finally reached the bulkhead.
At the compartment bulkhead was a doorway into the secondary computer core control room. The doors themselves were shifted diagonally ajar. Connor immediately realized that the only way that could happen is if the number six lateral member of the Valefor was twisted. The ship, quite literally, must have broken its back.
With the distortion to the door’s frame, Connor wasn’t sure he would be able to force the door open enough to gain access. He searched around through the rubble for a moment; finally settling on a tritanium cylinder used to route optical data conduits through the walls in this section. It wasn’t as long as he would have hoped and the ends were jagged and sharp, but he knew it would be strong enough to pry the door.
Connor wedged his new lever in the small separation in the door and gave it several strong pulls. The doors did not immediately budge at all, but suddenly broke loose sending the young man crashing to the floor in surprise. The tritanum conduit scattered off in its own direction accompanied by metallic clamor.
“Dammit!” Connor yelled, staring up at the ceiling.
Again, he climbed to his feet. His body still racked with throbbing pain.
The doorway had only opened up a small bit, but Connor was a small framed human and not very muscular. He managed to wiggle his way through the gap. Several times he thought he would pass out from the pain as the doors pressed against his various injuries.
Once inside the control room, Connor finally got a decent look at the secondary computer core itself. For the most part, the core seemed intact and operational. There were even a few terminals with fractured, but active, displays. Additional light flickered around the room from diminutive, dancing flames lining some of the conduits that supplied the core. Based on the damage pattern, Connor guessed that an overload had begun here and spread into the adjoining sections. Shielding around the core had protected its primary functions, but the rest of the conduits had not faired as well. From his new vantage point, he could vaguely make out the distorted form of the lateral member that ran right through this compartment and served as an anchor point for the core itself. The damage seemed awe inspiring in its extent.
Almost as if the fates were affirming his conclusion, the ship gave a creaking shudder that sent the already unstable technician tumbling forward from his tenuous footing. He managed to catch himself with his hands before his head collided with a protruding deck plate.
“What the…” he muttered as he stared at his own hands.
At first, the young crewman thought his eyes had begun to play tricks on him. Maybe he had lost enough blood that he was becoming delirious. Connor desperately hoped that was the case because already his mind was racing to another conclusion that terrified him far more than death. Sinister blemishes were visible on his skin. The thick veins that ran across the backs of his hands were dark and swollen. In the flickering light of the fires, he thought he could discern movement beneath the skin surface, like twitching muscle where none should be.
Despair and self-pity began to overwhelm him and take hold of Connor’s conscious thought.
“No. No…” he began to half burble and half sob.
“What’s wrong?”
Connor’s head snapped up, mid sob, searching for the source of the voice. It was familiar to him, but at the same time completely impossible. His voice echoed around the core, “Kelsi?”
He searched around, finally finding her seated at one of the consoles. Her clean appearance and pristine clothing were a stark contrast to the devastation around the rest of the ship.
“Don’t cry, Connor. You’re the brave one, remember?”
“What?” He stuttered. “But… how? Am I dead?”
Connor blinked his eyes a few times in confusion; sure that he must be imagining his fourteen-year-old sister trapped with him in this tomb on the far side of the galaxy. Still she sat perched on the stool and fussed with her auburn pigtails. She had always been a fidgety young girl.
“Tommy always bullies you, but you never cry.”
A sharp pain pierced through him and the young man doubled over in agony. He felt like his internal organs were being rearranged. In dismay he worried it might actually be the case. The nanoprobes were efficient little assimilators and he had no idea how long they had been at work.
“Be strong, Connor.” Her voice was soft and soothing.
Looking up at her, he fought back the pain. In a whimper, he replied, “I’m not stronger than this.”
“Yes, you are. You have to be.”
That was when he noticed it. The terminal beside his baby sister was not functioning as intended. Instead of the usual placid blues and ambers of standard issue Starfleet LCARS, the terminal was illuminated in a kaleidoscope of green and yellow circles.
“They’re going to find me, Connor.”
Her words carried with them a horrifying realization, sending a shiver down his spine that he knew wasn’t Borg nanoprobes commandeering his nervous system. Connor climbed awkwardly to his feet and stumbled forward into the terminal beside Kelsi. Resting on the remaining broken stool, he tapped clumsily at the panel and sifted through the fractured remains of the secondary processor. Buried within all the digital carnage was his worst nightmare.
The Valefor had indeed encountered a small Borg scout vessel near the edge of the B’Tran Cluster. It had been hidden among background radiation and the ship’s sensors hadn’t immediately noticed it. By the time they did, it was already too late. Some quick thinking by the Captain had managed to destroy the Borg aggressor, but not before massive damage had been caused and drones had swarmed every major area—main engineering, the bridge, the main computer core, deflector control; all were lost.
Very few internal systems were still functional. As far as Connor could tell, there weren’t more than a dozen or so life-signs left on the ship. Of those, he couldn’t be sure any weren’t drones. However, of greater concern, he could see that an invasive program was chewing its way through the secondary computer core desperately trying to gain access to what was left of the sub-space communications array. Already it had access to the navigation logs—including the position of the task force.
“Please, Connor, you have to hide me from them!” the girl pleaded.
Connor looked at Kelsi, remembering the day he hugged her for the last time right before departing for Earth Space Dock and the Valefor. A small tear welled up at the corner of his eye.
“No… I’m going to protect you.”
Turning his attention back to the panel, he did the only thing he knew for sure he could. The chief engineer, a boisterous Bolian who had an opinion for everything, thought he would make a great engineer someday—something Connor had taken a great deal of pride in. For right now though, he was still only a crewman second class that only really knew his way around magnetic constrictor coils. Hours on end were spent navigating the jefferies tubes of the lower bowels of the ship; Connor knew that system almost as well as the chief. His whole time aboard the Valefor had been spent keeping the coils functioning properly. Even a slight imbalance in the field geometry and the anti-matter would escape it confines and destroy the ship. All it takes is a faulty constrictor coil, a surge through an unshielded power conduit, or a corruption in the computer safety controls…
Connor felt strange undoing his own handiwork now.
The whispers of the Collective were slowly starting to grow in the back of his mind. None of the voices were distinguishable yet, but Connor felt like they were in the room with him now—hiding in the shadows like the monsters under his bed as a child. Connor stopped tapping the flickering panel, partly because he had done what he set out to and partly because he felt somehow compelled to stop. Resting against the console, he felt tired. He focused on his baby sister, wrapping himself in fond memories to fend of the approaching storm.
More than anything, he missed her smile.
“I love you, Sis…”
Seannewboy
Re: Guild creation available now
I got the following reply today from my support ticket on not being able to use "gay" or "lesbian" in the Mission Statement:
I've updated the Mission Statement and it worked perfectly now. Their quick response and the ease of getting this fixed really makes me happy. :)
--------------------Incoming transmission--------------------
Greetings Humanoid,
I am Protocol Droid S7-L1, Human-Cyborg relations.
I am replying to your earlier transmission regarding filter issues.
We have been working hard to address issues with our word filtering system. We are pleased to be able to advise you that the particular problem you have highlighted has been fixed and you should not experience any barriers when using these phrases. Please do not hesitate to let us know should this not be the case.
We would like to thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on this issue, and apologize for any inconvenience which may have been caused as a result.
Should you need further assistance with this matter, please do not hesitate to let me know. Galactic support is our specialty…
Sincerely,
Protocol Droid S7-L1
SWTOR Customer Service--------------------Transmission ended--------------------
I've updated the Mission Statement and it worked perfectly now. Their quick response and the ease of getting this fixed really makes me happy. :)
DCollins
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
Role Playing session feedback: I feel that it was a pretty good session overall. Some prepped email data packets (you can type them up, send them to yourself then forward later) to answer big questions. For example: If you had a big description for something.
A rundown of the crew positions at the beginning of the scenario would be helpful. All the players in the starting area then saying what they are.
I'll probably remember more, but my brain is running on caffeine right now...
Thank you greatly for the feedback. The most important aspect of RP is the people involved and as such we are always looking for ways to make your experience better.. If you think of anything else please let doogiegood or myself know :)
Philip
DCollins
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
ok my game is so off tonight. I came on for the RP tonight, and just realized I missed it 2 hours ago....
sigh
strawberry margarita, why do you distract me so
Ooo Strawberry Margarita's do that..
*steals the drink and runs**
Philip
Propecius
Re: March Fiction Writing Contest
Bumping the thread, and reminding people to post their fiction. We all want to read what you've created!
CapnBranFlakes
Re: Star Trek: The Journey
:tng:
Episode 209 - The Next Generation - "Ensign Ro" - 10/07/1991
After an attack on a Federation outpost, Picard is sent to locate a Bajoran terrorist, with the help of Ensign Ro Laren.
Enjoy!
Random
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
Role Playing session feedback: I feel that it was a pretty good session overall. Some prepped email data packets (you can type them up, send them to yourself then forward later) to answer big questions. For example: If you had a big description for something.
A rundown of the crew positions at the beginning of the scenario would be helpful. All the players in the starting area then saying what they are.
I'll probably remember more, but my brain is running on caffeine right now...
A rundown of the crew positions at the beginning of the scenario would be helpful. All the players in the starting area then saying what they are.
I'll probably remember more, but my brain is running on caffeine right now...
MrBlueGrey
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
ok my game is so off tonight. I came on for the RP tonight, and just realized I missed it 2 hours ago....
sigh
strawberry margarita, why do you distract me so
sigh
strawberry margarita, why do you distract me so
DCollins
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
Thank you to everyone that participated in the RP event. I ask that you all please send me some feedback on what you did like and did not like about the rp. Please include your duty aboard the ship so that I can insure that you are properly listed for the synopsis..
Thank you,
Philip
Thank you,
Philip
Re: Guild creation available now
Yeah, I figured it had to do with the server configuration, but the limitations on US vs Europe servers, I'm afraid that it'll separate the fleet and we'll have to change the way things operate completely.
That addresses above just redirects to www.swtor.com and the link to our mini-site is the one above. It's alright, but nothing that special.
That addresses above just redirects to www.swtor.com and the link to our mini-site is the one above. It's alright, but nothing that special.
DCollins
Re: March 9th Roleplay event sign up
Looking forward to the event this evening.. I shall be playing the part of Admiral Iroesay.. *giggles like a maniac*