Future of Star Trek: I'm coming home · 4:21am Sep 4th, 2017
I just wanted to write this blog post in regards to my "I'm Coming Home" story.
I just recently suffered the death of someone quite close to me, and she was one of the people that kept me writing this story. I originally put it on hiatus due to more hours at work, but with this new event, I don't know when I'm going to be getting back to it, so I thought I'd outline the course of events that would take place the in subsequent chapters.
I will have the text in spoilers and under a page break so that those of you who want to wait till I actually write it, or would rather it remain a mystery, it's not ruined for you.
This is your final warning, after this page break, there be spoilers.
Chapter 11 - Determination
The chapter opens up at a metal fabricator that makes hull plating for Starfleet vessels and features the distracted conversation of two Quality control employees, which leads to them missing a minor defect in a hull panel that didn't trigger an alert, but an attentive QC would have flagged it for review.
The rest of the chapter focuses on Zoe's time at the academy. She finds herself being assigned a dorm with a Female choblik, a race of Deer/Ostrich like creatures who are heavily modified by cybernetics from birth, named Tava. Their relationship starts out very rocky, but they quickly find common ground. Tava is a cybernetic engineer specializing in medical prosthetics who decided to join Starfleet to explore the galaxy. Part of their rocky start to relationship stemmed from Tava performing a medical scan on Zoe while she was sleeping, but from this, Tava discovered that even though she is a Unicorn, there are nerve bundles under her thick shoulder muscles that would normally connect to the wings of a Pegasus.
Using this, Tava designs and builds a set of prosthetic limbs that essentially give Zoe hands, making life a lot easier for her.
There are several time jumps during the chapter that features Sweetie Belle and other parts of Academy life.
Interspersed through out the chapter are what happens to that hull panel as it makes its way to be installed as part of the bridge of the newly constructed USS Hegemone, a Pathfinder-Class exploratory science vessel.
The chapter ends with Tava being killed in a shuttle accident during training.
Chapter 12 - Here There Be Dragons
The chapter opens up with Zoe, a green ensign assigned to the security detail of the USS Hegemone, complaining to her new Wife, Sapphire, in their shared quarters about how she just spent the last twelve hours taking inventory and calibrating the ship's small arms.
Then it cuts to the bridge, where newly minted Captian Lydia Johnson is alerted to a faint sensor reading of a ship just on the edge of sensors. She orders the ship to change course and investigate.
When they arrive, everyone is surprised to find the derelict hulk of an Excelsior-Class vessel bearing the registry NCC-1701-B. The ship shows no sign of power, and no signs of life. Capt Johnson notify's Starfleet command of their discovery and orders an away team to board the vessel and solve one of Starfleet's greatest mysteries: What happened to the Enterprise-B.
The away team, consisting of the Cheif and Deputy Cheif of security, Zoe, and a team of engineers, board the vessel via shuttle after performing an exterior survey of the ship, which finds the ship was intentionally vented of all atmosphere by opening all exterior docking hatches, cargo holds and shuttle bays. During this time, Zoe explains what was known about the Enterprise-B, that it was lost in 2329 in deep space under Captain Thomas Johnson Jr (she does mention that there's no relation to the captain, 'I asked.'), their last report saying that the crew had contracted a virus. The ship was listed as lost, presumed destroyed.
While onboard the Enterprise, the engineering crew quickly restore emergency power with a generator they brought with them and start working on restoring life support, and the team splits up to explore the ship. Zoe, along with a computer specialist are sent to the main computer to download its databanks. Along the way, they are horrified to find the mutilated frozen corpses of the Enterprise crew.
When they get to the computer lab, they find it sealed, with a viable atmosphere inside. intrigued by this, Zoe signals to the Hegemone for a site to site transport inside the room so they don't disturb any evidence inside by opening the door.
Inside they find the skeletal remains of a crewman wearing a medical uniform, a phaser in her hands, and scattered through out the room are empty packages of ration packs. The engineer stops Zoe from taking off her EV suit's helmet, as life support hadn't been restored yet. Using a portable generator, they activate the main computer and begin downloading the ship's logs and sensor data.
Inside the logs they find out that they had brought aboard an odd object they detected inside a rogue comet. During their research of the object, containment and quarantine were broken, and an illness quickly spread through out the ship. The virus originally reported to Starfleet command was actually a neural parasite that drove the crew mad and began killing each other.
The medical crewman found in the main computer was the lone Rigelian jelna (female) onboard and her species had a natural immunity to the parasite based on a series of frantic log entries she left, the final one a warning to anyone who finds the ship and that she was about to vent the atmosphere and then end her own life.
At this point the call came over their communicators that life support had been restored, and just as Zoe was reading a log that said that the parasite spread itself by feeding on the Topaline used in the ships life support systems, spreading its spores, but before Zoe could warn the away team, nearly all of them had taken off their helmets and were infected.
What followed is a harrowing fight for her life Zoe raced for the shuttle craft, unable to contact the Hegemone because the engineer she was with, having been driven mad, damaged her suits comms.
The chapter ends with Zoe, the lone survivor of the away mission, receiving a field promotion to Lieutenant JG and assigned as deputy chief of security. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers is sent to salvage and contain the Enterprise.
Chapter 13 - The Hand that Tips the Scales
This chapter takes place several years later, Zoe having risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander and now Chief of Security. The Hegemone, after returning to Federation space for resupply and maintenance, is sent to a Federation Protectorate world, having just undergone a contentious election, is withdrawing its protectorate status with the federation and expelling all UFP diplomats and Starfleet personnel from the planet.
The Away-team lead by the Hegemone XO, Zoe and a security detail, arrive via Shuttle-craft, as transporters are impossible due to minerals in the planet's crust generating interference. They find a near riot in front of the embassy gates as planetary natives are protesting the UFP presence.
Having been given one solar day to vacate, an additional shuttle of engineers is sent down to expedite the destruction of any technology that has to be left behind.
With the work nearly done, Zoe, the XO and the Ambassador are discussing the final preparations for leaving in front of the embassy, with only a small Starfleet Security team still on site, when two phaser blasts from across the street strike the XO and Ambassador dead, and a third shot seconds later only stopped by a quick shield Zoe manages just in time.
Zoe then begins getting frantic calls from the rest of the team that Starfleet phasers are firing into the crowd of protestors, but none of them had fired. Immediately shots begin firing out from buildings across from the embassy.
Her men under fire, and no transporters to quickly evacuate, Zoe gives the order to return fire set to stun to defend themselves and for a defensive retreat to the shuttle pad at the rear of the building, just as the front gates fall and the protestors storm through.
What follows is a running firefight through the embassy and in the end, several security officers are killed, with hundreds of protesters dead.
Almost immediately, the Hegemone is recalled to Earth, and an inquiry is held ascertain what happened.
Zoe's father, now Equus' ambassador to the UFP and front runner to become its Federation council member following Equus' final admission hearing that is only a month away, asks his daughter in private what happened. Zoe sticks to her story and that of her men: The XO and Ambassador were killed first, but she didn't know where those shots came from, but she knew the shot meant for her came from across the street. When her men reported that Starfleet phasers were firing into the crowd, they came under fire from the same direction from which the shot meant for her came.
Hearing that, James makes a call to Corbyn Matthews, the same JAG judge who presided over him decades earlier, now retired, and asked him to represent his daughter, he was initially hesitant but after James explain the situation, he agreed.
When the inquiry was held, a representative from that world brings damning evidence from a Geostationary satellite that was above the embassy, that shows Federation personnel firing first, which contradicts testimony given by Zoe and her men, as that was all that was available since all sensor data from the embassy was destroyed when the protesters burned it to the ground.
In a shocking twist, the representative questions Zoe's state of mind when she gave the order to return fire, bringing up the results of her Starfleet entrance exam as proof that she was unstable when put in a tough situation. Corbyn immediately objects, as those results are classified and are only available to Academy admissions and Starfleet Medical personnel.
The Judge presiding over the inquiry calls for a recess so they could figure out how such information was released.
Over the course of the next three days, no one is able to definitively find the leak, save for one lead, a doctor from that world was in Sweetie Belle's medical exchange program, but didn't enter Starfleet as a civilian, instead choosing to return home, but that doctor was killed shortly after returning home.
When the inquiry reconvenes, the representative blames the whole incident on Zoe and calls for her extradition. Before he could finish his demand, the doors to the room open and in walks members of that planets military escorted by James, Sweetie Belle and Captain Johnson.
They inform the Judge that a coup had taken place on that planet after the planets courts nullified the election due to information coming to light that the election was rigged by the winning party, who the representative was a member and implicated in the election tampering. Along with this, it came out that the doctor that Sweetie knew from the exchange program was paid by the same party to steal any information that she could from Starfleet medical records, which included the results of Zoe's Starfleet's admission exam, and that the whole incident was part of a multi-year plan to wrest control of the government and install a dictatorship.
Zoe is immediately cleared of all wrong doing.
The chapter ends with Zoe being promoted to Commander and given the position of XO.
Chapter 14 - Homecoming
A year later, news of a Coup on the Tzenkethi homeworld shocks those gathered in the Hegemone mess hall who had gathered to Celebrate Equus' formal admission into the Federation. Many gathered begin speculating that this would spell the end of the Typhon Pact and the decade's long cold war between it and Khitomer Accords signatories since diplomatic relations had been improving for years.
The Captain puts an end to the discussion when she tells everyone that the Hegemone had been recalled and are being sent to the Tzenkethi border to monitor what appears to be breaking out into a civil war.
The next bit of the chapter focuses on the banality of patrol duty on a starship until a Tzenkethi cruiser attempts to cross the border, and Zoe, on duty during beta shift, orders the Hegemone to intercept.
The cruiser opens fire immediately, and the two ships, evenly matched, duel it out to an almost stalemate, with the Hegemone's shields and weapons offline, and the Tzenkethi ship's engines and shields offline and weapons severely damaged.
During the fight, a direct hit to the bridge breaches the hull (exactly where that defective hull plating was installed), with the Operations officer sucked out through the hull breach. Zoe wonders why the Captain hadn't reached the bridge yet, unknown to her the Captain was knocked unconscious in her quarters during the initial attack.
The tactical officer reports that the Tzenkethi are powering up for another attack as the computer reports that Emergency Force fields were failing.
Zoe, doing the only thing she could think of in the heat of the moment, forms a shield over the hull breach, orders the helm to retreat from the area at best speed and finally orders the bridge evacuated.
With Zoe, the only one left on the bridge, and the ship moving out of harm's way, she notices that the Tzenkethi had targeted their engines. Torn between using whats left of her magical energy to teleport out of the bridge to safety and gamble that the attack is unsuccessful, or attempt to use her shield to take the brunt of the attack, she chooses the latter.
In a last ditch effort, she focuses all her magic to shield the ship, her eyes glow white just as the Tzenkethi fire a torpedo, her shield managed to deflect the torpedo just enough for it to land a glancing blow to the shuttle bay instead of the warp nacelle, allowing the Hegemone to escape.
As her eye's dim and Zoe slips out of consciousness, she feels the grip of rushing air and then nothing.
The chapter then cuts to Fluttershy waking in a cold sweat, turning to James, she says "Something's wrong."
The story ends with a large crowd gathered outside of Ponyville in the same field where James had crashed years earlier. They watch in silence as the Hegemone descends from the clouds and lands.
A gangplank opens and the entirety of the ship's company, clad in full Dress Uniform descend and form orderly ranks on either side until finally, a casket draped in the blue flag of the Federation held by six pallbearers followed by an officer playing the bagpipes.
When Zoe is laid to rest, her grave stone mentions that she was awarded the Federation Medal of Honour and Christopher Pike Medal of Valour posthumously.
Sorry for your loss.
All I can say is, don't grieve as Spock said, your friend is soaring the stars with our brothers and sisters now... :(
I just reread this. I do hope that someone pick this us and finishes the story,
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I'll pick it up eventually, right now I'm working on two other stories.