Disclaimer: Star Trek and all associated characters and situations are the property of CBS studios, Star Trek Online is the creation of Cryptic and Perfect World, all are used by myself for entertainment purposes without permission or intent to profit. Some dialog has been borrowed from the official Cryptic mission in the game.
Character: Male Human Starfleet Engineer - Delta Recruit
Timeframe: After Federation tutorial
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"An Exercise in Elaboration"
'The Burdens of Command'
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'
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"The ship is your's, Number One, your orders are... to lock on to my combadge and fire!"
Those words would remain seared into his memory for the rest of his life followed closely by his own order to the ship's tactical officer to obey Captain Masc Taggart's last command and open fire on the I.K.S. Chot. It certainly wasn't how he had expected to gain his first command. And then to face the Borg like they had, and survive no-less...
After that, the idea that he might one day be an Admiral didn't seem so much like some kind of prank being played on him.
At the moment, however, he was sitting at the desk in the First Officer's quarters - what were supposed to be his quarters - going over the PADDs that had managed to accumulate in a matter of hours. He wasn't yet comfortable enough with the idea that he was now the ship's Captain to move into those quarters yet, no matter what he'd overheard some of his classmates - some of his crew, now - saying about it being his right. The converse of rights, however, were duties and he had more immediate duties to fulfil as the ship's Acting Commanding Officer than acting on some supposed 'right' to move into the Captain's Quarters.
It could easily be said that no one aboard the ship had expected this Midshipman Cruise to involve fighting Klingons and the Borg, events that had their costs in lives and nerves. It was a dangerous galaxy out there and not everyone was made for starship duty, being at the forefront of the unknown and the perilous. Other were superstitous, believing that a ship or a Captain that had such things happen to them were bad luck. Whatever the reason, there were those who would no longer be in the crew once they made it back to Earth Spacedock. Subspace communication meant that things were often known about before they could actually take effect; Anne Potter would be transferring to the U.S.S. Gold while it was at Spacedock for replacement crew and resupply after a tour with Battle Group Omega before heading off on its new assignment to take over surveying the Jenolan Dyson Sphere from the U.S.S. Grissom; R'raak would become a member of Spacedock's Operations Department instead of Transporter Chief aboard the ship, something that the Acting Captain couldn't fault him for after the Caitian had been heavily injured by one of the Chot's boarding parties; and Razkii had gotten an assignment to the U.S.S. Indianapolis as relief Tactical Officer and would also be leaving once they were back in the Sol system.
They were the fortunate ones.
One of the old Earth naval traditions that had become a part of Starfleet was the 'burial at sea' of deceased crew members as soon as possible. From what little he had gathered, it traced its origin back to the long-term sea voyages where it might be months or years before a ship returned home and it simply wasn't feasible - or biologically sound - to keep a dead crew member's body aboard and with starships on missions of similar length or longer, the tradition continued, even when a ship was actually homeward bound, a body was still 'buried at sea' as soon as the ship's doctor had finished their duties and no security or medical reason remained to keep the body aboard.
A faint smile crossed his face as he remembered one example he had found in the text, that of Captain Spock despite the fact that the original Enterprise would be returning directly back to Earth after the events at the Mutara Nebula. Apparently the author of the text had enjoyed a wicked sense of humor as there had been an annotation that any future 'burial at sea' should take care to avoid planets created using unstable protomatter.
The seriousness of the matter quickly wiped the smile off of his face, however. There were torpedo casings down in the main torpedo room, torpedo casings that in less than an hour he would preside over their launch as part of the memoral service and 'burial at sea' for those lost, some of them occupied and others empty because there was no body to place inside, either because the cadet they were for had been vaporized by a disruptor during the battle or, in one particular case, the body had been unrecoverable because of where they had died. Rosark, Asher Moss, Morek and a half-dozen more that he'd known as friends and classmates for the last four years, shipmates for only a short time, were now gone on to whatever afterlife they believed in... along with the ship's actual Captain, the man whose place he was in; not necessarily filling, but at least in.
He took another look at the PADD he was currently working on and began reading aloud, "A very wise woman once said, 'The molecules of our bodies are the same molecules that make up this ship, and the planets outside, that burn within the stars themselves. We are star-stuff, we are the universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out'. Perhaps that's why we seek out new life and new civilizations, go boldly where no one has gone before, because in doing so we gain new understanding of the universe and the universe gains new understanding of itself. Sometimes it costs us, even our very lives. Our crewmates gave their lives for us, so that one day, hopefully soon, this war will end and we can once more seek knowledge among the stars and help the universe understand itself. 'We are star-stuff'. From the Stars we came, and to the Stars we return, from now until the end of time. We therefore commit these bodies to the deep..."
As far as eulogies went, it would have to do.
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Author's Note; Think about it, a Delta Recruit's tutorial has to be something of a wild ride; graduating cadet to potential senior staff, finding out in a space of minutes that they'll be an Admiral someday and First Officer shortly, then ending up Acting Captain on their Midshipmen Cruise and breveted to Lieutenant before it's even over... That would have to be a bit disconcerting to go through, even if the game is basically "Okay, you're a Lieutenant in rank and a Captain in position now that Captain Taggart is dead, now go find that missing freighter!".
Sci-Fi fans might know the 'very wise woman' as Ambassador Delenn from "Babylon 5", despite the paraphrasing of 'station' to 'ship'.
