First Contact

Chapter Fifty-Nine (Kark)

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.4

We've been out in the Dead Zone Fringe for the past two months, examining an old Precursor World that was unsurveyed. Nothing of interest, my Spock was disappointed that a hundred and change million year old set of ruins had been largely devastated by time on a largely dead world. Examination showed that the world was subject to a massive amount of orbital strikes, glassing, oceans boiled away, and massive atmospheric loss. My Uhura has been, well, less than stellar. I think she did a lot of door sitting to rack up rankings since she missed an urgent communication from Starfleet that we haven't been able to get back. Going to have to replace her. Not to mention, she's using the Uhura look but wearing a Discovery uniform? That's not OK.

Going to head back to a Deepspacenine Station and see what's going on. That transmission was seriously encoded and pulsed directly to us. I'll turn in our survey results and see if I can get Type III warp engines. They Type IIc are good, but my Scotty has told me that it's picking up a lot of harmonics from hyperspace, like a 'rumble' that keeps coming.

Long patrol, almost three years, and the most exciting thing we had was a talk with a Borgcube that was heading back to the edge of the zone. Their cloning bank and SUDS stacks got blown out so they didn't want to risk anything and marked themselves as NoPvP. We did provide assistance to them due to their status as a neutral vessel and nano-forged them a new creation engine.

They were cagey as to what they ran into that could damage a BB Class Borgcube that bad.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.14

I don't know what that was in warp-space, but whatever it was, it knocked us clear out of warp and blew out my port nacelle. That rumbling in hyperspace is still going, every few hours, the rumble lasting for an hour or so. It's bad enough I had to order the holodecks shut down due to harmonics.

My Uhura really screwed the Oriongirl. I told her to keep an ear out for any unusual traffic, and what does she do? Routes a priority message from Starfleet with an "ALL FLEETS" header to her personal com device. The encryption bricked her com device AND the message. Later she punted another message that came in with an "ALL GUILDS" header while she was 'taking a break and listed as 'idle'' over to our Spock's terminal, and bricked half the science lab including our Type III nano-forge. I'll be filing a formal complaint against her and demanding a point review.

My Spock thinks that there's something going on, something we missed by our Uhura's incompetence and he's pretty upset. About a step from pitching her out the airlock. I've never seen a Spock so mad his ears twitch. She keeps forgetting this isn't an eVR run and keeps walking around with an 'idle' over head.

No matter. Scotty told me it'll only be a few more days until the warp drive.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.38

Well, we've got power back. I had to put our Uhura in the brig to guarantee her safety. She had fired up the holodeck, overriding the lockout code, and was running a NexGen-MarySue Sim. In the middle of one of those 'rumbles' she forwarded a message marked "CONFED.MIL" to ENGINEERING.

That bricked EVERYTHING. Our nano-forge, the warp-core, everything. Had a Data down there, new guy at playing a Data, literally melted his brain. I mean, positronic alloy running out of his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. That interacted with the rumble and the holodeck generation field.

It gutted the ship, destroyed our Respawn Pods, and Spock and Scotty think it may have blown out our SUDS auto-update.

We've been using the shuttles to stay on atmosphere while we got the warp-core back up. We haven't yet, but we've got the life support back. It's been nice to eat a meal not out of a shuttle's emergency stores.

Scotty's estimate is "about when you let me bash that bitch's head in" for when we get the warp-core and engines back up.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.52

We've got the warp core back up. The SUDS can't auto-update, meaning if anyone gets killed, they're stuck on the backup from four weeks ago. Crew members are LIVID. Plus, the Respawn Pods are screwed. We tried regening the Data, and... it wasn't good.

His screams haunt my dreams.

Now we just have to fix the nacelles. The computer's started having problems again.

Damn, I'm tired. I might step back from Kark rank for a couple years. This mission has been bad.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.85

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Uhura is a Romulan spy. We found out, finally, where the computer instability was coming from.

SHE HAD CRACKED TEMPLATES IN THE SHIP COMMUNICATION DATABASE!

Some of them had some nasty, and I mean N.A.S.T.Y. virii in them. That's what's been hashing our computer. So our Uhura doesn't know jack about Meatspace LARP and apparently just doorsat on eVR stuff, she loaded the computer of my ship with cracked templates full of virii, and she bricked half out shit.

On the plus side, it looks like we'll have Warp-1 capability in a few days.

Oh, and our rescue beacons?

Bricked.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.141

Holy Shatner. Where do I begin?

First, the port nacelle went down again. We were sitting in between two planets when a whole Gorn FLEET dropped on us. We're not talking one of the little ones, I think it was every Gorn ship out here. FULL of lizard dudes. We're even talking a couple of those 'species only' ships where everyone on the ship was born a saurian. We figure we're screwed since they immediately opened a SUDS channel to get a compressed backup of everyone. You only do that when you're about to have a major fleet engagement.

Then the Fleet "Big Rock Thrower" himself coms me. Not on my Starfleet com, but my person com. Tells me he'll send a shuttle right now. Told me I could bring my Spock, McCoy, and Scotty.

What we heard, we didn't believe.

Full template unlocks. We're not talking some hope of luring back old players, we're talking "You Want It, It's Yours" template unlocks. Apparently some group of xenospecies out past the Dead Zone woke up an entire Precursor Fleet and are getting the shit Tashayarred out of them so the Confed told everyone to grab their shit and go help.

Showed me one of the messages my Uhura borked. It was an emergency update to the Type-IIc Warp Engines. That 'rumble' we're getting from hyperspace? That's the low bands being overpressured. You know those bands, the slow ones that are mainly used by colony ships or long-haul truckers? Yeah, so much metal is started to move that it's causing hyperspace reverberation into jumpspace AND warpspace. I had Scotty run how much metal that might be and he told me that the math comes out to move than gigatons of metal. He said you could probably see the bulge from hyperspace in subspace.

The Gorn helped us repair and update our Warp Engines. He said he couldn't tell me much more, I didn't have the right security header so he couldn't be sure I was actually Kark ranked.

Oh, and because that doofy moron put cracked templates in my computer, he had to register me as a possible pirate vessel.

I should airlock that moron.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.151

We made it to the nearest Deepspacenine station and... wow. Free repairs on my entire ship, free templates across your ranking and below, all qualified positions. Looks like all my time jumping around classes pays off, because template restrictions are being lifted. The Dakota is being outfitted with the Type-VIId engines, new warp core, new SUDS rack, new Respawn Pods, Type VI nano-forge, Type XIV Creation Engine, new replicators, the new transportation system (shielded and encrypted mat-trans beam) using the SUDS rack and error checking. Still comes with a neural degradation warning, but hey, them's the risk of the game.

Our Uhura problem was solved. Turns out she was an account sharer.

Got my name cleared for cracked templates, turns out she was actually running those templates to a ship that never showed up.

Anyway, turns out that it's a full blown Precursor Attack across a bunch of sentient systems on the other side of the Dead Zone. We're not talking a little one, we're talking full on fleets of the things. I'm trying to decide if I want the Dakota reconfigured for battle or not. I'd planned on taking a break for a couple decades after the Borg War game back in 8527 where Starfleet got stomped so bad.

Because my BattleNet rating is so high, I've even been offered the chance to come back to Starcraft or even RedAlert or 40KRTS for multiplayer VS Precursor maps.

My Spock isn't up to it. He took me up on my LFG because I was supposed to be doing a science only mission and this last mission really blew out his nerves. I feel for the guy, he's a good player, but his nerves have been shot since he had a bad Voyager run with a really bad Captain. That DeathArmada scandal a few years back really soured a lot of players.

I'll probably go ahead and see who wants to drop and run an LFG call.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.159

The Dakota's been reconfigured to OldTrek ship classes, since you're allowed to do Cross-Season at this time. Loaded up with the good stuff, but used an OldTrek heavy superdreadnaught class that's illegal in the other Seasons.

The LFG went good. A bunch of restrictions have been lifted, so I've got some weird crew members, but they're all high ranking. My Spock is a fox-girl out of the BASS, but she's got solid rankings and actually has a few IRL science creds. My America class superdreadnaught allows me for gunnery and security positions, so I took a few heavy hitters. Even got a Riker to join us. He's a former Captain, so if anything happens to me, my crew and ship are in good hands.

We'll do a shakedown cruise on the way to the New Systems as soon as everyone gets their mandatory SUDS deep-scan done for the main stack back on Luna.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.211

Arrived in the New Systems. It's a wreck. According to my Sulu (Wesley's are not ranked for this) the system we came into was in "Allied Space" but within thiry minutes, before we could even get lightspeed sensor returns, we had Precursors on us. It's easy, looking at the heavy shielding and everything we play with and figure nothing can really hurt us. I mean, we tussle with the Borg players, sometimes might even fight with 40K guys, but this... this was bad. We don't have nCv rounds and it only takes a half-dozen or so hits from those to completely drop your shields.

We warped out, came out in a different system, and sure as Janeway those things jumped us again. Different ship types but lean and efficient. One on one, hell, 20 on one, I could probably take their light attack craft, but when they swarm you a thousand on one or more, well, you GTFO. Your crew and your ship are more important than pulling an Into the Darkness.

My Klingons have to wear psychic dampeners. That scream those Precursors do drive them into a Klingon battle-frenzy. Ran the nano-forge pretty hard building psychic shields for the Dakota. It was worth it. Our third system, we got hit, but we were ready. I'd ran up some kinetic shields and turned them over to my Spock and she managed to reconfigure them to take nCv hits.

My new Uhura is amazing. She managed to isolate the battle-chatter well enough that we figured out where their Big Daddy was.

We went in cocky and wow, my crew is glad that I'm not a point hound.

That ship was big. We're talking a thousand miles across and three hundred miles thick. We're talking armor miles thick, main gun batteries, not by the dozen, but by the dozens of miles. It started shedding huge amounts of parasite torchship fighters. We fired photon torpedoes and GTFO.

We're sitting in a dead system now. No life on the planets in the Green Zone and there's still lava at the bottom of the craters and canyons.

The Precursors messed this place up.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.232

Had to have a major discussion with the crew. CONFED is offering military grade weaponry to us "qualified" LARPers. Apparently surviving those three system sensor sweeps impressed some of the military guys. They looked over our records and complimented me on knowing when to run.

Turns out my Riker held a Reserve Space Force commission from about 200 years ago. That means he can put us on some serious weaponry.

I can't believe the DokiGurlz and the Kiwaaaaaaii Orkz got thumped so bad.

It's a mad-house here.

The crew decided that they want to keep going. Everyone knows one or two mat-trans won't blow you out if you aren't SUDS'd up, you just gotta watch it a bit. Had some of the 'neo-sapient' and 'uncivilized' xeno-species test it for us. No major neurological disfunctions.

I've got an America class which means I've got the big transporter bays. We're talking drop an entire battalion of Redshirts onto planet at once with each bay. I've got six bays. That means I can also recover as many.

It's galling to find out that these Precursors hit so hard. I was all dreaming of rolling up on them and just phasering and proton torpedoing the crap out of them. Instead, they hit back, and they hit back HARD.

But the Dakota is tough enough to take a beating. The Guild excuses my 'non-canon' modifications to the Dakota since we lost a couple of good Captains out here already. The Confed guys want us to pull refugee evacuations because we can fight back, take a beating, and bring up refugees, plus I've got the life support and medical sections to handle it all.

The crew wants to do it. My Spock said that since everyone else is rushing out to engage in combat, we need to uphold the 'true' nature of the Federation and save people. She gave an impassioned speech, joined by our Uhura, about the real message of the Federation (and Confed) isn't "we're tough, rawr", but rather "We bring hope". That everyone forgets that with the excitement of space battle.

She reminded everyone that while we've got SUDS, and don't think about mortality, those people on those planets do not. They only have one life. No respawn. Uhura asked us how we'd act if we didn't have SUDS or Respawn. How precious our one life would be.

It was almost unanimous.

The Dakota is going be running rescue operations.

It's what's right, dammit.

I'm respecc'ing.

--Kark 8873

Captain's Personal Log - Stardate 8532.238

Entered the system broadcasting a distress beacon to encounter three Goliath Class Precursor machines attacking system while CONFED forces counter-attacked.

Proceeded to integrate with CONFED forces and being rescue operations.

The Dakota is well served in such a role, as a multi-purpose early Starfleet superdreadnaught. With extensive life support and security, as well as over-redundant life support, we should be able to effect the rescue of many being who might have otherwise been lost.

Crew confidence is high.

--Picard 8873