Lt.JG Taelon - Trial By Fire
Alison Hardwick
((Astrometrics, Deck 17, USS Gorkon))
Taelon: Ah, Taelon – nice to meet you both. I just transferred, so – this is, um, hopefully not the norm…?
Pace: Well, Starfleet is all about exploring, but I agree that I was… not entirely prepared for the mission to take this particular turn.
Sevo: ::She smiled, trying to put the two at ease.:: Well, I won’t lie and tell you this is an isolated incident - it’s not. We’ve had our fair share of galactic emergencies and encounters, but just as many good things, too. Remember, when you put on those uniforms — ::she pointed to the pair:: — you accepted the risks of being in Starfleet. This is one of them.
Taelon knew she was right - he’d certainly looked death in the face plenty of times. The starbase wasn’t as peaceful a place as one might hope, even if its day-to-day operations were…well, mundane, perhaps, in comparison to an exploring ship.
Still, this was a bit beyond the pale, even by his standards. After all, the worst thing most dangers could do was kill you.
Pace: S-sorry, I was just thinking about… ::Beat.:: Well, about how we can get out of this, I suppose.
Sevo: I know it looks daunting right now; even impossible. How can one ship make a difference and change everything? It’s not the ship; it’s the crew on it. We make the impossible possible.
Taelon: I hope you’re right, Commander.
Pace: Although, from what I’ve seen so far, there’s no other crew I’d rather be stuck in a Borg-dominated universe with… so there’s that at least.
Sevo: ::Ayiana took a sip of her coffee and smiled again.:: You’ve no idea. This crew is my family. You do anything for family.
Sevo: It may look daunting right now, especially if you’re right out of the Academy. ::She nodded to Pace.:: Remind me to tell you about *my* first day on the Victory sometime.
You couldn’t just say that and not elaborate a little bit. Taelon raised his eyebrows.
Taelon: It was, um, instructive, I take it?
Pace: ?
Sevo: Extragalactic horrors bent on eating everything. Talk about “trial by fire.”
Taelon: Extragalactic - ::A pause; he’d been typing as he listened, but now stopped that completely as he tried to imagine. Had he heard of such things? Hard to tell; for all his memory, the ranks of ‘horrors from beyond the stars’ had more creatures in it than he’d prefer (which was none). :: That’s, ah, quite something to face.
Pace: ?
Sevo: The point is, we’ll get through this. We’ll get broken and banged up, but we’ll get back up and try again. Just remember your training, and if you have any questions on anything, feel free to ask around.
Taelon: Thank you, Commander.
Pace / Sevo: ?
He went back to his work for a few moments, frowning down at the data. The planet was in terrible shape; while some of the oceans remained, much of its land mass was covered in Borg installations and outposts, pulling the remains of the civilization that’d once lived there from the dirt and converting it into raw material.
A practiced eye could see the pattern of the installations; a central hub, surrounded by thin veins of trackways and factory processing units like the spokes of a wheel. Here, one was devouring the remains of a city; there, another such cluster devoured what was likely several large deposits of iron ore.
Pace / Sevo: ?
Taelon: Mmm. They’ve been here for some time, certainly. Enough to have stripped most of the surface. Look, here -
He had the display zoom in on a section in the northern hemisphere, where the clusters were closer together and more built up. One stood out as he zoomed in - a long tower construct, centered on an oddly-shaped depression.
Pace / Sevo: ?
Taelon: If we overlay the planet’s scans from our timeline, you can see - ::He had the computer do so; the contrast was frightening. Where they now knew Borg had littered the surface was a pine forest, a village, a beautiful lake - all now rendered dull and black-brown. The Borg had drained the lake, stripped the trees, and now what was doubtless a drone center sat where the village once had.:: They’ve had plenty of time to get settled in, but haven’t stripped the planet completely.
Pace / Sevo: ?
Lt. JG Taelon
Science Officer
USS Gorkon
O239303T10