Start of an Adventure

Posted on Tue Feb 4th, 2025 @ 2:20pm by Ensign Hale Moore
Edited on on Wed Feb 5th, 2025 @ 2:47am

1,626 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: 1 - Third Contact
Location: Various
Timeline: Backpost pre Quebec (and MD01 -0001)

2377 – 1st year of the Academy

There was a certain amount of excitement on the face of Cadet Hale Moore as he almost skipped down the courtyard. Around him were the tall buildings of Starfleet Academy, the most elite (except the Vulcan science Academy, of course) and most common place of further education all wrapped into one chrome and glass and oh! Trees! He stopped and looked up at the large tree with awe, reaching out to touch it. “The white tree of Gondor,” he said to himself, almost dreamily.

Actually, it looked nothing like it. Its leaves were green and happily absorbing the sunlight, the bark was dark brown and wrinkled in the sort of way that made him wonder how old it was. And he had seen older, bigger trees at home, or when he went to Kew Gardens with his aunt. Even so, for him it was not just the tree…

It was what it represented. All those before him, the great names in history. Archer (did he count? Honestly, he couldn’t remember if there had been an Academy around then. Were they going to be tested on Academy knowledge? What year was this campus built?), Kirk, Spock, Pike, McCoy, Montgomery Scott…and loads of other names that he honestly, in this moment, couldn’t remember.

He pulled back slowly, his brown eyes taking in the tree itself. And when he looked down, he was standing on the emblem of Starfleet. He jumped off it with sudden alarm. Was that against the rules? He didn’t want to go against the rules, not on his first day!

Nervously he chuckled before he headed to the great hall, to meet the rest of his year. His fellow cadets.

2378 – 2nd year of the Academy

“Ouch!”

Hale grimaced as he sat in the chair, looking with wide eyes at the medical cadet standing to his left. Another buzzing noise and the shock traveled through his brain, making him pull strange postures. “Stop it! Ashaki’yag!”

“Sorry!” the cadet giggled and lowered the device in her hand. “Look, I really appreciate you helping me with my project. Mapping human’s neural pathways is sort of a brand-new experience for me, especially with a love subject.”

“Won’t be alive for much longer if we keep zapping him,” the other medical cadet to his right, Tamms, said. She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow, her lips pressing together. “Seriously, we could give him brain damage.”

“Brain damage, brain schmanage!” Ashaki’yag grinned as she moved to stand in front of Hale. “Okay…how many fingers am I holding up…” she held up three and pressed the button.

Zap!

“Aaaaaah!” Hale cried out, gripping the chair before the world went black. But he could hear. And he felt his heart beating, the breath in his lungs. And then he realized…

“You’ve blinded me! Change it back, change it back!” he cried out, panic rising to overcome his want of pleasing others. This had been a bad idea from the start, he realized it now, this was all him being stupid enough not to listen when someone was explaining a project.

“Sorry! I think…ah!” she pressed another button and Hale exhaled with relief as he could see again.

“Three. Three fingers. Can we stop now? Please?”

“Don’t be such a wimp, you know Klingons are all about pain as…character building,” Ashaki’yag said as she looked at her PADD. “Okay, so we’ve mapped…that. Oh! Can you try and do like…a magic trick?”

“Really?” Hale couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice. Usually, he did that alone, except that one time when they’d snuck out after curfew and had a few too many and he had tried to do them. “O…okay, I can…err…” he looked around, almost desperately before he reached for his lucky coin. It was an old thing, worth nothing in many ways. But his Dad said it brought luck.

He held it in his palm before he shifted and started doing tricks with it. It was all about practice, so he could let it jump from palm to palm by using the muscles in his palm.

“Okay…let’s try this,” Ashaki’yag said and pressed another button. A zap and Hale’s mind went blank.

“Look at this,” Tamms watched with aw as the movements sped up, watching the coin dance from hand to hand, across fingers. “You’ve somehow just increased his reflexes. I mean…that blank face thing’s weird, but look how it goes!”

“Oh, I put about 90% of his brain on this task, the last 10% is to make sure he stays breathing and hart beating and those boring things,” Ashaki-yag said proudly, smiling widely.

“Is his nose meant to be bleeding like that though? And his eyes? And ears?”

“Whoops…okay…turning that off,” she said and another zap.

“Aaaaargh!” the coin dropped, and Hale stared at his hands cramping up. And his nose. “What did you do, what did you do?” he asked, wiping his nose and seeing the nosebleed. “And why’s the world…pink?”

“Never mind,” she pushed him back in his chair and grabbed a medical tricorder. “I think I got what I need for the project though, so going to ace it! Let me just…heal up that…stuff…”

2379 – 3rd year of the Academy

“Okay, this is fine…this is fine…” Hale said to himself as he crawled through the Jeffries tubes. It was a training simulation. Repairs under fire. So, the red alert klaxon was blaring, the ship was shaking, and…

Okay, who had programmed in jelly on the walls? He leant close and sniffed it. Lime jelly, actually.

“Did you just lick the wall?” Cadet Daniels asked with horror, looking at him. “Moore, that is so weird, why would you even do that?”

“It’s lime,” Hale muttered and continued making his way to the panel. The panel on fire. “Who puts jelly on the walls anyway?”

“It’s meant to mimic the biological matter that’s taking over the ship,” Daniels said as he moved to his side, watching him for a moment. “Which means you just licked a first contact subject. Think that might be a fail.”

“What? Fail?” Hale looked at him with wide eyes. “I can’t fail another simulation; it’ll be my third one! Not counting the practice one where I blew up the ship.”

Daniels grimaced as he remembered, shaking his head as he watched him. “Yeah, no, best never to speak of that again.”

Hale took a breath as he reached, prying a panel open and pulling down a tube, pointing it at the burning panel before using the tricorder to access the fie suppression. He calculated the amount needed and activated it, watching the flames die down. “Seriously, I try and then just…over-try I guess? I feel like I got to be the best or else I’ll just be another…cadet….”

“We’re all feeling the same pressures,” Daniels said as he moved to touch the panel, grimacing at the heat still there. “It’s part of the whole experience. We learn to handle pressure by experiencing it.”

“Yeah?” Hale covered his hand with the sleeves of his overalls to pull the panel open, looking at the destruction. He grabbed his toolkit to start taking the isolinear chips. “Because I feel like every failure just gets bigger.”

“Don’t worry, Moore…not even you’ll top blowing up the ship in a simulation,” Daniels said playfully and started sorting the new chips out.

2381 – 4th year Academy graduation

“I’m so nervous,” Hale said as he watched himself in the reflective surface of the window, adjusting the uniform. A proper Starfleet uniform, with a single pip. Ensign. Ensign Hale Moore. He smiled to himself, awed, before he turned to look at Ashaki’yag. “And you…Doctor. Are you excited? I am so excited! We’re getting out assignments!” he smiled as he clapped, jumping up and down with he energy that just had to be let out for a moment.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s exciting, I get it…” she reached to pat his head, watching the confusion on his face. “There’s a good little Ensign…”

“That is just…awful,” Hale said with a laugh as he walked with her to the screens, watching excitedly. “I mean, I know we get it sent to our computers but…this is part of the tradition. Seeing where you and others are being sent to. For our new adventure. Oh! Tamms got the Enterprise! Flag ship! And you…oh, the Glasgow! That’s a great ship! And…”

“Never heard of the Quebec,” Ashaki’yag said as she saw his name against it. “Or a Quebec…”

“It’s…like a city…I think,” Hale said with confusion and looked at the screen. “It’s…” he paused, looking at his name. Ensign Hale Moore. Engineering. USS Quebec. “It’s amazing!” he cheered, reaching to grab her arms and dancing with her. “I get to go in space! And not a starbase, a moving ship! This is amazing!”

Present day

Ensign Hale Moore’s eyes were wide as he put his bag down on his bunk bed, awed at this. He was on a starship. In space. And there was no much he could do. “This,” he said aloud to himself. “Is the start of all my adventures, and-“

“Quiet, some of us are trying to sleep!”

“Oh, sorry,” Hale said quickly and sat down on the bed, but he was still grinning.

Yes, it was the start of all his adventures.

 

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