Personal Log of JR Hawthorne

Lieutenant Commander, Star Fleet Fleet Badge and Rank Insignia 2011-06-01

Stardate 763.4 I have now been on board Renown for a few weeks overseeing the finishing of Renown at Altair. As the ship is on minimal power I am staying planet side until I am authorized to stay onboard. It has been interesting being on a stark empty ship, though at this point equipment has been coming in on an hourly basis. Star Fleet Command has managed to hide the fact that the ship is here being finished and I have orders that I will be remaining on board as a senior officer once the work is completed. With four other Miranda’s here outfitting with one of them finished. This was USS Devastator, NCC-1873. The other three are Courage, NCC- 1874, Daring, NCC-1872 and Demeter, NCC-1868. HQ has told me that they now have a Commanding Officer but they won’t tell me who it is at the moment. I am still feeling twinges from my injuries but I am told that they are healing properly and that these things take time. Most of the crew has still not arrived and the ones that are here have been working 14 to 16 hour days along with the civilian technicians and engineers.

At night I am still having nightmares reliving the accident that put me on the shelf these last few months. It was just a stupid mistake that shouldn’t have happened but unfortunately these things still do. I was taking a turn flying an attack shuttle while I was on USS Gryphon, one of the newest fleet carriers when another pilot suffered some damage and then his craft collided with mine. I don’t know how I survived the first impact but at least my suit managed to keep me alive. The next thing I knew I was waking up in a hospital on Altair VI. I had suffered a serious head wound and still had a concussion. That was what worried the doctors but thankfully I started coming around. My unique blood type had confounded the experts at first and they had to custom make my medications as most meds just don’t work for me. In fact I have been forced to see a doctor roughly once a month to get tested and more often than not I have to get a shot to keep me in balance.

This little twist to my system comes from the fact that I was exposed to some radiation while still in the womb when the ship my parents were on malfunctioned and exposed them to anti-matter radiation. The thing is that somehow it changed my blood type so it became something totally singular to me. When I was born the doctors told my parents that my blood type was now basically unique and medications would have to be created specifically for me as normal ones wouldn’t work most of the time. The other thing it had done was caused one of the fingers of my right hand to atrophy so that the doctors were forced to operate and remove the finger before I was even a day old.

I had a wonderful childhood as my parents were scientists studying stellar cartography so I spent a lot of time on ships and stations. One day I wandered away from my parents as a toddler and came across some sort of spider and it freaked me out so badly that ever since I have had a fear of spiders of any kind. I even had a dog growing up and the both of us thought cats were utterly useless. I was extremely honest growing up and didn’t see the sense of telling a lie, and if I thought I was right I was extremely stubborn about it. I was adept at doing things with both hands equally well. I was also more flexible than most people and I found that yoga helped me immensely. I think early on was when I decided I wanted to get into Star Fleet and prepared myself for entry. I waited until after I had completed school and that was a year early so I entered at 17.

I graduated with honors from Star Fleet Academy in 2275 and probably could have been Summa Cum Laude but I really didn’t push myself that hard to get the top as I was still in the top ten percent of my class. I had an aptitude for flying and navigation as I had very good spatial sense. That and I could do mathematical equations in my head that most people needed calculators to do. Believe me that helped as I grew older when it came to gambling as I could run the odds through my head for poker. In fact after a while most of my class mates would not play with me as I had a habit of winning. The most challenging thing that I had to deal with was when I had to do my survival training and I drew an arctic setting and it was a difficult exercise but I passed the test. My lone science course ended up being meteorology as I had a fascination for weather patterns and how mathematics was used to predict them. It’s funny too about my name, I was named James Richard but as I was growing up I quickly became known as JR and the name sort of stuck with me until I didn’t answer to my given name anymore.

My first posting out of the Academy was on the USS Prince of Wales, NCC-601. This was a Saladin Class destroyer and my first CO was Commander Jessica Walters. She was an older ship but still able to perform up to Star Fleet’s standards. I served in the Operations division and basically took a turn at every duty station during my year on the ship. I was so proud to put on the gold tunic of command division for the first time. My rank of Ensign was quickly confirmed and I was soon taking a turn at the helm and navigation stations. My year passed on the destroyer and I was offered a posting to another ship.

In 2276 I was transferred to USS Star Union, NCC-2112 a brand new Dreadnaught under the command of Captain Jorge Salazar. This ship was huge and it took me some time to familiarize myself with all the decks. I was made the navigator of B watch so I spent quite a bit of time on the bridge. Soon after I was transferred I was promoted to Lieutenant junior grade. After my promotion I was even given the chance to be the ranking bridge officer at times and that was nerve wracking. I was lucky that nothing nasty happened while I was in charge and soon another year was over and I was being transferred off the Dreadnaught.

In 2277 I found myself on Star Base 9 serving as an Operations Officer. The CO was Vice Admiral Raj Grewal and I found that it was rather boring and mostly administrative. I became the duty officer for the night shift and spent most of the year learning the inner workings of Star Fleet. I found myself using a keyboard in front of a computer most of the time. Boy there is a lot of paperwork generated by Star Fleet and I quickly learned how to navigate the administrative side of the Fleet. I did find the year useful if I ever wanted to command a ship. I was also amazed at the amount of traffic that came through the base and I was involved with lots of functions and meetings including some diplomatic ones. I was also put to working teaching for the first time and I managed to instruct the students properly so at least I knew I could handle myself in a classroom. I had worked my butt off during the year and Admiral Grewal had noticed and when my year was up he offered me a choice of postings and I wanted to get back on a ship.

2278 I was now on the USS Gryphon, NCC-1950. She was a brand new Fleet Carrier and the CO was Captain Koji Nakajima. I was made a helmsman and soon after I came on board I was promoted to Lieutenant and made the chief helmsman along with doing duties with the air wing onboard. I even took a turn as pilot for the attack shuttles when needed. I wasn’t as good of a pilot in these little buzz-saws but I made do. We were sent out to the front lines and quickly saw combat duty. In the course of a year I managed to collect a combat service ribbon while serving with the combat wing. I really don’t want to go into details so I will leave it at that.

Things had gone well until the accident and then I was on Altair recovering. While I was in the hospital I was notified that I had been awarded with my 5 year medal of service in Star Fleet and I received a visit from a Commander who gave me my medal and service ribbon. So now I have something to hang on my dress uniform at least.

Combat Service Ribbon Five Year Medal Five Year Ribbon

Stardate 763.1 I was sitting at my desk doing paperwork when a young Ensign knocked on my door and asked me if I was aware that there was activity onboard Renown. I looked at her blankly for a moment and pulled up the current records and they indicated that the crew were not supposed to start arriving for another week. I pulled up the sensor data and it showed that the transporters had just gone into lockdown and that was strange as they weren’t even supposed to be active. I decided to contact HQ and got a Lt Cmdr who was also confused and said that no one was supposed to be on the ship other than a small team doing work on the computer security systems. Once he was aware that the something was going on he ordered me to investigate further. I went and signed out a phaser pistol and tucked it into my belt as I headed to the transporter platform.

When I got there I contacted Devastator and asked them to beam me onboard Renown. When they asked for a location, I told them to put me on the seal in the floor of the senior officer’s lounge on Deck 3. Seconds later I felt the tingle of the transporter and moments later I was standing on Deck 3 of Renown. I turned to the left and headed up the stairs, as I got to the top I could hear footsteps behind me. I continued up towards the bridge and stepped away from the stairs just outside the bridge door and drew my phaser and waited. Moments later some young cadets appeared with a Senior Chief from Security division and I will say that the Chief instantly asked for my SID when I identified myself. I pulled out my SID and held it up so he could see it and he then he introduced himself as Senior Chief Petty Officer Yure Sulu and when I crooked an eyebrow at him he said he was a cousin to the famous Hikaru Sulu and asked for orders. I told the three of them to open the bridge door so I could gain entrance. The other two were still wearing their Academy uniforms but at least they were final year cadets.

Chief Sulu produced a very nice blade and started prying away while the other two went to work and quickly pulled open the cover on the door circuits and went to work. The point proved mute when the door suddenly opened and we could see Star Fleet personnel inside including one very fat engineer. He pointed to the other side of the bridge and said the bad guy had gone that way and he was wearing light armor. Sulu looked towards me and I ordered him to pursue, stating apprehend, do not kill. He just nodded and took off running. I stepped into the bridge and looked around to see most of the systems shut down and then more people came out of the turbo-lift wearing cadet uniforms including a pale blue skinned gorgeous man in a medical uniform. He had dark blue eyes and almost silver hair. By the looks of him he had to be a Deian and was wearing Lt’s rank so I figured he had to be a doctor.

The fat engineer had turned his attention to the only working computer system and he seemed to be trying to do something as his fingers were just flying over the keyboard. I asked him what was going on and he said that he was fighting someone for control of the computer and I told him the only ones that were supposed to be onboard was a team of Vulcan’s here to work on the computers. That’s when the cadets said they had been attacked by a Vulcan when they had beamed onto the ship. This was rather strange and I waited for the engineer to get me access to the comm. system when one of the cadets said that one of the enemies appeared to be in the computer core and asked permission to engage them. As they didn’t have a weapon I handed over my phaser and told them to get on it and they took off running.

The doctor who had identified himself as Maresial started playing around with the sensors and soon told me that there was only two signals that were not human and it was at this time that the comms came back online. I immediately contacted Star Fleet and asked for assistance and moment later I was told that Devastator was preparing to beam over three security teams and I told them that the enemy was in armor so they delayed until they were also armored and soon they were appearing and started sweeping the ship. Then we were told that the remaining enemy had made it to the shuttle bay and was about to launch himself off the ship. I got to the sensor station and started powering up the tractor beam and also linked into the transporters so that I had some choices. Soon the ship reported that a shuttle had left the ship and I managed to lock onto the lone signal in the shuttle and initiated a beam-out. As soon as I saw that he was in the buffer I alerted the security team to get ready and deposited him on the main platform. Moments later they reported that he was in custody.

The sweep turned up a dead body but that was it. I later learned that the dead Vulcan was Commander Voril and he had been legit. His three companions however proved to be Romulan agents and one of them was a sleeper agent who had just been activated as deeper background checks showed a lot of forged documents. It appeared that they had tried to activate the weapon systems and launch photon torpedos at the other three Miranda’s still under finishing. I also found out that the crew coming on board had been a clerical error, they were supposed to be going to Courage but it wasn’t going to be ready for a few weeks yet so HQ told me that the crew was going to be assigned to Renown seeing as they were already there. The Doctor had headed down to sickbay to treat the severely injured Romulan before he was released into the custody of the Security team that waited for him.

I decided to remain on the ship as the crew was now starting to arrive on board and I finally found out that the new CO was a Vulcan Commander named T’Loc. The records said that she had been on Vulcan for the last year undergoing meditation. Looking further I see that she had been the former CO of a Hermes Class scout ship and she had been relieved of command during the uprising in Star Fleet Command. Before that she had been the Chief Medical Officer onboard USS Endeavor, NCC-1716, a Constitution Class cruiser under the command of Captain Storm and then Captain Cartwright after Storm was injured and declared unfit for ship duty. This could prove rather interesting depending on how she wants to run the ship.

There had been some damage done to the ship from phaser fire and the engineers were getting to work on patching up the ship as more and more of the crew arrived. Chief Sulu and one of the Security crewwoman Alanna Kai had distinguished themselves during the fight and were being awarded combat service ribbons for their actions. Alanna was also promoted to leading crewwoman. In fact some of the cadets were given brevet promotions to Lieutenant junior grade and were being put in charge of their respective divisions. Two of them were Shane Roi whom I had met trying to get into the bridge doors and Xavier Quinn. Shane was to become the head of Communications and Xavier was going to head up the science department. Dr Maresial was also joining us as the doctor on board. He was going to have an intern and two nurse Ensigns. Most of our new officers were brand new from the academy so I was going to have fun training a whole bunch of newbie officers.

Also coming through with all the other notifications were orders for my upcoming promotion to Lieutenant Commander just before the Captain came onboard and confirmation that I was the Executive Officer of Renown. Looking over the incoming roster most of the officers were going to be brand new ensigns and a few lieutenant junior grades. The NCO’s were no better with a CPO for each division and a smattering of junior petty officers. The chief of the boat was an experienced Senior Chief and along with Senior Chief Sulu in the Security division at least I was going to have some decent NCO’s. Most of the enlisted were either crewmen or brand new recruits so I could see a lot of training happening to get up to Star Fleet’s standards. I guess I will have to see how the new Captain reacts when she finally takes command.

The uprising had taken place in the senior ranks of Star Fleet Command with the militaristic side trying to take control. Luckily the Federation side of the ranks managed to prevail after a few months and finally took over command for good. Things had gotten rather ugly before the internal war was over. From what I can tell, the turning point was when Star Fleet tried to declare a heavy cruiser as mutinous. I was surprised to see that this had been USS Endeavor under the command of Captain Flynn. Things finally came to a head and when the dust settled cooler heads had prevailed. I won’t get into all the rumours that went around the fleet. Except that Endeavor seems to have disappeared about 8 months ago and is still listed as missing.

The other thing I should take note of is when the attempted coup at Star Fleet Command was finished the brass at HQ decided to finally change the standard duty uniform of Star Fleet. Gone were the three different colored tunics that showed what division a person was serving in and they replaced them with a dark red uniform complete with a duty jacket. Now the different divisions were separated by their under-tunic, which was now colored depending on the division and the insignia on the breast of the jacket. The ranks were also changed, gone was the stripes on the lower sleeve and now it was an insignia that attached on the right shoulder of the jacket. The jacket was now part of the uniform and expected to be worn at all times. So my old Lt’s stripe has been replaced with this, And now with my promotion I am now authorized to wear this, and the formal badge of Star Fleet is now the original emblem of USS Enterprise and it has replaced all the individual ship logos with this one.

I have also managed to look at the new names now in charge back on Earth and the one name that jumps out is newly promoted Vice Admiral Storm now the new Commandant of Star Fleet Academy. He had been in charge of the Marine Academy but had been relieved by the old regime and had disappeared with his last group of Marine cadets. The new Chief of Staff of Star Fleet is Admiral Carlos Rodriguez and he had assembled a brand new staff in order to fight our current dual front wars. Chief of Operations is Admiral Eric Lauderdale. Most of the senior officers appeared to be human with a couple of exceptions, Vice Admiral Lomax (an Andorian) in charge of planning and Admiral T’Kar (a Vulcan) in charge of logistics. Let’s hope that the new blood at the top can be successful in fighting the Klingon’s and Romulan’s. I wasn’t too concerned about the brass as a lowly Lt Cmdr wouldn’t have too much interaction with them.

I was more concerned with who the ship would be reporting to and where we would be heading. Scuttlebutt said we would be heading west to engage the Klingon’s and the only short fleet out there was the 13^th under the command of Admiral Nicholai Kalishnikov. I guess we will have to wait and see. Well official orders have finally come through and I will recieve my promotion at the same time as the ship is formally commisioned and HQ figures that will be in roughly three weeks time. I have been ordered to remain onboard as the new crew are arriving daily.

Stardate 777.4 I have been told that Commander T’Loc will arrive onboard in 4 hours to do a brief inspection of the ship. She will not take formal command until the commisioning. I have been working my butt off while onboard and will now have to make some time to welcome the CO onboard. Mind you all of the crew onboard have been working double shifts to get things ready on time. With the other ships behind us in constuction Star Fleet has been taking the technicians from Renown as soon as they are done and leaving us to do the final installing and testing of the systems. The majority of the crew is now onboard including a lone Breccan male. This was strange as they are supposed to be a permanent pair. I interviewed him as soon as he came onboard and found out that his life partner had died but had insisted to him that he continue on. His name was Grip Gulp but I was to call him Peanut. Looking over his record he was familiar with weapon systems and as a Lieutenant junior grade he had enough rank to put him in charge of ordnance. So there was another headache off my shoulders as I figured I was going to be in charge of this division also.

Stardate 777.8 I waited at the main transport platform and Commander T’Loc arrived precisely on time. I welcomed her aboard and she just nodded to me and said to follow her as she proceeded to wander around the ship and asked about the status of certain areas. Thankfully we were not behind on anything scheduled and after a few hours onboard she informed me that she had to leave and take care of something for a few days and she would return in about a week and then she would remain onboard. I escorted her back to the transporter pad and she left the ship.

Stardate 789.4 Commander T’Loc has returned onboard and has taken up residence in her quarters and has started to assist where she is needed as we are about a week away from commisioning. Our full complement of crew is onboard and that is 34 officers and 184 crew. With the two Lieutenants onboard being the Doctor and Chief of Security and rest being mostly Ensigns and a few junior Lt’s. We have 8 second year cadets that are good enough to be put onboard and they are midshipmen acting as division yeoman, freeing up the NCO’s for other duties. We also have about 4 dozen raw recruits right out of basic training and they are spread out between the divisions.

Stardate 797.0 the commisioning ceremony was held on the dock arm holding Renown in place as it was the only area large enough to hold everyone. It was presided over by Vice Admiral Kincaid, the base CO and overseen by Admiral Albright the sector CO. The ceremony to commision USS Renown was rather short with Commander T’Loc presented with the formal crest of the ship along with the commisioning date. Then she was formally ordered to take her duty as the Commanding Officer. Then I was rather shocked when she turned and asked for Lt Hawthorne to step forward.

I proceeded up to her and came to attention as she presented me with an ornate box which she opened and announced that due to my actions in the prevention of sabatoge I was formally presented with a Service Commendation and ribbon for my efforts and as of this stardate I was promoted to the rank of Lt Commander and ordered to take on the duties of First Officer aboard Renown. I then stepped back in line as she called up Dr Maresial and presented him with the same Commendation and confirmation of his Lt’s rank and posting as Chief Medical Officer aboard Renown. The others that were given the same award were junior Lt’s Quinn and Roi. They had their promotions confirmed and they were made division heads of their respective divisions. Senior Chief Sulu was also given the same commendation along with Leading Crewwoman Kai. The two of them also received their combat action ribbons for their actions.

We were then dismissed to the ship. I also noticed that the Captain was carrying a leather bag with the seal of Star Fleet Command and she told me that it contained our orders. She then handed me a key that fit the bag and said she had another one for the Chief Engineer. Under Star Fleets new protocol she would have all the important orders and codes in the bag and it would be in the Captain’s safe in her quarters. She also informed me that her first priority was the ship and if something needed to be done elsewhere it would be my responsibility. She also said that the Chief of Security’s prime responsibility would also be the ship and she would be delegating responsibility as she saw fit.

Commendation Service Medal and Ribbon

The Captain told me to take helm to start with and said that we would work on duty rosters once we were clear of the system. Once everyone was onboard the umbilical that attached us to the station was withdrawn and as we powered up the warp system the other connections were slowly released until we were sitting just off the dock. I then waited as the sensors cycled up and told me that we were clear of any obstructions and the Captain then ordered me to go ahead and I applied power to the impulse engine and slowly started moving forward. A course had been plotted for out system and I headed that way as the warp engines powered up. Once we had the go ahead from engineering the Captain ordered me to go to Warp one and maintain the speed for now. I set the controls and then the ship was shifting into warp speed and the stars blurred for a moment as the bubble formed and we headed into warp. It took a few hours until we were finally up to Warp 3.5 when the Captain ordered a course change to the Pyrellia System. Once we had it plotted she told us to make the course change and at our current speed it would take about 3 months to get there.

It was going to take about half a day before we could work the engine up to Warp 7 as our max speed was rated at Warp 9.2 and only for 12 hours so Warp 7 was about as high as the Captain wanted to go. Once we were up to speed it will still take close to three weeks to get there. After a couple of hours I was relieved at the helm as she told me that I was going to be the second watch bridge officer and that I could slot in a replacement at helm.

Stardate 801.4 the Captain called a meeting for all senior officers and when we were all in the briefing room she revealed our orders. We were to proceed to Pyrellia and find one Wilson Kincaid a former Federation employee who had some information on the Ileraen System. We were to head there after we had interviewed Mr Kincaid. Pyrellia was a privately owned pergium mine with over a thousand workers. We were looking for one Wilson Kincaid as he had information that the Captain required and we were to find and interview him. The Captain then ordered that Medical come up with two disaster response teams of six people each to respond off the ship if required. She also requested Lt MacKenzie do the same with the Security division and she put junior Lt Zamzow in charge of the first team.

Stardate 848.2 we haved arrived at the Pyrellia system and have come out of warp and are proceeding on impulse towards the mine. We have been given permission to send down a five man team and I have been ordered to lead it. I will be taking the Dr along with junior Lt’s Quinn and Peanut and Senior Chief Sulu. The last three weeks we have been spending time on drills and instruction and I found I have spent more time than I had planned teaching and it was getting easier to deal with. I guess I was getting better in how to best get my point across. The rest of the time I had been standing watch as the duty officer and I have managed to get about six hours of sleep a day while maintaining this pace.

We stepped onto the transport platform and waited for the engineer to set the co-ordinates and finally he looked up and nodded that everything was set and I told him to energize. The next moment we were standing on a dimly lit platform and I was wrinkling my nose from the persistent smell of pergium ore. We stepped off the platform and I told the four to pair up while they were down here as I was going to speak with the administrator here about Mr Kincaid. The doctor wanted to check over the infirmary and Quinn was going to accompany him. Peanut and Chief Sulu headed towards the habitat section to see if they could find him there. The four of them then split up and headed off in different directions. I then looked around and found the stairs that head up towards Administration.

I came out of the stairs into a different world. The floor was brightly lit and there was lush carpeting everywhere. I could see a transport pad that was locked down with a guard standing beside it. I could see some sort of a secretary and walked up to her and asked to see Administrator Reuben. She looked at something and said that he was currently in a meeting and he would be able to see me afterwords. She then directed me down the corridor to another young lady who asked me to wait in one of the plush armchairs that was in the room. I could see through the glass into an office and I could see the man I wanted to see speaking to two other men. As I sat there my communicator chirped and I proceeded to pull it out and opened it and Peanut informed me that they had narrowed the man down to the habitat section and they had asked the Dr and Mr Quinn to join them. I told them to keep me appraised of any new developments. Finally Mr Reuben was finished and stood up and the other two men left and he came out and introduced himself to me and asked what he could do for me.

I informed him that we were looking for one Wilson Kincaid and wished to interview him about one of his previous occupations. He was quite alarmed that I was there to take him away and I was quick to tell him that we only wished to speak with him and we would not be removing him. He checked on the computer and said that he had finished his shift a few hours before and that he had to be somewhere in the settlement downstairs. I told him that we were currently narrowing down where he was at and he then told me that he had other commitments and I took my leave of him just as my comm chirped again and when I answered it Peanut breathlessly told me that they had just found their man and he had taken off on them. I ordered them to pursue as I headed down the stairs.