A Letter to an Old Friend

Posted on 24 May 2025 @ 8:07pm by Captain Bane Plase

892 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: The Festival of Unity
Location: Starbase 375, VIP Quarters
Timeline: Before the beach party

On:

Dear Devan,

It has been a while since we last spoke. Right before you beamed back to Antioch III, I told you I'd keep in touch, and so here it is.

After we left Antioch, I had several meetings with Starfleet Command, and a few with the Office of First Contact and the Office of Cultural Integrity. They all wanted to know what went wrong, how we contributed to it, what we did to try and mitigate it, and so on. You know the drill. None of it resulted in charges, thankfully, but it did result in the Cygnus being assigned routine patrol duty beyond the Minos Korva sector.

The first few weeks out there were uneventful. We were doing the standard cataloguing, measuring space dust, chasing comets, and so on. The Science division was loving it, you remember Lieutenant Lisald, right? It was right up his alley. It was also giving time for our new Chief Engineer, Lieutenant T'Lara, whom you haven't yet met, to put the ship through the paces. She reluctantly agreed that Lieutenant Hartley had done pretty well, but even then, she made a few modifications which helped greatly during those sensor sweeps and whatnot.

Anyways, we picked up a distress signal from a freighter. Turned out it had suffered a hull breach while en route to Son'a space carrying isolinium. Yeah, you read that right. Our only guess is they were trying to purchase it from the Syndicate. Who knows what they could have done with it.

Dr. Winters was promoted with your recommendation to Chief Medical Officer and was also promoted to full Lieutenant. She is still a bit shaky running a department rather than just being a doctor, but honestly, she is doing wonderful. Do you remember how much she used to kick her own ass when she made a mistake or didnt know an answer? She is so hard on herself, and try as I might to tell her she has my highest confidence, she is still kicking her own butt too much. It's ok though; we all went through that phase when we were put in charge of a department. I know I certainly did, and I bet you did as well.

Do you remember Lieutenant Bast, the Operations Officer? After you decided to stay on Antioch III, Bast was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and I made him my XO. He has been doing an amazing job. He was pretty instrumental in the investigation of that freighter, and has made life on the Cygnus pretty amazing. He is good with the crew and great with administration. Erik Larsen made Captain.

Heh, I can hear the surprise in your voice about that one. It surprised me too, in more than one way. Let me explain.

Circling back around to that freighter I was talking about a moment ago, we took it in tow, headed back to Federation space. Lieutenant Lisald did something with the scans when we finally stabilized in warp with that monster in tow, and it set off the auto-destruct of the freighter. I honestly still do not know exactly what happened, or what he did, but the explosion of that freighter so close to us, unshielded, in warp, well, I tell you, we are lucky to be alive. We lost a significant amount of crew during that incident. The Cygnus is now undergoing extensive repairs and refits. It was only through the grace of the Prophets we survived, and through the ingenuity of the crew. Almost every single system was disabled or destroyed. The pod was blown away, as were one of the warp nacelles, not to mention all the hull breaches and stress fractures on the superstructure. Anyways, the USS Goddard came to our rescue, and it was captained by none other than our own Erik Larsen. I will tell you all about that in a later letter, if you are interested.

We have been reassigned to Starbase 375, around a beautiful planet. Later this evening, I plan on meeting with Lieutenant T'Lara (my Chief Engineer) about the status of the ship, then will head down to the planet. The survivors of the Cygnus are going down to have a party and to blow off some steam. Tomorrow starts a Festival of Unity which I am really looking forward to.

I really hope you are doing well, and the Antiocians are treating you well. I know we are persona non grata right now with them, but I am hopeful with your presence and your assistance you are continuing to provide them is helping out. I do not envy your task, nor your situation. In the event you get to see or talk to the Tashi, please send my warmest regards. I hope in the time since we have been there, time has not soured her towards me or towards what we represent.

Looking back at this letter, I fear I may have made this too long and it'll take you forever to read it. When I hear back from you, I will be happy to update you further on the goings-on with the ship and crew.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you or the Antiocians out. I sure do miss you, my friend, and I hope this finds you well.


Your friend,

Plase

 

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