John Kendrick: Difference between revisions

The Kendrick family are descendents of early 22nd century space boomers from Earth. With the Federation expanding further into the Alpha en Beta Quadrants, John’s grandfather felt that their rules and regulations were starting to hurt his trading business so in the mid 30s of the 24th century, he decided to build a hub outside of Federation controlled space to create his own personal business empire. This hub eventually grew out to become “Kendrick’s Palace”, the headquarters of the Universal Trading Company (UTC) which unites 47 independent freighters in search of business, trading and transport. The Palace is actually a four-armed space station in orbit of a blue gas giant in the Gath system.  

Being the eldest son, John was expected to take over the company, just like his father before him. Unfortunately John had other plans for his life and decided he wanted to join Starfleet. That decision caused a rift between him and his family. A painful situation with which he struggles with up until today.  

He left home at the age of 18 and traveled to Earth to study at Starfleet Academy.

A Starfleet officer has the aura of a 24th century renaissance man or woman. The so-called miracle workers. In reality however, only a small percentage of officers graduating from the Academy are truly gifted to excel in just about everything.

John falls in the category of those who, with limited talent but with hard work, managed to struggle their way through those four long years at the Academy.  

He followed the training course to become a Security officer, but took a minor in Tactical. He believed that, as a Security officer aboard a starship, he’d have front row seats when it came to first contact missions or diplomatic conferences. He joined Starfleet to explore the galaxy, not to sit behind the helm controls all day or down in engineering.

At the age of 12, he got his first shuttlepod as a present from his father. So at an early age, he was already familiar with the basics of a warp engine and had the opportunity to hone his skills as a pilot. He had little or no interest in the so-called hard sciences and needed the help of his best friend, Gabriella Morientes, to pass those tests at the Academy.

Because of his excellent marksmanship at the phaser range, his fellow cadets nicknamed him Hawkeye Kendrick.

After graduating from the Academy on stardate 239801.03, he was assigned to the USS Juneau NX-99801 - the first Starfleet vessel to be equipped with a Warp VX engine - as a Security officer.

He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant JG on stardate 239806.25 after their mission to the planet Aturn VII. Another promotion followed three months later, on stardate 239809.18. The peak of his young career followed on stardate 239811.19 when Captain Oddas appointed him as acting Chief of Security and Tactical. On stardate 239905.08 his position was made permanent.  

While visiting Lightside Station during his shore leave after their mission to Ring 42 (239808), John had an unexpected encounter with the crew of The Wanderer - a freighter in service of his father’s transport company. As their Captain - Hennessey - offered John a tour of the ship, they discovered that their shipment of valuable honey from a place called Butterfly City had been stolen.

Apparently transport companies or freighters that did business on the station for the first time, were more likely to be filing reports on missing cargo. John was surprised that station authorities referred to it as ‘missing’ instead of ‘stolen’ cargo, but it didn't take a genius to figure out why. The station’s reputation was at stake - or that of the port authority, to be more precise. Only in a handful of cases were the authorities able to locate the so-called missing cargo. Word was that in those cases the freighter captains were blackmailed to pay huge amounts of credits to get their cargo back .

With the authorities unable - or unwilling - to help, John decided to aid the crew of The Wanderer to get their stolen cargo back. Their journey led them to the fifth moon of Orstand III (Orsung) where they found their stolen cargo in a warehouse located in the center of a Balerian settlement. In an attempt to avoid bloodshed, John offered the Balerian leader named Orzuc a trade: Wanderer’s shipment of honey in exchange for John’s ancient chronowatch (a gift from his father’s Ferengi bookkeeper, named Wren). The Balerians agreed and after the exchange, The Wanderer set course back for Lightside Station.

Martuf - a Kalinda, the species that built the Lightside Station ages ago - worked for the port authorities aboard the Spike. To maintain his luxurious lifestyle and pay off his many gambling debts, he sold information to a criminal syndicate on the comings and goings of freighters with interesting cargo and made sure that any complaints of those same freighters got buried in the thousands of reports and files that were entered into the system each day. This little neat arrangement had benefited him for years.

That was until his encounter with John Kendrick and Moa Andersson, The Wanderer’s first mate and pilot. They kidnapped Martuf and brought him back aboard The Wanderer in a crate for interrogation. After he revealed everything they needed to know to retrieve their stolen cargo, they put him back to sleep and inside the crate and beamed him back over to his quarters on Lightside Station. After twelve hours the effects of sedatives would wear off. As he woke up from his long nap, Martuf would be able to unlock the crate from the inside. For some unknown reason, Martuf wasn’t able to open up the crate and died. The authorities concluded it was probably suicide as the man had a lot of outstanding debts.

As John learned about the death of Martuf, shortly after his promotion to Lieutenant, it threw him into a crisis of conscience. Convincing himself that there might be a slight possibility that he wasn’t responsible for his death (Martuf was a criminal and most likely had more enemies than one), he decided to keep quiet until the initial shock subsided and he could look at things more clearly. In the end however, it was just an excuse to avoid taking responsibility. The events still weigh heavily upon him, casting a shadow on both his life and career.

During their mission to Aturn VII, John, together with Lieutenant-Commander T’Lea and Doctor Rel, were taken prisoner by the Ferengi DaiMon named KayBay and beamed to the Golden Feather. In the DaiMon’s brig, Commander T’Lea devised a plan to escape, using a faux Vulcan nerve pinch on both John and Doctor Rel. Suffering from the early effects of Pon Farr, T’Lea’s emotions seeped through into John’s unconsciousness, thus creating a bond between the two of them.  

Three months later, during their shore leave, John was traveling aboard The Wanderer when he received a holo-message from T’Lea. Apparently she had tracked down the murderer of her mother, a Cardassian woman named Dal Selta. Fearing that she might get killed and that Dal would escape, T'Lea asked John to follow her to the planet Phorth to help her capture the Dal.

Arriving at Phorth, John beamed over to the planet's surface, only to find T’Lea and two other Romulans: T’Lea’s mother Raivus and a man named Ajen. As John laid eyes upon T’Lea, he felt a deep longing for her he could barely keep under control. As the four of them were beamed back aboard the cargo bay of The Wanderer, John soon found himself in a hand-to-hand combat with Ajen, the so-called Kal-if-fee. The Romulan was much stronger than him and as he was thrown down on his back, ready to receive the final blow, his opponent was stunned by a shot fired at his chest - courtesy of Moa.

As T’Lea tended to John’s wounds in sickbay, both eventually gave in to their deep longing for each other and mated to satisfy the hunger of Pon Farr.  

As The Wanderer returned to Lightside Station, Raivus was handed over to Starfleet Intelligence. Ajen however was released since there was no warrant out against him.  

Afterwards T’Lea and John parted ways, without ever really talking about what happened but John kept feeling this strong, almost passionate and all-consuming attraction to her.

A few months after T’Lea left Juneau, John started dating nurse Katrina Pelley. After T'Lea rejoined the crew at Denali Station, she felt that it was no longer appropriate to leave their bond intact and decided to break the link between them. She lured him away during the Awards Ceremony held at Club Möbius (SD 239909.09) and performed a Vulcan ritual without John - who was a bit inebriated at the time - fully realizing what was happening to him. The ritual caused some sort of ‘brain zap’ and John fell unconscious with no memory of what happened to him.  

By the end of 2399, a minor misunderstanding had arisen between John and T'Lea. John mistakenly believed that T'Lea had broken into his apartment to steal his saxophone. However, this misunderstanding ultimately led to T'Lea revealing the truth about the Pon Farr incident.

John met Nurse Katrina Pelley for the first time when they were both part of an Away Team, sent down to Ring 42, to an ancient city called Deolia, to help find a group of missing Starfleet officers from the Grace Hopper (SD 239806.27). They hadn’t really spoken to each other, during or after the mission. Juneau is a big ship, so it wasn’t until their mission in the Oort Cloud, hunting down pirates, that they saw each other again (SD 239904.19). Katrina was the nurse who treated his head injury down in Sickbay after he returned from a rescue operation aboard a freighter that had tried to ram Juneau. As fate would have it, they bumped into each other the next day, down at the Clanhouse. They started talking and though John still had strong feelings for T’Lea, he also found himself attracted to Katrina, who seemed more grounded and caring. They both transferred to Denali Station, but currently don’t live together - though John sleeps over at her apartment most of the time.