Josh Herrick/After Action Reports
Post-landing, the team broke into 2 groups; Rox and Herrick went in search of supplies while TK and Nilsen stayed back to effect repairs - with the comms array down, they would be out of contact until they returned. As Rox and Herrick started to get to know each other better while they walked towards the settlement, they encountered strange tricorder readings and an abandoned dwelling. During their investigation they heard strange screeches but were unable to attribute them to a source (7). The pair decided to head back to the shuttle, and as they made their way back, contact had been reestablished. On their journey back, they, Josh got a view of the lizard-man hybrid monster, which hastened their pace. They were able to make it back to the shuttle, narrowly escaping the clutches of the monster, and returning back to the {USS|Oumuamua} (8).
Following the trip to Paradiso, Herrick attended his second JOPA meeting, where he realized he had yet to pull a prank on one of the senior officers. There was only 1 notable member that had missed the boat in JOPA history, and he didn't want to be the second. During this meeting, each of the JOPA members received custom bowling shirts, with Herrick's reading Ensign and (in almost microscopic font) Chief Explosion Officer. They wished Promontory in his final meeting, having recently been promoted to Lieutenant and parties with rounds of bowling — where Josh discovered this sport was not his forte (9|10|11|12|13).
A few days later, Herrick suffered a panic attack while performing maintenance on the sensor pod. Kovacs had unintentionally run into him, and after assessing the man's appearance, informed him he would either need to visit sickbay or get reported. (14). Upon his visit to the Sickbay, where Josh had not attributed the issue to his claustrophobia, additional tests were run — where it was discovered by Kel that he was radioactive (15). Additional scans revealed that he, along with Kel and potentially Corelli had picked up a photo-activated radionuclide (16). Kel, along with Miash and T'Larn, worked to identify exactly how to remediate it, coming up with a combination of the transporter and several subsequent regeneration sessions. Corelli had joined midway through the procedure, and all three officers had effectively gone through the process. However, when it came time to enter the small chamber, Herrick figuratively shoved Kovacs into the booth. While Kovacs underwent his procedure, he caught up with the chief to try (rather unsuccessfully) to learn more about the Nautilus and its mission until the time it was his turn to undergo cellular regeneration (17|18|19).
Given the medical team's observation on his claustrophobia, Herrick was ordered to report to mandated counselling. At his first session, he met Brzezinski and Salo for the first time (20). Rivka was quick to offer exposure therapy, which caused a negative reaction from both Salo and Herrick and let to her being escorted out of the counseling session. Upon Salo's return, she had a more patient approach to therapy, where Josh revealed the source of his claustrophobia. At the age of 7, a combination of poor maintenance and a ship-wide power loss, led to a turbolift failure that had killed the father of his friend. The man had protected Josh and his sister, Em, during it's crash but it led to his demise. It had taken over an hour for rescue teams to arrive; and during that time, the man's eyes were open and glazed over (21|22). This was the first time that Josh had opened up about this experience to anyone, and Salo recommended weekly counselling sessions following this first productive one (23).
With this shore leave came the notable departures of Kel, Corelli, Perez, Rox and Vomek. Josh had been put in charge of pulling together a farewell video for their departure which highlighted different favourite moments as a farewell message from the {USS|Oumuamua} crew. During the party, he ran into the first officer, Etan (24) where the two briefly caught up before joining a larger group containing Sherlock, Maxwell and Nilsen (25). After some brief small talk, the team chatting about forming a small sports club with the interim name of OASIS (26|27) as a way to blow off steam and get to know each other with each group member exited at the prospects. While Josh didn't have a chance to bid the departing crew farewell, he hoped his going away video had done them justice (28.
As the party progressed, Josh realized that he knew Lhandon somehow. It hadn't been clear exactly how he knew the man, and he was left with more unanswered questions after trying to do preliminary digging. The opening of the new operations centre had provided him an opportunity to ask deeper questions, but Nilsen had not been willing to share much detail — however, a friendship had started to form between the men. He was left wondering if this was the same ensign who had been highly publicized in the FNS (29|30).
A week after the farewell party was the awards ceremony, where Herrick receive a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade, as well as the [Legion of Merit] and [Captain's Commendation] for his service during the Esh-o mission. The recognition and quick promotion had caught him off guard, but he gratefully accepted and had told the Commodore that he wouldn't let her down. It would be an interesting shift, where a more junior engineer would be leading a whole department, but he was willing to take on the challenge (31)
With the immediate crisis on board solved, and a quick shower later, Josh was sent with an away team along with Kammus Corelli, Anton Richards, and V'Len Kel to assist with a dire emergency - the nebula was having ill effects on a remote Esh-o mining colony (9]. With TINFOIL hats in addition to the injections from the Doctor, the team was now in a more emotionally stable position. As the shuttle flew towards the colony, warning lights went off several times on the shuttle, seeming faulty at first. As they got closer, they also detected that the nebula had been dissolving the colony and started exploring options like tractor beams to separate the healthy and 'infected' portions of the asteroid the colony sat upon (10|11). Just before landing, the shuttle's fuel lines had reported being compromised and the away team was forced to make an emergency landing (12).
While the shuttle had crashed into an arboretum in the colony, the team had made it through relatively unscathed and Josh had his first encounter with the Esh-o kind (13). The away team and Esh-o leaders explored options, evacuation being unviable, they elected to try splitting the asteroid using mines (14). As power fluctuations rippled through the colony, the team took on the task of investigating them as well (15). When they entered the mines and proceeded to the main core reactor, they encountered a fierce and winged beast. Josh and the away team worked to subdue the beast, trying to calm the Esh-o's plea to kill it, and narrowly escaped with their lives (16|17). After gathering some more volunteers to strategically place mines at points that would break the asteroid apart, the rode the compact mine carts, where the tight quarters caused Josh's claustrophobia to flare up, to reach and place the mines in strategic positions to split the asteroid, but before they could finish, they were held up by shapeshifters and barely escaped (18|19|20|21).
Making it back to the surface, they struggled with options to get the shuttle off the ground, relying on several crew members that had absconded with worker bees to rescue them. While the explosion had worked, it hadn't created enough distance between the two pieces of rock, and they needed to think of options fast (22). When it seemed like all hope was lost, the experimental ship with the designation Nautilus appeared and both the shuttle and worker bees were transported aboard. As the team emerged from their vessels into the large bay, they witnessed a holographic twin of an experiment running aboard another Nautilus from a parallel universe. The 'real' Nautilus that the team was one was tasked with preventing the other ship from causing a cataclysmic explosion that would wipe out life, and the holo-version had encountered difficulties with their holo-safeties, potentially putting the crew at risk. However, the other ship appeared to be unsuccessful in its attempts, and with the crisis passes, the 'real' Nautilus returned the away team back to the USS Oumuamua (23|24).
To aid in bonding with fellow lower deckers, Josh was invited to the JOPA where he met many of the junior officers he'd be working with in the future and was encouraged to pull a prank on one of the senior officers but wasn't quite sure what might be an appropriate one that wouldn't land him in too much hot water (13|14|15|16). After his recovery, there was an attempt by an officer from Humanoid Resources, Lieutenant Commander Klaaf, to put him on report for a Form B-74-Tango following the incident in the jefferies tube, but he was quickly dispatched by Commander Etan Iljor (17|18). He also had a brief run in with the Charles Tyber, a security officer onboard who seemed unable to wake up from a deep slumber, and luckily kept his life (19|20). The crew finished shore leave with an awards ceremony, where there many officers were decorated for the achievements on the mission previous to Josh coming aboard.