Personal Request (Mercury)
| USS Mercury | ||
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 INACTIVE STATUS | ||
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Mission Summary
Part 1
- Stardate 239002
As January ended, the Mercury’s away teams returned from the abandoned DSX with the mystery mostly solved, but with some unanswered questions — for example, the nature of Corporal Sian Douglas’s unconsciousness after an encounter with one of DSX’s cybernetic “spiders.” However, before inquiries could begin, Captain Aron Kells — reportedly at the behest of Starfleet — ordered the mission completely classified; officers were not even to discuss it amongst themselves. But before the crew could fully unpack this strange directive, they received a message from Eyas Wulfantine, asking for their help: his mother had been sentenced wrongfully to death on the Pythron homeworld , and he hoped that some of his friends would accompany him to rescue her.
Nearly the entire senior staff showed up to take part in this unorthodox mission, and while they suffered from unforeseen complications without the benefit of the Mercury, a passing luxury liner, stolen Gorn shuttle, and other strange transports ensured that the motley group made it to Pythro by month’s end. Meanwhile, back on the Mercury, Lt. JG Alexander Richards remained in command and left DSX, where the Mercury had been unloading supplies, to answer the distress call of a freighter that had been caught in the gravity well of a gas giant.
Part 2
- Stardates 239003-239004
As March began, most of the senior staff remained off-ship on an unexpected and unofficial mission to rescue Eyas Wulfantine’s mother from a trumped-up death sentence on his homeworld. The rescue parties split into three groups and sowed chaos across the planet — sometimes overt and sometimes covert — as the group under the charge of Eyas made its way closer and closer to his mother.
Meanwhile, the skeleton crew aboard the Mercury, under the command of Lt. JG Richards, the chief science officer, answered a distress call in the JB-437 system from a vessel that turned out to be an old Constitution class starship, the USS Saratoga, that had been lost and adrift in the gravity well of a gas giant in the Menthar corridor for one hundred years. Finally, Deep Space 10 (DSX) officially came online under the command of Commander Melitta Herodion.
The rescue of Eyas Wulfantine’s mother was a success, but the senior staff of the Mercury was left with the not-so-minimal task of sneaking back to the Menthar Corridor. After this had been accomplished, the crew settled in around Deep Space 10 for some shore leave.
DSX had come fully online while the senior staff was in absentia, and many of them used the opportunity to explore, meet the new residents, and acquaint themselves with the officers who had recently been assigned there. Events of note during shore leave included an experimental surgery upon Lieutenant Commander Roshanara Rahman and the reappearance of the Ring, last encountered by the USS Drake years before, around a planet in the Omicron Geminorum system. Meanwhile, some of the new junior lieutenants bonded; Captain Quinn Reynolds discovered an old friend; and Lieutenant Commander Isaac Bale and Major Jacen Fanel, the Mercury’s two hardened warriors, discussed the noble art of fatherhood.