Joining a new ship

Posted on Tue Oct 6th, 2020 @ 7:09am by

"Personal log.. Stardate... Whatever date it is now," said the Lieutenant as she recorded from her temporary quarters in the Intrepid class USS Alicorn. She was a nice ship, with a lot of service time. Captain Thalyessin was in charge, with his ever present Chief of Security, Samantha Diedrich, a former Borg who was a commander herself and his first officer.

"My new first ship assignment came through. A Norway class vessel," she continued as she looked at the PADD image of the ship. "I have a brief on the crew, but first times are always different than what you read in a personnel file."

She looked through the deck plans, and sighed in relief. "Good, there's a hydroponics bay. I can grow my fruits and vegetables. So much better than the replicated stuff. And....there," she said pointing down on the last deck, 13, "a holodeck, so I can at least remember home."

She teared up a little, and wiped it, cursing herself for being so feminine that she cried at the drop of a hat.

"After suffering through the Orion's kidnapping, and their keeping me conscious while they altered my body, and feeling every bone grind themselves down or grow outward, my skin expanding out or contracting into myself, my hair flowing out of my head, my nose grinding smaller, the utter pain of it all, remaining conscious through it all, I finally escaped," she said, working through the events of the past two years. "Admiral Scylding of the USS Utopia knew the Taggerts and came to rescue their child, and discovered all four dozen of us there. Unfortunately they didn't get the bastards who had stolen our identities."

She paused to control her emotions, as her voice was quivering. She continued, "What the Orions were doing with genetic engineering technology, changing faces, changing genders, I can't say. Sounds like a lot of extra effort when they could've just used some mental conditioning to control us. But according to the few files they recovered from the computers, they were trying to create the perfect 'honeypot' or 'infiltration agent,' that could 'persuade' (a polite euphemism) Starfleet officers to part with classified information that the Orions could then sell on the black market, or could blackmail them into doing what they wanted. An age-old tale, one the United States suffered under for much of the mid-20th to early 21st century with its intelligence agencies."

"The Orions spent so much time working on our bodies they didn't get to program our minds," she continued. "Well, aside from tactics and unarmed combat. My head's pumped full of every martial art from Earth and a few not from Earth. Now I always look for the exits and always face the door when I go to a restaurant. And a lot of feminine fluff on how to dress, do makeup and hair, et cetera...ugh."

"Thank God for the USS Utopia. When they came in and rescued us, some of us were so worked up by the Orions messing with our pheromones we kind of...surprised...the rescue team, shall we say. Unfortunately that slowed their rescue down, allowing the Orions to escape. I think they planned it that way, but whatever. I lost my identity, and my future, but if anything I was still alive and had my mind intact."

She walked around the quarters, pacing as she talked. "I got back to Earth, and my family greeted me, though they weren't expecting a 5'11" woman to be there with flame red hair down to her sizeable butt. We hugged and cried, and I spent a little while back on the farm in Georgia. It felt great just working the fields again, though I was able to do a lot more than mom and dad, even without the farm equipment to help. Taking care of the pigs, herding cattle to milk them, tending to the goats, all of that. It felt...normal. I just now had about four or five feet of thick curly hair to restrain," she laughed a little at her own quip. "And two giant protrusions, shall we say that loved bouncing around when I walked. Mom had to remind me to wear a bra on several occasions or I would've poked someone's eye out, she said."

"After three weeks, Starfleet came knocking again, and I went over to San Francisco," Jamie said. "I met Captain Dougherty, apparently a version of me from a different reality, and we had a good heart to heart. She looked similar to me, and we both I guess looked like our respective mothers, who were Scottish, and we had a few days together which really helped with my anger issues. She had spent years away from her home reality, so I guess I didn't have it so bad in comparison."

"I asked her about her world, and it's pretty crazy," Jamie said. "Her version of France started both world wars, apparently because Napoleon IV took the throne instead of a republic being declared, and Frederick III becoming the German Kaiser in 1878. Her version of the USA lost its Civil War because the Confederates emancipated in 1864, and her USA collapsed in 2021, requiring the Confederates to invade and save them. After their World War III, they lost over 1.9 billion people. It was after that tragedy that they got their act together and started expanding their moon bases, their Lagrange Stations, and began colonizing worlds. Setting up colonies and creating warp drive finally got the attention of the Vulcans, and a lot of their history after that paralleled ours quite a bit, strangely enough."

"It was around then I discovered I could change my hair's color a little, turning it auburn by thinking about it, or strawberry blonde, but it returned to red if I didn't concentrate on it. Kind of a useless party trick, but maybe if the Orions had scrambled my brain a bit more, they'd have included the instruction manual for that too."

She sat down, rolling her eyes as she noticed how different her butt felt from barely two years ago. "Every time I put on my uniform I wonder if it makes my butt look big, but the few times I've asked guys always say it looks great, so I guess I shouldn't worry. But after talking to my doppelganger, she adapted to her new self, so I can do it too."

"Starfleet found me fit to resume duty," Jamie continued. "But not after I accidentally made a Vulcan go into Pon Farr early, which is how they found out I needed a pheromone inhibitor to avoid trouble in the future."

Her cats lazed in the cat tree she had gotten for them (https://www.thehappycatsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/33.jpg), a Maine Coon/Ragdoll tabby girl named Sonya and a boy she named Kitty with gray fur. They were the cutest little things, and she was definitely a cat lady...but in a good way.

"So, they sent me to *therapy* like something was wrong with me..." she said accusatorily before continuing, "but I went and I had a lot of body issues, not lining up with my mind, but when I finally accepted the new me, they found me fit for duty. And they had me visit a cattery over in Savannah, where I picked up these two little fuzzballs, since the Betazoid said having a pet would be good for me."

She walked over to the cats and squatted down. She snapped her fingers a few times, and Sonya jumped down the ramps and hutches and rubbed on her leg. "Good girl," Jamie smiled. She picked up the cat, holding her on her shoulder, its paws dangling down her back, the cats legs resting on her breast, reminding her it existed. Jamie petted the cat a bit and walked over, sitting in her recliner with a book reader, as Sonya decided to turn around, and sit right on her chest, as if their purpose were to be a pillow for her.

"Well, hello Sonya," Jamie said sarcastically. "Please, lay across my sizeable bosom. That's what it's for, after all," she laughed a little. It was a very feminine laugh, but she'd gotten used to it by now.

Kitty felt a little jealous or something and jumped down, trotted across the room and jumped up, taking up his position in her lap, curling up and purring away as she petted him, and Sonya on her chest, whose belly she scratched, causing the little cat to stretch out across her bosom, legs reaching out forward and backward.

"God, I hope no one comes into my quarters and sees this. That's the last thing I need," she said with an exasperated sigh. "So, continuing. I got cats. They helped relax me, get some anger under control. I met an alternate doppelganger of myself, she showed me that I can deal with having all 23 chromosomes irrevocably altered, a new body shape and face, that it's me on the inside that counts, yada, yada, yada."

"They also found out that I really shouldn't be around any of the other Bellringer ladies," Jamie said, musing. "When all of us were put together in a dorm, Starfleet discovered we kind of...well....got a bit personal with each other..."

Her mind was taken back, and she felt a stirring within her before she got her mind back on track. "It's true we've got a, how'd she put it, 'higher susceptibility to being aroused'?"

"But there were some new air filters added, some nasal numbing agent given when we were around each other, and there were no more real incidents," Jamie continued. "But man, those other guys who were helping us all, did they have a great time. They were very thirsty afterwards...and very exhausted. Dang. But the Betazoid, Kara Troi - yes, she's a distant cousin to Admiral Riker's wife - gave us some holodeck programs to take out our, as she put it 'higher personal energies' without causing crew distractions by being overly intimate with our crewmates."

"So that takes us to now. I got transfer orders, since I was one of the most brilliant engineers in my class at the Academy," Jamie said, watching Kitty nuzzle his nose under his paw in her lap. "And they had a new ship, the Leto, that needed a Chief Engineer. I'd spent time working through warp geometry and finding 'novel solutions' to field problems, so they wanted me to put them in practice."

"Starfleet sends their ship telemetry and logs to Memory Alpha, Memory Beta, and five other public library planets and stations. Then they have the engineers there dissect what the ships went through to discover what the ship encountered, how it could have been solved differently, if it could have been, how the crew reacted, and how we can prevent that situation from requiring a novel solution that other ships don't have, and possibly make changes to future starships so that they can resolve those issues when they encounter them and not have to change things to work in ways they weren't designed to work...because now they are."

"Such is the life of an engineer," Jamie said with a smile, scratching Kitty behind his fuzzy gray ears. "Finding ways out of situations our captains put us in. but it'll be good to use my mind more than my body...uh...yeah. Besides, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, as they say. Dougherty out."
----------------------
OOC: USS Alicorn is Intrepid Class. Thalyessin looks like Mark Harmon from NCIS. Diedrich looks like Chandra West with Seven of Nine's Borg implants on her.

Liorae Saeihr: https://web.archive.org/web/20090405223614im_/http://www.uss-thesis.com/images/Thesis/crew/saeihr.php
Dylan Thalyessin: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1c/ff/e0/1cffe03262ff565882bdece499028ff8--eye-candy-actors.jpg
Cloe Parfaith: https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Reese-Witherspoon-Big-Little-Lies.png
Samantha Diedrich: https://bravofleet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/chandra-west-diedrich.png