Juneau Establishes First Contact With New Species

AAVARO WILDS — Arriving back in their patrol region, the USS Juneau (NX-99801) encountered an unknown species of space-borne cephalopod, however at the time they did not realise that the ship had ventured too close to the creature’s hunting ground.
A creature, only slightly smaller than the ship’s primary hull, attached itself to a bulkhead, remaining unbeknownst to the crew through the use of telepathy. It plunged the crew of the Juneau into a shared telepathic hallucination that augmented parts of their personalities to knit together a vision of early Earth space history.
The telepathic members of the crew were the first to realise things were not right when an earthquake struck their “little town”.
When the crew-turned-townsfolk gathered for a celebration of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the delusion broke down. Red alert klaxons interrupted the old-school television footage. Just as they got close to discovering the truth, agents of the creature beset the crew, acting as members of an organised crime syndicate.
It was at that point that the crew divided their efforts, something within the Captain calling her attention to the town’s recently destroyed antique store, a stand-in for the ship’s main engineering hub. Half the crew went with her while the other half stayed in the town’s diner, which was in actuality the ship’s bridge. The members of the crew in the diner continued to battle with the gangsters, hoping to keep the creature distracted.
When the illusion broke under the combined work of some telepathic members of the crew, both they and members of the team in engineering established contact through the use of binary code. While the creature infiltrated the ship’s computers. It was searching the ship for the warp core, seeking the heat and energy as a source of sustenance for itself and its young.
The crew of the Juneau freed themselves from the creature’s grasp and escaped the area through the use of a shuttlecraft as a distraction. While attempts on the warp core destroyed the initial creature, more such creatures exist in a continuing display of the true wonders of the universe.
 
Written by Jansen Orrey