Time Travel Fun

[Owen E Oulton]

Well, time travel stories are a favourite with me, so I've decided to have my players' characters transferred to DTI aboard a Thucydides class Timeship. Prepatory to that, I decided to have them involved in an incident make DTI demand that Starfleet transfer them. The USS Rising Sun was on an antipiracy patrol out of Cretok Nor when they caught up with an Orion Lightning class that had just talen out a Federation courier. They enaged the Lightning, thinking that this was going to be a brief battle. The Lightning opened fire with a new weapon the likes of which the crew of the Rising Sun had never seen, missing with their first shot, Rising Sun registered a high level chroniton burst and returned fire, taking out the Lightning's shields. They locked the transporter onto the bridge and began beaming the occupant(s) off just as they were hit by the second burst. They immediately lost power and the warp core began overloading. Blue lightning began flickering over every surface in the ship and a bolt of energy hit Lieutenant Wesson, a R2 astromech they'd picked up in one of their alternate universe adventures, knocking him (it?) out of action. Chief Engineer Tal had to eject the warp core. Meanwhile, the Orion captain they'd just beamed over had gome all Zoe Saldana-as-Gamorra in the Transporter Room, killing three RRT members and the Transporter Officer before being taken out with a heavy stun blast. Captain M'rel had her confined to the brig. Upon hearing her voice, Commander Seth (who has eidetic memory) thought her voice sounded very familiar. About that time Navigation reproted that they were in the core sectors of the Federation (they'd started out in the former Cardassian Demilitarised Zone), and the Federation time signal indicated they'd travelled back in time 95 years to 2287. The Excelsior class USS Odyssey NCC-2001 showed up and placed them under Temporal Prime Directive quarantine.

(Break for a month - Cliffhanger!)

The next session (today) saw them waiting for a DTI ship to show up. It was the USS Birmingham, a Starfleet Miranda class on detatched duty, who took them under tow back to Earth where they would be quarantined in a secure facility. Meanwhile Commander Tal started work on reviving Wesson, with only the most rudimentary understanding or robotics, but was unable to rebot Wesson's CPU. M'rel and Seth went down to the brig to interrogate the Orion, a gorgeous green vixen. She addressed Seth by name, and he was still getting that "I know but I have no idea who you are" feeling. M'rel asked her "You know my Science Officer?" and she replied "Intimately...". This caused Seth no end of consternation. Seth then headed for Engineering to help Tal work on Wesson. A former Borg drone, Seth still had a Borg computer interface and managed to contact Wesson's memory drives and retrieve Wesson's specs, which he then spent two hours putting into the computer while Tal took a nap, having beeen up for twenty straight hours. Once the specs were available, Tal reviewed them and worked on Wesson. He eventually managed to get Wesson working.

Seth went to Sickbay and sought out Commander Leiliri, the ship's Haliian CMO, who used her Canar to enter into a telepathing rapport with him and dredge up memories, fairly recent, of making mad passionate love to the prisoner. He still had no real idea of who she was but suddenly he realised that the only woman he'd been intimate with in the past two years was his girlfriend, a Bajoran Dabo Girl. He compared images of them and realised that the were one and the same. I actually used two photos of Bobby-Sue Luther, one of her in Enterprise as an Orion slave girl (luther.jpg) and one of her without the makeup, but photoshopped to give her a Bajoran nose (luther2.jpg). He confronted her back in the brig and she said "So, you finally figured it out". Seth's player Steve mumbled something OOC about how now his characters's Facebook page would be reading "Commander Seth is not romantically attached".

At that point sensors detected another Excelsior approaching with shields raised. It was NCC-2005, the USS Discovery, and informed the Birmingham that they were from Starfleet Intelligence and were taking custody of the Rising Sun. The Birmingham stated that they were contacting DTI headquarters in Greenwich and Starfleet Command for confirmation. The Discovery began firing phasers at the Birmingham. The Rising Sun fired a quantum torpedo at the Discovery's starboard nacelle just as the Discovery fired a full spread of photon torpedoes at them. The torps took out the Rising Sun's shields and the Discovery followed up with phasers on heavy stun. When the PCs awoke, they found the ship on full impulse running with their contraband Klingon cloaking device engaged, as Wesson is immune to stun. When the power flickered from the Discovery's weapons fire, the brig's force fields had gone down, and the Orion took the two security guards by surprise and escaped. She made her way to one of the Rising Sun's Type 18 shuttlepods and attempted to escape. Tal managed to jam the bay doors, at which point the Orion began using the pod's phasers to burn the door out of the way. M'rel, meanwhile, headed to the main shuttlebay and launched to D'Allaire, a Type 10 shuttle. The Orion had gotten out of the pod bay and had been caught by Tal's tractor beams. M'rel took out the pod's engines and Seth beamed the pirate back aboard, using a Courage Point to make certain that he could get a stun shot off at her before she did another Gamorra imitation.

The Discovery had disabled the Birmingham and the crew were afraid that they might have detected the phaser fire even through the cloak.

('Nother cliffhanger)

A good time was had by all, even Seth, who's feeling a bit betrayed - but he DID get to shoot his ex - not everyone can do that, legally at least! (No Orions were hurt during the course of this game session!)

Our gaming sessions last about 5 hours nominally once a month (schedules willing), then we break for dinner. Bruce's (M'rel's player) wife Andrea is a great cook. This month we had rare roast beef - YUMMM!

[Owen E Oulton]

Well, after 3 or 4 sessions in the past, getting embroiled in the "Intelligence War" of 2287 (an old plot from my game, run back in 1988-89, and fighting off more than one attempt by SI/S31 to take the ship for its future tech, the crew of the Rising Sun has returned home by way of a device called a "Silver Ball" (a device from my old campaign which was inspired by mentions of a spacial anomaly that destroyed the Chandley class USS Blackheart in FASA's RPG). They were reprimanded for having an illegal Klingon cloaking device on board and at DTI's request assigned to detached duty with DTI. They are now on the DTI H.Beam Piper, a Thucydides class timeship. Much experience was spread around (Renown still to be awarded - stuff like positive Initiative and negative Discipline) and the PCs have been assigned to training schools in anticipation of their new assignement - Temporal Engineering and the like.

[Owen E Oulton]

I'm getting ready for my first mission on the Thucydides class timeship DTI H.Beam Piper. The SS Bonchance was reported missing 3 weeks ago. Starfleet vessels investigated, as the Bonchance was a known Maquis gunrunner (the Maquis are still active some 8 years after the end of the Dominion War, now little more than a freelance terrorist outfit run by Tom Riker and ex-Admiral Leyton). Three Feaderation operatives were aboard, an FIS agent and two civilian operatives. The investigating ships discovered a fading temporal Rift - indications are that it leads about a milennium into the past. No temporal changes have yet been detected, and the Piper is being sent back to prevent any from taking place. Unbeknownst to the PCs, who have just been assigned to the Piper, all three are NPCs who have worked with the PCs before - 3 years ago, in the Triangle.

Wish me luck.

[mactavish]

I am really keen on using the slingshot maneuver from All Our Yesterdays in my Founding of the Federation Series [which is still in the planning stages].

The book mentions that thee ship must be capable of a minimum of warp 6, so I'm thinking of having a Columbia-class ship - which I am using in place of the Daedalus-class - slingshot around the red star from the Star Trek Enterprise Episode "Azati Prime" and encounter the time-displaced NX-01 Enterprise circa 2100, or about 63 years after they arrived in the past.

I'm guessing Jonathon Archer wasn't still commanding Enterprise at over 100 years old, so probably T'Pol before her son took over as commander. I'm also thinking of having Phlox still alive, the patriarch of a clan of half-Denobulan children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Anyway, the gist of the Episode involves the PC Crew of the U.S.S. Gagarin coming to the aid of the E2 and providing future technologies and some supplies as well as leaving a couple of NPC crew members behind to aid them in their mission (as the NPC captain of the Gagarin knows from files from Enterprise that descendants of members of his crew were on E2).

I'm also thinking of having the Gagarin crew encounter E2 again in a later time travel Episode and help them perform the slingshot maneuver and return to the PCs' present. Very exciting and brain-bending stuff!

mactavish out.