January/February 2026 Challenge: New. It can be anything that fits the theme - new ship, new crew, new beginnings etc. Any crew, any time, canon or your creation, AU or not.
Trek BBS: January/February 2026 Challenge
"New: The Next Lower Decks"
The Prometheus-class U.S.S. Phoenix-X stifled, stifflessly and stammery in strenuous stability along the Federation border as the Type-11 shuttlecraft Iroh exited its shuttle bay and jumped to warp. Captain Night Seifer operated the shuttle's forward consoles.
“Captain’s log, Stardate 70184.5. With the shuttlecraft Dracon under severe repairs, none of the crew wanted to join me in escorting my graduated nephew Vel to his first starship posting. Not that I blame them after my recent crash into a steampunk-Borg world full of mechanical-walking giant fish— I think I was the antagonist? Either way, with the subdued, limited shadow of what Starfleet Academy used to be, now in these dark times, it’s easily a miracle we get any new officers anymore. As such, I must risk the well-known shuttle-operator/accident trope again to see the utopian future we all were previously acquainted.”
As if on queue, the Iroh was intensely whacked out of warp by a sudden neutronic storm, throwing the Captain from the helm and knocking him unconscious, as well as several pips from his uniform collar.
---
The hull scraped Iroh, now barred from any registry decals and a damaged computer, later sat, rescued in the shuttle bay of the Parliament-class U.S.S. Kawartha. Seifer was awoken by Doctor Sveng in Sickbay.
“Brass cogs!” Seifer blurted before coming to his senses. “Oh, I’m okay. Where am I? Also, for that matter, who am I?”
Ensign Aya Chen walked over and noticed Sveng pausing for dramatic effect. “We have to give it a few seconds whenever anyone says that, in case of cold opens,” Sveng explained to Chen before turning back to Seifer. “As for you, I feared the impact of a neutronic storm would affect your Trill symbiont and your memories. We found you afloat and saved you.”
“Judging by the pip on your collar, you’re an Ensign,” Chen explained. “And, though your cells are being inoculated against radiolythic isotopes, our surface-level DNA scans indicate you to be Vel Torin: the Kawartha’s new officer! They said you were going to be arriving on a shuttle. Welcome!”
Sveng closed his tricorder. “Cognitive recall will come with inoculations, so you’re cleared for duty, but that broken down Academy gave you the wrong uniform. This is a support ship. Not one of those newfangled capital drama vessels with hull-ripping space battles and more decks than actually laid out.” He shuddered. “Ugh. Impossible turbolift shafts.”
---
Later, Seifer found himself on the lower decks of the Kawartha in a cluttered repair bay where the damaged Iroh was transferred. The amnesiac officer, now in a Starfleet support uniform with that one pip, rubbed his spotted Trill temples.
“Uggh. I feel like I got hit by a Danube-class runabout with a rollbar,” Seifer elucidated. “What’s the point of those again? Just to look different? Why would that be important?”
Ensign Rune, a Ferengi and engineer walked over to shake his hand. “Same reason they put a third nacelle on some Galaxy-class starships; future-compensation. Hey. I’m Rune. I was a misfit officer on exchange with the Yamato before the legendary Nog inspired me to join Starfleet. Now I’m repairing past misdeeds as well as hyper-stimulated plasma grids.”
“Rune’s engineering enthusiasm is so anti-Ferengi approval-seeking, he’s going to radiate his cells until he’s no longer Ferengi,” came the addition from a human Starfleet officer. “Leana Ortiz. Sciences. One of many long-running Ensigns in some kind of fleet-wide Harry Kim pitfall. Being rank-stuck in a dark era has frustratingly prevented me access to any satisfying cosmic oddities.”
The Ensign from Sickbay entered, carrying a little Alfa 177 canine with a horn of its head. “Aya Chen. Medical. I befriended a sehlat when I was young, so now I’m in it for the lifeforms, small to you guys. Also, you should know Commander Estelle’s transporter copy dogs have begun duplicating even more off the pad and are going nuts all over the ship while in heat! Their names are Pizza!” She placed the one on the work table before it ran over and humped Seifer’s arm.
“Aww. She’s so cute for a potential self-incest canine-Doopler,” Seifer noticed while quickly pulling away. “I’m told I’m Vel Torin. My memory was wiped from this computer-wrecked, registry-decal-singed Iroh on my way here, so I don’t really have a backstory to cherish. But I do have this escalating misplaced feeling intertwined with a rousing excitement for starting anew.” Then, “I know! Let’s adopt commanding, adjacent-British accents and get Ortiz the astro-strange anomaly she’s been looking for!”
Rune blinked. “Oh, wow. I’m loving this energy. But, if we do, it’s going to have to be during the Kawartha’s mission to Deep Space C-12 in Cardassian space, to reinforce its structural integrity against all these neutronic storms. I hope you guys are cool with grunt-level hull restoration enthusiasm as much as I’ll be perpetuating it.”
---
Soon, the Kawartha dropped warp before the medium-sized Starfleet space station Deep Space C-12. The group found themselves carrying various awkwardly sized tools into one of four station-wide lateral Engineering control rooms with a small airlock to launch DOT-11s.
“The Cardassians actually re-branded this as Teketekon Station after the Treaty in the 2370s,” Ortiz explained. “It was given an exception and repurposed as an administration port for what was, at the time, the Demilitarized Zone, manned by several non-threatening, bureaucratic Cardassian and Starfleet officers.”
Chen perked as she brought over a portable calibration console. “That’s like a Caitian after-party with double laser pointers. Anyway, what about the rumours of Obsidian Order and Section 31 agents frequenting shadow-control of this place over the years?”
“Pfft! Rumours are just posits of misplaced conjectures,” Seifer relinquished. “What isn’t hearsay is me convincing Captain Styles to approve our side quest of investigating the strange atomic readings left by those neutronic boomy-booms.”
Rune pumped. “Yeah! Also, this station’s unused, single starship bay has an industrial replicator that I have already activated to build up my own design multi-spatial probe. Engineering and science unite!”
“Aww, guys. Thank you soooo much for facilitating my astrophysics dreams. You don’t get this kind of tight-nit friend-bond on capital ships,” Ortiz appreciated. “Lower decks! Lower decks!”
But a Cardassian officer suddenly exited a nearby lavatory and was zipping up before being nearly surprised by their apparent activities. “What the hell is going on? You’re supposed to be configuring the DOTs for hull reinforcement. That last storm stripped this station’s duranium to its Cardassian skivvies! For reference, I am Gil Lokek, the station’s Engineer.”
“That means you’re at the lowest rank, Lokek. You’re one of us and just as green and looked down upon despite all of us being officers for some reason,” Seifer countered. “Besides, we can do both. See? I’ve programmed this rifle to more efficiently repair neutron-weakened hull plating.” He held it up.
Lokek squinted. “Your Starfleet DOTs have stubby arms. How do you expect them to hold that giant thing??” He watched as Seifer failed a few times after handing the rifle to an ungrippable DOT-11. Lokek continued, “Teketekon Station is slated for a full Cardassian compliment next month, with families, and we can’t have a slew of measly support officers messing up our protection against these storms!”
“Oh, crap. He’s right. The auto-launched multi-spatial probe appears to suddenly be activating storm-wrought space off the station’s port bow?” Ortiz observed from her science console. “It’s creating some kind of inverse neutronic energy field?”
Seifer began checking the probe readings. “That’s great! Inverse means the opposite of radiolytic, right? Like, super-healing? Is that a thing?”
“Uhh, this altered energy field is ten times more radioactive than before,” Ortiz discovered from her readings. “Teketokon’s position must be near some kind of subspace neutrino magnet zone. So much so, the field is burning itself out, but not before it’ll breach one transporter-neutralized, exposed hull section.” She looked to everyone, expressing an impending-doom-face. “Our section!”
They watched as Seifer tried again to place the modified rifle into the DOT-11’s stubby arms, only for it to struggle and drop it once more. Rune declared, “There’s a reason why you never saw these things on any of the Enterprises or Voyagers!” Everyone looked to see the Ferengi was now wearing an environmental suit and was picking up the rifle himself. “This is a job for a head-strong Engineer with proving-to-others-and-himself issues.” He began to squeeze himself through the small, force-fielded DOT airlock. “When I’m gone, please tell the Ferengi that I hated them.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Chen countered as she grabbed Rune’s legs when he made it halfway out of the airlock. “I did not successfully mate ten same-sex Pizza dogs to lose my first actual lifeform friend to intense, anomalytic radioactivity!”
Seifer then hooked his arm to Chen’s, trying to pull her away from him. “Aya, no! Part of being in command is being able to send someone to their deaths. At least, that’s how I interpreted Deanna Troi’s memoirs and assumption of her willingness to crash an Enterprise.”
“Torin, stop! We’re supposed to be four best friends who don’t let anything bad happen to each other, like that one conglomerate of crew-merging, Pakled-destroying, buffer time fanatic Ensigns on the Cerritos who appeared much taller in real life if you met them,” Ortiz counter-countered while hooking both her arms into Seifer’s pull.
Lokek just watched in utter deadpan at the display of conflated gripping officers before he walked over to an open circuit panel and rewired it so the gravity plating would shock Seifer, Ortiz and Chen to the floor, allowing Rune to escape to the outer hull. “You guys know Cardassians are always judging, right? Did you forget looking cool in front of me was a thing you were diplomatically required to do?”
“Rune to Torin. It’s working!” the boot-magnetized Ferengi declared from out in space to deaf ears as he blasted the hull plating with the reinforcement beam whilst being inundated with radiolytic energies. “Torin, do you read me? Bro, I’m trying to connect to you success-wise for new-friendship’s sakes. Vel Torin, can you read me!? Are we bros?? The longer I’m out here, the worse I’m prone to de- and/or re-evolutioning!” But it was too late, the energy field had engulfed him and sent his cells into a highly radiated, mutated state.
Several DOT-11s popped out into space and grabbed the mentally-fading Rune to squeeze him back through the tiny hatch, back inside. Chen quickly began medical-scanning the floor-dropped Ferengi. “His DNA has been radically altered. It’s like he’s half-Ferengi, half something else entirely. I think said species-blinding has alleviated death!?” She breathed a moment of disbelief. “I’m going to have a field day investigating his new state. This is what I signed up for.”
“I can feel an excitable Badgey and judgemental Koala somewhere,” Rune realized in shock as he sat up and rubbed his head. He then immediately pointed to Seifer. “Also, that is not Vel Torin! The computer wouldn’t put me through to him when I was reaching out for classic O’Brien/Bashir male bonding and, to a lesser extent, Kim/Paris.”
Seifer looked to his hands in realization. “Holy crap. Rune is right? This wave of modified radiation is synapting my synapses. I think I’m a Captain and that my ship is wayyy passed its projected life expectancy?”
“Uncle!” came the sudden accusatory tone from another Trill, with rucksack, who everyone watched step into the room with them. “I had to book passage on two Kobheerian freighters and that one same triglobulin-obsessed Axanar fluid-draining cargo ship the NX-01 encountered in the 22nd century.”
Captain Victor Styles also entered, just behind, pinching his own nose bridge in distress. “Ugh. Don’t remind me of that highly controversial documentary. As for the rest of you Ensigns, I want an immediate end to these lower decks shenanigans. How are capital ships going to take us seriously when your kind is constantly igniting and snuffing new forms of radiation? As you can plainly see, your actual Ensign Vel Torin is this guy!”
“By the real and confirmed Greek gods!? Then who were we Ensign-bonding with? I feel so violated and excited all at the same time,” Ortiz shuddered.
The imposter stepped forward, zipping up and into his previous capital Starfleet uniform whilst placing three additional engineering bolts as interim pips onto his collar. “I’m Captain Night Seifer of the U.S.S. Phoenix-X. Torin was my last name before I was joined and, despite inherent DOT-gripping setbacks, I will no longer tolerate this oppression of lower deckers.”
“Wait a minute. Your from that Prometheus-class starship that let those Borg-ripping gormaganders loose on Manzar colony!” Styles recalled in utter shock and disgust.
Seifer nodded. “We were testing their Worf-based defense perimeter. A lot of child abandonment of smaller defense sections. As for the Kawartha, you are ordered to be nicer to your lower deckers, to fix my shuttle Iroh, and to tow this station to a safer location. This experience has taught me much about appreciating the newness of being a low-level officer.”
“Hey, guys. I’m on task to join the Kawartha for a little while to help out,” came the entrance of the Bajoran and Stafleet officer, Ensign Dan.
Captain Seifer immediately nearly retched at the sight of his old rank-frozen subordinate. “Oh— Ugh!? I thought I was rid of you?? How dare you stalk me! You’re relieved!”
“But you recall me all the ti—?”
Seifer pointed. “Out!!” After all the excess personnel dispersed, Ortiz, Chen, Torin and Rune were left to address him. “As for you guys, thanks for the glimpse into that old passion and drive I used to know in my old days. Vel, do not tell your mother about me usurping your first day as an officer and single only chance to bond with your peers.”
“Captain, you don’t have to be new to have a fervent drive or passion,” Ortiz offered. “If they were you once, they’re still in there to be you again.”
The higher ranking Trill nodded. “Like an internal astrophysics anomaly waiting to be reignited, perhaps. Thank you, Ensign Ortiz. Rune, you’re no longer Ferengi; you're the man.” They fist bumped and then Seifer left.
“Do you guys do the chant thing? The lower decks one?” a foreign Vel Torin asked to an off-put un-bonded-to-him group who quickly and awkwardly backed away and made excuses to get back to work. Torin just stood there, blinking, now scared and artless, unsure what to do with his hands in this uncouth, new chapter. “Lower decks?”