Story [Star Trek Parody] Redshirt: Ships Record of UCAS Murphy [DDC 2015] - Updated 1/24

Title: Redshirt: Ships Record of UCAS Murphy (From the Official Log of Lord Captain Sir William Patrick Avery Katherine Scott)

Author: Volund Starfire

Genre: 2015 Diary Challenge, Star Trek, Parody, Journal

Author's Notes: This journal is loosely based on Star Trek, that genre being used mainly as a trope. In reality, this is a comedic look at one of the most unlucky starships in the fleet, captained by someone who makes Zap Brannigan look like a Boy Scout.

Note: While there are suggestive situations, there is no overt descriptions of adult content. The overall rating won't go above what one would expect for a show such as Futurama.

 

Dateline: 42008

Captain’s Speech given upon launch of the UCAS Murphy.

“This morning, when I put my uniform on and went back to my quarters, I knew that today was going to be a good day. After a hearty breakfast, I met with Vice Admiral Mirialeth Roberts and we have a vigorous discussion about the mission we will be embarking on. When her husband arrived and handed me our orders, I knew that we were destined for greatness.

This ship, named after the heroic explorer Lord Admiral Murphy Law, will take up the mantle of exploration where he left off. It is Lord Admiral Murphy who is credited with the discovery of the Tec Tec Horde. Though we waged war against them for two decades after the unfortunate sneeze that they took as an insult, they became one of the members of the Alliance. It wasn’t until later that we discovered the genetic virus we launched on them stopped their ability to reproduce, but their technology was still crucial to our advancement.

We are embarking on a year-long mission of exploration in the same spirit as the great Lord Admiral. We will travel beyond the borders of the Alliance to make contact with sexy new species, find powerful new technology, and explore what the galaxy offers.

This ship is crewed by the best and brightest that the Unified Confederate Alliance Academy can produce. Five hundred brave men, beautiful women, and brave and beautiful aliens will live within the walls of this vessel; a family working in very close quarters. And that is what we all are, a family clad in the red uniform tunic of the UCA.

“With that said, and with the blessing of the Admiralty, I now take official command of this ship by UCA order I.D.10-T. To you, my fine and valiant crew, I give the first order of our voyage: Engage engines and prepare to leave space dock.”


CASUALTY REPORT
Name: Petty Officer Second Class Loma Chavis
Report: It is my sad duty to report that PO2 Chavis died today from explosive decompression while boarding the ship in the primary docking tube. It would appear that our navigator wasn’t paying attention to my speech and misheard my first order. With his mind elsewhere, he engaged the engines and the ship tore free of the space dock with PO2 Chavis in the boarding shaft. The officer was sufficiently chastised, before I received word of the death. As a result, I have instituted a block on all bridge display screens for any pornographic materials.

 

Dateline: 42012

God, I love being the captain. The power and prestige are like a drug. Knowing that the lives of every man, woman, and alien are in my hands are beyond any high I have ever had. Well, almost every high I have ever had.

It’s been eight days since we launched from Fleet Command base around Earth. Our orders were to use the transit time to the edge of the Orion Arm as a shakedown for the various ship systems. Even though everyone is highly trained, this ship is state of the art. The Murphy has technology from all of the Unified Confederate Alliance races, and a couple that we found during the last war.

Besides familiarization with the ships systems, I have also instructed the section officers to do a performance evaluation for every member of their section. The chiefs ended up getting their evaluations of my desk quicker than I thought they would. My personnel officer and I spend all night working on them. In the morning, we decided to hand the duty to a yeoman because I needed to sleep and she needed a shower. I also instructed the yeoman to clean my office, since some of the evaluations fell on the floor.

We also ran through some drills to test crew response times to emergency situations. One that stands out on my mind the most was during third shift. I may have forgotten the timing of when the drill began, so I ended up locked in a lift car with a female Felpurr Petty Officer for a couple of hours. My executive officer handled the drill better than any other officer, save myself, and I made sure the Felpurr received a higher rating on her performance evaluation from me.

Unfortunately, I ended up in the sick bay do to a series of deep scratched on my back. I always forget that Felpurr have retractable claws… or do I. Regardless, I wasn’t able to comfortably lean back in my command chair for a full day. Though, it did give me time to get familiarized with the layout of sick bay and one of the nurses.

Not everything went as well as the crew drills. One of the laze turret doors jammed during a live-fire drill. Engineering told me it would be repaired by tomorrow; something about an actuator malfunction. Otherwise, the rest of the ship and crew met all expectations.

The only thing that is rather concerning is the ship’s computer. The holographic interface has been acting up slightly. She has also been rather rude in her answers to crew questions and I think called me a “vociferous man whore” after I left my quarters. I am not sure, though, because it was drowned out by the sound of the door closing.

* * *

CASUALTY REPORT
Name: Lieutenant Milissa Huff
Report: LT Huff was a woman who put duty ahead of almost all aspects of her life. She often slept at her workstation, when she actually slept, and was known to go a couple of days without a shower while working on important projects. She was in charge of one of the crews that helped assemble the ship while it was in air-dock around Earth, so her technical expertise was a great addition to the crew roster. Unfortunately, she had worked three-straight days without sleep when she was tasked to do simple maintenance to an external laze turret hatch. In her sleep-deprived mind, she forgot that the Murphy was currently underway and no longer in air-dock. She neglected to put on a space suit when she opened an airlock to leave the ship.

 

Dateline: 42020

The biggest problem with traveling across vast distances of space is that it is really far from one point to another. I mean really, really far. So far that it would drive a normal man insane with the vast distance of absolutely nothing around him. It is a good thing that I am not a normal man. On the contrary, I am a very special man. I am the Captain.

The sensors have picked up random pockets of gas here and there, the stray particle of antimatter, and a couple of clouds of dark matter between the two stellar arms. However, that is about it. We are currently floating through a sea of nothing, like the ships of old, trusting only the distant glimmer of starlight to tell us we are going the right direction and hoping the gods of the sea, or in this case space, look favorably upon our crew.

Damn, I am bored. I signed up for adventure and excitement, not staring out an unchanging main viewport at the same blasted stars. Where is the wine, women, and song that the old stories promised of the intrepid captain! There isn’t even a single green slave girl on the entire ship! Though, the orange, red, and purple ones have already been thoroughly tested, but I’d never call them ‘slave girls’ when they’re in uniform.

Rather than travel slowly through this mass of utter nothing, I have instructed engineering to put their collective heads together and come up with some way to make us go faster. It wasn’t long before the entire ship was rocked by a sudden boost of power.

I was expecting it to shave a couple of days off of our travel time, but the navigator reported that it did far more than that. Stellar cartography picked out our first planetary body to visit and it was two and a half weeks away. At our new speed, we will reach it in a week! Congratulations Engineering!

* * *

CASUALTY REPORT
Name: Petty Officer Corey Ehnis
Report: PO Ehnis came up with a wonderful idea to improve the engine output by reconfiguring the plasma drive intermix array station into a triple helix rather than the traditional fleet double-helix drive. The chief engineer told him that he was crazy and it would never work, but that didn’t stop PO Ehnis. Reports say he yelled “Eureka” just before a polarity compression field expanded within the intermix chamber and vaporized him. One technician has reported hearing a disembodied voice yelling “Eureka” inside the chamber whenever the cruise drive is activated and the compression field expands.

 

Dateline: 42024

We have arrived at the first planet outside of explored space. It is the first alien planet discovered in nearly a century. It is a murky gray-green ball orbiting a burned out black hole. It is one of three planets in the system and is as dead as a doornail.

Yup. It’s nothing but a useless ball of rock. It has only the barest atmosphere to support human life, and the weather fluctuates between ‘cold as hell’ and ‘air conditioning or death.’ There are no radio, microwave, or subspace signals coming from it at this range. With a lack of anything else in this part of space, we’d be able to hear it if it did.

Then again, what do those science nerds in the sensor department know? They only read their little screens and interpret the data. They don’t know what it feels like to stand on an alien world, the inhabitants bowing at your feet like you were a god. All they know is algebra and other nerdy stuff.

Well, except for one of the Ensigns. She knows how to do the Nebula Twist. I didn’t think that was even taught outside of the Trikari Enclave. Though, since her knees don’t bend the right way, it’s not like the real thing. But, in the vastness of unexplored space we must make do.

Crew morale is still high. Though, the reports I have been receiving about the computer interface is troubling. She has been sighing in exasperation every time a member of the bridge asks a question. I actually saw her visibly flip off the operations officer when she left the bridge. She also was in the middle of giving my executive officer a lap dance when I came on this morning at first shift.

Well, she is probably just going through the entire range of her artificial personality program. I sent a subspace packet to Fleet command, but they didn’t have any answers. Apparently, the designer of the program hung himself shortly after the ship left Earth orbit. Some people, right?

It’s just a computer that runs every single part of the ship away from the immediate attention of living members of the crew. What’s the worst that could happen?

* * *

CASUALTY REPORT
Name: Petty Officer Jody Cagno
Report: PO Cagno was one of our best shuttle pilots. She was a fighter pilot in the war, but volunteered for the shuttle service when she heard about the expeditionary fleet. She was in the Sim Bay playing Ultimate Space Ninja Racer VII when the safety protocols malfunctioned. She was in the lead when a Yakuza flier shot her ship with a torpedo capsule which was previously not installed (or even part of the game). Somehow, the capsule contained a midget ninja. The little guy made it to the cockpit and stabbed PO Cagno just as she was in the final leg of the race. The recording shows that PO Cagno was able to finish the race before succumbing to her wounds. Before the program was shut down, the Yakuza boss sent me a message over the ships comm and offered me the life of his dishonored pilot.

 

Dateline: 42028

It is my unfortunate duty to report that the planet was a complete bust, just as I had previously thought. There was barely any atmosphere, no water, and no higher lifeforms. The only thing that was even moderately alive was some kind of fungus that seemed to grow over most everything. The geek squad that went down said something about it looked like it was eaten off of some of the rocks, but I just chalked that up to their imagination.

Apparently, the star went nova and took out all the life on this little rock. There were some ruins, but no real energy signatures worth speaking about. The radiation levels were high, but not enough to kill anyone. Though, after a complete inspection, there are two lovely members of the crew who won’t have to shave for a while… or cut their finger nails.

The only thing that really stood out was a strange alien-looking etching that was carved into the moon. It was huge, measuring hundreds of kilometers across. Xenolinguistics couldn’t pull up a complete translation of it. They reported it as either ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ or ‘Gods, Gods, Gods’ and a series of numbers below it. It was strange, but useless. There were no girls or gods found on the planet.

The science team came back with several samples of the strange moss. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the laboratory when the computer complained about being cold and incinerated everything in the room. Thank goodness there was nobody in there.

One of the shuttle flight technicians was making a big fuss about something black dropping from under the shuttle and taking off into one of the corridors. It was probably just a shadow from the overhead lights. When I asked the computer, she said it was my mother and questioned my mother’s disposition in some alien tongue. Well, her actual words were “yo mama, beotch.”

Stellar cartography seemed excited when I told them we would be passing close enough to the black hole to get a deep sensor scan. I’m planning to demonstrate what I mean to one of the lead scientists in that department later tonight, if you know what I mean.

* * *

CASUALTY REPORT
Name: Crewman Markus Sparks
Report: CN Sparks was one of the most brilliant minds to graduate the UCA Science Academy. From a young age, he loved nothing more than gazing through telescopes at the heavens. I can report that he died doing what he loved. While in the Stellar Cartography lab, there was a freak warp in the cruise engine. This warp caused the computer model of the nearby black hole to take on the actual qualities of a black hole. CN Sparks was standing on one of the tables, measuring the angular vector of the black hole and was accidentally sucked into it, along with most on the lab furniture and a couple of wall plates. There are some who say that because of the time distortion, he will be falling forever into the black hole; however the entire event lasted no more than .02 seconds.

 

This is HILARIOUS! I absolutely love it already I'm very much looking forward to a year with the captain!

And I already adore the computer

The casualty report at the en of every entry cracks me up, too. Amazing job!