N C C - 1 6 4 2 , S T A R F L E E T, I N C . C O R R E S P O N D E N C E S H I P

FIRST RAY OF SUN NEWSLETTER OF THE USS AARUSHI

2 0 1 7 A U G U S T E D I T I O N

MOTTO OF THE USS AARUSHI / NCC-1642

Sarek: The question you face is: which

path will you choose?

USS Aarushi Charities

Operation Paperback Pink Slipper Project

Sub for Santa

As the USS Aarushi moves forward, this newsletter will highlight some of the crew as well as tell the take of the Rise of the Aarushi, a continuing saga written by the CO with contributions by the crew.

Photo by Matthew Keener

Some Goings On

Monthly Activities

Pink Slipper donation

Operation Paperback

Monthly Photo Scavenger Hunt

If you follow me at all on Facebook you know it’s been incredibly difficultly the last few months, tearing muscles, spraining muscles, breaking bones. Breaking my ankle was the topper, and to do it just at the big fall holidays. Anyway, surgery has put my ankle back together with a plate and eight to ten screws. That’s me in a nutshell.

Please note the message by COMM Tony Knopes Chief of Computer Ops, STARFLEET regarding the STARFLEET Database and your membership certificates which are available to print. If you need help either getting into your database or printing your certificate let me know.

Photos by Janet Shepherd

The Photo Scavenger Hunt continues. For this month we will

be looking for these items:

This isn’t a contest, this is for fun! Just pick one topic and run!

1. Halloween pumpkin 2. Costume party 3. Front yard decorations 4. Best costume you’ve seen this year 5. Fall leaves

Email them to me at uss_aarushi@icloud.com

If your photo isn’t on the list, no worries. The more creative the better so think artsy if possible and go for it!!!!!

Photos by Matthew Keener

Trivia Which Capt of the Enterprise taught the other how to right horses?

What movie?

Adventures of the USS AarushiReoccurring Crew: Admiral T’Peira, (Keira Strong) Rear Admiral Tessa, Q in disguise, (Rear Admiral Janet Shepherd) Col Ian Ral Chief of Security (Col. Matthew Keener) Ensign Quentin, a former Q, in Command line, (Robbie Lawrence) Trebor Gnorts, Engineering, (Robert Strong) Halladay, Computers, History, and Jack of All Trades, (Doug Halladay) Connie Smith, Medical Ensign Zipariah, Medical (Ensign Janice Roberts) Steve Smith, Computer Operations Capt. Jeffery Beckstrom, Engineering Chaplain Sinbad Alan, (Jeffery Beckstrom) Lt. T’Shel Selah, Vulcan/Human, (Britt Stevens) Ensign Alyssa Clawson, Security Ensign Lenara Pren Rox (Holly Bolland) Crewman Recruit Rahtikae (Rachel Kieran) Ensign Zipariah, Janice Roberts Midshipman Car, a Horta, Fictional Civilian Vashi, Vulcan, Fictional The Doctor, Fictional

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T’Shel’s first day

T’Shel Selah sat on the edge of her, lost in thought. Her sharp, brown eyes, drifting and unfocused, long black hair, braided and tightly coiled, out of her way. As her eyes slowly moved across the bare shelfs and blank walls and few standard issue comforts that filled the space, she felt a pang of nostalgia for her old apartment at sci-ops with its colorful walls and large windows facing the sun. She was excited for her new assignment, of course, thrilled about finally going into space, but still, this was her first post on a star ship and she was a bit nervous. She reached up and ran a hand over the tips of her ears, a nervous habit she retained from childhood. She glanced at the clock before drifting away into her thoughts again. She still had a few minutes until she had to report to the bridge for her first shift as science officer She had been reassigned from sci-ops not long ago, the whole transfer had been very fast and it had her slightly off balance. What with the recent destruction of Vulcan she had had to make some choices, she felt some

guilt at her decisions, but she just couldn’t move to New Vulcan, she just couldn’t. She had been offered an early discharge so she could help with the repopulation efforts, but she had turned down that offer. Her talents were better suited to scientific inquiry than child rearing. Space and its mysteries had stolen her heart as a child and it still owned her soul. It was also a logical career path so

she could justify her path to both sides of herself. She had chosen Starfleet. But still there was human guilt for her choice that would have followed her either decision. Sometimes, she wished she had learned the depth of emotional control of those raised on Vulcan.

T’Shel was the only half Vulcan assigned to the Aarushi and after they completed their assignment of escorting their Vulcan guests to New Vulcan, there wouldn’t be anyone else who shared that part of her. She would be alone, as she always was. What was the old earth saying, “too foreign for home, too foreign for here, never enough for both” With a long sigh she settled into meditation, suppressing the guilt and homesickness and nerves and excitement and all the other emotions she was dealing with, and applying a mask of Vulcan composure that the crew would expect from her. The struggle of being, of expectations and the weight of it all was heavy. She closed her eyes, and try as she could, she couldn’t push away the images, the memories that cropped up every time she closed her eyes. Every single time her eyes closed lately she saw the same thing.

The large viewing screen in sci-ops, everyone standing in shock and horror or desperately working to try and find some impossible solution to the destruction being witnessed. The starships that were still around Vulcan were streaming back the images as the planet crumbled, they were beaming up as many Vulcans as they could. A small group of Vulcans ran onto a corner of the screen right near a new cliff created by the crumbling planet, the crowd crumbling as they ran trying to be seen, to be beamed aboard a starship. She froze in the middle of her calculations staring in horror as most of the group got beamed aboard some ship, but one man just missed it, and as he fell, a gut-wrenching scream echoed around. Her father fell into the void of the collapsing planet and she could do nothing. She could do nothing.

T’Shel jolted, taking a breath as she oriented herself in her room. It had been months since she had lost her father and yet that image, that moment as she watched him fall was still as fresh in her mind as the day it had happened. She glanced over to the clock again, just a few more minutes. She stood and stretched, rubbing her face to get rid of the tears. She stepped to the desk and picked up her gloves. She had taken to wearing them when her father had helped her with her telepathy. Humans and some other species tended to use touch to connect with other people. Gloves helped her to fit in without unwanted mental connections. She brushed her cheeks one more time, took a deep breath and pulled herself together, pushing all the heavy emotions back to be dealt with later. She took another breath, making sure that her mask of composer was fully in place, tugged on her gloves, stepped out her door and headed to the turbolift to the bridge for her first shift.

“Admiral on the bridge” came the call from command, as Admiral T’Peira stepped into view. T’Shel quickly turned from the viewport and saluted her new commanding officer. As the admiral took her seat, T’Shel turned back and stared at the small blue ball that was her home planet. They could still see it from the space dock. Most of the crew was gathered on the bridge, well, everyone who could make an excuse for being there, T’Shel remembered from her trips to Vulcan that the view on takeoff was always best from the bridge. From behind her, T’Shel heard the admiral checking in with her first officer and making sure that everyone was aboard. As everything was apparently secure, the admiral directed the pilot, “Clawson” T’Shel noted, to take them out. Earth shrank behind them too quickly and soon the planet was just a tiny marble in the vastness of space. “I believe the show’s over folks.” Stated the admiral, she directed the ship to warp as the crew dispersed back to their assigned

places. T’Shel retreated to the science station and began getting used to the programs and systems on the ship. She also brought up the ships roster and started matching faces and names. She might as well be familiar with the members of alpha shift who she’d be working with on the bridge. She also tried to memorize voices as the crew called to each other and chatted while they

worked. Most of them seemed to know each other. This was clearly a crew that had been together for a while.

Everything was normal or at least seemed normal. What was normal at sci-ops wasn’t necessarily normal on a starship, but everything seemed to be fine. So why then, T’Shel wondered, was she so jittery. There was a nagging in the back of her mind, something distracting that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She brushed it off and continued her work. As they neared New Vulcan, a short trip. When something broke through to her mind, a single thought, shouted to her across space “Go”, the thought didn’t even have time to fade before something immensely powerful hit the ship. T’Shel flew across the bridge slamming into one of the communication stations, her vision blurred as her head struck the edge, and a pain fueled fog spread through her head. The Admiral’s voice rang through the haze and the pain “Bridge! Report” T’Shel tried to reach up and access the communications, but her arm wouldn’t move and before she could reach around with her other hand, the inertial dampeners kicked in, throwing the already disoriented crew around and breaking some of the equipment, T’Shel felt her arm rip open as pain exploded across her chest, she was bleeding and injured in multiple places, a concussion, probably some broken bones. She needed to figure out what had happened or they’d probably get hit again. Her job right now was to prevent that. She started crawling across the bridge back to the science station. Everything hurt, moving her arm was difficult and she couldn’t stand on her own, she could barely leverage herself enough to get to her computers. She may be injured, but securing the ship and making sure they weren’t hit again was the priority. She began sweeping the area for lifeforms, ships, anomalies, anything that could have even theoretically cause a powerful enough blast to hit the ship as it did. Behind her, she could vaguely hear one of the ensigns, Quentin, she thought, reporting back to the admiral, “We have no idea what it was or where it came from. Science is working on it.”

“I’m on my way” came the quick reply. T’Shel continued working as quickly as she could. Nothing was showing up, but there was little that T’Shel enjoyed more than a challenge. The pain faded a bit as the work distracted her. The admiral arrived on the bridge and began getting reports. At the call, T’Shel twitched an ear back a bit, listening to what was being said. Communications had received a signal that said “Go” just before they’d been hit. The same word that T’Shel had heard before impact. Whatever it was, it had the capacity to send both telepathic messages and communication signals. It could have been from a secondary source or by the source of the initial impact. Either way, it was more information than they had had a moment before. T’Shel mentally prepared a report as the Admiral started handing out orders, taking them away at warp 3 and heading back around to New Vulcan. And dispatching medical down to engineering, one of the engineers, Gnorts was down. She hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet, but based on the bridge crew’s reaction to the statement, he was clearly important to this crew. She would figure out what had happened, for this Gnorts, for the crew she barely knew, for science. This was not a problem, it was a puzzle and she would solve it. Her first day on the Aarushi and it was already a terrifying, strange, adventure.

(by Brittany Stevens)

Photos by Rachel Turnbow Keiran

Floyd got a hair cut by Jeffery Beckstrom

Hi all, I just wanted to drop a quick note on something that we've been working on that is now available. I announced at IC that we've been working with Steven's MP team on making a faster, more streamlined digital certificate. Today, I made this new feature available to the membership. When logged into the Member Database, under the MEMBER menu item, you will see a new item for MEMBER CERTIFICATE. If you click that link, you will be presented with a PDF of your current membership certificate. You can download this PDF and print it if you desire. Hopefully, we got the page sizes correct - we did a search for the list of which countries use A4 vs Letter. If yours doesn't come out correct, please let me know at compops@sfi.org. If there are issues or questions, please don't hesitate to let me know.

--- COMM Tony Knopes Chief of Computer Ops, STARFLEET compops@sfi.org

by Connie Smith Costume at Trunk or Treat

Poop Suckers Inc.

the

The content of this newsletter is the sole property of the editor, or the individual that submitted the photo or article, or the owner of the materials or photos or artwork downloaded from the internet. The editor and the USS AARUSHI hold no claims to any trademarks, copyrights, or properties held by CBS Studios nor Paramount Pictures. All content from Star Trek including still images and character names is the property of Paramount Pictures Corporation and CBS Studios, Inc. and no infringement is intended. No portion of this document may be copied or republished in any way or form without the written consent of the editor. Keira Russell-Strong, Editor

2 0 1 7 - A U G U S T

USS AARUSHI

NEWSLETTER: FIRST RAY OF SUN USS AARUSHI /NCC-1642 CORRESPONDENCE SHIP

Trivia answer:

Wm Shatner helped Patrick Stewart tune up Patrick’s horse.

Movie was Generations