Redshirts
Ensign Ray Compton has just been posted to the Enterprise. In his first day the talk among his peers is that security on the Enterprise is more dangerous than he expected. Once the Enterprise receives a distress call, Compton gets to find out first hand just how bad things can get.
Since there isn't much (read zero) market for unsolicited Star Trek stories, I thought that I'd publish this one here. I did submit it to several places, but I exhausted the market after three attempts.
Note: The story is in PDF format, so if you don't
have the Acrobat Reader you'll have to download it from Adobe. Don't worry,
it's free.
Characters
Ensign Ray Compton
Ray Compton comes from the third season episode "Wink of an Eye". I was originally planning to use a character of my own creation, but the contest rules required that characters be regulars or guests from the show. I think the story probably got disqualified because Compton wasn't recognizable enough.
Ensign Pavel Chekov
Chekov was only one step above a redshirt in many episodes. When the action got rolling, he was usually the first one to get punched, shot, or have any number of nasty things happen to him.
Lieutenant D'Amato
Appears and dies in "That Which Survives" in the third season of the show.
Ensign Smythe
This character is a redshirt I created for the story. He's Compton's roommate, and of course during the course of the story he dies.
Garrovick
Appears in the second season episode "Obsession". He barely survives an encounter with the vampire cloud. Unfortunately his fellow security guards aren't so lucky.
Lieutenant Shea
Appears in "By any Other Name". He comes close to dying in that episode; just narrowly escaping. I set him up as one of the ship's veterans. He's seen friend after friend get killed while planet-side with Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
Setting
The story is set just after the end of the second season, in the original series. I won't go into details, as many of you will be familiar with the Star Trek series.
Notes
This is a story I wrote for Pocket Book's Strange New Worlds contest. My entry was actually the second story I came up with for the contest. (I discovered a conflict with the established timeline in the first one.)
It's based on the concept of what the lowly crew of the Enterprise went through. In most shows there was usually one security guard who got killed. I wanted to have some fun and write about a mission from their perspective.
The title comes from the term fans of the show applied to these hapless minions.