Too long to post here 
so I've hosted it on my website. I believe the last word count was just under 5k, including spoiler titles and tags.
http://trek.mouthybitch.com/the_ensign.html
Preview...
You have just graduated from Starfleet Academy and have been assigned to the Enterprise. After enduring a crowded military transport to Starbase 4, you are relieved and excited to beam aboard Enterprise with four other new ensigns and a lieutenant transferring from the starbase.
As, relatively speaking, the ship materializes around you, you realize that both Captain Kirk and Commander Spock have come to welcome you and your comrades. For a routine transfer, you think this is really nice of them. Then the captain gives you and the other ensigns a dismissive nod, and heads toward the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant Miller," Kirk says to her. "Welcome aboard. This is Commander Spock, he'll get you up to date on the Durden matter. We've already gone into warp and should arrive there in..."
"One day, two-point-six hours," Spock fills in.
Miller nods, and you miss her response as the security chief enters the now-crowded transporter room.
"All right, ensigns, out into the hallway now," he says. "I'm Lieutenant Freeman, security chief. I've got your bunk assignments here."
You follow him like sheep, but wonder what the Durden matter is about... after all, you and Durden III have a bit of history...
When you were seven years old, your cultural anthropologist mother moved you and your sister to Durden III so she could study the locals from behind a "duck blind". It's a really boring thing for kids seven and five years old, living in a hollowed-out cliff behind a holographic image of that cliff, with only some late-industrial natives to stare at all day.
So it wasn't that surprising that the two of you decided to sneak out and talk to those natives. What you didn't realize, in your youth and Federation upbringing, was that you looked so different from the zebra-striped Durdenites that they would immediately realize you weren't part of their community.
You also didn't realize that they would react in panic, their local constabulary bringing primitive energy weapons to bear on you. You pulled your sister back toward the safety of the outpost, but she couldn't keep up. She tripped, fell... and before you could dash back to help her, a horrible green beam struck her and tore her body in half.
Somehow, you made it back to the duck blind, where the scientists brought you to safety. But you wished you had died out there, with your sister, or in her place. And as the outpost was evacuated to shuttles and the angry, violent Durdenites left behind, you vowed to somehow, someday, make up for your sister's death...
so I've hosted it on my website. I believe the last word count was just under 5k, including spoiler titles and tags.http://trek.mouthybitch.com/the_ensign.html
Preview...
You have just graduated from Starfleet Academy and have been assigned to the Enterprise. After enduring a crowded military transport to Starbase 4, you are relieved and excited to beam aboard Enterprise with four other new ensigns and a lieutenant transferring from the starbase.
As, relatively speaking, the ship materializes around you, you realize that both Captain Kirk and Commander Spock have come to welcome you and your comrades. For a routine transfer, you think this is really nice of them. Then the captain gives you and the other ensigns a dismissive nod, and heads toward the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant Miller," Kirk says to her. "Welcome aboard. This is Commander Spock, he'll get you up to date on the Durden matter. We've already gone into warp and should arrive there in..."
"One day, two-point-six hours," Spock fills in.
Miller nods, and you miss her response as the security chief enters the now-crowded transporter room.
"All right, ensigns, out into the hallway now," he says. "I'm Lieutenant Freeman, security chief. I've got your bunk assignments here."
You follow him like sheep, but wonder what the Durden matter is about... after all, you and Durden III have a bit of history...
When you were seven years old, your cultural anthropologist mother moved you and your sister to Durden III so she could study the locals from behind a "duck blind". It's a really boring thing for kids seven and five years old, living in a hollowed-out cliff behind a holographic image of that cliff, with only some late-industrial natives to stare at all day.
So it wasn't that surprising that the two of you decided to sneak out and talk to those natives. What you didn't realize, in your youth and Federation upbringing, was that you looked so different from the zebra-striped Durdenites that they would immediately realize you weren't part of their community.
You also didn't realize that they would react in panic, their local constabulary bringing primitive energy weapons to bear on you. You pulled your sister back toward the safety of the outpost, but she couldn't keep up. She tripped, fell... and before you could dash back to help her, a horrible green beam struck her and tore her body in half.
Somehow, you made it back to the duck blind, where the scientists brought you to safety. But you wished you had died out there, with your sister, or in her place. And as the outpost was evacuated to shuttles and the angry, violent Durdenites left behind, you vowed to somehow, someday, make up for your sister's death...
