Proximity Alert

Introduction

This is a Star Trek story I wrote in 1993, in the days when I was a bit of a Trekkie, and a member of a Star Trek FanClub called Starfleet Command - which had as its selling point the idea that it was organised along the same lines as Star Fleet Cmmand from the TV show, with units, positions and ranks. At the time of writing I held the rank of Captain, and the local unit in Glasgow was the USS Avenger.

The story started life as an idea for a role-playing scenario I was developing for the rest of the members - my crew - which is why some of the names are of real people who held those ranks and positions at the time I began to write the story in July 1993, except in cases where some had actually picked a non-human race and chosen an appropriate name such as Dr Qnayf, the Klingon CMO and Lt Searochd, the Vulcan science officer.

This was intentional since the people on the USS Avenger in the story are essentially the same people who served with me in Starfleet Command the fan club as officers and crew of the USS Avenger, including people who have since left or resigned in the seven or so years that I was in command, like Woods or McMinn.

Occasionally I have used fictional characters like Tovarishch, but my idea was to have a story about us - namely the people who were members of the fan club at the time. In any case I have tried to be faithful to the characters wherever possible.

The Deep Space Nine connection came about because my original intention was to send this to Scotpress - a fan-based organisation which published Trek stories by fans for the fans. They have a stipulation that televised characters must appear in the story also, whether Classic, Next Generation or Deep Space Nine, and considering the fictional time period in our unit I felt that DS9 was the most appropriate. This story starts at around Stardate 49174, which would be equivalent to 4th season DS9.
Of course, since I was writing this just prior to DS9 starting its run on BBC2, it does not feature any of the storylines which were so prevalent in 4th season, like the Jem Hadar, the impending Dominion war and Gamma Quadrant politics. It may be useful to think of it as an alternate universe (or is that stretching it a bit too far...?)

Some of the scenes may be unsuitable for younger readers.

Live Long And Prosper
Akeel Ahmad

P.S. Of course, it goes without saying that all the stuff about Star Trek and Deep Space Nine, Starfleet Command, etc., is the property of Paramount Pictures Corporation, and they own all the rights to it - I'm just doing this story for fun and am not gaining anything from it - yada, yada, yada!

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