Star Trek: The voyages of the USS Apollo

Chapter Thirteen: Lost with all hands.

August 30th 2411

"Admiral Quinn's Personal Log: Star Date 388337.427. Over a year ago the U.S.S Apollo was sent out to survey the Badlands and were meant to report back after two weeks, but they did not. We searched for them for months and eventually found an escape pod that drifted all the way outside the Badlands. The pod was launched when some sort of anomaly struck the ship and destroyed it. No one was on board the pod, so Starfleet had no choice but to declare the U.S.S Apollo lost with all hands. Today I am to make a eulogy at the joint funeral of the Apollo Crew at Deep Space Nine. My only wish is that I can give their families some solace after they were told that their husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and in some cases their children were dead."

Assembled at the Docking Port One of Deep Space Nine were over five hundred people from across the Federation, staring at the escape pod that was recovered from the Apollo just weeks prior. The pod's footage was garbled and difficult to make out, but it clearly showed the Apollo getting sucked into an anomaly and seemingly exploding as it entered. This was what made Starfleet accept that the Crew of the Apollo were dead and declared the Apollo lost with all hands. All of these people were the families and friends of the one hundred Crew that died in an instant and they had come to take their time to mourn the loss of their beloved. They had all put something in the escape pod that had belonged to one of the Crew as a kind of funeral and now Admiral Quinn would deliver his eulogy as the items of the Bridge Crew were put inside.

Admiral Quinn walked over to the escape pod, stood next to it and sadly said "Thank you all for coming to the funeral of the Apollo Crew. Just over a year ago I gave Captain Ethan Rivers a tour of the Apollo, the last ship he ever commanded. He looked so excited to finally get his command. Who knew that it would be his last. I am truly sorry for the losses that each of you must feel at this day and I truly wish that this had never happened. But that is not possible. Now we take the time to remember those who were lost to us out there in the Badlands." Admiral Quinn stood aside as Toral Antos walked over to the escape pod with a wrench and said "When my sister, Toral Laren, was just a child, she loved working on machines and by the time she was nine, she was a master at engineering. She joined Starfleet and became the Chief Engineer on the Apollo because she would be able to have her own engineering station and would fulfil her dream of one day building an entire ship. Sadly that dream won't come to pass." Antos then carefully put Toral's favourite wrench into the escape pod and said with tears in his eyes "Rest in peace my sister. May we meet again."

As Antos sat down in his chair and sat next to his wife and children, a Klingon with a bat'leth walked up to the escape pod and said "I am Rejac, brother of Voq. My brother served as the Chief Tactical Officer on the Apollo and found it to be an honour to represent our people in Starfleet. He had lived an honourable life and although many of my people question on weather or not his death was honourable, I will continue to live my life honourably so that one day I may join him in Sto'Vo'Kor. I now place his first bat'leth into the escape pod to honour his memory."

As Rejac placed the bat'leth into the escape pod and then sat down, an elderly Starfleet Captain walked up to the pod and tearfully said "My name is Captain Matt Jackson and my son, William, was the pilot on the Apollo. Of the four sons I have, he was the youngest and the bravest. When he was a boy, he admired the pilots of Starfleet and he admired me for my Captaincy. So he joined Starfleet and began training as a pilot. When he finally became one, I was so proud of him. Now he's gone and the last words he ever said to me were on a viewscreen and were "I love you Dad." Those are words that I shall never forget and I shall always love my little space pilot." Captain Jackson then placed a toy star ship into the escape pod and said "Rest in peace son." He then embraced his wife in a loving hug and an elderly black woman walked forward to the pod to give her eulogy.