Captain's personal log, Stardate...
I don't even know what Stardate it is anymore. All I know is, that it's been approximately two years since I've left the Gibraltar at DS19.
Heh, apparently DS19 is gone now... shows how much has changed.
Anyway... Captain's personal log, stardate... well, today. This is Captain RoBobby McMillan speaking. I've been asked to record this: the counsellors at Starfleet Medical told me that talking about my experiences would stimulate my recovery. The problem is, I don't *want* to talk about it. So counsellors, if you're listening to this, it'll be a very short recording.
Ah what the hell.
It started two years ago. Or longer, actually... it started back when I was assimilated by the Borg, approximately three years ago. While I was rescued by the Gibraltar crew only a few weeks after that, it was enough for the Borg to have access to my DNA... and apparently share it with someone else. For a few months after that horrible incident, we found... me. Or rather, a clone of mine. He was ultimately sent to Starfleet HQ... but it didn't stop there. Multiple clones of multiple crewmembers were found. It was then that we realised... we were not alone.
After another few months,we found something related to the whole clone situation. Starfleet sent us to Echo Colony, where apparently strange signals were coming from, which seemed similar to the signals the clones were emanating. There, we were led into a trap: someone was testing us by subjecting us to all kinds of dangerous situations. This man called himself 'The Director'. This man had to have something to do with the clones... but unfortunately we couldn't find any evidence. Frankly, we were just happy to have made it back to the ship alive!
Our search for the clones went on... but what we didn't know at that time was that they'd been cloned over and over again... dozens, if not hundreds of the Gibraltar crew's clones, were out there... pretending to be us. In fact, it went from bad to worse: the clones actually started attacking outposts, as the USS Gibraltar crew. They even had a fake ship and everything. Since Starfleet refused to do anything about it, we went rogue and tracked the clones ourselves.
I wonder if I should even mention this in my log... but it's probably nothing Starfleet doesn't already know. And well, what are they going to do to me? They can't punish me more than I already have been punished by the Director... But we'll get to that later.
Our time as rogue officers wasn't an easy one. We saved a Federation colony, but we lost Admiral Delacroix. We wanted to clear our name and find the clones who actually attacked the Klingon outpost. After a few weeks though, our luck changed... if you can call it that. We ran into Kelly Heron once again, who reported she had destroyed a Starfleet ship called the Gibraltar, along with ships called the Ohiom and the Pico, who were protecting a clone facility. It was hard to believe: not only the Gibraltar crew had been cloned: the crews of the Ohiom and Pico had suffered the same fate. Luckily, Heron gave us the coordinates of the cloning facility... so we went to have a look. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything. Figures.
After a while, we ran into another cloned version of the USS Ohiom and her crew. They told us they were protecting Starbase 24, but we found out that they were actually about to destroy it. So we engaged them... but suffered heavy casualties. We finally managed to destroy them though... but at great cost.
We were damaged. Defeated. Lost without a friendly port in lightyears. It seemed the end... until we picked up another ship. It was the USS Gibraltar... it was us! Or rather, our clones. I led an away team on board the clone ship, consisting of Sophie Johnson and Richardjrn Weatherwax, as well as Kelly Heron. Unfortunately for us, Sophie had been a clone all along. Luckily, we managed to escape, and take some necessary supplies with us... but the Sophie clone had died. Now, we had to find the *real* Sophie... who'd apparently been left behind at the abandoned cloning facility. Once we actually found her though, she told us some terrible news: DS19 was in danger. The clone ship USS Pico was on its way to destroy the station! It took some doing, but we managed to let Commander Juliesse of DS19 trust us, just in time to destroy the clone ship.
We thought that was the end of it. Our innocence had been proven. We were allowed back into the fleet, and even received a full pardon from Starfleet. Life was as it should be, once again. No more clones: we were unique again.
All that changed though, roughly two years ago now. The Gibraltar was on shore leave at DS19, and I was relaxing in my ready room, when all of a sudden I received a message... from myself. My heart sank as I answered it: it came from a clone of mine. He told me that we didn't destroy all the cloning facilities... and that more clones appeared every day. He said he knew everything about who did it, about a connection to the highest levels of Starfleet Command, and even to the Klingon Empire. He was willing to share it with me... but I had to meet him, face-to-face. Alone. Without the Gibraltar, or my trusted crew. I couldn't contact Starfleet, he said, for I might be talking to a clone without me knowing...
It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make. I trusted my crew with my life: they had gone rogue for me, they rescued me from the Borg. I owed them everything, and more. How could I not tell them? How could I just leave?
On the other hand, there was my duty as a Starfleet Captain. These clones were dangerous: perhaps even moreso than the Borg or the Dominion. This might be my one and only chance of getting information to destroy them all.
And then there were my personal feelings on the subject. I won't lie: I wanted these clones destroyed. I felt violated, angry, and guilty for letting it go this far. I know, I know, I probably shouldn't have felt this way... but I did. Anyone who'd been in my situation, would.
So I left. I told the crew I'd be back in a few days... and I left.
You know, it almost seems like a pattern: whenever I take a risk, it ends up blowing in my face. The same happened here. When I got to the planet my clone specified, I found his gutted corpse. Someone had killed him before he could give me information. Pretty soon, I was surrounded by... well, my crew. Except they weren't. They were clones too. From a communications device, a voice stated that they should take me down to the dungeons.
I knew that voice.
It was 'The Director'... the same voice we heard at Echo Colony.
I didn't see the sky again for the next two years. I was tortured, interrogated, probed, prodded... they did something to me. At first I thought they wanted to extract genetic material to make better clones, and that was probably part of the reasons for all those experiments. The second part though... well, before I say what that was, I have to explain a few things.
You see, the duty of every officer in captivity is to escape. Plain and simple. I knew nobody knew where I was, but I also knew that the Gibraltar crew wouldn't stop searching for me. So if I could just get to a communications panel or something, I might be able to send a message. So I tried to escape... again and again and again. And every time, I was caught. I don't know how they always knew, but they did. I was beaten, punished, tortured. And then I'd try again. The circle would repeat over and over again...
Until months had passed, and I had no more energy to go on.
It may seem cowardly, but at that point, the only way out was death. So I went for it. I tried to escape once again, and when the clones tried to stop me, I jumped off a cliff. I remember the wind in my hair, the freedom of the fall... the knowledge that soon it would end.
But it didn't end. I woke up on a surgical table, with a doctor looking at me. "Now that wasn't so smart, was it?" he asked.
Ever since, I tried and tried and tried again to kill myself. I starved myself to death, got in a firefight and let myself get shot... I even got run over by gigantic boulders. Every time I did so, I woke up on a surgical table. It left me with one, inescapable conclusion...
I cannot die.
Do you have any idea what kind of a curse that is? Not being able to die? The torture just went on and on, with no possible escape. And all this time, every day, I could hear the voice of the Director, talking to me. Sometimes it was as if I could hear him in my head. In my dreams. All. The. Time. It was maddening.
I overheard conversations: about a Klingon, about Admiral McKenna working for the Director, about Admiral Janeway being captured, the Gibraltar being destroyed, its crew killed. I didn't know what was real and what wasn't. Finally though, I couldn't take it anymore. I stopped resisting. And that was when it all changed.
Because I wasn't going to escape, they often left my cell door unlocked. They knew they had me broken... they knew I had nowhere to go. So when I one day heard about them getting rid of my old shuttle, I almost didn't care.
Almost.
It was as if something inside me rose to the surface and took over. The Starfleet part of me, I think. The Human part of me. When the clones weren't looking, I ran away... I stole the shuttlecraft and took off, only narrowingly avoiding their ships. Still, they hit me pretty bad. Life support was disabled, navigational control was gone... I would be lucky to survive this. But even so, at least it would end.
It didn't end. In what would have been the last few minutes of my life, I heard a voice coming back from the comm channel. =/\=This is Captain Kie Braveheart of the USS Malta.=/\= I couldn't believe it. In fact, I didn't believe it, even when my former XO beamed me on board his ship. I thought they were clones. I was sure of it.
That was, until they actually nursed me back to health. They reacted so differently than all the clones... while the clones would just go about their business, doing what they were told by the Director, these people - some of whom were my former crew! - actually showed independent thoughts and emotions. Sophie in particular seemed rather upset with me. While unpleasant, that could only mean one thing: they couldn't be clones... they were the real deal!
Just as I had found freedom, I almost lost it again: the Director, wherever he was, still had a hold on me through an implant in my brain. That was how he managed to communicate with me, through my dreams. It was hell. Thankfully, Dr. Songlord managed to jam the signals being received by that implants... and the Director's voice disappeared. So while I still have that damned implant inside my brain, hopefully I won't ever hear that voice again.
So that's basically the whole story. It was kind of Captain Braveheart to contact the Lexington and bring me back to Earth, where I can recover. That might take some time... while the Director is no longer in control of my dreams anymore, I still have nightmares about what happened to me. And then there's the fact that apparently I cannot die. Of course it could be the case that the Director used other McMillan clones to replace my damaged and destroyed organs or limbs, in which case I'm no longer the RoBobby McMillan that I thought I was. It also means that the next time I have a fatal accident, I'll actually die. I really don't want to think about this though... it's... troubling.
Well, it's almost time for my 10 o'clock counselling appointment. I'm sure the counsellors here will be pleased that I put down the whole story in my log. And if they're not, then I'm sure Starfleet Intelligence will be: they're no doubt eager to question me about what happened during these two years.
It won't be an easy recovery... but I do think I'll get over it. Eventually. And what I'll do once I've recovered? I honestly don't know. However... I did see a glimpse of the Gibraltar in space dock. Perhaps I can command her once again, in the future. That would be great.
I do have a request for Starfleet though, if they once again put me in charge of the Gibraltar: please, please, please! No more life threatening missions. I could do with some boring science for a change.
This was Captain RoBobby McMillan,
signing off.
