Ensign’s Log — Got myself into a bit of trouble, log. Sigh… it was inevitable and of course Tom was involved.

Over the last few years, our ship has been boarded countless numbers of times and although I’m not head of security, I though it would be interesting to propose some changes to the ship’s defensive infrastructure.

Defense Turrets!

I thought it was a good idea. After checking out some specs on the holodeck, I was able to replicate the laser cannons we use on the exterior of our ship and make them small enough to fit into your average corridor. So I made a small demo for Tuvok and he eventually he ok’d the project.

With a little bit of thought and a little bit of work, we were able to make a prototype that had the same power as our stronger phasers and could stun intruders in the ship. When I was working inside the holodeck, Tom Paris came in and told me he wanted to give me a little “creative” input.

To tell you the truth, his suggestion was actually pretty startling. It took me the better part of three months to design and prototype the laser cannon, and then it took even more time to create the parts and stick the whole thing together for the live demo.

What Tom thought would help was instead of actually building the turret was to use a holographic generator to create the ship and then use it as an actual weapon. As you probably know, a hologram can be as potent as the real thing. Through a bit of reprogramming, we were able to create a turret that had its safety protocols overridden and still have the complex engineering that goes into “Shoot and Don’t Shoot” exemptions that we put into its artificial intelligence.

The neat part was that we were able to put them all around the ship on a case-by-case basis, so there’s no reason for us to create a dozen or more turrets throughout the entire ship. Say we have someone on Deck 10 running around, we can generate two turrets anywhere and have them intercept intruders on the go.

So a few weeks later, we have a Red Alert going and suddenly a bunch of Hirogen beam aboard the ship. The perfect time to give the turrets a test! I signal down to engineering and tell them to use them to slow down the intruders. What I didn’t know was that Tom decided to program some… modifications into the weapons.

What Happened

On Deck 14, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create an exact working replica of an M61 Vulcan, a weapon platform used by the United States Navy during the stone ages of the 2000s. Holographic bullet holes pierced through bulkheads and blasted through the statis chambers on the deck. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone vaporized by bullets, but let’s just say we can confirm the Hirogen have red blood.

On Deck 13, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create this sharp, abstract object that would float down corridors. It had all these arms that would flail against the walls and rip right through the siding… and the Hirogen didn’t exactly fair too well either. There was no escape from the shape and it would morph in accordance to the movements of the Hirogen on the deck. It was like a bad episode of Neelix’s Kitchen, (side note install a holo projector in Neelix’s kitchen).

On Deck 12, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create a series of Punji traps that were used during the Vietnam War in the 1970s. They were ancient looking things, but the mess they made… let’s just say we don’t usually think of sharpened bamboo as a futuristic material, but the sticks managed to pierce through the Hirogen’s armour and the hide underneath. It was like entering a scene from that Home Alone movie Tom forced us to watch last Christmas.

On Deck 9, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create a recreation of Kahless, one of the fiercest Klingons in history. The Hirogren really didn’t know how to react to the hologram as they couldn’t even touch him. Some of them tried to fight and tried to shoot at it, but nothing would happen. Let’s just say the Klingons’s skills in battle aren’t understated, but Tom said he didn’t want to go near B’Elanna for a couple of days… she was pretty angry.

On Deck 7, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create these rails that had these lasers that would run across the corridor. He said the idea came from some video game called Resident Evil he played on one of his vintage consoles. His “idea” successfully diced up the intruders, but also managed to take off a finger from Ensign Kennedy who wanted to see what all the commotion was about.

On Deck 6, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to just produce a travelling wall of fire. Harmless if on the holodeck, but the fire made the carpeting catch on fire and managed to start up the fire protocols on the deck trapping 20 crew members in their rooms. There was also the clean up afterwards… we can now confirm what a burning Hirogen smells like and it’s not a smell you forget.

On Deck 5, Tom reprogrammed the holographic generators to create mutilated versions of the intruders on the deck. They were just twitching on the ground covered in blood and when they got there and saw their doubles a few of them passed out. Some warrior hunters. Tuvok had a chance to sneak up behind them as they watched and managed to stun a few, but the holographic projectors recreated the security teams too. Ensign Molly is still having nightmares.

On Deck 3, we actually got to see the turrets in action and they worked fine. No one was hurt. The Hirogen were stunned. They were sent back to their ship.

After the corridors had been cleaned up and the crew were debriefed on the attack, Tuvok and Janeway called us into the Captain’s Quarters. We were reprimanded for our actions and Tom was stripped of his holodeck and replicator privileges for a month. I was ordered to disassemble the holographic projectors on every deck immediately.

Admittedly, it was a good idea and Seven even said it was a technology that the Borg would have considered quite valuable to assimilate, which I think is a compliment. We’re going to be finding some other use for the projectors though, but we’ll have to see next log what that’s going to end up being.