Alex Beck

Alex Beck was born in Edinburg, Scotland on April 11, 2373, to Harold Beck and Jasmine Beck. After a few years, his little sister, Kelly Beck, was born. Over the years of his childhood, he had played with Kelly and teased her, but mostly protected her as a big brother should. But this mostly meant saving her from spiders or bullies from school, nothing much else. Nothing really exciting at all happened in Alex’s childhood, aside from the fact that he got into dismantling a lot of his toys, learning about them, and putting them back together like new, and as older, as he got, the more he became familiar with appliances at home and figuring out how to fix them or make them better. When Alex was halfway through high school, his father approached him and suggested to Alex join Starfleet Academy, saying that his talents would be quite useful there. Having already thought about joining Starfleet, with his father suggesting it to him, there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to apply right after high school. So once he graduated from high school on July 6th, 2391, Alex Beck applied to Starfleet Academy and was accepted.

(2391-2395) Starfleet Academy

For the first couple of years in Starfleet Academy, Alex was nothing more than an A Student. Focused heavily on his classes, reading his materials, studying for exams, and passing them with nearly perfect scores. But it was around the third of his year at the Academy when he started to push it, the need to not just make friends and become popular but to overall be the best of his class. Essentially he started customizing some of his own data PADDs to allow him to tap into the main database of Starfleet Academy, get full blueprints of various crafts, and be able to study them but at the same time, mess with other students and instructors’ doors by making them open just out of the blue or when they do open for someone, immediately close them right before they could step through, pretty much making them walk right into the door. All these little pranks and gaining access to material that were just a little above him was almost enough to get him expelled from the Academy. What saved him from this was when there was a shuttle accident by one of the student pilots during their exercises, and for some reason, the safety protocols were not engaging and the shuttle’s core was several minutes away from exploding. While everyone was helping the instructor and pilot in training out of the shuttle and trying to evacuate the area, Alex jumped right into the shuttle and prevented the shuttle’s core from overloading. The crash caused most of the command isolinear chips with the safety protocols to be fried but also ruptured one of the coolant hoses as well as caused a misalignment that Alex not only able to reroute the coolant system but also realign to prevent the core from overloading. As soon as the core’s temperature had reached safe levels, he shut down the shuttle’s main power. So instead of being expelled, he was given a hard, long lecture, as well as sent home for a couple of days after a letter of what Alex had been doing had been sent to his parents, in which he received another hard, long lecture.

Upon returning to Starfleet Academy, Alex swore he was going to be a good boy from now on, but near the end of his last year as a Senior at the Academy, Alex became annoyed with the Kobayashi Maru test and understood the meaning behind it but absolutely disagreed with it. He believed that, yes the Captain should understand that the inevitable will eventually come, but that does not mean the Captain should ever accept the inevitable, or give up. So of course, he used his skills to reprogram the Kobayashi Maru test to be far more realistic, such as in this current age, there is simply no way the Klingons would have enough vessels to respond at the rate that they did in the test, due to resources and current state of the Empire. Plus they were their allies, so he changed it so that it was the Romulans instead of the Klingons since most Romulans are happy that the Federation tried to save them but then there are those that are not so happy at all. So once he retook the test, of course, there was a lot of confusion but the ship they were using, which in this case was still the famous Constitution Class ship against Three Romulan D7s, was definitely more than capable of combating the Romulan vessels. Alex made one slight adjustment that is to why it was easy…only one of the decloaked and opened fire on their ship, so when the other two decloaked, they immediately knew that they were hostile and Alex ordered his weapons officer to fire a full spread of photon torpedoes at the two Romulan D7’s that were just decloaking, causing severe damage to them, just enough to finish them off with a few phaser blasts. This left them with only one D7 to deal with, which still pushed the Cadets a bit as it was a Romulan D7 with their fancy new plasma torpedoes, but in the end, they were successful in destroying the last Rom D7 and saving the crew of the Kobayashi Maru. Now of course, Alex got a lot of scorn for this, but because of how often Cadets have tried to cheat the Kobayashi Maru test, there was only one thing that they asked of Alex to keep him from being held back a year and that was ‘Why’. Alex explained to them that the Kobayashi Maru may be necessary to explain to the Cadets if they ever get the chance to command that the inevitable will eventually happen, but the fact is, they will learn that no matter what when they serve their duty to whichever assignment they get posted to, and that the test was completely unfair because every Captain, who may understand the inevitable will happen, will not accept the inevitable and will do everything they can to save the lives of their crew, even if it meant sacrificing themselves to do so. Alex even went on to list the number of Captains who have faced the inevitable, survived it, and saved hundreds if not thousands, or had sacrificed themselves and still saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives. He even went on, after having reviewed the records of those who were questioning him for his cheating of the test, that most of them too used to be Captains and he felt that any Captain who accepts the inevitable and allows it to happen without even trying to prevent it nor saving their crew, is just insulting and embarrassing. Alex did point out, that he knows there are moments when the inevitable happens too fast to act, and there is no shame in that because it is better that it happens quickly so that the crew doesn’t have to suffer a slow and painful death, but if there was a remote chance to prevent it or a remote chance to save the lives of the crew, would they take it, he asked. After Alex’s lengthy explanation of why he cheated, they accepted his appeal and also commended him for the slight ‘update’ to the Kobayashi Maru test, saying that a little change of enemy is good, and they will consider possibly making the Kobayashi Maru more up to date to the timeline and events.

Thus, the remainder of Alex’s Senior year in Starfleet Academy went back to being smooth and in a few short months since the Kobayashi Maru test, Alex graduated. Not exactly at the top of his class but he was up there.

(2395 – 2399) USS Portland

As an Ensign fresh out of the Academy, Alex did have a choice of what posting he wanted due to how high up he was when he graduated but he decided to pick something that would be a challenge and he chose an old Ambassador Class that went by the name USS Portland. So as soon as he arrived on board, he reported to his Chief of Engineering and immediately went to work as soon as he was given orders.

Over the course of the years, Alex has spent his time crawling through Jefferies tubes and maintenance shafts keeping the old girl in tip-top shape as best as the engineering department could with what they had and received. The Portland hadn’t even seen much action either, mostly transporting lots of medical supplies, food rations, building materials, and all the like to help the Romulans, or patrolling the border with a frigate or two as their support wing, being an old girl with years behind her and being the class that she was, it was always best to have an escort wing just in case.

Now, normally Portland wouldn’t take any kind of patrol assignment without escort but this patrol assignment became important and that was to patrol the border near The Triangle that was essentially the center of the three major empires, Federation, Romulans, and Klingons. Apparently, there were concerns and so the Captain of the Portland felt that having a Heavy Cruiser like she was patrolling the border around there would show that Starfleet is always prepared; and if Starfleet wasn’t, they always find a way to be. So without escort, the Portland began its patrol along the border and after several days without any encounter, as well as word from Command that escorts were finally being sent to beef up the patrol with the Portland, suddenly a Vorcha Attack Cruiser appeared out of nowhere and began opening fire without warning. Despite being caught off guard, the Portland was able to get her shields up and fight back but the Vorcha outclassed and outgunned the Portland. The fight lasted for roughly ten minutes until the Portland lost dorsal shields and took a torpedo hit that was awfully close to the bridge. When word came that the bridge not only suffered casualties but lost power, Alex didn’t wait for anyone to tell him to re-route command functions to some of the Engineering consoles, bringing the ship back under control and back into the fight. Their two escorts, a Centaur and Cheyenne, finally dropped out of warp and were told to immediately engage the Vorcha as soon as they arrived, so they essentially came in guns blazing but it wasn’t until a final torpedo from the Vorcha that struck the secondary hull, somehow causing a series of overloads to various power junctions that crippled the Portland.

The two escort vessels were able to chase the Vorcha away, forcing it to flee from battle and return to check up on the condition of the Portland but also provide defense as well. It took Alex and the entire engineering division to crawl through the ship when for some reason doors and turbo lifts refused to work, just to figure out that not only were her warp coils in both nacelles completely fused but some of the power junctions near the main computer core that overloaded somehow caused a surge that fried pretty much over half the computer core. With the Portland out of commission, they left it to one of the escorts to inform Command that they needed a warping tug to grab the Portland and bring it to the Devron Fleet Yards, and while they waited, the escorts took the wounded off the Portland and treated them in their sickbays, but there were a few that were critical, which the Centaur took to the Devron Fleet Yards as soon as possible before the tug arrived, leaving the Cheyenne the one to protect the crippled Portland.

Alex spent most of his time on the Portland while waiting for the tug and during the tow to the Fleet Yards by the tug, crawling through the Portland and trying his damndest to get her mostly repaired so that all the engineers at the yards had to do was replace the computer core and the coils. But when the Portland was pulled into the dock, they said that the Portland was just too old, having been in service for nearly fifty years, refitted and retrofitted with upgraded equipment, they simply felt that they were better off using the Portland for parts for other Ambassador Class vessels. Plus they stated that there was more damage to the Portland than just replacing a computer core and warp coils, replacing the overloaded power junctions, as well as the wires, isolinear chips…all the things that Alex tried very hard to replace most of, they simply said that it was too much. Of course, Alex protested but the Captain and the Chief told him to let the Portland go, that there were other starships. Alex never thought he’d get attached to any ship in the fleet, thinking that taking an assignment on the Portland was just because it be a challenge for how old she was, but the ship grew on him and he enjoyed the time he spent on board, the years he spent in those tubes, the time and sweat he put into her. Accepting the loss wasn’t easy for him but he knew his Captain and Chief were correct, so he packed up his things and started searching for a new posting elsewhere.

(2399 – Present) USS Altai

Alex Beck has accepted the position of Chief Engineer on board the USS Altai. While on board the Altai, Beck had assisted in restoring power to the listening outpost that they were given permission to lay claim to and use as a base of operations to essentially ‘spy’ on the Breen. In a sense, just keep an eye on them and see what they have been doing. Altai was even boarded by some mechanical spider that Beck had devised to lure to the ship’s primary computer core and overloaded it to fry the intruder. Thankfully with a secondary computer core, the Altai was not out of commission for too long. Also, the Starship with a full crew of Starfleet Corps of Engineers had a spare computer core to replace the primary, which they have done so before they left the system after the listening post was retrofitted up to standards and functionality.

Beck had also claimed a DOT from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers Starship and essentially gifted it to the Altai and the listening post as an essential worker. With its help, Beck was able to install a holographic system that created a fake surface that covered the exposed listening post that was built onto and into an asteroid. He had also modified the shield system and the holographic system to work in unison so if by chance a vessel did come and had some evidence that made them believe there was an outpost there and was to fire on the very spot where the hologram was hiding the outpost, the weapons would impact the shield but the system will make it appear that the weapons impacted rock to keep up the illusion that it is just an ordinary asteroid.

Beck was then handpicked by Captain Henry Maxwell and promoted to Lieutenant while given the Chief Engineer position on board the USS Sovereign. Beck had a pleasant farewell departure from the outpost and the crew of the Altai while leaving the DOT behind as it was essential to maintaining and repairing the holographic system in case it ever got damaged or routine maintenance. Plus Beck figured he will find a way to get himself a new DOT.

Beck was once again handpicked by Captain Gerald Hunt to be the new Chief Engineer on board Starbase 415. After what happened to the Sovereign‘s last mission during the Blood Dilithium crisis, he accepted the position. Plus he added a request for more DOTs.