Editing STA:Reac Crew Verdan (section)

==Career Events==
*Encounter With a Truly Alien Being/Special Commendation
*“Sacrifice for the Greater Good”

It was clear from the beginning that this case would be a strange one, but there was no way to know ahead of time just how profoundly Verdan's life would change as a result of an investigation at a small mining colony. He and his partner, Senior Investigator Garam Maadis, were sent to look into a series of mysterious and bloody deaths at a small mining outpost on the second moon of Trelik 3, on the edge of Trill space. While the Trelik system is still barely settled and largely without significant resources, scans of this moon had found extensive deposits of a unique crystal appropriate for decorative and industrial uses. Construction on the mining station had begun about five years prior, and for the last three years the Mineral Extraction Conglomerate's "Trelkian lunar crystals" had been steadily supplied to a widening set of interested buyers. Keeping miners at the station, however, was difficult, as they complained of strange lights and movement just on the edge of vision.

Then the deaths started. First they occurred only in the deepest parts of the mine, where active expansion created greater risk of accidents that could, if one was sufficiently determined, explain the unexpected disappearances followed by later discovery of various body parts. However, after the eighth such death and the spread of the trouble into the higher levels of the mine - literally and figuratively, as the last victim was an aide to the Conglomerate's onsite overseer - the authorities on Trill were contacted and the two Investigators sent off to uncover the cause.

After an extended investigation - and another victim - Verdan observed that before each disappearance and again before the appearance of the remains the lights in the tunnels started burning slightly brighter and the cameras revealed slight static around the edges of the image. New sensing equipment, jury rigged by the remaining staff of the facility, revealed a crackling, slightly clouded distortion in the air, as if an electrical pulse had taken gaseous form. This entity - for its movements were clearly intelligent, stealthy, and actively predatory - would wait for a victim to be monetarily isolated out of sight of the cameras and swiftly engulf them before slinking away. After a period of hours of "digestion," the form would rapidly retract, flash brightly, and then explosively expand, showering an assortment of remaining pieces of the victim over a small area.

Then it would return to its hunt - a hunt that became more effective and more efficient the more victims it took. Once the discovery was made, however, there was no clear way to contain the entity, as it flitted unconcerned through any barrier placed before it, including ones made of the native rock and crystal, and it was showing increased interest in the spacecraft, indicating both a desire to leave the moon and a growing understanding that this was the way to achieve its desire. Two more victims were taken before Garam Maadis realized that the way of stopping the creature lay not in the material, but its arrangement. The veins of crystal were not random, but seeded, providing a harmonic field capable of capturing the entity's energy form, apparently the invention of a past species faced with its deprivations so long before that no records were left of the danger. The engineering crew was able to devise a careful pattern of explosions to reform the hole they had unknowingly created in the entity's prison, but it required luring the creature back into the depths, which had avoided since its first emergence. 

Garam volunteered to serve as bait, as the senior officer present, knowing that there was no possibility of escape. But the risk of allowing a nearly undetectable, highly intelligent, actively malevolent, and incomprehensibly ancient entity to escape into populated space left no real option. Verdan was ordered to organize the miners, ensure the trap was successfully triggered and could contain the entity, and then to evacuate the moon and report on the profound danger of any living being returning to it, much less digging back into the depths. To help a friend to choose a painful death would have been bad enough, but - contrary to all rules and regulations - Verdan and Garam had been lovers as well, since almost the beginning of their time working together. Still, with eleven dead civilians and no ability to evacuate without risking bringing the entity as well, there was no other choice. The plan worked, but Verdan was left profoundly broken by the experience.

Back on Trill, his superiors gave him - and Garam posthumously - the highest honors for bravery and dedication to the people of Trill. Verdan, meanwhile, struggled with carefully hidden suicidality and profound depression. At the suggestion of a superior he applied for consideration by the Symbiosis Commission. He did not anticipate being selected but any chance to start over seemed appealing. Despite concerns over psychological stability leading to extensive debate on his suitability, the Board approved his joining. The surgery was almost a year to the day from when he and Garam had set out for the Trelkian moon. The newly joined Verdan Qet left as soon as he was healed enough for travel, headed to Earth to study at the Starfleet Academy.