Joshua Garrity

Joshua Garrity was one of only 14 children, including his younger brother, Zachary,  to survive the attempts to shut down the Borite mine in the Gorn Moon, Taursus and rescue the captive children before the moon exploded in 2396.  It was found that the children within the mine were being forced not only to mine the ore but also to translate for and entertain any traders who visited there in whatever manner they desired. All children were discovered to have endured severe abuse of various natures, and malnutrition, conditions from which, judging by the stacks of bodies left to decompose in various alcoves inside the moon, many succumbed regularly among the slave population within the mines. Multiple breaks were reset and health issues were attended to aboard the rescuing ships.

Initially, the unusually tall and almost painfully thin young Joshua was thought to be nonverbal, though it was later discovered that he not only spoke, he was fluent several languages, specifically Gorn, Standard, Bajoran, Cardassian, Ferengi, Orion, Andorian, Romulan, and Tellarite, having learned them from the traders who came and went, as had his brother, Zachary, along with what could only be identified as ‘the language of the mines’. However, he’d been well conditioned in the mines not to speak unless it was necessary, as when they’d been expected to translate for the traders and their Gorn keepers, who were unable to articulate the languages themselves. Further testing revealed that both boys appeared to have an incredible physical strength that could only be attributed to growing and developing in such an extremely high gravity environment, lending more credence to their growing suspicion, based on the boys’ reactions to each new environment thus far, that the boys had ever been outside of the moon and had, in all probability, been born there.

It was determined upon his rescue that Joshua was roughly 13 years of age based on growth rate and bone density scans, adjusting for environmental factors, such as the extremely high gravity and the excessively high temperatures within the moon.  

Once they were logged into the system and released from the sickbay, the survivors were transported to Deep Space 9, where efforts began to find the families of the families or guardians of the rescued children were already underway. Most of the children were claimed quickly, however, they were unsuccessful in finding any relatives or legal guardians for the Garrity boys. When efforts to locate any family failed and nobody from the private sector stepped forward to claim the boys, Captain Johnathan Hale, who’d grown surprisingly fond of the boys, put in to have them remain in his custody aboard his ship, the USS Georgetown.

Both boys required medical care for some time, as well as counselling to aid in their emotional healing. They also required some assistance adjusting to life outside of the mines. As time went on, they learned to live and function among the ship’s personnel, adapting to the new world they found themselves in. However, privately, they still adjusted the temperature and gravity in their cabin to approximate the environment they grew up in.  

Educationally, Joshua proved to be anxious to learn everything offered to him. He became a voracious reader and seemed to retain information quickly. As his education progressed, he demonstrated aptitude in many areas, including a remarkable aptitude for xenolinguistics, but he seemed to be most skilled and comfortable in engineering. At Captain Hale’s urging, he took Starfleet’s entrance exams shortly after he turned 18, using the month and day of their rescue as both boys’ ‘birthday’, and was granted admission in 2401. By the time he graduated from the academy in 2405, he was fully certified in all areas of engineering, including designing, repairing and programming. He was also certified as a field medic, though he declined to delve further into the medical field as he still found direct physical contact with others unsettling.

Joshua’s first posting, in 2405 was to the USS Santa Ana, a research and exploration vessel. In 2406, the vessel was attacked and boarded by invading Klingons. The crew fought valiantly, but in the end, the survivors were forced to use the escape pods before the ship’s self- destruct sequence finished counting down. Rescued crewmen credited the young ensign for setting creative barriers and traps to hold back the invaders both during the fight and after the self-destruct sequence and been activated, enabling survivors to reach the escape pods before the ship’s destruction. However, it was also noted that, in the end, Joshua himself was gravely injured. Lieutenant Patrick McEntire disobeyed orders, going back for his fallen friend and comrade, and carried him to the last pod, narrowly escaping before the ship exploded. Once rescued, survivors were routed to the nearest space station, Visek Nor, and from there, once they’d been debriefed and were deemed fit for duty, to their next assignments.

Following a long stay in the station’s infirmary, Joshua Garrity was discharged, then officially assigned to the newly renamed Heyerdahl Station in 2407.