The double death of Tasha Yar

Tasha's youth
Starfleet
Enterprise
Fate
Yesterday's Enterprise
Tasha's double death
Sela

Tasha's youth

The colony on the planet of New Paris was founded with the intention to build a flourishing community, where art and peace would rule, and war would not exist. The humans who landed on the planet with this ideal, had ran away from Earth during the Post Atomic Horrors with sublight ships. They didn't want to have to live through such pain and atrocities ever again.
Unfortunately, time and human nature have caught up with them, and their beautiful civilization has gone down in a nuclear war. Contact with Earth was lost, and the ruins of the cities came under the rule of drug lords.

In this world a young girl grows up. Her name is Tasha. Her mother, a drug addict, leaves her only when she's five. An old woman picks her up from the streets and teaches her to steal for her, and how to survive among the ruins. When Tasha's twelve, the woman dies and Tasha is alone. During the years that follow, she learns how to defend herself when there's no escape left ; gangs rape every girl they can find.

On the age of fifteen, she finally gets caught by a gang, but she's saved at the very last by a Starfleet team that beamed down on this recently discovered planet. The leader of the team is Darryl "Dare" Adin, and he takes her away from the planet, to Earth.

When they ask for her name, she chooses as surname the name of the old woman, Yar, as a rememberance to this planet to where she'll never return, but that learned her to fight and survive.

Starfleet

Dare brings Tasha Yar to Earth and goes on. She is permitted at Starfleet Academy, and begins a brilliant carreer. Starfleet will be the only family she ever knew.
When she's 23, Dare returns. Tasha has become a beautiful woman and they fall in love. They decide to marry and sign up on a Galaxy class starship, a new class on which they can live together. But before all this can happen, fate strikes.

Tasha passes the finals of Starfleet Academy cum laude, and her training mission aboard the USS Starbound (under the command of captain Jarvis, and with Dare as chief of security) is also a success. That's why the Starbound, on his way back, loads a secret cargo of dilithium cristals from Starbase 36 for the Starfleet shipyards of Mars. But the Starbound is attacked by Orionians and the dilithium is stolen. 21 casualties, including all officers, except for Dare, are to be regretted.
Although it's Dare who can motivate the cadets enough to reach Starbase 18 with the crippled ship, he's arrested and convicted for treason. Dare and Yar separate as enemies, and some time later Dare escapes and disappeares.

Enterprise

Years later, Tasha gets an asignment on the USS Enterprise NCC1701D, the newest vessel of Starfleet. Some months after the beginning of their journey, two weeks after the famous mission to Minos, the planet whose inhabitants were all killed by their advanced weapons, she and Data, the only android in Starfleet and third in command of the Enterprise, are sent to the planet Treva. They have to conduct an investigation about a rebellion against the legal government of Treva.

On Treva they meet Dare, who's now working as a mercenary for the rebels, who are in reality trying to liberate the planet from the tiranny of the "legal" ruler. Data and Yar get involved in the struggle, that is about to be lost by the rebels. But the Enterprise responds to an emergency message and arrives just on time to end the fight in favour of the rebellion.

Tasha finds herself now forced to stay loyal to Starfleet and arrest Dare, although he is still (or again) her one true love. So Dare is locked up again.
But Data, a special friend from Tasha (see also Data), succeeds in proving that the evidence that was used against Dare at his trial was falsified by the Orionians, who wanted to get back at Dare for something.

Dare is re-offered his old function at Starfleet, but decides to return to his mercenaries. Tasha and Dare separate again, but this time with the promise and the hope to come back together in the future and to stay together.

Tasha's life seems better than ever...

Fate

But...
Troi's shuttle crashes on the planet Vagra II and the rescue is made difficult by the sadistic creature Armus.
Armus kills Tasha...

Tasha Yar never finds the happiness that she has chased for so long. She dies while trying to save a friend.

Yesterday's Enterprise

Later, the Enterprise encounters a temporal disturbance, through which the Enterprise C, the predecessor of the Enterprise D known to us, travels from 25 years in the past to the days of the Enterprise D. Because of this little trip through time, the ship disappears from the scene of a battle 25 years earlier, in which it was supposed to assist a Klingon vessel under attack by Romulans. History is changed, and suddenly the Federation is fighting a losing war against the Klingon Empire.

And suddenly, Tasha is still alive and kicking.

The crew of the Enterprise D does not notice that anything changed, for them this war has always been going on. Only Guinan senses something's wrong, about things in general and about Tasha. Guinan alerts captain Picard, who chooses to believe Guinan's instincts and asks the Enterprise C to go back, attack the Romulans, be destroyed in the process, but stop this war from ever starting.

In the mean time, Tasha has started to fall in love with Lt Castillo, the helmsman of the Enterprise C, and she has found out from Guinan that, in what Guinan feels is "normal time", she has died a senseless death. When captain Garrett from the Enterprise from the past gets killed in a Klingon raid, Tasha requests to be transferred to the ship and go with it to the past and give it more chances against the Romulans.

Captain Picard agrees, and Tasha disappears with the Enterprise C through the temporal anomaly to the past. The Enterprise C attacks the Romulan vessels and is destroyed, as is the Klingon ship, but the Federation has proven its loyalty to the Klingon empire and the war is prevented. History returns to its normal course, and according to this history, Enterprises C and D never met.

Tasha's double death

But Tasha is captured during the battle and brought to Romulus, while somewhere else she's still running around as a child. On Romulus she is forced to marry a Romulan general and gets a daughter, Sela. At an attempt to escape, the child betrays her and Tasha Yar is executed. She dies twice in the same timeline...

Sela

25 years after Tasha's emprisonment, her daughter is the leader of a Romulan conspiracy that provides material support to the Klingon faction lead by the sisters (and son) of Duras, in a Klingon civil war for the leadership over the Council. If the Duras family will gain the throne and beat the Federation-loyal Gowron, there's sure to be a war between the Federation and the Klingons. That's why the Romulans assist the Duras faction. Captain Picard exposes the treason and cuts off the support. Gowron wins. Peace is safe, again.

During the conflict, Enterprise D comes into contact with Sela, who's commanding a Romulan warbird. Thus the crew of the Enterprise finds out, via Guinan, that Tasha was aboard the Enterprise C 25 years earlier, and what else happened to her later.

© 1998 by Peter De Bruyne.
"Star Trek" created by Gene Roddenberry.
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