Peter Koester

Captain Peter Koester is commanding officer aboard the USS Dauntless. (Star Trek: Dauntless)

Early life and career

Peter J. Koester was a 24th century Starfleet officer, born in September 2343 in New York City (North American continent, Earth), to a Terran father and a half-Betazoid mother. The course of his entire life seemed laid out for him from a young age by his father, a career Starfleet officer, almost since the day he was born.

Koester entered Starfleet Academy at age 16 and graduated near the top of his class four years later. While attending the Academy he met and befriended future shipmate Virgil Kane. His first deep-space assignment after graduation was aboard the starship USS Al-Batani. On the Al-Batani he formed a student/mentor relationship with Science Officer Kathryn Janeway.

Family and personal life

Koester married his first wife in 2368. The couple gave birth to a daughter, Gem, the next year. They divorced in 2371 with Koester retaining custody of his daughter despite an active Starfleet career.

During a brief civilian career between 2378 and 2380, Koester became engaged to his long-distance girlfriend, Commander Michele Peterson, Chief of Security on the starship USS Christa McAuliffe, whom he met several years earlier during a diplomatic mission to Kosov IV. The engagement lasted several years before the couple finally married in the spring of 2383.

Starfleet career

Following his transfer from the Al-Batani, Koester found himself detailed to a number of special assignments rather than the typical string of starship assignments most young officers expect. Constantly being shifted from starbase to starbase, department to department, he was always being promised another starship assignment but never actually received one until he applied for Starfleet’s newly proposed Preliminary Survey Program (SFOps PSP 00121.1) in 2371, which created an exploratory fleet in the newly opened Gamma Quadrant to commence with the starship USS Sarek and a small fleet of runabouts converted to independent survey vessels. Upon his acceptance into the program, Koester was jumped in rank from lieutenant to captain and assigned command of the PSV/USS Hudson.

After less than six months in the Gamma Quadrant, the Hudson was severely damaged by a surprise Jem'Hadar attack in early 2372. Starfleet soon canceled the PSP program in light of rising tensions with the Klingon Empire, and Koester and his small crew were reassigned as the command crew of the Intrepid-class starship USS Dauntless. The Dauntless launched from Earth Station McKinley on stardate 49368.4, and after a shakedown cruise that included a slingshot time warp to the late 20th century, was commissioned on stardate 49752.5.

In mid-2374, following Operation Return, the Dauntless and her crew were awarded Starfleet's highest tactical award and Koester was promoted to Fleet Captain. Unfortunately, the Dauntless was destroyed several weeks later in an incident rumored to have involved the Q Continuum that has since been classified at the highest levels by Starfleet Command. Shortly after being acquitted by court-martial for the loss of his ship, Koester was reassigned as commanding officer of the newly launched Sovereign-class vessel NCC-75310, now renamed USS Dauntless.

In between other assignments, Dauntless-75310 participated in many of the major battles during the last year of the Dominion War, including the invasion of Cardassia Prime that forced the surrender of the Jem'Hadar and Breen forces. Many members of the Dauntless crew were lost or killed during these battles, including Koester's close friend and lover, the starship's Chief Medical Officer. Following the war, in recognition of his bravery and valor under fire during the conflict, Koester was promoted to the flag rank of Commodore in mid-2376. The promotion almost cost him his command, with orders to a desk job awaiting him. Calling in a number of favors he was owed and a well-timed crisis allowed Koester to retain command of the Dauntless for at least several months longer.

In early 2377, Koester found himself promoted to admiral when he was chosen for the coveted assignment as aide-de-camp to the Federation President. As such, he was placed in command of "Starfleet-One", the Hawking-class starship USS Sagan.

Admiral Koester resigned his commission in disgust following an incident in 2378 where his assignment was usurped by other high-ranking Starfleet officers working behind his back. Koester spent the next eighteen months living in Tycho City on Earth's moon, while working in the civilian sector as a senior manager and pilot for a commercial shuttle service within the Sol system. His premature retirement ended after an encounter with Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise-E and his old mentor, Admiral Kathryn Janeway, during a memorial service following the Reman coup of 2379. Koester made the decision to apply to the Federation Council for reinstatement to Starfleet, under the condition he is recommissioned with the rank of Captain and command of a starship, which was granted in June 2380. To Koester's surprise, the command he was assigned was once again the Sovereign-class starship Dauntless (NCC-75310), which had been in drydock at Utopia Planitia for repairs following a collision almost a year before. With many of the original crew still on board, it seemed almost like Koester had never been gone for the three intervening years.

In late 2380, while en route to vacation on Risa, Captain Koester was abducted by forces of the Kairn Empire, a race never before encountered. Using psychological manipulation, they attempted to extract strategic and tactical intelligence about Starfleet and the Federation to support an invasion of Federation space. Koester, realizing his predicament, managed to escape and was rescued by the crew of the Dauntless, who advised Starfleet of the new adversary on their doorstep.

In 2381, Dauntless was assigned as the acting Starfleet Academy training vessel. During the six months the third-year midshipmen were aboard, the Dauntless encountered a new life-form now referred to as "Space Sharks", capable of stripping spacecraft of all organic matter in seconds, and visited two civilizations the Federation had neglected for almost a century, Gideon and Sigma Iotia II. However, the most startling event of Captain Koester's life during this period was the encounter with Romulan Commander T'Lees, who decades earlier had been a deep-cover spy on Earth during the time Koester first attended Starfleet Academy, and who revealed to Koester the existence of his half-Romulan son, P'Tor.

Later in 2381, the Dauntless again encountered warships of the Kairn Empire, which had recently annexed Federation sectors 428 and 429. After narrowly escaping destruction and informing Starfleet, as the only captain to survive not one but two encounters with the Kairn, Koester was temporarily reassigned as an advisor aboard the Ericsson-class starship USS Providence, assigned to infiltrate the Kairn-held sectors and report back on their capabilities and intentions.

In 2382, the Dauntless encountered a century-old derelict Federation starship, the Independence. Upon boarding the vessel, the away team was shocked to discover over two dozen members of the Dauntless crew wearing hundred-year-old Starfleet uniforms and in stasis, including Captain Koester. These counterparts were turned over to the Department of Temporal Investigations, who spent several months debriefing the crew trying to determine where they had come from and how they came to be aboard a starship adrift for more than 100 years. Almost six months after discovering the starship Independence, while attempting to shut down and replace dangerous experimental reactors aboard the former Starfleet space station Adelphia-One, the same thirty members of the Dauntless crew found themselves thrown back in time when the reactors overloaded and exploded. With the aid of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise in the year 2276, Koester and his crew of castaways stole a Miranda-class starship nearing completion at San Francisco Fleet Yards and modified it to place the crew in cryogenic suspension to return to their proper time. The loop was complete when Koester and his crew managed to escape from Temporal Investigations custody, and with a device jerry-rigged aboard the Independence sealed the subspace rift the explosion of Adelphia-One had caused, saving both the starship Dauntless and the population of the planet Adelphous III. (Star Trek: Dauntless)