- See Moss for other articles with titles that contain, either by relationship or by coincidence, this character's surname.
Roy John Moss could have been one of the Federation's greatest technical minds of the 23rd century. Instead he became one of the worst archeological vandals in galactic history.
He was a human male born in 2230, the son of pirate "Big Rex" Moss and an unidentified woman Rex Moss claimed to have killed.
At age 14 in 2244, Roy Moss developed a method of tuning deflector shields that allowed a ship to withstand gravitational anomalies and stresses far in excess of those generally thought possible. This technique allowed the pirate vessel Shark to operate undetected in the vicinity of the Vega IX trinary star, as shipping losses were attributed to storms and anomalies spawned by the trinary rather than piracy.
Shortly thereafter, after examining Faramond Old Culture artifacts that had been on one of the vessels "salvaged" by the Shark and comparing them with some he'd seen on Faramond itself, he managed to intuitively decipher the Old Culture's normalized symbology.
Either of these achievements would ordinarily have earned Moss a reputation as a "boy wonder" on par with Richard Daystrom, but given his criminal and abusive upbringing, it never occurred to him to "go legit". Instead he survived as a petty pirate crewman, used for the advantage he gave the one ship, and endlessly scheming about how he would one day put his tormenters in their place -- especially his father. He spent the next several years like that, at the beck and call of the Shark's captain, Angus Burgoyne, and his father, while surreptitiously diverting part of the Shark's booty to his own private cache.
This state of affairs continued until 2249, when the Shark pounced on a Starfleet liaison cutter observing Vega IX en route to Faramond. Among those on board were Captain Robert April, a surly teenaged James T. Kirk, and Kirk's father. Despite the Shark's substantial advantages, the tenacity and resourcefulness of the Starfleeters allowed them to eventually board the Shark and disrupt its operations long enough to be rescued by the USS Enterprise. Part of that "disruption" led to Rex Moss's discovery of Roy's embezzling and thus to a final deadly confrontation between them, ending in Roy accidentally electrocuting his father.
While the actions of the Starfleet personnel profoundly impressed young Kirk (as did -- negatively -- Moss' example of wasted potential) and spurred him towards his Starfleet career, (still in progress)
[2255: released from penal colony]
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