Epis­ode Num­ber: 1×11

Writ­ten by: Marco Rafalá

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 17^th April 2021

Guest Stars:

• Crew­man Samuel Ewendi: engineer
• Lieu­ten­ant John Kear­ney: Armory Officer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Lieu­ten­ant Dar­lene Phil­lips: Chief Engin­eer, SS Atlantis NX-05 (seen only)

We have recovered the lone sur­viv­or of a stran­ded 22^nd-cen­tury shuttle­pod from the sur­face of BC-04^d. As the BC-04 sys­tem is embed­ded with­in a large time dila­tion field caused by an unstable worm­hole, it appears only six years have passed for Lt Kear­ney, des­pite over 130 years passing out­side the Black Cluster. Mean­while, we have iden­ti­fied what appears to the star­ship SS Atlantis stran­ded with­in the worm­hole’s maw itself. We are attempt­ing to dis­cov­er if Atlantis her­self is also car­ry­ing sur­viv­ors that may need res­cue, while plan­ning our own escape from the worm­hole’s ongo­ing expansion.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate 9842.6, supplemental

Plot: As the mouth of the worm­hole expands, the crew turns its atten­tion to the pos­sib­il­ity of res­cuing the crew of Atlantis, and sta­ging their own escape.

The ‘A’ Plot: With the ship’s power being expen­ded rap­idly in an effort to res­ist the worm­hole’s pull, Cap­tain Mas­uda calls a seni­or staff meet­ing to dis­cuss pos­sible solu­tions. Giv­en the rap­id power-drain res­ult­ing from oppos­ing the pull of the worm­hole, she decides to use the grav­it­a­tion­al incline to their advant­age: by allow­ing the worm­hole to pull them in, they can move towards the stran­ded ship more rap­idly while regen­er­at­ing their power reserves. The only down­side is avoid­ing the Romu­lan mines…

As Lt Valik attempts to reroute power and the Com­mu­nic­a­tions officer attempts to break through the dis­tor­tion to con­tact Atlantis, Ensigns Kheled and Locke begin the com­plic­ated pro­cess of nav­ig­at­ing the worm­hole. Kheled pilots the ves­sel at impulse towards her des­tin­a­tion, while Locke mon­it­ors the sensors for signs of mines. On sev­er­al occa­sions, he spots one, giv­ing Kheled enough warn­ing that the ship can man­oeuvre around it. Unfor­tu­nately, the radi­ation emis­sions of the worm­hole wreak hav­oc with the sensors, blind­ing the most use­ful and for­cing Locke to use less suit­able systems.

Even­tu­ally, they reach a point with­in a few hun­dred kilo­metres of Atlantis. Sensor sweeps show that sev­er­al sec­tions seem to have power and to be sup­port­ing humanoid life. Unfor­tu­nately, although Comms is able to send a clear mes­sage, there is no response from the stricken starship.

Evid­ently a land­ing party would need to board her. Giv­en the grav­it­a­tion­al surges, shuttle travel would not be safe, so trans­port­ers would need to be used – with power restric­tions sug­gest­ing a small party. She opts to go in per­son, tak­ing Lt Astan, Dr Vale and Crew­man Ewendi from engineering.

They mater­i­al­ise on the trans­port­er plat­form of the archa­ic ves­sel. The room is dark, under emer­gency light­ing only, and the sounds of shouts and energy weapons fire can be heard from the cor­ridors bey­ond. Astan forces the doors open and they ven­ture into the ship.

The sounds of com­bat are com­ing from bey­ond a pile of rubble, so Astan clam­bers up to get a look. He sees two groups of humans, in blue cov­er­alls, fir­ing phase pis­tols at each oth­er from cov­er at oppos­ite ends of the pas­sage. He reports the situ­ation back to Mas­uda, who decides to take the situ­ation in hand.

She climbs of the pile and steps out into the cor­ridor, announ­cing her iden­tity in a loud voice, and demand­ing both sides stand down. Her gam­bit works and the gun­fire stops, but mem­bers of one side take the oppor­tun­ity to escape with a cap­tive. She attempts to get both groups to tell her what’s hap­pen­ing, but gets a garbled story about shape­shift­ing ali­ens try­ing to invade the galaxy.

While one group, appar­ently work­ing for the First Officer of Atlantis, seems reluct­ant to talk, with­draw­ing to anoth­er floor via a Jef­fer­ies tube, a rep­res­ent­at­ive of the oth­er side, appar­ently sup­port­ers of the Chief Engin­eer, does stay to talk briefly. He explains that, after encoun­ter­ing a shape-shift­ing ali­en, the First Officer orches­trated the assas­sin­a­tion of the Cap­tain, and attemp­ted to take con­trol of the ship. The Chief Engin­eer opposed the coup and the two fac­tions had been fight­ing ever since, neither able to trust the other.

When Mas­uda sug­gests that maybe she could talk to the Chief Engin­eer, their inform­ant tells her that the com­mand fac­tion have just abduc­ted their lead­er. Maybe if they res­cue her they would be able to talk?

Dia­logue: “This is Cap­tain Mas­uda Akari of the Star­fleet ves­sel Lyo­n­esse. Put up your arms and stand down!”

Obser­va­tions: The crew of Atlantis appears to have split into at least two fac­tions, centered on the first officer and chief engin­eer. The engin­eer­ing fac­tion believe the com­mand group are work­ing with a hos­tile shape-shift­ing alien.

Ref­er­ences: Cap­tain Mas­uda con­siders wheth­er the crew have been affected by a water-borne sub­stance such as that found on Psi 2000.

In a brief dis­cus­sion about shape­shift­ing ali­ens, salt vam­pires and cham­eloids are men­tioned. Neither seem rel­ev­ant to the cur­rent situation.

Ques­tions: What really happened to the Cap­tain of Atlantis? And who is the alien?