Epis­ode Num­ber: 2×08

Writ­ten by: Jim Johnson

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 25^th Feb­ru­ary 2023

Guest Stars:

• Cap­tain Akul: Com­mand­ing officer of the I.K.S. Mup­wI’.
• Chief Petty Officer Adorr Rogon: Bol­i­an oper­a­tions NCO on Lex­ing­ton.
• Cap­tain Pyan­far: Com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Thun­der­child.
• Assor­ted officers from S.S. Bann, S.S. Ber­bice, S.S. Corazon, S.S. Cow­slip, S.S. Feli­cid­ade, S.S. Gerba, S.S. Jahde and S.S. Lon­don­derry.

Finally, we are back in action!

The repairs took over two months, but we are able to resume our mis­sion. Admir­al Hebert has wasted little time in giv­ing us the means to test those repairs—we’ve been tasked with shep­herd­ing a sup­ply con­voy to Array 3–5, one of the joint Fed­er­a­tion-Klin­gon research posts deep with­in the Expanse.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 48612.9

Plot: Escort­ing a sup­ply con­voy through an anom­aly-filled region of space, Lex­ing­ton and her charges are attacked by pirates.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton is cruis­ing at warp 5, shep­herd­ing a con­voy of 8 trans­ports, and accom­pan­ied by the I.K.S. Mup­wI’, trav­el­ing with the group under cloak.

When sensors show they’re enter­ing an area rich in sub­space anom­alies, the newly-pro­moted Lt Cdr Zepht begins con­stant sensor sweeps, expect­ing trouble of some sort. He also amuses him­self by fine-tun­ing the sensors to pick up Mup­wI’s exact loc­a­tion. Kon­in aks him to put a mark­er on the main screen, but just as he does so, there’s a very vis­ible explo­sion at that pos­i­tion. Mup­wI’ sud­denly pops into view, before tum­bling out of warp and fall­ing behind. At the same time, Lex­ing­ton exper­i­ences an abrupt energy surge through all the bridge con­soles, caus­ing a num­ber of minor overloads.

Kon­in orders the con­voy to drop out of warp, and they emerge into nor­mal space sur­roun­ded by col­our­ful stream­ers of energy, chaot­ic­ally pop­ping in and out of exist­ence. The cap­tain requests a dam­age report as mes­sages from the trans­ports come in: many of them have also exper­i­enced dam­age, includ­ing energy over­loads, engine fail­ures, grav­ity dis­rup­tions and minor explosions.

As engin­eer­ing teams are beamed to the dam­aged trans­ports, a chan­nel is opened to Mup­wI’: Cap­tain Akul appears on screen while snarling in Klin­gon at his crew. Appar­ently, they suffered a major explo­sion on their warp drive and his engin­eers are doing little more than prov­ing their incom­pet­ence. Kon­in offers the assist­ance of one of his teams and Akul accepts, not­ing that maybe they can show his people what a work eth­ic is. Zepht volun­teers to take the engin­eer­ing team in a shuttle for the hour-long trip back to the Klin­gon cruis­er (which is already a light day behind them), as they can­’t risk leav­ing the con­voy undefended.

Not long after he leaves, two large freight­ers and a dozen small fight­er-craft of vari­ous classes emerge from behind a col­our­ful knot of energy stream­ers. One of the freight­ers imme­di­ately heads towards Mup­wI’, and the oth­er ves­sels head towards the con­voy. As Kon­in calls the bridge to red alert, Boone reacts quickly, dis­abling 4 of the incom­ing fight­ers with phaser fire. The freight­er fires dis­ruptors at Lex­ing­ton, pen­et­rat­ing her shields and caus­ing dam­age to a num­ber of her systems.

Quinn brings Lex­ing­ton closer to the fight­ers, and anoth­er vol­ley of phaser fire leaves 4 more dead in space, but as Chief Rogon juggles the ship’s power reserves and shields, the freight­er fires again, caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age to the engines. Boone returns fire, open­ing up breaches across large parts of the attack­er­’s hull. Mean­while, the remain­ing fight­ers open fire on the con­voy, to little effect.

The ‘B’ Plot: When Zepht admits to insub­or­din­a­tion in his report on the Susque­hanna mis­sion, Kon­in finds he needs to estab­lish what actu­ally happened, espe­cially since Zepht is due for pro­mo­tion. Meet­ings reveal that Zepht believed the Romu­lans were not going to respond to Quin­n’s attempts at nego­ti­ation, and would have left the land­ing party in danger of cap­ture. Boone, mean­while, was con­cerned for the safety of the Star­fleet med­ic­al per­son­nel trail­ing behind them. Both judged the situ­ation was already bey­ond peace­ful res­ol­u­tion when they chose to dis­obey orders and open fire. Quinn is of the opin­ion that, as a first offence, this was a minor incid­ent and not worth report­ing, but notes that if it hap­pens again, he will be more likely to make a form­al charge. Kon­in decides to let the mat­ter rest for the moment, mak­ing it known to both Zepht and Boone that it can­not hap­pen again.

The ‘C’ Plots: Cap­tain Kon­in sends the crew of the Mup­wI’ a bar­rel of blood­wine and a targ-car­cass as thanks for retriev­ing the crew of the Zam­bezi. In return, Kon­in and the afore­men­tioned per­son­nel are invited to join a party with the Klin­gons. Kon­in politely declines, but the oth­ers attend, many of them liv­ing to regret it. The only per­son to escape unscathed is Doc­tor Con­ners, who denies using any kind of phar­ma­ceut­ic­al assist­ance to evade the effects of alco­hol poisoning.

Kon­in also vis­its The Eyrie, a bar restric­ted to com­mand-level staff on Nar­en­dra Sta­tion. Chat­ting to Cap­tain Pyan­far from U.S.S. Thun­der­child, he tries to get her opin­ions on con­voy escort duty in the region and the dangers of pir­acy. While she has led plenty of escort mis­sions, she believes the rumours of pir­ates in the Expanse are greatly exaggerated.

Obser­va­tions: The Klin­gon mem­ber of the squad­ron finally makes an appear­ance. I.K.S. Mup­wI’ is a K’vort-class battle­cruis­er, shaped like the clas­sic bird-of-prey, but almost as big as Lex­ing­ton. Cap­tain Akul, a some­what aggress­ive com­mand­er, has been throw­ing his weight around at Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, and is not pop­u­lar with the engin­eer­ing crews there. He is some­what favour­ably dis­posed towards the Lex­ing­ton crew, after Kon­in’s gifts.

Star­fleet and the K.D.F. are estab­lish­ing small research out­posts through­out the near­er por­tions of the Shack­leton Expanse, with the aim of gath­er­ing data on the anom­alies com­mon to the region.

The Eyrie is a small bar on one of the upper levels of the Dip­lo­mat­ic Ring of Nar­en­dra Sta­tion. By tra­di­tion, access is restric­ted to com­mand­ing officers of Star­fleet ves­sels, plus oth­ers of the rank of Cap­tain and high­er, giv­ing them a chance to let off steam away from the lower ranks.

Ques­tions: Why did the pir­ates choose this place to attack?