Epis­ode Num­ber: 3×06

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 2^nd June 2024

Intro­du­cing:

• Lieu­ten­ant Baelot Jin: Risi­an sci­ence officer on Lyo­n­esse

Guest Stars:

• Com­mand­er Ravenna: Com­mand­er of the Romu­lan war­bird Che­vareth
• Cen­tur­i­on Thameth: Raven­na’s exec­ut­ive officer
• Lieu­ten­ant Donak: Ambi­tious mem­ber of Raven­na’s crew

We have met the K’si. They were not what we anti­cip­ated, but neither were they what we would have hoped. They appear to have used their tech­no­lo­gic­al superi­or­ity to estab­lish them­selves as gods over the less advanced cul­tures of the Black Cluster, and while they jus­ti­fy their actions as pro­tect­ing their wor­ship­pers, they are not bene­vol­ent. Our attempt to make peace­ful con­tact in the hopes of find­ing a way out of this place broke down fast – and the K’si elec­ted to des­troy the city of Beseech­ing Glory on Oreis­on as a rem­edy for our unin­ten­ded contamination.

While racing to pre­vent this, a third party inter­vened. It appears there’s a Romu­lan ship in here with us – and I have no idea what their inten­tions might be!

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9971.4

Plot: Lyo­n­esse con­tacts the Romu­lan ves­sel to try to reach an agree­ment on work­ing togeth­er, but finds the Romu­lans have prob­lems of their own.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lieu­ten­ant Jin, sit­ting at the sci­ence sta­tion, attempts to to cal­ib­rate the sensors in order to get a firm fix on the Romu­lan ves­sel, but is only able to nar­row its loc­a­tion to a region sev­er­al astro­nom­ic­al units across. The cap­tain orders a chan­nel to be opened and sends greet­ings, invit­ing them to talk.

The Romu­lan com­mand­er soon responds, intro­du­cing her­self as Com­mand­er Ravenna of the war­bird Che­vareth of the Imper­i­al Star Navy. While she main­tains the same proud demean­our as every Romu­lan com­mand­er, her sur­round­ings seem shabby, with mis­matched wall pan­els and flick­er­ing data screens. She tells them that they have been inside the neb­ula for 19 months, and are look­ing for a way out.

When Mas­uda asks about the Romu­lan inter­ven­tion at Oreis­on, Ravenna com­ments that the Lyo­n­esse crew has man­aged to anger the K’si quickly. She has had many encoun­ters with them over the last year, and they have always been hos­tile. She con­siders the K’si to by tyr­ants and slavers; while the Romu­lan Star Empire has sub­ject worlds, they are free to live as they please, and are nev­er pun­ished for the actions of oth­ers. She has seen many such incid­ents in this time, and was glad of the oppor­tun­ity to thwart them.

The cap­tain sug­gests that the two crews might be able to work togeth­er to both defend against the K’si and escape the Cluster. Ravenna says she is will­ing to dis­cuss a tem­por­ary alli­ance. After speak­ing to her cen­tur­i­on, she says they will be with them shortly, and ends the communication.

Tim­mons, at the com­mu­nic­a­tions con­sole, inter­cepts an encryp­ted sig­nal from the Romu­lan ship to an unknown loc­a­tion. Jin is able to use this sig­nal to pin­point the ves­sel’s loc­a­tion, although he notes that cloaked Romu­lan ves­sels “run silent”, restrict­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions to min­im­ise the chances of detec­tion. He sus­pects the sig­nal may be unau­thor­ised, as it was only picked up because Lyo­n­esse is between the Romu­lan and the recipient.

Mean­while, James has used the new loc­a­tion inform­a­tion to to spot what looks like a twink­ling “star” in roughly the right place. Valik notes that the Romu­lans appear to have a dis­tinct flaw in their cloak­ing device’s output.

Mas­uda asks Jin to decrypt the trans­mis­sion, in case it might give them an addi­tion­al bar­gain­ing chip with the Romu­lans. Jin, who can’t res­ist a good mys­tery, is already doing so on his own ini­ti­at­ive, dis­cov­er­ing that the sig­nal was dir­ec­ted to an unknown party on the K’si ship. He is able to extract a fem­in­ine voice speak­ing in Romu­lan: “Com­mand­er has formed an alli­ance with Star­fleet. Be pre­pared. Please advise if you need me to do anything.”

The cap­tain reopens the chan­nel to her coun­ter­part and informs her of this dis­cov­ery as a show of trust. Ravenna imme­di­ately orders her cen­tur­i­on, Thameth, to investigate.

James’s “star” is now mov­ing towards Oreis­on at around 60% of the speed of light. He puts a mag­ni­fied view on the main screen, reveal­ing the flick­er­ing image of a bird-like ves­sel sim­il­ar in size to their own. It’s def­in­itely a Romu­lan war­bird, but its cloak­ing device appears to be mal­func­tion­ing; the Che­vareth decloaks fully as they reach orbit.

Mas­uda asks Jin to make a more detailed scan for intel­li­gence pur­poses, and he is able to obtain basic inform­a­tion. The Romu­lan ves­sel is tech­no­lo­gic­ally equi­val­ent to Lyo­n­esse, with heav­ier arma­ments, includ­ing dis­ruptor banks and plasma tor­pedo sys­tems, but weak­er shields. He notes that while it seems cap­able of a high power out­put, he is unable to get read­ings from the warp core, as the ship’s engin­eer­ing sec­tion seems to absorb sensor sig­nals rather than reflect them. The ship appears to be dam­aged, with evid­ence of tem­por­ary repairs to the hull and sev­er­al areas appar­ently without power, although most of the tac­tic­al sys­tems are in per­fect work­ing order.

The Romu­lans return the favour, scan­ning Lyo­n­esse as they come to a halt about a hun­dred metres off their bow. Tim­mons hails them, but they do not respond for sev­er­al minutes.

Then on an audio-only chan­nel, a young­er voice is heard: “Please stand by, there has been a change in cir­cum­stances”. Then the Che­vareth’s weapons power up, as behind Lyo­n­esse, the K’si host car­ri­er arrives, its own weapons sys­tems active.

The young­er voice then addresses them: “I have them for you, your Excel­lency. If you will take cus­tody, we will be on our way and not both­er you further.”

The Arc: The Romu­lans have been here all along, although it’s unclear why. More import­antly, they have just as bad an opin­ion of the K’si as the crew of the Lyo­n­esse.

Obser­va­tions: Baelot Jin is the Risi­an head of sci­ences, gain­ing the pos­i­tion after Hop­era took on the role of exec­ut­ive officer. A spe­cial­ist in astro­met­rics and stel­lar car­to­graphy, Jin also over­sees nav­ig­a­tion aboard Lyo­n­esse. As he com­ments dur­ing the story, he can­not res­ist a good mystery.

The Romu­lan ves­sel is an Aye mosar­am-class war­bird, a ves­sel roughly equi­val­ent to the Arca­dia-class. Star­fleet Intel­li­gence knows little of the design at this stage, but it is more advanced than both the aging Vas hath­am-class used in the 2266 bor­der raids, and the Klin­gon-built Vas’kalabam-class cruis­ers. The Che­vareth is obvi­ously in poor repair, with scattered traces of battle dam­age, miss­ing hull pan­els, and a vari­able power signature.

Che­vareth has been in the Black Cluster for 19 months: if they entered along­side Lyo­n­esse, this would be over two months longer than indic­ated by the stard­ates. The dis­par­ity is explain­able by the brief peri­od the Star­fleet crew spent with­in the area of extreme time dila­tion sur­round­ing the BC-04 worm­hole.

Ques­tions: What are the Romu­lans doing so far from home?