Epis­ode Num­ber: 3×07

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 23^rd June 2024

Guest Stars:

• Com­mand­er Ravenna: Com­mand­er of the Romu­lan war­bird Che­vareth
• Cen­tur­i­on Thameth: Raven­na’s exec­ut­ive officer
• Lieu­ten­ant Donak: Ambi­tious mem­ber of Raven­na’s crew
• Jak D’Jak: Sov­er­eign Vice­roy of the K’si Host Car­ri­er Light of Heaven

Com­mand­er Ravenna of the Che­vareth seems amen­able to an alli­ance of sorts, but it seems she has prob­lems of her own. Our scans show her ship is dam­aged, and it appears that mem­bers of her crew may be plot­ting mutiny.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9971.4

Plot: Lyo­n­esse’s crew finds itself poten­tially facing two enemies, as the K’si arrive intent on excising their influ­ence per­man­ently, and the Romu­lans resolve their own issues.

The ‘A’ Plot: With both the K’si and the Romu­lans point­ing act­ive weapons at Lyo­n­esse, Cap­tain Mas­uda weighs up her options. She decides that her pri­or­ity has to be pro­tect­ing Beseech­ing Glory and the oth­er Oreis­on com­munit­ies, and then to aid Com­mand­er Ravenna, a poten­tial ally, in her own struggle. She orders Lt James to take the ship closer to the Che­vareth, in order to lim­it the chances of being caught in a cross­fire should the Romu­lan mutin­eers take control.

Mean­while, Lt Jin’s sci­ence team argues that they don’t know enough about the prop­er­ties of the “dark mat­ter” on which the K’si’s tech­no­logy appears to rely, and that this could be of vital import­ance if con­flict breaks out. If they could obtain a sample from the nearby debris field of the des­troyed sphere, this could give them a tac­tic­al advant­age, but using the trans­port­er would require lower­ing their shields, and a shuttle­craft would be extremely vulnerable.

James has an idea, and moves the ship into the debris, moment­ar­ily drop­ping the shields and cap­tur­ing some of the debris with­in them. Jin rushes down to the trans­port­er room to bring a sample aboard. He takes appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions, enclos­ing it in a con­tain­ment field as it mater­i­al­ises, but some­thing goes wrong, and the float­ing bubble of black vis­cous mater­i­al slowly expands through the bar­ri­er into the trans­port­er room. Real­ising this is a little bey­ond him, Jin calls Lt Valik for help. The Vul­can arrives moments later, and the two jury-rig an exper­i­ment­al “iso­met­ric flux nul­li­fic­a­tion grid” to con­tain it, basing their work on Ensign Kheled’s research into modi­fy­ing the shields to res­ist the neb­ula gasses. When the mod­i­fied field suc­cess­fully con­tains the sample, Jin raises his hand for a “high-five” with Valik. The Vul­can merely raises an eye­brow, and Jin quickly con­verts his ges­ture into a Vul­can salute.

The K’si ves­sel moves closer and the Sov­er­eign Vice­roy hails them, gloat­ing: “I see you have come back to the scene of the crime”. Mas­uda responds by stat­ing her intent to defend the Oreis­on, and D’Jak imme­di­ately closes the com­mu­nic­a­tion, leav­ing the K’si emblem, a rep­res­ent­a­tion of a black sphere, on screen.

The Light of Heav­en opens fire, sev­er­al beams of cor­rus­cat­ing black energy nar­rowly miss­ing Lyo­n­esse as James launches into a well-prac­ticed eva­sion man­oeuvre. Lt Par­ish returns fire, phaser blasts eat­ing into the big­ger ship’s shields. Jin scans the enemy ship’s weapon sys­tems, estab­lish­ing tar­get locks on the gun ports, and then uses the scan data to remodu­late their own shields to bet­ter res­ist the weapons’ effects.

Unfor­tu­nately, power fluc­tu­ations, caused by the stresses of com­bat, weak­en the dark mat­ter con­tain­ment field in the particle phys­ics labor­at­ory, and the sample breaks out again.

On the bridge, Mas­uda attempts to hail the K’si to request a truce, but the only reply is in the form of more weapons fire, the black energy dan­cing across the rein­forced shields. Par­ish tar­gets their weapons, dis­abling sev­er­al ports, but some of the debris field is drawn to Lyo­n­esse’s phaser emit­ters, block­ing them. While Valik and his team get to work clear­ing the block­ages, Mas­uda again attempts to get the K’si to stand down, cit­ing the Star­fleet ves­sel’s clear weapons advantage.

D’Jak answers the hail only briefly, shout­ing “Die, heretics!”, as the Light of Heav­en fires again, once more miss­ing its target.

Par­ish opens fire with the newly-unblocked phasers, erad­ic­at­ing the K’si shields and caus­ing severe dam­age to their weapons, but D’Jak ral­lies his crew with a threat­en­ing speech and they finally score a dam­aging hit on Lyo­n­esse’s engines.

Obser­va­tions: It appears that the K’si hier­archy main­tains con­trol through threats and intimidation.

The Light of Heav­en’s weapons employ what Jin describes as “phased anti-photons”, explain­ing their effect as the exact oppos­ite of phasers. How­ever, this is some­thing that the Stand­ard Mod­el of particle phys­ics has no room for.

Dia­logue: Cap­tain Mas­uda: “We can­not let you des­troy these people, and we will act to stop you from caus­ing harm to the pop­u­la­tion. We come in peace and want to come to a mutu­al under­stand­ing, but we are ready to defend this planet.”

Sov­er­eign Vice­roy Jak D’Jak: “Are you really sure that’s the atti­tude you want to take, Captain?”

Mas­uda: “I have nev­er been more sure of any­thing, Viceroy.”