Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×12

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 27^th July 2024

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant Richter Strauss: Former sci­ence officer aboard U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton NCC-1709.
• Meher­on: Cov­en­ant research­er, formerly the High Curate.

We appear to have trav­elled in time again, and in space.

We escaped the hos­tile entit­ies on Gliese 411 d‑a, and the destruc­tion of the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton, by trav­el­ing through an Iconi­an gate­way. We are now in what looks like anoth­er Tilikaal struc­ture. Lt Strauss, a stran­ded Star­fleet officer resid­ing here, has informed us that it is 2292, and that this is a sta­tion orbit­ing the edge of the galaxy.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9456 (estim­ated)

Plot: The timelost away team arrives on the Hab­it­a­tion, home of the Cov­en­ant, only to dis­cov­er it too is in immin­ent danger of destruction.

The ‘A’ Plot: The away team steps through the gate­way into the Hab­it­a­tion. They find them­selves on a dais sim­il­ar to the one they just left, but loc­ated with­in a rocky cav­ern. The dais is encircled by a ring of Greek-style marble columns, as before, but a dis­tinct­ive grey con­sole stands in front of it. Next to this stands Lieu­ten­ant Richter Strauss, who wel­comes them with a smile.

While he intro­duces him­self, Zepht exam­ines the con­sole, not­ing that it is con­struc­ted from the dur­able con­crete used by the Tilikaal, and is con­nec­ted to the dais by cables. He comes to the con­clu­sion that the Tilikaal were study­ing the gate­way, prob­ably with a view to con­trolling it.

Kon­in asks Strauss about the struc­ture, but their host defers any dis­cus­sion until they have a chance to settle in. He sum­mons a couple of the res­id­ent humanoids, who he intro­duces as the Cov­en­ant, and asks them to arrange rooms and a dinner.

Once they have eaten, Strauss relates his arrival as part of a land­ing party from the ori­gin­al U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton. He avoids the spe­cif­ics of their arrival, oth­er than admit­ting it was an acci­dent, but describes the caste struc­ture of the Cov­en­ant, and how that was lead­ing to their inev­it­able demise. Cap­tain Pryce’s team real­ised they needed to fix the sta­tion’s power gen­er­at­or to react­iv­ate the main trans­port sys­tem to get home, and this ulti­mately led to the com­plete restruc­tur­ing of Cov­en­ant soci­ety. He volun­teered to remain to study the tech­no­logy here, and help the Cov­en­ant build a new cul­ture; the gate failed shortly after the oth­ers left.

Kon­in asks him about the crew of the older Lex­ing­ton, espe­cially Kroso Adred. Strauss expresses some worry about break­ing secur­ity clas­si­fic­a­tions, but Kon­in per­suades him that they already know about a lot of the ship’s mis­sions. Strauss remin­isces about his col­leagues, but does not reveal any­thing new about Adred.

Strauss then takes the team on a tour of the sta­tion, explain­ing what he’s dis­covered over the last two dec­ades. He has nev­er heard the word “Tilikaal”, but has seen quite a few arte­facts that match what Zepht describes. Along­side his stud­ies, he’s been help­ing the Cov­en­ant learn about the tech­no­logy in the sta­tion, work­ing closely with Meher­on, the former High Cur­ate. He explains that the Cur­ate itself has now been replaced by a coun­cil, whose mem­bers are elec­ted by the vari­ous work groups with­in the populace.

The high­light of the tour is the “Obser­vat­ory”, which he believes to be the reas­on the sta­tion was con­struc­ted. To demon­strate its use, he shows them a close-up view of Earth, point­ing out that the now-com­pleted Space­dock One was still under con­struc­tion when he last visited.

Kon­in asks to see the gate through which Strauss and his col­leagues arrived, hop­ing that Azon­an and Zepht might be able to work out how to use it. Strauss shows them the fea­ture­less room next door to the Obser­vat­ory and explains that it seems to rely on a car­ri­er wave emit­ted by anoth­er des­tin­a­tion which is no longer trans­mit­ting. He has man­aged to access the machinery but has not been able to loc­ate any con­trol sys­tems or work out its oper­at­ing prin­ciples. Azon­an takes a look at the machinery and con­curs that the sys­tem requires a car­ri­er wave from the des­tin­a­tion, which does not cur­rently exist. Back in the Obser­vat­ory, Strauss shows them 51 Pegasi V, the world from which his team arrived, and points out a large crater in the approx­im­ate loc­a­tion of the oth­er gate. It does­n’t look like a viable way home.

Return­ing to the Iconi­an gate, Strauss explains that it seems to switch between des­tin­a­tions every 47 minutes, rotat­ing through a fixed sequence every 11 days. Unfor­tu­nately, he has been unable to view the des­tin­a­tions them­selves, and his early exper­i­ments showed that many of them are dan­ger­ous. Since it’s obvi­ous that the gate can trans­port its users through time as well as space, this presents a pos­sible way home at some point close to their own time. Zepht and Azon­an begin put­ting togeth­er a plan to use drones, pro­duced in the Hab­it­a­tion rep­lic­at­ors, to view each des­tin­a­tion in turn, using loc­al sub­space sig­nals to identi­fy the date.

This will be a pro­ject that will take at least two weeks, so the oth­ers find oth­er ways to fill their time. Kon­in talks to Strauss and the Cov­en­ant to learn more about their soci­ety. Quinn explores the com­plex, ini­tially work­ing on the hunch that the sta­tion has a drive sys­tem and a con­trol centre to oper­ate it. He finds that no such sys­tems exist, but he does loc­ate sev­er­al use­ful stor­age areas and dis­used dormitories.

Raynor, mean­while, spends a lot of time in the Obser­vat­ory, explor­ing the galaxy, spot­ting Borg cubes in the Delta Quad­rant, and even see­ing the explo­sion of an indus­tri­al facil­ity on one of the moons of Qo’noS. Then he notices a fiery red mass which seems to be head­ing towards the sta­tion. Study­ing the object, Zepht iden­ti­fies it as a cloud of metreon gas, sev­er­al astro­nom­ic­al units across. Its path will inter­sect with that of the sta­tion in about three months, and will des­troy the asteroid.

This rev­el­a­tion sets both a time lim­it on their own escape, and estab­lishes the need to warn and evac­u­ate the Cov­en­ant. Azon­an’s cal­cu­la­tions show that it will be dif­fi­cult to evac­u­ate the 3,500 Cov­en­ant in time, as they will only have one 47 minute win­dow per 11 day cycle. And that’s assum­ing they cooper­ate with some very care­ful planning.

They resume their quest to identi­fy a safe escape point, los­ing sev­er­al drones to hot, tox­ic or air­less worlds in the pro­cess, but even­tu­ally identi­fy two pos­sible des­tin­a­tions: the hills over­look­ing the shore-leave facil­it­ies on Amir II, the plan­et which Star­base 364 orbits, and what looks like the centre of a city full of mono­lith­ic struc­tures resem­bling those on Gamma Tory­ui IV. In both cases, it looks like they would arrive home about a month after their dis­ap­pear­ance, which means Amir II is likely to be crawl­ing with Klin­gons, while Lex­ing­ton would have long since left Gamma Tory­ui. Kon­in decides the lat­ter option is safer, and since the gate will open to that loc­a­tion in the next 24 hours, orders Azon­an to send a drone through to trans­mit a mes­sage to Al’Malki, Lex­ing­ton and any nearby Star­fleet vessels.

They now have 11 days to plan their evac­u­ation before the next win­dow opens. Kon­in, Raynor and Strauss begin the hard work of explain­ing the danger to the Cov­en­ant and per­suad­ing them that they need to leave, begin­ning with the coun­cil. It is remark­ably dif­fi­cult work, but even­tu­ally they suc­ceed in per­suad­ing all but a few die-hard coun­cil­lors, each rep­res­ent­ing a couple of hun­dred individuals.

The first group are ready when the win­dow opens and Quinn leads them through, encoun­ter­ing Al’Malki in the centre of the ruined city. He wel­comes them and says that Lex­ing­ton is on her way. The away team get slightly more evacu­ees through than they had hoped, then settle back to wait the 11 days for the next win­dow. They fill their time by cata­loguing the Tilikaal tech­no­logy in the sta­tion, while Kon­in con­tin­ues to bully and cajole the last hol­d­outs to agree to evac­u­ate. Over the next few weeks, they suc­ceed in evac­u­at­ing most of the pop­u­la­tion to Gamma Tory­ui IV, where they are pro­cessed by a team of refugee spe­cial­ists from Starfleet.

As the last win­dow before the dis­aster approaches, Kon­in makes a des­per­ate bid to per­suade the remain­ing Cov­en­ant to leave. His impas­sioned argu­ments, along with the rising tem­per­at­ure, finally get through, and they agree to fol­low the rest of their people.

Meher­on is the last to leave the Hab­it­a­tion, look­ing around sadly before step­ping through the gate, as flames engulf the room.

The ‘B’ Plot: Zohir has been assigned as the per­man­ent com­mand­ing officer of Lex­ing­ton, since the away team were assumed lost, but read­ily steps aside when Kon­in returns, say­ing com­mand was “too much like hard work”. He brings them up to date on recent his­tory, and they learn that the dis­pute with the Klin­gons has ended, now that the Car­das­si­ans have joined the Domin­ion, and that Vice Admir­al Hebert has returned to Nar­en­dra sta­tion. Amongst oth­er things, this means that they can provide accom­mod­a­tion for the Cov­en­ant refugees while they find them a per­man­ent home.

The Arc: Richter Strauss finally returns to the Fed­er­a­tion, albeit a cen­tury later.

Obser­va­tions: It seems the Tilikaal had some know­ledge of the Iconi­ans, but did not neces­sar­ily under­stand their technology.

Turlu­n­omi­en con­firms that the Hab­it­a­tion was a Tilikaal arte­fact, and it seems to have been used as a vant­age point for galactic obser­va­tions. It is, how­ever, unclear why there was an Iconi­an gate present.

Ref­er­ences: Metreon gas is a dan­ger­ously volat­ile sub­stance with a num­ber of unusu­al prop­er­ties. It has appeared sev­er­al times in the show, includ­ing the gas pock­ets used against the So’na by Com­mand­er Riker in Star Trek: Insur­rec­tion, and the metreon cas­cade weapon used against the Talaxians.

Strauss men­tions a num­ber of the ori­gin­al Lady Lex’s crew’s quirks, includ­ing the ghost in Engineering.