Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×17

Writ­ten by: Kelly Fitzpatrick & Derek Tyler Attico, with Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 19^th Octo­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Sar-ayla Blue: Cal-Mir­ran guide
• Gar-zalash Black: Reclus­ive scientist
• Ash’tamalia: Lead­er of the Tilikaal “Dis­placed”

Our search for meth­ods of help­ing the Tilikaal has led us through the heart of Cal-Mir­ran soci­ety and now out bey­ond the reaches of civil­iz­a­tion. We found an unlikely ally in a near-para­noid sci­ent­ist, Gar-zalash Black, who is obsessed with the energy pulses. Per­haps they can help us find the seat of this power so we can help both the Cal-Mir­rans and the Tilikaal.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 54955.5, supplemental

Plot: After fight­ing off a loc­al pred­at­or, the group gains entrance to the Shad­ow Spire, where they dis­cov­er that the Tilikaal are not quite what they present them­selves to be.

The ‘A’ Plot: Zepht tries to get a clear scan of the “dragon” as it winds its way past the run­about, but the mind fog accom­pa­ny­ing it makes it dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. He man­ages to get an image of the huge eel-like creature, not­ing its size and thick blue scales.

As Quinn tries to man­oeuvre the Trave out of its way, Sar-ayla explains that cobalt dragons hunt by track­ing men­tal energy, so they decide their best bet to escape without killing it is to tem­por­ar­ily “blind” this abil­ity. Dr Con­ners reveals that she has a small amount of ther­agen in her medkit, which she uses to sup­press the cap­tain’s tele­pathy when needed. She thinks she can rep­lic­ate a large enough dose to affect the dragon, but it would be dif­fi­cult to deliv­er through the creature’s armoured skin.

Raynor pro­poses that a mod­i­fied micro­tor­pedo could be guided into the creature’s mouth, but Azon­an reminds him that the weapons sys­tems on the run­about are not access­ible from inside the hull. It may be pos­sible, how­ever, to rep­lic­ate a probe for the pur­pose, using the trans­port­er to get it near its target.

Over the next des­per­ate minutes, Quinn con­tin­ues to dodge the dragon’s attacks, while Zepht tries to main­tain the shields against its power­ful bites. Azon­an and Raynor work to build the probe, and Con­ners rep­lic­ates enough ther­agen to affect the creature. Soon, they are fin­ished and Azon­an beams it out into the sea near the creature, where Raynor steers it into its mouth. The effect is imme­di­ate and the men­tal pres­sure lifts as the dragon rears back, its body coil­ing and uncoil­ing viol­ently, before it swims off, slowly shak­ing its head.

The Trave resumes its jour­ney towards the base of the spire a kilo­met­er below, where a large arch­way marks a door into the interi­or. Set­ting down next to it, the Star­fleet per­son­nel don envir­on­ment suits to endure the high pres­sure at this depth. The door is curi­ously devoid of the plant and anim­al growths on the rest of the struc­ture, des­pite being of the same material.

Zepht is able to work out the con­trols, and they enter a large air­lock, work­ing des­pite its age. Bey­ond is a large octa­gon­al room, with anoth­er large arch­way on the far side, match­ing the one they just exited, but rather than a door, it holds a black void. The ceil­ing is out of sight, and the room’s walls are covered in tiers of Tilikaal sar­co­phagi like the ones below the sur­face of Can­did­ate Three II. Bright blue energy chan­nels snake down the walls between the sar­co­phagi. Sev­er­al more sar­co­phagi rest on the room’s floor, and a con­trol pan­el covered in Tilikaal runes adorns the wall next to the archway.

As Sar-ayla explores the cham­ber, point­ing out its fea­tures eagerly, Gar-zalash begins record­ing the scene using a mix of ali­en tech­no­lo­gies. They provide a rap­id com­ment­ary to their record­ings, primar­ily about how the vari­ous fea­tures con­fim their the­or­ies about ali­en-gov­ern­ment com­mu­nic­a­tions and plots.

Scans show that the sar­co­phagi are occu­pied, but that the con­di­tion of the occu­pants var­ies, with some deceased, oth­ers in sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion, and odd indi­vidu­als appear­ing to be awake. That status also seems to be short-lived, how­ever, as these Tilikaal quickly return to a sus­pen­ded state, or even die alto­geth­er, moments later, while oth­ers awaken in turn. They note that the awaken­ings appear to be linked to reg­u­lar strong pulses of tetryon­ic energy from the arch­way, pulses that also coin­cide with power­ful tremors shak­ing the whole structure.

The vibra­tions appear to be caused by micro­frac­tures in the space/time con­tinuum, an effect they’ve seen before at Can­did­ate Three. It appears that the spire is accu­mu­lat­ing energy from sub­space, then releas­ing a pulse of tetry­ons when it reaches a cer­tain threshold. The tetry­ons open a micro­frac­ture, allow­ing a Tilikaal aderi to emerge and awaken a body, and trig­ger anoth­er vibra­tion. Unfor­tu­nately for the aderi, the frac­ture then closes, return­ing them to their imprisonment.

Azon­an notes that the tremors are dam­aging the struc­ture, and that their fre­quency is increas­ing. Gar-zalash reminds them that the vibra­tions are also being felt in the oth­er spires across the plan­et, caus­ing the debil­it­at­ing effects to the Cal-Mir­rans that they’ve already wit­nessed, and that the Shad­ow Spire appears to be the epi­centre of the effect. Even­tu­ally, the vibra­tions will be so power­ful that the entire pop­u­la­tion will be threatened.

Zepht tries throw­ing a rock at the black void under the arch and it van­ishes. Real­ising that this is a gate­way, pre­sum­ably to the Tilikaal’s pris­on dimen­sion, they determ­ine that the sys­tem is act­ive but that some­thing is wrong. Power is being drawn from sub­space by the spire and fed into the gate sys­tem, but the gate is not using it, instead allow­ing it to dis­charge into the loc­al envir­on­ment, caus­ing the ongo­ing deteri­or­a­tion of the struc­ture. Activ­at­ing the gate prop­erly should both use up the excess energy, and open the gate­way, with the added bonus of provid­ing an exit route for the trapped aderi.

Zepht turns his atten­tion to the con­trol pan­el, while Sar-ayla hov­ers over his shoulder mak­ing help­ful sug­ges­tions. He works out the sequence to activ­ate the gate and enters it, whereupon the void is replaced with a swirl­ing mass of colour.

An almost invis­ible shock­wave passes through the room, and Gar-zalash is trans­fixed by its effect, invol­un­tar­ily trig­ger­ing the same tem­por­al illu­sion effect used by the Cal-Mir­ran lead­er, Ayr-amin Gold, when they first arrived. This time, the accom­pa­ny­ing images appear to show the spire cham­ber at an earli­er point in time.

Sar-ayla is present, explor­ing the room and its con­tents with great curi­os­ity. They inter­fere with one of the sar­co­phagi, and it implodes, crush­ing its occu­pant instantly. Sar-ayla shows mild dis­tress, then, as they explore fur­ther, a series of col­ours flash from the void in the arch­way, which the team’s com­mu­nic­at­ors trans­late. Sar-ayla is asked what they are doing, and then the com­mu­nic­at­or iden­ti­fies her­self as Ash’tamalia of the Displaced.

Real­ising Sar-ayla’s motiv­a­tion to explore, she sug­gests a deal: assist her people in escap­ing their pris­on and she will show the Cal-Mir­ran great won­ders. Sar-ayla quickly agrees and is told how to activ­ate the sys­tem, allow­ing it to accu­mu­late energy, but also learns that their Cal-Mir­ran physiology will not be able to use the con­trols, des­troy­ing them instead. They need to find an organ­ic being to activ­ate the gate­way prop­erly, but Ash’tamalia indic­ates that it is likely that help will arrive soon now that the sys­tem is active.

As the scene fades, Gar-zalash pulses agrily, accus­ing the oth­er Cal-Mir­ran of being a “lying gov­ern­ment agent”. Sar-ayla protests that their actions will allow the Cal-Mir­ran people to leave their world and explore mul­tiple universes.

While the two argue, the away team study the now act­ive portal, which is begin­ning to emit bursts of bright light. Sud­denly, Ash’tamali­a’s shim­mer­ing aderi appears in the arch­way, to be greeted by the eager Sar-ayla. The Tilikaal announces that the Cal-Mir­ran’s rev­el­a­tion is at hand, and reaches out a tendril of her being to touch to one of the energy chan­nels. A loud crack thun­ders through the spire and moments later a light­ning-like flash her­alds a small explo­sion of rock as one of the walls springs a leak under the intense pres­sure outside.

Ash’tamalia now reaches out with anoth­er tent­ril to grab Sar-ayla, who is instantly immob­il­ised. The Cal-Mir­ran cries out in fear and pain, as their body reforms into a crys­tal­line approx­im­a­tion of a Tilikaal. The Ash’tamali­a’s aderi moves down the tendril of energy and merges with the form, appar­ently over­whelm­ing Sar-ayla completely.

Ash’tamalia flexes her new fist and laughs, gloat­ing over the power avail­able to the Cal-Mir­rans and now her­self, and how she will use it to restore the power of the Tilikaal.

The Arc: Ash’tamalia is free, but this might not be such a good thing.

Obser­va­tions: This epis­ode marks the end of sea­son 4.

Ash’tamalia demon­strates a dif­fer­ent aspect to that pre­vi­ously seen. She appears to be cruel and ruth­less, with a will­ing­ness to dis­place an exist­ing intel­li­gence for her own pur­poses. The implic­a­tion is that she has been work­ing towards this event for some time.

Some Cal-Mir­rans appear to have the abil­ity to replay events from the loc­al past using a light manip­u­la­tion tech­nique they call “time refrac­tion”. This is mostly a vol­un­tary pro­cess, but can be triggered by shock or expos­ure to cer­tain ener­gies. It does not require the Cal-Mir­ran to have been present dur­ing the occur­rence of the event.

Cobalt dragons are immense eel-like creatures, about 80 metres long, with power­ful jaws, six eyes, and ves­ti­gi­al legs tipped with sharp claws. Their skin is thick and scaly, shin­ing a bright metal­lic blue in the run­about’s spot­lights. They hunt by track­ing men­tal energy, and con­sume both that and the flesh of their prey.

Dia­logue: LtCdr Zepht: “With the Tilikaal noth­ing is impossible!”

Ash’tamalia reveals a dark side to her per­son­al­ity: “Soon all our lost power will be restored, and in my control!”

Ref­er­ences: Ash’tamalia, or at least her aderi, was pre­vi­ously seen in the sequence of events mark­ing the end of sea­son 2, “The Assessor Gam­bit”, “The Dis­placed” and “As Many as Six Impossible Things”. Pre­vi­ously, she presen­ted her­self as the des­per­ate lead­er of a group of exiled paci­fists try­ing to get home.

Ques­tions: Is this Ash’tamalia, or someone pre­tend­ing to be her? If the former, what are her true intentions?