Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×01

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

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 2^nd Novem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Gar-zalash Black: Reclus­ive scientist
• Ash’tamalia: Lead­er of the Tilikaal “Dis­placed”

Ash’tamalia appears to have shown her true col­ours, and seems intent on using the Tilikaal arte­facts on Cal-Mirra to enhance her power at the expense of the inhab­it­ants. We need to close the gate­way before its ener­gies com­pletely destabil­ise the Cal-Mir­rans’ bio-energy fields.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 54955.5, supplemental

Plot: The away team battles Ash’tamalia while des­per­ately try­ing to close the gate­way to her dimension.

The ‘A’ Plot: As water con­tin­ues to pour in to the room, Zepht orders the team to open fire. Raynor responds imme­di­ately, hit­ting Ash’tamalia square in the chest with his phaser beam, but sees the beam dif­frac­ted through her body into a harm­less spray of col­our. She retali­ates with a telekin­et­ic blast, hurl­ing him across the room, where his head hits the side of the entry­way, knock­ing him out.

Mean­while, Zepht attempts to reverse the key sequence that opened the portal, and Azon­an launches him­self at the Tilikaal, hop­ing that his ush­aan will affect her crys­tal­line body the same way it does ice. Unfor­tu­nately, he misses, and she simply floats upward out of his reach.

Dr Con­ners goes to check on Raynor, apply­ing first aid to his head injury, and pre­par­at­ing to evac­u­ate him to the run­about. Ash’tamalia begins to draw more power from the spire’s energy con­duits, as Azon­an joins Zepht who is now attempt­ing to cut off the power to the gate­way, where more Tilikaal aderi are emer­ging from their pris­on universe.

Determ­in­ing that Ash’tamalia presents too much of a threat to Zepht and Azon­an to ignore, Con­ners begins modi­fy­ing her tri­cord­er to emit a fre­quency that should cre­ate a dam­aging res­on­ance in her crys­tal form. The Tilikaal her­self is draw­ing more power, and many of the newly-arrived aderi can be seen mov­ing towards spe­cif­ic sar­co­phagi in the room. The Tilikaal lead­er hurls anoth­er bolt of energy at Azon­an and Zepht, but it misses, throw­ing up splin­ters from the frame of the gate­way arch.

The two officers make a hero­ic effort, com­pletely shut­ting the gate­way down. The res­ults are imme­di­ate, as the col­our­ful field col­lapses into a rotat­ing black disc, and Ash’tamalia screams her defi­ance. Sud­denly, Gar-zalash throws them­self into the gate, express­ing a desire to see what lies bey­ond, as the disc com­presses into a point and vanishes.

With the gate­way gone, the arch itself begins to col­lapse, an early sign of a more gen­er­al col­lapse of the Shad­ow Spire, its struc­ture weakened by the vibra­tions. Ash’tamalia sum­mons a final surge of energy from the con­duits and van­ishes with a num­ber of aderi, appar­ently trans­port­ing to an unknown location.

With more water flood­ing into the cham­ber, the away team begins to evac­u­ate, before Zepht notices there are sev­er­al dozen newly-awakened Tilikaal climb­ing out of sarch­o­phagi and look­ing con­fused. Real­ising they can­not leave even a poten­tial enemy to die, Zepht orders Quinn to beam them into the run­about, where they can be moved to safety.

The Trave finally flees into the dark water as the Shad­ow Spire col­lapses behind it, head­ing through the hole remain­ing in the sur­face towards space once the rubble has settled.

Arriv­ing in orbit, Zepht con­tacts Lex­ing­ton to report on their exper­i­ences. Con­ners then asks to talk dir­ectly to Com­mand­er Zohir, who she sur­prises by ask­ing him to remove the cap­tain from act­ive duty and restrict him to his quar­ters imme­di­ately. She explains that the pres­ence of a Tilikaal aderi in his mind means that he is a secur­ity threat at this point. Aboard the ship, Kon­in is some­what irrit­ated by this sum­mary decision, but puts up no resistance.

Once the run­about has returned to Lex­ing­ton, the Tilikaal refugees, phys­ic­ally weak and appar­ently amne­si­ac, are placed in the quar­ant­ine ward, where nurses and a secur­ity team can keep an eye on them. Con­ners takes Raynor into sur­gery to work on his injur­ies but, even­tu­ally, she has to join the rest of the team to explain her actions to Zohir.

At the debrief­ing, the away team explains about Ash’tamali­a’s true nature, and their sus­pi­cion that Tur­lo­nu­mi­en, Kon­in’s men­tal pas­sen­ger, can­not be trus­ted. Zepht believes that Ash’tamalia may have lied about why her people were imprisoned – and that her fac­tion were the insane ones. Although the doc­tor protests that only Nar­en­dra Sta­tion would have the neces­sary facil­it­ies to carry out a full exam­in­a­tion of the cap­tain, Zohir orders the doc­tor to carry out an exam­in­a­tion of her own at the first oppor­tun­ity, with a full secur­ity backup. Azon­an and Boone are also to begin a full exam­in­a­tion of the com­puter sys­tems to ensure that Tur­lo­nu­mi­en has not been cre­at­ing secur­ity bypasses.

A shuttle­craft is dis­patched back to Cal-Mirra with a team of dip­lo­mats and xeno­anthro­po­lo­gists to estab­lish full rela­tions with the Cal-Mir­rans. They report back that the Cal-Mir­rans have had one of their own star­ships hijacked from orbit, the crew slaughtered in the pro­cess. It seems Ash’tamalia has escaped deep­er into the Expanse.

Con­ners exam­ines Kon­in dur­ing the return trip to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, determ­in­ing that Turlu­n­omi­en’s brain­wave pat­terns are def­in­itely stronger than they were. The cap­tain seems unaware of any issues, but after a few minutes, the Tilikaal aderi simply takes over, talk­ing dir­ect to the Doc­tor with Kon­in’s voice. He refuses to answer ques­tions about his place in the Tilikaal intern­al struggles, but explains that Ash’tamalia is the most driv­en mem­ber of his fac­tion, and will do whatever it takes to free her people. Tur­lo­nu­mi­en insists that he per­son­ally has no hos­tile intent towards either the ship or the Federation.

They arrive back at the sta­tion to news of the Second Battle of Deep Space NIne, and the Fed­er­a­tion’s sub­sequent with­draw­al from the region fol­low­ing Bajor’s non-aggres­sion pact with the Domin­ion. It seems war has once again broken out in the Alpha Quadrant.

The Arc: Ash’tamalia is still loose some­where in the Shack­leton Expanse, while Tur­lo­nu­mi­en’s exact inten­tion is unclear.

Obser­va­tions: From the view­ers’ point of view, Kon­in’s con­scious­ness is now trapped inside his own head. Tur­lo­nu­mi­en appears to be in con­trol of his mind and body. As yet, this is only sus­pec­ted by Conners.

Ref­er­ences: It seems the Cal-Mir­rans do have star­ships, of a crys­tal­line form sim­il­ar to Sar-ayla’s skiff. This comes as a great relief to Zepht, who was wor­ried they had viol­ated the Prime Dir­ect­ive again.

The Second Battle of Deep Space 9 marks the begin­ning of the Domin­ion War. Star­fleet is forced to leave Bajor­an space fol­low­ing the sign­ing of non-aggres­sion pacts between the Domin­ion and most of the galactic powers in the Alpha and Beta Quad­rants. While Vice Admir­al Hebert is being asked to pri­or­it­ise the 20^th Fleet’s work in the Shack­leton Expanse, she has sent sev­er­al ships to join Star­fleet forces near the Car­das­si­an Demil­it­ar­ised Zone, includ­ing the Ven­ture and the Thun­der­Child.

Ques­tions: Where exactly does Tur­lo­nu­mi­en stand with regards to Ash’tamalia?