Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×02

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 9^th Novem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Com­modore Jensen: Seni­or officer in Star­fleet Intelligence

After sev­er­al weeks of being invest­ig­ated by both psy­cho­lo­gists and Star­fleet Intel­li­gence at Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, I have been cleared to resume my com­mand. It seems my Tilikaal pas­sen­ger Tur­lo­nu­mi­en is not con­sidered to be a threat.

The con­flict in the Alpha Quad­rant is not going well, and most of the 20^th Fleet has now been dis­patched to aid with the defence, leav­ing the rest of us stretched once more. The Lex­ing­ton’s mis­sion continues.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51054.5

Plot: Lex­ing­ton’s seni­or officers are recruited for a cov­ert mis­sion into Vin­Shari space.

The ‘A’ Plot: The Domin­ion War is escal­at­ing, and many ves­sels in the 20^th Fleet are recalled to the Alpha Quad­rant to help bol­ster the defence against the Jem’hadar forces. Cap­tain Kon­in spends sev­er­al weeks being invest­ig­ated and examined by both secur­ity and med­ic­al divi­sions, before they decide that Tur­lo­nu­mi­en is not a threat to either Star­fleet or the ongo­ing oper­a­tion. Mean­while, the Lex­ing­ton crew is kept busy with routine patrols and escort mis­sions until the U.S.S. Cairo, under the com­mand of Cap­tain Leslie Wong, arrives at the sta­tion to help pick up some of the load.

Kon­in and his seni­or officers are ordered to a secure brief­ing on the sta­tion’s com­mand level, each being reques­ted by name. In the brief­ing room, Cap­tain Murphy intro­duces them to Com­modore Jensen of Star­fleet Intel­li­gence, along with a couple of more juni­or officers.

Once the room is secured, Jensen begins his brief­ing. He explains that a num­ber of ships have been raided and either cap­tured or des­troyed by the Vin­Shari over the last few months, some of them Star­fleet, although the major­ity were civil­ian. It had been assumed that the crews were dead, which seems to be stand­ard pro­ced­ure for the Vin­Shari, but recently a series of faint Star­fleet com­badge sig­nals has been picked up from Vin­Shari space. It appears that there were three sur­viv­ors from the SS Cav­endish, a Star­fleet sup­port ves­sel lost back in Novem­ber. The sig­nals were traced to Scorch, the inner­most world of the Vin­Shari home sys­tem and the loc­a­tion of their most notori­ous pris­on facil­ity. Jensen wants the lost officers safely back in Fed­er­a­tion space, along with any oth­er Fed­er­a­tion cit­izens present.

The Vin­Shari atti­tude to out­siders means that the res­cue will be a cov­ert mis­sion into hos­tile space. Jensen has a small ship that could slip through, but he needs a crew famil­i­ar with the Vin­Shari – and that is why Kon­in and his crew are present. Their job would be to go in, find the sur­viv­ors and bring them out, all without being caught by the VinShari.

The officers agree to under­take the mis­sion, although Zepht seems to feel they had no choice, and then Com­mand­er Sig­mund is let in. They will be using her run­about, the U.S.S. Cass, and one of the reas­ons for all the secrecy is the ship’s illeg­al cloak­ing device. Jensen’s plan is that Lex­ing­ton will take them to a point 10 light years from the Vin­Shari sys­tem, whereupon the Cass will use its cloak­ing device to sneak through the drone cor­don and sys­tem to reach Scorch itself, before return­ing the way it came.

There is some con­cern as to how many pris­on­ers they could carry if there are a large num­ber present. Sig­mund tells them that she is plan­ning to remove most of the sens­it­ive equip­ment from the Cass, so that will give them enough room for about 40 pas­sen­gers for a short while. There is some dis­cus­sion of mul­tiple shuttle runs and trans­port­er relays, but it is even­tu­ally decided that this is some­thing to worry about once they know what they are deal­ing with.

Jensen reminds them that this is a top secret mis­sion. The major­ity of the crew, includ­ing Com­mand­er Zohir, will be unaware of the true nature of their mis­sion. The Cass will oper­ate from shut­tle­bay 2, the mod­i­fied bay that serves as home to the Trave, and the equip­ment removed from the run­about will also be stored there. The deck will be off-lim­its to the usu­al sup­port per­son­nel, and watched over by the two Star­fleet Intel­li­gence officers present at the briefing.

A few days later, Lex­ing­ton approaches a brown dwarf, appar­ently con­duct­ing a routine sur­vey, but uses its advanced sensors to scan the Vin­Shari sys­tem, not­ing that the new­born 4^th star on its edge is still very act­ive, throw­ing viol­ent sol­ar flares in all dir­ec­tions. The scan also enables them to get a record of the Vin­Shari fleet’s patrol sched­ules, so that they can put togeth­er an approach plan to avoid them.

The Cass launches for a “closer look at the brown dwarf”, then jumps to warp, cloak­ing as it does so. The run­about soon arrives at the ship grave­yard around the sys­tem and they return to nor­mal space for the approach. As they pass through the grave­yard, Quinn notices a hulk of an unusu­al design, resem­bling a beetle. He iden­ti­fies it as a Domin­ion attack ship, and Sig­mund is sur­prised to see it so far from the bat­tle­front near Bajor.

The Cass moves on towards the drone cor­don, and the con­ver­sa­tion trails off into silence. Things are tense for a few minutes, but the cloak does its job and they pass through unnoticed. Enter­ing the sys­tem from above the eclipt­ic plane, Quinn man­oeuvres the run­about to avoid patrols and take advant­age of the sol­ar flares to con­fuse the Vin­Shari defence systems.

They are still undetec­ted as they enter orbit around Scorch. They are some­what sur­prised to find three prim­it­ive space sta­tions arranged in a polar orbit around the plan­et. They have little in the way of equip­ment and only about a dozen life signs each, and each pos­sesses one large win­dow open­ing on to the three cent­ral suns. After a few moments, Azon­an sur­mises that these are mon­as­ter­ies, observing the Vin­Shari gods.

As they con­sider this, they are sub­jec­ted to a brief moment of worry as a Vin­Shari cruis­er approaches, but it ignores them and jet­tis­ons a drop pod con­tain­ing three lifesigns, which then falls towards the plan­et’s sur­face. It lands in the middle of an area about 50 km across, littered with metal­lic wreck­age. The Cass’s sensors show that the life­forms sur­vived, and that there are oth­er humanoid lifesigns scattered across the plan­et’s sur­face, along with clusters of arti­fi­cial shel­ters assembled from pieces of wreck­age. They also pick up a fast-mov­ing group of pet­ro­chem­ic­al-powered vehices fur­ther afield.

It seems that there is a good chance the Star­fleet officers are still alive.

The Arc: While Lex­ing­ton has been focus­sing on the Tilikaal threat, the Vin­Shari have been expand­ing their own sphere of influence.

Obser­va­tions: Scorch is the closest world to the Vin­Shari primary stars, a class‑H desert world with low grav­ity, a thin atmo­sphere and very little water. The Vin­Shari use it as a pris­on for viol­ent and polit­ic­al pris­on­ers, depos­it­ing them on the sur­face in small drop pods and abandon­ing them to their fates. There are scattered life­forms, but the humanoid pop­u­la­tion is clustered around a 50 km region covered in the wreck­age left by the drop pods. While there are isol­ated com­munit­ies of make­shift shel­ters, some of the pop­u­la­tion are mobile, trav­el­ing in groups of pet­rol-engined vehicles.

Three sta­tions circle the plan­et in a polar orbit that ensures they have per­petu­al sight of the three suns. With min­im­al equip­ment and life sup­port, these appear to serve as mon­as­ter­ies, allow­ing their occu­pants to con­tem­plate the gods their suns symbolise.

The new star cre­ated by the Ha’kiv on their last vis­it has appar­ently been named Zarap (“The Unborn” in the primary Vin­Shari tongue), and is regarded as an out­post of evil. A cor­don of battle­sta­tions has already been built around it to provide early warn­ing of trouble. It is extremely act­ive, giv­ing off many sol­ar flares and ejec­tions of coron­al mass.

Ref­er­ences: The U.S.S. Cairo is an Excel­si­or-class ves­sel under the com­mand of Cap­tain Leslie Wong, assigned to the Shack­leton Expanse to help with every­day duties while many of the more mod­ern ves­sels of the 20^th Fleet have been reas­signed to the bat­tle­front. The Cairo first appeared in the Star Trek: the Next Gen­er­a­tion epis­ode “Chain of Com­mand”, under the com­mand of Edward Jellico.

The unusu­al wreck spot­ted in the grave­yard is a Jem’Hadar fight­er, a small attack ves­sel used extens­ively by the Dominion.

Ques­tions: It remains to be seen how many Star­fleet and Fed­er­a­tion per­son­nel are stran­ded on Scorch, and wheth­er the team have simply been lured into a trap.