Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×01

Writ­ten by: ELH

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 17^th Septem­ber 2024

For the past two weeks, we have been head­ing away from Oreis­on, although long range sensors have been show­ing that the K’si are with­draw­ing all their ves­sels from the vicin­ity. It is pos­sible that recent events have had a big­ger impact on their soci­ety than we had anti­cip­ated. That said, I’m keen to put as much dis­tance as pos­sible between us and them. We’ve lost track of the Che­vareth – the Romu­lans cloaked as they went to warp, and it appears their dam­aged cloak is still effect­ive at long range.

This time has been rel­at­ively quiet: there’s not much to do while trav­el­ing up and down these neb­ula tun­nels, espe­cially giv­en the lack of any true recre­ation­al facil­it­ies on the ship. The crew is mak­ing do, though. They’ve arranged a tal­ent night in the mess hall to keep mor­ale high. So far I’ve only per­son­ally seen Ensign Dol­is per­form with her sax­o­phone. I should prob­ably fig­ure out what sort of tal­ent I can bring to the table. I won­der if the oth­er seni­or officers have any­thing to offer?

I’m host­ing a little potluck in my quar­ters tonight: maybe it will be a good sub­ject for conversation…

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9976.8

Plot: Lyo­n­esse responds to a Star­fleet dis­tress call from a nearby sys­tem, but runs into a major problem.

The ‘A’ Plot: While the cap­tain and her seni­or officers enjoy a din­ner party in her cab­in, Lt Tim­monds is the officer of the watch on the bridge. The com­mu­nic­a­tions officer reports receiv­ing a dis­tress call from ahead of the ship, and once Tim­monds has heard the mes­sage, he imme­di­ately con­tacts the captain.

Mas­uda arrives on deck, accom­pan­ied by the oth­er officers, and asks what they’ve dis­covered. Tim­monds explains that the sig­nal is a stand­ard auto­mated Star­fleet dis­tress mes­sage, but that he can­’t identi­fy the ori­gin­at­ing ves­sel. Jin ana­lyses the sig­nal and estab­lishes that it was trans­mit­ted by Star­fleet equip­ment, but that the usu­al iden­ti­fic­a­tion codes are in an unknown format. Addi­tion­ally, com­pon­ent ref­er­ence num­bers embed­ded in the sig­nal are too high for the cur­rent peri­od, as they are usu­ally assigned sequentially.

The ori­gin point is in a sys­tem in a neb­ula bubble about 1 light year ahead, and ini­tial scans show it’s on a class‑Y “demon” plan­et. Real­ising response time will be of the essence, Mas­uda orders max­im­um speed.

About 20 hours later, the ship drops out of warp on the edge of the sys­tem, which is com­posed of a K‑class star, fairly typ­ic­al for this region, three gas giants and a single rocky world, close to the primary, with a high grav­it­a­tion­al pull, and the hot, tox­ic atmo­sphere asso­ci­ated with a demon plan­et. They’re able to pin­point the ori­gin point for the dis­tress call quite quickly, but sensors are also show­ing a large K’si facil­ity on the oth­er side of the plan­et. Mas­uda com­ments that this is a little awk­ward, giv­en their recent inter­ac­tions with the cul­ture, but they need to respond to the dis­tress call.

Then Jin announces that the sensor scans are also show­ing that the sys­tem is riddled with space/time frac­tures, with dif­fer­ent regions appear­ing to be in dif­fer­ent time zones rel­at­ive to oth­ers. The frac­tures radi­ate out­wards from the plan­et, and are dan­ger­ous, as they are not easy to see and can cause sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age if hit at speed.

This last point is demon­strated almost imme­di­ately, as the ship rocks viol­ently, and alarm klax­ons begin blar­ing. Almost imme­di­ately, main engin­eer­ing is evac­u­at­ing, report­ing that there has been a warp core breach. Valik sprints down to the core in an effort to pre­vent it going crit­ic­al and des­troy­ing the ship. Aided by Crew­man Ewendi at a nearby con­sole, and by Lts James and Jin on the bridge, he is able to shut the core down, avert­ing catastrophe.

Valik reports to the bridge that it will take a long time to repair the dam­age, but Hop­era notes that they won’t be able to travel at warp speeds through the maze of frac­tures around the plan­et anyway.

The ‘B’ Plot: The cap­tain holds a potluck din­ner in her cab­in, invit­ing her seni­or officers. Each of them brings a con­tri­bu­tion to the meal:

• Lt Valik sup­plies the starter, a tur­een of plomeek soup, although he has toned down the fla­vour out of con­sid­er­a­tion for his non-Vul­can colleagues.
• Mas­uda has pre­pared sushi, with fish and veget­ari­an options.
• Com­mand­er Hop­era sup­plies a dish of Andori­an noodles, in a spicy blue sauce.
• Dr Vale-of-Winds pro­duces a xen­o­fungus gratin, which is a shock­ing pink colour.
• Lieu­ten­ant Jin brings dessert, a salted dragon­fruit pie, accom­pan­ied by black cus­tard, in hon­our of the Black Cluster itself.
• Lieu­ten­ant James brings the last of his sup­ply of home-brewed ale, based on a recipe from his fron­ti­er homeworld.

Dr Vale is late, plead­ing extra work in sick­bay. The Vul­cans they res­cued from the Sonak’s sup­port vehicle are now recov­er­ing from their long peri­od of sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion, and are receiv­ing treat­ment for asso­ci­ated con­di­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, some of them are react­ing badly to being treated by non-Vul­cans, which is mak­ing things a little dif­fi­cult. Valik offers to talk to them to help estab­lish a bet­ter relationship.

As the meal pro­gresses, Mas­uda brings up the sub­ject of the tal­ent con­test, and won­ders if any of the group would like to con­trib­ute? Jin pro­poses pro­du­cing an artist­ic holo­graph­ic dis­play based on Lyo­n­esse’s jour­ney to date, set to music, while James offers to sing. Those who have heard the conn officer hum­ming to him­self on the bridge wince at the thought.

The Arc: The K’si are with­draw­ing from the vicin­ity of Oreis­on, but it is unclear why.

Obser­va­tions: BC-12b is a class Y “demon” world, and is inhos­pit­able to most life, with a grav­it­a­tion­al pull in excess of 1.5g, a dense, hot atmo­sphere, full of sul­phur­ous com­pounds, and extreme tec­ton­ic activ­ity. The dis­tress call comes from the middle of a 100 km wide plain, sur­roun­ded by act­ive volcanoes.

Due to the over­run­ning of the mis­sion, the crew has begun organ­ising tal­ent con­tests and oth­er enter­tain­ments to improve morale.

The Vul­can sur­viv­ors from the Sonak are now awake after spend­ing sev­er­al dec­ades in sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion, but are being mon­itored care­fully as they recov­er. Unfor­tu­nately, some of them still main­tain an older Vul­can arrog­ance towards oth­er spe­cies, caus­ing a cer­tain amount of ten­sion with the med­ic­al team.

Hamilton James brews his own ale, based on a recipe from the fron­ti­er world on which he grew up. He brought a stash with him and has been ration­ing them through­out the trip, but brings the last bottles to Mas­uda’s potluck.

Dia­logue: Vale, in response to the sug­ges­tion of a sci­entif­ic present­a­tion at the tal­ent show: “Maybe we can liven it up a bit? With inter­pret­at­ive dance?”

Ques­tions: There are not sup­posed to be any Star­fleet ves­sels in the Black Cluster, so who’s broad­cast­ing the dis­tress sig­nal? Is this a K’si trap?