Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×03

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 7^th Decem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant Tan­ya Prescott: Stran­ded Star­fleet engineer.
• Mang Kleq: Klin­gon prisoner.
• Gravel: Head of a fac­tion of pris­on­ers on Scorch.
• Tem­pest: Rival to Gravel.

Scorch is turn­ing out to be some­what hos­tile to life. Per­petu­al dust storms, desert con­di­tions, sink­holes and aggress­ive neigh­bours would make you do any­thing to sur­vive. Hope­fully, we can find our miss­ing officers and get out quickly.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51085.3

Plot: The res­cue party sneaks into the camp hold­ing the source of the com­badge signals.

The ‘A’ Plot: With their tri­cord­ers los­ing accur­acy with range, the cap­tain decides they need to get closer to the nearby set­tle­ment to observe it dir­ectly. Accord­ingly, Raynor leads the party out into the dust cloud, accom­pan­ied by the two Klin­gons, who have accep­ted Kon­in’s demand for their service.

About 200m into their walk, Raynor, who has been con­cen­trat­ing on their path over the rough ground, is sur­prised as an armoured creature launches itself out of a shal­low depres­sion at him. Des­pite the impact, he is able to fight back and fells it with a punch, shout­ing that they’re under attack by manis. A second manis attacks Azon­an, viciously claw­ing him before he can throw it back against a rock, knock­ing it out. Quinn spots a third creature approach­ing, but is able to stun it before it can attack. Con­ners treats Azon­an’s injury, then they move on.

Not long after, they reach the edge of a wide, shal­low val­ley, con­tain­ing a scat­ter­ing of tents, lean-tos and oth­er shel­ters, along with a vari­ety of impro­vised vehicles. Two lar­ger struc­tures, one com­posed of met­al plates, dom­in­ate the set­tle­ment, sit­ting to one side of an open area con­tain­ing a firepit. There are not many guards, but they decide to wait until night­fall before approach­ing, to be on the safe side.

Once dark­ness falls, they sneak into the camp, Raynor again lead­ing the way. Most of the team man­age this without mak­ing too much noise, aided by the begin­ning of some kind of party around the firepit. Azon­an is nearly caught in the open when the sol­it­ary guard walks into the area. He comes close to find­ing the Andori­an’s hid­ing place, but Raynor silently dis­ables him before he can.

Mak­ing their way to the met­al shel­ter, they see that it has been con­struc­ted out of hull plates from the drop pods. There are no gaps on the rear side of the struc­ture, so Zepht and Raynor circle it quietly on oppos­ite sides, not­ing a metal­lic clank­ing noise from inside. Reach­ing the front, they see two guards on the entrance, with anoth­er stand­ing in the entrance to the large tent oppos­ite. It seems a little too dan­ger­ous to go in this way, so they sig­nal back to the others.

Azon­an opens his toolkit and pulls out a laser cut­ter, then cuts a hole in the wall. Inside he sees two pris­on­ers, wear­ing explos­ive col­lars, work­ing on a com­plex device at a bench. One of them is wear­ing a tattered Star­fleet uni­form and Azon­an sur­mises this is one of their tar­gets. He steps for­ward, announ­cing his pres­ence. She intro­duces her­self as Lieu­ten­ant Tan­ya Prescott, and asks if he is there to res­cue her and her friends.

He asks her how many, and she says “about fifty”. He imme­di­ately explains that won’t be pos­sible, as they don’t have space. Her face darkens, and she snarls: “OK, then let’s go for plan B!” She reaches for a com­badge on the bench, and Azon­an grabs her arms, trig­ger­ing a des­per­ate struggle.

Noti­cing the guards enter­ing the shel­ter to invest­ig­ate the noise, Raynor fol­lows them in and knocks them out in two swift blows. Azon­an, mean­while, des­pite tak­ing a dir­ect hit from one of the guards’ guns, suc­ceeds in immob­il­ising Prescott.

Out­side, an explo­sion announces the begin­ning of an attack by a rival fac­tion of pris­on­ers. The pris­on­ers out­side move to fight back, and open war­fare breaks out around the firepit. A huge Vin­Shari man walks out of the large tent, and Zepht real­ises this is Gravel, the notori­ous lead­er of the fac­tion. He strides into the battle and calls out the lead­er of the oppos­i­tion, a Vin­Shari woman call­ing her­self Tem­pest. Zepht has time to note that she does not seem to have the usu­al neck spines, although it takes a moment to real­ise that the Mida­jah-Ka they met in a pre­vi­ous encounter also exhib­ited this peculiarity.

When Tem­pest responds to his chal­lenge, tak­ing up a dis­tinct­ive com­bat stance, Gravel laughs at her and pro­duces a ram­shackle-look­ing gun from his belt. He thumbs the trig­ger, and it briefly emits a beam remin­is­cent of a phaser, before explod­ing in his hand, killing him instantly.

Zepht real­ises the battle is already over and con­tacts the oth­ers to warn them. Kon­in checks that Azon­an and Raynor have secured Prescott and orders an imme­di­ate beamout.

Aboard the Cass, they inter­rog­ate the sul­len Prescott, dis­cov­er­ing that she was the only Star­fleet officer left on the plan­et. Her two col­leagues had both been killed shortly after their arrival after refus­ing to work for one of the fac­tions. She had been res­cued by Tem­pest, who had turned out to be a woman with ambi­tion. They became fast friends, and Prescott had provided her with soph­ist­ic­ated weapons and vehicles assembled from com­pon­ents gathered from the wreck­age of the drop pods. These in turn had enabled Tem­pest’s rap­id rise to head of a very suc­cess­ful fac­tion. The pair had devised a plan to attract a Star­fleet res­cue party, using the dead officers’ com­badges, and then get the entire fac­tion off plan­et and out of the Vin­Shari sys­tem, so Tem­pest could begin her ven­geance against the Vin­Shari government.

Once the Lex­ing­ton has returned to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, Prescott is handed over to Star­fleet Secur­ity for debrief­ing and prob­able charges regard­ing her actions.

Obser­va­tions: Lieu­ten­ant Tan­ya Prescott is a Human engin­eer from Luna, the last sur­viv­or of her crew and pos­sess­ing an ingeni­ous abil­ity to adapt tech­no­logy to new uses. She has seen enough hor­rors to ensure that she is will­ing to com­prom­ise her prin­ciples for a chance of escape for her­self and her friends.

Gravel is a tower­ing, mus­cu­lar Vin­Shari male, and has armed him­self with a very basic phaser assembled by Prescott. Unfor­tu­nately, it explodes as soon as he tries to use it, which was always Prescot­t’s inten­tion. His rival, Tem­pest is a Vin­Shari female of more nor­mal size, but appears to be miss­ing her col­lar spines, an indic­a­tion that she was once a mem­ber of the Mida­jah-Ka, the Vin­Shari intel­li­gence service.

Ref­er­ences: The attack­ing pred­at­ors are manis, the semi-intel­li­gent dog-like creatures used by the Vin­Shari, and pre­vi­ously seen in “The Needs of the Few”. This trio appear to be a nat­ur­al hunt­ing group, pre­sum­ably prey­ing on the stran­ded prisoners.