Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×07

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 8^th Feb­ru­ary 2025

Guest Stars:

• Dr Helena Talia­ferro: Head of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge.
• Deep Space Sur­vey Probe 79-Alpha Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram (SCH): The arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence con­trolling the probe.
• Thought Lead­er Zora-Nel White: Com­mand­ing officer of the Cal-Mir­ran ves­sel Tol-Ner­ine.

The Lex­ing­ton has been assigned to return to a num­ber of pre­vi­ously con­firmed Tilikaal ruins, car­ry­ing out more in-depth sur­veys for any­thing that has been missed. It is dull and painstak­ing work, but the order comes from the top, along with Dr Helena Talia­ferro. She has not been mak­ing her­self pop­u­lar, mak­ing extens­ive demands and try­ing to over­ride Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Zeph­t’s orders.

She is how­ever prov­ing a wel­come dis­trac­tion for me. While the news from the Alpha Quad­rant has been bet­ter these past few weeks, with the vic­tor­ies at Deep Space Nine and Vul­canis, there has been no news of my wife, miss­ing since the Battle of Tyra.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51278.2

Plot: Lex­ing­ton is diver­ted from re-sur­vey­ing known Tilikaal sites to recov­er a sur­vey probe stran­ded in the ice ring of Cal-Mirra. But the probe’s con­trolling arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has oth­er ideas.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton has been tasked with re-vis­it­ing those worlds already iden­ti­fied as Tilikaal sites and sur­veyed, with the inten­tion of recov­er­ing any data or tech­no­logy that might help with loc­at­ing and cap­tur­ing Ash’Tamalia, prefer­ably before she can do more harm. Lt Cdr Zepht and the ship’s sci­ences depart­ment are work­ing over­time on ana­lys­ing the new data, but Dr Helena Talia­ferro, head of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge, is accom­pa­ny­ing them and her per­fec­tion­ist atti­tude is mak­ing the work difficult.

New orders come in from the Admir­al: they are to sus­pend their cur­rent mis­sion and return imme­di­ately to Cal-Mirra, where a Star­fleet deep space probe has been found with­in the plan­et’s rings. The Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment has reques­ted that the Lex­ing­ton be assigned to recov­er the device. Hebert then goes on to explain that amongst the probe’s records are the loc­a­tions of a num­ber of Omega molecules dis­covered with­in the Expanse. Under the Omega Dir­ect­ive this data can­not be allowed to fall into the hands of oth­er, less scru­pu­lous gov­ern­ments. Kon­in is ordered to recov­er or delete the data, or to des­troy the probe.

Lex­ing­ton begins recov­er­ing the sur­vey teams at short notice, caus­ing Talia­ferro to storm on to the bridge to ask what is going on. Kon­in explains the Admir­al’s orders (without men­tion­ing the Omega Dir­ect­ive), and states that he has no choice. Recov­er­ing the probe is a pri­or­ity, but at least it should be bring­ing more use­ful data for the pro­ject as a whole. Talia­ferro even­tu­ally backs down, but lodges her protest in the strongest pos­sible terms.

Arriv­ing in the Gamma Tory­ui sys­tem, the ship is hailed by the Cal-Mir­ran ves­sel Tol-ner­ine. Its com­mand­er intro­duces them­self as Thought Lead­er Zora-Nel White, and asks if they have come to retrieve the probe. They explain that they found it drift­ing inert with­in the ice ring of the plan­et, and quickly real­ised it was of Fed­er­a­tion manufacture.

The Tol-ner­ine guides them through the ring until the probe comes into view. Zeph­t’s ini­tial scans reveal little about it: while it is oper­at­ing on min­im­al power, that energy is being used to gen­er­ate a power­ful shield and a sensor-scat­ter­ing field. He won­ders if the probe is try­ing to hide.

Zora-Nel requests to come aboard and observe the recov­ery in per­son, and Kon­in agrees in the interest of improv­ing rela­tions between the two polit­ies. The Cal-Mir­ran floats straight into Lex­ing­ton’s air­lock across the inter­ven­ing vacuum.

They hail the probe’s con­trolling arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, but there is no response, so Raynor attempts to trig­ger an over­ride, which does get a reply. The face of a young woman in Star­fleet uni­form appears on screen and she iden­ti­fies her­self as Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram 79-Alpha. The cap­tain asks her to trans­mit the probe’s col­lec­ted data and she looks regret­ful for a moment, then says that it will not be pos­sible to do so: its con­tents rep­res­ent a major threat to the galaxy at large.

Kon­in cuts con­tact and they dis­cuss ways of retriev­ing the drone, or at least the data. He explains that he has orders to des­troy the drone if it can­not be retrieved, as the data it is car­ry­ing is indeed dan­ger­ous and can­not be allowed to fall into the hands of hos­tile powers such as the Romulans.

Raynor points out that the scat­ter­ing field will make it dif­fi­cult to trans­port or tract­or the probe into the ship. Com­mand over­rides are not work­ing, but it may be pos­sible to hack into its com­puter sys­tem and extract the data remotely.

Zora-Nel is curi­ous as to the nature of the SCH, and they explain the exist­ence of non-sen­tient autonom­ous intel­li­gences, used for remote sys­tems such as this. The Cal-Mir­ran presses their point: if it is a com­puter-gen­er­ated arti­fi­cial per­son­al­ity, why is it cap­able of res­ist­ing orders?

Azon­an notes that it is pos­sible for self-aware­ness to emerge spon­tan­eously with­in such sys­tems, usu­ally as the res­ult of assim­il­a­tion of large amounts of data. If this is the case, then hack­ing the intel­li­gence or remov­ing the data would res­ult in irre­vers­ible changes to its personality.

Zora-Nel objects to this, arguing that such a self-aware per­son­al­ity is a con­scious being and must have all the rights that go with that status. Over­rid­ing its autonomy would be tan­tamount to coer­cion, and dam­aging its per­son­al­ity would be assault; des­troy­ing the probe would be murder. The Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment would not stand by idly while any of these options were car­ried out.

The SCH then con­tacts them to announce that it is request­ing asylum with the Cal-Mir­rans. Zora-Nel demands that Kon­in delay any decision until their gov­ern­ment has had a chance to dis­cuss the situ­ation, and he agrees.

The ‘B’ Plot: While the sur­vey parties sift through the ruins on 47 Tory­ui II, Zepht vis­its the astro­met­rics lab to check on the latest sur­vey data. He sees Lieu­ten­ant Ganz com­ing the oth­er way, her face furi­ous. He stops to ask what the prob­lem is and she is barely able to speak, mut­ter­ing insults dir­ec­ted at an unnamed tar­get, before head­ing off to the crew lounge to calm down.

Zepht goes into the lab to find that Talia­ferro is once again com­par­ing data on mul­tiple PADDs. He offers to help, but is refused. She says she will do bet­ter by her­self – nobody is able to do this effi­ciently enough. He per­sists, and even­tu­ally, she lets him take over, leav­ing the room mut­ter­ing to herself.

He later finds that she has upset most mem­bers of the sci­ence depart­ment with her demands to improve effi­ciency, pre­ci­sion and ded­ic­a­tion. Many feel she has insul­ted their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, oth­ers are hav­ing dif­fi­culty with the work­load. A small num­ber are act­ively plan­ning some kind of payback.

After the orders to head to Cal-Mirra, Talia­ferro retreats to the level 9 crew lounge. Shortly after­wards, the head stew­ard com­plains to Raynor that “that Betazoid” is driv­ing every­one else out of the room with her “dirges”. He goes to invest­ig­ate, but decides that he may need the author­ity of the cap­tain, so requests that Kon­in accom­pany him to the lounge.

They find Talia­ferro by her­self with a bottle of Saur­i­an brandy, singing ancient Betazoid funer­al laments. There’s no-one else in the room, the oth­er crew mem­bers appar­ently driv­en off, pos­sibly by her offkey per­form­ance. Kon­in notices a pro­nounced feel­ing of hos­til­ity in the room that seems to be eman­at­ing from the sci­ent­ist. As they approach, she yells at them to leave her alone, then goes back to singing, refus­ing to talk to them. The feel­ing of hos­til­ity wor­sens, mixed with a level of weary sad­ness, and even Raynor becomes aware of it – it appears that Talia­fer­ro’s emo­tions are being broad­cast into the room at large.

Kon­in calls on Doc­tor Con­ners, who car­ries out a dis­crete med­ic­al scan. Check­ing the res­ults, she imme­di­ately orders that Talia­ferro be taken to the med­ic­al centre, where she can carry out full tests. The sci­ent­ist does not res­ist, hav­ing now with­drawn into a drunk­en near-cata­ton­ic state.

Soon, she tells the cap­tain that the head sci­ent­ist of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge appears to be suf­fer­ing from ther­agen with­draw­al. From what she can tell from the unre­dac­ted por­tion of her med­ic­al records, she takes the diluted form of the sub­stance to con­trol her mis­oem­path­ia, which makes it dif­fi­cult to block out oth­er people’s emo­tions and thoughts. At this point in time, it appears she has run out of the med­ic­a­tion, which is caus­ing her to lose con­trol and pro­ject her own emo­tions on to oth­ers. While Con­ners has a small sup­ply of the drug, in order to assist with the cap­tain’s own need to dampen the Tilikaal cries for help in the region, she needs far more to restore Talia­fer­ro’s capa­city to work. Unfor­tu­nately, it is illeg­al to man­u­fac­ture the drug in the levels needed.

Obser­va­tions: Helena Talia­ferro appears to be depend­ent on reg­u­lar doses of diluted ther­agen, ori­gin­ally cre­ated by the Klin­gons as a nerve gas, and often used to treat men­tal ill­ness. Talia­ferro is a Betazoid, but she suf­fers from mis­oem­path­ia: her tele­pathy is so sens­it­ive to the thoughts and emo­tions of oth­ers that it is dif­fi­cult for her to main­tain the defences that keep her own per­son­al­ity sep­ar­ate from the world out­side. She takes ther­agen to sup­press her tele­pathy, enabling her to live and work nor­mally; the down­side is that she lacks the usu­al Betazoid abil­ity to get along with people, as she does not receive the empath­ic cues that her spe­cies uses in place of read­ing body and facial language.

Deep Space Probe 79-Alpha is a Class VII‑A recon­nais­sance probe, mod­i­fied for autonom­ous deep space sur­veys. Its autonomy is provided by a sim­u­lated intel­li­gence mat­rix, cap­able of appear­ing in holo­graph­ic form. Known as the Sur­vey Con­trol Holo­gram, it is based on matrices sim­il­ar to those used in Emer­gency Med­ic­al Holo­grams. Judging from 79-Alpha’s “awaken­ing”, it has oth­er sim­il­ar­it­ies to the EMH used in Intrep­id-class space­craft.

Ref­er­ences: Omega molecules are rare particles con­tain­ing vast amounts of energy. While use­ful for many applic­a­tions, they are extremely unstable, and can dev­ast­ate volumes of sub­space light years across if they explode. Star­fleet reg­u­la­tions con­sider them so dan­ger­ous that the Omega Dir­ect­ive dir­ects a com­mand­ing officer to dis­reg­ard all oth­er reg­u­la­tions in order to des­troy one when discovered.