Epis­ode Num­ber: 3×02

Writ­ten by: Scott Pearson

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 1^st July 2023

Guest Stars:

• Ash’tamalia: Lead­er of the Tilikaal “Dis­placed”
• Lieu­ten­ant Albert Dur­and: Lexington’s seni­or cosmologist
• Tur­lo­nu­mi­en: Tilikaal aco­lyte of Ash’tamalia
• Col­on­el Morok: Com­mand­ing officer of the I.K.S. moH be’n­al and of the Klin­gon pen­al squadron
• Cap­tain Jør­gen Hendricks: com­mand­ing officer of U.S.S. Minotaur and Kon­in’s former first officer

We are stran­ded in a strange ali­en dimen­sion. Neither time nor space seem to have much mean­ing, and we have no idea how long we have been here. Will­power and ima­gin­a­tion seem to gov­ern what passes for real­ity, rather than logic and sci­ence. We have, how­ever, met the Tilikaal, although they are not quite what we were led to expect. Spir­its imprisoned by their own people, they seem mostly exhausted and des­per­ate to escape.

We’re going to have to make our own way home.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, unknown

Plot: Now that they are aware of the Tilikaal’s situ­ation, Cap­tain Kon­in and his crew get to work build­ing a way to get home. Unfor­tu­nately, the situ­ation in the Expanse has changed some­what dur­ing their absence.

The ‘A’ Plot: Upon their return to Lex­ing­ton, the seni­or officers find that most of the hal­lu­cin­a­tions have van­ished, includ­ing Lord Cochrane and the eld­er Cap­tain Konin.

The cap­tain imme­di­ately orders his team to the con­fer­ence room to dis­cuss the pos­sib­il­it­ies for return­ing to the Expanse. They quickly identi­fy a num­ber of tar­gets to achieve: open­ing a gate­way back to real space, gen­er­at­ing the power to do so, and actu­ally mov­ing to and through the worm­hole (giv­en that there is no real space to move through in the pock­et universe).

Based on the way in which the trans­port­er team loc­ated him via his brain­wave pat­terns, Zepht pro­poses using the med­ic­al depart­ment’s records of the evac­u­ated crew mem­bers to ensure they emerge closer to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion. He also notes that, since most activ­ity in this dimen­sion requires will­power, the psion­ic­ally-cap­able indi­vidu­als on the ship, includ­ing Kon­in and Selvek, along with two dol­phins in ceta­cean oper­a­tions, might be able to help focus the crew’s col­lect­ive belief in the operation.

Kon­in raises the pos­sib­il­ity of using isolyt­ic bursts to open the gate­way, which would remove the power require­ments, but they decide against this option due to the per­man­ent dam­age it would do in the region in which it opens. Fol­low­ing a brief dis­cus­sion on wheth­er det­on­at­ing the warp core out­side the ship would provide the neces­sary power, Quinn points out that using a num­ber of photon tor­pedoes could achieve the same goal, with the shields fun­nel­ling and col­lect­ing the energy.

Zepht sug­gests it may be pos­sible to to modi­fy the shields to catch one of the waves of energy that con­tinu­ally sleet through the sys­tem. If angled cor­rectly, they could be used in a sim­il­ar fash­ion to the sails on a sur­face ves­sel to bring the ship closer to the gateway.

With a plan in place, the crew get to work – Dr Con­ners points out that they need to do this quickly, as the energy waves are begin­ning to cause long-last­ing dam­age to the crew. Zepht begins the pro­cess by get­ting detailed sensor read­ings of the energy waves. While he ana­lyses the data, determ­in­ing the make-up of the energy and attempt­ing to find a par­tic­u­lar pat­tern in its move­ment, Kon­in works closely with Quinn and Azon­an to recon­fig­ure the shields to catch these energies.

Quinn then re-ori­ents the ship into the best pos­i­tion to do this, before Kon­in, tak­ing tac­tic­al con­trol dir­ectly, fires a num­ber of photon tor­pedoes, det­on­at­ing them just inside the bubble of real­ity sur­round­ing the ship. The explos­ive energy gen­er­ated is then fun­nelled into the power redir­ec­tion sys­tem cre­ated by Azon­an’s team at Can­did­ate Three. Zepht uses the nav­ig­a­tion­al deflect­or to focus this energy and recre­ate the worm­hole that brought them here.

There are some delays in this pro­cess, while Azon­an’s team run around per­form­ing emer­gency repairs to col­lapsing con­duits, and a Tilikaal named Tur­lo­nu­mi­en takes the oppor­tun­ity to make an offer. If they can link to one of the crew mem­bers now, they should be able to retain that link once Lex­ing­ton has returned to nor­mal space. This would then enable Tur­lo­nu­mi­en to advise on the use of any Tilikaal tech­no­logy encountered by the crew dur­ing their res­cue mis­sion. Kon­in reluct­antly agrees, allow­ing the Tilikaal to link with him, although it is unclear wheth­er it worked.

Zepht finally man­ages to get the worm­hole open, and Quinn cor­rectly judges the tim­ing to catch the next energy wave and ride it into the gate­way, although the jour­ney through it is rough. Between the shak­ing and the power over­loads, Lex­ing­ton is quite badly dam­aged by the time she emerges into nor­mal space close to Nar­en­dra Station…

…where she is imme­di­ately chal­lenged to identi­fy her­self by a squad­ron of three Klin­gon battlecruisers.

The ‘B’ Plot: The Klin­gon com­mand­er iden­ti­fies him­self as Col­on­el Morok of the I.K.S. moH be’n­al and his squad­ron has already armed their weapons. A mes­sage on behalf of Cap­tain Akul from Nar­en­dra Sta­tion quickly calms mat­ters, and is fol­lowed by a friend­li­er missive from Cap­tain Hendricks of U.S.S. Minotaur, Kon­in’s pre­vi­ous command.

Com­mand­er Murphy con­tacts Kon­in and informs him that polit­ics have got­ten a little com­plex since Lex­ing­ton’s dis­ap­pear­ance, and that the alli­ance with the Klin­gons has ended. Learn­ing that this has been just four weeks, Kon­in is shocked at how quickly this could hap­pen. Murphy sym­path­ises and invites his seni­or officers to the sta­tion oper­a­tions centre for a brief­ing. He also prom­ises to arrange repairs for the dam­aged vessel.

Dock­ing at the sta­tion, the crew are con­cerned when they find armed guards every­where, both Klin­gon and Star­fleet, watch­ing each oth­er sus­pi­ciously. When they reach the brief­ing room, they find Murphy wait­ing with Cap­tain Akul, who is pleased to see them, hav­ing wor­ried that they had died in a dis­hon­or­able acci­dent. The pair quickly begin to explain recent events, from the Klin­gon inva­sion of the Car­das­si­an Uni­on to Chan­cel­lor Gowron’s break­ing of the Khitomer Accords and the Battle of Deep Space Nine.

Akul is quick to explain that there are no hos­til­it­ies between the two powers, but that armed con­flict could break out over the smal­lest thing with little notice. They are still work­ing out how things will work aboard the sta­tion: basic­ally, the Klin­gons have com­plete con­trol of the train­ing and bar­racks levels, while Star­fleet con­trols the dip­lo­mat­ic level. All oth­er areas are being admin­istered jointly, but all oper­a­tions are being car­ried out by teams that are made up of 50% KDF, 50% Star­fleet per­son­nel, over­seen by secur­ity teams. The aim is to min­im­ise any chances of false accus­a­tions of treach­ery or sab­ot­age. Hebert has returned to San Fran­cisco and Kar­gan to Ty’gokor to con­sult with their respect­ive super­i­ors on the situation.

Morok’s pres­ence is com­plic­at­ing things, espe­cially with both Bellero­phon and Lex­ing­ton out of the pic­ture, hence the pres­ence of Minotaur and the newly-arrived U.S.S. Cour­ageous. While Morok out­ranks Akul, the lat­ter is dis­put­ing his claim to over­all com­mand, cit­ing Morok’s status as com­mand­er of a pen­al squad­ron; he warns that Morok is very con­scious of what little hon­our he has, and is likely to retali­ate viol­ently if provoked.

When they return to the ship, Kon­in’s first act is to order Sub-Lieu­ten­ant D’g­hov to be relieved of duty and turned over to the Klin­gons, in order to avoid any accus­a­tions of treach­ery. He finds that Chief Boone, sport­ing a black eye, has already done so, based on instruc­tions from Star­fleet Security.

The ‘C’ Plot: Murphy requests that Kon­in take part as one of the presid­ing officers in the court mar­tial of Cap­tain Daak for the loss of U.S.S. Bellero­phon. Fol­low­ing evid­ence from both Kon­in and Pyan­far, as well as mem­bers of his own crew, Daak is ulti­mately com­men­ded for sav­ing every­one pos­sible, and assigned to return to the main body of the Fed­er­a­tion to refit a moth­balled ship for duty.

The Arc: Cap­tain Kon­in has agreed to try and res­cue the Tilikaal and also to link with one of their num­ber for the dur­a­tion of that process.

Else­where, rela­tions between the Fed­er­a­tion and the Klin­gon Empire have begun to break down.

Obser­va­tions: Fol­low­ing the dis­sol­u­tion of the alli­ance with the Klin­gons, life on Nar­en­dra Sta­tion has become some­what com­plic­ated. The Klin­gons are in con­trol of the bar­racks near the base of the sta­tion and Star­fleet con­trols the dip­lo­mat­ic levels. The rest of the sta­tion is still form­ally shared, but all oper­a­tions are car­ried out by joint teams made up of equal num­bers of Star­fleet and KDF per­son­nel. While the lead­ers on both sides want to avoid any con­flict, some of the lower ranks are spoil­ing for a fight, and this has led to a heavy secur­ity pres­ence from both sides.

I.K.S. moH be’n­al and her two com­pan­ions are cen­tury-old K’t’inga-class battle­cruis­ers, which have been assigned to bol­ster the Imper­i­al forces at the sta­tion. The three dis­honored ships form a Klin­gon pen­al squad­ron, to which the KDF assigns dis­honored and crim­in­al war­ri­ors, who fight for the chance to regain their hon­our. Col­on­el Morok is known to be quick to avenge insults, usu­ally in a leth­al fashion.

Admir­al Hebert and her staff have respon­ded by call­ing in Cap­tain Kon­in’s old com­mand, U.S.S. Minotaur (Cen­taur-class), and U.S.S. Cour­ageous (Defi­ant-class). Oth­er ele­ments of the 20^th Fleet are with­in easy reach, led by U.S.S. Beowulf (Akira-class), but Star­fleet is not keen to escal­ate the situ­ation. The Defi­ant-class has only just been declas­si­fied at this point, fol­low­ing the class-ship’s suc­cess­ful oper­a­tions in the Bajor­an sector.

Star­fleet main­tains the tra­di­tion of court-mar­tial­ling the com­mand­ing officer for the loss of a star­ship. It is regarded as a form­al­ity, primar­ily used for determ­in­ing what exactly happened and what can be learned from the dis­aster, rather than for lay­ing blame and assign­ing pen­al­ties – unless a fail­ure of duty is determ­ined to have occurred. Cap­tain Daak and his crew will be return­ing to the core sec­tors of the Fed­er­a­tion to refit and crew a moth­balled vessel.

Dia­logue: Zepht to Quinn: “How do you fancy being the first helms­man to use a star­ship to ride a wave?”

Zepht: “Looks like we’ll be mak­ing use of the space­dock premi­um mem­ber­’s card again!”

Ref­er­ences: The dis­sol­u­tion of the Khitomer Accords and the First Battle of Deep Space Nine took place around Stard­ate 49011. The story was related in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine epis­ode “The Way of the War­ri­or”.

Ques­tions: What is Tur­lo­nu­mi­en really up to? Is the cap­tain now compromised?