Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×11

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 13^th July 2024

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant Richter Strauss: Former sci­ence officer aboard U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton NCC-1709.

Trans­port­er acci­dents are nev­er good. Trans­port­er acci­dents where you travel in time are par­tic­u­larly bad. Apart from the dangers of wreck­ing the timeline and des­troy­ing the uni­verse, the paper­work from the Depart­ment of Tem­por­al Invest­ig­a­tions is a bur­eau­crat­ic nightmare…

We are stran­ded on the Lex­ing­ton of a cen­tury ago, and while this gives us a golden oppor­tun­ity to add some detail to our recent dis­cov­er­ies regard­ing Cap­tain Adred’s dis­ap­pear­ance, we have a hard time lim­it. As far as we can make out, the ship will be des­troyed in a mat­ter of hours.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 5797.6

Plot: The stran­ded away team makes plans to get off the ship before its appoint­ment with destruc­tion, before learn­ing more about the ruins on the plan­et and the fate of their predecessors.

The ‘A’ Plot: With the ship’s trans­port­ers dis­abled due to the sol­ar flare dam­age, they decide they will need to take one of the ship’s shuttle­craft. Check­ing a ship schem­at­ic for a route to get there, they real­ise that it’s too far to use their pre­ferred meth­od of keep­ing to crawlspaces, and that they will need to resort to disguises.

Zepht and Azon­an head down to the ship’s laun­dry to find some unclaimed uni­forms. Zepht tells the clerk he has come to col­lect the laun­dry for a par­tic­u­lar group of rooms, but finds his sub­ter­fuge is not needed. The clerk does­n’t even look up from his paper­work as he points out a bundle of clothes.

Kon­in, mean­while, checks the trans­port­er room sup­ply cup­board for use­ful equip­ment, find­ing a secure weapons lock­er, a pair of envir­on­ment suits and some gen­er­al equip­ment, includ­ing an unse­cured box of photon gren­ades. Giv­en that he can get into the weapons lock­er with min­im­al trouble, he decides he’s not impressed with this ship’s secur­ity protocols.

Zepht returns with the uni­forms and they dis­guise them­selves as a group of enlis­ted crew­men, led by Quinn as an ensign. Car­ry­ing the phasers and suits in a large crate, they take a tur­bo­l­ift to the hangar deck.

Unfor­tu­nately, the hangar deck turns out to be open to space, due to the extern­al doors los­ing power. Find­ing more envir­on­ment suits in a nearby lock­er, they quickly suit up and head out to the one shuttle­craft on the launch pad, appar­ently named Iron Maid­en. Receiv­ing a com­mu­nic­at­or chal­lenge from the hangar con­trol­ler, Kon­in responds that they’ve been assigned to repair the out­er doors. Unfor­tu­nately, the officer soon notices that they are head­ing in the wrong dir­ec­tion, so he is forced to make an excuse about need­ing the shuttle­craft for power, while ges­tur­ing to the oth­ers to pick up speed.

Aboard the shuttle, Quinn has trouble with the archa­ic con­trols and needs Kon­in’s help to famil­i­ar­ise him­self with them. Azon­an works to cut off the con­trol­ler­’s frantic attempts to take remote con­trol of the ves­sel. Then Quinn takes off, avoids clip­ping the doors and plunges the shuttle into Gliese 411 d‑a’s tur­bu­lent atmosphere.

He fights to retain con­trol as the storm winds toss the shuttle around, but brings it through the lower level of the clouds safely, only to find him­self much closer to the ground than he expec­ted. Iron Maid­en nar­rowly clips a ridge, los­ing an engine nacelle, before he can make a con­trolled crash-land­ing near the land­ing site of the heavy shuttle used by Cap­tain Pryce’s land­ing party.

Scan­ning the out­side envir­on­ment con­firms they will need their suits, so they quickly put them on before climb­ing out of the wrecked shuttle­craft. Sur­round­ing the site is a wide vari­ety of rust-red plants, resem­b­ing a crim­son jungle. Zepht scans them and notes that des­pite look­ing organ­ic, these “plants” are actu­ally made of met­al. He picks up what appears to be elec­tric­al sig­nals run­ning through struc­tures resem­bling roots and hanging vines around them.

The “under­growth” is heavy, and the leaf struc­tures turn out to be razor-edged, present­ing a danger to the envir­on­ment suits and their wear­ers. Raynor starts cut­ting a path with his phaser, but their tri­cord­ers soon pick up signs of move­ment amongst the trees. After some debate, they opt to move as fast as they can, in case there are mech­an­ic­al “pred­at­ors” of some kind, or the trees them­selves are react­ing to their actions.

Head­ing for the heavy shuttle­craft, they reach the foot of a six-sided pyr­am­id­al build­ing, rising out of the sur­round­ing forest. Tri­cord­er scans show humanoid lifesigns with­in, so they hunt for an entrance, soon find­ing the shuttle, newly covered in vines, parked on a large plaza in front of the build­ing. Enter­ing the build­ing through a low entrance, they find evid­ence of the pas­sage of the earli­er party through a tangle of cables remin­is­cent of a spider­’s web. Tur­lo­nu­mi­en speaks up in Kon­in’s head, telling him he can detect Tilikaal in the room, but that some­thing is not quite right. Zepht detects five con­cen­tra­tions of power with­in the web, pos­sibly indic­at­ing there are five entities.

Their suit com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tems enable them to listen in on Pryce’s land­ing party as it nego­ti­ates with a dis­em­bod­ied entity, but it does not appear to be going well. The entity claims to have con­trol of the Lex­ing­ton, and the watch officer is shout­ing that they’re under attack. Sud­denly, a short scream rings out, and the Lex­ing­ton party begins run­ning for the exit. Kon­in and his team quickly hide as they pass, before ven­tur­ing to see what actu­ally happened.

They soon find a clear area in the centre of the build­ing, sur­round­ing a con­sole covered in what appears to be blood. Azon­an trips over some­thing on the floor as he approaches, then real­ises it is a humanoid foot in an envir­on­ment suit. Pulling back the cables, he sees that this is just a foot: the rest of the body is else­where. Zepht finds the head, still in its hel­met, on the con­sole; it appears to be a Tellarite.

Gently mov­ing the head out of the way, he patches his tri­cord­er into the con­sole and attempts to com­mu­nic­ate with the dis­em­bod­ied entit­ies. They appear to be respons­ive and eager to talk, but will only assist with their time dis­place­ment prob­lem if the land­ing party prom­ises to down­load them into a lar­ger com­puter sys­tem. He tries to explain that they don’t have the capa­city, but can cer­tainly prom­ise to come back. Tur­lo­nu­mi­en, mean­while, is try­ing to tell Kon­in this is a bad idea, as the intel­li­gences don’t seem to be quite sane. They begin to real­ise that these are arti­fi­cial con­structs, rather like the single-minded arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence they found in the arte­facts stolen by the Ori­ons the pre­vi­ous year.

The entit­ies sud­denly denounce them as dis­hon­est, and tentacles begin to form from twis­ted cables around them. Real­ising what happened to the Tel­lar­ite, they decide dis­cre­tion is the great­er part of valour and depart quickly.

Out­side, they find that the oth­er land­ing party has already left, unwit­tingly strand­ing them on this plan­et. Check­ing the comm chan­nels, Kon­in real­ises that the star­ship itself is silent; he can hear Pryce des­per­ately try­ing to regain con­tact, before anoth­er Human voice informs him that they have to be des­troyed for the good of the Fed­er­a­tion. Both sides go quiet at that point.

Zepht mean­while is scan­ning for oth­er tech­no­logy that might be able to help them get home. There’s a large con­cen­tra­tion of power usage a kilo­met­er away, so they move that way, put­ting as much dis­tance as pos­sible between them and the AIs.

They dis­cov­er a low dome of white mater­i­al provid­ing a pro­tect­ive shield to a pleas­ant-look­ing orna­ment­al garden, its tran­quil­ity a stark con­trast to its sur­round­ings. Azon­an notes that the design of the garden looks more like Earth’s ancient Greek cul­ture than Tilikaal, though it is def­in­itely much older. The garden encircles a cir­cu­lar dais, sur­moun­ted by a ring of ornate pil­lars sur­round­ing a float­ing sil­ver rectangle.

Tur­lo­nu­mi­en sug­gests to Kon­in that the city may have been con­struc­ted so that the Tilikaal could study the garden and its con­tents. Azon­an sud­denly real­ises that the archi­tec­ture is Iconi­an, and that the sil­ver rect­angle could be one of their legendary gate­ways. Ven­tur­ing closer they wit­ness blurry images mov­ing with­in the free-stand­ing rect­angle’s shim­mer­ing sur­face. It is def­in­itely begin­ning to look like an arti­fi­cial portal of some kind.

Zepht decides this needs to be tested, and tosses a stone into the rect­angle, whereupon it dis­ap­pears. Moments later it reappears through the anom­aly, land­ing near his feet. He tries again, get­ting the same res­ult, then tries writ­ing “hello” on anoth­er stone and throws that through. This time, it takes about thirty seconds before it reappears, wrapped in what seems to be a piece of paper. Unwrap­ping the paper, he sees the words “Hello to you too!”

Zepht looks at the oth­ers, shrugs and steps into the portal, emer­ging in a large vaul­ted room, con­struc­ted with­in a dimly-lit cav­ern. A middle-aged man in a battered Star­fleet uni­form is watch­ing him, and he notes that the man’s poin­ted ears are in dis­tinct con­trast to his friendly demean­our. The man intro­duces him­self as Lieu­ten­ant Richter Strauss, formerly of the U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton, and that he has been stran­ded on this sta­tion for sev­er­al dec­ades. Zepht real­ises that he must have trav­elled in time as he tra­versed the portal, and asks Strauss for the date, dis­cov­er­ing it is now 2292, 23 years after the Lex­ing­ton’s destruc­tion.

Step­ping back through the portal, Zepht asks the oth­ers to join him in the future.

Obser­va­tions: Cap­tain Kon­in remem­bers pilot­ing a 23^rd cen­tury Class F shuttle­craft as part of his pilot train­ing at the Academy. These craft had been retired by the time any of the oth­ers were attending.

Ref­er­ences: The Lex­ing­ton crew has encountered a Tilikaal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence before, con­tained with­in an arte­fact stolen by the Ori­on, Pal­jara. That entity was power­ful, extremely single-minded, and presen­ted a clear threat to a large volume of space.

The Iconi­ans, known in legend as the “Demons of Air and Dark­ness”, ruled an inter­stel­lar empire in the region. Reputed to be viol­ent con­quer­ors, they main­tained a net­work of trans­port­er portals cap­able of inter­stel­lar ranges, but were ulti­mately des­troyed by an alli­ance of their enemies, hun­dreds of mil­len­nia ago. Iconia itself lies about 40 light years from Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, with­in the Romu­lan Neut­ral Zone, and there­fore out of range to Fed­er­a­tion archaeologists.

The deceased Tel­lar­ite was Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Zoss Glasch Nossaag, secur­ity chief on the 23^rd cen­tury U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton. He was killed by the Tilikaal AIs on Gliese 411 d‑a when Cap­tain Pryce rebuffed their threats.

Lieu­ten­ant Richter Strauss was the young sci­ence officer on the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton. He remained on the extra-galactic Hab­it­a­tion to learn more of the tech­no­logy there.

Iron Maid­en was one of the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton’s Class F shuttle­craft, while Mam­moth was a Class H heavy shuttle­craft on the same ship.

Ques­tions: Was there a con­nec­tion between the Tilikaal and the Iconians?