Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×15

Writ­ten by: Kelly Fitzpatrick & Derek Tyler Attico, with Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 7^th Septem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Thacinn: Tilikaal refugee
• Vice Admir­al Hayes: Star­fleet Chief of Stra­tegic Operations

Once again, we have been dragged away from our mis­sion. This time we have been car­ry­ing Admir­al Hebert to Nim­bus III, the infam­ous “Plan­et of Galactic Peace”.

Although that pro­ject was aban­doned after the Tomed Incid­ent, the deser­ted world is play­ing host to high-rank­ing dip­lo­mats and mil­it­ary per­son­nel from major powers across the Alpha and Beta Quad­rants. The sub­ject for dis­cus­sion is the grow­ing threat of the Domin­ion and its alli­ance with the Car­das­si­an Union.

Zepht has been asked to present on the poten­tial of weapon­ising Tilikaal tech­no­logy. I do not believe he is happy about this…

[Com­puter: strike the last sentence.]

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 50879.3

Plot: Lex­ing­ton becomes entangled in a battle to pre­vent the Borg from reach­ing Earth. Sev­er­al weeks later, the ship returns to the Shack­leton Expanse and a mis­sion to invest­ig­ate mys­ter­i­ous sig­nals from a tide-locked world.

Pro­logue: Vice Admir­al Hebert attends an intra-galactic con­fer­ence on Nim­bus III regard­ing the threat of the Domin­ion. She chooses to fly her flag from Lex­ing­ton for the voy­age, and the Thun­der­child escorts them for the week-long trip along the edge of the Romu­lan Neut­ral Zone.

Cap­tain Kon­in, Com­mand­er Zohir and Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Zepht are invited to the con­fer­ence itself, where they encounter rep­res­ent­at­ives from most of the Alpha and Beta Quad­rants’ inter­stel­lar powers. The first day of the event is largely polit­ic­al, with present­a­tions on recent events in the Gamma Quad­rant, around the Bajor­an Worm­hole, and with­in the Car­das­si­an Uni­on. The pro­gramme then breaks up into spe­cial­ist for­ums, and Zepht is invited to speak to a small group of mil­it­ary research­ers on the pos­sib­il­it­ies of weapon­ising Tilikaal tech­no­logy. He emphas­ises that the pro­ject’s research is still in its very early stages, and that, while the Tilikaal sys­tems are power­ful, they are not port­able and tend to be indis­crim­in­ate. And the team are still work­ing out how to con­trol them.

On the fourth day of the con­fer­ence, all the Star­fleet per­son­nel present are summoned to an early con­fid­en­tial brief­ing. Vice Admir­al Hayes plays live feeds from Ivor Prime and Deep Space 5, show­ing that a Borg cube is now head­ing towards Earth. He goes on to order that Lex­ing­ton, Thun­der­child and the oth­er Star­fleet ves­sels present should join a fleet he is assem­bling to ward off the assault. When informed of the threat later, the non-Star­fleet del­eg­ates at the con­fer­ence decide to retreat to their own ter­rit­or­ies to for­ti­fy their own defences.

Hayes plans to con­front the Borg at Ophi­cus on the edge of Sec­tor 001, and places Lex­ing­ton in the main defence peri­met­er. Quinn sug­gests that the ships in the fleet should employ ran­dom, unpre­dict­able move­ments to min­im­ise the chances of dir­ect hits from the cube, and Hayes adopts this as part of his battle plan.

Soon the advance ele­ments of the fleet are head­ing back at max­im­um speed, trad­ing fire with the massive Borg cube. The ships in the defence peri­met­er open fire and battle is joined.

Aboard Lex­ing­ton, Raynor leads with a salvo of tor­pedoes, but the ship is hit by two suc­cess­ive sweeps from the cube’s cut­ting beams, elim­in­at­ing her shields and inflict­ing dam­age to sev­er­al sys­tems. Borg drones mater­i­al­ise in sev­er­al sec­tions of the ship, and the crew find them­selves in a battle to pre­vent them assim­il­at­ing the ship.

A drone appears on the bridge and attacks Selvek at the ops sta­tion, throw­ing him into a corner, before insert­ing assim­il­a­tion tubules into the con­sole. Behind the tac­tic­al con­sole, Raynor shoots at the drone but it ignores the impact. A second drone attacks him and he finds him­self in a des­per­ate battle to avoid being injec­ted with nan­o­probes. Quinn draws his sgi­ahn-dubh and attempts to stab the first drone, but is thrown back. This, how­ever, gives Kon­in the open­ing to fire his phaser and des­troy it. Raynor man­ages to over­power his oppon­ent and sets about dis­cov­er­ing how much dam­age was done.

Azon­an is frantic­ally rerout­ing power to restore the shields as a drone enters main engin­eer­ing. He leaps over the main sys­tems con­sole to dis­able the intruder with his ush­aan-tor, then man­ages to get the shields back online. A second drone tar­gets Ensign Elser, but Azon­an is able to des­troy it before ral­ly­ing the team to fight back against the invaders.

Unfor­tu­nately, it’s all too late, as con­trol sys­tems fail across the ship. Lights flick­er and go out across the hull, and the ship starts to drift power­less, slowly tum­bling. Out­side, the cube speeds past, leav­ing more drones for the crew to battle, as Azon­an and his team attempt to get the sys­tems online again.

We are track­ing increased tetryon­ic fil­a­ment activ­ity and asso­ci­ated EM radi­ation bursts deep with­in the Expanse. These phe­nom­ena all seem to be lead­ing to an unex­plored star sys­tem with a single plan­et. Our new friend Thacinn has agreed to assist the sci­ence team with scans on board while an away team invest­ig­ates plan­et­side. While it’s anyone’s guess what awaits us on this world, we know the trapped Tilikaal can­not wait for us indefinitely.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 50954.8

The ‘A’ Plot: Three weeks later, fol­low­ing extens­ive repairs, Lex­ing­ton is back in the Shack­leton Expanse, some­what under­staffed as a res­ult of the cas­u­al­ties sus­tained in the battle. The Borg assault on Earth was ulti­mately defeated by the newly-com­mis­sioned U.S.S. Enter­prise and a small group of sur­viv­ing ves­sels from the battle.

They are now a num­ber of light years bey­ond the Vin­Shari home­world, invest­ig­at­ing an unusu­al sys­tem con­tain­ing a single plan­et, tid­ally-locked to its primary star. Long range sensors, newly enhanced with the aid of Thacinn, the Tilikaal refugee res­cued a few months earli­er, have detec­ted a major con­cen­tra­tion of tetryon­ic fil­a­ment activ­itiy and its asso­ci­ated radi­ation bursts. Zepht and his team believe this may indic­ate the pres­ence of Tilikaal tech­no­logy, or even a point of access to the Tilikaal pris­on dimension.

Zeph­t’s ini­tial scans show the plan­et has a hab­it­able atmo­sphere, at least in the twi­light band between the two regions of per­man­ent night and day, but that large objects in low orbit are emit­ting stat­ic fields which will inhib­it detailed sensor scans and the use of trans­port­ers. Zepht opts to send a probe in for a closer look, but this exper­i­ences the same prob­lems with inter­fer­ence. A second probe is sent on a loop­ing path in and out of the atmo­sphere, bypassing the orbit­ing objects. It is rap­idly dis­abled by what appears to be a massive dis­charge of stat­ic elec­tri­city, but Raynor is able to retrieve a por­tion of its databanks once it returns to space. The records show that it was hit by what appear to be tentacles trail­ing from a huge sau­cer-like object. Zepht notes the object’s sim­il­ar­ity to the cos­mo­zo­ans repor­ted by the Enter­prise after her vis­it to Far­point Sta­tion a dec­ade ago.

It is obvi­ous that they will need to take this danger into account in order to reach the sur­face. Reas­on­ing that a lar­ger vehicle should pos­sess strong enough shields to sur­vive a sim­il­ar attack, Kon­in decides to use the Trave.

Obser­va­tions: Shortly before the con­fer­ence on Nim­bus III, Zepht is reas­signed as both chief sci­ence officer for Lex­ing­ton and the seni­or mis­sion spe­cial­ist for the entirety of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge. Azon­an sug­gests that Selvek should take his place as oper­a­tions man­ager on the bridge.

The Upsi­lon Tory­ui sys­tem pos­sesses a single plan­et, tid­ally-locked, with one side always facing its star. The plan­et is primar­ily ocean, but the water is boil­ing on the side closest to the star, and frozen on the oth­er. A nar­row band between the two sides main­tains a clas­sic M‑class cli­mate. What land there is appears to con­sists of vari­ous crys­tal­line structures.

Dia­logue: “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and sur­render your ships. We will add your bio­lo­gic­al and tech­no­lo­gic­al dis­tinct­ive­ness to our own. Your cul­ture will adapt to ser­vice us. Res­ist­ance is futile.”

Ref­er­ences: Nim­bus III was first seen in Star Trek V: The Final Fron­ti­er, where it was the site of the ill-fated “Plan­et of Galactic Peace”, before being taken over by Sybok’s fol­low­ers. The Star­fleet Corps of Engin­eers has con­struc­ted a tem­por­ary con­fer­ence centre on the site of the plan­et’s cap­it­al, Para­dise City.

Del­eg­ates at the con­fer­ence include those from the major Fed­er­a­tion cul­tures, along with Klin­gons, Romu­lans, Fer­engi, Bajor­ans, Talari­ans and Gorn. The Ori­on gov­ern­ment, First Fed­er­a­tion, Kzinti Hege­mony and the Akaru have also sent rep­res­ent­at­ives, and there are even a couple of the exiled mem­bers of the former Car­das­si­an Detapa Council.

The Battle of Sec­tor 001 is shown dur­ing the open­ing scenes of Star Trek: First Con­tact. Lex­ing­ton’s part in the battle and cas­u­al­ties suffered are ref­er­enced in the reports received by the Enter­prise.

Zepht likens the orbit­ing objects at Upsi­lon Torui to the space­borne “cnid­ari­ans” seen in the Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion pilot epis­ode, “Encounter at Far­point”, although these seem bigger.