Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×16

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

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 21^st Septem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Ayr-amin Gold: Lead Uni­fi­er of the Cooper­at­ive government
• Recana-el Orange: Rep­res­ent­at­ive of the Sun­seekers faction
• Sar-ayla Blue: Cal-Mir­ran guide
• Kes-adrel: Sar-ayla’s skiff
• Gar-zalash Black: Reclus­ive scientist

Upsi­lon Tory­ui I is a fas­cin­at­ing world: tide-locked, covered in water, and appar­ently home to large cos­mo­zo­ans, as well as the source of power­ful tetryon­ic sig­nals. Giv­en the levels of ion­ic inter­fer­ence in the atmo­sphere of the plan­et, the away team will be tak­ing the Trave to invest­ig­ate the ori­gins of these signals.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 54955.0, supplemental

Plot: The away team makes its way to the sur­face of Gamma Tory­ui I and dis­cov­ers a unique life­form, before jour­ney­ing to the heart of the plan­et’s dark side to loc­ate the source of the tetryon­ic fil­a­ment activity.

The ‘A’ Plot: The run­about Trave departs Lex­ing­ton car­ry­ing Zepht, Quinn, Azon­an, Raynor and Dr Con­nors. Diving into the atmo­sphere, Quinn avoids the orbit­ing cos­mo­zo­ans, and heads for a line of basalt rock pil­lars in the tem­per­ate zone along the ter­min­at­or. Unfor­tu­nately, des­pite his best efforts, the craft does hit a trail­ing tendril from one of the creatures and is struck by a huge stat­ic dis­charge. The shields are over­whelmed, the impulse drive shuts down and they begin to fall towards the ocean below. While Quinn tries to slow the craft using the thrusters, Azon­an restarts the drive and power sys­tems, and they regain con­trol at about 200m above sea level.

At this level, the stat­ic inter­fer­ence affect­ing the sensors is non-exist­ent and they can get a good view of their sur­round­ings. Below them is an expanse of deep blue water, broken by long straight waves mov­ing from the sun­ward side towards the dark­ness. Above them, the bright blue sky sports a tracery of faint auror­ae. The sensors pick up life signs in the water below them.

A line of pil­lars is vis­ible atop a basalt ridge a few kilo­metres away, and sensors show that tetryon­ic activ­ity is eman­at­ing from one of them, so they head that way for a closer look. Mean­while, mag­ni­fied images of the ridge show what appear to be metal­lic struc­tures, with mov­ing and flash­ing lights. Are these signs of life or even civilisation?

The pil­lars are square in cross-sec­tion and have flat tops at a con­sist­ent height of around 400m above sea-level. While they are com­posed of a form of basalt, there are lines of glow­ing blue energy sim­il­ar to those used by the Tilikaal, and the chan­nels hold­ing the energy appear to be made of the dur­acrete-like mater­i­al that cul­ture used.

Around the ridge itself, bright lights seem to be mov­ing with pur­pose, and the sensors show that these are being pro­duced by life-forms of vastly-dif­fer­ent natures: sol­id, liquid and gaseous. The lights change col­ours and bright­ness in what might be a form of com­mu­nic­a­tion, so they put the uni­ver­sal trans­lat­or to work on solv­ing this puzzle.

More lights, in the water near the act­ive pil­lar, appear to be mov­ing in errat­ic pat­terns, pos­sibly indic­at­ing some kind of dis­tress. Unsure as to wheth­er they should inter­fere, they mon­it­or the lights of a group on the ridge itself, learn­ing that they appear to be debat­ing philo­sophy. Using the trans­lat­or, they beam their own mes­sage at the philo­soph­ers, inform­ing them of the troubled life­forms. The response sur­prises them: “Well? Help them, then!”

Azon­an is able to dis­en­tangle the pecu­li­ar life­forms from the sur­round­ing sea water through care­ful use of the trans­port­er, and beams them to the shore. Dur­ing this pro­cess, the hov­er­ing run­about is approached by a group of metal­lic spheres, each around a metre across. They flash a rap­id mes­sage, which trans­lates as a warn­ing not to inter­fere with nat­ur­al events. When the crew presses on with the res­cue, the spheres launch what appears to be an attack, and large parts of the hull begin to crys­tal­lise, although the shields blunt the worst of the effect.

A second group of float­ing objects then approaches, this time con­sist­ing of a vari­ety of angu­lar shapes, and the lead­er flashes a mes­sage telling them to stop fight­ing. The first group, call­ing them­selves “Sun­seekers”, ignore them and carry on attack­ing. The entire area is then affected by an unusu­al tem­por­al loop, and when it ends, the Sun­seekers have ceased their attack and are leaving.

The new­comers apo­lo­gise to the Trave crew for the “time refrac­tion”, but explain that it was neces­sary to determ­ine who was respons­ible for the battle. Their lead­er intro­duces them­self as Ayr-amin Gold, Lead Uni­fi­er of the Cooper­at­ive gov­ern­ment, and refers to the Sun­seekers as “reli­gious zealots”. Then they wel­come the vis­it­ors to Cal-Mirra and ask why they are here.

Zepht explains about Tilikaal tech­no­logy and its often dan­ger­ous side-effects, and that their mis­sion to find these arte­facts has brought them to this world. Hav­ing detec­ted the sig­nals from the pil­lars, they are hop­ing to identi­fy their source and make them safe. Ayr-amin explains that the spire’s eman­a­tions were respons­ible for the dam­age suffered by the life­forms in the water, and that these kinds of prob­lems have been increas­ing lately. They invite the away team to join an ongo­ing con­fer­ence dis­cuss­ing the problem.

Ayr-amin dir­ects them to land on the flat space on top of one of the spires, and they note that sev­er­al spires have crys­tal­line ves­sels rest­ing on them in the same way. Unfor­tu­nately, there is no stair­case or oth­er means to reach the sur­face of the ridge, so they are forced to use the transporter.

The Cal-Mir­rans escort them to an open air debat­ing cham­ber, con­sist­ing of smooth, curved met­al walls, and occu­pied by sev­er­al dozen nat­ives of vary­ing forms, all com­mu­nic­at­ing by means of col­oured light pulses. Con­fus­ingly, there appear to be at least three types of life­form present: sol­id crys­tal forms, clouds of vapour and pools of liquid. The indi­vidu­als them­selves often vary in shape, and it’s only when a sol­id Cal-Mir­ran appears to sub­lim­ate into a vapour that they real­ise the nat­ives can shift between sol­id, liquid and gas at will. When they men­tion this to Ayr-amin, the Cal-Mir­ran seems con­fused as to why the vis­it­ors are fixed in one form, for­cing Zepht to explain about car­bon-based bio­lo­gic­al life, its lim­it­a­tions and variety.

The con­fer­ence itself con­cerns a planned invest­ig­a­tion of the spires. The Cooper­at­ive wants to dis­as­semble one to see how it works, hope­fully lear­ing how to pre­vent them injur­ing any­one else. The Sun­seekers, a fun­da­ment­al­ist reli­gious fac­tion led by Recana-el Orange, all of whom appear to be fixed in the form of sil­very spheres of met­al, are opposed to any such desec­ra­tion of the “sac­red spires”.

Zepht asks to be allowed to speak, and repeats his explan­a­tion of their mis­sion, going on to explain that they have devices that can determ­ine the struc­ture and con­tents of the spires without harm­ing them. Unfor­tu­nately, this does not appear to sat­is­fy the Sun­seekers: Recana-el com­plains stridently about their con­cerns being ignored in favour of the Cooper­at­ive’s own interests, and announces that the Sun­seekers will be cut­ting off all trade between their home at the Ray and the Cooper­at­ive gov­ern­ment, before storm­ing out of the chamber.

In the silence that fol­lows, Ayr-amin tells the away team that the ces­sa­tion of trade will cause prob­lems as the Sun­seekers refine the raw mater­i­als mined by the Cooper­at­ive, which are then used for con­struc­tion, but that if they can help prove that the spires are the source of the prob­lem, then maybe Recana-el will relent.

Anoth­er rep­res­ent­at­ive, Sar-ayla Blue, points out that their research has shown that the pil­lars loc­ated closest to “Unknown Dark” are the most act­ive. Per­haps the source can be found on the dark side of the plan­et? They volun­teer to act as a guide, as they have con­tacts with­in the Bead Clan, a group of para­noid tech­no­lo­gists resid­ing in that region who might have a bet­ter idea of what is going on.

The away team agrees and Sar-ayla sum­mons their “skiff”, a liv­ing crys­tal ves­sel named Kes-adrel. The skiff is big enough to carry the run­about, and asks many ques­tions about its pas­sen­gers through­out the trip. Sar-ayla intends to take them to con­sult Gar-zalash Black, a reclus­ive sci­ent­ist who lives deep with­in the Unknown Dark, as their research involves mon­it­or­ing the spires and their activity.

As they travel into the dark­ness, dis­cuss­ing the dif­fer­ences between their soci­et­ies, the water beneath them dis­ap­pears beneath pack ice, and the vis­it­ors are forced to don envir­on­ment suits to res­ist the bit­ter cold, although Azon­an finds the tem­per­at­ures quite pleas­ant for anoth­er hour or so. At one point, Raynor notices that Sar-ayla appears to have an advanced tech­no­lo­gic­al device embed­ded with­in them, and asks about it. The Cal-Mir­ran explains that this is an anti-grav­ity field gen­er­at­or developed by the Bead Clan, based on ancient devices found near the spires. These implants are used by many Cal-Mir­rans to enable them to float and move about without hav­ing to change into their gaseous form, which has obvi­ous issues inter­act­ing with the environment.

After sev­er­al hours travel, the incon­gru­ous sight of a sail­ing ship wrecked on the ice appears ahead of them, although on closer inspec­tion, it turns out to be a Vin­Shari Storm­break­er. Cau­tiously, they approach, observing that it has been heav­ily mod­i­fied to make a kind of shel­ter. Kes-adrel receives a sig­nal from the wreck, and the image of a black gaseous form appears on one of the skiff’s facets, threat­en­ing them with destruc­tion if they per­sist in dis­turb­ing their research. When Sar-ayla reminds Gar-zalash that they are old asso­ci­ates, their tone changes and the vis­it­ors are chal­lenged to solve a riddle to prove they are worth the sci­ent­ist’s time. Raynor works out the answer quickly and they are invited into the wreck.

The interi­or of the ves­sel has been turned into a labor­at­ory of sorts, equipped with salvaged com­puter and sensor hard­ware from mul­tiple sources, includ­ing the Fed­er­a­tion, the Klin­gon Empire and the Fer­engi. Gar-zalash explains that they research sig­nals and radi­ation from mul­tiple sources, includ­ing the spires. They have been mon­it­or­ing the increased eman­a­tions from the spires, and have determ­ined that they seem to ori­gin­ate at the Shad­ow Spire, a large con­struc­tion in the heart of the dark side.

This prompts anoth­er long trip, but this time on the run­about, as Kes-adrel is unable to go much fur­ther. Gar-zalash and Sar-ayla accom­pany the away team, com­ment­ing con­stantly on the tech­no­logy around them. Even­tu­ally, they reach the their des­tin­a­tion, observing a spire rising two kilo­met­ers out of the icy wastes. Above it, a huge holo­graph­ic image of an aurora jelly flashes a mes­sage of warn­ing, but a cav­ernous hole blas­ted into the ice next to the spire indic­ates that someone else may already have ignored the mes­sage. Gar-zalash notes that the entrance to the spire will be at its base, so Quinn takes the run­about into the hole in the ice, and the freez­ing water within.

As they des­cend, a huge blue shape looms out of the dark­ness, caus­ing pan­ic amongst the Cal-Mir­rans: “It’s a cobalt dragon!”

The Arc: The spires appear to con­tain a form of Tilikaal technology.

Obser­va­tions: The Cal-Mir­rans are an energy-based life-form, cap­able of shift­ing their phys­ic­al bod­ies between gaseous, liquid and crys­tal­line sol­id forms, and shift­ing their shapes with­in those forms. They com­mu­nic­ate with light pulses, using a lan­guage based on col­our and tim­ing. Cre­ated spon­tan­eously as a res­ult of light­ning strikes, they have no fam­il­ies or gender, but form com­munit­ies based around com­mon interests.

Cal-Mir­ran soci­ety is divided into dif­fer­ent fac­tions, includ­ing the major­ity Cooper­at­ive gov­ern­ment, the reli­gious Sun­seekers, who restrict their form to metal­lic spheres to hon­our the sun they wor­ship as a cre­at­or god, and the reclus­ive Bead Clan, exper­i­menters with sci­ence and tech­no­logy. Many Cal-Mir­rans are implanted with anti­grav­ity devices cre­ated by the Bead Clan, allow­ing them to hov­er and move in liquid or sol­id forms.

Oth­er beings on the plan­et include the vast orbit­ing aurora jel­lies, cobalt dragons in the depths of the oceans, and sen­tient crys­tal­line ves­sels, such as Kes-adrel.