Epis­ode Num­ber: 3×10

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 29^th Septem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Com­mand­er Ravenna: Com­mand­er of the Romu­lan war­bird Che­vareth
• Cen­tur­i­on Thameth: Ravenna’s exec­ut­ive officer
• Sub­cen­tur­i­on Thul­mir: Seni­or war­fare officer on the Che­vareth
• Lieu­ten­ant Erak: Helm officer on the Che­vareth
• Sub­lieu­ten­ant Hakama: Juni­or officer on the Che­vareth

Our inter­ven­tion in Che­vareth’s mutiny has not gone quite to plan. We’ve recovered Com­mand­er Ravenna, but she does not appear to be…well. And I’ve been shot in the back!

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9971.5, supplemental

Plot: Mas­uda and the board­ing party help to thwart the mutiny on the Che­vareth, while Lt Jin and his team work to clear the Light of Heav­en of Romu­lan assault teams.

The ‘A’ Plot: Aware that oth­er Romu­lans are likely to vis­it the brig before long, the board­ing party and the freed pris­on­ers look for some­where to hole up, attend to the cap­tain’s injur­ies and plan their next move. Sub­cen­tur­i­on Thul­mir leads them down a level and out into a dimly-lit area in the ves­sel’s star­board wing, using a com­mand code to open a door to a small recre­ation room fit­ted with chairs and tables. He explains that, as the ship suffered increas­ing amounts of dam­age, less neces­sary parts of the ship were shut down to save on life sup­port and maintenance.

It does not take long for the room to warm up, and Vale-of-Winds is soon able to start work on tend­ing to Mas­uda’s dis­ruptor burn, with the assist­ance of a some­what unpre­pared James. The doc­tor’s meth­ods may appear unusu­al, but they seem to be effect­ive, although the cap­tain does go into shock from the pain at one point. Before long, she is able to con­verse without gasp­ing in pain.

In the mean­time, Vale’s rem­edy for Com­mand­er Raven­na’s own trauma seems to have taken effect. She begins to take more interest in her sur­round­ings, con­vers­ing in Romu­lan with her col­leagues. Once Mas­uda is act­ive, Ravenna addresses her by name, des­pite the dis­guising make-up. She explains that even on a ship the size of Che­vareth she is famil­i­ar enough with her crew to know there are no officers from Gal’arass aboard, but know­ing that there are Human eth­ni­cit­ies with sim­il­ar fea­tures, she eas­ily sur­mised the cap­tain’s iden­tity. Vale is shocked to learn that her own fame has pre­ceded her: appar­ently Romu­lan intel­li­gence has been track­ing her since the Fed­er­a­tion-Klin­gon War.

Intro­duc­tions out of the way, the two C.O.s go on to dis­cuss the mutiny. Ravenna explains that although she knew Donak was ambi­tious, she did not anti­cip­ate so bold a move. Her fam­ily includes a power­ful mem­ber of the Imper­i­al Sen­ate with ambi­tions to be the next praetor. It seems Donak dis­cov­er­ing her “incom­pet­ence” and tak­ing over for the great­er glory of the Empire, would enhance his pro­spects. She had already been very vocal about the com­mand­er­’s decisions and the advant­ages of an alli­ance with the K’si.

Ravenna goes on to explain that it should not have been pos­sible for Donak to have taken over the ship, as the com­mand codes are locked to the com­mand­ing officer, her cen­tur­i­on and the seni­or ship­board rep­res­ent­at­ive of the Tal Diann, the Romu­lan nav­al intel­li­gence ser­vice. Cen­tur­i­on Thameth has served with her for more than two dec­ades, and while Sub­com­mand­er Ritek of the Tal Diann died recently, his suc­cessor, Sub­lieu­ten­ant Hakama, has yet com­plete the trans­fer of respons­ib­il­it­ies. Sub­cen­tur­i­on Makeena of the Oper­a­tions depart­ment would be the most seni­or officer not in cus­tody, but would not have access to the codes.

She lists the poten­tial mutin­eers, which include Hakama, Makeena, Lieu­ten­ant Devok in Engin­eer­ing and Mar­ine Lieu­ten­ant Boton. Thul­mir and Erak have already proven loy­al to Ravenna, and Erak vouches for Sub­lieu­ten­ant Kulut in Sensors and Com­mu­nic­a­tions. The pos­i­tions of Thameth and Lieu­ten­ant Vevuna, the head of Bio­lo­gic­al Sup­port, remain uncertain.

Mas­uda and Ravenna agree that they need to estab­lish Thameth­’s dis­pos­i­tion: was he part of the mutiny? Or was he coerced in some way, as Ravenna believes? If it was the lat­ter, and he’s not in the brig, then he is likely to be in Bio­lo­gic­al Sup­port. The Romu­lan does not elab­or­ate on why this would be, although this soon becomes clear. Thul­mir leads the way to the single locked entry­way to the Bio­lo­gic­al Sup­port centre, and Ravenna over­rides the lock, show­ing that some of her own com­mand codes are still val­id. The life sci­ences and med­ic­al teams with­in put up little res­ist­ance, as Ravenna pushes straight through the sick­bay to the inter­rog­a­tion suite.

Thameth is strapped into a met­al chair, while the young lieu­ten­ant they saw earli­er (who turns out to be Hakama) inter­rog­ates him, aided by sensors and oth­er more sin­is­ter devices. The com­mand­er orders her to stop and let him go and, when she refuses, shoots her in the side without hes­it­a­tion. They free Thameth, who explains that he was picked up by Hakama’s team just before the Star­fleet party arrived; it seems that Hakama had been aware of his plan all along. Ravenna des­troys much of the suite in an unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic dis­play of anger, as a doc­tor takes Hakama away to a secure room. The com­mand­er admits that she sus­pects Hakama may be a Tal Shiar agent, some­thing not allowed by nav­al convention.

Before long, Ravenna and Thameth are able to rally enough crew mem­bers to lead an assault team to the bridge, secur­ing it after a brief fight and tak­ing Donak and her allies pris­on­er, end­ing the mutiny.

Hav­ing taken no part in the battle, and with their pres­ence unknown to the crew at large, Mas­uda and her team return to Lyo­n­esse. The Che­vareth recov­ers food for­aging parties, which Ravenna had deployed to the unin­hab­ited parts of Oreis­on before the battle, and then with­draws from the plan­et, allow­ing the Star­fleet ves­sel to provide some aid to the stricken Light of Heav­en. Ravenna refuses to com­ment on the fuel they had already taken from the K’si.

The two ships then leave the sys­tem before more K’si ves­sels arrive.

The ‘B’ Plot: On Lyo­n­esse, the crew pro­ceeds with the task of extract­ing the armed Romu­lan board­ing parties from the dis­abled K’si ves­sel. Jin iden­ti­fies Romu­lan biosig­na­tures, then Astan pos­i­tions his secur­ity teams to dis­arm them as soon as Valik’s people bring them aboard. With four trans­port­er rooms work­ing, the pro­cess is quite fast.

Unfor­tu­nately, there are a couple of mis­haps. Des­pite their best efforts to ensure no K’si are caught in the beam-ins, they do briefly kid­nap one, before Valik is able to dis­en­tangle their pat­tern from the Romu­lan group and return them to their ship.

In trans­port­er room 3, one Romu­lan group mater­i­al­ises before the secur­ity per­son­nel are ready. Tak­ing the trans­port­er oper­at­or host­age, they bar­ri­cade them­selves in the trans­port­er room, exchan­ging fire with the secur­ity team. It takes Astan’s depart­ment sev­er­al minutes to regain control.

Even­tu­ally, all the Romu­lan per­son­nel have been dis­armed and escor­ted to cargo hold 5, where a make­shift hold­ing facil­ity has been set up. Even­tu­ally, they are returned to the Che­vareth, com­plete with their equipment.

The Arc: It seems the Romu­lans will be allies of a sort, rather than enemies.

Obser­va­tions: Romu­lan soci­ety is driv­en by polit­ic­al fac­tions built around power­ful fam­il­ies, who are con­stantly com­pet­ing for influ­ence. The Imper­i­al gov­ern­ment is demo­crat­ic, but in a fash­ion remin­is­cent of ancient Rome, voters are influ­enced sup­port spe­cif­ic sen­at­ori­al can­did­ates by favours and reg­u­lar pay­ments. This sys­tem of pat­ron­age extends into every­day life, where the sen­at­ors will usu­ally back their sup­port­ers in civil dis­putes. With­in the Imper­i­al Star Navy, how­ever, this tra­di­tion is sup­posed to be banned, with loy­alty to the ship and the Empire repla­cing it.

The infam­ous Tal Shiar is well known as the power­ful secur­ity and intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Romu­lan Star Empire, but by con­ven­tion has no author­ity with­in the Star Navy. Nav­al author­it­ies oper­ate their own secur­ity depart­ment, the Tal Diann, which serves a sim­il­ar role and main­tains a fierce rivalry with the Tal Shiar.

Gal’arass is a remote region on Romu­lus, noted for the beauty of its land­scape. The loc­al pop­u­la­tion have dis­tinct­ive fea­tures, which are sim­il­ar to those pos­sessed by some eth­nic groups on Earth and Vulcan.