Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×04

Writ­ten by: Jeff Wheaton

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 21^st Decem­ber 2024

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant Larc glash Nossaag: Archae­olo­gic­al remote sens­ing expert.
• Chief N’Reya: Head of shut­tle­bay 2’s main­ten­ance crew.
• Crew­man “Span­ners”: Mem­ber of shut­tle­bay 2’s main­ten­ance crew.
• Ser­geant König: Mem­ber of Raynor’s unit dur­ing the Bor­der Wars.
• Lt Gomez: Mem­ber of the U.S.S. Yamagu­chi crew dur­ing the Battle of Wolf 359.

Lex­ing­ton has just fin­ished her pre­lim­in­ary scans of the fourth plan­et in the Tam­mer­on sys­tem using an exper­i­ment­al pro­to­type sensor based on chroniton particle reac­tions. If all goes to plan, this new sensor should be able to achieve a low-detail scan of the his­tory of any plan­et­ary body, and could lead to major advance­ments in Star­fleet’s archae­olo­gic­al stud­ies. The sys­tem was designed as part of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge, but even though the pro­ject is sus­pen­ded fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of Ash’tamali­a’s true motiv­a­tions, the Tilikaal ruins remain of suf­fi­cient interest to make these tests worthwhile.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51135.7

Plot: The Lex­ing­ton crew find them­selves caught in a tem­por­al loop.

The ‘A’ Plot: Quinn is work­ing on the Trave, with a couple of main­ten­ance crew­men. He notices that the interi­or light is on in shuttle 12, a Type‑6 shuttle­craft parked on the far side of the bay. This is odd, as nobody else is sup­posed to be in this area, and the shuttle should be powered down any­way. He calls Raynor and requests back up, then when he arrives, the two go to investigate.

The light remains on as they approach, but there’s no sign of any­one with­in the craft. They board and Raynor activ­ates the dia­gnostics pan­el, not­ing that the record shows no activ­ity before it powered up about 5 minutes earli­er. Quinn is dis­trac­ted by a sud­den noise from out­side, and return­ing to the door, he sees Chief N’Reya try­ing to calm down her col­league, who is frus­tratedly banging a large span­ner against a bent hull plate. Raynor, mean­while, becomes aware of a famil­i­ar odour, a mix of machine oil, smoke and per­fume, and turns to find a woman in a ground forces uni­form sat in the pilot’s seat. Recog­nising his old ser­geant, who died dur­ing the Car­das­si­an con­flict, he expresses his sur­prise at see­ing her. She returns the sur­prise, not­ing that he seems older and a lot clean­er. Before they can con­verse fur­ther, Raynor looks up as Quinn reboards the shuttle; when he looks back, she has vanished.

Raynor decides to vis­it sick­bay to check if there’s any­thing med­ic­ally wrong.

Lex­ing­ton is host­ing an exper­i­ment using chroniton-enhanced sensors to explore the past of a world, cur­rently Tam­mer­on IV. Lt Nossaag of Star­fleet’s archae­olo­gic­al remote sens­ing team is over­see­ing the exper­i­ment, which is being run from main engin­eer­ing, much to Azon­an’s irritation.

The ini­tial stages of the exper­i­ment prove very suc­cess­ful, and after sev­er­al hours of scans and the asso­ci­ated cal­cu­la­tions, the seni­or officers gath­er in main engin­eer­ing to view the res­ults. There are cheers as the view­ing screen shows a series of pan­or­a­mas of large cit­ies, each built in ter­races like huge step pyr­am­ids. The images are fuzzy, but anim­ated, and large vehicles can be seen mov­ing along and above the streets.

The cap­tain notes a fast-mov­ing object enter­ing the sky above one city, and this is fol­lowed by a bright flash in the centre of the com­munity. Check­ing oth­er cit­ies at around the same timestamp reveals sim­il­ar explo­sions, and they find it easy to track the meth­od­ic­al oblit­er­a­tion of every large com­munity on the con­tin­ent. It seems that the pre­vi­ous exped­i­tions’ hypo­thes­is that the civil­isa­tion was the vic­tim of a nuc­le­ar holo­caust is correct.

Des­pite this dark­er dis­cov­ery, Nossaag is pleased with the res­ults of his tests, and per­suades the cap­tain to allow his team to con­duct extens­ive scans of the plan­et while they’re there. Kon­in agrees, allow­ing four more days of data col­lec­tion to be scheduled.

A little while later, Raynor is at the tac­tic­al sta­tion on the bridge, car­ry­ing out routine threat scans of the sur­round­ing sys­tem. The sensors pick up an anom­aly at the edge of the sys­tem, which reappears as the sensors sweep the area again. None of the oth­er sensors are show­ing any­thing at that loc­a­tion, so he asks Zepht, cur­rently work­ing in astro­met­rics, to carry out a more detailed sweep. The Den­ob­u­lan reports back that he has been unable to find anything.

In the ready room, Kon­in is going over daily reports, try­ing to sup­press his wor­ries about his wife, who is deployed on the front line of the Domin­ion War. Reach­ing over for anoth­er PADD, he knocks his cof­fee mug off the table. Curs­ing, he calls for ser­vices to come and clean it up, then grabs a cloth to mop up the worst of the mess. It is then that he notices there is noth­ing on the floor, and that his cof­fee is still in his mug, on the table. He gets up and heads onto the bridge, won­der­ing if there’s a con­nec­tion to Raynor’s exper­i­ence in shut­tle­bay 2, but this does seem different.

In the mess hall, Quinn is get­ting lunch before begin­ning the after­noon shift. He picks up a tray of food from the rep­lic­at­or and goes to join some col­leagues in the conn depart­ment. An anim­ated debate ensues, until one of the oth­ers won­ders aloud if he’s plan­ning to get any food. He looks down at his tray, which isn’t there, so he sighs and gets up to return to the replicator.

In astro­met­rics, Zepht is ana­lys­ing recent sensor data, when he notices a bright met­eor dive into the atmo­sphere of the plan­et below. He idly watches the fire­ball explode in the upper atmo­sphere, then is bemused to see a second one fol­low the same path, explod­ing in the same way. When a third met­eor fol­lows the same path, he real­ises some­thing is off and looks at the cor­res­pond­ing sensor read­ings, noti­cing that the three bod­ies appear to have been identical.

In main engin­eer­ing, Azon­an is closely mon­it­or­ing the activ­it­ies of Nossaag and his team, not quite trust­ing their tech­no­logy. A crew­man approaches with the engin­eer­ing duty roster, and he absently signs it off before return­ing to his obser­va­tion. He’s a little sur­prised when the crew­man again clears his throat, and asks him to sign the duty roster. Sud­denly, alarms begin sound­ing, and the warp core begins emit­ting some very dis­turb­ing noises. Real­ising that the core is about go crit­ic­al, Azon­an shouts at the crew to evac­u­ate, while rush­ing to eject the core. Unfor­tu­nately, he’s too late, and the core explodes, tak­ing the ship with it…

Raynor is at the tac­tic­al sta­tion on the bridge, car­ry­ing out routine threat scans of the sur­round­ing sys­tem. The sensors pick up an anom­aly at the edge of the sys­tem, which reappears as the sensors sweep the area again. None of the oth­er sensors are show­ing any­thing at that loc­a­tion, so he asks Zepht, cur­rently work­ing in astro­met­rics, to carry out a more detailed sweep. The Den­ob­u­lan reports back that he has found bursts of tetry­on emis­sions at that loc­a­tion, which may indic­ate the use of a cloak­ing device. Sus­pect­ing Romu­lan activ­ity, Raynor begins a more act­ive scan.

In the ready room, Kon­in is going over daily reports, try­ing to sup­press his wor­ries about his wife, who is deployed on the front line of the Domin­ion War. Reach­ing over for anoth­er PADD, he knocks his cof­fee mug off the table. Curs­ing, he calls for ser­vices to come and clean it up, then grabs a cloth to mop up the worst of the mess. It is then that he notices there is noth­ing on the floor, and that his cof­fee is still in his mug, on the table. He gets up and heads onto the bridge, won­der­ing if there’s a con­nec­tion to Raynor’s exper­i­ence in shut­tle­bay 2, but the secur­ity chief inter­rupts to raise the mat­ter of the tetry­on particles. Kon­in, remem­ber­ing the Romu­lan mind-con­trol plot on Zeta Gracha VII, puts the ship on alert and orders full sweeps to detect cloaked activity.

In the mess hall, Quinn is get­ting lunch before begin­ning the after­noon shift. He picks up a tray of food from the rep­lic­at­or and goes to join some col­leagues in the conn depart­ment, but spies a famil­i­ar face sit­ting alone at anoth­er table. As he approaches, he real­ises it’s Lt Gomez, an old col­league from the U.S.S. Yamagu­chi. They get involved in a some­what akward con­ver­sa­tion about old times, but it takes him sev­er­al minutes to real­ise that Gomez is wear­ing an older pat­tern of uni­form. He is dis­trac­ted by someone bump­ing into his chair, and when he looks back, the appar­i­tion has van­ished. Moreover, his din­ner plate is empty, but he does­n’t think he’s eaten any­thing. Sigh­ing he goes back to the replicator.

In astro­met­rics, Zepht is ana­lys­ing recent sensor data, look­ing for more evid­ence of a Romu­lan pres­ence, when he notices a bright met­eor dive into the atmo­sphere of the plan­et below. He idly watches the fire­ball explode in the upper atmo­sphere, then is bemused to see a second one fol­low the same path, explod­ing in the same way. When a third met­eor fol­lows the same path, he real­ises some­thing is off and looks at the cor­res­pond­ing sensor read­ings, real­ising that all 3 eman­ated from the same point as the tetry­on particles he detec­ted earli­er. He reports to the cap­tain that a cloaked Romu­lan ship may be using met­eor­oids to try and des­troy the ship.

In main engin­eer­ing, Azon­an is closely mon­it­or­ing the activ­it­ies of Nossaag and his team, not quite trust­ing their tech­no­logy. A crew­man approaches with the engin­eer­ing duty roster, and he absently signs it off before going back to double-check­ing Nossaag’s work. On receiv­ing the cap­tain’s alert, he is about to order the mod­i­fied sensors deac­tiv­ated, when the crew­man again clears his throat, and asks him to sign the duty roster. As he berates the con­fused crew­man about wast­ing his time, alarms begin sound­ing, and the warp core begins emit­ting some very dis­turb­ing noises. Real­ising that the core is about go crit­ic­al, Azon­an shouts at the crew to evac­u­ate, while rush­ing to eject the core. Unfor­tu­nately, he’s too late, and the core explodes, tak­ing the ship with it…

The same sequence of events repeats a couple more times, with vari­ations, but on the fourth repe­ti­tion, the crew is begin­ning to notice some­thing odd: Raynor and Quinn both devel­op a strange sense of déjà vu, while Zepht remem­bers see­ing the met­eor­ic fire­ball many more times than he can count. Kon­in devel­ops a head­ache from the stress, and Azon­an’s irrit­a­tion with the archaelo­gic­al team begins to over­come his Vul­can training.

Zepht is the first to real­ise there is more going on, and car­ries out an intern­al sensor sweep of the ship, spe­cific­ally look­ing for chronitons. He finds them every­where, in dens­it­ies much high­er than could have accu­mu­lated in the time the sensor sys­tem has been online. Con­tact­ing Raynor, he begins to explain his sus­pi­cions, but the cap­tain breaks into the con­ver­sa­tion and demands an explan­a­tion. Raynor includes the oth­er seni­or officers, so that they are all able to relate the strange events they’ve experienced.

Real­ising they’re caught in a time loop, Azon­an turns to the engin­eer­ing bay at large, yelling at his team to turn the sensor modi­fic­a­tions off imme­di­ately. At that point, he real­ises that the major­ity of his team appear to be caught in indi­vidu­al pock­ets of time. Some are loop­ing through the same activ­it­ies repeatedly, while oth­ers are mov­ing in slow motion, and oth­ers at high speed. One unfor­tu­nate officer is star­ing at his aged and withered hand, scream­ing silently. None of them respond to his orders.

He decides to turn it off him­self, but the sensor con­trols are on the far side of the room, and on the oth­er side of an unknown num­ber of tem­por­al pockets.

Obser­va­tions: Lieu­ten­ant Larc glash Nossaag is dis­tantly related to the Tel­lar­ite secur­ity officer of the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton (NCC-1709), accord­ing to the producers.

Nossaag’s sensor modi­fic­a­tions work by bathing the tar­get area in chroniton radi­ation, then ana­lys­ing the pat­terns of reflec­ted particles. Soph­ist­ic­ated com­puter sys­tems can then recon­struct the sequence of events at a par­tic­u­lar time, at a fairly low resolution.

Tam­mer­on IV is an Earth-sized K‑class plan­et in a sys­tem deep with­in the Expanse and well away from hos­tile space. The plan­et is arid and warm, with an unbreath­able atmo­sphere and occa­sion­al pock­ets of dan­ger­ous radi­ation. Pre­vi­ous sur­veys have pro­duced evid­ence that the world was pre­vi­ously M‑class and the home of an indus­tri­al soci­ety. Archae­olo­gists have hypo­thes­ised that the plan­et’s eco­sphere was des­troyed in a nuc­le­ar con­flag­ra­tion, but the con­di­tions have pre­ven­ted any exten­ded investigations.

Zepht ref­er­ences the Romu­lan orbit­al aster­oid bom­bard­ment of Colony 75/4772 early in the Earth-Romu­lan War.

Dia­logue: Zepht: I have been scan­ning for Romu­lan ships, but I haven’t found any.

Kon­in (some­what irrit­ated): That’s nat­ur­al for a cloak!

Ques­tions: Is this a Romu­lan plot? Or is it just a side effect of the sensor modifications?