Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×06

Writ­ten by: John Brent Macek

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 25^th Janu­ary 2025

Guest Stars:

• Com­modore Diego Reyes: Retired Star­fleet com­modore and S.A.D. activist.

I have received orders from Vice Admir­al Hebert to pro­ceed at once to the 14 Tory­ui sys­tem where we are to loc­ate the wreck­age of the Star­ship Gor­gon. Once loc­ated, we are to des­troy it imme­di­ately before it drifts into the system’s space lanes. Civil­ian freight­er traffic is heavy in this sec­tor, as it lies on the route from the Fed­er­a­tion core worlds. And we need those space lanes clear.

This comes at a dif­fi­cult moment for me. The Hyper­ion is serving in the 7^th Fleet, cur­rently con­front­ing a Domin­ion advance into the Tyra sys­tem, close to the core worlds. Ini­tial reports from the bat­tle­front are not prom­ising: the Domin­ion assault is tak­ing a heavy toll on the defenders.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51218.9

Plot: Ordered to des­troy a drift­ing wreck for the safety of ship­ping, the crew has to deal with act­iv­ists want­ing to pre­serve it as a war memorial.

The ‘A’ Plot: The Lex­ing­ton receives orders from Star­base 364 to loc­ate and des­troy a wreck drift­ing into a major space lane. Accom­pa­ny­ing the orders is a per­son­al mes­sage from the Admir­al to Cap­tain Kon­in, emphas­ising that the wreck must be des­troyed, as its aging warp core is unstable and emit­ting heavy doses of deadly Ber­thold radi­ation, mak­ing it impossible to board and recov­er the ship. Her tone makes him sus­pi­cious of her intentions.

The wreck is that of the U.S.S. Gor­gon, and is mov­ing at near light­speed along the bor­der between Romu­lan and Klin­gon space towards the Expanse. Although the ship has no power, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to spot on long range sensors, its sec­ond­ary warp nacelles con­tain enough resid­ual energy to sus­tain its speed against the drag induced by inter­stel­lar dust impacts. It has been drift­ing for over a cen­tury, since the end of the Fed­er­a­tion-Klin­gon War of the 2250s, and is about to enter the main ship­ping lanes from the core worlds to the Fed­er­a­tion colon­ies of the region. Civil­ian ves­sels mov­ing at warp would be unlikely to spot the wreck in time to avoid a poten­tial collision.

Based on the wreck­’s recor­ded pos­i­tion and tra­ject­ory, Zepht is able to cal­cu­late its cur­rent loc­a­tion so they can get close enough to detect it. As they close in, the cap­tain holds a meet­ing to dis­cuss the best way to handle the task; sev­er­al officers are keen to try to sal­vage the ves­sel, but Kon­in is adam­ant that their orders must be fol­lowed pre­cisely. Raynor won­ders if it might be pos­sible to board the wreck and recov­er its records first. Azon­an points out that the Gor­gon is affected by relativ­ist­ic time dila­tion, which would make any board­ing pro­cess very complicated.

Quinn is able to manouevre to with­in a couple of hun­dred metres of the ves­sel while sus­tain­ing their speed, although Azon­an in main engin­eer­ing is forced to earn his keep, try­ing to hold the Lex­ing­ton togeth­er under the strain. Zepht per­forms a detailed scan, not­ing that the Gor­gon has min­im­al power in its sys­tems, dam­age which appears to be primar­ily from micro­met­eor­oid impacts, and no life signs. Kon­in steps up to the sci­ence con­sole to run his own scan, but a prox­im­ity alert sounds before he can see the results.

A new ship sud­denly inter­poses itself between the two cruis­ers, appar­ently a mod­i­fied civil­ian freight­er. It imme­di­ately broad­casts a mes­sage, identi­fy­ing itself as the S.S. Sarissa, and demand­ing they stand down, so that the Gor­gon can be salvaged as a war memori­al by the Sons and Daugh­ters of the Fed­er­a­tion-Klin­gon War. The Sarissa’s com­mand­er is Com­modore Diego Reyes, an eld­erly and rather crotchety retired Star­fleet officer. Unfor­tu­nately the new­comer is block­ing dir­ect access to the wreck, includ­ing sensors and tract­or beams.

Then the Sarissa locks its own tract­or beam on to the Gor­gon.

Kon­in argues with Reyes about the status of the wreck, attempt­ing to use Fed­er­a­tion law to get him to back down. The older man argues that the wreck is a war grave, of great import­ance to the des­cend­ants of its crew. Then he cuts the com­mu­nic­a­tion as the tract­or beam pulls the two ships towards each other.

Zepht deploys a probe to get a closer look at the wreck, and Kon­in asks him to scan for Beth­old radi­ation. The Den­ob­u­lan is unable to find any sign of such emissions.

Fail­ing to get Reyes to back down, Kon­in orders Quinn to take the ship along­side the Gor­gon, so that they can get a dir­ect line-of-sight to the Sarissa’s tract­or beam. He dir­ects Raynor to tar­get their own tract­or beam at the civil­ian ship’s tract­or emit­ter, set­ting up an inter­fer­ence pat­tern that severs its tie to the wreck. Unfor­tu­nately, this sets up a feed­back loop that res­ults in an explo­sion and an elec­tric­al dis­charge through­out the civil­ian ship, caus­ing most of its sys­tems to fail. The Sarissa falls rap­idly behind them, while Raynor vapor­ises the Gor­gon with con­trolled phaser bursts.

Quinn slows Lex­ing­ton so they can provide aid to the stricken freight­er. Tract­or­ing the Sarissa, they send board­ing parties to con­duct repairs and aid the injured. There is only one ser­i­ous cas­u­alty, Reyes, who has suffered fatal injur­ies. Kon­in vis­its him in sick­bay in an effort to find out what he was try­ing to do, but the old officer replies that it’s down to him to expose the con­spir­acy. He hints that he has left some data in his quar­ters before he dies.

Con­duct­ing a search of Reyes’s quar­ters aboard the Sarissa, Kon­in finds a PADD, con­tain­ing what appears to be a video mes­sage “to whom it may con­cern”, along with reams of evid­ence about a bioweapon deployed aboard the Gor­gon. Tak­ing the PADD back to his quar­ters, he watches the video, learn­ing about Reyes’ the­or­ies that the mys­ter­i­ous Sec­tion 31 was plan­ning to use muta­gen­ic weaponry to reduce the Klin­gon capa­city for war­fare. Reyes con­cludes his video with the sug­ges­tion that Star­fleet will try to cov­er this up.

The ‘B’ Plot: Kon­in is dis­trac­ted by the know­ledge that his wife’s ves­sel is part of Star­fleet’s first massed form­a­tion con­front­ing the Domin­ion at Tyra. Once the Gor­gon oper­a­tion is com­plete, he learns that the fleet suffered mass cas­u­al­ties, with the Hyper­ion repor­ted as miss­ing in action.

The Arc: Sec­tion 31 rears its ugly head again, albeit a cen­tury ago.

Obser­va­tions: The Gor­gon is drift­ing near light­speed, and since its warp drive is not act­ively func­tion­ing, is not enclosed by a sub­space bubble. Relativ­ist­ic time dila­tion is there­fore in effect, slow­ing sub­ject­ive time and increas­ing its mass appro­pri­ately, and caus­ing cor­res­pond­ing issues for would-be sal­vagers. The wreck has been drift­ing for over a cen­tury in this way, its speed and lack of emis­sions mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to spot with long range sensors.

Dia­logue: Azon­an: “I’m fed up of hear­ing from Com­modore Reyes…”

Ref­er­ences: The U.S.S. Gor­gon is a Carde­n­as-class cruis­er, launched in 2215, and has four nacelles. The class was designed to allow for exten­ded high-warp travel by altern­at­ing the nacelles in pairs. The four sets of coils appear to have retained enough field energy to keep the ves­sel mov­ing at near light­speed against the ongo­ing drag of space dust and gas.

Hebert warns Kon­in that the Gor­gon’s warp drive is emit­ting high-levels of Ber­thold radi­ation, which is extremely dan­ger­ous to organ­ic mat­ter and can­not be blocked by shields. In real­ity, no such radi­ation is detec­ted, and it appears this was an attempt to stop the crew board­ing the ves­sel and uncov­er­ing its secrets.

The Star Trek: Van­guard nov­els fea­ture a Com­modore Diego Reyes who com­manded Star­base 47, AKA Van­guard Sta­tion, in the 2260’s. That officer was dis­hon­our­ably dis­charged from Star­fleet, then spent the rest of his life in obscur­ity. The Diego Reyes in this story, while a retired com­modore, is def­in­itely not the same indi­vidu­al, although he may have been related, which may explain his anim­os­ity towards Starfleet.

Cap­tain Rebekah Kon­in’s ves­sel, U.S.S. Hyper­ion, is part of Star­fleet’s Sev­enth Fleet, facing off against a Domin­in­ion offens­ive against the Fed­er­a­tion core worlds. The two forces met in the Tyra sys­tem in the first massed fleet battle of the war and it did not go well for Star­fleet, los­ing 98 out of 112 ships.

Ques­tions: What was the nature of the secret weapon sup­posedly car­ried by the Gor­gon?