Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×09

Writ­ten by: Dayton Ward

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 8^th March 2025

Guest Stars:

• Jir­al Sera: Ori­on con­tract pilot.
• E’lor­uul: Head of the “pro­spect­ing” oper­a­tion on Dys­athus II, actu­ally a rank­ing mem­ber of the Ori­on Syndicate.
• SCH 79-Alpha: Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram from a deep space sur­vey probe, cur­rently in hid­ing aboard Lex­ing­ton.

Deep Space Sur­vey Probe 79-Alpha’s data included faint gra­vi­met­ric dis­tor­tions eman­at­ing from the second plan­et of the Dys­athus star sys­tem. The sys­tem is loc­ated well away from the con­cen­tra­tion of activ­ity that’s the focus of our explor­a­tion of the Shack­leton Expanse, but close enough to Romu­lan space to make me nervous. Until now, no such read­ings have ever been recor­ded in this region, so their abrupt appear­ance now, par­tic­u­larly in the wake of everything that’s happened these past sev­er­al months, is a sur­pris­ing devel­op­ment. Of addi­tion­al con­cern is the area’s pop­ular­ity with civil­ian mer­chants and oth­ers who might not appre­ci­ate Star­fleet scru­tiny. We’ve been ordered to invest­ig­ate and take whatever action I deem neces­sary and appro­pri­ate for the good of our over­all mission.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51368.1

Plot: Lex­ing­ton’s crew are recalled from shore leave to invest­ig­ate anom­aly activ­ity in a sys­tem near Romu­lan space.

The ‘A’ Plot: Vice Admir­al Hebert con­tacts the Lex­ing­ton, and her call is passed on to Azon­an as the seni­or officer present. He is work­ing on the long range sensors in the depths of the sec­ond­ary hull. Hebert tells him that they need to take an urgent trip to Dys­athus, near the Romu­lan bor­der. The data recovered from Deep Space Sur­vey Probe 79-Alpha has shown that the 2^nd plan­et of the sys­tem has star­ted pro­du­cing gra­vi­met­ric anom­alies of the type asso­ci­ated with Tilikaal struc­tures. The sig­nals are increas­ing in intens­ity, and the large num­ber of civil­ian ves­sels in the vicin­ity, along with the prox­im­ity to the Romu­lan bor­der, make invest­ig­a­tion a priority.

Azon­an orders the bridge to recall the crew from shore leave, while he cleans up and pre­pares to leave. The recall of the seni­or officers is a little var­ied: Kon­in and Quinn are beamed dir­ectly from the top of Mount Uhura, and Raynor arrives wear­ing a neck brace, but explains he has been told he will be fully fit in a day or so. Zepht and Zohir do not respond imme­di­ately: the Den­ob­u­lan is still hibern­at­ing, and Zohir is even­tu­ally recovered in a Hawaii­an shirt from a yacht off the coast near the leave facility.

They get under­way, and once Zepht is awake, Kon­in organ­ises a con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the mis­sion. The read­ings were picked up at long range by the probe, and have only just been extrac­ted from its data cache. They indic­ate a steady increase in gra­vi­met­ric and radi­ation anom­alies in the sys­tem, and bear a strik­ing resemb­lance to those from Alpha Tory­ui II and Orgun II. If this is anoth­er Tilikaal facil­ity, then it can­not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Romu­lans or the Ori­on Syn­dic­ate. Lex­ing­ton is under orders to invest­ig­ate, eval­u­ate and act accordingly.

Raynor reports that the sys­tem is heav­ily used by smug­glers and oth­er groups try­ing to avoid Star­fleet scru­tiny. Dys­athus II is envel­oped in a field of debris res­ult­ing from the col­li­sion of two of its moons, and is con­sequently dif­fi­cult to reach and sub­ject to freez­ing weath­er. Zepht reports that the plan­ners for Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge are con­cerned that this new devel­op­ment could be an indic­a­tion of fur­ther Tilikaal attempts to enter this universe.

They begin their approach to the plan­et, and enter the chaot­ic debris field, dodging aster­oids the size of Nar­en­dra Sta­tion. Sensors pick up a dis­abled ves­sel drift­ing along­side a huge frag­ment of rock, but it is dif­fi­cult to make out details as min­er­als in the debris are inter­fer­ing with sensor read­ings. An attempt to use a probe to get a bet­ter read­ing fails when it is hit by a met­eor­oid, so they change their path to invest­ig­ate dir­ectly, dis­cov­er­ing a Rigel­lian-designed freight­er, which has actu­ally crash-landed on one of the lar­ger rocks. Its engines and life sup­port are com­prom­ised, and it’s not likely to be mov­ing any time soon. Sensors are pick­ing up one humanoid lifeform.

Raynor takes a small med­ic­al team with secur­ity sup­port and beams into the small bridge. The room is badly dam­aged, with col­lapsed struts and sparks shower­ing from the ceil­ing. A pair of legs sticks out from under a con­sole, and turns out to belong to the ves­sel’s oper­at­or, an Ori­on con­tract pilot called Jir­al Sera. He thanks them for their assist­ance and explains that he was hit by an unex­pec­ted rock while nav­ig­at­ing through the debris field. Raynor quizzes him about what he was doing and he says that he is work­ing as a cargo hauler for a min­ing con­cern. Upon hear­ing that the ship is bey­ond recov­ery, he cheer­fully shrugs, point­ing out that he does not own it. They offer to return him to his employ­er and he agrees.

Cau­tiously enter­ing orbit, they dis­cov­er that the radi­ation from the anom­alies will make use of the trans­port­er impossible, so they pre­pare the Trave to fly the land­ing party down. Giv­en the con­di­tions on the sur­face, Raynor opts to make sure there are enough envir­on­ment suits and phaser rifles aboard, and brings an extra secur­ity officer to keep an eye on Sera. Des­pite the storms in the upper atmo­sphere, the des­cent is unevent­ful, and they soon find the min­ing camp on the shores of an inland sea in the north­ern polar region. They also detect a sub­mers­ible oper­at­ing a cut­ting beam near what appears to be an arti­fi­cial struc­ture deep beneath the seabed. The struc­ture itself seems to be the source of the grav­it­a­tion­al anomalies.

As they land near the camp, they are approached by a skim­mer. It appears to be Ori­on in design, and this is con­firmed when the vehicle hails them. Its occu­pant iden­ti­fies her­self as Super­visor E’lor­uul, and Kon­in imme­di­ately frowns. He tem­por­ar­ily mutes the con­ver­sa­tion to tell the oth­ers that she’s a wanted Ori­on Syn­dic­ate mem­ber, facing charges for pir­acy. Then he intro­duces him­self and states that he has res­cued her pilot, to which she responds that she is grate­ful for his assist­ance, before going on to declare that her oper­a­tion is entirely leg­al, but that this plan­et is out­side the jur­is­dic­tion of Star­fleet any­way. She will not appre­ci­ate any inter­fer­ence, although Kon­in protests that is not their intention.

Zepht notices some­thing on the sensors: the sub­mers­ible appears to be in trouble. The cut­ting beam is inact­ive and the sub itself is now lying on its side on the lip of a deep trench. Kon­in relays this to E’lor­uul, who imme­di­ately ends the con­ver­sa­tion to deal with the issue. The cap­tain determ­ines that they have the abil­ity to assist, so Quinn takes the run­about into the water. They find the sub­mers­ible quickly, and tract­or it out of the water to the shore.

As the sub­mers­ible settles and the crew begin emer­ging, the water begins to churn, as a huge struc­ture emerges from beneath the waves. Zepht takes one look at the archi­tec­tur­al design and announces that it is Iconian.

The ‘B’ Plot: With the re-exam­in­a­tion of the Tilikaal sites paused for a while, Kon­in allows the crew to take leave for a few days. Many take advant­age of the shore leave facil­it­ies on Amir II, the world around which Nar­en­dra Sta­tion orbits.

Kon­in and Quinn are two of them, using the shore facil­ity as a base from which to explore the moun­tains over­look­ing it. Kon­in is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in tak­ing on some of the more dif­fi­cult climbs, using them to help clear his mind of wor­ries about his wife, who was recently recovered alive after the loss of her ship. Quinn is sur­prised at some of the routes they take, which seem a lot harder than they need to be. The pair also attends some of the soc­cer matches being held between rep­res­ent­at­ives of the dif­fer­ent Fed­er­a­tion mem­bers in the region. Again Quinn is sur­prised by the cap­tain’s aggress­ive sup­port for his chosen teams.

Zohir is also on the sur­face, spend­ing some time with Nat­alie Sig­mund on a yacht explor­ing the island chain off the coast.

Raynor spends some of his time try­ing to get to know 79-Alpha, but finds it is not very inter­ested in social niceties, seem­ing to come alive only when dis­cuss­ing philo­sophy or its explor­a­tion of the far reaches of the Shack­leton Expanse. Later, he volun­teers to train with some of the Klin­gon gar­ris­on, hop­ing to learn more about their tac­tics. Unfor­tu­nately, they mis­un­der­stand his interest, and assign him to the “enemy” forces for a sim­u­lated battle on the sur­face of Amir II. He’s badly injured, and spends sev­er­al days in the star­base med­ic­al facil­ity with a neck injury.

Azon­an and Zepht remain on the ship. Azon­an wants to catch up on some of the more obscure main­ten­ance work, while avoid­ing encoun­ters with Klin­gons. As the most seni­or officer remain­ing aboard, he is also forced to take on the role of Officer of the Day, over­see­ing the routine work around the ves­sel. Zepht, mean­while, is under­go­ing his annu­al hibernation.

The ‘C’ Plot: Dr Con­ners decides she has done as much as she can for Dr Talia­ferro, and trans­fers her to the Star­base 364 med­ic­al centre in the hope they can help bal­ance treat­ment for her addic­tion with her con­tinu­ing health.

The Arc: Des­pite the sim­il­ar­it­ies in the anom­alies and radi­ation pro­duced, the facil­ity turns out to be Iconi­an rather than Tilikaal. With the two civil­isa­tions exist­ing in almost the same time peri­od, it seems likely they interacted.

Obser­va­tions: Quinn and Kon­in both enjoy out­side pur­suits, such as hik­ing and climb­ing, as well as team sports. Zepht, like all Den­ob­u­lans, has to sleep for sev­er­al days a year.

Rebekah Kon­in was recovered alive from the wreck of the Hyper­ion’s cap­tain’s yacht. The rest of her crew appear to have died in the battle. The cap­tain is cur­rently in a secure facil­ity, while med­ic­al and intel­li­gence spe­cial­ists assess her phys­ic­al and men­tal state.

Amir II, the plan­et around which Star­base 364 orbits, provides shore leave facil­it­ies, along­side ground train­ing facil­it­ies for Klin­gons. The main struc­tures are in an area of strik­ing nat­ur­al beauty, perched on a plat­eau over­look­ing a deep blue sea, but pro­tec­ted from the worst of the storms by a cres­cent-shaped moun­tain range, all over­looked by the craggy Mount Uhura, the 2^nd highest peak on the planet.

Dys­athus II is sur­roun­ded by a dense cloud of rocky debris, appar­ently the res­ult of an astro­nom­ic­ally recent col­li­sion betwen two moons. The debris will even­tu­ally settle into rings, but the tra­ject­or­ies of the frag­ments are still chaot­ic and unpre­dict­able. The plan­et itself was class M, but ground impacts, most of which are near the equat­or, have caused an extens­ive impact winter. It still has a largely breath­able atmo­sphere, but it is pol­luted by tox­ins from the impacts and very cold. Exot­ic min­er­als, both in the orbit­ing debris and in atmo­spher­ic dust, cause severe sensor interference.

E’lor­uul’s camp is near the north pole, on the edge of a large inland sea, its sur­face mostly frozen over. The camp con­sists of tem­por­ary arc­tic shel­ters, and an Ori­on-designed per­son­nel trans­port is landed nearby. She also has a sub­mers­ible ves­sel oper­at­ing in the depths of the sea. Her staff is a mix of Ori­ons, Humans, Naus­icaans and Yridians.

The odd radi­ation and grav­it­a­tion­al anom­alies in the sys­tem appear to eman­ate from a vast under­ground struc­ture, although it shows no sign of power gen­er­a­tion. It is roughly pyr­am­id­al in shape, with intric­ate sur­face detail­ing that indic­ates it is of Iconi­an origin.

Ref­er­ences: E’lor­uul was last seen in “Fad­ing Sun”; pre­vi­ous encoun­ters show she is a ruth­less Ori­on oper­at­or, also sus­pec­ted to be behind the pir­ate raid on Con­voy SE-119, and the theft of Tilikaal arte­facts from Nar­en­dra Station.

Ques­tions: Why is the pyr­am­id activ­at­ing now?