Epis­ode Num­ber: 2×09

Writ­ten by: Jim Johnson

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 25^th March 2023

Guest Stars:

• Cap­tain Akul: Com­mand­ing officer of the I.K.S. Mup­wI’.
• Chief Petty Officer Adorr Rogon: Bol­i­an oper­a­tions NCO on Lex­ing­ton.
• “Slab”, “Grunt” and Bahl: Ori­on Syn­dic­ate pirates.
• Assor­ted officers from S.S. Bann, S.S. Ber­bice, S.S. Corazon, S.S. Cow­slip, S.S. Feli­cid­ade, S.S. Gerba, S.S. Jahde and S.S. Lon­don­derry.

After days crawl­ing at warp 5 into the depths of the Expanse, we’ve been ambushed by pir­ates. With Mup­wI’ kept out of the fight by a warp core fail­ure, they’ve been able to use their num­bers to inflict severe dam­age on Lex­ing­ton, but we’ve now gained the upper hand.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 48625.7

Plot: While escort­ing a con­voy to a remote sci­ence out­post, Mup­wI’ has suffered dam­age to her warp drive, leav­ing Lex­ing­ton to defend against a horde of pir­ates alone.

The ‘A’ Plot: Boone stag­gers away from the tac­tic­al con­sole shak­ing his head after the last impact. As he sits back against a wall, Kon­in takes over, launch­ing a salvo of photon tor­pedoes at the pir­ate freight­er. The mul­tiple blasts break the ship’s back, leav­ing it help­less in space.

A cor­rus­cat­ing wave of energy washes over the bat­tle­field, caus­ing minor sys­tems fail­ures on many of the con­voy ves­sels, although the pir­ate fight­ers seem to be ready for it, dodging around the energy rib­bons. Wor­ry­ingly, Corazon and Bann flick­er and van­ish, and the crew of Lex­ing­ton is sud­denly con­fron­ted with a very dif­fer­ent world: dressed in unusu­al uni­forms, strain­ing to see in dimin­ished light­ing and devel­op­ing more aggress­ive atti­tudes. As Kon­in real­ises they have some­how slipped into the infam­ous “mir­ror uni­verse”, everything returns to nor­mal. The miss­ing trans­ports also reappear, although Corazon appears to be covered in a thick gel-like sub­stance, which is evap­or­at­ing into space. Her cap­tain later relates that they spent those moments immersed in a dense liquid, and sur­roun­ded by giant, shad­owy creatures.

The remain­ing pir­ate fight­ers close in on the trans­ports, then the second pir­ate freight­er reappears, com­ing to a halt next to Jahde and briefly drop­ping her shields. Ops Chief Rogon reports trans­port­er activ­ity before the ves­sel’s shields go back up.

As Lex­ing­ton moves to respond to the new threat, a second wave of energy hits the region, with sim­il­arly odd effects. Once again, two of the trans­ports van­ish, this time Feli­cid­ade and Ber­bice, while Lex­ing­ton is hit by an even more dra­mat­ic change, briefly being replaced by what appears to be a 20^th cen­tury Earth air­craft car­ri­er. And once again, everything returns to nor­mal a few seconds later.

Kon­in fires phasers, caus­ing minor dam­age to the second pir­ate, which then jumps to warp, fol­lowed by both Jahde and Lon­don­derry, which have obvi­ously been boarded and com­mand­eered. Lex­ing­ton eas­ily dis­ables the remainder of the fight­ers and moves towards the stricken pir­ate freight­er to res­cue sur­viv­ors. Sud­denly, the freight­er explodes, fol­lowed by the dis­abled fight­ers, in what appears to be a delib­er­ate act of self destruction.

Sigh­ing, Kon­in con­tacts the remain­ing trans­ports for dam­age reports, before lead­ing them back to Mup­wI’, where they can be pro­tec­ted while Lex­ing­ton recov­ers Jahde and Lon­don­derry. On the Klin­gon cruis­er, Zepht and his engin­eer­ing team are mak­ing good pro­gress in restor­ing the warp core, as Cap­tain Akul watches crit­ic­ally, impressed with their work, but con­tinu­ally cri­ti­cising his own people’s lack of efficiency.

When Lex­ing­ton arrives, Zepht takes the oppor­tun­ity to return to his sta­tion, leav­ing the engin­eers to carry on without him. Not­ing Akul’s dis­ap­point­ment at being left to look after the con­voy, Kon­in invites him aboard Lex­ing­ton, to take part in res­cuing the miss­ing transports.

They quickly track the com­mand­eered ves­sels to a deser­ted plan­et in a nearby sys­tem, where they find them docked to a huge freight­er in a decay­ing orbit. The sur­viv­ing pir­ate freight­er from the attack is also present and moves to inter­cept them. Ignor­ing it, Lex­ing­ton heads straight towards the two trans­ports, beam­ing their crews to safety, before Akul is giv­en the hon­our of dis­abling the engines of the large ves­sel. He also takes the oppor­tun­ity to fire a quick phaser vol­ley at the smal­ler freight­er, dis­abling it and appar­ently motiv­at­ing them to self-destruct.

Board­ing the remain­ing ships, they are able to regain con­trol of the trans­ports, and to loc­ate four pir­ates, who are taken pris­on­er and returned to the brig. Quinn is put in charge of inter­rog­at­ing them, and asks Akul to accom­pany him; Kon­in tags along, intend­ing to mon­it­or the pris­on­ers telepathically.

The first pris­on­er is a surly Human going by the name of “Slab”. He does­n’t want to talk and refuses to rise to Quin­n’s attempts to intim­id­ate him into doing so, even when he’s escor­ted to the air­lock where Quinn tries to con­vince him that he will be ejec­ted into space. Unfor­tu­nately, Quinn for­gets to lock out the air­lock con­trols; when Kon­in real­ises that Slab is going to space him­self, he orders the trans­port­er room to beam the pris­on­er back to the brig as soon as the out­er door opens. It is clear that the pir­ate is more afraid of his boss than any­thing Star­fleet could do to him. The idea of hand­ing him over to the Klin­gons does­n’t scare him either, and Kon­in vetoes this anyway.

“Grunt” is a tower­ing Naus­icaan, but is barely able to under­stand the ques­tions he’s asked. They don’t get much out of him.

A Bol­i­an named Bahl seems hap­pi­er to talk … to a point. He admits that they’re pir­ates, that they work to their cap­tain’s orders, and that they are all part of the Ori­on Syn­dic­ate, but he won’t name his cap­tain. Kon­in is able to read from his sur­face thoughts that this is actu­ally the Ori­on own­er-oper­at­or E’lor­uul. Bahl flatly refuses to give any inform­a­tion as to who is advising her or where her base is, explain­ing that his life is simply not worth it. When asked about Syn­dic­ate spies oper­at­ing on Nar­en­dra, he just sneers and asks: “what do you think?”

Unfor­tu­nately, the fourth pris­on­er appears to have died in his cell. Dr Con­ners is unable to estab­lish a cause of death, and there’s no sign of any sui­cide devices, so she ini­tially assumes he may have some­how willed him­self to death. Kon­in, how­ever, is wor­ried that he may have been murdered by an accom­plice aboard the ves­sel, so she agrees to carry out a more detailed autopsy.

As the seni­or officers return to the bridge, the ship is briefly hit by anoth­er energy wave, los­ing all power for sev­er­al minutes. As they try to get the door to the bridge open, Quinn requests Akul’s assist­ance in a rather famil­i­ar fash­ion, and is treated to a dis­play of the Klin­gon’s tem­per. He’s back­han­ded for his insolence, and Kon­in is forced to step in, request­ing that Akul not strike his officers.

Once power is restored, they are able to return to the con­voy, escort­ing it to Array 3–5 without incid­ent. As they return to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion for more repairs, Kon­in begins to estab­lish a work­ing rela­tion­ship with the Klin­gon commander.

The Arc: The crew has uncovered evid­ence that the Ori­on Syn­dic­ate is up to some­thing in the region, with their old adversary E’lor­uul play­ing a major part. It remains unclear as to wheth­er this is any­thing more sig­ni­fic­ant than the usu­al organ­ised crime activities.

Ref­er­ences: E’lor­uul was the Ori­on trans­port cap­tain seen pre­vi­ously in ‘Fad­ing Sun’.

Dia­logue: Cap­tain Akul boards Lex­ing­ton: “Let us hunt pir­ates together!”

Quinn asks for help with a door: “Akul, if you could help me open the door…”

And Akul’s tem­per flares: “You will address me with the respect due to my position!”

Ques­tions: Sus­pi­cions remain that sab­ot­age may have caused or con­trib­uted to the mul­tiple tech­nic­al fail­ures exper­i­enced by the convoy.

And what was hap­pen­ing with those flashes of altern­at­ive universes?