Epis­ode Num­ber: 2×14

Writ­ten by: Jim Johnson

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 27^th May 2023

Guest Stars:

• Assessor Tredik: Mys­ter­i­ous res­id­ent, and appar­ent care­taker, of Can­did­ate Three’s ruins.
• Com­mand­er Tomalak: Com­mand­ing officer of the Cast­orex and of the Romu­lan squadron.

We are in the Can­did­ate Three sys­tem, along with the rest of the task force, where we have become involved in Assessor Tredik’s attempt to save his charges, the Tilikaal, from a plan­et­ary col­li­sion. It looks like my ques­tions will have to wait.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 48965.2

Plot: Lex­ing­ton and Bellero­phon attempt to aid Assessor Tredik in sav­ing the vul­ner­able Tilikaal from the plan­et­ary col­li­sion, while Thun­der­child keeps the Romu­lans from interfering.

The ‘A’ Plot: Aboard Lex­ing­ton, Cap­tain Kon­in orders all non-engin­eer­ing per­son­nel to evac­u­ate the lower levels of the ship, redu­cing the risk of cas­u­al­ties from power over­loads. D’g­hov and Boone help ensure that there are no strag­glers as crew mem­bers move pur­pose­fully into the main sau­cer. Azon­an gath­ers his engin­eer­ing team and explains the details of his plan, out­lining the vari­ous con­tin­gen­cies built in to allow for poten­tial problems.

The work begins in earn­est as Selvek, assisted by Kon­in on the bridge, recon­fig­ures the shields to help redir­ect the energy. Azon­an takes the lead on the next stage, as his engin­eer­ing staff rein­forces and rearranges vari­ous parts of the power grid to ensure the expec­ted energy flow will be con­tained and con­duc­ted without harm­ing Lex­ing­ton or her crew. Selvek is alarmed to see that Azon­an is not above using brute force when the con­nec­tions don’t quite fit cor­rectly on the first try, but it seems to work.

Once all is ready, Kon­in gives the order to Quinn to take Lex­ing­ton into the heart of the energy stream, while Azon­an and Selvek attempt to ensure the ship sur­vives long enough to even attempt her task. Quinn is more cau­tious than usu­al, dodging the more power­ful energy bursts as he steers her into the centre of the storm.

Azon­an quickly activ­ates the energy redir­ec­tion, and they are relieved to see a power­ful green energy beam coalesce in front of the ship’s deflect­or dish, dir­ec­ted out into inter­plan­et­ary space. The engin­eer­ing and dam­age con­trol teams are kept busy for the next half-hour, con­stantly rerout­ing power, divert­ing over­loads into stor­age bat­ter­ies and repair­ing over­loaded equip­ment, as Azon­an care­fully orches­trates the whole pro­cess. This achieve the tar­get of allow­ing Bellero­phon and her teams to remain on the sur­face sig­ni­fic­antly longer.

With his crew entirely occu­pied by redir­ect­ing the energy stream, Kon­in is unable to react when the Romu­lans arrive. Quinn does sug­gest attempt­ing to aim the nav­ig­a­tion­al deflect­or at the intruders, but Azon­an points out that this could dis­rupt the energy flow cata­stroph­ic­ally, so the Cap­tain decides not to risk it.

As Thun­der­child arrives moments later, some­thing odd begins to hap­pen to the energy stream­ing out of Lex­ing­ton’s deflect­or, as the beam begins to deform into a vor­tex. Flat­ten­ing out into a disc, it opens up to form a portal into anoth­er space. Sim­il­ar portals are open­ing up on the sur­face of Can­did­ate Three II and in the cor­ridors and rooms of the spacecraft.

With­in each portal is the fig­ure of Ash’tamalia, the same being seen in holo­graph­ic trans­mis­sions. They reach out their hand, beg­ging the behold­ers to help them. Many of the Star­fleet per­son­nel respond by grabbing the hand, intend­ing to pull the Tilikaal through to join them, but they find they are dragged through the portal instead. In orbit, a giant hand grabs Lex­ing­ton, pulling her through the giant vor­tex in front of her.

The ‘B’ Plot: Below the sur­face of Can­did­ate Three II, Assessor Tredik explains that Zepht and his team need to fix some of the carved con­duits bring­ing energy plasma to his appar­at­us. The Den­ob­u­lan quickly dir­ects his assist­ants to begin mak­ing the neces­sary repairs, but after the first three, it becomes obvi­ous that most of the dam­aged con­duits are out­side the con­trol room. This will require clam­ber­ing out on to the nar­row ledges and cat­walks criss-cross­ing the huge cham­ber con­tain­ing the Tilikaal sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion chambers.

Sigh­ing, he removes his boots so that his bare feet can get a bet­ter grip as he edges through the win­dow. The oth­ers look at each oth­er and fol­low, each aim­ing for a dif­fer­ent dam­age site. The repairs are time-con­sum­ing, espe­cially since debris impacts on the sur­face are send­ing tremors through the cham­ber and its fit­tings, mak­ing move­ment dan­ger­ous. Even­tu­ally, Tredik indic­ates that enough repairs have been com­pleted to enable adequate power for his sys­tems, and the Star­fleet per­son­nel head back to the con­trol room.

Their next tasks are to reset and restart a pair of power reg­u­lat­ors vital to his sys­tem. These pro­cesses are simple enough, but the reg­u­lat­ors take time to power up. As the minutes tick past, Elser receives a mes­sage relayed from Thun­der­child regard­ing incom­ing Romu­lans. Work­ing on his own ini­ti­at­ive, he quickly arranges a booby trap with a phaser and a tri­cord­er to delay any Romu­lan assault through the entry passage.

After what seems like hours, everything is ready, and Tredik thanks them for their assist­ance. He sug­gests they get to safety, as he will be able to accom­plish his task now. They take the hint and head for the sur­face, arriv­ing in time to see two Romu­lan assault shuttles fly over­head, fir­ing dis­ruptor blasts at Bellero­phon’s exten­ded shields. See­ing that the shields are weak­en­ing they sprint for the ship.

Unfor­tu­nately, they are only about halfway there when the shields flare and begin to col­lapse. Moments later, they are forced to take cov­er as a cluster of rocks pen­et­rate the dis­sip­at­ing shields, strik­ing the ground where they were run­ning. As they get back to their feet, an explo­sion rips through the sec­ond­ary hull of the landed ship, break­ing her back as escape pods begin to eject from her hull. They watch aghast as more explo­sions turn Bellero­phon into a pile of scrap.

The ‘C’ Plot: On the edge of the sys­tem, Thun­der­child and her fight­ers battle a quar­tet of Romu­lan war­birds, led by Com­mand­er Tomalak aboard the Cast­orex, in an effort to delay their inter­fer­ence. With the fight­ers dis­tract­ing the Romu­lan tar­get­ing sys­tems, the cruis­er dodges and rolls to avoid incom­ing dis­ruptor fire from the war­birds, but Cast­orex scores a hit, scor­ing a line of explo­sions across the left side of her saucer.

Thun­der­child returns fire, her phaser beams sweep­ing across Cast­orex, and huge explo­sions rav­age her star­board warp nacelle. The war­bird Cas­si­an takes anoth­er shot, but misses, and again Thun­der­child’s phaser arrays wreak hav­oc, leav­ing the Romu­lan crew des­per­ately try­ing to restore power to their crippled vessel.

The remain­ing war­birds, T’val­lin and Veras­tas, break past the dog­fight and head towards Can­did­ate Three II, Thun­der­child turn­ing to pur­sue. Both Romu­lan ships fire plasma tor­pedoes at the Star­fleet ves­sel, caus­ing little dam­age, then briefly drop their shields to launch a pair of assault shuttles each, before turn­ing to face their pursuer.

More plasma tor­pedoes speed towards Thun­der­child, which retali­ates with a salvo of quantum tor­pedoes, crip­ping Veras­tas. Cap­tain Pyan­far senses the oppor­tun­ity to broad­cast a demand that the Romu­lans stand down, but the remain­ing war­bird com­mand­er does not respond. Instead, T’val­lin races towards the col­lid­ing plan­ets, the Star­fleet cruis­er in hot pursuit.

The Arc: It looks like the Lex­ing­ton crew will get to meet the Tilikaal at last.

Obser­va­tions: There’s an Ensign A’Mathi in Engin­eer­ing: is he a des­cend­ant of the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton’s Chief Engin­eer?

Dia­logue: Lt Cdr Azon­an gets his team to work: “Mr Selvek, take charge of the shields. Main­tain power levels and stand ready to bring backup gen­er­at­ors online as needed. Lieu­ten­ant Leh­man, we’re going to use aux­il­i­ary deu­teri­um tank 7 as over­flow stor­age for the tetry­ons if needed. I want the tank com­pletely drained; shunt the fuel to oth­er tanks, any­thing we don’t have capa­city for, toss it over­board, then put up a level four con­tain­ment field around the tank. At the first sign of a leak, flush the tank out through the refuel­ling valves. Ensign Galez, get up to cargo bay 2 and estab­lish a trans­port­er lock on tank 7; if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll have to beam it off the ship. Ensign A’Mathi, we’ll be push­ing tetry­ons through the deu­teri­um sys­tem, so make sure the feed to the warp core is isol­ated, I don’t want stray tetry­ons run­ning through M/ARA. Ensign Kelen, do the same with the fusion react­ors. Chief Cal­lo­way, get down to the anti­mat­ter gen­er­at­or and isol­ate the QCRD from the Bus­sard col­lect­or feed; no one’s ever proved a tetry­on anti­particle exists, and this is no time for impromptu exper­i­ments to find one. Every­one else, stand to your sta­tions, keep a weath­er eye on the read­ings and sing out at the first sign of trouble. Every­one clear? Then jump to it!”

Ques­tions: Where have Lex­ing­ton and her crew gone? Did the rest of the ships and per­son­nel in the sys­tem survive?