Epis­ode Num­ber: 3×08

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 23^rd Septem­ber 2023

Guest Stars:

• Gen­er­al V’Roth: Fam­ous Klin­gon lead­er and com­mand­er of the I.K.S. Hu’Tegh

Lex­ing­ton has been hijacked! Gen­er­al V’Roth invited us aboard Hu’Tegh for a form­al din­ner, then detained us while his troops took con­trol of my ship. I am not going to take this lying down!

Cap­tain’s Log: Supplemental

Plot: Cap­tains Kon­in and Daak, and their seni­or officers begin their attempt to regain con­trol of the hijacked Lex­ing­ton.

The ‘A’ Plot: The com­mand crews of both Lex­ing­ton and Bellero­phon have been con­fined to a single large deten­tion cell deep with­in the Hu’Tegh. They imme­di­ately start look­ing for a way to escape and regain con­trol of their ship.

Decid­ing they need to know the dis­pos­i­tion of their guards, Kon­in attempts to loc­ate them by tele­pathy. He finds only two nearby, in the con­trol room out­side the cell. Azon­an notes the pres­ence of sensors with­in the cell, but it seems neither guard is pay­ing any atten­tion to the prisoners.

The engin­eer and a couple of the oth­ers begin check­ing the walls, floor and ceil­ing in the vain hope of find­ing an equip­ment access pan­el. They’re unsuc­cess­ful, but he does find a loose wall pan­el. It looks like the nor­mally flush bolts hold­ing it in place are loose enough to be unscrewed. Kon­in organ­ises a dis­cus­sion as a dis­trac­tion to any poten­tial observ­ers, while Zepht and Azon­an start unscrew­ing the bolts. The metre square void behind it holds a col­lec­tion of torn blankets, a very plain dag­ger and a length of durani­um with a flattened end that would make a good crow­bar. Azon­an com­ments that it seems to be a make­shift escape kit left by a pre­vi­ous prisoner.

The dis­cov­ery sparks a renewed effort to find a way out. They con­firm that the door is sealed shut, and that all of the oth­er pan­els are bolted down tight. The void hid­den behind the loose pan­el is just about big enough for one per­son to fit into, but does­n’t seem to lead any­where. Then Zepht notes that the far side appears to be an identic­al pan­el, spark­ing the idea that maybe it too can be removed. Raynor leans in with the durani­um crow­bar to see if he can get some lever­age, and, after sev­er­al minutes of effort, a bolt cracks with a loud bang.

Kon­in checks on the guards and com­ments that they do not appear to have noticed the noise, so they resume work­ing at the pan­el. Once again, a bolt breaks and Azon­an wriggles into the gap to try and catch the pan­el if it falls. A third bolt breaks and the pan­el swings down on its remain­ing bolt, leav­ing an open­ing into anoth­er cell.

Swinging the pan­el out of the way, Raynor scrambles through the open­ing and and con­firms the next cell is clear. The oth­ers fol­low him through as he checks the door. It turns out to be unlocked, and they are able to lever it open. Bey­ond is anoth­er guard room, like the one for their own cell, but it is dark and unmanned. Dis­cov­er­ing that the doors are locked, Zepht activ­ates the com­puter con­sole to look for a door-open­ing routine. He is suc­cess­ful, but thwarted by a secur­ity lock­out – then he finds the pass­word scratched into the console.

Choos­ing to bypass their former guards, they go through the oppos­ite door, emer­ging into an empty cor­ridor. Kon­in has devised a plan to com­mand­eer a trans­port­er room, then use it to reach and dis­able the ship’s com­mu­nic­a­tions and warp drive, before return­ing to Lex­ing­ton. Between intel­li­gence brief­ings and the lim­ited floor plans Zepht was able to extract from the guard room com­puter, they are able to find their way to a nearby trans­port­er nexus.

Burst­ing in, they ini­ti­ate a vicious hand-to-hand battle with the two war­ri­ors sta­tioned there. Zepht and Kon­in are both injured in the battle, but the group are able to put both Klin­gons down, with the added bonus that the glory-hungry war­ri­ors neg­lected to raise the alarm. Zepht hacks into the com­puter con­sole, and Daak volun­teers his team to over­see the trans­port­er operations.

They begin by beam­ing into the com­mu­nic­a­tions centre, sur­pris­ing and over­com­ing the lone officer swiftly. Extern­al com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tems are dis­abled and locked down before they return to the trans­port­er room.

Arriv­ing in the main warp engine room, they find the cham­ber staffed by non-com­batant crew­men, rather than war­ri­ors, and they are able to take con­trol with min­im­al trouble. Their plans to simply eject the warp cores, or to shut them down, are how­ever, thwarted by the Klin­gons’ reluct­ance to give non-war­ri­ors access to that part of the con­trol sys­tem. They are instead forced to adjust the bal­ance of the mat­ter­/anti-mat­ter mix in order to force a gradu­al over­load. Zeph­t’s hope is that the bridge won’t notice the imbal­ance for sev­er­al minutes, giv­ing them a chance to get back aboard Lex­ing­ton.

Dia­logue: Raynor invokes the spir­it of the greatest plan­ner of all time: “Gee Cap­tain, what are we gonna do tonight?”

Ques­tions: Escape achieved, now for the Lady Lex!