Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×03

Writ­ten by: ELH

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 30^th March 2025

Guest Stars:

• Cap­tain Aukai: Aure­li­an com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Majest­ic NCC-90201.
• Ensign Chen: Head of the judges pan­el for the Lyo­n­esse Tal­ent Competition.
• Warp Engin­eer 2^nd class James Wes­ley: Entrant in the Lyo­n­esse Tal­ent Competition.
• Cas­sia: Baelot Jin’s pet Risi­an panther.

We have made con­tact with the future! The marooned star­ship has turned out to be from the Star­fleet of the 25^th cen­tury, and its pres­ence is dis­rupt­ing the flow of time around BC-12b. We need to help them return home, even if it means we nev­er will.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9977.4

Plot: Lyo­n­esse’s crew throws itself into the task of free­ing the Majest­ic from BC-12b.

The ‘A’ Plot: Hav­ing worked out the recov­ery plan with the crew of the Majest­ic, the away team pre­pares to return to the Lyo­n­esse. Before they leave, Dr Vale-of-Winds stops to talk to the cap­tain and asks how he has found work­ing with the K’si. Aukai, real­ising that she is attempt­ing to divine a little of her own future, sidesteps the ques­tion by sug­gest­ing that their engin­eers are highly-skilled. Vale does not press the issue.

James takes Mor­gana out of the shut­tle­bay and back to orbit, where they quickly explain the Majest­ic’s conun­drum to Cap­tain Mas­uda. She author­ises their plan to release the stricken ship and they get to work. Valik heads to engin­eer­ing in order to max­im­ise the avail­ab­il­ity of power, while Hop­era, Jin and James manip­u­late the nav­ig­a­tion­al deflect­or from the bridge.

There are ini­tial delays due to fluc­tu­ations in the power con­nec­tions, but they soon begin to refine their pro­cess. Hop­era mon­it­ors the status of the solano­gen crys­tals around the Majest­ic so that they can fine-tune the beam, and they begin to make good pro­gress. The scans show that the chroniton beam is work­ing, as Valik begins to pull more power from oth­er sys­tems to keep it at full intensity.

Mas­uda, mean­while, is track­ing the pair of K’si host car­ri­ers that they detec­ted earli­er, as they enter the sys­tem and nav­ig­ate their way through the time bubbles. She announces that their arrival is immin­ent, and Hop­er­a’s team real­ises it has to speed up its oper­a­tion if it is to free the Majest­ic in time.

Unfor­tu­nately, the K’si open fire as soon as they are in range. Des­pite orders to the con­trary, the duty helms­man pan­ics and moves Lyo­n­esse out of the path of the incom­ing dark energy. This causes the chroniton beam to move away from the tar­get crys­tals, mean­ing that Jin is forced to waste pre­cious time realign­ing the deflect­or. Finally, after a con­cer­ted effort, he and James are able to retar­get the crys­tals and deliv­er the final burst of energy.

Sud­denly, a power­ful earth­quake rips across the near side of the plan­et, open­ing vast cracks in the sur­face and trig­ger­ing vol­can­ic erup­tions. Majest­ic emerges from the chaos, then fades away, ahead of a sub­space shock­wave that spreads out across the sys­tem, reset­ting the time vari­ations through­out. The two K’si ves­sels appear to be instant­an­eously relo­cated fur­ther out into the sys­tem, and the nav­ig­at­or estim­ates they will take sev­er­al hours to arrive.

How­ever, com­mu­nic­a­tions is now pick­ing up dis­tress calls from the far side of the plan­et. The K’si colony has appar­ently suffered cata­stroph­ic dam­age from the earth­quakes, and increas­ing num­bers are being injured or killed as the plan­et’s tox­ic atmo­sphere leaks into their hab­it­at domes. Lyo­n­esse’s seni­or officers briefly debate wheth­er to inter­vene since the K’si have been impac­ably hos­tile, but the cap­tain reminds them of their Star­fleet oaths, so they go to the rescue.

As they get under­way, Mas­uda con­tacts the lead­er of the K’si squad­ron, star­ing her inten­tion to assist the col­on­ists. After con­fer­ring with his own officers, the K’si agrees to accept their assit­ance. When the car­ri­ers arrive a couple of hours later, Lyo­n­esse’s away teams are already treat­ing the wounded and help­ing to clear the rubble. The crews of the three ships work togeth­er to restore the colony to a liv­able state.

The K’si lead­er thanks them for their assist­ance and states that he intends to argue in their favour with the K’si High Com­mand, and that he will provide assist­ance should they need it.

The ‘B’ Plot: Once they are back in the tun­nels of the neb­ula, the crew holds the planned tal­ent com­pet­i­tion. Sev­er­al of the seni­or officers take part, although the cap­tain and the exec­ut­ive officer are asked to join the judging pan­el along­side three of the more juni­or crew members.

Dr Vale reveals an unsus­pec­ted tal­ent for host­ing and com­pères the show, intro­du­cing the acts and telling jokes. Des­pite offend­ing the cap­tain at one point, her per­form­ance seems to go down well with the audi­ence. Valik opens the show with a recit­a­tion of Vul­can poetry, but is clearly uncom­fort­able per­form­ing, with the res­ults a little flat even for a Vul­can. Jin’s demon­stra­tion of his pet Risi­an pan­ther­’s train­ing and agil­ity does prove rather pop­u­lar as he steers the lithe anim­al through hoops and oth­er obstacles. Lt James’ con­fid­ent rendi­tion of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gam­bler” does not go down too well though, as he has no idea how the tune is sup­posed to go…

After some debate, the pan­el awards second place to Jin, and first place to PO James Wes­ley, for his per­form­ance of “My Shot” from the music­al Hamilton. Unfor­tu­nately, the announce­ment of the first place con­fuses James, who nearly gets up to accept the award.

The Arc: Could this be the begin­nings of a rap­proche­ment with the K’si?

Obser­va­tions: The K’si colony con­sists of a num­ber of sturdy domes to keep BC-12b’s caustic atmo­sphere out, and houses around 3,000 col­on­ists. It is unclear what they are actu­ally doing on the plan­et, but it seems likely they are involved in resource extrac­tion of some kind.

Baelot Jin has brought a pet along to keep him com­pany dur­ing the voy­age, a Risi­an pan­ther named Cas­sia. About the size and shape of a large house­cat, this creature has an extra pair of fore­legs and two pre­hensile tentacles emer­ging from its shoulders.

Dia­logue: Ensign Chen, draw­ing out the ten­sion as much as pos­sible: “And the first prize goes to…Hamilton…James..Wesley!”