Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×04

Writ­ten by: Al Spader

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 21^st April 2025

After the excite­ment of the last couple of months, we’ve spent the last three weeks on a peace­ful cruise along what we believe to be the trail­ing edge of the neb­ula, try­ing to loc­ate a nav­ig­able path back to Fed­er­a­tion space, while avoid­ing K’si ter­rit­ory. This area does seem to be devoid of both paths and star sys­tems so far.

Many of the crew have been tak­ing the oppor­tun­ity to relax with their vari­ous pas­times and projects.

Exec­ut­ive Officer­’s Log: Stard­ate, 9986.3

Plot: Detect­ing a pos­sible worm­hole in a star sys­tem, the Lyo­n­esse crew hopes to dis­cov­er a route out of the nebula.

The ‘A’ Plot: While the ship cruises along anoth­er cor­ridor through the neb­ula, the alpha shift is largely occu­pied with leis­ure activ­it­ies. Dr Vale-of-Winds is in the arbor­etum, prun­ing and tend­ing to vari­ous plants, while Valik is play­ing Kal-toh solo in the mess. James is in the recre­ation room, exper­i­ment­ing with adding some kind of nar­rat­ive to the prim­it­ive holo­graph­ic sim­u­la­tions. Jin, mean­while, is on the bridge, eagerly mon­it­or­ing the long range sensor scans of the next star sys­tem on their route, BC-13.

As they enter the bubble of space cleared by BC-13’s sol­ar winds, the sensors detect a burst of rare tetry­on radi­ation from the vicin­ity of the star. Jin quickly real­ises the sig­ni­fic­ance of this, and con­tacts the cap­tain, inform­ing her that there appears to be an act­ive worm­hole in the system.

Mas­uda imme­di­ately orders a con­fer­ence of the seni­or staff, so that they can ana­lyse and dis­cuss the sensor data. Jin explains the phys­ics involved, and that the worm­hole, sim­il­ar to the one encountered over a year ago, may present a route out of the Black Cluster, although it could go to any­where, or any­when. Since they’re going that way any­way, Mas­uda reas­ons, they might as well investigate.

BC-13 is orbited by 6 plan­ets, with the sig­nals com­ing from the third, read­ing as M‑class. As they approach they dis­cov­er that, while the plan­et has a thriv­ing eco­sys­tem, it is unin­hab­ited. There are signs of an indus­tri­al civil­isa­tion, includ­ing traces of pol­lu­tion and built-up areas sim­il­ar to cit­ies, but no indic­a­tions that the people who built it are still present. There are no radio sig­nals or signs of act­ive power gen­er­a­tion or usage.

The verter­on radi­ation is eman­at­ing from both orbit and the sur­face, with the strongest sig­nal com­ing from what appears to be a small orbit­al space sta­tion. Visu­al scans show a spindle-shaped struc­ture with what appears to be a tree grow­ing out of its centre. Vale sug­gests that this might be the res­ult of some kind of bio­lo­gic­al exper­i­ment gone wrong. Sensors show that the worm­hole gen­er­at­ing the radi­ation is in the same loc­a­tion, so there may be a con­nec­tion. Could this be the case on the sur­face as well?

Mas­uda decides to invest­ig­ate both sources, although the verter­on radi­ation will pre­vent the use of trans­port­ers. Valik, Jin, James, Vale and Astan will head to the sur­face in the shuttle Mor­gana, while Hop­era leads Par­ish, Kheled and Ewendi aboard Gawaine to the station.

The Mor­gana crew find the verter­on sig­nals are eman­at­ing from mul­tiple loc­a­tions across a large plain near the ruins of a city. The dom­in­ant veget­a­tion on the plain itself appears to be a spe­cies of large cab­bage-like plants, each twice the size of a Human. James finds a suf­fi­ciently clear space and lands the shuttle so they can invest­ig­ate on foot.

Tri­cord­er scans show that the verter­on radi­ation is com­ing from the plants them­selves, which prompts Valik to get a little too close to one of the huge plants. He is sud­denly struck by a thorn-covered branch: it appears that the plants are able to react to poten­tial threats and defend them­selves. They do estab­lish that the plants’ cent­ral struc­tures appear to con­tain the entrances to micro-wormholes.

Kheled brings Gawaine in close to the orbit­al sta­tion, suc­cess­fully avoid­ing the sprawl­ing branches of the tree grow­ing out of it. Weirdly, the plant appears to be alive, des­pite the vacu­um, although it’s not clear where it is get­ting its nutri­tion from. He docks with the main air­lock, and the away team boards the sta­tion, find­ing that the sta­tion’s life sup­port sys­tem is still working.

The plant appears to have sealed the breaches it has made in the hull, and its roots are wrapped around a fusion power plant. At first sight, the plant appears to be sim­il­ar to those on the sur­face, but much lar­ger. Tri­cord­er scans con­fim that there is a lar­ger worm­hole entrance nestled with­in its bole.

Vale’s team are sur­prised by a sud­den bang, fol­lowed by a fast-mov­ing wind. Invest­ig­at­ing, they find a small but power­ful vor­tex centered on a cluster of sev­er­al of the plants. The tri­cord­ers are show­ing that the worm­holes hos­ted by the indi­vidu­al plants have some­how merged into a single sub­space structure.

James pro­poses that they should look at send­ing a small probe into one of the worm­holes to see what’s on the oth­er side. Jin muses that the worm­holes on the sur­face are a little on the small side, but that the one dis­covered in orbit should be large enough. The sug­ges­tion is passed back to Lyo­n­esse.

In the mean­time, Vale sug­gests that the key to all this may be in the aban­doned cit­ies, and they board the shuttle to invest­ig­ate the nearest.

Obser­va­tions: Recre­ation rooms using holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tions have been a fea­ture of Fed­er­a­tion star­ships since the late 22^nd cen­tury, but these are nowhere near as soph­ist­ic­ated as the holo­decks seen in Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and its suc­cessors. The Lyo­n­esse’s rec room can pro­duce con­vin­cing three-dimen­sion­al anim­ated images, but they have no sub­stance, and reac­tions to a user­’s own actions are lim­ited. The sys­tem is gen­er­ally used for train­ing sim­u­la­tions, and to provide some dis­trac­tion from the mono­tony of ship life.

Verter­on particles are a com­mon byproduct of sub­space anom­alies. Their pres­ence can sig­ni­fy the pres­ence of a worm­hole or sim­il­ar sub­space structure.

BC-13d is an M‑class plan­et quite sim­il­ar to Earth. It con­tains the remains of what seems to be an extinct civil­isa­tion with around 21^st cen­tury tech­no­logy. Judging from the state of the cit­ies and the traces of pol­lu­tion in the atmo­sphere, the inhab­it­ants van­ished 2–300 years ago.

The large plants found on the sur­face resemble wild cab­bages, up to 3 or 4 metres across. They have thorned branches, which can react to move­ment nearby, thrash­ing about as a defence mech­an­ism. Some­how, many of these plants seem to con­tain mini­ature worm­holes with­in their boles.

Anoth­er of Lyo­n­esse’s Arthur­i­an-themed shuttle­craft is intro­duced, the Class‑F Gawaine.

Ques­tions: How does a plant con­tain a wormhole?