Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×19

Writ­ten by: Tilly Bridges & Susan Bridges

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 9^th August 2025

The Battle for Valo III has not gone well… but we’re not beaten.

The fleet fought the Jem’Hadar to a draw. We are adrift in space with mul­tiple breaches, an ejec­ted warp core, and no com­mu­nic­a­tions. We can only hope some of the oth­ers fared bet­ter, and that we’re back up and run­ning before the Jem’Hadar are.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51650.0

Plot: Drift­ing in the wreck­age of a fleet battle, Lex­ing­ton’s crew struggles to make repairs before enemy rein­force­ments arrive.

The ‘A’ Plot: The view­point moves through the rem­nants of a fleet battle, derel­ict ships and debris float­ing in the void. At its heart is Lex­ing­ton, her lights flick­er­ing, her sensor pod and a large sec­tion of her sau­cer miss­ing. On the bridge, crew mem­bers are pulling wreck­age aside to res­cue pinned col­leagues. Showers of sparks rain down on the scene and the lights occa­sion­ally dim and brighten.

Emer­gency med­ic­al teams are sup­port­ing the wounded: Raynor has a dis­lo­cated shoulder, earned try­ing to save Quinn from a fall­ing beam, and Quinn him­self has a head injury. Nobody has escaped unscathed. Intern­al com­mu­nic­a­tions are down, so juni­or crew­mem­bers are oper­at­ing as run­ners to carry mes­sages and dam­age reports.

Kon­in calls the seni­or officers to a con­fer­ence to assess the dam­age and put togeth­er a repair plan; he’s con­cerned that Jem’Hadar rein­force­ments may arrive before they are in a pos­i­tion to defend themselves.

• Raynor reports that their tac­tic­al situ­ation is bad: they have no power for phasers, are com­pletely out of photon tor­pedoes, and their shields are oper­at­ing at min­im­um capa­city, suf­fi­cient only to pro­tect them from collisions.
• Selvek says that, with the loss of the sensor pod and the need to min­im­ise emis­sions, their sensors are oper­at­ing in pass­ive mode, although recent com­puter updates are help­ing with scan ana­lys­is. While he is pick­ing up some signs of life and power in nearby ves­sels, all appear to be disabled.
• Quinn reports that they have little capa­city for move­ment; warp and impulse drives are com­pletely down, but they do have thrusters.
• Azon­an explains that the main reas­on for their cur­rent status is that they had to eject the warp core to avoid a cata­stroph­ic con­tain­ment fail­ure. This has left them run­ning on reserve power, which is stretched thin. The sensor pod pylon was severed in one attack, and decks 5–11 on the sau­cer have suffered major breaches. They have no sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions and no long range sensors.
• Dr Con­ners reports that crew cas­u­al­ties have been severe – 57 deaths at last count, and 121 inca­pa­cit­ated through vari­ous injur­ies – but she notes that they would have been much worse if the major­ity of the 300 strong sci­ence depart­ment had not been left at Nar­en­dra Sta­tion. She com­plains that they do not have enough power to oper­ate the sur­gic­al theatres prop­erly – they are rerout­ing power from the inde­pend­ent gen­er­at­ors for holo­decks 1, 2 and 3, but have been unable to get access to num­ber 4. Would it be pos­sible to shut that one down as well? Kon­in, aware that this holo­deck secretly main­tains Gia’s pro­gram, replies that he will see what he can do.

When Raynor sug­gests that they can recov­er spare parts, includ­ing a replace­ment warp core, from one of the oth­er ships, Selvek points out that the trans­port­er will be of little use, as there is too much inter­fer­ence from the debris. Quinn adds that the shut­tle­bays were badly dam­aged in the attack: shut­tle­bay 1 is full of wreck­age from unse­cured shuttle­craft, while the out­er doors of shut­tle­bay 2 have seized shut, pre­vent­ing the Trave from being launched. There are two shutte­pods and a Type 6 shuttle­craft avail­able in shut­tle­bay 3, along with half-a-dozen workbees.

Ulti­mately, Kon­in decides that com­mu­nic­a­tions are a pri­or­ity for repair, so that they can con­tact nearby Star­fleet ves­sels for assist­ance, and that get­ting extra power to sick­bay is also import­ant. Azon­an sug­gests that the Trave’s warp core could be tapped for power, since they can­’t use the craft to help with recov­ery oper­a­tions. A third pri­or­ity would obvi­ously be to obtain a replace­ment warp core, from one of the nearby wrecks. Quinn and Raynor will take a shuttle to the wreck of the U.S.S. Alex­an­dria, which has been iden­ti­fied by sensors as life­less but with power. Selvek and Ensign Elser will accom­pany them with a team of engin­eers, while Azon­an will have a team pre­par­ing engin­eer­ing for the new core.

Quinn takes the shuttle out of shut­tle­bay 3 and threads his way through the drift­ing wreck­age towards their des­tin­a­tion. Approach­ing the Alex­an­dria, they can see huge holes in the hull and fires con­tinu­ing to burn in sev­er­al areas. Most of the escape pods have been launched, and while life sup­port is oper­at­ing in some sec­tions, there are no signs of life.

The shuttle docks in the ves­sel’s main shut­tle­bay, which is open to space, and the away team ven­tures out in envir­on­ment­al suits. Raynor quickly loc­ates the ship’s pre­fix code and unlocks the air­lock so they can enter the engin­eer­ing com­plex. They soon find, how­ever, that main engin­eer­ing itself is air­less, which it becomes clear is due to an unex­ploded Domin­ion tor­pedo lodged in the for­ward bulk­head, hav­ing pen­et­rated through the nav­ig­a­tion­al deflect­or. The warp core itself is fully intact.

Elser volun­teers to defuse the bomb and Raynor assists, while the oth­ers begin cut­ting the core free so that they extract it through the ejec­tion port. Elser is nearly fin­ished when a series of beeps begin to sound, indic­at­ing that a det­on­a­tion timer has star­ted. He frantic­ally loc­ates the com­pon­ent respons­ible and dis­ables it, heav­ing a sigh of relief.

Azon­an fin­ishes con­nect­ing the Trave to the sick­bay power sup­ply, receiv­ing the grat­it­ude of Con­ners and her over­worked team. Return­ing to main engin­eer­ing, he helps with adapt­ing the con­nec­tions to match a dif­fer­ent mod­el of warp core. Kon­in, mean­while, talks to Gia in holo­deck 4 about her obser­va­tions. She has been subtly assist­ing the sensor oper­at­ors by adding “com­puter iden­ti­fic­a­tions” to readouts.

Raynor and Quinn take the shuttle beneath the hull of the Alex­an­dria, but it is hit by the cov­er from the ejec­tion port as it is released from its fasten­ings. The dam­age is min­im­al, so they use the tract­or beam to care­fully extract their prize, before recov­er­ing the rest of the away team and head­ing back to Lex­ing­ton. A team of engin­eers in work­bees is wait­ing to assist them, and they guide the warp core into the open ejec­tion hatch, where Azon­an and his team con­nect into the system.

While all this is going on, anoth­er engin­eer­ing team has restored sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions, and Kon­in orders a burst trans­mis­sion to Star­base 12, to let them know what happened and to request help. The com­mu­nic­a­tions officer also picks up a mes­sage on Klin­gon fre­quen­cies: the Mup­wI’ is lead­ing a Klin­gon force to the area.

Raynor expresses con­cern about the dis­abled Jem’Hadar war­ships in the vicin­ity, and announces that he wants to recov­er a nearby Per­eg­rine-class fight­er so that they have access to work­ing weapons. Quinn agrees to take him and Elser out, and they invest­ig­ate the closest, which although life­less shows no signs of ser­i­ous dam­age. Elser exam­ines it, dis­cov­er­ing that the power dis­trib­ut­or was dam­aged by a nearby explo­sion, the pilot dying from a sub­sequent life sup­port fail­ure. It’s an easy fix, so Elser is done in minutes.

Raynor gently pulls the pilot’s corpse out so they can return it to Lex­ing­ton, then clam­bers into the cock­pit. His pilot­ing skills are almost non-exist­ent, but he’s only inter­ested in the weapon sys­tems. Care­fully aim­ing at a Jem’Hadar battle­cruis­er on the far side of Lex­ing­ton, he fires two micro-tor­pedoes at a gap in its armour. The tor­pedoes score a dir­ect hit, and the ship’s back is broken by a series of explosions.

Obser­va­tions: The U.S.S. Alex­an­dria and the U.S.S. Petra are of the Excel­si­or-class, a work­horse of Star­fleet nearly a cen­tury old. Alex­an­dria’s main engin­eer­ing room is cav­ernous, a vast open space stretch­ing over 7 decks, with the ver­tic­al inter­mix cham­ber at its heart.

Oth­er Star­fleet ves­sels dis­abled in the battle include the U.S.S. Cas­si­opeia and the U.S.S. Daunt­less, both Intrep­id-class, and the U.S.S. Mononoke, an Akira-class cruis­er.

The Battle of Valo III star­ted when a team of Bajor­an sci­ent­ists dis­covered a crashed Domin­ion war­ship on a remote colony world. They inad­vert­antly awakened a squad of Jem’Hadar in stas­is, who imme­di­ately called for rein­force­ments. Star­fleet also respon­ded, and a chaot­ic series of ship-to-ship duels ensued. The two sides were per­fectly matched, and they fought each oth­er to a stand­still, the sur­viv­ors des­per­ately hop­ing for reinforcements.