Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×20

Writ­ten by: Tilly Bridges & Susan Bridges

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 23^rd August 2025

Guest Stars:

• Com­modore Gian­bat­tista Spal­lone: Human com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Mononoke.
• Cap­tain Zizu: Saur­i­an com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Daunt­less.

Bat­tle­field repairs are going well, but we’re detect­ing sim­il­ar activ­it­ies on the Domin­ion wrecks, and it’s going to be a race to be ready first. It can only a mat­ter of time until Domin­ion rein­force­ments arrive.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51651.1

Plot: The Lex­ing­ton crew works to restore the ship to fight­ing con­di­tion, while try­ing to assist oth­er cas­u­al­ties of the battle.

The ‘A’ Plot: As sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions come back online, the comms officer reports con­tact with, and dis­tress calls from, nearby Star­fleet ves­sels. Many are com­pletely dis­abled, with emer­gency beacons mark­ing their crew’s escape pods, while oth­ers are attempt­ing to repair severe dam­age. The U.S.S. Daunt­less, an Intrep­id-class ship close by, is report­ing that while its dam­age is largely trivi­al, the primary com­puter core took a dir­ect hit, and the crew is request­ing assist­ance in recon­nect­ing the sec­ond­ary core. The U.S.S Mononoke has taken sev­er­al heavy hits, but is fully cap­able of fight­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, the Akira-class ship has been boarded by a large force of Jem’Hadar.

On Lex­ing­ton, the new warp core is now installed, but the engin­eer­ing teams’ time is taken up by recal­ib­rat­ing the con­nec­tions to vari­ous sys­tems, in order to be able to use the revised power out­put. The shuttle­craft car­ry­ing Quinn, Elser and Selvek remains close to the repaired fight­er now occu­pied by Raynor.

After check­ing with Azon­an as to wheth­er the away team is needed back on the ship, Kon­in con­tacts Daunt­less and offers assist­ance with the com­puter issues. Cap­tain Zizu is grate­ful for the offer, and agrees to sup­ply a squad of secur­ity per­son­nel to help on Mononoke. Told that a shuttle car­ry­ing Selvek and Elser will be with him shortly, he warns that it should dock to an extern­al air­lock, as they have no con­trol over their shut­tle­bay at present. As the away team exchanges per­son­nel with the Daunt­less, Lex­ing­ton’s engin­eer­ing depart­ment is tasked with pri­or­it­ising move­ment, weapons and shields. While Azon­an’s team con­centates on the impulse and warp drive mech­an­isms, he recon­nects the phaser arrays.

Their per­son­nel trans­fer com­plete, Quinn and Raynor head out to the Mononoke. On the Lex­ing­ton, Kon­in sets about elim­in­at­ing some of the big­ger Domin­ion threats, order­ing the phaser destruc­tion of the battle­cruis­er nearest to his ship. The engin­eer­ing teams are now work­ing on cal­ib­rat­ing the shield power sup­ply, so Azon­an estab­lishes a reserve power pool to kick­start shield regeneration.

The away team reaches the Mononoke, where they find that the Jem’Hadar have con­trol of two of the rear land­ing bays and a fire­fight is tak­ing place in the third. Quinn decides he can provide the best assist­ance by land­ing at the entrance and let­ting his pas­sen­gers out there. Unfor­tu­nately, he mis­judges this and lands in the middle of the invaders, imme­di­ately tak­ing heavy fire from both sides. Raynor attempts to help by fol­low­ing the shuttle in, but his basic pilot­ing skills res­ult in the fight­er careen­ing through the entrance and clip­ping the top of the shuttle. One wing­tip slices through one group of Jem’Hadar, but the oth­er peels the top of the shuttle back, leav­ing it open to space. It then comes to a rest against the door to the inner hangar.

Des­pite the near dis­aster, the new secur­ity team helps win the battle for the defend­ers, while Quinn runs across to check on Raynor. The Lex­ing­ton secur­ity chief is fine, though he needs help get­ting out of the cock­pit to join the fight. Quinn leaves him to the loc­al defend­ers and heads straight into the main hangar, where he is dir­ec­ted to the ship’s com­mand & con­trol centre on the deck above. Com­modore Spal­lone thanks him for bring­ing the troops, and agrees to Quin­n’s request for a new shuttle so he can return to Lex­ing­ton and bring more.

Lex­ing­ton gets under­way, mov­ing closer to Mononoke, then Kon­in orders the nearby Jem’Hadar cruis­er des­troyed. As this takes place, Azon­an is able to bring the shields back to about 70%, and the engin­eer­ing team brings the sensors to full power, which enables them to spot the immin­ent arrival of sub­stan­tial Domin­ion reinforcements.

Kon­in requests a status report from Daunt­less and Mononoke, learn­ing that both are now ready for action. He assigns Daunt­less to pick up as many sur­viv­ing crew mem­bers as they can from the bat­tle­field, begin­ning with those trapped on Petra and Cas­si­opeia. He then asks Mononoke to inter­cept the new­comers, and try to screen the res­cue oper­a­tion from inter­fer­ence. Lex­ing­ton will flank Mononoke to force the new ships to divide their fire.

The plan is mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful. Mononoke is able to des­troy a couple of battle­cruis­ers as they drop out of warp, but Lex­ing­ton is quickly swarmed by attack ships. Both ships are badly dam­aged in the pro­cess, with little capa­city to fight on. Behind them, Daunt­less is able to pick up all the sur­viv­ors in the bat­tle­field, before leav­ing at warp, prom­ising to return shortly.

Des­pite their appar­ent vic­tory, the Domin­ion forces ignore the two dam­aged ves­sels and head straight on to Valo III, where sensors detect the arrival of a large amount of troops. Neither Lex­ing­ton nor Mononoke is able to get past the orbit­ing ships to assist the forces on the ground, but neither do the Jem’Hadar respond to attempts to lure them away.

The fight­ing on Valo III lasts for sev­er­al hours until the Klin­gon forces arrive, led by the Mup­wI’. The new arrivals deal with the Domin­ion ships in quick order, before beam­ing their own troops down to con­front the Jem’Hadar. The last Domin­ion battle­cruis­er, how­ever, swoops low into the atmo­sphere, emer­ging with anoth­er ves­sel held in a tract­or beam, before going imme­di­ately to warp. Sensors show that the tractored ves­sel con­tains a couple of Jem’Hadar squads, a luck­less pair of Bajor­an sci­ent­ists, and an unknown life form.

The remainder of the 17^th Fleet finally arrives, but is far too late to do any­thing but help with the clean-up. Lex­ing­ton is towed back to Star­base 12, where the chief of the dock­yards threatens to scrap her. Kon­in flatly refuses, but is warned that it will be up to 2 months until she is bat­tle­worthy again.

Obser­va­tions: The Daunt­less only took one hit in the battle, but the impact des­troyed her com­puter core. Cap­tain Zizu explain that many of her com­puter tech­ni­cians also died in the blast, and the remain­ing crew mem­bers lack the expert­ise to recon­nect the backup system.

Mononoke took a num­ber of mod­er­ate blasts, but was able to repair them. Unfotunately, Jem’Hadar from the nearby battle­cruis­er boarded while their shields were down and took over much of the ship’s shut­tle­bays. Com­modore Spal­lone’s board­ing defence teams are over­whelmed by their num­bers. Quinn flies a Type‑7 shuttle home, not­ing that these have a large capa­city but are quite fragile.

Ques­tions: Was that a Founder in the ship recovered by the Domin­ion? How long had it been there?