Epis­ode Num­ber: 6×10

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 1^st Novem­ber 2025

We remain cloaked, orbit­ing Betazed as we gath­er intel­li­gence on the con­di­tions on the sur­face, and try to loc­ate our tar­gets. At this point, we are wait­ing for Ambas­sad­or Troi to con­tact the res­ist­ance for us, so we’re look­ing for use­ful tasks to fill our time.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51756.1

Plot: Azon­an and Raynor break into a plan­et­ary defence satellite.

The ‘A’ Plot: Back on the Fal­con, the com­modore finds Azon­an, who has spent the last couple of days fix­ing glitches in the ship’s cloak­ing device. Hav­ing updated him on their dis­cov­er­ies, he explains that his wife appears to be in the cus­tody of the Car­das­si­an Intel­li­gence Bur­eau, and the build­ing is pro­tec­ted by a scat­ter­ing field. He asks if Azon­an would be able to engin­eer some­thing that could pen­et­rate it? The engin­eer muses that it may be pos­sible to do some­thing with pat­tern enhan­cers. Kon­in points out that there is time to work this out, as it will be the last part of the mis­sion to com­plete before they leave.

Return­ing to the oth­ers, he decides that they should do some­thing pro­duct­ive while wait­ing for Troi to con­tact them about the VIPs and the res­ist­ance, so they invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of access­ing the occu­pi­ers’ com­puter net­work. Raynor sug­gests that they could board one of the cap­tured defence satel­lites and hack into the net­work from there. Azon­an points out they are designed to oper­ate without sup­port from liv­ing people, and are dif­fi­cult to get into, although these mod­els are dec­ades old. If they can obtain access, there will be a ded­ic­ated con­nec­tion back to the com­mand and con­trol centre.

With a plan in place, Quinn takes the cloaked Fal­con towards one of the defence satel­lites in a polar orbit, on the basis that it’s less likely to be observed by oth­er orbit­ing ves­sels. Azon­an and Raynor don envir­on­ment suits, then the secur­ity officer opens the air­lock and jumps towards the satel­lite, passing through the defens­ive shields with a brief flash. He nearly misses the satel­lite, but grabs an extern­al rail and man­ages to get his boots onto the hull. Azon­an is more cau­tious, and manouevres across with suit thrusters. Examin­ing the hull of the satel­lite, they find the egress hatch from its con­struc­tion, now wel­ded shut to pre­vent unau­thor­ised access. After check­ing for traps and alarms, Azon­an begins cut­ting his way in with a plasma torch, a pro­cess that takes an hour.

The interi­or is cramped, but there is enough space to move around. All of the cir­cuitry is access­ible, and Azon­an looks around, spots the main main­ten­ance con­trol pan­el, and removes the cov­er so that he can begin over­rid­ing the secur­ity sys­tems. He imme­di­ately spots a later addi­tion: a phys­ic­al secur­ity sys­tem con­sist­ing of fra­gile black threads cov­er­ing the iso­lin­ear chips rack, run­ning back to a blob of organ­ic-look­ing mater­i­al. It appears to be a simple tamper alarm, and is con­nec­ted to the com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tem. Examin­ing it in detail, he notes a flaw in the sys­tem: it will trig­ger if any of the threads are cut, but there is noth­ing to pre­vent him dis­abling the com­mu­nic­a­tions con­nec­tion itself.

Achiev­ing this, he is then able to reset the sys­tem so that he can access the con­sole. The dis­play text is in the Domin­ion script, but it is a simple mat­ter to switch it back to Stand­ard. Con­nect­ing to the main occu­pa­tion net­work via the down­link is eas­ily achieved and they begin down­load­ing as much data as they can.

Azon­an is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in identi­fy­ing the trait­or that dis­abled the net­work when the Domin­ion arrived. He soon loc­ates a secur­ity code, then pauses…

It’s the per­son­al access code of Cap­tain Rebekah Konin.

The Arc: It appears Kon­in’s wife is the traitor.

Obser­va­tions: Betazed’s plan­et­ary defence sys­tem is made up of sev­er­al dozen satel­lites more than forty years old. Each is a rough cube about 20m across, with a tur­ret on each side, each tur­ret con­tain­ing a photon tor­pedo launch­er and a double phaser bank. The whole sys­tem is dir­ec­ted by a ground facil­ity via a ded­ic­ated data down­link. The satel­lite is inten­ded to be self-suf­fi­cient once activ­ated, with tor­pedoes fab­ric­ated via an intern­al rep­lic­at­or, but main­ten­ance can be achieved by using the down­link to beam into the interi­or. The satel­lite has a basic life sup­port sys­tem to assist with this. An exter­i­or hatch used dur­ing assembly is sealed per­man­ently once the satel­lite is in place.

Ques­tions: Why would Rebekah Kon­in betray her own planet?