Epis­ode Num­ber: 6×13

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 13^th Decem­ber 2025

Guest Stars:

• Vice Admir­al Mawero: Zak­dorn head of Star­fleet Stra­tegic Oper­a­tions Command.

Our mis­sion is com­plete, and we are head­ing home with a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of res­cued pris­on­ers. Rebekah Kon­in is still uncon­scious, but Dr Con­ners assures me she is healthy and has high hopes for her recov­ery. We anti­cip­ate cross­ing the front line back into Star­fleet-con­trolled space in a mat­ter of hours.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate 51760.5

Plot: The Robert Scott’s jour­ney home is inter­rup­ted by a stray sub­space radio message.

The ‘A’ Plot: The Robert Scott is mov­ing, as fast as it can under cloak, towards Fed­er­a­tion-con­trolled space. About three hours from safety, Selvek announces that the ship has received a sub­space radio sig­nal from astern. Ana­lys­ing the sig­nal, he dis­cov­ers that it is an encryp­ted burst com­mu­nic­a­tion, appar­ently from a Domin­ion source.

Wor­ried that they are being pur­sued, Kon­in asks him to trace the sig­nal. Selvek dis­cov­ers that it appears to have ori­gin­ated from Car­das­sia Prime, via a loc­al sub­space relay sta­tion. Oddly, it is addressed to a Domin­ion fleet loc­ated much closer to Car­das­si­an territory.

Con­fused as to why the mes­sage came via this relay, and was picked up by them, Kon­in orders Azon­an and Raynor to attempt to decrypt the mes­sage. He is par­tic­u­larly con­cerned that this may be some elab­or­ate ruse to lure them into a trap, but can­not ignore the pos­sib­il­ity that this may be a genu­ine mes­sage that reached them by accident.

The data pack­et con­sists of two parts, a series of per­son­al com­mu­nic­a­tions, rel­at­ively easy to decode, and a lar­ger, heav­ily encryp­ted por­tion that prob­ably includes detailed ship deploy­ments and intel­li­gence reports. This lat­ter data will take a long time to decrypt with the lim­ited com­puter power avail­able to the Scott, but the mes­sages include a simple missive from a Vorta named Weyoun to the com­mand­er of the 231^st Fleet, order­ing them to pre­pare to execute the plans in the pre­vi­ous message.

Azon­an notes that the plans men­tioned may still be in the relay’s cached stor­age, held in case a por­tion becomes cor­rup­ted and needs to be resent. Kon­in decides that they should attempt to down­load the data, and orders an appro­pri­ate change of course.

Three hours later, the cloaked ship is approach­ing the loc­a­tion of the relay. Sensors pick up a pair of Jem’Hadar fight­ers patrolling nearby, but they don’t seem to have detec­ted the Scott. They creep slowly towards the buoy and it quickly becomes obvi­ous that some­thing has hit it: it is tum­bling through space and, although its sys­tems are act­ive, the auto­mated sta­tion-keep­ing thrusters appear to be inef­fect­ive at try­ing to sta­bil­ise it.

Luck­ily, they won’t need to board the relay, but they will need to get closer before they can use the access codes they acquired on Betazed. Keep­ing a wary eye on the Jem’Hadar, Quinn man­oeuvres closer to the unpre­dict­ably-mov­ing buoy, and Azon­an accesses its sys­tems. He announces that the data they’re after is part of a huge cache and it will be faster to down­load it all than to search for just the bits they want. With the com­modore’s approv­al, he gets started.

Before long, the dis­tant fight­ers begin to move in towards their loc­a­tion. Selvek checks the Scott’s sys­tems, and real­ises that the cloak is begin­ning to fail, leak­ing some sig­nals that the Jem’Hadar have been able to detect. Ten­sions mount as Azon­an tries to com­plete the down­load while the fight­ers speed towards them.

Finally, he announces he has fin­ished, and they make a break for safety. The Jem’Hadar imme­di­ately change course to inter­cept them, mak­ing it obvi­ous they have been detec­ted. The next few hours are a mix of urgent activ­ity and long waits as Quinn attempts to stay ahead of the fight­ers, all while their cloak con­tin­ues to deteriorate.

As they close on the bor­der, the cloak­ing device gives out com­pletely. This enables them to move faster, but the fight­ers now have a dir­ect fix on their loc­a­tion, and a Domin­ion cruis­er has joined the pur­suit. Dodging sev­er­al shots, the Scott finally makes it across the fron­ti­er, where the sud­den appear­ance of a large Star­fleet ves­sel deters the Domin­ion pur­suers. The cap­tain of the U.S.S. Crom­well then turns his atten­tion to the con­ver­ted Romu­lan ship, demand­ing to know their iden­tity and pur­pose. Kon­in is able to explain in gen­er­al terms while keep­ing their full mis­sion con­fid­en­tial, and Crom­well’s cap­tain agrees to escort them back to the nearest Star­fleet base.

The ‘B’ Plot: Sev­er­al days later, with the major­ity of their charges handed over to Star­fleet Intel­li­gence for debrief, the team has returned the limp­ing Robert Scott to Mer­rin at Sta­tion AN-7b, and been trans­por­ted back to Star­base 12 aboard one of Star­fleet’s trans­ports. Once there, they find that Vice Admir­al Mawero is now run­ning both the star­base and the fleet, with Sh’lyath hav­ing been reas­signed to Star­fleet Command.

The debrief takes about a week as Mawero and his team record every detail of the trip and ana­lyse the data Kon­in and his crew have col­lec­ted. The Zak­dorn explains that he is very pleased with their oper­a­tions over the last few months, and he fully intends to hon­our the agree­ment with Vice Admir­al Hebert, send­ing them back to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion as soon as the repair work on Lex­ing­ton is com­plete. Kon­in finds this gives him about three weeks to either get the redeployed crew mem­bers back, or recruit replacements.

Cap­tain Rebekah Kon­in spends this peri­od under the care of the Star­base med­ic­al centre, super­vised by Con­ners. She is alive and phys­ic­ally well, but remains in a coma. Con­ners believes she will regain con­scious­ness in time, but it is impossible to pre­dict what the long-term effects of her exper­i­ences will be. After some dis­cus­sion with her hus­band, they agree that she should return to Nar­en­dra Sta­tion, where she can recov­er with her family.

About a week after the debriefs end, Mawero allows the com­modore to organ­ise a cere­mony to recog­nise his crew’s actions over the last few months. At a form­al event on the aging sta­tion’s parade ground, the seni­or officers, in full dress uni­form, are awar­ded dec­or­a­tions reflect­ing their ser­vice: Lt Cdr Raynor is made a mem­ber of the Kar­agite Order of Hero­ism, while Lt Cdrs Azon­an and Quinn each get the Star­fleet Cita­tion for Con­spicu­ous Gal­lantry. Ensign Elser is pro­moted to lieu­ten­ant, juni­or grade.

Soon, Lex­ing­ton is once again ready to return to space, and Kon­in has his team take her out for a shake­down cruise. Azon­an pro­nounces her fit for ser­vice: des­pite his mis­giv­ings over the use of new­er sys­tems to replace the dam­aged ones, includ­ing a more effi­cient warp core, the parts seem to be work­ing togeth­er well.

Even­tu­ally, the ship departs for the Shack­leton Expanse, passing briefly by the 25 Erid­ani neb­ula, where they find that Gia has been spend­ing the last few weeks quietly study­ing the phenomenon.

Sev­er­al weeks later, they approach Star­base 364, where they learn that the U.S.S. Cairo has been lost with all hands, hav­ing been ambushed by the Jem’Hadar, far from the front lines.

The Arc: Lex­ing­ton’s part in the Domin­ion War is over (at least for now) and they have returned to the Shack­leton Expanse to resume the search for Zepht.

Obser­va­tions: Gia has been invest­ig­at­ing astro­phys­ic­al phe­nom­ena, such as neb­u­lae, dur­ing their brief “exile”. They seem to have developed a detailed interest in the subject.

Ref­er­ences: The vari­ous incarn­a­tions of the Vorta Weyoun were reg­u­lar ant­ag­on­ists in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The U.S.S. Crom­well NCC-26519 is an age­ing Ambas­sad­or-class cruiser.

The Domin­ion ambush of the Cairo was men­tioned in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine epis­ode “In the pale moon­light”.