Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×01

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 24^th Janu­ary 2026

Guest Stars:

• Cap­tain Murphy: Adjut­ant to Vice Admir­al Hebert
• Doc­tor V’laar: Vul­can act­ing research head of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge

After a five week voy­age on a some­what cir­cuit­ous route, we are finally approach­ing Star­base 364. My seni­or officers have taken the oppor­tun­ity to drill the new crew mem­bers into some semb­lance of order. Azon­an has been pok­ing around in our replace­ment sys­tems – appar­ently some of the com­pon­ents are mak­ing unusu­al noises and he’s try­ing to determ­ine if this is a prob­lem. It’ll be good to finally be home!

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52003.2

Plot: Lex­ing­ton’s return to Star­base 364 is inter­rup­ted by a Vin­Shari assault.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton returns to Star­base 364 after spend­ing sev­er­al months help­ing out on the Domin­ion War front lines. Around an hour out from the sta­tion, they are hailed by Vice Admir­al Hebert, who wel­comes them back and is pleased they sur­vived the con­flict. She is look­ing for­ward to com­par­ing notes, but asks that the com­modore vis­it her as soon as they get in: a group of Ar-Ka-Se refugees is request­ing asylum, and his pri­or exper­i­ence with the Vin­Shari indic­ates he would be best placed to nego­ti­ate with them. Kon­in indic­ates that they should be no prob­lem, but to be wary of pur­su­ing VinShari.

About thirty minutes later, they pick up dis­tress calls from the vicin­ity of the sta­tion. The major­ity are from civil­ian ves­sels flee­ing the area, but the sta­tion is report­ing that it is under assault from Vin­Shari war­ships. It appears Kon­in’s warn­ing was justified.

They spot an Ant­ares-type freight­er head­ing almost dir­ectly for them, so Selvek hails it to get more inform­a­tion. He learns that two large Vin­Shari ves­sels appeared near the sta­tion, and without warn­ing, they both fired large har­poons into the hull. The sta­tion’s power failed almost imme­di­ately, and space-suited fig­ures began a zero‑g board­ing action.

Kon­in orders a red alert, and Quinn to take Lex­ing­ton to max­im­um speed. He also calls for assist­ance from any nearby allied ves­sels. Replies indic­ate that a pair of B’Rel-class birds-of-prey are on their way, and that a num­ber of Twen­ti­eth Fleet ves­sels are also inbound.

They arrive about twenty minutes later. The sta­tion is dark, except for a couple of intern­al fires, and two Vin­Shari Storm­break­er-class ships are nearby. The only Star­fleet ves­sel present, the U.S.S. Vic­tory, is also dark and drift­ing, a large hole in its hull indic­at­ing where the warp core has been ripped out. Life­pods and debris float around the sta­tion, largely ignored by the VinShari.

As Lex­ing­ton closes the dis­tance, a huge explo­sion blos­soms from inside the sta­tion’s hangar level, and two run­abouts flee ahead of the blast. Both ves­sels go to warp imme­di­ately, fol­lowed moments later by the Vin­Shari vessels.

Quinn takes the Trave and a secur­ity team to shad­ow the flee­ing ves­sels, while Lex­ing­ton goes to provide assist­ance to the sta­tion. As they move closer, an injured Cap­tain Murphy con­tacts them, telling them that Hebert is cur­rently in the hos­pit­al wing, badly injured. He explains that the “Ar-Ka-Se refugees” turned out to be Mida­jah-Ka com­mandos, who launched an attack inside the sta­tion, while the two Vin­Shari war­ships ini­ti­ated a major board­ing action.

Dam­age reports are sparse: the sta­tion’s power sys­tem is down, and many people are trapped. As the ship’s crew begin to assist with res­cues and recov­ery oper­a­tions, rein­force­ments from the Klin­gon Defence Force and the Twen­ti­eth Fleet arrive to help.

Quinn pur­sues the Vin­Shari attack­ers, but is lim­ited by the Trave’s top speed; he is unable to catch up before the two big ships, along with one of the run­abouts, enter the viol­ent ion storms that mark the edge of the Shack­leton Expanse. Sus­pi­ciously, the oth­er run­about is nowhere to be seen. Com­ing to a halt at a safe dis­tance, Quinn watches for a while to make sure the Vin­Shari are not set­ting up an ambush, then heads back to the star­base. On the way, he scans for ion trails, learn­ing that the second run­about changed course about a light year out, but then its trail vanished.

Back at the sta­tion, the ini­tial dis­aster recov­ery is mostly com­plete after about 12 hours. Star­base 364 has lost 2 of its 4 fusion power cores, and the land­ing deck is a mass of twis­ted met­al. The Vic­tory has suffered major struc­tur­al dam­age in the theft of its warp core. Most of the sta­tion’s pop­u­la­tion has been evac­u­ated to the sur­face of Amir II.

As the clean-up con­tin­ues, Kon­in meets with Murphy in Heber­t’s office. The admir­al is still inca­pa­cit­ated, but the adjut­ant is able to bring him up to date with recent events:

• The “Akaru Main” now extends 80% of the way towards the expec­ted point for Zeph­t’s reappear­ance, but the sup­ply lines are stretched and time is run­ning out. Lex­ing­ton has the mis­sion dur­a­tion to be able to get there, but they will need to move fast in order to make their appointment.
• The Vin­Shari are attack­ing ships and sta­tions over a huge stretch of the middle Expanse. While there has been no form­al announce­ment, they seem to be hos­tile to the Fed­er­a­tion, the Klin­gons and the Akaru. There are also some signs of con­flict with Cal-Mirra. Their mod­us operandi has not changed, as they usu­ally steal power sys­tems and samples of advanced tech­no­logy, leav­ing the sur­viv­ors aboard their wrecked vessels.
• Mean­while, Ash’Tamalia has also been very act­ive, attack­ing ships of all fac­tions along the Main. Her motiv­a­tions are a little less clear, unless she is simply dis­rupt­ing oper­a­tions. She gen­er­ally des­troys her tar­gets, leav­ing few survivors.

With both Hebert and Tali­afi­erro out of action, Kon­in is effect­ively the cur­rent head of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge. While he wants revenge on the Vin­Shari, he real­ises that while war with the Domin­ion con­tin­ues, Star­fleet can­not afford anoth­er large scale con­flict, espe­cially with the threat of Ash’Tamalia hanging over all of them. He also has to bal­ance the pro­tec­tion of the sta­tion and its sur­round­ings with the need to res­cue Zepht and secure the Oracle.

After some thought, he decides that maybe the Romu­lans, as their new allies, will be will­ing to help, pos­sibly by provid­ing pro­tec­tion in the imme­di­ate area. He asks Murphy to reach out dip­lo­mat­ic­ally to the closest region­al com­mand­er, who turns out to be Sub­ad­mir­al Tomalak, lead­er of the Romu­lan fleet at Can­did­ate Three. He is also tasked with ask­ing the Klin­gons if they can offer any sup­port. The Vin­Shari will simply have to be endured for the moment, and fought when the oppor­tun­ity allows.

36 hours after the attack, Dr V’laar of Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge comes to Kon­in’s office on Lex­ing­ton. Com­mu­nic­a­tions are still unre­li­able and she thinks it will be more secure to make her report in per­son. It seems a num­ber of Tilikaal arte­facts have van­ished from the secure stor­age area. There is no indic­a­tion of how this was achieved, the doors seem to have simply been unlocked. The raid is most likely to have happened dur­ing the Vin­Shari attack, so there may be a con­nec­tion between the two.

Kon­in assigns Azon­an and Raynor to invest­ig­ate the theft, with spe­cif­ic instruc­tions to determ­ine if the Ori­ons were involved again. This time the oper­a­tion seems to have been much more soph­ist­ic­ated, and there is no trace of trans­port­er use. There is no record left in the sys­tems of the codes used to unlock the doors; in each case, both cent­ral and loc­al records have been wiped. Sensor records and oth­er com­puter logs have also been sanitised.

They widen their invest­ig­a­tion to include the sur­round­ing areas, which show no move­ment at the appar­ent time of the raid. Raynor asks Azon­an to go back through the records, check­ing for anom­alies that might indic­ate fab­ric­ated data, as some­thing feels famil­i­ar. Unfor­tu­nately, this trig­gers some kind of mal­ware pay­load, and the sensor data is wiped. Azon­an reacts quickly, cut­ting the con­nec­tion to the wider ship sys­tems before the mal­ware spreads, but they are unable to recov­er any of the miss­ing data.

When they report back to the com­modore, both Boone and Con­ners take an interest. The doc­tor points out that there was anoth­er dis­ap­pear­ance five years ago, in which the sensor logs also appeared to have been fab­ric­ated: that of Cap­tain Adred. Could this be the same per­pet­rat­or? And could that per­pet­rat­or be the mys­ter­i­ous Sec­tion 31?

The Arc: The explor­a­tion of the Shack­leton Expanse resumes.

Obser­va­tions: The nar­row cor­ridor of space being explored by Star­fleet and the Akaru Exped­i­tion­ary Fleet has been christened the “Akaru Main”. At this point, it reaches over three quar­ters of the way to the expec­ted arrival point of Zepht and the Iconi­an Oracle.

Ref­er­ences: The ori­gin­al Ori­on-per­pet­rated arte­fact heist was uncovered and resolved in “The Ori­on Heist”.

Cap­tain Helt­in Adred dis­ap­peared in “Fad­ing Sun”, with the invest­ig­a­tion unfold­ing over sev­er­al years. Sec­tion 31 has been sug­ges­ted as a pos­sible culprit.

The Vin­Shari and their Mida­jah-Ka elite have been implac­ably hos­tile to the Star­fleet pres­ence in the Expanse since their first encounter in “The Needs of the Few”.

The then-Com­mand­er Tomalak was an occa­sion­al foe of Cap­tain Picard, and com­manded the Romu­lan taskforce in “The Dis­placed”.

Ques­tions: Who stole the artefacts?