Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×02

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 7^th Feb­ru­ary 2026

Guest Stars:

• Cap­tain Murphy: Adjut­ant to Vice Admir­al Hebert.
• Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Okundu: Star­base 312’s Judge Advocate.
• E’loruul: Pris­on­er and mem­ber of the Ori­on Syndicate.
• Rayner: Ori­on ship operator.
• Sub-Admir­al Tomalak: Romu­lan sec­tor governor.

The res­id­ents of Nar­en­dra Sta­tion are slowly pick­ing up the pieces after the Vin­Shari raid. Vice Admir­al Hebert remains under med­ic­al super­vi­sion, leav­ing me to super­vise the recov­ery and nego­ti­ate with the Romu­lans for assist­ance. Lt Cdr Raynor is invest­ig­at­ing the arte­fact theft, while the oth­ers pre­pare for the lengthy voy­age hanging over all of us.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52013.0

Plot: Raynor invest­ig­ates the Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge theft as the rest of the seni­or officers pre­pare for their res­cue mission.

The ‘A’ Plot: Raynor invest­ig­ates wheth­er the theft from the arte­fact vault was actu­ally con­nec­ted to the Vin­Shari raid, or just took advant­age of it.

He begins in the epi­centre of the action, in the shuttle hangar, look­ing for inform­a­tion about what indi­vidu­als and groups were doing at the time. He finds that the cleanup is about 60% com­plete, with most of the deceased recovered, and wreck­age cleared. As he asks ques­tions of both the emer­gency and hangar work­ers, he real­ises that the exact flow of events is not that clear.

One ERT mem­ber shows him to a large pile of recovered equip­ment that has yet to be iden­ti­fied. Near this is a cleared area con­tain­ing a row of body-bags in a stas­is field, appar­ently includ­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives of both the attack­ers and their vic­tims. One table is stacked with what appear to be weapons, includ­ing vari­ous knives, dis­ruptors and the dis­tinct­ive Vin­Shari pro­jectile weapons. There’s even a broken Mida­jah-Ka escrima. He notices a lot of Ori­on weapons and tools, even though there were no Ori­ons involved in the attack.

Search­ing through the equip­ment pile, he finds a dis­tinct­ive black and sil­ver com­badge, in the form of a Star­fleet delta. While he still does not know of any Star­fleet unit that would use this, it is very sim­il­ar to the one he found in the access tubes dur­ing the Klin­gon assault two years ago.

Giv­en the large num­ber of Ori­on weapons, he decides to invest­ig­ate pos­sible Syn­dic­ate con­nec­tions to the event first. He heads to the gal­ler­ia and seeks out an Ori­on trader whose ship was dam­aged in the attack. The Ori­on, con­fus­ingly named Rayner, is ini­tially will­ing to talk, but becomes upset about “racial pro­fil­ing” when Raynor seems to assume he will know how to con­tact the Syn­dic­ate just because he’s Ori­on. The secur­ity chief gets the mes­sage and backs off.

He does have an altern­at­ive, but poten­tially trouble­some, option, so he gets in touch with Lt Cdr Okundu, the sta­tion’s JAG rep­res­ent­at­ive, and arranges to vis­it the pen­al colony on Amir II. A few hours later, he walks into an inter­view room where E’lor­uul, the Ori­on Syn­dic­ate owner/operator cap­tured at Dys­athus II, is wait­ing. After some nego­ti­ation, she proves will­ing to make a deal: although he can­not offer her free­dom, he might be able to get her sen­tence reduced.

He speaks to Okundu, who agrees to his request, and returns to the inter­view room to let E’lor­uul know the news. She explains that her own oper­a­tion had been ordered by her Boss, on behalf of an unnamed third party. The Syn­dic­ate had little interest in the arte­facts, except for their resale value as curios, but the cli­ent was look­ing for spe­cif­ic items. The Vin­Shari would have been hired help in the recent events, get­ting weapons and tech­no­logy in return for cre­at­ing a dis­trac­tion, all organ­ised by the client.

Unfor­tu­nately, she does not know who or what the cli­ent is. To find that out, he will need to talk to her Boss, Gavreh-Taan, on his pleas­ure barge, the Con­tent­ment.

The ‘B’ Plot: Fol­low­ing up on his plans to ensure Nar­en­dra Sta­tion’s secur­ity while Lex­ing­ton is on her exten­ded voy­age into the Shack­leton Expanse, Kon­in asks Cap­tain Murphy to request a meet­ing with the Romu­lans. A reply arrives quickly, stat­ing that Sub-Admir­al Tomalak agrees to meet and will be arriv­ing in 24 hours.

The next day, the war­bird Trennis decloaks about a kilo­metre off the sta­tion and hails the com­mand deck. Kon­in is noti­fied imme­di­ately, and answers the hail, invit­ing the sub-admir­al to a meet­ing in Lex­ing­ton’s con­fer­ence room. Tomalak agrees and beams aboard an hour later to be met by Kon­in, Murphy and Boone.

They take Tomalak and his asso­ci­ates to the con­fer­ence room, where they get to busi­ness after the usu­al pleas­ant­ries. Kon­in explains the recent events and, not­ing Romu­lan exper­i­ence with sensor sys­tems, requests assist­ance in set­ting up an early warn­ing sensor net­work to give the sta­tion more warn­ing of sim­il­ar events.

In return, Tomalak puts for­ward a num­ber of requests and conditions:

• The sys­tem would be oper­ated and main­tained by Romu­lan per­son­nel only, in order to safe­guard tech­no­lo­gic­al secrets.
• Romu­lan per­son­nel would not be expec­ted to work with or along­side Klingons.
• Romu­lan ships would be allowed dock­ing and shore leave priv­ileges at Nar­en­dra Station.
• Romu­lan ships would have the right to stop and search sus­pec­ted smug­glers in the vicinity.
• Star­fleet would provide data on Romu­lan dis­sid­ents in the region.
• And the arrest and extra­di­tion of the saboteur respons­ible for the destruc­tion of the Valdreth at Can­did­ate Three.

Kon­in agrees to most of the requests, but refers the stop and search request to the sta­tion’s leg­al team, and indic­ates that he is unable to help with regards to dis­sid­ents (“we do not know of any”) and the saboteur (“we do not know who did that”).

Tomalak accepts this and the agree­ment is sealed.

The ‘C’ Plot: Else­where, Azon­an and Quinn are pre­par­ing for Lex­ing­ton’s exten­ded mis­sion into the Shack­leton Expanse.

Quinn begins to gath­er as much astrog­a­tion­al data about the route as he can, draw­ing on Star­fleet’s probe and long range sensor data, Gia’s exper­i­ences explor­ing the region, data gathered by the Akaru, and inform­a­tion garnered from civil­ian ves­sels that have ven­tured that far. He com­piles a pro­vi­sion­al set of nav­ig­a­tion charts for regions they will be tra­vers­ing, then begins to plot the best course he can, com­bin­ing speed and safety. He also spends time on the holo­decks prac­tising warp speed man­oeuvres through that kind of terrain.

Azon­an ini­ti­ates a detailed sur­vey of the ship’s stores and cargo capa­city, using that to build a reserve of spare parts, mater­i­als and oth­er resources for such a long jour­ney, as they will be far from con­veni­ent repair sites. He also begins to plan for sup­ply caches along their route, rely­ing on the Akaru fleet to stock them.

The Arc: The black and sil­ver badge makes a reappear­ance, and we begin to find out what the Ori­ons have been up to in the Shack­leton Expanse.

Obser­va­tions: Quinn dis­cov­ers some inform­a­tion about the fur­ther reaches of the Shack­leton Expanse, includ­ing the Triplets, a group of 3 identic­al stars that appear to be orbit­ing around a com­mon centre, the Wash­board, a region of space heav­ily affected by grav­it­a­tion­al waves from the Triplets, and the Shack­leton Pin­wheel, an oddly-struc­tured neb­ula near their destination.

Amir II, the plan­et which Star­base 364 orbits, hosts a Fed­er­a­tion pen­al colony on the far side from the main sur­face facil­it­ies. Owner/Operator E’lor­uul is one of its inmates.

Ref­er­ences: The Ori­on Syn­dic­ate Boss, Gavreh-Taan is over a cen­tury old. He was one of the twin sons of Lolani-Taan, com­mand­er of the Zhair­assha. Lolani and her fam­ily were hunt­ing Ori­on “his­tor­ic­al rel­ics” on Dourap IV when they encountered the crew of the ori­gin­al Lex­ing­ton.

The Trennis, a D’Deri­dex-class war­bird, has been under Sub-Admir­al Tomalak’s com­mand for at least nine years, hav­ing encountered the U.S.S. Enter­prise on two occa­sions in 2366.