Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×06

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 11^th April 2026

Guest Stars:

• Akaru’Bak Chiel: Seni­or offi­cial in the Akaru government.
• Com­mand­er Belar: Com­mand­ing officer of the Akaru ves­sel Shon Azon­an.
• Ayr-amin Gold: Lead­er of the oppos­i­tion faction.
• Recana-el Orange: Lead Uni­fi­er of the Cooper­at­ive government.

We have loc­ated the wreck of the Akaru frig­ate I.S. Striv­ing Togeth­er. It’s drift­ing com­pletely dead in space, with no signs of life, and there appear to be large rents in the hull. I agree with Azon­an’s assess­ment that it looks like the vic­tim of a Vin­Shari attack, but we need to get closer to be sure. Unfor­tu­nately, it is right in the middle of a per­fect site for an ambush.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52198.2

Plot: The invest­ig­a­tion of the wrecked Akaru ves­sel res­ults in a joint dip­lo­mat­ic exped­i­tion to Cal-Mirra.

The ‘A’ Plot: The Lex­ing­ton scans the area as she approaches the wrecked star­ship. It lies in the middle of a region dom­in­ated by the small anom­alies typ­ic­al of the Shack­leton Expanse, and clouds of neb­ula gases that block sensor read­ings. Azon­an notes that this would be per­fect ter­rit­ory for a Vin­Shari ambush, and Kon­in agrees.

They take the cau­tious approach, send­ing probes into the clouds to scout for Vin­Shari activ­ity. Quinn and Selvek modi­fy a shuttle for remote oper­a­tion, and rig it to emit fake life signs. Quinn then dir­ects it towards the wreck, but it eli­cits no response, and the probes detect noth­ing untoward.

They move closer, remain­ing wary, but there is no sign of danger. Short range scan­ners con­firm that the wreck is com­pletely life­less, so a board­ing party is formed, com­pris­ing Azon­an, Quinn, Raynor, Selvek and Elser, all equipped with envir­on­ment suits. They beam dir­ectly onto the ship’s bridge, where they find two Akaru bod­ies drift­ing through the air­less cham­ber, with sev­er­al more still in their seats. They note that the corpses appear to have died from suf­foc­a­tion, but some have intense loc­al­ised radi­ation burns. These do not resemble phaser or dis­ruptor injur­ies, but may be some kind of high-energy laser impact.

As Selvek gains access to the com­puter sys­tem, the oth­ers explore the rest of the ship, look­ing for clues as to what happened. They find a num­ber of oth­er bod­ies, and it is obvi­ous some of the crew per­ished when they were sucked into space through the huge holes in the hull. There are more of the unusu­al burn marks on the walls, but no phys­ic­al evid­ence of VinShari.

The logs recovered by Selvek show that the ship detec­ted a fast object mov­ing towards them, which dropped out of warp right next to it, slow­ing at a rate which would strain most ves­sels’ struc­tur­al integ­rity. The watch­ers see a bright light over­whelm the sensors and the record­ing ends. Intern­al video records show glow­ing humanoid fig­ures appear­ing in cor­ridors, then emit­ting bright light which over­whelms the sensors.

The board­ing party comes to the con­clu­sion that this was not a VIn­Shari attack, but notes that the Cal-Mir­ran crys­tal­line bio­logy would be cap­able of emit­ting this level of light. Kon­in sug­gests that this may actu­ally have been Ash’tamalia in her recently-acquired crys­tal­line form. Azon­an remem­bers that Vin­Shari har­poons leave detect­able traces of an unusu­al alloy and goes to check for its pres­ence. He finds no sign of it, but he does dis­cov­er small shards of crystal.

The Lex­ing­ton’s sensors pick up an incom­ing ves­sel, which soon hails them. It is the I.S. Shon Azon­an, anoth­er of the new Kon­in-class cruis­ers, cap­tained by Com­mand­er Belar. Hav­ing returned to the ship, Azon­an explains their dis­cov­er­ies to the Akaru officer, before Belar tells them that Akaru’Bak Chiel would like to meet them on Setu urgently. The Azon­an recov­ers the Akaru bod­ies, then the two ships tow the Striv­ing Togeth­er back to their homeworld.

Chiel, now respons­ible for admin­is­tra­tion for the entire Akaru navy, is wait­ing for them in her office on Setu. Kon­in relates what they have dis­covered, and Chiel explains that the Vin­Shari have been a con­stant threat to their oper­a­tions. They have launched repeated raids and attacks, but the Akaru have devised their own means of defence: basic­ally they open fire the second the Vin­Shari are iden­ti­fied. Des­pite this, some ships are still van­ish­ing, pre­sum­ably lost to the VinShari.

Kon­in relates his the­ory that these losses could actu­ally be attempts by Ash’tamalia to dis­rupt pre­par­a­tions for the trip to Pi-Latka. Any dam­age she can do will make the exped­i­tion that much more dif­fi­cult, and if she stirs up a war between the Akaru and the Cal-Mir­rans that will serve her pur­poses admir­ably. Unfor­tu­nately at this point, the Cal-Mir­rans have rebuffed all Akaru dip­lo­mat­ic contacts.

At this point, the Iry­ax inter­venes, tak­ing psion­ic con­trol of Chiel to inform them that the Akaru need to estab­lish some form of dip­lo­mat­ic con­tact. He wants Kon­in to intro­duce a del­eg­a­tion led by Chiel to the Cal-Mir­ran government.

Kon­in agrees and the excur­sion is quickly organ­ised: the Lex­ing­ton and the Shon Azon­an will depart for Cal-Mirra as soon as pos­sible, accom­pan­ied by two frig­ates. They will carry a dip­lo­mat­ic team of five Akaru’Bak, along with Chiel. The Lex­ing­ton will also place sub­space radio relays on the route to facil­it­ate emer­gency com­mu­nic­a­tions and, assum­ing the Cal-Mir­rans are recept­ive, ongo­ing con­tact. Kon­in will intro­duce the del­eg­a­tion to the Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment before return­ing to the Lex­ing­ton’s primary mission.

The flo­tilla departs Setu and travels along the Akaru Main for two days at warp 6 before detour­ing into unmapped space towards Cal-Mirra. As they drop out of warp on the edge of the tiny star sys­tem, they are met by three Prism-class ves­sels, their weapons act­ive. A brief mes­sage from one of them demands that they turn and leave the sys­tem imme­di­ately. Kon­in iden­ti­fies him­self, and is able to con­vince their com­mand­er to allow a per­son­al meeting.

A little later, a golden cloud moves pur­pose­fully towards one of Lex­ing­ton’s air­locks. The air­lock is opened and the crys­tal­line form of Ayr-amin Gold takes shape before enter­ing the ship. Ayr-amin remem­bers the crew from its pre­vi­ous vis­it and adopts a more recept­ive stance than their com­pan­ions. Meet­ing with them, Kon­in learns there has been a shift in power with­in the Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment, and that the Sun­seeker fac­tion are now dom­in­ant, with Recana-el Orange tak­ing on the role of Lead Uni­fi­er. This has res­ul­ted in a swing towards isol­a­tion­ism, as the cul­ture with­draws from a viol­ent galaxy. Some debate fol­lows, but Kon­in is able to con­vince Ayr-amin that the Akaru come in peace and that they should have the oppor­tun­ity to meet the gov­ern­ment on the surface.

Shortly, they beam down to the edge of the Cooper­at­ive Gov­ern­ment cham­ber, where Ayr-amin intro­duces them to the gathered pop­u­la­tion. Recana-el moves for­ward, their spher­ic­al body shin­ing, and begins to speak. Sud­denly, a red-skinned humanoid fig­ure emerges from a shim­mer­ing haze behind them and slaps a device on to their body; moments later, both fig­ures dis­ap­pear in a red blur.

The Arc: The Vin­Shari are back. Or is it Ash’tamalia?

Obser­va­tions: The Akaru have doubled down on nam­ing their Kon­in-class ves­sels after Lex­ing­ton’s com­mand crew, much to Azon­an’s irritation.

Dia­logue: Kon­in after Recana-el’s abduc­tion (in Old Betazoid): “Ich hasse die VinShari!”

Ref­er­ences: Com­mand­er Belar was ori­gin­ally encountered as a juni­or crew mem­ber on the I.S. Star­ward.

The Akaru tac­tic for deal­ing with Vin­Shari attacks resembles the infam­ous “Vul­can Hello”.

Ayr-amin Gold is the former Lead Uni­fi­er of the Cal-Mir­ran Cooper­at­ive gov­ern­ment.

Ques­tions: Why did the Vin­Shari kid­nap the Cal-Mir­ran lead­er? And was that a Klin­gon transporter?