Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×07

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 25^th April 2026

Guest Stars:

• Akaru’Bak Chiel: Seni­or offi­cial in the Akaru government.
• Com­mand­er Belar: Com­mand­ing officer of the Akaru ves­sel I.S. Shon Azon­an.
• Ayr-amin Gold: Lead­er of the Cal-Mir­ran oppos­i­tion faction.
• Recana-el Orange: Lead Uni­fi­er of the Cal-Mir­ran Cooper­at­ive government.
• Tan-nuvel Cerulean: Deputy Unifier.
• Gar-zalash Black: Reclus­ive Cal-Mir­ran scientist.

The Lex­ing­ton has returned to Cal-Mirra, lead­ing a del­eg­a­tion of Akaru dip­lo­mats at the request of the Iry­ax. They hope to estab­lish con­tact in order to pre­vent mis­un­der­stand­ings about recent attacks on Akaru ves­sels, which may be due to either the Vin­Shari or Ash’Tamalia.

Unfor­tu­nately, our arrival seems to have come at a bad time.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52224.7

Plot: The crew of the Lex­ing­ton become involved in a des­per­ate race to res­cue Recana-el Orange.

The ‘A’ Plot: For sev­er­al seconds after the abduc­tion, the entire debat­ing arena is frozen in shock, then flashes of light begin to illu­min­ate the scene. Ini­tially, these seem quite tent­at­ive and dim, but soon the arena begins to resemble a strobe light dis­play, as the Cal-Mir­rans argue about what just happened.

Com­modore Kon­in instructs Lex­ing­ton to begin look­ing for nearby ships and trans­port­er activ­ity. As he explains what has just happened, Com­mand­er Azon­an ini­ti­ates red alert as a pre­cau­tion. This draws a hos­tile reac­tion from the loc­al Cal-Mir­ran ves­sels, which activ­ate weapons and close in. Azon­an wisely de-escalates.

Kon­in turns his atten­tion to the assembled gov­ern­ment, try­ing to get some kind of idea of what they’re think­ing. As the Cal-Mir­rans are of a very dif­fer­ent bio­logy, he is only able to make out gen­er­al emo­tions, but he does pick up a mix of fear, shock and anger, along with a grow­ing sense of determ­in­a­tion. Some of the strongest eman­a­tions are from Ayr-amin and Tan-nuvel Cerulean, Recana-el’s deputy, who is advoc­at­ing for a sum­mary exe­cu­tion of the humanoids who seem to have brought the trouble.

Kon­in is able to attract Ayr-amin’s atten­tion, and tries to explain that this appears to have been the actions of the Vin­Shari, an aggress­ive spe­cies already known to them. The former Lead Uni­fi­er points out that the assemblage is very upset, and that Tan-nuvel is mov­ing to force them all out and retreat into total isol­a­tion. With Chiel’s agree­ment, Kon­in prom­ises the sup­port of both Star­fleet and the Akaru in find­ing and res­cuing Recana-el.

Selvek, mean­while, has been using his tri­cord­er to loc­ate the source of the trans­port­er beam. He iden­ti­fies a sig­nal source at the top of a nearby spire, but as he points this out to Kon­in, some­thing lifts off and accel­er­ates upwards, jump­ing to warp with­in the atmo­sphere and trig­ger­ing major storm effects.

In orbit, Lex­ing­ton’s sensors pick up the ship’s move­ment, but they are unable to track it when it activ­ates a cloak­ing device as it leaves Setu’s grav­ity well. The oper­a­tions officer reports that it seems to be small, about the size of a run­about, and its warp core appears to be Star­fleet issue, but the cloak­ing device is Romu­lan. Azon­an relays this to the sur­face, but says they can only guess at its des­tin­a­tion. He notes that it seems an odd com­bin­a­tion: Klin­gon trans­port­er, Romu­lan cloak­ing device, Star­fleet warp drive. None of which seem to be Vin­Shari – could this be Ori­on or anoth­er third party?

Tan-nuvel then tells them that Cal-mir­rans emit cer­tain elec­tro­mag­net­ic fre­quen­cies that res­on­ate in oth­er Cal-Mir­rans. It should be pos­sible to tri­an­gu­late Recana-el’s loc­a­tion by this method.

After some debate amongst the assembly, Ayr-amin relays its accept­ance of Kon­in’s offer of assist­ance. It is soon agreed that the exped­i­tion will involve both the Lex­ing­ton and the Azon­an, along with 3 Cal-Mir­ran ves­sels. Ayr-amin, Recana-el and Gar-zalash Black, the res­id­ent expert on ali­en tech­no­logy, will join them.

The ensu­ing chase takes a day, con­sist­ing of peri­ods at warp fol­lowed by peri­ods at sub­light while the Cal-Mir­rans acquire an updated bear­ing for Recana-el’s loc­a­tion. Even­tu­ally, they pin­point this to with­in a small emis­sion neb­ula. The cloud is dense, and giv­ing off high levels of radi­ation, mak­ing it impossible to pen­et­rate with sensors. Rayner notes that it will inflict ser­i­ous dam­age to the shields, but Quinn is con­fid­ent he can nav­ig­ate the nar­row chan­nels vis­ible within.

The Cal-Mir­ran ships man­oeuvre to tri­an­gu­late the abduct­ee’s loc­a­tion, then Lex­ing­ton and Azon­an enter cau­tiously. A few hun­dred astro­nom­ic­al units inside the peri­met­er, they dis­cov­er what appears to be a Klin­gon research sta­tion. Its power use is min­im­al, but the con­di­tions make it impossible to identi­fy life signs or get oth­er data. Selvek does pick up reg­u­lar bursts of tachy­on activ­ity, each fol­lowed by a rise in chroniton levels. He is unable to fig­ure out why, but explains that tachy­ons are often asso­ci­ated with tem­por­al events, such as tran­stem­por­al wormholes.

Azon­an puts togeth­er a board­ing party, con­sist­ing of Con­ners, Azon­an, Selvek, Quinn and Raynor, along with a couple of secur­ity officers. The radi­ation makes trans­port­ers inef­fect­ive, so Quinn pilots a shuttle into the sta­tion’s hangar bay, which con­tains sev­er­al wrecked Klin­gon shuttle­craft, and an undam­aged Danube-class run­about.

Life sup­port and arti­fi­cial grav­ity is act­ive, and the bay’s force-field is in place, so they are able to exit without envir­on­ment suits. Azon­an decides the first order of busi­ness is to invest­ig­ate the run­about, since he sus­pects this is the ves­sel they have been hunt­ing. It does not respond to any of the usu­al access meth­ods, so they trig­ger the emer­gency access bolts to blow the main hatch off.

All is quiet onboard, and Selvek begins try­ing to access the com­puter sys­tem. Azon­an finds that one of the cus­tom mod­ules is locked, and is unable to gain access without a ded­ic­ated remote con­trol; he con­cludes that this is the loc­a­tion of its cloak­ing device. The com­puter sys­tem is stand­ard LCARS, but seems to have the cap­ab­il­ity of being switched into dif­fer­ent “iden­tit­ies”, allow­ing it to mas­quer­ade as dif­fer­ent run­abouts. It con­tains noth­ing indic­at­ing its own­er or mission.

Vacat­ing the run­about, they ven­ture into the sta­tion, climb­ing emer­gency stairs up to the main level. Except for life sup­port, there are no indic­a­tions of any inhab­it­ants, but they soon find their way into what seems to be a med­ic­al research facil­ity. One of the labor­at­or­ies is draw­ing power but they are able to approach without problems.

Open­ing the heavy door, they see a large, dimly-lit room con­tain­ing a a cube-shaped energy cage, con­tain­ing the spher­ic­al form of Recana-el, who seems to be in par­tic­u­larly bad shape. Two large energy pro­ject­ors sit to either side of the cage, and a man in Star­fleet med­ic­al uni­form is work­ing at a con­sole next to them.

The man looks up, seems pleased to see them and asks them to hold on for one moment. Azon­an imme­di­ately demands the man stand down and cease his exper­i­ments, but is waved off. Azon­an raises his phaser and fires, but the scene shim­mers, and he finds him­self back on the oth­er side of the closed door. His stun shot strikes one of the secur­ity officers.

Azon­an looks around and sees the rest of the board­ing party are still with him. Without stop­ping to think about what just happened, he opens the door and imme­di­ately shoots the man without warn­ing, stun­ning him.

He and Selvek study the energy cage, which appears to be a form of Faraday cage, keep­ing cer­tain energy types from enter­ing or leav­ing, and keep­ing the cap­tive trapped. The energy pro­ject­ors are designed to emit tachy­on bursts of vary­ing energy levels into the cage. They shut down the sys­tem but Recana-el is very weak and unable to move out of the enclosure.

Azon­an steps out of the room to con­tact Lex­ing­ton and imme­di­ately exper­i­ences a flash­back to a time when the sta­tion was in use by the Klin­gons, see­ing med­ics car­ry­ing injured war­ri­ors into the facil­ity. As the image fades, he warns Kon­in about time slips. He asks Ayr-amin how they can help Recana-el, and they explain that Cal-Mir­rans are able to heal each oth­er by means of a pro­cess called cas­cade align­ment; they need to get the abduct­ee back to the ship.

Loc­at­ing a pair of anti­grav­ity attach­ments, Con­nors and a secur­ity guard are able to use them to man­oeuvre the Cal-Mir­ran into the cor­ridor and back towards the shuttle­craft. Azon­an and the oth­ers remain to exam­ine the equipment.

Obser­va­tions: The run­about is a stand­ard Danube-class ves­sel, the U.S.S. Ouse. The Ouse went miss­ing on the Car­das­si­an bor­der about a year ago, and was assumed lost to enemy action.

Anti­grav­ity attach­ments are devices designed to attach to a crate or oth­er large object and neut­ral­ise its mass, so that it can be moved through humanoid muscle power. They were seen sev­er­al times in Star Trek.

Ques­tions: Who is the kid­nap­per and why was he exper­i­ment­ing on Recana-el? What triggered the time shifts?