Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×08

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 9^th May 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.
• “Com­mand­er John Snow”: Prisoner.

We have suc­cess­fully recovered Recana-el, cap­tured the kid­nap­per, and we are fairly sure we know who he works for. We are not exactly clear as to what he was doing, or why. And it looks like get­ting the vic­tim to safety may not be easy: the region appears to be sub­ject to fre­quent time anomalies.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52245.7

Plot: The res­cue party makes its escape through a battle that took place a cen­tury ago.

The ‘A’ Plot: On the aban­doned Klin­gon sta­tion, Com­mand­er Azon­an begins organ­ising the team for its return to the shuttle and Lex­ing­ton. With two uncon­scious humanoids, along with the kid­nap vic­tim, who appears to be too weak to move, it will be a dif­fi­cult journey.

Recana-el is basic­ally a 1 metre ball of crys­tal, and while they can nor­mally float with the aid of a cyber­net­ic implant, this appears to be inact­ive. Quinn loc­ates a pair of anti­grav­ity attach­ments nearby, and he and Azon­an are able to attach these to the Cal-Mir­ran’s sur­face, so that they can man­oeuvre them out of the room.

While they’re doing this, Raynor cuffs the pris­on­er, and Selvek down­loads as much data as pos­sible from his equip­ment. Azon­an is plan­ning to come back for the machinery itself once Recana-el is safe, but fate has oth­er ideas.

As they open the door to ven­ture out into the cor­ridor, there is anoth­er “shud­der”, and they find them­selves in the dim light­ing and acrid air of an act­ive Klin­gon sta­tion. Choos­ing to ignore this, they fol­low the pas­sage back towards the sta­tion’s core. Raynor and the act­ive guard provide cov­er, while Azon­an car­ries the pris­on­er, Doc­tor Con­ners sup­ports the still-stunned secur­ity officer, and Selvek and Quinn man­oeuvre Recana-el with the anti­grav units.

Klax­ons sound, and then they hear sev­er­al dull booms. Emer­gency light­ing activ­ates, and march­ing boots ring on the floor. Raynor spots war­ri­ors march­ing towards them, and as they look for some­where to hide, there’s an explo­sion from behind. The war­ri­ors begin to run and the party finds a side alcove to duck into.

Con­ners iden­ti­fies the war­ri­ors as Quch­Ha’, which dates the cur­rent time to the 23^rd cen­tury. They behave more like sol­diers than tra­di­tion­al Klin­gon beqpu’, tak­ing up fir­ing pos­i­tions to defend against boarders. They largely ignore the Star­fleet con­tin­gent, acknow­ledging their pres­ence, but con­cen­trat­ing on the cloud of smoke bil­low­ing at the end of the pas­sage. Most of them seem wor­ried or even afraid, a very un-Klin­gon response.

Raynor soon sees why, as hulk­ing, winged fig­ures emerge from the smoke, dis­ruptor blasts boun­cing straight off their armoured hides. As the oncom­ing fig­ures engage the lead ele­ments of the Klin­gon defence, the secur­ity chief becomes a first-hand wit­ness to the bru­tal­ity of their assault.

They quickly form a plan to escape: Raynor and the secur­ity guard will lay down cov­er­ing fire, while the oth­ers escape through the gaps between the Klin­gon pos­i­tions. Con­ners and the recov­er­ing guard go first, fol­lowed by Selvek, using his Vul­can strength to carry the uncon­scious pris­on­er. Azon­an and Quinn guide Recana-el out, then Raynor and his col­league stage a fight­ing retreat. They make it to safety unscathed, but are fol­lowed by the screams of dying Klingons.

They decide not to risk the elev­at­ors, opt­ing to man­oeuvre their cargo down the stairs to the hangar deck, but then they have a shock. While there are plenty of Klin­gon armed shuttles, their own shuttle and the Ouse are nowhere to be seen, as they did­n’t exist in the 23^rd cen­tury. Azon­an imme­di­ately con­tacts Kon­in, in the hope that the Lex­ing­ton was affected by the timeslip as well.

Out­side, the ship has been caught in the cross­fire between Klin­gon birds-of-prey and the black globe-shaped ves­sels of the attack­ers. The helms­man has to work hard to pull the ship out of the imme­di­ate battle, as dis­ruptor fire splashes off the shields. Man­oeuv­ring close to the sta­tion, Lex­ing­ton beams the board­ing party out, then makes for the chan­nel out of the nebula.

At this point the anom­aly ends and everything returns to nor­mal. Lex­ing­ton pauses to dis­patch the Trave with a recov­ery crew to pick up the shuttle and tow the Ouse out.

As they head towards the edge of the neb­ula, anoth­er time shift occurs. This time, the neb­ula seems to dis­ap­pear, and it’s only when Selvek scans behind the ship that they see that the neb­ula gas has been com­pressed into an immense lens over a light year in dia­met­er. Through it, a star sys­tem can be seen, with two inhab­ited plan­ets – Romu­lus and Remus. As Quinn accel­er­ates to reach the edge of the former neb­ula before the anom­aly ends, they catch brief bursts of light, which seem to be Cal-Mir­ran com­mu­nic­a­tions. With­in the lens, anoth­er plan­et appears between the two Romu­lan home­worlds, trig­ger­ing a slow motion col­li­sion remin­is­cent of the Can­did­ate Three event. The tech­no­logy involved in this is obvi­ously Tilikaal, and it seems they’re get­ting a glimpse of the future, or at least a pos­sible future.

Then once again, everything returns to nor­mal, and they take sig­ni­fic­ant shield dam­age from the radi­ation in the neb­ula before they can exit. As they organ­ise the trans­fer of Recana-el to one of the Cal-Mir­ran ships, Raynor picks up a dis­tress call from the recov­ery crew.

Head­ing back into the neb­ula, they find their way to the source of the dis­tress call. The run­abouts have both been caught with­in the cloud and dam­aged, severely in the case of the Trave, where one of the three crew has been killed. The shuttle appears to be fine. The vehicles are retrieved with a tract­or beam, and their crews sent to sickbay.

Now that things have calmed down a little, Kon­in goes to con­front their pris­on­er. Con­ners and Raynor have him restrained in an isol­a­tion ward, so that they can min­im­ise the risk of him killing himself.

Kon­in attempts to get him to give up his employ­ers and mis­sion, using a com­bin­a­tion of tele­pathy, threats and nego­ti­ation. Unfor­tu­nately, he proves remark­ably resi­li­ent, con­stantly ima­gin­ing a field full of rab­bits to thwart tele­path­ic scans. All Kon­in is able to extract ini­tially is a name, Com­mand­er John Snow, which is likely false. Snow also seems com­pletely unim­pressed by Raynor’s threats. Even­tu­ally, how­ever, they are able to pro­voke him enough to explain what he was try­ing to do.

It seems that Cal-Mir­rans have the abil­ity to affect the flow of around them­selves, enabling them to see briefly into the future or the past. Snow had iden­ti­fied Recana-el as one of the most power­ful users of this abil­ity, and he was try­ing to amp­li­fy and con­trol their abil­it­ies using tachy­ons. He explains that this cap­ab­il­ity would be invalu­able to Star­fleet by help­ing to pre­dict Domin­ion strategy and work­ing out the causes of mil­it­ary defeats. Under no cir­cum­stance, how­ever, will Snow admit who he works for, but Kon­in already has a pretty good idea. Snow does seem utterly con­vinced that he’s doing the right thing.

Kon­in has Con­ners double-check the pris­on­er for sui­cide devices, then Raynor locks him up in the ship’s brig for later inter­rog­a­tion by Star­fleet Security.

Kon­in takes his find­ings to the rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Akaru and Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ments, and apo­lo­get­ic­ally explains that the cul­prit is Human. He is also forced to admit that he was exper­i­ment­ing on the vic­tim for the poten­tial bene­fit of Starfleet.

Ayr-amin replies that this is exactly what the Cal-Mir­rans, led by Recana-el’s Sun­seekers, were wor­ried about, that out­siders would come to their world and try to exploit them. They are also con­cerned that because their pop­u­la­tion is so small, they would not be able to present this.

Kon­in can only point out that this is not what the Fed­er­a­tion stands for, and that Snow will be pun­ished for his crimes. Chiel takes his side, point­ing out that Star­fleet has proven itself to the Akaru on sev­er­al occasions.

Ulti­mately, Ayr-Amin and Tan-Nuvel decide that the Cal-Mir­ran gov­ern­ment will main­tain dip­lo­mat­ic con­tact only with the Akaru. If the Fed­er­a­tion wishes to con­tact them, they will need to go through them. They will, how­ever, deal with the Lex­ing­ton crew, since they res­cued their leader.

Obser­va­tions: 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, not­ably for mov­ing Nomad in The Changeling.

The Klin­gon term Kin­shaya trans­lates as “demons”, and refers to a relent­less spe­cies they fought a series of wars against in the late 23^rd cen­tury. As is often the case when they find a foe they can­not defeat, the Klin­gons will not speak of them.

The Cal-Mir­rans pos­sess the abil­ity to affect the flow of time around them­selves, allow­ing them to see into the near future or past. Snow was attempt­ing to boost this cap­ab­il­ity in Recana-el, and their reac­tion appears to have triggered the tem­por­al anomalies.

Ref­er­ences: The Quch­Ha’, or “Unhappy Ones”, were those Klin­gons affected by the aug­ment vir­us. They made up a major­ity of the Klin­gon forces in the 23^rd cen­tury, but have dis­ap­peared by 2375, and most Star­fleet officers are unaware of their existence.

Ques­tions: Was this a Sec­tion 31 plot?