Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×16

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew, based on a story by Dayton Ward

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 22^nd August 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant T’rhyn: Time trav­el­ler from the 23^rd cen­tury, now serving as a Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge advisor.

We have finally arrived at Pi-Latka. The view is breath­tak­ing. Stel­lar car­to­graphy tells me that the Andori­an astro­nomer who first iden­ti­fied the sys­tem named it after the winged god­dess of beauty, and I can see why. The sys­tem looks like a spider­’s web covered in the morn­ing dew, with rings of ice crys­tals sur­round­ing the star itself.

But we have work to do. By our cal­cu­la­tions, Zepht and the Oracle will be arriv­ing in just over two weeks. We have to fig­ure out exactly where and be ready for their arrival. And it remains highly likely that Ash’Tamalia is lurk­ing somewhere.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52554.8

Plot: Lex­ing­ton reaches Pi-Latka, and a land­ing party inad­vert­ently viol­ates a loc­al taboo.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton approaches the Pi-Latka sys­tem, a single orange star sur­roun­ded by spec­tac­u­lar belts of ice particles, resem­bling a stel­lar scale rep­lica of Sat­urn. Unusu­ally, the sensors are not detect­ing any­thing massive enough to qual­i­fy as a plan­et, but there are around three dozen rock and ice plan­et­oids act­ing as shep­herds to the ice rings.

Kon­in becomes aware of many eth­er­e­al voices, all singing a soar­ing har­mony remin­is­cent of a cathed­ral choir. No-one else on the bridge can hear them, so he con­cludes this is a tele­path­ic effect. As they approach the sys­tem, the voices become louder, and Dr Con­ners con­tacts him to say that she is get­ting sim­il­ar reports from the oth­er tele­paths and empaths aboard. Kon­in asks her to provide some­thing to deaden his tele­path­ic abil­it­ies for the dur­a­tion of their stay, accept­ing her warn­ing that this will also slow down his decision making.

T’rhyn points out that on the known pre­vi­ous occa­sions, the Oracle appeared in exist­ing phys­ic­al struc­tures, but detailed scans show no sign of either Tilikaal or Iconi­an mater­i­als or energy sig­na­tures. Kon­in decides to check each of the plan­et­oids one by one, and asks for plans. The plan­et­oids are sub­ject to fre­quent showers of high velo­city ice met­eor­oids, mak­ing unshiel­ded probes imprac­tic­al. Shuttles and run­abouts would have dif­fi­culty main­tain­ing their shields against the impacts. After some dis­cus­sion, it is decided to take the time to invest­ig­ate them one at a time from Lex­ing­ton herself.

Kon­in announces that they will start at the out­er­most and work their way in, but then Selvek detects an ion trail lead­ing dir­ectly towards the orbit of the largest plan­et­oid. It appears to have been cre­ated by an impulse drive, although it is about a week old, and suf­fi­ciently dis­persed that they can­not tell what kind of ship. Con­clud­ing that this world must be sig­ni­fic­ant, Kon­in changes his plans to start there.

From orbit, a dark dome is clearly vis­ible emer­ging from the snow on the sur­face. It is def­in­itely hol­low, but the sensors are unable to pen­et­rate its surface.

Azon­an puts togeth­er an away team to invest­ig­ate the struc­ture, con­sist­ing of Elser, Raynor, Hugar­im­min and T’rhyn, and they beam down to the frozen sur­face. The dome is shal­low, about 5 km across and 1 km at its highest point. Its sur­face was evid­ently smooth ori­gin­ally, but is pit­ted by micro­met­eor impacts. There are no signs of an entrance where they arrive, so they begin circ­ling the dome to find one.

Selvek announces the arrival of four objects on the edge of the sys­tem, appear­ing on sensors as black circles. Their entry to the sys­tem fol­lows an odd path: half an orbit around the edge, then loop­ing around a plan­et­oid and circ­ling in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion about half a mil­lion km closer to the primary. This repeats as they pro­gress fur­ther into the system.

The com­modore hails the approach­ing ves­sels, but the reply is audio-only, con­sist­ing of a series of snarls, bel­lows and shrieks. The uni­ver­sal trans­lat­or takes a while to decipher this, then they dis­cov­er they are being accused of tres­passing on holy ground by the “High Priest of the Kin­shaya”. The priest demands that they leave the sys­tem now or die as heretics. Kon­in tries to apo­lo­gise, ask­ing for time to recov­er the away team, but the Kin­shaya accusess them of sacrilege.

Sur­pris­ingly, the Kin­shaya ships remain on their ori­gin­al flight plan, rather than divert­ing to inter­cept the intruders. Selvek sug­gests they are fol­low­ing a ritu­al path and would con­sider it taboo to devi­ate. This will give the Lex­ing­ton crew about thirty minutes before they need to evacuate.

Kon­in con­tacts the away team to find out if they have dis­covered a way into the dome, and Azon­an asks if Lex­ing­ton can provide any more data from her vant­age point. Sensors show a recessed line sur­round­ing the crown of the dome, about 250 m in dia­met­er. Using their mag­net­ic boots, the away team are able to climb up to see for them­selves, dis­cov­er­ing that it is def­in­itely an access port, but that there are no con­trols vis­ible. Azon­an asks for help from the ship, and the com­modore dir­ects Boone to lift the pan­el out with a tract­or beam. Unfor­tu­nately, it appears the pan­el was attached by a hinge, and the tract­or beam breaks the connection.

It is too far to jump down, so the away team are beamed back to the ship, then down to the interi­or, find­ing an open space occu­pied by a long aven­ue flanked by stone build­ings, with a step pyr­am­id at one end and what could be a land­ing space at the oth­er. They search for signs of Tilikaal or Iconi­an influ­ence, but find none, for­cing them to con­clude that this is entirely a Kin­shaya con­struc­tion. The cir­cu­lar writ­ing sys­tem and repeated motif of a black circle are intriguing, but not rel­ev­ant to their mission.

The team returns to Lex­ing­ton, and Boone tries to put the door back in place. Unfor­tu­nately, the broken hinge makes their vis­it obvi­ous. Kon­in decides they should leave at once, and they warp out of the sys­tem, a few minutes before the Kin­shaya arrive.

As they leave, Selvek remarks that he has been regis­ter­ing odd sensor returns from vari­ous points around the sys­tem. At first, he con­cluded they were the res­ult of unusu­al con­fig­ur­a­tions of ice crys­tals, but then he iden­ti­fied a resemb­lance to the occa­sion­al leaks from a cloak­ing device. It is pos­sible that anoth­er vis­it­or is present in the system.

After some dis­cus­sion, Kon­in won­ders if it was the U.S.S. Cass, the cloaked run­about oper­ated by Sec­tion 31’s Com­mand­er Sig­mund. The ion trail would match a Danube-class, but a ves­sel that size would not be able to travel that far without sup­port. Azon­an wor­ries that the run­about may have been cloaked and attached to the Lex­ing­ton her­self, but there are no data indic­at­ing they were car­ry­ing that much addi­tion­al mass. Kon­in then real­ises that this may explain the Ori­on ship they found at the site of the Borg battle.

Decid­ing it would be safest to stay away from Pi-Latka until the arrival of the Oracle, Kon­in asks the stel­lar car­to­graphy team for recom­mend­a­tions. They believe the Kin­shaya are from a cluster of stars to rim­ward, and explain that the Shack­leton Pin­wheel, while a fas­cin­at­ing place to study, would be extremely dan­ger­ous due to the sub­space dis­rup­tion it gen­er­ates. Their sug­ges­tion to vis­it the Ember Cluster, to core­ward, is accepted.

Arriv­ing at the Cluster, they begin sur­vey scans in order to make good use of their time, and soon pick up what appears to be a tele­vi­sion broad­cast from a world inside the region. The astro­met­rics team are adam­ant that the stars are far too young to have nat­ive civil­isa­tions, but the sig­nals ori­gin­ate from a sys­tem 5 light years inside the cluster bound­ary. They appear to be from a cul­ture sim­il­ar to that of Earth in the mid-20^th cen­tury, com­plete with advan­cing tech­no­logy and a cold war, but the spe­cies is crustacean.

The Arc: Pi-Latka is the pre­dicted des­tin­a­tion of the Oracle and Zepht, but the sys­tem may be a little dan­ger­ous now that the Kin­shaya are on the warpath.

Obser­va­tions: Pi-Latka is an orange main sequence star, but has no plan­ets, only ice rings from its frost line out to 15 astro­nom­ic­al units. There are 32 plan­et­oids, ran­ging from 2 to 552 km, act­ing as “shep­herd moons” to 28 rings. The entire sys­tem looks like a dew-covered spider­’s web, illu­in­ated by the orange glow of the Shack­leton Pin­wheel, 10 light years away. There are very few silic­ates or oth­er heavy ele­ments in the sys­tem, which is made up almost entirely of water ice and frozen gasses. This is a very unusu­al arrangement.

Pi-Latka b, the largest plan­et­oid, sits in a wide gap between two of the bright­est rings. It is 552 km in dia­met­er, pos­sess­ing grav­ity one twen­ti­eth of Earth’s and a very thin oxygen/nitrogen atmo­sphere. The sur­face tem­per­at­ure is around 290 Kelvin, and it is covered in a deep lay­er of crys­tal­lised “snow”, which includes some frozen gasses. The dome is 1 km high and 5 km in dia­met­er, and its out­er wall extends at least 300 m under­ground. It is made of an iron/titanium alloy half a metre thick and appears to be impen­et­rable to sensors; the away team dis­cov­ers that the interi­or sur­face is covered in the same black sensor- and anom­aly-reflect­ive coat­ing as the Kin­shaya ships. The only way in is via a large pan­el in the centre of the “roof”. With­in is a sheltered area with a series of stone struc­tures built around a kilo­metre-long aven­ue. A land­ing area with 4 shal­low pits that would each fit a Kin­shaya sphere ship lies at one end, while at the oth­er is a step pyr­am­id very sim­il­ar to a May­an temple. The pyr­am­id has no steps, but a large black disc is sus­pen­ded from a pair of pil­lars at the top. The oth­er build­ings are block-shaped and con­tain machinery, which looks like it would provide heat and atmo­sphere to the dome when the door is sealed.

The black sphere ships are con­firmed as belong­ing to the Kin­shaya. The first of the spe­cies encountered appear to be extremely reli­gious. The reli­gion itself is led by a high priest, and appears to be ritu­al­ist­ic and taboo-ori­ented. The high priest evid­ently regards Pi-Latka as holy land. The Kin­shaya lan­guage is gut­tur­al and made up of shrieks and snarls of vari­ous pitches.

Ques­tions: Are Sig­mund and the Cass present? If not, who else might be present?