Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×03

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 4^th Octo­ber 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant (juni­or grade) Akhona Dana: Beta shift flight controller.
• The Entity: Mys­ter­i­ous entity now occupy­ing a cloned body.

We are con­tinu­ing our search for a way out of the Black Neb­ula. The tem­por­ary dis­ap­pear­ance of nearly half the crew at BC-23 has had a sober­ing effect on many of those involved, and the com­prom­ise we were forced into to bring them back can­’t be help­ing. Jin and the doc­tor are work­ing on the prom­ised body for the entity respons­ible. Mean­while, I have finally been faced with mak­ing a decision as to who will replace Lt Del­brück as head of the flight con­trol team.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 10002.4

Plot: Lyo­n­esse dis­cov­ers a cyc­lopean K’si struc­ture orbit­ing a small star.

The ‘A’ Plot: A couple of weeks after leav­ing BC-23, Lyo­n­esse is approach­ing anoth­er stel­lar bubble. Lt Tim­mons, cur­rently occupy­ing the com­mu­nic­a­tions sta­tion, turns to the cap­tain and informs her that he is pick­ing up a large volume of sub­space com­mu­nic­a­tions traffic. He has isol­ated thou­sands of data sig­nals con­nect­ing ships and facil­it­ies, along with a num­ber of voice channels.

Cap­tain Mas­uda asks if he can identi­fy the senders of the sig­nals, and he replies that while the com­puter is still try­ing to decrypt much of the data, the audio con­ver­sa­tions appear to be tak­ing place in sev­er­al K’si dialects.

Mas­uda imme­di­ately puts the crew on yel­low alert, has the flight con­trol team look for a con­cealed loc­a­tion near the neb­ula wall, and orders silent run­ning. Then she calls the seni­or officers to the con­fer­ence room.

Tim­mons is called on to report on what he has dis­covered in the com­mu­nic­a­tions. He says that the major­ity of the con­tent is simple data: primar­ily effi­ciency read­ings, pos­i­tions, status reports and traffic con­trol mes­sages. The voice chan­nels are mostly social, people talk­ing to loved ones, news reports and so on, although one chan­nel appears to carry col­lec­ted pray­ers from wor­ship­pers else­where. He sur­mises that this could be a colony, mil­it­ary base or some kind of con­struc­tion project.

The cap­tain wants to know more before they pro­ceed, and asks for sug­ges­tions. After some dis­cus­sion, they decide to send Jin out in the scout shuttle Nim­uë to gath­er more inform­a­tion covertly.

James flies Nim­uë, with Jin in the instru­ment oper­at­or’s seat, towards the edge of the new bubble. Their pass­ive sensor sys­tems pickup one small star, orbited by a single large struc­ture, accom­pan­ied by a swarm of space­craft and oth­er objects. Jin is able to trace many of the com­mu­nic­a­tion sig­nals, which leave the bubble by anoth­er tun­nel in the dir­ec­tion of the K’si home­world. The pray­ers are trav­el­ling in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion. Jin begins low energy scans for energy sources, life signs and mater­i­als, then launches a probe to gath­er more data, before they return to Lyo­n­esse.

Back in the sci­ence labs, he is able to ana­lyse the data. The large struc­ture appears to be a space sta­tion in the form of a disc dozens of kilo­metres across, but seems to be still under con­struc­tion. The sur­face is clearly divided into two con­cent­ric rings, sur­round­ing an open­ing 3 kilo­metres in dia­met­er. He notes that it resembles a giant eye, and won­ders if this is con­nec­ted to HER, the hos­tile plan­et-sized entity at BC-22.

Life sign read­ings indic­ate tens of thou­sands of humanoids, about 30% of whom are K’si, with the remainder made up of Oreis­on, Vahari, and a num­ber of oth­er spe­cies, some unknown. He reas­ons that the non-K’si are con­struc­tion work­ers, prob­ably enslaved.

He, the cap­tain and the oth­ers present on the bridge spec­u­late about the pur­pose of the struc­ture. A pop­u­lar sug­ges­tion is that it is some kind of arti­fi­cial worm­hole gen­er­at­or, designed to enable travel either to anoth­er part of the neb­ula or out of it. The cap­tain thinks the lat­ter is unlikely, giv­en that the K’si vice­roy seemed unaware that the out­side even exis­ted when they encountered him. If it is the case though, it’s a pos­sible route home, although at the cost of unleash­ing the K’si on an unsus­pect­ing universe.

Then the Entity bursts on to the bridge, trailed by Dr Vale, and shout­ing about a hos­tile force out­side the ship. As they try to under­stand what he’s say­ing, the nav­ig­at­or notices move­ment in the cloud wall next to the ship, and a loop of a giant ser­pent­ine body briefly breaches the surface.

The ‘B’ Plots: Lt(jg) James is in the juni­or officers’ mess, try­ing to ignore the loud chat­ter and laughter from the oth­er end of the room, where a small group of officers, includ­ing Lt(jg) Dana, are play­ing some kind of game. He sits alone at a table covered in PADDs, which he is intently studying.

One of the oth­er officers approaches him, ask­ing if he would like to join them. James declines, say­ing that he needs to study for the upcom­ing exam­in­a­tion. The officer returns to the group, and Dana calls James a “spoilsport” before return­ing to the game.

Lt Valik is in engin­eer­ing mon­it­or­ing the warp core. He seems curi­ously inat­tent­ive, pos­sibly even dis­trac­ted, which would be unusu­al for a Vulcan.

Lt Jin and Com­mand­er Vale are in the bios­cience lab, where a human male is lying on a biobed. Vale is run­ning through some final tests, before invit­ing him to stand up and try a few move­ments. She seems pleased with his cap­ab­il­it­ies, and it becomes clear that this is the arti­fi­cial body cre­ated for the BC-23 Entity. He is eager to exper­i­ence more of life on the ship, and presses Jin as to when he will be able to get his own ship.

The Arc: Is this a pos­sible way home?

Obser­va­tions: The BC-24 sys­tem con­sists of a single orange dwarf star, appar­ently with no nat­ur­al com­pan­ions of its own. It does not even seem to pos­sess an aster­oid belt. It is, how­ever, heav­ily pop­u­lated, with over thirty thou­sand humanoid res­id­ents on the vari­ous space sta­tions and space­craft in its vicinity.

At thirty kilo­metres across, the K’si space sta­tion is lar­ger than any arti­fi­cial struc­ture pre­vi­ously encountered by Star­fleet, dwarf­ing even the newly-opened Space­dock One orbit­ing Earth. The con­cent­ric rings form­ing its struc­ture, along with the open­ing in its centre, give it the appear­ance of a lid­less eye float­ing in the void, an illu­sion enhanced by the lines radi­at­ing across the out­er ring. The entire struc­ture is laced with dark mat­ter, and oth­er sta­tions appear to be beam­ing dark energy dir­ectly at recept­ors on its surface.

Lyo­n­esse is cur­rently oper­at­ing without a depart­ment head for flight con­trol, although Lt(jg) James has been per­form­ing the rel­ev­ant duties since Lieu­ten­ant Luis Del­brück left the ship for health reas­ons at New Vahar. Both James and Lieu­ten­ant (juni­or grade) Akhona Dana, the beta shift flight con­trol­ler, are in com­pet­i­tion for the per­man­ent pos­i­tion, which will also bring a field pro­mo­tion to Lieu­ten­ant. Dana is pop­u­lar with her peers, but has bet­ter admin­is­tra­tion skills than prac­tic­al fly­ing ability.

Ref­er­ences: Nim­uë, the scout shuttle, has been seen sev­er­al times, most recently in “No Good Deed”. It car­ries two remote sensor probes in launch bays built into its wings.

The giant entit­ies resid­ing in the clouds, christened “gods” by the crew, make their first appear­ance since New Vahar.

Ques­tions: What are the K’si doing here?