Epis­ode Num­ber: 8×05

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

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 31^st Octo­ber 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant T’rhyn: Time trav­el­ler from the 23^rd cen­tury, now serving as a Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge advisor.
• Com­mand­er Nat­alie Sig­mund: Sec­tion 31 agent.
• Uth’Olano: Rep­res­ent­at­ive of the Tilikaal aderi.

The away team has arrived at the Locus and gained access to the land­ing site with minutes to spare. They should be able to res­cue Zepht, but we still need to decide what to do with the Oracle itself when it arrives.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52596.4

Plot: The away team pre­pares for the arrivals of both the Oracle and the Romulans.

The ‘A’ Plot: Gath­er­ing at the edge of the float­ing plat­form, the away team pre­pares for a con­front­a­tion with Com­mand­er Sig­mund. As they get closer, how­ever, they find that she seems uncon­cerned by their presence.

When Azon­an chal­lenges her as to what her inten­tions are, she explains that she is try­ing to ensure that the Oracle will remain in place once it arrives, rather than jump­ing away at ran­dom as it is pro­grammed to do. Then she intends to des­troy the tech­no­logy. It seems she has decided that, although her mis­sion was to acquire the Tilikaal tech­no­logy for use against the Fed­er­a­tion’s enemies, its cre­at­ors are too dan­ger­ous to ignore.

Aware that the Oracle is due with­in minutes, Sig­mund is attempt­ing to bal­ance the vari­ous energy levels around the plat­form. Remem­ber­ing that he was able to repro­gram the con­trol mech­an­ism back at Dys­athus II, Azon­an pro­poses to board the Oracle when it arrives and dis­able the mech­an­ism inside as soon as he can.

Then the Oracle fades into exist­ence at the centre of the platform.

Azon­an and Con­ners approach the Oracle, rifles at the ready, and the Andori­an oper­ates the door con­trol. Once they’ve cycled the air­lock, they find Zepht slumped against a corner inside. Azon­an sheds his envir­on­ment suit in order to get into the crawl space to dis­able the con­trol mech­an­ism, while the doc­tor quickly checks Zepht, com­ing to the con­clu­sion that he has been without food, water and com­pany for two weeks. While his Den­ob­u­lan physiology could eas­ily man­age the first two, the loneli­ness has brought him to the brink of depres­sion. She can treat this, but needs to get him back to Lex­ing­ton.

Out­side, Raynor and Selvek leave T’rhyn to keep an eye on Sig­mund while they return to the cav­ern where the Sec­tion 31 team cre­ated their entry to the Locus. They have two tasks: pre­pare defences against the incom­ing Romu­lans, and receive an envir­on­ment suit beamed down for Zepht. While Selvek begins repair­ing the Omega Team’s force field gen­er­at­or, Raynor takes the suit back up to the Oracle, then returns to set demoli­tion charges in the approach tun­nel. With both tasks com­plete, they turn on the force field, det­on­ate the charges to bring down the ceil­ing, and take cov­er to wait for the Romulans.

Inside the Oracle, Azon­an is try­ing to under­stand what it does and how it is con­trolled. T’rhyn has con­cluded that it is designed to inter­face with the Tilikaal data net­work, while the lar­ger Locus con­nects to the oth­er Iconi­an Loci. There is a large cir­cu­lar door at one end that appears to be sealed, and this could be the con­nec­tion to the Tilikaal’s pock­et uni­verse. Of course, they will need to get it all work­ing first.

The Locus itself should be cap­able of gen­er­at­ing immense power, but instead appears to be run­ning on its own reserves, so the first job is to get its gen­er­at­or work­ing again. Com­ing to the con­clu­sion that it just needs a prim­ing charge, Azon­an drains sev­er­al phaser rifles to restart it. With the power require­ments met, the Locus auto­mat­ic­ally con­nects to oth­ers of its kind across the Shack­leton Expanse and beyond.

Data begins to flood into the pentagon­al con­sole at the centre of the Oracle, but Azon­an finds that he needs to fine-tune and fil­ter the data. He can then use his tri­cord­er to pro­ject it into a holo­graph­ic dis­play above the con­sole, where a star map appears dis­play­ing the loc­a­tions of Iconi­an facilities.

Back in the tun­nels, the Romu­lans make short work of the block­age, using dis­ruptor rifles to vapor­ise the rubble, before advan­cing to the force field. Raynor, wor­ried that it won’t last long if sub­jec­ted to heavy fire, warns the rest of the team that time is short. T’rhyn points out that the Locus can gen­er­ate its own force field, so before long, the Star­fleet field is replaced by a much more power­ful and flex­ible defens­ive shield, stop­ping the Romu­lan sol­diers in their tracks. Raynor and Selvek remain to mon­it­or the situ­ation, and guard the trans­port pat­tern enhan­cers mark­ing their only way out.

In the Oracle, Azon­an is work­ing out how to con­nect the sys­tem to the Tilikaal data net­work. There are more data over­load prob­lems, but he soon sees the loc­a­tions of Tilikaal facil­it­ies, includ­ing the body vaults, appear­ing on the holo­graph­ic dis­play. Indic­a­tions are that there are bil­lions of indi­vidu­als in sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion wait­ing for the return of their aderi.

At this point, the closed door inside the Oracle irises open to reveal a swirl­ing vor­tex of bright blue energy. As those present stag­ger back from the portal, it emits a beam that strikes Zepht, who sud­denly stands up, a blue light eman­at­ing from his eyes. He opens his mouth, but what emerges is not the Den­ob­u­lan’s voice: it is fem­in­ine, layered over sev­er­al fre­quen­cies. The entity pos­sess­ing him intro­duces her­self as Uth’Olano, and states that she rep­res­ents the exiled Tilikaal. Then she demands that they cease try­ing to res­cue them.

Uth’Olano proves amen­able to ques­tions, and con­firms most of the story they had been piecing togeth­er from the Iconi­an records. The Tilikaal found that the pro­cess of becom­ing aderi often dam­aged their neur­o­lo­gic­al energy pat­terns, with dam­age ran­ging from min­im­al amne­sia to full demen­tia, or even psy­chos­is in the rarest cases. Real­ising the threat they posed to the rest of the uni­verse, they locked them­selves away to ensure its safety. A small group of the most insane, how­ever, rejec­ted this decision and has been work­ing to return ever since. The remainder of the pop­u­la­tion has spent the last hun­dred thou­sand years try­ing to pre­vent this, and most are con­tent in their exile.

Unfor­tu­nately for their plans, the Iconi­ans chose to inter­vene, build­ing the Locus sys­tem to force a con­nec­tion to the Tilikaal dimen­sion­al pris­on and restore them to their bod­ies. Uth’Olano believes they meant well, but were unaware of the dangers. The prob­lem now is that the Oracle is power­ing its con­nec­tion with the sub­space energy of the pris­on dimen­sion itself, irre­voc­ably dis­as­sembling it. While the Tilikaal are expend­ing their own energy to main­tain its struc­ture, that can­not last – either the con­nec­tion must be switched off, or all the Tilikaal aderi brought home to avoid their extinction.

Azon­an notes that just clos­ing the portal will still leave Ash’Tamalia in the real uni­verse, which is prob­ably the most dan­ger­ous out­come for the galaxy. After some fur­ther dis­cus­sion with Uth’Olano, they agree that they should attempt to trap Ash’Tamalia and her allies, return­ing them to the pris­on dimen­sion. In the mean­time, those Tilikaal that want to return can do so before they close the portal for good. Uth’Olano believes they can main­tain the portal for a short peri­od before they start tak­ing per­man­ent damage.

The Arc: The Oracle has returned and Zepht has been res­cued, and con­tact has been estab­lished with the Tilikaal.

Obser­va­tions: Den­ob­u­lans are a social people and dis­like being alone for exten­ded peri­ods of time. Zepht has been isol­ated with­in the Oracle for nearly two weeks without com­pany, as well as food and drink. This seems to have left him in a some­what dis­so­ci­at­ive state, although Dr Con­ners believes he will recov­er quickly with the right treatment.

Uth’Olano is the spokes­per­son for the major­ity of Tilikaal in the pock­et dimen­sion, speak­ing by pos­sess­ing Zepht, rather than mani­fest­ing in per­son. She argues that the Tilikaal as a whole should remain with­in the dimen­sion, as the small num­ber of insane aderi pose a great threat to the universe.

The con­soles sur­round­ing the Oracle plat­form pos­sess largely mech­an­ic­al con­trols – but­tons, switches and sliders – while data is dis­played in a three-dimen­sion­al holo­graph­ic form above them.

The Oracle itself is designed to inter­face the Iconi­an Locus net­work to the Tilikaal data net­work, and open a con­nec­tion to their pris­on dimen­sion, via a cir­cu­lar portal within.

The Locus is almost use­less without its power gen­er­at­or, but this is cur­rently inact­ive. The gen­er­at­or requires an infu­sion of energy from else­where to get it oper­a­tion­al. This power source can then enable the Locus to open the data and dimen­sion­al con­nec­tion, and to gen­er­ate a power­ful defens­ive force field.

Ques­tions: Where is Ash’Tamalia at the moment?