Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×14

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 17^th May 2025

Guest Stars:

• Admira Mauti: Com­mand­ing officer of the Akaru Exped­i­tion­ary Fleet, formerly of the Star­ward.
• Cap­tain Leslie Wong: Com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Cairo.
• Akaru’Bak Chiel: Seni­or offi­cial in the Akaru government.

The events at Dys­athus have promp­ted a num­ber of changes to Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge. The Oracle, accom­pan­ied by Lt Cdr Zepht, is due to arrive at Pi-Latka in approx­im­ately 4 months. This unusu­al sys­tem lies well bey­ond the cur­rent extent of our explor­a­tion, so we are hav­ing to reor­gan­ise our sur­vey efforts to pri­or­it­ise reach­ing it.

Luck­ily, the Akaru have offered to assist by provid­ing addi­tion­al ships and estab­lish­ing resup­ply sta­tions. So, once again we find ourselves in the Setu sys­tem, to ren­dez­vous with the Cairo and the latest addi­tions to the Akaru fleet.

We also have a pas­sen­ger: after nearly two years as ambas­sad­or, the newly-pro­moted Admir­al Mauti is about to take on her new command…

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51524.3

Plot: Plans for the fur­ther explor­a­tion of the Shack­leton Expanse are inter­rup­ted by a new dir­ect­ive from Star­fleet Command.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton arrives at Setu, con­vey­ing the former Ambas­sad­or Mauti to her new role as Admir­al of the new Akaru Exped­i­tion­ary Fleet. The U.S.S. Cairo is already in-sys­tem, where they have been coordin­at­ing plans for the Akaru to assist with the explor­a­tion of the Shack­leton Expanse.

Cap­tain Wong wel­comes them with an invit­a­tion to vis­it the palace of the Iry­ax on the sur­face for the form­al­it­ies. Mater­i­al­ising in the famil­i­ar plaza, they are met by Akaru’Bak Chiel, now part of the upper levels of the plan­et­ary gov­ern­ment, and her staff. Gifts are exchanged, as has become tra­di­tion, then Mauti is wel­comed home, and a small cere­mony bestows her new rank.

Chiel then asks if Mauti would like to vis­it her new com­mand, and she agrees, invit­ing the Lex­ing­ton officers to join her. A sur­face-to-orbit shuttle takes them up to the plan­et’s orbit­al con­struc­tion facil­it­ies, then they trans­fer to a main­ten­ance shuttle to fly out to the new ships, tak­ing the oppor­tun­ity to sweep past them in the approved man­ner. Dur­ing the trip, Wong seems to be hav­ing dif­fi­culty keep­ing a straight face, but Kon­in’s tele­pathy is unable to pen­et­rate her Star­fleet-trained men­tal defences. It is only when Chiel turns to intro­duce them to the new flag­ship that he real­ises why: it is named the Atani Kon­in. It seems that Wong did try her best to dis­suade the Akaru from nam­ing the ship (and class) after him, but they were determ­ined to hon­our the man that helped build their alli­ance with the Federation.

The delighted admir­al leads them on a tour of her new ship, but then Kon­in receives a call from the Lex­ing­ton, inform­ing him that they have received an encoded trans­mis­sion from Vice Admir­al Hebert. He offers his apo­lo­gies to the Akaru, explain­ing that he must return to Lex­ing­ton to receive it.

Back in his ready room, Hebert explains that Lex­ing­ton has been ordered back to the Alpha Quad­rant, to under­take a 3‑month tour fight­ing in the war. It seems that after Domin­ion sab­ot­age at Uto­pia Plani­tia, dam­aged star­ships are tak­ing longer to repair, so rein­force­ments are required to help with the defence of the core worlds. He imme­di­ately recalls his officers. Wong explains that she has just received the news, and that Cairo has been assigned to lead the explor­a­tion efforts in Lex­ing­ton’s absence.

Arriv­ing at Star­base 364 two days later, Lex­ing­ton begins to take on sup­plies and exchange crew ahead of the long journey.

The admir­al sum­mons the seni­or officers to her office for an urgent meet­ing, and, when they arrive, they are sur­prised to find Cap­tain Murphy and an hon­our guard in full dress uni­form wait­ing for them. Hebert is stand­ing in front of her desk and beck­ons Kon­in for­ward, before anoun­cing to all present that he is hereby pro­moted to the rank of Com­modore, with all the priv­ileges and respons­ib­il­it­ies that implies. Then she replaces his rank insignia, explain­ing that this will give him the author­ity to get things done quickly, thereby increas­ing the ship’s chance of sur­viv­ing its three month tour of duty, because she needs him to com­plete the Shack­leton mis­sion when he gets back. Kon­in is not par­tic­u­larly happy about this turn of events, but accepts it with grace.

Once the form­al­it­ies are over, Hebert explains that Lex­ing­ton will be return­ing to the core worlds along­side the U.S.S. Cour­ageous and U.S.S. Minotaur, and a sup­ply tender, the S.S. Franz. The Klin­gon Deep Space Fleet has gran­ted per­mis­sion for the con­voy to use its pri­or­ity sub­space lanes, which should get them home in record time.

That even­ing, Kon­in buys every­one drinks, fol­low­ing Star­fleet tradition.

The little fleet’s depar­ture goes smoothly, and they reach the Klin­gon bor­der with­in twelve hours, where they are met by a K’t’inga-class battle­cruis­er, the I.K.S. Karog. The Klin­gon cap­tain proves friendly, if form­al, and they exchange ship tours and din­ners dur­ing the jour­ney. At Qo’noS, they are handed over to a famil­i­ar ves­sel, the Mup­wI’. Cap­tain Akul is delighted to see his old friend and has insisted on escort­ing them to the Fed­er­a­tion bor­der him­self, although he is unable to return to the battle with them, because the Mup­wI has been rotated out for rest and repair.

Two days after cross­ing the bor­der, the flo­tilla is approach­ing Star­base 12, near Ori­on, when Gia (the former 79-Alpha) noti­fies them that long range sensors are pick­ing up six Jem’hadar ves­sels on an inter­cept course. Kon­in orders red alert, as they pre­pare for battle.

The Arc: The next stage of the explor­a­tion of the Shack­leton Expanse will not involve the Lex­ing­ton.

Obser­va­tions: The explor­a­tion of the Expanse is being refo­cussed from a broad front to a nar­row probe in the dir­ec­tion of Pi-Latka. This is so that Star­fleet can be present when Zepht and the Oracle reappear at that loc­a­tion. The Akaru, keen to begin their own colo­ni­al expan­sion in alli­ance with the Fed­er­a­tion, have volun­teered ships and Akaru-run resup­ply bases to help the effort, in return for nav­ig­a­tion­al data for prom­ising worlds. Now that Lex­ing­ton has been recalled to the Alpha Quad­rant, Cairo will take over her role for the duration.

The Akaru have improved on their frig­ate design, enlar­ging it and installing more advanced tech­no­logy. The new ships have been des­ig­nated cruis­ers of the Atani Kon­in-class, and Mauti has been pro­moted to admir­al and made com­mand­ing officer of this fleet.

Com­modore is the low­est flag rank with­in Star­fleet, and is gen­er­ally held by com­mand­ing officers of star­bases and of sig­ni­fic­ant ships. It is dis­tinct from the pos­i­tion of fleet cap­tain, an hon­or­ary title giv­en to the com­mand­er of a task force. Kon­in decides to con­tin­ue wear­ing his exist­ing uni­form as opposed to the more elab­or­ate uni­form worn by most flag officers.

Sur­vey Com­mand Holo­gram 79-Alpha has now adop­ted the name Gia and is provid­ing sensor and nav­ig­a­tion ana­lys­is from with­in holo­deck 4. The crew at large is still not aware of her pres­ence, as the seni­or officers are main­tain­ing the cov­er story that there is a clas­si­fied sim­u­la­tion run­ning in the holodeck.

Dia­logue: Vice Admir­al Hebert: “Con­grat­u­la­tions, Com­modore Konin!”

Cap­tain Konin: “$#!%…”

Ref­er­ences: The sab­ot­age at Uto­pia Plani­tia and its after­math are detailed in Steven S. Long’s The Domin­ion War Source­book: The Fires of Armaged­don (TrekRPG.net, 2001) for The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Role­play­ing Game (Last Uni­corn Games, 1999).

Cour­ageous and Minotaur have both appeared before. U.S.S. Minotaur (Cen­taur-class) was Kon­in’s pre­vi­ous com­mand before trans­fer­ring to Lex­ing­ton, while U.S.S. Cour­ageous (Defi­ant-class) was assigned to the sta­tion to provide heavy duty defence dur­ing the build-up to the recent war with the Klin­gons. Both were last seen dur­ing the Battle of Nar­en­dra Sta­tion in “Let Slip the Dogs of War”.

The S.S. Franz is a Lotus Flower-class trans­port, ori­gin­ally presen­ted as a “neut­ron­ic fuel car­ri­er” in the Star Trek Star­ship Tac­tic­al Com­bat Sim­u­lat­or (Wheel­er, W.J., Brown, F.G. and Tepool D.F. FASA, 1986), an expan­sion for Star Trek: The Role Play­ing Game (FASA, 1983). With­in that game’s lore, the unfor­tu­nate Kobay­ashi Maru was a ship of this class.