Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×06

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 6^th July 2025

Much to my own dis­ap­point­ment, we are trav­el­ling away from Fed­er­a­tion space, fol­low­ing the only viable pas­sage. Nav­ig­a­tion believes we are aver­aging only 2 light years from the core­ward edge of the Black Cluster, but it might as well be on the oth­er side of the galaxy.

Mor­ale is low. After the dis­cov­er­ies at BC-13, there has been a gen­er­al mood of gloom across the ship, and we are again start­ing to see argu­ments break­ing out in oth­er­wise peace­ful departments.

Still, there is lit­er­ally a light at the end of the tun­nel: after over two weeks of travel, long range sensors are show­ing that we will shortly reach anoth­er star sys­tem. I won­der what we’ll find this time?

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 9992.3

Plot: The Lyo­n­esse stumbles into the heart of the K’si empire, res­ult­ing in a des­per­ate attempt to evade discovery.

The ‘A’ Plot: After two weeks fol­low­ing a tun­nel tak­ing the ship away from Fed­er­a­tion space, the crew detects a new star sys­tem bubble ahead.

Ven­tur­ing into the new void, sensors detect sev­er­al stars packed into the space. Scans indic­ate that there are many inhab­ited worlds, with lots of space-going traffic, and then they pick up the unmis­tak­able sig­na­ture of K’si dark mat­ter tech­no­logy through­out. James quickly reverses the ship back into the tun­nel entrance, to min­im­ise the chance of dis­cov­ery, while they ana­lyse their sensor data, real­ising that they have found the heart of the K’si empire. Their data show anoth­er exit about two light years from the entry, as well as anoth­er on the far side, which Lock cal­cu­lates will lead back towards Oreison.

This gives them a choice: go back the way they came and try to find anoth­er way around the K’si worlds, which would eas­ily take a couple of months, or try to sneak around the out­er sur­face of this bubble, hop­ing not to be spot­ted. Between the clouds of cor­ros­ive gas and the risk of dis­cov­ery, the lat­ter is risky but prefer­able. As the primary helms­man, James decides this kind of com­plex man­oeuv­ring will require his per­son­al atten­tion, but if they travel slow enough to run silently, it will take around ten hours. He needs to rest first, so they find a pock­et in the tun­nel wall, in which to hide.

Half a day later, Lyn­on­esse creeps back to the tun­nel entrance and they use the sensors to map as much of their route as pos­sible, before the ship ven­tures out into the maze. Jin uses the pass­ive sensors to care­fully plot their course, as James moves the ship as close to the wall as pos­sible, steer­ing around the uneven gas prom­in­ences emer­ging from its surface.

Pro­gress is slow and cau­tious, and seems to take forever. About half-way along their route, the sensors pick up an approach­ing K’si patrol ves­sel. This lends an air of urgency to their mis­sion, as James flies closer to the clouds in the hope of avoid­ing detection.

Determ­ined to get the ship through to safety, James remains at the con­trols past the end of his shift. As they approach their tar­get, Jin detects a K’si host car­ri­er head­ing straight for them, and a ripple of pan­ic runs through the bridge crew. James pushes the engines to full power, racing for the exit, now only a quarter light year away, as the slower K’si ves­sel tries to close the distance.

Sud­denly, the neb­ula wall next to the ship seems to boil, and four tentacles, each a hun­dred metres across and kilo­metres long, reach for them. James is able to dodge the incom­ing attacks and they escape into the tun­nel, the K’si trail­ing help­lessly behind.

The ‘B’ Plot: A week later, hav­ing left the K’si pur­suers far behind, they reach the threshold of anoth­er void. Mind­ful of their con­tin­ued prox­im­ity to the K’si home­world, they ven­ture in cautiously.

They find that the bubble is home to a bright young star, only a mil­lion or so years old. The bubble pos­sesses an exit on the far side, but is flooded with sol­ar radi­ation, spark­ing viol­ent ion storms. Lock and Jin’s ana­lys­is shows that they might be able to avoid the worst of the dam­age, if they repeat their pre­vi­ous tac­tic and creep around the edge of the bubble towards the exit.

Then they receive a broken dis­tress call. It appears to be com­ing from a sheltered pock­et in the middle of the sys­tem, and it is in the K’si language.

The cap­tain muses for a moment, then announces that they have to help the stran­ded vessel.

The Arc: The crew has dis­covered the home­world of the K’si, and the heart of their empire.

Obser­va­tions: The K’si empire is centred on a bubble with­in the neb­ula con­tain­ing five stars (BC-14-BC-18), packed close togeth­er. Each has its own plan­et­ary sys­tem, and there are over a dozen pop­u­lated plan­ets amond them. Sensors show thou­sands of space­craft, and Jin estim­ates the over­all pop­u­la­tion as in excess of ten bil­lion K’si.

Ion storms are a rare but well-known haz­ard in space, notori­ous for their effects on star­ship sys­tems. In this case, a con­stant storm rages across the sphere hold­ing BC-19, mak­ing trans­it extremely dangerous.

Ref­er­ences: This is the second time the inhab­it­ants of the neb­ula gas clouds have been glimpsed. They do seem to be hostile.

Ques­tions: What was that?