Epis­ode Num­ber: 5×17

Writ­ten by: Tilly Bridges and Susan Bridges

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 19^th July 2025

Guest Stars:

• Bizel Hox: Trill civil­ian strategist.
• Ensign Kelly: Run­about co-pilot.

Our new assign­ment is not quite what we expec­ted. Des­pite join­ing one of the fleets fight­ing the war against the Domin­ion, we are effect­ively act­ing as a goal keep­er. I know Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Quinn, in par­tic­u­lar, was hop­ing to be join­ing one of the big battles, but he may have to get used to dis­ap­point­ment. And the fleet com­mand­er has an “inter­est­ing” set of priorities.

After less than half of the liberty we were gran­ted after our arrival, we are already on a mis­sion to respond to a dis­tress call from the 25 Erid­ani neb­ula. Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er Azon­an has con­firmed that struc­tur­al repairs after our recent battle with the Jem’hadar are basic­ally com­plete, but that the clean-up has not yet begun. He is work­ing hard to con­firm we are spaceworthy.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51546.9

Plot: Lex­ing­ton’s crew under­takes a res­cue mis­sion in a dan­ger­ous nebula.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton is head­ing towards the 25 Erid­ani neb­ula, about two light years from Star­base 12, to loc­ate and res­cue the run­about U.S.S. La Plata, and its valu­able pas­sen­ger. Bizel Hox, a civil­ian stra­tegic adviser, was return­ing to Earth fol­low­ing a con­fernce at the starbase.

The jour­ney is short, due to the prox­im­ity of the neb­ula, and Kon­in, sus­pect­ing an ambush, orders an imme­di­ate scan for the dis­tressed ship as soon as Quinn drops out of warp. The idea is to loc­ate the La Plata, then quickly warp to the oth­er side of the neb­ula to enter from an unex­pec­ted direction.

Sensors quickly loc­ate the tar­get, pick­ing up a broken dis­tress call, but the short warp skip goes wrong. Alarm klax­ons sound as the ship arrives in the middle of a dense part of the neb­ula, caustic gases imme­di­ately caus­ing dam­age to the hull, des­pite their rein­forced shields.

The com­modore opts to con­tin­ue the mis­sion, and they approach the run­about. Scans indic­ate that it is badly dam­aged: shields at 10%, with extens­ive hull dam­age. There are four life signs aboard, two of which are very weak. They attempt to estab­lish con­tact, but the inter­fer­ence is too great.

Selvek restores the shields on the Lex­ing­ton and extends them around the stricken ves­sel to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age. They are unable to estab­lish a trans­port­er lock on it, so Lex­ing­ton’s own run­about, Trave, is quickly pre­pared for use, then Quinn flies Azon­an, Con­ners and Raynor across to board the La Plata.

Assess­ing the situ­ation, he opts to dock upside down with the oth­er run­about’s vent­ral hatch. As soon as the dock­ing clamps are locked, Azon­an opens the Trave’s hatch, acci­dent­ally releas­ing a small cloud of neb­ula gas, trapped between the two ships, into the cab­in. He suf­fers minor burns before the emer­gency vent­il­a­tion sys­tems trap and extract the gas.

Azon­an and Raynor clam­ber into the run­about, weapons at the ready, to find a Star­fleet officer wait­ing for them. Ensign Kelly, the co-pilot, informs them that the rest of his crew are in the rear cab­in, two of them badly injured. They fol­low him through, accom­pan­ied by Dr Con­ners, who imme­di­ately checks Kelly and the oth­ers for evid­ence of Changelings, find­ing nothing.

She turns her atten­tion to their injur­ies: Kelly and the secur­ity officer show evid­ence of cuts and bruises, but the pilot has a broken arm. Their pas­sen­ger, Hox, is in a very bad way, bleed­ing from an abdom­in­al wound. Con­ner­s’s tri­cord­er scan also shows that her sym­biont has shif­ted pos­i­tion in her torso, and com­ments that this is very dan­ger­ous. She needs to oper­ate to cor­rect this, before the patient can be moved.

As she scrubs up and sets up her equip­ment, Azon­an inspects the run­about to see if it can be repaired eas­ily, as this would allow them to get Hox back to safety on Lex­ing­ton without actu­ally mov­ing her. He finds that the com­puter­’s con­nec­tion to the flight con­trols is dam­aged, and that the matter/antimatter core is cracked. He points out that neither is likely to be due to gas cor­ro­sion, ask­ing Kelly if the ship was fired upon. Kelly answers in the affirm­at­ive, explain­ing that the ship was sur­prised by an attack from an unseen ves­sel. The pilot reacted instinct­ively and entered the neb­ula for cov­er, for­get­ting its effect on ship hulls. They nev­er saw the ship that attacked them. The Andori­an relays this inform­a­tion back to Lex­ing­ton via Quinn, and begins work to pre­vent a core breach.

Back on Lex­ing­ton, the com­modore imme­di­ately orders a red alert, with Boone activ­at­ing weapons sys­tems while Selvek act­ively scans for trouble. The Vul­can soon picks up eddies in the gases that might indic­ate the pres­ence of an unseen ves­sel, pos­sibly cloaked.

Giv­en that it will take a while for Con­ners and Azon­an to com­plete their tasks, Quinn opts to tow La Plata back to shut­tle­bay 2. As the oth­er run­about is the same size as Trave, it can­not be tractored, so he will need to use the dock­ing clamp. This will be dif­fi­cult to man­age, as the clamp is not strong enough to deal with sud­den shocks, so he calls on Kelly to assist and mon­it­or the systems.

The short trip is tense, but all is well until they approach the hatch, when a ves­sel decloaks off Lex­ing­ton’s port bow, dis­char­ging dis­ruptors and caus­ing minor shield dam­age. Boone imme­di­ately fires back as the oth­er ship, now iden­ti­fied as a Car­das­si­an Kel­don-class cruis­er, gets closer.

The hangar con­trol officer brings the two run­abouts in by tract­or beam, sus­pend­ing them in the middle of the bay, while the two crews imme­di­ately dis­em­bark. Azon­an bolts for engin­eer­ing, while Con­ners super­vises the evac­u­ation of the injured to sick­bay. Quinn and Raynor head for the bridge.

Raynor takes over tac­tic­al from the less-exper­i­enced Boone, and fires on the attack­er, but this trig­gers an explo­sion of the neb­ula gases, dam­aging boths ships’ shields. Azon­an pulls togeth­er enough power for warp drive, as Quinn plots a course out. As the Car­das­si­an pre­pares to fire, Kon­in orders the escape, but their sud­den accel­er­a­tion causes a cata­strophe in shut­tle­bay 2, where the two run­abouts are still clamped togeth­er, under­side to under­side, and sus­pen­ded in the middle of the bay. The intern­al tract­or beams fail, and both craft slam into the bay doors, caus­ing major dam­age to both the doors and the runabouts.

Lex­ing­ton quickly returns to Star­base 12, where Com­modore Stonn con­grat­u­lates them on the suc­cess of their res­cue oper­a­tion. The star­base med­ic­al centre con­firms that Con­ners has ensured that Hox will be recov­er, and they relay their dis­cov­ery of a cloaked Car­das­si­an war­ship in the region.

Obser­va­tions: The 25 Erid­ani Neb­ula is loc­ated on the edge of the Ori­on sec­tor, close to Tau 1 Erid­ani, and less than a light year from a major space lane link­ing Earth to Beta Rigel. The neb­ula is noted for its caustic gasses, which can burn through an unpro­tec­ted star­ship’s hull in minutes, and stead­ily weak­en shields.

Bizel Hox is a noted civil­ian strategy advisor. A joined Trill, her sym­biont pos­sesses sev­er­al life­times of exper­i­ence in militrary settings.

Dia­logue: Azon­an, in response to one of Quin­n’s more out­rageous sug­ges­tions: “Let’s call that one ‘Plan H’!”

Ref­er­ences: The Car­das­si­an star­ship is a Kel­don-class cruis­er, an upgraded ver­sion of the stand­ard Gal­or, with uprated arma­ments and a high­er speed. This example’s pos­ses­sion of a cloak­ing device indic­ates that it is most likely oper­ated by the Car­das­si­an Intel­li­gence Bur­eau, suc­cessor to the notori­ous Obsidi­an Order. The Order used over a dozen cloaked Kel­dons, con­struc­ted with the aid of the Romu­lan Tal Shiar, in the ill-fated joint mis­sion to the Omari­on Nebula.

The U.S.S. La Plata is a stand­ard Danube-class run­about, oper­at­ing as a cour­i­er ves­sel between Earth and Star­base 12. Fol­low­ing the events of this epis­ode, Star­fleet will begin car­ry­ing high-value pas­sen­gers and oth­er items by fast star­ship, for improved security.

Ques­tions: How many Kel­dons are in the area? And who is oper­at­ing them now the Obsidi­an Order is gone?