Epis­ode Num­ber: 6×09

Writ­ten by: Tony Pi

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 20^th Septem­ber 2025

Guest Stars:

• Ul’Raq: Quelthoni­an enter­tain­er and scoundrel
• Agna: Ul’Raq’s girl­friend, a Bolian
• Mer­on Keldaar: A Bajor­an gambler

The Quelthoni­an Imper­i­al Court has announced the death of the Emper­or, Da’Raq III. The late mon­arch ruled the inde­pend­ent sys­tem with a light touch for over three dec­ades, but the suc­ces­sion is unclear. His son, Ul’Raq, dis­ap­peared from the palace grounds sev­en years ago and has not been seen since. If he does not make his pres­ence known with­in the tra­di­tion­al 17 days of mourn­ing, the throne will pass to Ul’Raq’s cous­in, Cha’Thop, con­tro­ver­sial own­er of the Quel’Thop Weapons Conglomerate.

Fed­er­al News Ser­vice Broad­cast: Stard­ate, 51735.1

Plot: Raynor, Quinn and Azon­an find them­selves caught up in a loc­al polit­ic­al incident.

The ‘A’ Plot: After a week or so over­see­ing the repairs to the U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton at the Star­base 12 shipyards, repeated com­plaints from the repair teams have res­ul­ted in Azon­an being asked to leave for a few days. He is invited to join Raynor and Quinn in the Cafe Ter­restri­enne bar on the sta­tion, where they have been play­ing a lot of the Fer­engi game tongo.

He joins them as they play yet anoth­er tongo game. Also play­ing are Ul’Raq and Mer­on Keldaar, who have become reg­u­lar oppon­ents of the pair, along with a pair of Ori­ons, and Grak, a Fer­engi who claims to be a former cham­pi­on play­er. The Ori­ons seem to delight in bul­ly­ing Grak, ask­ing if they can add some “house rules”, such as the abil­ity to sab­ot­age pro­duc­tion and threaten sup­pli­ers. The flustered Fer­engi loses his stake, which is soon picked up by Raynor, Azon­an and Meron.

Ul’Raq, who makes his main income as a singer/songwriter per­form­ing at the loc­al bars, ducks out to head to the stage to play his even­ing set. He is inter­cep­ted by a Bol­i­an woman, his girl­friend Agna, and they argue, before he leaves with her, car­ry­ing on an anim­ated conversation.

Raynor receives a mes­sage from Star­base Secur­ity, ask­ing him to loc­ate “Prince” Ul’Raq, and pro­tect him until a “Quelthoni­an secur­ity team” arrives. It seems that the musi­cian is more sig­ni­fic­ant than he appears, and he has inher­ited his father­’s throne. Unfor­tu­nately, he is now nowhere to be seen. Raynor asks the bar­keep­er where he might be, but learns only that if he does­n’t per­form his set, he won’t get paid…

Gath­er­ing up Azon­an and Quinn, Raynor begins hunt­ing for the miss­ing prince. They imme­di­ately head to the loc­al secur­ity sta­tion to get help from them, but see the major­ity of the depu­ties head­ing out in a hurry. They stop one and are told they are respond­ing to an emer­gency in the accom­mod­a­tion decks. They enter the office and find a lone Vul­can lieu­ten­ant, but she refuses to recall her team, as they are provid­ing assist­ance fol­low­ing an explo­sion in one of the suites. Even Quin­n’s attempt to pull rank on her fails to get a pos­it­ive res­ult. The best she will do is provide a line of com­mu­nic­a­tion to the star­base’s secur­ity headquar­ters and make her secur­ity scan­ners avail­able to them; unfor­tu­nately, attempts to loc­ate Quelthoni­an lifesigns in this sec­tion of the sta­tion are unsuccessful.

Sus­pect­ing the explo­sion might be con­nec­ted to Ul’Raq, they get the loc­a­tion of the incid­ent and go to invest­ig­ate. Sure enough, the explo­sion seems to have been centred on the Quelthoni­an’s rooms. They bluff their way into the invest­ig­a­tion scene, and are able to carry out their own curs­ory exam­in­a­tion. The explo­sion blew out a sec­tion of the sta­tion’s out­er hull, com­pletely expos­ing the rooms to space, but there is no body float­ing in space, and no sign of any phys­ic­al remains. Traces of shrapnel from the blast seem to indic­ate that the explo­sion took place in the vicin­ity of the main win­dow. Raynor picks up what appears to be a mech­an­ic­al insect leg embed­ded in the inner wall, and pock­ets it for a later examination.

Return­ing to the main enter­tain­ment floor, they spot Mer­on talk­ing to a sin­is­ter-look­ing Hupyri­an. They arrive as the Bajor­an hands over a heavy case, and the Hupyri­an leaves. They ask Mer­on about Ul’Raq, but he refuses to help, then sud­denly runs. Raynor gives chase and catches him, before drag­ging him into the secur­ity sta­tion. They are able to get him to admit that he knows where Ul’Raq might be, but his loy­alty to his friend pre­vents him telling them where. After try­ing bribery and intim­id­a­tion, they even­tu­ally per­suade him they are try­ing to pro­tect the Quelthonian.

Mer­on tells them that Agna had arranged an escape on a Boslic ves­sel, and that he used his own con­tacts to provide Ul’Raq with a Car­das­si­an sensor block­er to avoid detec­tion while he waited for depar­ture. The Quelthoni­an would have hid­den some­where where he had an easy-to-access escape route. Azon­an muses that would be either the pub­lic trans­port­ers, the shuttle deck or escape pods. Using this inform­a­tion, they get the sta­tion staff to scan spe­cif­ic parts of the star­base for sensor dead zones, find­ing one around the escape pods near the scene of the explosion.

In the mean­time, Azon­an has been examin­ing the mech­an­ic­al leg found by Raynor, and con­cludes that it is Dop­teri­an tech­no­logy. Is it pos­sible the explo­sion was caused by an insect­oid drone of some kind?

They vis­it the escape pods and con­firm a large sensor-blind volume around them. One pod is locked, and it seems clear that Ul’Raq and Agna are inside. Azon­an is wor­ried that the Quelthoni­an will launch the pod if he thinks he is being attacked, so Quinn heads to the shuttle deck and powers up the Trave, fly­ing it around to the extern­al loc­a­tion cor­res­pond­ing to the pods. As he gets into pos­i­tion, he sees a num­ber of insect-like drones crawl­ing across the sta­tion to the same location.

With Quinn in pos­i­tion, Azon­an and Raynor open a chan­nel to the pod, and attempt to con­vince Ul’Raq they are there to pro­tect him. Ul’Raq explains that he does­n’t want the throne, he just wants to marry Agna and play music. The Star­fleet officers point out that this is some­thing he can decide once the Quelthoni­ans arrive, and that they will pro­tect him until then, but he explains that the Quelthoni­an line of suc­ces­sion is not some­thing you can opt out of: he is the Emper­or until he dies.

As they con­tin­ue to try to per­suade him, he pan­ics and launches the pod. Quinn is able to catch it in a tract­or beam, but the insect drones begin hurl­ing them­selves off the sta­tion sur­face towards the pod. Quinn quickly beams its occu­pants onto the run­about, then trans­ports Azon­an and Raynor aboard as he heads back to the shuttle deck.

As they fly, Ul’Raq quizzes them on their views of duty and how he could pos­sibly be an effect­ive ruler when his pas­sions are being sup­pressed. He would also have to aban­don Agna as their laws would not allow him to marry an ali­en. They argue that some­times duty has to take pri­or­ity for the great­er good, and that he can change laws if he is an abso­lute ruler.

They also note that the assas­sin’s pat­ron will pre­sum­ably bene­fit if the prince does not take up the throne. Ul’Raq admits that the suc­ces­sion would fall to his uncle Cha’Thop, who is known to exploit his employ­ees. He would not be a good Emperor.

Sud­denly, the run­about comes under fire as a Boslic freight­er approaches, tar­get­ing them with its phasers. Quinn des­per­ately avoids the beams, call­ing for help from the sta­tion, which launches fight­ers. The fight­ers promptly run into the remain­ing drones, which det­on­ate, for­cing them off course.

Trave is able to make it in to the land­ing bay in the con­fu­sion, and the Boslic ves­sel flees.

The Quelthoni­an secur­ity team arrives, and forms an hon­our guard for their new Emper­or, who has decided to take up his new role. Agna leaves with him, since he plans to look at chan­ging some of the Quelthoni­an tra­di­tions. Quinn offers Star­fleet help, for secur­ity and dip­lomacy, but Ul’Raq is adam­ant that his people would nev­er accept extern­al inter­fer­ence. He does, how­ever, state that the three of them would be wel­come to vis­it as hon­oured guests.

Obser­va­tions: Ul’Raq is the eld­est son of the deceased Quelthoni­an Emper­or, and his suc­cessor, but would rather spend his time writ­ing and per­form­ing music. Quelthoni­ans look Human, but pos­sess gold-col­oured irises, and three horns curving back­wards over their skulls.

Quelthonia is an inde­pend­ent polity occupy­ing a single star sys­tem with­in the Fed­er­a­tion sphere of influ­ence. While Quelthoni­an tech­no­logy is slightly less advanced than its neigh­bours, the empire is known for export­ing cheap, effi­cient weapon sys­tems. It is a mon­archy, ruled by a hered­it­ary mon­arch, pos­sess­ing abso­lute power. When an Emper­or dies, his heir becomes the new Emper­or as soon as the 17 days of mourn­ing end. There is no leg­al way to avoid inher­it­ing the throne.

Ref­er­ences: The Boslics are a neut­ral power, loc­ated near Romu­lan space. Their mer­chants often provide mer­cen­ary ser­vices to who­ever can pay them.

The Dop­teri­ans are rel­at­ives of the Fer­engi, noted for their skill with robot­ic technologies.