Epis­ode Num­ber: 6×12

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 29^th Novem­ber 2025

Guest Stars:

• Eilun Suder: Betazoid res­ist­ance member.
• Tur­lo­nu­mi­en: Tilikaal aderi, a pas­sen­ger in Com­modore Kon­in’s mind.
• Cap­tain Rebekah Kon­in: Former com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Hyper­ion, and Atani Kon­in’s wife.
• Sukatar­aal: Tilikaal aderi.

We’re finally ready to infilt­rate the Renda Insti­tute and res­cue the inmates. We’ll need every­one to work togeth­er to achieve this!

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51761.0

Plot: The crew of the Robert Scott raids the Renda Insti­tute of Neur­o­lo­gic­al Sciences.

The ‘A’ Plot: Aboard the Robert Scott, the officers plan their res­cue mis­sion to the Renda Insti­tute, using the maps pro­duced by Suder from his memor­ies of vis­it­ing. Their ini­tial goal will be to get close enough to ana­lyse the trans­port­er-scat­ter­ing field over the facil­ity so that they can beam the pris­on­ers out dir­ectly, but they also plan for dis­abling it com­pletely should this fail. Georg Elser will remain aboard the ship to oper­ate the trans­port­er, but every­one else will be involved in the raid.

They mater­i­al­ise in the woods sur­round­ing the Insti­tute an hour or so after night­fall, close to where Kon­in arrived a few days before. He points out the peri­met­er move­ment sensors, and Selvek sets to work, using a tri­cord­er to repro­gram them from a dis­tance. He turns one off, and con­vinces its neigh­bours that it is still work­ing and report­ing no move­ment, thus cre­at­ing a gap wide enough for the group to pass through.

Azon­an then turns on the artific­al shroud, and walks across the field to approach the low wall divid­ing it in two. Using his tri­cord­er in pass­ive mode, he iden­ti­fies infrared sensors guard­ing the walls and sets out to dis­able them. The oth­ers cross the grass to the wall, stay­ing low to avoid cas­u­al detec­tion, although Quinn isn’t quite low enough, for­cing the oth­ers to pull him down.

They wait as Azon­an sur­veys a side entrance, which is in a trench below ground level. The sensors are high up, not easy to dis­able, and the door is secured with bolts, rather than locked. Although the sensors can­not see him through the shroud, he is con­cerned that the puff of warm air that would be released as he opens the door will set off an alarm. Open­ing his toolkit, he pulls out a mag­net­ic device to pull the bolts back, then pro­duces a small can of cool­ing gas and attaches it to a dis­carded rake. Rais­ing the can to the sensor, he releases a freez­ing spray, then jumps back down to the door, open­ing it and entering.

He finds him­self in the base­ment of the Insti­tute’s south wing, con­tain­ing an old fusion react­or and a steam tur­bine, which power the house. It is dark and no-one is around, so he heads fur­ther in, not­ing the rather archa­ic con­trol pan­els, then finds a heavy steel door block­ing his path. A pass­ive scan with his tri­cord­er indic­ates there is no-one in the cham­ber bey­ond, so he cau­tiously opens it, emer­ging in an elab­or­ately dec­or­ated cham­ber con­tain­ing a 23^rd cen­tury trans­port­er sys­tem, and a wide flight of steps up to ground level. Behind the trans­port­er pad is a par­ti­tion with two con­cealed doors, behind which appears to be a bank of com­puters. Enter­ing this room, he finds a duo­tron­ic com­puter sys­tem, which he is eas­ily able to access by rearran­ging the wires under the con­sole. He shuts down the infrared sensors, set­ting up a dummy sig­nal so that no-one mon­it­or­ing them will be alerted.

Selvek sees the red lights on the sensors go dark and sig­nals the oth­ers to enter the build­ing. They reach the south­ern door, slip­ping inside, but Kon­in, act­ing as rear­guard, steps on a rake. Once inside, they are quickly able to join Azonan.

Raynor takes the shroud and ven­tures up the stairs to the recep­tion area. A Car­das­si­an guard is sit­ting behind the ori­gin­al recep­tion desk, which has now been stacked with Car­das­si­an ter­min­als and mon­it­ors. Raynor silently approaches and knocks out the guard, then accesses the ter­min­als to check the rest of the build­ing. He is able to get the loc­a­tions of ten Car­das­si­ans and twelve Betazoid staff, five pris­on­ers – none of which are iden­ti­fied – and an indi­vidu­al lis­ted simply as “Sukatar­aal”. The rooms imme­di­ately to the north of the recep­tion room are excluded from the intern­al sensors, however.

The oth­ers join him at the desk: Selvek quickly dis­ables the base­ment trans­port­er sys­tem to pre­vent the arrival of any rein­force­ments, sets up the pat­tern enhan­cers, then begins the ana­lys­is of the scat­ter­ing field. Raynor, Quinn and Con­ners head into the secure sec­tion of the south wing, check­ing each cell as Azon­an remotely opens the doors one by one. Kon­in stands guard at the door to the north wing.

The five pris­on­ers turn out to be three Betazoids and two high-rank­ing Star­fleet officers, one Human and one Vul­can. Three of them are on the list, but there is no sign of Rebekah Kon­in. Con­ners busies her­self examin­ing the released pris­on­ers, check­ing for Changelings, while com­ment­ing on the signs of tor­ture and the traces of inter­rog­a­tion drugs in their blood. The two Star­fleet officers have suffered espe­cially badly.

As they bring the released pris­on­ers to the recep­tion area, the north door opens and two Cara­das­si­ans walk in, com­pletely unaware of the infilt­a­tion team. Kon­in reacts quickly, shoot­ing both before they can react. The seni­or of the two, still con­scious, draws his phaser but Selvek stuns him before he can fire.

Ready­ing their phaser rifles, Raynor and Kon­in move through the north door, look­ing for more guards and hop­ing to find Rebekah. They dis­cov­er that the former con­sulta­tion rooms have been con­ver­ted into inter­rog­a­tion cham­bers, with an array of tor­ture and inter­rog­a­tion devices ready for use.

Enter­ing the refect­ory, they are treated to the odd sight of a Betazoid woman wear­ing a Car­das­si­an uni­form. She turns to face them and Kon­in recog­nises his wife. As he reels from the shock, she greets him tele­path­ic­ally. It feels wrong, subtly dif­fer­ent from her famil­i­ar men­tal “voice”, and he real­ises this is not actu­ally Rebekah. He still hes­it­ates, so Raynor steps for­ward and raises his rifle, then finds him­self fight­ing the com­pul­sion to shoot him­self. Shak­ing off the urge, he man­ages to fire at her, but she absorbs the blast without stag­ger­ing. Kon­in is finally able to over­come his own hes­it­a­tion and press his trig­ger, but misses completely.

She waves her hand, and a wave of telekin­et­ic energy hits them, push­ing them into the cor­ridor. As they stag­ger to their feet, Kon­in com­ment­ing that his wife was nev­er able to do that, she quickly moves into the next room, clos­ing the door behind her. The pair fol­low cau­tiously, phaser rifles at the ready, and dis­cov­er that the room is a gym­nas­i­um. Their quarry is crouched in the corner, hug­ging her knees, and look­ing con­fused. See­ing her hus­band, she begins to ask about her ship and crew, but he stuns her without hesitation.

Back in recep­tion, Azon­an and Selvek have been unable to suc­cess­fully char­ac­ter­ise the scat­ter­ing field. The Andori­an decides to take a more dir­ect approach to the prob­lem and steps out of the front door to shoot the pro­ject­or. This raises the alarm, but Elser, back on the Robert Scott, begins beam­ing the res­cued pris­on­ers out imme­di­ately, then, at Con­ners’ sug­ges­tion, the Betazoid staff. Azon­an dis­ap­pears into the power room and sets the fusion plant to over­load. They leave just as the remain­ing Car­das­si­an per­son­nel arrive, heav­ily armed.

And a small mush­room cloud blos­soms over the valley.

On the ship, Elser is recov­er­ing the last of their oth­er tar­gets, who join their col­leagues in ask­ing what exactly is going on. As Kon­in and Suder try to calm them down and answer their ques­tions, Azon­an and Con­ners move the uncon­scious Rebekah Kon­in into the make­shift “cell”. Quinn heads to the bridge, and begins to move them out of their orbit. Raynor, see­ing that a num­ber of Domin­ion war­ships are start­ing to power up nearby, enacts their planned dis­trac­tion and det­on­ates the bombs planted at the clon­ing facil­ity, as Quinn jumps to warp.

Hours later, Con­ners has been able to exam­ine Kon­in’s wife in detail, report­ing that she is not a Changeling, clone or any oth­er kind of dop­pl­eg­ang­er. She checks her brain­waves, and dis­cov­ers two over­lap­ping pat­terns: one is Rebekah Kon­in, but the oth­er is ali­en. At the com­modore’s sug­ges­tion, she scans him, and finds that the ali­en pat­tern matches that of his pas­sen­ger: Turlonumien.

The ali­en is a Tilikaal.

As they travel, Kon­in becomes aware of a repeat­ing tele­path­ic query: the entity inhab­it­ing his wife is ask­ing to be released. This is not a risk he is pre­pared to take, but over time, the requests repeat and get louder, going on for hour after hour. Soon every­one aboard, regard­less of their esper rat­ing, is affected and tem­pers begin to fray.

It is clear that Kon­in needs to talk to the being, but when he enters the cell, hav­ing ensured Con­ners and Raynor are ready to back him up, he finds his wife is uncon­scious. The glow­ing blue form of a Tilikaal aderi is stand­ing over her, and she smile, intro­du­cing her­self as Sukatar­aal. She demands her imme­di­ate release, but Kon­in refuses, des­pite her prom­ise that she will keep “ask­ing” until their frail psyches give way.

Kon­in with­draws and locks the door, before debat­ing with the oth­ers about how they can stop her. Unable to come up with a way that does not involve the death of Rebekah, he even­tu­ally asks Tur­lo­nu­mi­en for advice. The Tilikaal explains Sukatar­aal’s back­ground as an old ally of Ash’Tamalia who escaped their pris­on mil­len­nia ago. He believes that he can get Sukatar­aal out of her host, but it may res­ult in some unavoid­able dam­age – mostly to memory and skills.

After think­ing for a few moments, Kon­in decides it is worth the risk. He re-enters the cell, to Sukatar­aal’s ini­tial delight, then Tur­lo­nu­mi­en emerges as Kon­in steps back. The two aderi fight, cre­at­ing a lot of light and sound, before van­ish­ing in a blind­ing flash.

Kon­in wakes up later, lying on the floor next to Raynor, with Con­ners check­ing their vital signs. She tells them that it seems to have worked: Rebekah is alive but uncon­scious, and there is no sign of Sukatar­aal… or Turlonumien.

Kon­in is going to have to get used to the empty feel­ing inside his own head.

The Arc: Rebekah Kon­in has finally been res­cued, but at the cost of Kon­in’s con­stant com­pan­ion of the last three years. And it seems that there maybe oth­er allies of Ash’Tamalia loose in the galaxy.

Obser­va­tions: Sukatar­aal is a Tilikaal and an ally of Ash’Tamalia. Accord­ing to Tur­lo­nu­mi­en, she escaped their pris­on dimen­sion by unknown means sev­er­al thou­sand years ago. It appears she has con­tin­ued work­ing towards free­ing her people, and has been work­ing with the Domin­ion in order to dis­tract Star­fleet from the grow­ing threat in the Shack­leton Expanse.

The Renda Insti­tute is housed in a four storey former man­sion with north and south wings and a base­ment. The treat­ment rooms are mostly on the ground floor, with accom­mod­a­tion and liv­ing spaces in the wings; staff and secure accom­mod­a­tion to the south, oth­er patient accom­mod­a­tion to the north. The base­ment con­tains util­ity rooms, kit­chens, a fusion power plant and a trans­port­er pad, but most of its tech­no­logy is extremely out­dated, a hun­dred years old or more. The Car­das­si­an Intel­li­gence Bur­eau has brought its own admin­is­tra­tion and inter­rog­a­tion equip­ment, but is oth­er­wise rely­ing on what it has inherited.

Dia­logue: Sukatar­aal as Rebekah Kon­in: “Imz­adi! It’s so nice to see you again…”

Rebekah Kon­in: “What’s hap­pen­ing? Where’s my ship?”

Ref­er­ences: The final battle between Tur­lo­nu­mi­en and Sukatar­aal looks a lot like that between Ulkesh and Kosh in Babylon 5.

Ques­tions: How did Sukatar­aal get hold of Rebekah Kon­in? Are there any more aderi loose in the galaxy?