Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×12

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 27^th June 2026

Guest Stars:

• Q: Unpre­dict­able omni­po­tent entity.

Well, we made it.

The Endur­ance Divide stretches before us, a neb­u­lous wall of gas stretch­ing as far as we can see: core­ward, rim­ward, above and below the galactic plane. It is at most three light years deep, but it is an obstacle to our journey.

Although the trans­par­ent sur­face is faint and dif­fi­cult to see, it is pos­sible to make out con­stant move­ment with the naked eye. Gia tells me this is the res­ult of reg­u­lar grav­ity waves with­in the neb­ula itself, and they are a prob­lem we need to over­come. The waves are caused by the three bright stars vis­ible at the centre of the region: the Triplets.

Astro­bi­o­logy is excited, sensors are pick­ing up shad­owy shapes mov­ing with­in the neb­ula. The Divide is reputed to be a nurs­ery for many space­go­ing lifeforms.

Time to get started.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52345.1

Plot: The U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton crosses into the tur­bu­lent space of the Endur­ance Divide.

The ‘A’ Plot: After a little over three weeks, Lex­ing­ton heaves to a light year from the faint clouds mark­ing the Endur­ance Divide. From this dis­tance, the trans­lu­cent sur­face of the neb­ula is vis­ibly rip­pling, as if they are peer­ing into the sur­face of a clear pool. A wide vari­ety of cos­mo­zo­an life can be seen mov­ing through the neb­u­la’s depths, and the three bright stars called the Triplets are clearly vis­ible bey­ond. The cloud is impen­et­rable to nearly all sensor modes except vis­ible light, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to get any clear read­ings of its intern­al structure.

While the spe­cial­ists in stel­lar car­to­graphy and astro­met­rics ana­lyse what data they can get out of their read­ings, Kon­in calls a meet­ing of his seni­or officers to plan their next move.

Gia explains that her ana­lys­is shows two options: either risk the unpre­dict­able anom­alies of the Endur­ance Divide to reach the rel­at­ively stable space on the far side, or go around it. Unfor­tu­nately, the lat­ter would take them a hun­dred light years out of their path, which would almost cer­tainly take longer than the three months they have before Zeph­t’s arrival at Pi-Latka,

Quinn has spent much of his free time work­ing on a safe route through the anom­alies, based on the star charts he has acquired, cross-ref­er­enced with Gia’s data. How­ever, he can­not be cer­tain it is val­id and believes more obser­va­tion is needed.

Selvek and Azon­an are con­cerned about the effect of the grav­it­a­tion­al waves on the ship’s struc­tur­al integ­rity, espe­cially giv­en the repeated instances of struc­tur­al dam­age exper­i­enced over the last few years. Azon­an plans to work with A’Mathi to rein­force and tune the struc­tur­al integ­rity field as needed, espe­cially around the mis­sion pod pylon. He has noticed some wor­ry­ing creak­ing noises since their return from the Alpha Quadrant.

Kon­in opts to spend a few days cruis­ing rel­at­ively slowly towards the entry point for Quin­n’s route, gath­er­ing more data as they do so. This will hope­fully enable them to refine their route. Addi­tion­ally, they will be able to gath­er more data on the region for sci­entif­ic study.

Sev­er­al days later, they slow to a halt once again about half a light year out from the neb­ula. From this dis­tance, the roil­ing sur­face is clearly vis­ible, and Selvek explains how the inter­ac­tion of grav­ity waves and anom­alies are cre­at­ing the chaot­ic effect. The same pro­cess will ensure that they have to keep revis­ing their route, with care­ful man­oeuv­ring around unfore­seen obstacles extend­ing over sev­er­al days.

Quinn, being who he is, insists on doing most of the pilot­ing, so they arrange for Selvek to provide back up while he rests, with Kon­in provid­ing addi­tion­al guid­ance. Giv­en the sensor restric­tions, Raynor tasks mem­bers of the secur­ity team to stand at for­ward view­ports, watch­ing for signs of incom­ing grav­ity waves and anom­alies. Azon­an and A’Mathi will be kept busy in engin­eer­ing mon­it­or­ing and tun­ing the SIF to res­ist grav­ity shear-planes.

Quinn takes the ship for­ward at a quarter impulse and, almost imme­di­ately, a golden net unfurls in front of them. The crew recog­nises the effect and Kon­in orders full stop. Quinn begins loudly chal­len­ging Q to appear. Moments later, there is a flash, and a woman’s voice tells them they can go no further.

Kon­in turns to face a prim woman in an old-fash­ioned out­fit stand­ing in front of the sec­ond­ary engin­eer­ing mon­it­or. He tells her that they are passing through the region to res­cue a friend from a plan­et on the far side. Evid­ently one of the Q, she replies that they will have to go around: the eco­sys­tem with­in the Divide is too del­ic­ate for them to dis­rupt. When Kon­in explains that they do not have the time to go around, she clicks her fin­gers and the two of them van­ish. Q appears sit­ting in Kon­in’s chair in the ready room, with Kon­in oppos­ite, and a pair of mar­tinis on the desk between them.

Q explains that the region Star­fleet has named the Endur­ance Divide is the only spawn­ing ground for a large vari­ety of space-borne creatures, and that she intends to pro­tect it from any inter­fer­ence. Kon­in repeats his reas­ons for cross­ing it, explain­ing the con­nec­tion to the Tilikaal. She con­siders this for a moment, before say­ing that she had believed the Tilikaal were long gone. Kon­in describes their dis­cov­er­ies and she listens with interest. She announces that she will allow them through, but that they will need to be very care­ful. A single matter/antimatter explo­sion would destabil­ise vast volumes of the Divide, wreak­ing hav­oc on the res­id­ent creatures. If that hap­pens, she would be forced to inter­vene to pro­tect them without con­sid­er­a­tion for the Lex­ing­ton. Kon­in tells her that they would be very care­ful, avoid­ing close con­tact with any such creatures. Q agrees to this and van­ishes in a flash of light.

Now that they have Q’s per­mis­sion, Quinn takes the ship slowly into the clouds. Cross­ing the bound­ary causes a jolt felt through­out the ship. Quick reac­tions from Quinn and the engin­eer­ing team pre­vent any dam­age, although a num­ber of per­son­nel are knocked off their feet. As they pro­ceed, all are aware of repet­it­ive thumps and creaks as grav­ity waves pass through the ship.

For the next three days, the ship pro­ceeds cau­tiously, with every­one on edge, watch­ing for trouble. Many go to bed abso­lutely exhausted, sleep fit­fully due to the creak­ing, then awaken early the next day to do it all again. Des­pite the med­ic­al team’s best efforts, the fatigue begins to grow. Kon­in and the oth­er tele­path­ic mem­bers of the crew feel it worse, as the con­stant pound­ing is accom­pan­ied by the same kind of whis­per­ing voices they encountered when they first entered the Shack­leton Expanse. No-one is able to make any­thing intel­li­gible out of the tele­path­ic whispers.

Towards the end of the third day, Raynor spots a small bubble on the viewscreen. He points it out, and they zoom in on the object, about half an astro­nom­ic­al unit from them. It looks like a blueish space-going jelly­fish about the size of the ship, and it is dir­ectly in their path. It does not seem to react to their pres­ence, so rather than take a wide path around, Kon­in opts to pass it at a close dis­tance, so they can get some visu­al obser­va­tions of the creature.

Unfor­tu­nately, as they pass with­in a few thou­sand kilo­met­ers of the being, it does react, sud­denly burst­ing in a bril­liant dis­play of blue light. A psych­ic shock­wave passes through the ship, and every­one is affected. Once again, the tele­paths take the brunt of it, and it’s only Raynor’s quick reac­tion, throw­ing a con­tain­ment force-field around the com­modore, that pre­vents him passing out from the pain.

As they recov­er, they see that the “jelly­fish” has van­ished, but weirdly, there is also no imme­di­ate reac­tion from Q – much to Quin­n’s annoy­ance. Addi­tion­ally, the work­ing sensors are now pick­ing up traces of the same kind of radi­ation that was emit­ted from the sub­space anom­alies they encountered before the events at Can­did­ate Three. Giv­en this, and the tim­ing of the attack, Kon­in and Azon­an begin to won­der if this was some kind of trap or “mine” set by Ash’Tamalia. They’ll obvi­ously need to make sure they avoid any­thing sim­il­ar. As they dis­cuss this, Q makes an appear­ance, listens to their con­clu­sions and indic­ates that she will be look­ing to have words with the Tilikaal.

They resume their jour­ney with even more cau­tion and with­in anoth­er two days, they approach the far sur­face of the Divide. Anoth­er jelly­fish is spot­ted ahead of them, so Quinn gives it a wide berth, at least an astro­nom­ic­al unit away. The creature reacts only by slowly flow­ing in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion: this one may be genuine.

As they emerge from the neb­ula, the full vista of the Shack­leton Expanse bey­ond the Divide appears before them. The Triplets are shin­ing brightly, with the pecu­li­ar spir­al struc­ture of the Shack­leton Pin­wheel appear­ing bey­ond them.

One of Raynor’s team calls in to report a col­lec­tion of lights mov­ing towards the ship. As they get closer, each light resolves into a lumin­ous red-orange cloud shaped vaguely like a fish. They are obvi­ously alive, as they react to the ship’s pres­ence by match­ing velo­city and per­form­ing com­plex man­oeuvres, some­what sim­il­ar to those of Earth dolphins.

Selvek announces that the ship’s power levels are drop­ping rap­idly. A’Mathi runs a dia­gnost­ic, identi­fy­ing losses at mul­tiple points across the ship’s EPS net­work. Scans of these loc­a­tions show glow­ing clouds, very sim­il­ar to the creatures out­side, gath­er­ing around the junc­tions in the net­work. They appear to be feed­ing dir­ectly from plasma leaks in the conduits.

Azon­an real­ises that this will only get worse as more of the creatures real­ise that this energy source exists. They can shut down the net­work, or even the warp core, to pre­vent the oth­ers being attrac­ted, but this will leave them stran­ded. Raynor pro­poses an altern­at­ive plan: shut down the net­work, then fire a photon tor­pedo, set to det­on­ate some dis­tance away from the ship. It will need to be a good ten thou­sand kilo­metres away, as the ship will be defence­less: the shields rely­ing on the EPS grid for power.

Kon­in author­ises the plan and Raynor care­fully fires the tor­pedo away from the neb­ula to avoid draw­ing the ire of Q. It works, draw­ing all the creatures away, and the ship goes to warp before they can react to it power­ing up once more.

The Arc: Through the Endur­ance Divide and on to the Triplets.

Obser­va­tions: The Endur­ance Divide is a vast plane of space that sep­ar­ates the Shack­leton Expanse into two halves, stretch­ing from the core­ward side to the rim­ward side, and con­tain­ing clouds of low dens­ity gas. Only 2–3 light years thick, it’s awash with grav­it­a­tion­al eddies and sub­space anom­alies. Their inter­ac­tions make the region dan­ger­ous to travel through. The sur­face of the neb­ula appears to ripple as grav­it­a­tion­al waves peak and fall.

This mani­fest­a­tion of Q is dif­fer­ent from any seen before, choos­ing to take the form of a middle-aged Amer­ic­an woman of the mid-20^th cen­tury, com­plete with horn-rimmed glasses and tweed suit. Giv­en her xeno-eco­lo­gic­al interests and strident atti­tude, she appears to be a dif­fer­ent entity from the Q that became obsessed with the U.S.S. Enter­prise, assum­ing such a thing makes sense for the Continuum.

The Triplets are three appar­ently identic­al stars orbit­ing a com­mon centre. Giv­en the oth­er Tilikaal astro-engin­eer­ing pro­jects, Dia­mond Hedge sci­ent­ists have hypo­thes­ised that the struc­ture is arti­fi­cial. Their rota­tion cre­ates radi­at­ing grav­ity waves that inter­fere with each oth­er in a spir­al pat­tern, caus­ing vari­ations in the sub­space field across the Shack­leton Expanse, and cre­at­ing the Endur­ance Divide.

The Shack­leton Pin­wheel appears as a slowly-rotat­ing spir­al galaxy-shaped form­a­tion more than a hun­dred light years bey­ond the Triplets, in the vicin­ity of Pi-Latka. Its nature and ori­gins are com­pletely open to question.

Ref­er­ences: The “Q‑net” was first seen in the Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion epis­ode “Encounter at Far­point”, and has since been asso­ci­ated with many of Q’s activities.

Ques­tions: Was Ash’Tamalia respons­ible for the psych­ic “mine”?