Epis­ode Num­ber: 4×14

Writ­ten by: Joe Rixman

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 28^th June 2026

Guest Stars:

• Kala’Zee: Xindi-Avi­an scientist.
• Zekarakkt: Dorad­in scientist.

We may yet be able to save two civil­isa­tions. It appears a sep­ar­ate “life­boat” was launched into space before the end. Sensors have picked up an arti­fi­cial object in close orbit around the sun, but time is short, it is fall­ing towards the star.

First Officer’s Log: Supplemental

Plot: Lyo­n­esse chases after the last sur­viv­ors of the BC-21e catastrophe.

The ‘A’ Plot: It’s not long before Jin picks up a metal­lic object near the sys­tem primary. A few moments later he is able to con­firm that the object is arti­fi­cial and that its orbit will even­tu­ally res­ult in a col­li­sion with the star.

The crew imme­di­ately sets out to recov­er the object. Lt James is quickly able to match speeds with the object, which appears to be a met­al cyl­in­der about 20 metres long, but the seni­or officers are still debat­ing how to bring it aboard. They even­tu­ally settle on using the tract­or beam to bring it into a cargo bay, where it can be effect­ively quar­ant­ined in case act­ive examples of the vir­us are present.

James is able to secure the cyl­in­der with the tract­or beam, but then Lt Valik notices excess­ive power being drawn from the ship’s reserves. Tra­cing it to the tract­or beam emit­ter draw­ing far too much, he warns James that it needs to be shut off, or they will not have any reserves left. The cap­tain agrees and orders James to shut off the emit­ter until Valik’s main­ten­ance staff can fix the prob­lem. The cyl­in­der is released, but a brief power surge throws it into a three-axis spin.

Valik’s team finds that the tract­or beam emit­ter is mis­aligned. This would have been detec­ted and cor­rec­ted in a reg­u­lar over­haul at a star­base, but they have been away from home too long. It should only take an hour to fix, but then the engin­eer gets trapped inside the emit­ter turret.

Jin, mean­while, is work­ing on a con­tin­gency plan, cal­cu­lat­ing how to pos­i­tion the ves­sel so that they can just allow the cyl­in­der to simply drift into the cargo bay. Unfor­tu­nately, this is com­plic­ated by the chaot­ic spin it has acquired.

Valik arrives on M deck to invest­ig­ate the situ­ation with the trapped engin­eer. He finds him with his arm trapped between the access bay and the edge of the hatch. He spends sig­ni­fic­ant time work­ing out how to get him free, before Vale sug­gests using the transporter.

With the emer­gency resolved, Valik’s team is soon able to fix the tract­or emit­ter, allow­ing them to bring the cyl­in­der into the cargo bay in a con­trolled fash­ion. In the mean­time, Vale has been work­ing with the engin­eer­ing team to con­struct a bio­haz­ard con­tain­ment facil­ity in the cargo bay, to pre­vent the chance of the vir­us leak­ing into the ship.

Once all the pre­par­a­tions are com­plete, they care­fully open the side of the cyl­in­der, reveal­ing sev­er­al cramped spaces filled with cryo­cap­sules. Med­ic­al tri­cord­er scans reveal thou­sands of embry­os in sus­pen­ded anim­a­tion, of both loc­al spe­cies. A sep­ar­ate cham­ber at one end of the ves­sel con­tains more cap­sules con­tain­ing adult rep­res­ent­at­ives. The entire ves­sel is powered by an unshiel­ded nuc­le­ar react­or at the oth­er end, which causes some con­cerns about radiation.

Jin and Vale begin debat­ing wheth­er to revive any or all of the adults, and if so, who. Jin wants to revive one of the Xindi-Avi­ans, but Vale believes that the arth­ro­pods should be involved in any dis­cus­sion about their spe­cies’ future. First con­tact spe­cial­ist Lt Tim­monds sug­gests that the loc­als would be less able to deal with a new spe­cies of ali­en than a Xindi. If they awaken one of the Xindi first, then they should be able to advise on the best way to com­mu­nic­ate with the ath­ro­pods without alarm­ing them. Unfor­tu­nately, no-one has any idea who among the Xindi is in a pos­i­tion of author­ity, as the only indic­a­tion of each cap­sule’s occu­pant is a label writ­ten in both the Xindi-Avi­an and loc­al scripts – both of which they have yet to decipher.

They agree to awaken a Xindi adult at ran­dom, and this res­ults in their meet­ing Kala’Zee, one of the sci­ent­ists that worked on the escape pro­ject. While alarmed to be awakened in such away, Tim­monds is quickly able to get his trust, and he reit­er­ates a per­son­al ver­sion of the dis­aster. When told of their plan, he recom­mends Zekarakkt, a “Dorad­in” bio­lo­gist, who he believes will be open to ali­en contact.

Once the Dorad­in is awakened, she, Kala’Zee and Tim­monds engage in nego­ti­ations about how they can best help the refugees. The options includ­ing return­ing them to their plan­et of ori­gin in the hopes that the vir­us is truly erad­ic­ated, find them a new home with­in the neb­ula, or take them out of the neb­ula back to Fed­er­a­tion space. They could also return the Dorad­in to their home­world and the Xindi else­where. Kala’Zee proves reluct­ant to return to the Fed­er­a­tion, due to a fear of the oth­er Xindi spe­cies (unsur­pris­ing giv­en their his­tory), while Zekarakkt is con­cerned that return­ing to her home­world would expose her people to the vir­us once more. They even­tu­ally agree that Lyo­n­esse will carry both sets of cryo­cap­sules until they find a suit­able home for both spe­cies. Kala’Zee and Zekarakkt guide them in awaken­ing sev­er­al more of the sus­pen­ded sci­ent­ists to assist them in their search. If they are unable to find some­where suit­able before leav­ing the neb­ula, they will still have the option of return­ing them to the Dorad­in homeworld.

The Arc: It appears Lyo­n­esse has picked up yet more strays.

Obser­va­tions: Lyo­n­esse’s primary tract­or emit­ter is housed below the low­est deck of the sec­ond­ary hull. It is con­tained in a retract­able tur­ret, with just enough space for a tech­ni­cian to squeeze in for main­ten­ance. More com­plex repairs require its remov­al from the turret.

The “life­boat” cap­sule is very small, sim­il­ar in con­struc­tion to the derel­ict space sta­tion, but very cramped inside. The main com­part­ments con­tain a total of 50 cryo­cap­sules, each hold­ing thou­sands of embry­os, of both spe­cies. Anoth­er com­part­ment con­tains 10 cap­sules con­tain­ing a Xindi-Avi­an adult, 10 with an arth­ro­pod adult.

It seems that the indi­gen­ous sen­tient arth­ro­pods were called “Dorad­ins” by the Xindi-Avians.