Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×18

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew, based on a story by Dayton Ward

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 12^th Septem­ber 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant T’rhyn: Time trav­el­ler from the 23^rd cen­tury, now serving as a Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge advisor.
• Com­mand­er Haleth: Com­mand­ing officer of the Romu­lan war­bird Mogai.
• Major Telona: Haleth­’s Tal Shiar advisor, serving as his centurion.
• Cap­tain Akul: Com­mand­ing officer of the Klin­gon cruis­er Mup­wI’.

We have returned to Pi-Latka, mak­ing use of the cap­tured cloak­ing device. Unfor­tu­nately the cloak has failed at the worst pos­sible moment.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52578.4

Plot: The away team is res­cued by an unex­pec­ted ally, and finally iden­ti­fies the Locus.

The ‘A’ Plot: The Trave floats in space, flanked by a pair of huge black spher­ic­al ves­sels. As Kin­shaya voices screech in anger from the com­mu­nic­a­tions con­sole, Kon­in’s away team debates wheth­er they can escape unscathed.

Then anoth­er sig­nal is received, and a pair of Romu­lan faces appear on the mon­it­or: “This is Com­mand­er Haleth of the Romu­lan war­bird Mogai. Can I render assist­ance?” There is no sign of anoth­er ship in the vicin­ity, but it only takes moments for Kon­in to agree. A huge green star­ship, dwarf­ing the Kin­shaya ves­sels, decloaks above the scene, grabs the run­about in a tract­or beam, then cloaks and moves off at speed before the Kin­shaya can react.

Once they’re at a safe dis­tance, Haleth opens a chan­nel once more: “So, I was won­der­ing if you would like to come aboard? I would like a word with you about your use of illi­cit technology.”

Kon­in sig­nals his agree­ment, and moments later, the sex­tet is trans­por­ted on to Haleth­’s com­mand deck, a bal­cony over­look­ing the main bridge of the Mogai. A pair of hulk­ing Reman guards flanks the two com­mand chairs, which rotate to face the vis­it­ors. While the cen­tur­i­on gets to her feet as the Trave crew men­bers step off the trans­port­er plat­form, Com­mand­er Haleth remains in his seat, ges­tur­ing to them to be seated at the con­fer­ence table. They sit down and he wel­comes them aboard the Mogai.

The Romu­lan explains that he was rather sur­prised to find anoth­er cloaked ves­sel in the sys­tem, espe­cially with so many already present, and was par­tic­u­larly intrigued when he found it was a Star­fleet run­about. He is curi­ous as to why they are so far from home in such a small ves­sel. Kon­in replies that they had unin­ten­tion­ally offen­ded the Kin­shaya, but giv­en the import­ance of their mis­sion, they opted for drastic meas­ures to avoid detec­tion and casualties.

Haleth asks what they are doing in the sys­tem, and Kon­in explains that they are here because an ali­en tech­no­logy is pre­dicted to deliv­er a miss­ing crew­man to a nearby loc­a­tion in a few days time. In return, their host explains that he is on an exten­ded shake­down cruise for his new ship; while he will not give any details about its cap­ab­il­it­ies, he is evid­ently very proud of the Mogai. Telona watches him care­fully as he speaks.

The Romu­lan com­mand­er reminds them about the treaty lim­it­a­tion on Star­fleet use of cloak­ing tech­no­logy, and announces that he will be con­fis­cat­ing the cloak­ing device, to which Kon­in acqui­esces, reas­on­ing that he has little choice. Then Haleth sur­prises them, and Telona, by explain­ing that he will prob­ably “mis­place the incid­ent report” in light of their cur­rent alli­ance against the Dominion.

Haleth is more than happy to release both the crew and their run­about, as he does not con­sider either them or Lex­ing­ton a threat to his own mis­sion. Telona is vis­ibly angry at this, but says noth­ing in response.

Then she asks “Are the oth­er two cloaked ships in the sys­tem part of your mis­sion?” The Trave crew is a little sur­prised at the news there are two. Kon­in admits that they knew about one: a rogue Star­fleet team is also present and is sus­pec­ted to have access to a cloak­ing device, but he has no idea who the oth­er could be.

Haleth repeats his admon­ish­ment about the cloak­ing device, and says that they will be returned to the Trave as soon as his team is fin­ished remov­ing it. True to his word, the team is returned to the run­about around 5 minutes later. The vast Romu­lan war­bird then cloaks, van­ish­ing from sight.

They imme­di­ately begin spec­u­lat­ing about the iden­tity of the second cloaked ship, as it’s obvi­ous that the first is Com­mand­er Sig­mun­d’s U.S.S. Cass. Could it be the Mup­wI’? If so, they may have a bet­ter chance to achieve their aims.

With the cloak­ing device gone, and the Kin­shaya alert to their pres­ence, Kon­in aborts the mis­sion and the Trave heads back towards Lex­ing­ton’s cur­rent loc­a­tion. Once out of the sys­tem, Kon­in sends a broad­cast mes­sage on Klin­gon fre­quen­cies, addressed to Cap­tain Akul, and ask­ing to arrange a meeting.

They rejoin Lex­ing­ton a couple of days later, and imme­di­ately get under­way to the coordin­ates included in the mes­sage to Akul. Shortly after­wards, they receive a tight-beam com­mu­nic­a­tion from the Mup­wI’, in which Akul con­firms the Klin­gons are present, but will remain cloaked.

With the com­modore’s per­mis­sion, the Klin­gon cap­tain beams aboard, whereupon he and Kon­in retire to the con­fer­ence room. Akul says his ship’s mis­sion is to con­duct astro­nom­ic­al research in the region, but that it is remain­ing cloaked due to the Klin­gons’ long enmity with the Kin­shaya. When asked about the loc­al power, he is unable to provide much hard data; the Klin­gon records of the con­flict are almost non-exist­ent, just a warn­ing to stay away.

Kon­in explains why Lex­ing­ton is in the vicin­ity, and Akul is intrigued, but is adam­ant he will not get involved, as he does not want to alert the Kin­shaya to the Klin­gon pres­ence. His inten­tion is to sur­vey Pi-Latka while remain­ing under cloak, then leave. How­ever, as he is already scan­ning the sys­tem, he is will­ing to keep an eye out for appro­pri­ate loc­a­tions that might house the Iconi­an Locus.

True to his word, Akul trans­mits the Mup­wI’s accu­mu­lated sur­vey data for Pi-Latka a few days later. In the accom­pa­ny­ing mes­sage, he explains that Lex­ing­ton had missed a plan­et: it lies very close to the primary, and has a large con­cen­tra­tion of the metals they’re look­ing for. This could be the arrival site.

Based on this inform­a­tion, the team devel­ops a new plan: to go straight to the plan­et, find the Locus and get out before the Kin­shaya can react. Quinn takes Lex­ing­ton into the sys­tem at max­im­um warp, rap­idly slow­ing to a halt in a low orbit. Sensor scans imme­di­ately pick up humanoid life signs in caves below a moun­tain range on the ter­min­at­or line of the tide-locked plan­et, with the met­al object assumed to be the Locus sev­er­al hun­dred metres below them.

Azon­an assembles an away team con­sist­ing of Raynor, Con­ners, Selvek and T’rhyn, equipped with envir­on­ment suits, pat­tern enhan­cers and a pair of phaser rifles. The sur­face in that region is sub­ject to winds in excess of 200 km/h, mak­ing it impossible to land a shuttle, so the plan is to beam down dir­ectly into the cave mouth. Unfor­tu­nately, the intense radi­ation this close to Pi-Latka dis­torts the trans­port­er lock and they arrive in an open area. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the team are knocked off their feet dur­ing the scramble to make it to safety.

Shaken, they press on into the cave sys­tem, using their tri­cord­ers to nav­ig­ate down­wards through the twist­ing tun­nels. After some walk­ing, Selvek picks up a quar­tet of sta­tion­ary life sig­nals ahead. Wor­ried that it might be an ambush, Azon­an and Raynor take the lead, weapons at the ready. As they round the corner, pre­pared for a fire fight, sev­er­al photon gren­ades det­on­ate, catch­ing all of them and knock­ing out T’rhyn.

The Arc: It appears they have found the Locus, but Sig­mund may have beaten them to it.

Obser­va­tions: The Romu­lan ves­sel is the Mogai, an example of a pre­vi­ously unseen class of war­bird, and appar­ently under­go­ing a shake­down cruise. While the main hull is much smal­ler than the D’deri­dex, it has a wing­span of more than 1600m, with a very flat for­ward pro­file. Haleth and Telona com­mand their ves­sel from a large mezzan­ine deck over­look­ing the main bridge, where around 40 Star Navy per­son­nel work. As well as the trans­port­er pad, the bal­cony con­tains two high-backed chairs with their own con­soles and a con­fer­ence table, all dom­in­ated by a siz­able ren­der­ing of the emblem of the Romu­lan Star Empire.

Com­mand­er Haleth is an urbane man approach­ing retire­ment age. He seems to prefer polite con­ver­sa­tion to threats and is more than happy to dis­cuss dif­fer­ences with his oppon­ents. His cen­tur­i­on, Major Telona, by com­par­is­on, is a mod­el of Tal Shiar icy con­fid­ence, giv­ing away little and expect­ing timely and full answers to her ques­tions. Her pres­ence in the role of cen­tur­i­on is unusu­al: as a rule, the Romu­lan Star Navy does not appre­ci­ate Tal Shiar inter­fer­ence in their affairs, going so far as to main­tain its own intern­al secur­ity ser­vice, the Tal Diann, to ensure they have no excuse to do so.

The plan­et, des­ig­nated Pi-Latka ah, orbits close to its sun. It is dense, about two thirds the size of Earth, but with a high­er grav­ity. It has a very thin atmo­sphere, but because it is tide-locked to Pi-Latka itself, there are high speed winds res­ult­ing from con­vec­tion cur­rents. The appar­ent site of the Locus is deep below a moun­tain, but there are what appears to be lava tubes lead­ing past its location.

Dia­logue: Cap­tain Kon­in’s mes­sage to Akul: “Akul, if you are out there, meet us in 2 days at these coordin­ates. Maybe we can help each oth­er, signed Konin.”

Ref­er­ences: The Mogai is the pro­to­type for the Romu­lan Star Navy’s new heavy war­bird, inten­ded to replace the ubi­quit­ous D’deri­dex. Anoth­er example of the class, Com­mand­er Donatra’s Val­dore, makes an appear­ance in Star Trek: Nemes­is, which takes place around four years later.

Ques­tions: How big is the oppos­i­tion, and what is Sig­mund up to?