Kirk apprises Councilor Robespierre of the situation, and for the first time since he came aboard, Robespierre looks genuinely happy. A legal battle is exactly his kind of fight.
He comes to the bridge, steps up to the viewscreen, straightens his collar and begins. Under the Khitomer Accords, he informs Kordath, a passenger under Federation protection cannot simply be surrendered on a captain’s say-so. There are extradition protocols. There are jurisdictional reviews. There is a formal process for the presentation of charges, which, as far as he can see, Kordath has not begun.
Kordath’s patience thins visibly with every clause. “We are not in a courtroom, Councilor.”
“No,”Robespierre agrees pleasantly. “If we were, you would already have lost. Now, I’ll need to see your warrant.”
Kordath glares at him for a long moment. Then he transmits it.
Robespierre studies it with obvious relish. “Verifying this through the proper diplomatic channels will take at least half a day. Perhaps longer.”
“You have four hours,”says Kordath, and the screen goes dark.
The Bird-of-Prey takes up position off the Enterprise’s bow, its weapons still trained on her.
With four hours on the clock, Scotty and Maia get to work restoring the systems still damaged after the attack. That gives everyone else time to deal with the problem the ambush interrupted: one of the four guests aboard sabotaged the cruiser.
In the brig, the captured strike team members are no help. Under questioning, they offer nothing beyond the fact that they were following orders. Whose orders, beyond their direct superiors, none of them seems to know.
Kirk has already sent Starfleet a routine request for background information on all four passengers. But Starfleet will take its time, and the crew can’t afford to.
What do you do?
A) Quietly question them. Find out where each guest was when the cruiser’s engines failed, without telling them why you’re asking. But casual questions may yield incomplete answers, and pushing too hard risks tipping your hand.
B) Confront them with the sabotage. Gather all four, reveal that you know the cruiser was sabotaged, and question them openly. Their reactions might tell you more than their answers. But the saboteur will be on guard from here on.
C) Search their quarters. While the guests are kept busy elsewhere, look for anything that connects them to the sabotage. But a careful saboteur may have covered their tracks, and searching a diplomat’s quarters risks a diplomatic incident.
Choose!
Previously On Amalgaverse…
You and 19 others have been stranded in an amalgam universe of myriad SF realities. All 19 are sci-fi’s Best of the Best. And then there’s you, uniquely qualified given your encyclopedic knowledge garnered from your world where these characters, their technologies, and their stories are fiction, beloved t.v. shows you have watched time and again. Together, all 20 of you have set off on the Enterprise-D, tasked with finding a way home. On its first mission, the crew answered a distress call from a dead ship and found it was far from empty. Aboard, the away team awoke an android named Maia, discovered a “survivor” named Rhea who turned out to be something else entirely, and fought their way off as scavengers closed in. They came home to the Enterprise with two things: a new crewmember in Maia, and a fragment of the signature an entity left behind when it crossed into this reality. Colonel Carter believes it’s one piece of a much larger puzzle, and that the rest of it is still out there waiting.
For your second mission, you have elected to follow a Starfleet directive, traveling to pick up and transport Harven Zax, a dangerous intelligence broker, to a rendezvous point at the edge of the Expanse. Upon arrival, you discover his cruiser inoperable, drifting towards a black hole, the ship’s automated defense systems preventing Scotty from using the Enterprise’s transporter to simply beam them aboard.
O’Neill and Data take the jumper to the cruiser where they encounter four stranded passengers: the annoyingly flamboyant Harven Zax, his silent bodyguard Lucinda Shockley, his mild-mannered protege Milo, a Starfleet official named Robespierre, and the ship’s utility bot, Dunsel. Everyone piles into the jumper and launch, only to be caught by the black hole’s gravitational pull. The Enterprise uses its tractor in an attempt to reel in the jumper while, on the bridge, the crew must decide what to do about the two life signs in the mercenary shuttle headed for the event horizon.
The Enterprise escapes the black hole’s gravitational pull by using the deflector array to project a counter-field ahead of the ship and then jumping to warp.
You set off for the rendezvous point and your guests settle in: no-nonsense Lucinda, meek Milo, officious Robespierre and, of course, the bombastic Harven Zax.
While Data works on repairing Dunsel the robot, you check in on the mercenaries you beamed off the doomed shuttle headed towards the black hole’s event horizon. They offer to talk in exchange for their freedom. Instead, you have Garak chat with the alien mercenary, Algernon. In his own incomparable fashion, the simple Cardassian tailor convinces the merc to talk and reveal he and his partner were in the employ of a Klingon Great House who want Harven Zax for a secret he carries. Algernon also reveals that he and Mira were given coordinates to the damaged cruiser transporting Zax. But Garak finds this mysterious. The cruisers engines failed without warning. So how did anyone know where to find it?
Suddenly, the Enterprise shudders and slows. Data reveals the ship’s nacelles are encrusted with glittering green growth that turns out to be a subspace organism that feeds on warp fields. Everyone retreats to a shielded section of the ship as a baryon sweep clears the organisms, then the crew directs focus to their passengers, engaging them in conversation to learn more about their mission. Harven Zax simply talks about himself while Robespierre laments the fact he has been passed over for promotion three times. Milo demonstrates impressive understanding of the Ancients in his conversation with Daniel Jackson, and Aeryn Sun identifies Lucinda as a fellow ex-military. But the most notable piece of information comes from Dunsel who, it turns out, had his memory stores deleted after discovering that someone had sabotaged the cruiser, forcing the ship out of warp and into the hands of the waiting mercs. One of their passengers is a mole, and the crew must decide how to proceed.
The crew attempts to lure the mole into a trap by revealing they will successfully restore Dunsel’s memory stores by morning. But, rather than taking the bait, the mole springs their own trap. The Enterprise drops out of warp and goes dark. A beacon onboard the ship is broadcasting their position and a mysterious vessel fast-approaches dropping out of warp and hovering over the Enterprise.
Armored strike teams are beamed down the Enterprise. The crew is split into four person teams to meet them.
Kirk leads a team to Engineering where they discover an automated device that was used to disrupt the Enterprise. Once turned off, power is restored. As Kirk and co. head out, they are pinned down by enemy fire. Things look grim until – rescue comes from an unexpected source: Maia the android, Algernon and Mira the mercs, and little Dunsel.
Data and Rommie hack into the strike teams’ comms and direct them to the guest deck where they expect to find Harven Zax. Instead, they find Odo impersonating Zax – and then a horrific alien creature. Before they can react, our crew turns the tables on them and ends their threat. Their transport cruiser, meanwhile, attempts to make good its escape – only to be destroyed by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey that then redirects its weapons to the Enterprise. It’s commander, Kordath, demands the Enterprise hand over Harven Zax.
Get caught up on our series, crew, and past missions at the AMALGAVERSE site.
Leave a Reply