Kirk gathers all four guests in the observation lounge and tells them the truth. The cruiser’s engines didn’t fail on their own. They were sabotaged, and whoever did it is sitting in this room.
Zax is on his feet at once. “Sabotage? Then it was ME they meant to kill. Have you any idea what I have endured? I was very nearly devoured by a black hole, and now I learn someone wanted me dead before I even got there. Is there no end to my suffering?!” As always, the tragedy is entirely about him.
Robespierre is outraged. “I have served the Federation for thirty years, Captain, and I have never been so insulted. You would treat your own guests as criminals? Surely, this is a mistake.”
Milo looks visibly shaken. Lucinda remains unreadable. For a moment, their eyes meet. Then both look away.
Kirk asks where each of them was the night the cruiser’s engines failed.
Lucinda was with Zax of course. Guarding him is her job. “She never left my side,”Zax confirms warmly. “My ever-watchful sentinel.”
Robespierre was alone in his quarters, working on matters, he informs them, well above anyone’s clearance. Milo was asleep, and apologizes that nobody can vouch for him.
Before Kirk can press any of them, Data interrupts. A priority message has arrived from Starfleet Command.
Starfleet has checked with the Klingon High Council. The Council has never issued a warrant for Harven Zax. It has never heard of the charges. The document’s authorization and seal are forgeries.
Zax is outraged all over again. “A forgery? Even the charges against me are counterfeit!”
And Data has found something interesting on his own. Running the ship’s name and her captain against Starfleet’s records, he’s learned that the Vor’nak belongs to the House of Kerath, a powerful Great House.
Whatever Kordath is doing here, he’s doing it for his House alone, using forged Council authority to threaten a Federation starship in violation of the Khitomer Accords. If the High Council found out which House was responsible, the House of Kerath would have a great deal to answer for.
Kirk sits back, and for the first time since the Bird-of-Prey appeared, he smiles. “Well. Now we have something to talk about.”
What do you do?
A) Expose him. Open a channel to every ship in range and accuse the House of Kerath of using a forged warrant to threaten a Federation starship. It could shame Kordath into withdrawing – or provoke him into proving he won’t be intimidated. Either way, you risk making a lifelong enemy of a Great House.
B) Tell him privately. Let Kordath know what you’ve learned and offer him a way to withdraw with his honor intact. It’s cleaner, but he may mistake discretion for weakness.
C) Go to the High Council. Report the House of Kerath’s role in the forgery through official channels and let the Council deal with its own. It’s the proper course, but the Council may not act before the deadline, and Kordath seems to be running out of patience.
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.
Councilor Robespierre is enlisted to argue jurisprudence with the Kordath who grudgingly offers up a warrant for Zax’s arrest. Robespierre informs him it may take a full day to run this by Starfleet Command. Kordath gives him four hours.
With time to kill, focus shifts to the mole in their midst. Kirk gathers the four suspect passengers and informs them that one of them was responsible for sabotaging their cruiser.
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