You have deduced that the soft-spoken Milo is the real Harven Zax, and that the flamboyant man claiming the name is a decoy meant to misdirect would-be kidnappers or assassins. But you still can’t prove who the mole is, so you decide not to arrest anyone.
All four guests beam down to the planet with Kirk, Daniel, Data, and Teal’c, while Carter assumes command of the Enterprise.
They materialize in a grassy clearing beside the Stargate. A five-person Starfleet security team is already waiting, and the gate behind them is active.
Their leader steps forward, polite and brisk. They’re here for Harven Zax.
“In a hurry?”Daniel asks, nodding towards the active gate.
“Long trip home,” replies the leader, without a flicker.
Zax marches up the steps towards the shimmering puddle, then turns and throws his arms wide, addressing the crew: “Farewell, you magnificent fopdoodles. I shall speak of you fondly. Occasionally.”
Robespierre sidles up to Kirk and lowers his voice. The sealed pouch he’s been carrying contains the identification passcode for this exchange. The receiving team was supposed to give it on arrival. They didn’t.
What do you do?
A) Take the gate. Draw weapons and seize the Stargate before anyone goes through. But it means a potential firefight beside an open wormhole with four civilians in the line of fire.
B) Give them Milo. If they are Starfleet and your deduction is correct, he’s the one they’re really after. But if this team isn’t Starfleet, you’ve handed the real Harven Zax to the wrong people.
C) Give them “Harven Zax”. Hand over the decoy and let them figure it out on their own. But if they’re genuine, you’ve lied to Starfleet. If they’re not, they leave with the wrong guy.
D) Demand the passcode. Ask them to identify themselves before you hand anyone over. But if they can’t, they’ll know you’re onto them.
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. Four suspects – four different reactions. Harven Zax is indignant and makes himself the victim. Robespierre is outraged by the accusation. Milo seems visibly distressed while Lucinda is as inscrutable as ever. They each offer up their whereabouts on the night the cruiser was sabotaged. Harven Zax says he was with Lucinda, and his trusty bodyguard corroborates his account. Robespierre was in his room, working on “none of your business” while Milo was also alone in his room and apologizes for not being able to provide an alibi.
Just then, Data reports that the High Council never approved a warrant for Harven Zax’s arrest. The forgery Kordath provided was a forgery. Kirk contacts Kordath and makes him aware that he knows the warrant was a forgery, leading the Klingon to back off for fear that word of this dishonorable conduct will be revealed.
Kirk is then summoned to the science lab where Carter and Data have recovered some video more Diunsel’s memory stories, a snippet of surveillance video from the night of the cruiser’s sabotage that shows Lucinda visiting Milo in the dead of night, proving she lied when she claimed she’d been in Harven Zax’s room that night. Rather than reveal this information to their guests, the crew elects to keep it under wraps and prepare an away team to escort them to their rendezvous point: a Stargate on P3X-461.
As your prepare to beam down to the planet, a late-arriving background check on your guests arrives from Starfleet. You learn that Robespierre’s record with Starfleet is spotty, Harven Dax is famously publicity-shy and no one has ever captured his image, Lucinda is ex-military with underworld connections, while Starlet was unable to find any information on Milo. It’s as if he doesn’t exist.
Get caught up on our series, crew, and past missions at the AMALGAVERSE site.
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