Captain's Log, Stardate 27623, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
We'll have to get back to our mapping mission in former Yrillian space later. For now, we've got to bring some FDS personnel to a minor Apiata colony at Belzan VI. The situation is that the Sydraxians had a claim to the system that they were never able to enforce before the Kar-Akar incident, and now that there's peace again they want to negotiate a joint colonization effort with the Apiata.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27624.4, USS
Rru'adorr - Captain Olon
I have been handed a complex situation. Two Horizon vessels have been stopped by Betazed Defense Forces deep in Federation space. One vessel belongs to the Horizon peacekeeping directorate -- it has been in chase of the other for some weeks, its chase only halted by the Betazoids. Captain Kormar, a Lintrid, is claiming freedom of navigation to apprehend a dangerous criminal.
The Moy in the other vessel, Qolp, says they have committed no crime -- they are being chased because a system has determined they will eventually commit one.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27625.3, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
January has been making these jokes about "the birds and the bees" since we received these orders. That's one of the things I've missed most since the injury; I used to be able to just
get alien jokes, and now they're incomprehensible.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27625.3, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
That was supposed to be a personal log! Sorry!
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27626, USS
Rru'adorr - Captain Olon
I confronted Captain Kormar about Qolp's allegations. Kormar freely admitted Horizon has a 'near-foolproof' system of physical and digital surveillance that feeds into algorithms to determine the likelihood of any citizen committing a crime. Intervention mostly consists of preventative counseling, but those 'determined' to commit violent crime are often swiftly captured and euthanized. Qolp's online presence and data collected by public surveillance and fed through Harmony's algorithm 'determined' that she had a dangerous combination of paranoid delusion, impulsivity, and overattachment that would supposedly inevitably lead to a crime.
I questioned Kormar about if he was troubled by this flagrant violation of rights of the accused. He believes boredom due to modern, safe Horizon life has led to overactive imaginations. He expressed some discomfort at the harshness of the regime, and his belief -- from a purely practical point of view, not out of compassion -- that the all-or-nothing approach to violent criminals caused them to escalate their crimes immediately. 'If you assault someone,' he said, 'You are likely to be imprisoned for life, may be euthanized. So why stop there?' So when crimes do happen now, they are often gory, blood and guts affairs.
I cannot turn over the criminal to the Horizon. I will encourage the fugitive to apply for political asylum. But how to convince the Captain to turn around?
...
Acting Captain's Log, Stardate 27628.3, USS
Rru'adorr - Commander Jela Yathliss
Captain Olon's gone. Vinon's half-dead. Qolp… didn't feel safe. She wanted insurance in case we turned her over to Horizon. Unfortunately, she had just enough engineering knowledge to put a plan into action. She was prepared to craft a bomb using Trellium-D. When Vinon went to examine what he thought was an error in the Trellium-D taps, she ambushed him, nearly killing him. Olon went to reason with her, but by that point she was convinced we were returning her to Horizon custody, and she shot him with a stolen phaser. I had security storm her position after the fact, and recover the Trellium.
This is an embarrassment in front of the Horizon and for our own security procedures. Qolp has been taken into Federation custody. I hope she can find the help she needs.
[-10pp]
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27628.4, USS
Justice - Captain Hrular Krurin
A distress call has just come in from a new Tauni colony called Kalasht. While details are minimal, they claim to be under attack by a tenacious local predator. Fortunately, they say that they've been able to avoid further casualties by hunkering down in a fortified structure, and have sufficient supplies to await
Justice's arrival.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27628.7, USS
Opportunity - Captain Huth fop Makpol
There's an unidentified signal coming from the sixth planet of the FR-284 system. We've already passed through that system on our mapping mission, but it looks like something got past us.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27630.1, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
Oh boy. Just as we pulled into the system, we got a distress call from the colony. Some kind of freak flooding event at a new construction site. Good thing there happened to be a diplomatic event scheduled for today and we were already on our way here!
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27630.3, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
Never mind, the flood happened BECAUSE of this week's plans.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27630.3, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
Alright, we know all the details now. Apparently, local Queen Alazostra and the Sydraxian governor-to-be Vrodex decided to each go ahead and try to claim a local geothermal hotspot before we could get here to ensure they negotiated fairly. One or both of them drilled too recklessly to get their reactor set up before the other could, and punctured a major aquifer. The whole site is flooded now, and there's over 200 people in need of rescue.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27630.9, USS
Courageous, Captain Zara ka'Athnon
Courageous is responding to an urgent Ashidi distress call from the surface of an airless moon in the Vakyr Phi system which is approximately five lightyears off of our current course.
The truncated, but confirmed genuine, Ashidi distress call reports that they are a small scientific team who are under attack from a heavily armed group of killer robots.
Our tactical and security departments are at full alert and
Courageous is fully prepared for all imaginable contingencies.
When we rescue the Ashidi I fully intend to learn the details of what is clearly a very interesting story!
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27631.7, USS
Justice - Captain Hrular Krurin
From geosynchronous orbit above the colony site,
Justice has found the attackers. A swarm of jet-propelled invertebrates are flying around the site just outside of its shield perimeter. I believe some atmospheric explosive detonations should deter these organisms, even if handheld phasers have proven insufficient as the colonists claim.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27632, USS
Enlightenment - Captain Demari Iekn
I didn't realize sydraxians could swim so well! They kind of swish their bodies like a marine mammal, they did better than the apiata!
Fortunately, we still got everyone beamed out of the flooded mines before their air ran out. We're already hearing stories about sydraxian miners who risked their lives to save apiata, no matter what their leaders and foremen thought of each other. In the wake of the incident, both parties will be promoting some new people into leadership positions, and I can tell that a lesson has been learned. I think the negotiations should get off to a good new start now.
[Gain +5 pp]
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27632.2, USS
Justice - Captain Hrular Krurin
The air has been cleared. The colony's administrator tells me that the persistent attacks started after a marine survey mission off the nearby coast went dark, and that the initial wave of organisms were detected inbound from that coast after a search and rescue operation was sent. With the immediate situation resolved, we will be turning our eyes on the ocean now.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27632.6, USS
Opportunity - Captain Huth fop Makpol
We've made one of the stranger finds of my career on the sixth planet. Maybe that means the system deserves a proper name now, but let's not jump to conclusions. Its small though; no wonder we missed it before.
The find is what looks like a geometric stone and metal structure just sitting on a rocky mesa, only it's just sitting on the ground, not built into place on foundations. There's no sign of any advanced technology, but its emitting those subspace signals that now sound an awful lot like a badly garbled comm signal. The strangest part is that there's no other signs of construction anywhere else on the planet; most likely, this primitive-looking box-building was lowered from orbit. There doesn't seem to be much else that away teams alone can learn.
The thing is too big to beam, but with a tractor beam and a tethered shuttle we can pull it into the cargo bay for further study. If that turns out to be a bad idea, we can always blow it out into space at a moment's notice.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27633.9, USS
Courageous, Captain Zara ka'Athnon
The distress call is not coming from an Ashidi team that's on the moon's surface, it's coming
through some sort of obsidian black portal which is on the surface. I've taken a heavily defended away team to the surface to investigate.
While the science and engineering teams were setting up, Lieutenant Nixa was able to confirm that there are Ashidi on the other end of that portal, but not much more than than that.
Obviously I'm going through.
Even if this wasn't a unique opportunity with immense potential to advance the fields of archaeology and physics, there are friends in danger on the other side of that portal who need Starfleet's help!
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27635, USS
S'harien - Captain Demora Sulu
The S'harien is back in action, but we've been given a special mission before heading back toward the rim to keep exploring. Some influential actors in at least three of the largest Bajoran Diaspora colonies located near STO territory have decided to push for Federation membership, and they're being accused of treachery by more traditionalist demographics. This
should be an internal Bajoran affair, but one of these colonies has already had Starfleet help in establishing itself, another is located just within the edge of the Federation's claimed space, and the people asking for our intervention are mostly miners and traders who have been providing some non-negligible amounts of bulk resources to the Seyek and Apiata for years now.
We're going to be picking up a man by the name of Melen Riess from the remote Hajatar monastery just outside the Straits of Themis that neither the Ashalla Pact nor the Diaspora authorities have staked claim to. It's a tiny colony, but it's hundreds of years old; one of the first worlds the Bajorans set foot on during their early days of space travel. Melen was a member of the old Bajoran government who retired just before the Ashalla Declaration, and seems to be well regarded by almost every segment of Bajoran society. From what it says in the dossier that came with our orders, he's agreed to come out of his monastic retirement just one last time to help resolve this.
…
[AWAY TEAM RECORDING [STARDATE 27635.5]]
[CMDR VALENTINE] Captain! Those disruptors are pu-
[??? ] TOO LATE! THEY'RE THROUGH!
[CPT. KA'ATHNON] This way Doctor, mind the step, it's a doozy!
[DR. L'AMOUR] THIS KEEPS HAPPENING. I AM NEVER LEAVING MY SICKBAY AGAIN!!
[LT LINNAEISS] It's working ma'am!
[???] I told you, this was exactly how we did it the first ti-
[CPT. KA'ATHNON] No time doctor, we need to leave. Now. EVERYONE AFTER ME!
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27637, USS
Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin
Commodore Lee has given us a simple mission today. Extract an operative from the Oriolis system itself!
The Federation Diplomatic Service has worked hard over the past several years to cultivate informants and operatives within Dawiar space. One of them is calling for extraction with a wealth of first-hand observation of the inner workings of the Kharhazad court. This will also make them an asylum seeker, as they are not one of our surgically-modified operatives.
They cannot escape the system without being detected, and they need to cover their tracks to avoid drawing attention to our mission here. To that end, in a few days they will crash an impulse shuttle on 32 Oriolis, a dwarf planet in the kuiper belt, while remaining in orbit in a space suit while waiting for extraction. So we will have to infiltrate, but also hurry before the operative runs out of oxygen or Dawiar search and rescue, ironically, saves her life.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27637.1, USS
Justice - Captain Hrular Krurin
The flying organisms are disposable offspring produced by a much larger floating biomass whose tendrils root it to the seabed. A low-powered orbital phaser strike was sufficient to stun the mother organism and render it safe for study. Despite the initial tragedies, this may be a blessing in disguise for the colony. It now seems that the ocean floor is very rich in lithic orotanium, and this species roots itself to seabed deposits. Armed with this new knowledge, the colonists plan to use these creatures to locate more deposits while keeping themselves safe.
[Gain +15 br, +5 pp]
...
Bridge transcript, Stardate 27638, USS
Opportunity
[LT. CMDR BESSLE] Sir, report coming in from cargo bay one. The artifact just started radiating
heat.
[CPT. FOP MAKPOL] How hot are we talking?
[LT. CMDR BESSLE] Temperature began rising at a rate of 0.35 degrees centigrade per minute just a couple of minutes ago, and the rate is stil-
*alarms begin sounding*
[LT. PEH] Sir! Intruder alert! Oh wow, cargo bay one just got flooded by killer robots! That's kinda coo-
[CPT. FOP MAKPOL] Bridge to cargo bay control! Get everyone the hell out of bay one, and then open the hatch and release the forcefield. Mr. Layill, get your team to the access points and hold the line!
[Lt. CMDR BESSLE] Sir, we...we're now detecting new Starfleet comm transponders in the cargo bay. Phaser fire. Sir...call coming in from the cargo bay, patching it through.
[CPT. KA'ATHNON] Oh good, am I getting through? Which ship are we on now?
[CPT. FOP MAKPOL] OH WHAT THE (censored - CoS)
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27638.1, USS
Courageous, Captain Zara ka'Athnon
I've never had the chance to visit
Opportunity before! She had very well maintained cargo bays before the-
Sorry Doctor!
-before the Robots attacked.
Anyway, my team is currently holding off the robot attackers along with a fast reaction team from
Opportunity's security department, and we likely could shut the portal off and end the attack. That would be the safe call.
We can't do that though.
There are more Ashidi trapped in their basecamp on the other side of that portal. I'm certain that if my people can put our heads together with the Ashidi we did rescue and
Opportunity's people we can figure out a way to end the attack and save everyone! I'm certain that it can be done!
But first, I need to find an intact terminal and access USS
Pleezirra's logs.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27638.2, USS
Opportunity - Captain Huth fop Makpol
According to their xenopsych profile, the Ashidi are a cautious and risk-averse people. According to recent firsthand intelligence, they're a bunch of reckless maniacs who deliberately stole the portal to Robot Hell that Starfleet saved the Lamarck from and started poking it for no good reason. Someone at SFI needs to spend the rest of their life scrubbing plasma conduits.
Right this second though, Captain ka'Athnon and I have come up with a plan for pushing back against the only space-warping invader so far who's leg she isn't trying to hump. According to the Pleezirra's logs, these combat drones don't have the best electronic shielding; phasers set to max dispersal with a high EMP wake should work well. We're going to be leading some of Opportunity's security forces back through the gateway, rescue whatever ashidi lunatics are still alive in there, and get them back to this ship or the
Courageous.
Sounds easy.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27639.2, USS
S'harien - Captain Demora Sulu
We're going to have to speed up to warp 10. We just received word that Melen and several of his fellow monks have fallen ill, and Hajatar's doctor hasn't been able to identify the disease, let alone cure it. Hopefully, our breadth of medical experience will be enough to make up for our almost never having treated bajorans.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27640.4, USS
S'harien - Captain Demora Sulu
We've arrived at Hajatar, and Melen and the other patients are in sickbay, but the initial prognosis is...well, its not good. Dr. Argunn hasn't even been able to isolate the pathogen, let alone begin curing it. The weird thing is that he claims to have SEEN a foreign particle that he thinks could have been it, but by the time Dr. Orr came to test the blood sample it had apparently disappeared entirely, leaving everyone wondering is that even really WAS the culprit at all.
The symptoms are being controlled, mostly, but the patients' condition is still deteriorating. We need to know more about Bajoran medicine and pathology
now. Lucky us, one of the trademasters pushing for this summit is from the Themis colony of Unbroken Faith, and might be able to get us in touch with Bajor via the contacts made by the USS
Suffrage a few years ago. I think it's our best chance at this point.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27641.1 USS
Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin
We have spent the last few days hopping from system to system working our way closer to the Oriolis system. We have actually crossed most of Dawiar space -- approaching from near their Fenris colony to avoid detection from the extensive patrols that keep an eye on activity from Ollasa IV. The risk is that if we are detected, closest Federation space is right through those patrols.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27642.5 USS
Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin
The operative has called, but there is a major obstacle. CDF
Ernagot, a Kaldar II, has responded to the crash. Our operative was apparently so beloved by the ruling class that they pulled the Cardassian flagship off patrols! Also likely: the captain of the
Ernagot suspects what we are up to.
We will arrive at roughly the same time. Fortunately, the
Ernagot has poor science capabilities, which we can use to gain the upper hand.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27643.5, USS
S'Harien - Captain Demora Sulu
We've managed to get through to a major medical authority on Bajor, but the answers they gave us - or rather, the ones they were WILLING to give us - weren't as helpful as I'd hoped. There
have been outbreaks of a disease like this throughout Bajoran space, but they don't want to share it with us because the disease and its cure are both Cardassian in origin, and the penalty for sharing Cardassian medical technology with the Federation would apparently be too great for them to risk.
That does open some other doors for us, though! We might not be on sharing-medical-textbooks terms with the Cardassians, but Rear Admiral Ka'Sharren managed to recover quite a bit of general knowledge from computers captured during the Gabriel War. I'm having every spare medical technician and data analyst go through every medical document we got from them now.
The patients aren't getting any better, and now some of the colonists are starting to question the Federation's ability to protect them from similar hazards at all. I've reassured them that we WILL find the cure for this disease, and I think I managed to placate them for now, but it's not going to last forever. Especially if Melen Riess dies.
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27643.8 USS
Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin
We had drifted to right under 32 Oriolis when the
Ernagot dramatically warped in. Were this an Excelsior, it would have been only seconds before they detected our operative, and possibly us as well. Instead, their poor sensor package have us minutes to implement our plan.
Ernagot's sensors have a sweeping, cyclical refresh rate and can be can be overwhelmed by too many contacts. We used our tractor beam to stealthily incite a cyrovolcanic eruption between the
Ernagot and our operative. We used that as additional coverage between their sensor's refresh to beam out the operative. Then, we waited several hours while they examined the crash site, before reporting the charred mush of cloned organs and bones as the remains of our operative and warping out.
It was a slow work to make our way out of Dawiar space, but we managed without further incident. Our operative has good tips on how to appeal to Dawiar leadership, along with data on the brand new Dawiar cruiser, about to enter service.
[Ashalla Pact tag now 93/???]
[Khalkalhad Mk2: C4 S2 H4 L4 P2 D3, 120br 80sr, 1124kt 3yr, 3/4/2]
...
Captain's Log, Stardate 27644, USS
Opportunity - Captain Huth fop Makpol
The plan went well
enough, I suppose. The robots are a step up from surly targs when it comes to fighting, but with our plans and equipment we were able to push them back and recover the rest of the ashidi with minimal losses. Not
no losses, though. Crewmen Kel, sh'Ventrin, and Robinson gave their lives in this operation. Thanks, Ashidi.
Captain ka'Athnon and her team parted ways at the entrance to the portal leading back to the moon the
Courageous is orbiting. Those gateways are just simple stone on our side, but on whatever Delta Quadrant hellscape we just came back from they've got building-sized machines keeping them active. That's in addition to the mines, factories, and starship-scale heavy weapon emplacements, all fully automated and at least thirty thousand years old.
Before coming back through our way, we left them a photon torpedo on a ten second detonater as a going away present. Zara's idea; I think I might actually be warming up to that one. Ten seconds later, all three of the portals we know about shut down.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27644.4, USS
Courageous - Captain Zara ka'Athanon
It's good to be back on the
Courageous! Not that the alien armory wasn't fascinating. Imagine, hiding all those robots and infrastructure on a hothouse world so far from anything, and just leaving it for all those thousands of years! It's too bad that we had to destroy all the gateways for safety reasons, and that the planet is so far from the Federation that it'll be decades or more before we can find it again. Maybe someone else will have detected the explosion though, and we can share notes if we ever meet them? I hope so.
Captain fop Makpol is nice. I hope we get to have another adventure sometime. I just hope next time we don't have to lose anyone.
[Gain +10 rp, +10 Too Good to Be True tag for Ashidi (now at 60/500)]
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27647.4, USS
S'Harien - Captain Demora Sulu
There's no known Cardassian disease with symptoms like this. On top of that, the monastery's prior claims that they haven't had any Cardassian visitors who could have brought the disease in years.
Two of the patients are now in critical condition, and the rest are expected to follow within just a couple of days.
I'm getting that hospital on Bajor back on the line, no matter
how many feathers it ruffles. And I'm going to go through the Hajatar Monastery's visitor records
myself.
…
Captain's Log, Stardate 27649, USS
S'Harien - Captain Demora Sulu
THAT'S what the problem was! Apparently, on Bajor, "Cardassian" has become a euphemism for the entire senior Ashalla Pact membership. It wasn't a cardassian disease at all, it was konen!
As soon as I saw the logs of a group of konen mystics who visited earlier this year, I had our people recheck the Gabriel logs for konen medical data, and they found it. It's a psionically sensitive bacterium that's somehow managed to evolve a defense against Konen doctors trying to diagnose it; it can sense when a telepathic entity is paying attention to it, and immediately goes into hiding within the host's organelles. That's why it vanished as soon as Doctor Orr tried to look at it.
The cure wasn't in the files, but now that they know what to look for our medical staff was able to isolate the bacterium and find one without too much trouble. We do, after all, have quite a breadth of medical experience here in Starfleet. The patients are expected to recover soon enough that the negotiations will only need to be delayed a couple more weeks, and this is already being spun into a pro-Federation and anti-Cardassian talking point throughout the Bajoran Diaspora. I didn't even have to say anything.
[Gain +25 Cardassian Agitators tag (now at [87/100]), +10 pp]
