Star Trek: Emergency Deep

S01E09 “Orbital Manoeuvres in the Dark”

S01E09 Orbital Manouevres in the Dark title card

• Stardate: 58563.9, 26th July 2381.
• Location: Gondolin Station, Cor Caroli III

Previously on Star Trek: Emergency Deep.

From Gondolin Station

After taking time to recover from Andorian Death Fever, Commander Morpheus Drake returns to the Östergötland as her primary Conn Officer. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Saladin Chau, who tended to Drake, also returns to the ship from Gondolin Station‘s infirmary.

In the meantime, Captain Greg Ellison tasks Drake to organise a memorial for Lieutenant JG Velek & Specialist 1st Class Randall Loomis. They were both killed by the Orion whalers along with the shuttle Mälaren in Trychnos orbit. Drake holds the memorial in the hangar bay.

After the memorial, Capt Ellison receives a message from Admiral Kathryn Janeway. She informed him that she will look into the Romulan operative Qaenlahr with the Orion whalers, along with his involvement with the Ellison siblings. How did Qaenlahr know of Ellison and his sister Commander Sally Ellison?

Chief of Operations Lieutenant Commander Tosk the Studious has been monitoring the new Cetacean Ops modifications and the delivery of the new Type-8w and Type-9w shuttlecrafts, The new small crafts would also be submersibles like the Östergötland. They would allow the crew to explore a greater area of an ocean. Another new modification to the ship itself is the installation of Digital Operation Tools robots. These DOTs would be able to repair the ships in locations that would be too dangerous for organics to reach and even carry out extra-vehicular repairs immediately.

DOT-7s

With all modifications and repairs complete, the Östergötland prepares to return to Trychnos to investigate the cloaked objects in orbit. They are navigation hazards that has collided with Orion blockade runners and the Federation cargo ship SS Takoyaki. What are the ships bumping into?

To Trychnos

Before they leave, Captain Ellison contacts Gondolin Station’s commanding officer Lieutenant Commander Ola Piotrowski. Ellison announces that he would not be choosing any of the three Executive Officer candidates. Instead he will field-promote Morpheus Drake as Acting Executive Officer. Because of this, Ensign Kithrup is promoted to Alfa Shift Conn Officer. Kithrup gladly accepts the position and swims into the new Conn tank, beside Tosk’s station.

With Lt. Cmdr. Piotrowski’s permission, the Östergötland departs, setting a course for Trychnos.

Upon arrival off Trychnos, Drake expresses his belief that there are more than one cloaked orbiting object. They go to Yellow Alert. Using data downloaded and decrypted from the captured Orion Lightning-type starship, Tosk plots the exact coordinates where the cloaked objects collided with the Orions months earlier. From Tosk’s figures, the nearest collision occurred in orbit at the south polar region.

En route, Östergötland experiences a violent collision. Ellison falls and is knocked out cold.

Bridge of the Östergötland

Drake then becomes acting Captain and calls a med team to the bridge. At the Ops Station, Tosk scans and detects an invisible meteor falling into the Trychnos atmosphere from orbit. With Kithrup piloting, they chase after the invisible meteor, the object that they crashed into. The Östergötland swoops in towards the fiery projectile.

Then with Tosk’s sensor scans to aid him, Drake grabs the object with a tractor beam from the captain’s chair controls. Kithrup levels their descent and maintains altitude at 20 km. After taking a minute to catch their breath, Drake orders Kithrup to ascend to low orbit.

Tosk runs a sensor scan on it and pulls up the readings on the main viewscreen.

The Discovery

Although invisible, the tractor beam’s graviton projection interacting with the object’s structure, allows them to scan it. They discover it to be a tritanium-like cylinder 20 metres length. Then, Petty Officer 1st Class Isaac Brosch – the Landing Signal Officer – pulls it into Shuttle Bay 2. Drake and Tosk rush there, leaving Dr. Chau’s medical team to treat the unconscious Captain Ellison.

Tosk, familiar with the technology, disables the cloaking module. The cylinder turns visible. Tosk finds the controls and popped the cylinder open. Inside are five dormant Tosks, sleeping under cyrogenic suspension! The cloaking device, Tosk notes, is NOT Romulan in origin, but an old Gamma Quadrant design. What were five Tosks from the Gamma Quadrant doing in orbit around an uninhabited planet in the Alpha Quadrant? How did they get there?

There are shuttle bays one and two

But before they could proceed, five Orion Lightning-type whaling ships drop out of warp at a distance and accelerate towards Trychnos. Going to Red Alert, Drake orders the ship to hide at the far side of Trychnos and suggests they use the Tosks’ sleeping cylinder’s cloak to render the Östergötland  invisible.

As  the dolphin flies them over the horizon and out of sight, Tosk tells Kithrup, “Better to die than live as a captive.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Notes:

• The reason the Captain was knocked out was because the player fell asleep while playing on Discord. No complaints. Sometimes players could be more exhausted than they think.