Chapter 4 - Season 3, Episode 4, Lensflare Verse
Featuring ...
Lieutenant Commander Carl Hedley Executive Officer
Lieutenant Commander Ezekiel “Zeke” Pride Flight Controller
Lieutenant Elli-Navine Chief Engineer
Lieutenant Alexander Artopolis Chief Medical Officer
Lieutenant Reeza Ral Chief Operations Officer
Apparently heading to see a captain Sindril who Carl and Ral don’t know, but they apparently discovered something, so I guess time to check it out.
Oh no! Distress signal! Standard Starfleet distress signal! Supposedly not any starfleet that far out, but who cares? International Rescue away! Thunderbirds are Go! Pretty quick, too, warp 9, that’s not to be sniffed at.
Looks like the call is coming from the Oort cloud, a tubular station embedded in an asteroid, naturally with a bunch of debris floating around hiding it sneakily. Looks vaguely starfleet, but the distress signal doesn’t identify the station.
According to sensors, the tube is for docking stuff. Not a huge station, about 300m internal diameter. No life signs, but there is organic matter. Also it’s apparently from a different reality? Seems to be a lot of that going around lately! The J.J-verse reality! Spicy!
Looks like it swapped with a similar asteroid in our universe about an hour ago. Time to nose around! Beam a drone across to make sure it’s safe-ish. Good news, everybody! The drone doesn’t immediately explode!
Unfortunately, the drone seems to struggle with doorhandles, so time to beam down some hands, and the attached people. Carl insists on wearing a space suit, and recommends that everyone else does, too.
Through the door, glaring at the drone, and into the ops room. Power seems to be on, looks familiar, but it’s all blue and stylish instead of multicoloured. Checking the records, looks like the place has been pretty active recently until recently. Seems like a high energy burst blinded sensors, then when they came back there were no lifesigns. Recognises the crew, though!
Carl interrogates the computer, since it seems to agree that he’s a big shot officer and very important, and it gives him access. Seems like the Potemkin it has on record has the same registration, built at the same time, and similar service history for the first thirty years. No dominion war or borg invasion, though. Apparently the borg were destroyed at some point, somehow? Also, the ship looks surprisingly different. It’s got an extra shuttle bay, for starters. And maybe more firepower, plus ablative armour and reinforced shields? Carl is jealous!
Also the station’s purpose is classified. But it looks like maybe some transporters or something were modified to send it here? Weird. Carl manages to trick the computer into believing that he’s the highest ranking Federation officer still alive, so clearly he should have access to the classified info, and it tells him that the station was researching methods of travelling between universes, prompted by the events of Star Trek (The modern film). Apparently there was also a coup when mirror universe people tried to infiltrate and take over? Interesting.
Apparently the station as a whole wasn’t supposed to come through, but there’s no indication of exactly what when wrong since it was all hidden by the pulse. There was a communication received just before it happened, but the communication has been deleted. Sounds like a trigger, maybe? Sent from alternate universe Potemkin! Oooooooooooooooohhhhh…
Looks like we’ve got higher access clearance than we ought to have? Looks like the crew were into some shaady stuff back in the J.J.verse. Time to get nosy!
Next room looks like cargo handling, with all crates and stuff. Most of it is food and spares, nothing all that interesting. Apparently Doritos don’t exist in the other universe, which can only be a plus! There are some bodies, though, so that’s a little macabre, and sort of ruins Carls approval. Looks like the cells are saturated with high energy particles, frying their nervous system completely. Not much more interesting, though.
Onwards! Some offices, one belonging to the station commander. Pretty standard stuff. There’s a big map on the wall, and it looks to Carl like the Federation is quite a bit bigger in this world, including Cardassian, Romulan, and Klingon space. Ferengi and Tholians seem to have a lot more territory, too, and it doesn’t seem like relationships are particularly good. There are some border stations on the federation side.
Commander has a fancy looking tricorder thing, too, which, naturally, Ral swipes immediately. Looks like the boss is the same guy who sent us into the Targ pit to do his menial work! What a douche! He wasn’t doing anything interesting when he bought it, though, just general admin. He was in charge of the flotilla that engaged the borg at unimatrix 0. ‘Twas a pretty big fleet, ten thousand or so ships, and destroyed the borg completely. Which is why he got this job. Probably just got lucky. Doesn’t seem like he was up to anything nefarious, though, unfortunately.
Heading down a corridor, looks like they planned ahead to expand this base, but it hasn’t happened yet. Get to the end, there’s an antechamber with a desk opening onto a significantly narrower corridor.
First door leads to a general-purpose science lab. Seems to be doing high energy particle research atm. They seem to be further along than our federation, though. So we copy all their gubbins and dump it onto a shuttles computer, just so we don’t accidentally connect to the Potemkin and cause shenanigans.
Next door along leads to another lab, of indeterminate purpose. Looks like it’s just a bunch of computing power, and it’s all turned off until we boot one of them up. And another door! It leads into a hydroponics room, which is somewhat surprising. Plants are all dead, though.
And then Ral notices the Potemkin out a window, much closer than it ought to be. And then Pax says a new ship has arrived and it’s jamming all communications. And then the drone says the shuttle on the landing pad wasn’t there when it arrived. Seems like alternate universe company is on the way… So that’s fun.
Third room has a circular pad on the floor, also a swirly bluey purpley warp core thing. Looks like a bunch of reality hopping gubbins we really want to get our hands on.
Also, there are lifesigns on board. They seem to be crew we recognise, but wearing the unfamiliar uniforms in marine green. Also combat armour. Not an ideal situation for the crew. Shooty people start to set up a defensive position while Elli tries to make a back door, opening up the window overlooking the landing pad.
We manage to escape on their shuttle, almost get shot by the weird Potemkin, then escape on the real Potemkin. This is definitely going to cause problems.
On examination, the shuttle seems pretty fancy. Well made, high quality components, fancy bio computer, but significantly more militaristic than our starfleet. Looks like they’re at war with the Ferengi and Tholians at the same time, and they seem to be winning. Also turns out that with their more militarised starfleet, they were able to mess up the borg pretty effectively. Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans and so on joined the Federation willingly. Also looks like there have been quite a few mirror universe incursions, which maybe explains why they were so unreasonably hostile to us.