The plot thickens

The crew began back onboard the Tiberius after investigating the outpost on Cordolan IV. They decided they first wanted to study the neural parasite more closely seeing how they had a Romulan with a parasite onboard the ship. Lt. Velesa and her crew did some meticulous work and was able to device a way to remove the parasite from the Romulan for further studies.

However, before any more information could be learned, red alert sounded and the crew was called back to the bridge. A Romulan Warbird, the Decius, had returned and was believing the story about the parasites infiltration of the Romulan Star Empire. The Decius came bearing knowledge of the location of the Iconian Gateway, which they transferred to the Tiberius. Soon as the message was received, the Decius blew up! Scans concluded that sabotage was the culprit.

Before the Tiberius could act on the coordinates they had just received, systems all across the ship suddenly went dark. Before sensors went down, they detected another Warbird on an intercept course, with an ETA of 12 hours. The crew had that much time to restore power to the ship or they would be dead in the water.

The crew sprang into action and determined that a virus was beamed onto the ship from the Decius along with the coordinates. The engineer team was able to locate the files, erase them, and reboot the computer system prior to the warbird from arriving.

However, the warbird, the L'Cata, was only minutes later in arriving and demanded the Tiberius and her crew be turned over to the Romulan Star Empire for destroying the Decius. After some tense negotiation, the Commander was beamed over to the Tiberius for further discussions. It was at this time that evidence that the Tiberius was talking the truth was presented, and the Commander agreed to help with Tiberius in ridding the Empire of the parasites. Convinced that the parasites were a threat, the L'Cata's Commander left the area to consult with her superiors.

The Tiberius then made her way to the Moana system, the supposed location of the Iconian Gateway. Once in orbit around the third planet, another warbird, the Axia, decloaked and immediately fired on the Tiberius, just barely missing her. The Tiberius responded in kind, landing to hard hits onto the Axia, causing a breach to her structure and sensors. Before the Axia could fire off another blast, the L'Cata arrived and fired on the Axia, damaging her significantly enough to cause the Axia to retreat.

Captain Ral ordered an away to to investigate the human life sign (and Starfleet runabout) on the surface and to locate and destroy the gateway.

Will the crew succeed in stopping the Iconian Gateway from being activated? Or will the parasites overtake the crew? Find out in 2 weeks for the conclusion!