Meet the Neighbors

With mysteries and questions building within the Shackleton Expanse, the Tiberius set off to try to answer some of these questions:

• Are there any connections between all of these artifacts and technology they've encountered? 
• Who or what is Tilakall?
• What roll does the Romulans play in all of this? 
• And, probably most importantly, who are the XO?

After having a staff meeting to discuss these questions and how to resolve them, the Tiberius, following some intel, sought out the XO. This would take the crew deeper into the Shackleton Expanse than any Federation ship has gone. But first, the ship had to navigate a tricky patch of space, known as the Passage, that is filled with unstable gases and electromagnetic eddies. The ship, with some precision flying by Lt. Faragutt, managed to make it's way through the Passage with a cloaked escort in toe (the Mupwl'). 

On the other side of the Passage, the crew set about normal operations on the ship when suddenly the ship went into Red Alert. As the crew investigated they realized that Captain Ral was no longer onboard the ship! Sensors were jammed for approximately 3 seconds at the time of the Captain's disappearance, and only trace elements of what the crew suspected were a transporter signal were discovered onboard the ship. Outside of the ship, sensors noted a faint energy trail leading into a nearby nebula. 

As the Tiberius approached the nebula, 2 drone ships emerged and attacked. One of the drone ships, but the other was disabled. The crew was able to establish a remote link with the computer on the drone ship and transferred some data onto the Tiberius. This data provided what the crew interpreted as coordinates to a star system on the other side of the nebula. 

As they set off after the other drone ship, they were greeted by the ship. After some negotiations, the Tiberius agreed to follow the ship to the homeworld of the Xaldi in order to retrieve the captain. However, in order to get the captain back, someone would have to face the Xaldi champion (and win) in hand-to-hand combat! Lt. Commander Torc agreed, and the 2 meet inside a great arena. 

Torc ended up being victorious, but the Xaldi seemed hesitate to turn over the captain. The Xaldi started fighting amongst themselves, allowing the crew to escape to rescue the captain. The Captain was located in an underground bunker very near to the arena. However, the bunker was filled with Xaldi, and the crew had to fight their way to find and retrieve their captain.

The crew was able to make their way through the bunker and to the captain, but his life-signs were failing fast. Besides the obvious broken bones, the captain appeared to be suffering from head trauma, neurological issues, and massive bleeding. While alive, the captain needed to be transfered to the ship so the Doctor can try to save him (and the symbiont's) life. 

Will the Doctor and his team be able to save Captain Ral's life? Will the Tiberius be able to flee the Xaldi? Find out next time on the continuing missions of the USS Tiberius! 

We Are the Stars

Following the events on the Klingon colony, the Tiberius was diverted from their patrol in the Shackleton Expanse in order to assist in the evacuation of some Federation scientist and artifacts from Alpha Toryui II. The Tiberius was to rendezvous with the USS Mogami, a new Calypso class vessel, and assist in the evacuation. 

Once the Tiberius arrived into the system, standard scans were performed. The results were a little concerning as they discovered the red giant star was just hours away from going Supernova (hence the reason for the evacuation). However, as noted by the science team on the surface, this star was far too young to be going supernova. The Tiberius' sensors, upon scans of the star, found an anomalous sensor hole deep inside the the star. The crew also discovered some debris, consisting of metals normally found on starships, orbiting off-center from the star. 

Captain Ral ordered his senior staff to a conference room meeting and invited Captain Fortok (of the Mogami) and Lt. Thompson (of the science team on the planet surface) to join in to discuss the plans. Captain Fortok thought it would take about 18 hours to get the personal and artifacts off planet. However, according the Tiberius' calculations, they only had about 11 hours until the star went supernova. Lt. Thompson was being fairly adamant that he was staying until all artifacts were recovered.

After their conversation, it was decided that First Officer MacKenzie and Second Officer Torc would go to the planet and get an assessment from planet-side. Meanwhile, Lt. Commanders Foxwell (Eng.) and Wegen (Sci) were going to stay on the ship to do more research on the star. They created an advanced sensor probed and launched it into the sun to try to get more data on the star, but the results were negative. 

Meanwhile, the Tiberius' CMO Jerrynn started getting reports of headaches from about a dozen or so crew members (including himself). A quick observation noted that all of these patients had either telepathic or emphathic abilities and were all also reported hear whispers. The good doctor was able to administer some medication to everyone (including himself) to help with the symptoms, but all were declared fit for duty. 

With the sensor probe having failed, the idea was presented to link together the sensors of the Tiberius and Mogami to try to get a better look at the sensor shadow in the star. Once again, this didn't appear to have any success. While that was going on, Lt. Commander Foxwell, with the assistance of Lt. Commander Wegen, went to work adjusting the sensor emitters on the outside of the Tiberius in order to more efficiently transport the artifacts to the surface. 

On the surface, Doctor Jerrynn joined MacKenzie and Torc to see if the effects of the whispering were made better or worse by being on the planet (since there were no empaths/telepaths on the planet). The Doctor concluded the planet wasn't causing any changes, though he did note that the whispering was steadily growing louder. Also on the surface, MacKenzie and Torc were able to convince Lt. Thompson and the rest of the science teams to depart, assuring them they would be able to recover most (but not all) of the artifacts. 

As the Mogami departed, being as they were all filled up with artifacts and scientists, it was up the Tiberius to take the last couple of transports and artifacts before setting off themselves. As the last of the shuttles and artifacts arrived on the ship, the ship was rocked by a large gravimetric shock wave from the star (these have been becoming more frequent and more violent through this whole time), placing the ship in Red Alert and disabling the warp drive. Lt. Commander Foxwell was able to determine that the warp coils in the nacelles were out of aligned and that he needed hours to repair, hours in which the Tiberius didn't have. He was, however, able to produce some short-lived warp bubbles to allow the Tiberius to 'skip' out of the system in short bursts, ensuring the safety of the entire crew.

Just as the star was finally going supernova, Doctor Jerrynn (and the rest of the empaths/telepaths) suddenly were overwhelmed by the pain and sounds of the whispers (which were now more or less screams). At the moment the star went supernova, the voices finally became clear and said "Tilikaal...help us...please" and then went silent. Suddenly, with a bright flash, the star and the three planets suddenly vanished, and the Tiberius was left in relative safety (which allowed Foxwell to affect repairs on the warp coils). Also, the artifacts onboard the Tiberius at the moment of supernova, suddenly all glowed blue, with sensors and tricorders detecting tears and fractures in sub-space before they quickly healed themselves. 

Now that the Tiberius is out of harms way from the star, many questions need answering. Who or what is Tilakaal? These artifacts, is there any relationship to the artifacts of previous missions? And who or what has the capability to move entire planetary systems through sub-space and time? Not to mention the previous unanswered questions: Who is the XO and what happened to the Romulan ship Commander Sigmund discovered? 

Check back next time as the crew of the Tiberius tries to answer these questions and more!