Episode 2×2 “Doomsday World”
Based on the novel by Carmen Carter, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger
Adapted by Roger Taylor
Airdate: January 19, 2024

The adaptation used for this episode is available on Continuing Mission here. Thanks and RIP, Roger Taylor.

It was supposed to be relaxing.

Cmdr. Sabin Trall (unjoined Trill M, Chief Science Officer) received an invitation from his old friend and mentor Dr. Nassa Gant Coleridge to participate in an archaeological dig on Kirlos, known for the ancient and mysterious machinery that sustained its domed settlement. Sharing curiosity and also coming along were Cmdr. Ter’Rec (Tellarite M, Chief Engineer), Ensign Bagheera (Caitian M, Security Officer), and Cmdr. Athytti sh’Shaine (Andorian F, Executive Officer).

Kirlos, with its domed capital city of Kirlosia, lay along the USS Lexington’s route to its next assignment, ferrying diplomatic staff to Federation embassies at minor powers in the Sydon and Vel Fosc Sectors. Kirlos was a condominium run by the Federation and the neighboring K’Vin Hegemony. The K’Vin had once been allies of the Federation and even applied for membership in 2260, but their total and fundamental disagreement with the Prime Directive turned out to be a deal-breaker and the K’Vin withdrew their membership application in 2269, leaving suspicion and resentment on both sides.

When the shore party materialized in the transporter room of the Federation Embassy, UFP Ambassador Stephaleh made it abundantly clear that she wanted the Lexington gone as quickly as possible, since the arrival of a capital ship raised tensions with the K’Vin and sparked rumors among the civilian population of a potential military takeover. That the Lexington was a science vessel first and foremost did little to assuage these fears. K’Vin Ambassador Gregach was more polite, but noted that negotiating their visit took hours of paperwork. Stephaleh and Gregach obviously liked each other personally, despite the tense relations between their governments, and summarized the arrangements: Kirlosia was self-segregated into a Federation and K’Vin sides of down, divided by the main thoroughfare called Embassy Row; the dig site where Nassa’s team was working was on the K’Vin side of town, with the K’Vin limiting the amount and type of materials that could be removed; and although Nassa was the most recent, she was far from the first archaeologist to try to unearth the secrets of Kirlos and they had no reason to think she would be more successful than her predecessors. Kirlosia’s domed environment was kept liveable by ancient machinery that nobody seemed to understand, left behind by the ancient Ariantu Empire which held the planet thousands of years ago. Archenemies of the K’Vin before disappearing from the galaxy five thousand years ago, the Ariantu were largely shrouded in myth, with legends telling of technological power beyond imagining and terrible wars in which entire planets were hurled against each other as weapons. Records were sparse, however, and hard evidence even rarer.

Fashionably late, Nassa strode into the Embassy reception room and crushed Sabin in a bear hug. She introduced her assistant, Thul, a member of the diminutive, furry, lupine species called Sullurh indigenous to Kirlos. (The crew would take to referring to the Sullurh as “little foxes,” an affectionate nickname based on their resemblance to bipedal versions of the Earth vulpes genus.) This was Nassa’s chance to meet the other crew members, who she did not know; and for Thul to get acquainted with all of them.

The next morning, Nassa and Thul were waiting in front of the embassy with three hover bikes. Nassa leaned against her own bike with some serious attitude, prompting Ter’Rec to remark that she was his kind of woman. Nassa instructed them to follow her to the dig site and stay close, because other than Embassy Row and the Strip that bisected it, there were no straight roads in Kirlosia, and winding turns and narrow back alleys were the rule, not the exception. Transmat stations for beaming were rare, especially back from those two main streets. Ter’Rec mounted up the first bike, with Bagheera as his passenger, while Sabin drove the second bike, with Athytti hanging on to him. Nassa led them on a relatively sedate run initially, pausing in front of the Trade Hall, the ugliest and emptiest building in town. Most trade in Kirlosia was just this side of legal, so traders preferred to meet elsewhere instead of using a government-run building where nothing was private. Without warning, Nassa gunned her engine and took off again, leaving Ter’Rec and Sabin to abruptly start their engines and give chase. Nassa drove with increasing speed, recklessness, and aggression, but the Starfleet men were able to keep up, following her through a steep downward tunnel until emerging into a large chamber several miles underground, where they could park beside her. Sabin’s examination of the markings around the chamber gave him some familiarity with the ancient Ariantu language.

Nassa grandly welcomed them to Gamma Level, where her teams were excavating and where most of the machinery that maintained life support in Kirlosia was located. Passing down an uncomfortable side tunnel, Nassa led the shore party to another, ridiculously huge chamber, big enough to put the interior of Earth Spacedock to shame. Ter’Rec and Sabin examined the markings on the floor and, combined with the dimensions of the place, concluded that this must be a spaceport. Nassa agreed, but for the lack of any way in or out–even the tunnel they crawled through to get here was excavated by the previous archaeological team.

Rather humorously, on the way out, Ter’Rec spotted the Transmat room in the wall of the Gamma Level entry–they could have just beamed in from the Embassy rather than go on a hair-raising bike ride. When Ter’Rec pointed this out, Nassa quipped, “I thought you Starfleet types liked adventure.” She then passed out digging gear for them to start pitching in–after all, that’s what they came to do.

After the morning dig, Nassa took the shore party to lunch at her favorite bistro. While waiting for their food at the patio, the ground shook and they witnessed the explosion of the golden dome and spire of the Trade Hall a couple of blocks away. The shore party beat the first responders to the blast site and were able to find and rescue the three survivors of the explosion, all maintenance workers. When the first responders did show up, Sabin borrowed a tricorder and noticed traces of an explosive called poly-dichloric euphemal (PDE), a typically used in mining and sold by Pandriite traders, a number of whom are active on Kirlos. Chief Petty Officer Powell, head of the Embassy’s Starfleet security detachment, debriefed the shore party following this incident before releasing them to clean up and recover.

All four were refreshed and dressed when Nassa arrived to take them out and blow off some steam. Their first stop was Busiek’s, at the intersection of Embassy Row and the Strip. While jockeying for space near the bar, Sabin noticed Gezor, the Sullury assistant to K’Vin Ambassador Gregach, meeting with several Pandriite traders at a nearby table, and overheard references to a deal involving illicit goods and pointing to Gezor’s involvement with the Trade Hall bombing. Gezor then got up and left the building, forcing the shore party to improvise some tradecraft to tail him. Athytti and Bagheera kept him in line of sight, with Sabin and Ter’Rec hanging back and able to follow the two of them.

Gezor led them deeper and deeper into the K’Vin side of town along Embassy Row, toward the K’Vin Embassy, which aroused Bagheera’s suspicions as they passed a number of Transmat platforms. He questioned why Gezor was walking when he could just beam to his destination–something felt deeply wrong and uncomfortable. A block from the Embassy’s gates, Gezor stumbled and dropped something. When Athytti recovered the object and showed it to Ter’Rec, it was very obviously a vial of PDE with a detonator attached. At this moment, one of the automated gun turrets atop the K’Vin Embassy exploded. Ilugh, the K’Vin Embassy’s chief of security, arrived almost immediately with several of his troops and placed the shore party under arrest.

Inside the K’Vin Embassy, Ambassador Gregach had been awakened by the blast and questioned the shore party. Athytti told him the truth and tried to make him aware of Gezor’s involvement. Though skeptical, Gregach was persuaded that there was enough doubt not to press charges, and they were lucky that no one war hurt. However, they had been caught with explosive device they should not have had, in a part of town where they did not belong, near a terrorist attack in progress. Consequently, the shore party were permanently banned from the K’Vin zone and Ilugh beamed them directly back to the Federation Embassy for a dressing-down from Ambassador Stephaleh.

Zamorh, Stephaleh’s Sullurh assistant, cautioned her that there could be a plot against the Federation or against her personally, and urged her to declare martial law and prepare Federation citizens to evacuate. Stephaleh refused, since Gregach had not declared martial law in the K’Vin zone and she did not want to escalate the situation further. The shore party then retired to their quarters for the evening, at a loose end since being banned from the K’Vin zone would end their participation in Nassa’s dig. However, Sabin found a handwritten note from Nassa under the door of his quarters, asking him to meet her at the Ariantu Museum at 1000 hours the next morning.

Sabin went ahead of the others to meet Nassa, and she took him to the basement of the museum. She explained that the museum displayed everything the K’Vin and Federation knew about the ancient Ariantu, and she had a surprise to show him. Before she could share it, a bomb obliterated the side of the museum, knocking Sabin off his feet and throwing Nassa like a ragdoll and dropping rubble on top of her. Nassa suffered severe internal injuries and, fading out of consciousness, told her deceased husband she would see him soon. However, Sabin grabbed a first aid kit from the bathroom and was able to stabilize Nassa, saving her life.

At street level, Athytti, Ter’Rec, and Bagheera had arrived at the museum on foot just as the blast took place. Thul staggered out of the museum, his fur on fire, crying “Nassa! Nassa!” Bagheera smothered the flames with his body, saving Thul’s life.

Nassa and Thul had to be taken to the hospital for further treatment. The shore party was recalled to the Federation Embassy where they received more bad news. Protestors were assembling outside the Embassy, growing in number hour by hour, demanding answers and declaration of martial law. A group of Federation merchants who met with Zamorh the previous night were poisoned and killed, leaving some of Stephaleh’s staunchest supporters dead and the Federation civilian community in Kirlosia effectively leaderless. The next morning, the K’Vin Embassy reported that six soldiers from Ambassador Gregach’s bodyguard detail were also poisoned to death by a plethane gas leak in the barracks wing. The leak was suspicious and foul play suspected. The soldiers’ deaths prompted Gregach to change his mind and declare martial law in the K’Vin zone and request reinforcements from his homeworld. A K’Vin warship was now enroute to Kirlos to restore order. USS Lexington was also on her way back to Kirlos.

Stephaleh, in despair and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, wondered how the situation could have deteriorated so quickly when she and Gregach are friends and trust each other. Zamorh again counseled martial law in the Federation zone and evacuation of Federation citizens. Evacuation was out of the question–there were over 250,000 civilians, Federation and Sullurh alike, living in the Federation zone and even once the Lexington returned there was nowhere near enough shipping available to move them all. As for martial law, Stephaleh asked the shore party for advice, and they concluded it would not be possible or even desirable to enforce martial law. Except for the few dozen guards around the embassy, there was no organized Starfleet or military presence to enforce martial law. Even once the Lexington arrived, her security force would be totally inadequate to control such a large civilian population.

Stephaleh went out onto the balcony and addressed the protestors, urging calm and giving her reasons for refusing martial law. This attempt failed miserably. Rather than calming the crowd, Stephaleh’s address instead angered them to storm the embassy gates and scale its walls. Starfleet’s security guards, firing on area stun, were able to subdue the first wave, but the second wave simply rushed and overwhelmed them and continued on into the grounds and the Embassy itself. The shore party found themselves in urgent need of an escape route.

Nassa briefly called Sabin’s communicator, instructing him to get to the roof. The four shore party members avoided the mob storming the Embassy’s hallways and stairs, instead climbing the exterior walls to reach the rooftop. Nassa met them on the roof with a hovercraft truck, flying them away from the Federation Embassy. The escape was short-lived, however, as a pair of K’Vin fighter-interceptors launched from the spaceport and appeared on either side of the truck, capturing it in a tractor beam and dragging it down to the landing pad on the roof of the K’Vin Embassy. Ter’Rec snarked that this was why he never took shore leave, to which Nassa retorted, “Come on, this is better than technical journals.”

An unfriendly reception awaited on the landing pad. Ilugh and his troops stormed up the loading ramp and stunned the occupants without even saying hello.

When Nassa and the shore party came to, they were in a dungeon. Clearly disused and in musty, its construction did not match the Embassy building above. Nassa concluded this must be an original Ariantu construction, and the K’Vin simply built their embassy atop the existing ruins. Sabin and Ter’Rec examined the room, looking for an exit strategy, and found a slab in the floor that was separate from the surrounding rock. They were nearly caught as the K’Vin guards also threw Thul into the dungeon with them just as they were examining the slab’s location. The four Starfleet officers managed to pool their strength and lift the slab, revealing a passage straight down, but the awful noise alerted the guards, who could be heard running in the hallway outside. With time short, Athytti first sent the civilians, Nassa and Thul, down the shaft to safety first; then Sabin and Ter’Rec. Then the K’Vin guards threw open the cell door and burst in, disruptors at the ready. Bagheera shouted at Athytti to go, dropped to all fours, and pounced on the nearest two guards, their shots going wild as he tackled them with a roar. Athytti dropped down the shaft, leading the others down a modern and well-lit corridor and away from the sounds of Bagheera’s struggle with the K’Vin troops.

At the end of the corridor was a large turbolift, programmed apparently with only one destination. To get away from the K’Vin, there weren’t other options. The turbolift took them to what Nassa and Thul recognized as the legendary Omega Level, center of Ariantu technology for the entire planet. While Ter’Rec found the armory and broke through its security measures, Athytti and Sabin activated the computers and discovered the Ariantu records, proving that the legends were not exaggerating how fearsome and powerful the ancient Ariantu were. Among other things, the Ariantu used space-folding shunt drives to teleport their ships from place to place, explaining the underground spaceport on Gamma Level. There was little time for a deeper examination, as sensor readings showed several small ships in orbit of Kirlos firing on the civilian freighters there, destroying some and scattering the rest. Then the turbolift opened again, with Ilugh and more of his troops arriving and taking them back into custody.

This time, when Ilugh left them in the cell along with the badly-beaten Bagheera, a transporter beam grabbed them, and they materialized in the transporter room of the Federation Embassy, now thoroughly trashed. Stephaleh and Powell were waiting there. Powell’s people at the spaceport tracked the truck’s capture and descent to the K’Vin Embassy, so it was not hard to figure out where they were. Once the mob was done with its vandalism and moved on, Powell was able to restore the transporter and beam them out. The good news was that the mob violence appeared to have subsided. The bad news was that those ships in orbit are the Ariantu returning to claim Kirlos. Stephaleh already tried to contact the Ariantu twice and was rebuffed, and now they will not take her calls. Sabin and Ter’Rec analyzed the data from the space battle overhead and noted that, while the Ariantu fighter-bombers might be able to shoot up commercial freighters with impunity, they would have no change in a fight with a capital ship, two of which will be arriving soon (the K’Vin warship and the Lexington). Athytti decided to play for time until those reinforcements could arrive and drive away the Ariantu, and opened a channel to the Ariantu paac mother. Offended, the Ariantu scoffed at Athytti and ended the transmission without a word. Powell then noted that the Ariantu had just jammed all communications in and around Kirlos.

Something didn’t add up, so Ter’Rec and Sabin realized that the small Ariantu fighters could not possibly have the ability to jam communications throughout the system. They also noticed that unlike Nassa, Thul was not with them, and Powell confirmed that Thul was not beamed out of the dungeon with them nor was his life sign detected there during the rescue. In fact, there were no Sullurh present or visible anywhere in the Embassy or out on the streets. Athytti concluded that the Sullurh had betrayed them and were probably responsible for the jamming.

The Embassy’s sensors showed that the K’Vin warship and the Lexington had finally arrived in the system and were nearing Kirlos, when the planet itself went into violent seismic tremors, and a wormhole appeared in the system and began growing rapidly. The K’Vin warship and the Lexington, as well as the nearby Ariantu fighter-bombers, were caught in its gravity well and being pulled in. At this rate, in a few hours, Kirlos itself would be pulled out of orbit and sucked through the wormhole. Sabin and Ter’Rec were able to figure out that the planet’s tremors were only a side effect of the wormhole’s gravitational pull on the planet, and since there was nothing outside the planet that could have generated an artificial wormhole, the cause must be inside the planet. The obvious suspect was the Omega Level control room.

Now carrying standard Starfleet phasers, tricorders, and communicators furnished by Powell, the shore party hurried back to the transporter room. Nassa insisted on coming too, since she was the closest thing to an expert on Ariantu machinery they had. The five of them beamed into the K’Vin Embassy and found it deserted, making for an easy trip back through the dungeon and turbolift to Omega Level. There they found Thul alone and sobbing in the control room. While Nassa checked on Thul, the Starfleet personnel checked on the controls. This confirmed that the Ariantu machinery under Kirlos was generating the wormhole, and that wormhole was a passage. Once fully open, it would be large enough for a planet to travel through, and the target was the K’Vin homeworld. Kirlos was on a collision course that would annihilate the K’Vin homeworld and its 5 billion inhabitants.

Athytti decided the best and fastest course of action was to use the controls to shut down the wormhole generator, since the physical equipment was buried all over the planet, deep within the crust, so trying to destroy it all was not practical. Destroying the computer system might stop the wormhole, but it might also cause the machinery to overload or respond unpredictably, and would remove the very controls the shore party would need to stop it. So, with help from Thul reconstructing what the elders did to turn on the wormhole generator, and Sabin helping with his rudimentary grasp of the Ariantu language, Athytti attempted a shutdown sequence on the controls. The first attempt was rejected; in the time that took, the K’Vin warship was ripped apart and destroyed by gravimetric shear as it was sucked into the wormhole. On the second attempt, Athytti was able to bypass the security lockout and shut down the wormhole generator, saving the Lexington from a similar fate. The wormhole collapsed and disappeared, and Kirlos returned to its normal orbit.

At the Federation Embassy, Ambassadors Stephaleh and Gregach, along with Capt. Birdsong (human F, Commanding Officer), debriefed the shore party and listened to Thul explain what had happened. The Sullurh were an offshoot of the Ariantu race (Sullurh means “those who stayed behind” in the Ariantu language), left behind to look after Kirlos and its doomsday device when the Ariantu abandoned the planet. Last year, the Ariantu sent agents among the Sullurh to proclaim their return and recruited Sullurh to manipulate and provoke the Federation and K’Vin into a war which would evict the Federation from Kirlos, leaving the planet open for the Ariantu to come back and resume their war against the K’Vin. Although Thul begged them not to, the Sullurh elders followed the Ariantu paac mother’s instructions and activated the doomsday device to destroy the K’Vin homeworld once and for all, at the expense of destroying Kirlos itself.

Security teams from the Lexington deployed in coordination with K’Vin troops and apprehended the Sullurh elders who conspired with the Ariantu to perpetrate the terrorist bombings and use of the doomsday device. Gezor appears to have been the ringleader. The Ariantu paac mothers were captured when the Ariantu ships surrendered to the Lexington. Both Ambassadors requested Birdsong help them mediate the future arrangements for Kirlos: the K’Vin rightly see the wormhole generator as a knife to their throats, and insist on it being disassembled, the Sullurh will need new leadership, and the Federation, K’Vin, and Sullurh will need to jointly figure out how any surviving Ariantu might be allowed to settle on Kirlos, with infighting between different ship-clans posing a challenge. The Lexington will be here awhile dealing with these issues. The good news is that the Federation-K’Vin condominium over Kirlos will continue, and cooperatively deactivating the doomsday weapon on this planet will help restore trust between the two powers.

Nassa and Ter’Rec, both admittedly blunt and lacking in social skills, beamed up to the Lexington’s crew lounge to bond over their shared loves of scotch, dieselpunk technology, and driving really fast.

Athytti teased Sabin that it was fun to ride with him again, and she had forgotten he could do that. He admitted that he had too. However, deciding they’d had enough adrenaline and thrills for one day, they linked arms and went out for a walk.

Geoff: Ter’Rec, Athytti

Fred: Sabin, Bagheera

Modular laboratory focus: n/a

Crew support used: 4

Lexington damage: n/a

Casualties: 0

Shuttlecraft destroyed: 0

On the next Star Trek Adventures…

2×3 “Darkness”