by Daniel Li

Episode 2×5 “The Whole of the Law”
By Christopher L. Bennett
From Strange New Worlds
Airdate: August 25, 2024

Three months into a long-range survey mission, Cmdr. Sabin Trall (unjoined Trill M, Chief Science Officer) found himself looking at the same space dust day after day. USS Lexington (NCC-1709, Constitution class, Scientific and Survey Operations) was operating far out of real-time communications range with Starfleet, and finding M-class planets rare and intelligent life-forms nonexistent so far, the crew’s greatest enemies were boredom and depression. Sabin’s eyes were glazing over during Gamma Shift, as he and Cmdr. Ter’Rec (Tellarite M, Chief Engineer) supervised a number of lower-deckers getting their bridge rotations. As the Lexington approached the next survey site, a red dwarf star, the sensors detected an asteroid-shaped object of unusually high density orbiting within the habitable range.

“A possibly habitable rock?” Sabin intoned blandly, sending his sensor data to the helm. Ter’Rec, in the center seat, signaled Lt. Iban (Risian M, Flight Controller) to divert course. Lexington made a slow, methodical circuit around the object, an ellipse protected by a transparent dome and covered with terraces enclosing numerous environments and biomes. Its orbit around the red dwarf was tidally locked, with one face (the Light Face) permanently facing the sun, and the other (Dark Face) permanently facing outward toward the stars. Visual imaging showed that the environments on the Dark Face tended to be harsher, more extreme, or more polluted. The dome’s shielding blocked any more detailed scans. The outer rim between the two faces was dotted with what appeared to be docking bays and landing fields, although these were sensor-shielded as well.

As Lexington completed circumnavigating the ellipse, a hail came in, which Ter’Rec took, paging the captain to the bridge. The avian-reptilian being on the viewscreen introduced herself as Vishorasa, welcoming these guests from the United Federation of Planets to Thelema. She invited the crew to visit for shore leave and entertainment, sending landing and beam-in coordinates for Port 37 at the rim. Iban muted the transmission as Capt. Mary Birdsong (human F, Commanding Officer) arrived on the bridge, commenting that Thelema rang a bell as the name of a pseudo-religious movement founded on Earth by Aleister Crowley, which was now fairly popular on Risa. It was a libertine belief system calling for people to pursue their own calling and desire free of restrictions, as long as they did not harm others. While Birdsong exchanged first contact pleasantries with Vishorasa, Sabin looked up the library computer entries on Crowley and his Thelema new religious movement, and became quite unnerved by some of the occult implications.

Obviously, making first contact with the Thelemans fell within the mission parameters to seek out new life and new civilizations, but Birdsong was reluctant to risk a large delegation so early in the process. Cmdr. Athytti sh’Shaine (Andorian F, Executive Officer) accompanied Ter’Rec and Sabin on the shuttlecraft Woods Hole to Port 37, where a male Theleman calling himself Hamisor greeted them and escorted them through a tram system to meet Vishorasa in person. She greeted the away team and reiterated the Thelemans’ libertarian philosophy, inviting them to bring their crew for rest and recreation.

Ter’Rec asked how she knew about the United Federation of Planets and who they were. Vishorasa informed them that many guests come to Thelema from all over the galaxy, and these friends share their knowledge. Sabin noted that the promotional videos behind Vishorasa showed many alien species enjoying themselves on Thelema, including Klingons, Gorn, and Nyberrites, so the Thelemans’ understanding of the Federation likely came secondhand from those cultures. The Klingons were hostile, and the Gorn had been hostile until their big revolution a year earlier, so that did not exactly bode well for first impressions.

Athytti asked how the Thelemans ensured guests did not harm one another or otherwise violate the autonomy principle. Vishorasa explained that the Light Face included only amusements that either are harmless to anyone, or could only risk harming the participant himself. The Dark Face included combat, violence, and risk of life, but only those who consented to such risks were allowed to enter. In this way, anyone who did not consent to risk of harm was not exposed to it.

When the away team returned with these answers, Birdsong convened a senior staff meeting in the observation lounge to decide what to do. The crew desperately needed shore leave after three months cooped up in a tin can. Still, she could not dismiss Sabin and Ter’Rec’s intuition that something didn’t add up. Ter’Rec suggested issuing 48-hour liberty passes for 48 crew members at a time; this would allow the entire crew to rotate through Thelema over the course of 10 days. A lottery system would decide who got to go first, with enlisted personnel given priority and at least two officers ranking Commander or above remaining on the Lexington at any time in case a crisis occurred. Ter’Rec requested to forego the lottery and wait until the last shore leave rotation, wanting to stay aboard ship at first to make sure nothing went wrong. Birdsong elected to remain aboard as well.

Of the senior officers, Sabin and Athytti came up in the lottery for the first cohort of liberty passes. On the shuttle ride over, Athytti spotted Sabin’s pack full of books and a PADD and elicited that he was looking forward to binge reading at a beach resort near a rocky cove. As she often did at the Academy, Athytti tried to push him out of his introvert zone, and convinced him to take a sailing lesson with her at the cove in the morning before reading together in the afternoon. Ensign Samson Gao (human M, Security Officer) came over and chatted them up, missing their social cues that he was being a third wheel. Arriving on Thelema, the crew members followed the Theleman porters’ directions around the tram station to various platforms that would take them to the destinations they had chosen, walking past clearly posted warnings not to enter the Dark Face unless consenting to risk life and limb. Obeying the captain’s orders, all crew members went to the trams to the Light Face. Athytti, Sabin, and Gao stepped through the door one of the porters indicated to a Light Face tram, and as the door closed behind them, an unseen assailant blasted them with energy bursts from behind, knocking them unconscious.

Sabin regained consciousness in a jungle clearing, shaking off a pounding headache and soreness in all of his muscles which he recognized as the aftereffects of being stunned with a phaser. Athytti lay nearby and slowly regained consciousness too. There was no sign of Gao. Looking up at Thelema’s dome, Sabin saw a black sky filled with stars instead of sunlight–they were on the Dark Face. At this point, rustling in the jungle perimeter revealed three Koborode warriors wielding blades. Athytti shouted at them that they hadn’t signed up for this, but the Koborode did not believe her and two of them attacked. Athytti had to dive out of the way to avoid being chopped in half, while Sabin managed to dodge quick slashes from his assailant’s blade, only to be hit in the temple by a pommel strike and knocked out. Gao, leaving his hiding place in the brush, came flying in Bruce Lee style, flattening one Koborode with a leaping roundhouse kick and taking out the other with a three-punch combo. The third and final Koborode decided to talk instead of attacking, and believed Athytti’s insistence that there had been a mistake and they did not belong on the Dark Face. Calling himself Bovokkan, he agreed to help them reach safety so they could contact Vishorasa and escape the Dark Face.

Meanwhile, Ter’Rec oversaw the Lexington’s bridge as the shift was changing. Lt. Aisha (Risian F, Ship’s Counselor) contacted him from Thelema, reporting that Athytti, Sabin, and Gao had gone missing and all attempts to contact them or locate their communicators had failed. Ter’Rec contacted Vishorasa asking her for help, but was stonewalled. Vishorasa insisted that anyone visiting the Dark Face could only have done so with consent, and to track their whereabouts or remove them would violate their privacy and autonomy. Ter’Rec insisted that the captain had only authorized shore leave for the Light Face, to which Vishorasa retorted that guests’ choices to obey their command structure or not were their own, and not hers to enforce. Captain Birdsong arrived on the bridge and had no more luck getting Vishorasa to cooperate. However, when Ter’Rec asked how Vishorasa could be so certain that nobody could be sent to the Dark Face against their will or by accident, he surfaced a crucial piece of the puzzle: Thelema had a telepathic computer system that scanned every guest and learned his or her desires on the way in. Ter’Rec checked the library computer and noted this matched the description of the computer the Enterprise encountered three years earlier on the Omicron Delta planet, although Thelema’s computer did not seem to be equipped with the replication facilities to turn the guests’ desires into physical representations.

Finding Vishorasa unhelpful, Birdsong agreed to travel to Thelema to investigate the computer with the help of Vishorasa’s trusted subordinate Hamisor. Meanwhile, she instructed Ter’Rec to modify the Lexington’s sensor suites to penetrate Thelema’s dome so that the missing personnel could be located and beamed out. Birdsong took the Woods Hole to Thelema and met Hamisor, escorted by Cmdr. Thalon Quilar (Andorian M, Chief of Security) and Lt. (j.g.) Bagheera (Caitian M, Security Officer). As with all other guests, the away team had to surrender their weapons upon arrival before boarding the tram. Hamisor escorted them to the computer core, where Birdsong cajoled the computer into revealing the truth: The computer itself had decided to serve the desires of guests who wished to hunt and kill the unwilling by interpreting questionable consent–even contemplating for a moment what it would be like to enter the Dark Face–as sufficient consent to abduct them and use them as prey.

Hamisor drew his phaser, hoping to shoot the away team and cover up their discovery, but Bagheera responded with lighting reflexes, disarming Hamisor and knocking him out with a one-two punch. Unfortunately, Hamisor hit his head on the computer console on the way down, suffering a brain hemorrhage from the blunt force trauma. Thalon’s attempt at first aid was unsuccessful, and Hamisor died minutes later, taking whatever evidence he had with him.

Ter’Rec found his efforts to penetrate the dome with the sensors frustrated at every turn, wading neck deep in wiring in the sensor equipment and getting no closer.

Bovokkan delivered Athytti, Sabin, and Gao to what they thought would be a safe haven, only to discover it was in fact a combat arena for bloodsport. Bovokkan had betrayed them. Waiting for them was the villain from the last episode: Captain Sharama Kaladok, late of the Kavian Expeditionary Force.

The computer fed Birdsong a transmission from Kaladok: she blamed Birdsong for the casualties on her ship and the civil war on her planet, in a speech which Thalon drily commented she must have practiced too many times in the ladies’ room mirror. Kaladok had hoped to lure Birdsong to Thelema to take revenge on her personally, but if she was hearing this recording that had failed, so Kaladok would settle for taking revenge on Birdsong’s crew. The image then changed to show the arena, so Birdsong could witness Kaladok’s revenge.

The Starfleet officers had found disruptor pistols to arm themselves; the arena had only rolling sand dunes and no real cover, so with ranged weapons this resembled an execution more than a fight, which was no doubt what Kaladok wanted. She and her two Nausicaan gladiators were armed with disruptor rifles, and Kaladok went first. Kaladok took careful aim at Athytti and gunned her down before she had a chance to fire. The Nausicaans did the same with Sabin and Gao. Gao managed to remain conscious long enough to fire his disruptor, hitting Kaladok in the center of mass and killing her. The purple light of Thelema’s transporter beam grabbed Athytti, Sabin, and Gao just as the darkness claimed him.

Thelema’s hospital was able to save the lives of the three Starfleet officers, Birdsong having located them in the arena in the nick of time. With the computer system having an uncorrectable error in its ethical system, Vishorasa determined that the Thelemans would have to disassemble it and make do without it. Bovokkan, now wanted for attempted murder, turned himself in for imprisonment by the Federation rather than risk the Kavians hunting him down and killing him for his failure.

As the shore leave rotations finished, Athytti, Sabin, and Gao were stable enough to be transferred to the Lexington’s sickbay as she resumed her survey mission, though none would be fit to return to duty soon. 

Geoff: Ter’Rec, Birdsong, Gao

Fred: Sabin, Ahytti, Bagheera

Modular laboratory focus: n/a

Crew support used: 4 + 6 Threat

Lexington damage: n/a

Casualties: 3 wounded

Shuttlecraft destroyed: 0

On the next Star Trek Adventures…

2×6 “Entropy’s Demise”