The Academy Option (Challenger)
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"The Academy Option"
Written by Captain T'Pen
The Away team is dropped off on Olympia Station Alpha – Very Edge of Sector 12 - while the rest of the Challenger crew delivers a contingent of Marines on Hos. The Away Team is without communications with the Challenger.
Planet Class: Class F: Class F planets are typically about the mass of Earth and are in their sun's habitable zone. They are younger than the Earth, and their surfaces are still crystallizing. Their atmospheres retain small amounts of toxic gases. As these planets continue cooling they may become classes C, M or N.
Planet System: Olympus Minor
Population: Starfleet Cadet Training Facility, Various Races.
Situation: Hostage Situation
Among the members of the current Starfleet Training Academy, is the son of a well-known King, who is ailing and near death. The King’s advisories, and even members of his own council, have plotted together to kidnap (with intent to kill) the son, in an attempt to retain the existing orthodoxy: the prince is too progressive for the regimes like and a modernizer. If he is “taken care of” then the crown falls to his brother, a conservative brother of the council. .
Olympus Station Alpha is a mining facility, which until recently, strip-mined crystal ore from the planets interior. The facility has been abandoned, the owners leasing it out to STARFLEET Command, as a training area for new Cadets.
The Cadets have come here to participate in an exercise, where one of the cadets has been designated as the assassin. No one in the class knows who the assassin is. Their objective is to stay alive for a period of twelve day.
Deva Voot is not actually Caitian, but actually a Doeinian, male member of the Prince’s own race, but he’s been altered by the conspirators to look like a Caitian to deceive the Prince and Starfleet as a whole. He was assigned the part of the “assassin” for this exercise. He, with those set to kidnap the Prince, play a traitorous game of sport amongst the cadets in the facility.
The members of the U.S.S. CHALLENGER learns of the plot (or at least part of it) when it is at the station to transfer cadets and crew rotation, through an illicit communication between the plotters inside the base and the plotters outside the base. The only information the CHALLENGER crew has, is that there is a plot to kidnap, it is up to the crew to discover by whom the plot is organized and at whom it is aimed. It will be a race against time, filled with deception and espionage as the CHALLENGER crew attempts to prevent the kidnap/murder of one cadet and discover the identities of his aggressors, without causing a panic or letting the plotters know that the CHALLENGER is on to them.
Prince Jeda Brefra, incidentally, has yet to tell his classmates that he’s a prince. Especially, Cadet Heart, who he is currently courting.
Doeinian: A race of Deer-like sentient beings, who stand on their hind legs. The Male of the species grow antlers during the winter seasons, where as the Females do not. Doeinians are non-aggressive normally, but will attack when cornered. They have very poor eyesight and rely on scent as a means of navigation.