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The Dying of the Light (Gorkon)

2401, Episode 24
USS Gorkon
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ACTIVE STATUS
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THE CREW
THE MISSIONS
THE SHIP
BEHIND THE SCENES
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Sovereign class
NCC-82293

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The Tyrellian Sector Saga
Gorkon Mission History
Previous Missions · Crew Logs
Overview Individual Missions
2393 A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
2394 Old Hatreds · The Silver Function · The Devil's Expanse · Telutho'kai
2395 Hvei'khenn · Sweet Dreams Are Made of This
2396 The Njörðr Incident · Operation Sea Devil · Together in Electric Dreams
2397 Serpent Heart, Flowering Face · Welcome to Dinosauria · Operation Q-Ball
2398 What Do Boys Dream · The Pelian Brief
2399 Shadows of the Rift · Rogue World
2400 Fight the Power · Shadows in the Temple
2401 The Dying of the Light
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The Dying of the Light

  • Stardate 240103.21 to Present

The Gorkon has arrived at Depot 39, a secret Starfleet installation hidden inside a nebula. The facility has experienced an unusual crime; a high-ranking officer has stolen classified items and fled, leaving absolute chaos in his wake. As neutral parties experienced in dealing with unusual situations, the Gorkon’s crew has been called in to assist base staff in investigating the theft.

Locations

  • Depot 39 Corridor

  • Assimilated Planet, New Cyndriel

  • Nassau, Ma no Umi


Depot 39

Act One:

  • Theft: A ship of some kind has been stolen, according to an eyewitness. However, the databases containing all the information on the ships and items stored in the depot have been corrupted, and exactly what is missing is currently unknown.
  • Sabotage: To facilitate the theft, Johnson (and accomplices, perhaps) has sabotaged several areas of the station, taking some systems offline, disrupting others, and booby trapping yet more.

New Cyndriel

  • Lost to the Borg: New Cyndriel, originally a peaceful colony of some many millions, a popular destination for sunseekers, outdoorists, and artists who came to enjoy its unspoiled beaches, forests, and landscapes. Now assimilated by the Borg, and the shell of its former beauty. Instead dull, polluted and sickly looking.

Nassau

Act Two:

  • Nassau is a massive rogue asteroid within Ma No Umi. Once a base of operations for the Orion Syndicate, it now houses the survivors of the Borg conquest. Its erratic path through the plasma storms and gravitational anomalies of the region makes it very difficult to find, and the Borg do not seem inclined to bother. To provide protection from even the worst plasma storms, the base itself is located in the tunnels and caverns deep below the asteroid's crust.

Unimatrix Seventeen

Act Three:

  • Minimal internal security; the prevailing theory is the Borg believe it’s not required because of the low chance of infiltration and a reliance on the drones;
  • A half-built sphere with a time travel drive is docked with the Unimatrix; it’s unclear if it’s a build in progress or one abandoned once it became obvious it wasn’t necessary.


Notable Characters

So far:

  • Commodore Daffyd Johnson: A human man in his late 50s/early 60s with greying auburn hair, pale, freckled skin and blue eyes. He has two children, a son and a daughter. He was a well-regarded Starfleet officer with a career spanning over thirty years, trusted to oversee one of Starfleet’s most secret facilities. His whereabouts are unknown.
  • The Nassau survivors found the ruins of his camp a few years back. Evidence suggested he destroyed it to prevent the Borg from assimilating any of the tech and knowledge from the Prime timeline. From the scraps they could salvage, it appears the Omega Borg timeline was not the change he had hoped to make.
  • Captain T’Veran: A Vulcan woman of unknown age, with soft, gentle features and tawny skin. She has a respectable, if mostly administrative, career. She was last seen midway through her normal shift, several hours before the “nighttime” theft.
  • Richwine: A Depot 39 Officer.
  • Kael Tam: Dead in the Prime timeline. An unjoined Trill in his early 50s. In the Gorkon’s home timeline, he was killed in action aboard the ship. He is the leader of the survivors gathered in Nassau.
  • Lena Josett: An ex-Borg Bajoran/Cardassian woman. In the Gorkon's home timeline, Lena was away from the ship and as such was not caught in the event horizon. In the Johnson Timeline, she was once an assimilated drone, now living amongst the civilians of Nassau.


Mission Summary

Click sub-headings below to expand or collapse.

Act One: The Winter of Our Discontent

The Gorkon has divided into four away teams with unique goals and objectives. In Act 1, they must each carefully navigate a station potentially full of booby traps and officers loyal to the charistmatic commodore. With limited information due to the highly secretive nature of Depot 39, it won't be so straight forward. But the end goal is clear: find out who is involved, where they are and why they are involved, so that Johnson and the stolen ship can be tracked down.

Decipher

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Locate

  • Locate (arrest?) the possible accomplice—initial investigations showed that the commander of the facility, Captain T’Veran disappeared several hours before the theft. She and the Commodore were known to be close friends, and she is wanted for questioning.

Arriving at Depot 39 and weary of any traps that they might come across, the team consisting of Neathler, Finch and Whitlock headed towards Captain T’Veran’s quarters to search for any clues where the missing Vulcan was hiding. A half-empty cup filled with a beverage and an abandoned game was all they found at first sight. After the arrival of Sienelis, their investigation revealed some Vulcan blood, some traces of DNA and that one of the latest appointment was with someone with the initials C.P.

They met the exhausted Chief Medical Doctor with those exact initials, in sickbay. It took some persuading before the man confirmed that the blood found was that of Captain T’Veran who also had acquired a medkit from sickbay. Following more leads on the blood, revealed a secret cabinet leading to a hidden passageway. The team entered the passageway, only to find a deadly trapped corridor at the end, which Whitlock activated in his haste. Crossing a horizontal ladder, Sienelis disabled the trap following the shouted instructions from Finch at the other side of the corridor.

It was here that, for a reason still unknown, T’Veran revealed herself to the team and led them to another dark room where they came to the agreement, the team would take the captain to the safety of the Gorkon. Thus T’Veran showed them the way to the cargo bay and its transporter. - by Samira Neathler.

Investigate

Tahna Meru, Ayiana Sevo, Gnaxac, and Isabelle Basilia investigated the Commodore's tactics on board the station. From physical evidence and logs in the security center, they determined the Commodore had spent months learning and coordinating the station's security response. In tracing a path he might have taken (and despite nearly getting spaced by a trap on the way there) they found a secret room where he'd stashed equipment he intended to use for the heist, including a PADD loaded with a complex virus. In ops, they were able to look into the PADD further, determining it simulated a security breach and gave anyone using the PADD access to the station's computers while they were locked down during the security breach. 

In an attempt to trace other PADDs with the virus on the station and uncover potential accomplices, they made their way to the science wing. There, they found the Commodore had stolen a prototype Molecular Phased Mineral Extractor, which could allow him to steal things without even having to break a lock, and a potentially incriminating data chip. They returned to the Gorkon to confirm their findings. - by Tahna Meru.

Repair

  • Repair the damage done—Johnson corrupted computer logs, took systems offline, and possibly left booby traps to enable his escape and cover his tracks. Make the facility safe and secure again.

The repair team of zh’Tisav, Stoyer and Bowers began at the stations main computer core. After finding a monitoring device, they used it’s design to develop a rudimentary program by which to detect the traps left behind by the Commodore. They realized they wouldn’t be able to repair the computer directly, and moved on through the stations dark maintenance corridors.

They safely circumvented one trap, only to set off an explosive one while trying to access a subprocessor, barely making it out alive. After making emergency repairs to the fire supression system as well as the plasma distribution system the team made their way to the stations lounge, where they located another bomb. This time they were able to neutralize the trap and enact some much needed repairs.

Their quest to repair the station next led them deeper into the station to the shuttlebay deck. Two of the stations personnel followed them there, trapping them on malfunctioning gravity plating. They confronted the suspicious pair, learning they were following them on the Commodores orders, andtook them into custody. One was sent to the Gorkon’s brig while the second remained as the teams “minesweeper.” They continued fighting through the Commodore and his lackey’s traps to finish their repairs by restoring the main computer to a functional state. - by Vylaa zh'Tisav

First Interlude

"After our time on Depot 39, our intrepid heroes have put right some of Johnson’s sabotage and discovered some of his plans. Alas, but too late—the Gorkon arrives just a fraction too late to stop him using his temporal device. Caught in its wake, they watch the universe change in front of their eyes into one conquered entirely by the Borg." The Federation is gone, and the Gorkon is the last bastion of a time which never happened. In this interlude, the crew must process and reconcile their new reality, in different locations across the ship.

Act Two: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

"But I am going to tell you that you’re not alone. We’re a crew, and we’re a crew who can, and have, achieved the impossible. We will find a way to undo the damage Johnson has done, and we will get home to our families and friends. That’s a promise we make right now, to ourselves, to everyone on this ship, and all those absent who we hold in our hearts." - Quinn Reynolds

The Gorkon is under attack from a Borg Cube, holding her own as best as she can, though she has taken at least one severe blow. In Act 2, the engineers must work together to repair the warp core that has gone offline, as the bridge directs the ships defense with limited options. One team will safeguard civilians, and another prepares for Borg intruders.

Bridge

Grappling with an offline warp core, and quickly adapting Borg, Quinn Reynolds directs the bridge accordingly. Using tactics such as evasive maneuvers, tactfully deployed probes, and considering decoys such as meticulously timed shuttle explosions, the team were up against it. With drones being launched from the Cube, landing onto the hull of the Gorkon in an unprecedented move, Helmsman Cory Stoyer continued to weave and heave the ship, forcing the intertial dampeners to play catch up. With a suggestion by Rahkmar to reverse the polarisation of the hull, later used though with not enough of a result, Reynolds suggested sending an electric current through it instead; Ayiana Sevo zapping into quick work, the majority of drones were shaken off. Eventually, the arrival of four ships, Romulan, Klingon and Cardassian in origin, led by Kael Tam appeared, greeting the ship with a data packet containing crucial EMP information to disable those drones that had intruded the lower decks, the final nail in the coffin for the Borgs initial invasion. - by Doz Finch

Corridors

While handing out melee weapons to security teams on deck eleven, the team of Neathler, Taelon, Finley and Farvor detected signs of nanoprobes that led them to a Borg node on deck ten. Making sure the node was no longer connected to any of the Gorkon’s computer systems, the node was transported to a closed cybernetic lab where the team went in lockdown.

A machine, setup by lieutenant Taelon, dissected the node piece by piece and the team discovered it was constructed from materials mainly coming from species from the Alpha Quadrant. During the ship’s bumpy ride, Borg drones managed to get onboard and lifting the lockdown, the team went to stop them.

Their journey took them to the daycare where they encountered and killed two Borg drones, only to discover they were former crew members. More Borg signs were detected at Sto’vo’kor and just after the team engaged with the Borg, a pulse disabled the drones, leaving the team behind to do the clean up. - by Samira Neathler.

Science Labs

Lieutenant Commander Tahna Meru along with Ensigns Nera Ay, Vesela Pace, and Solkon led the charge in locating civilian scientists and family of crewmembers trapped in the science labs on the lower decks, including Lieutenant Vylaa zh'Tisav's daughter. The group encountered blown conduits and a raging fire on Deck 17, which they successfully put out before locating the civilians in a series of wrecked labs. With the civilians in tow, the group relocated to a storeroom on Deck 18, away from the action, and borrowed a few Bajoran resistance tactics to set defensive traps for the Borg along the way. With no Borg detected on their deck and battles raging overhead, the group used the Gorkon's computers to send out false life signals to lure Borg on the upper decks to less populated areas of the ship. Ultimately four civilian casualties were reported from the science labs, with three others transported to sickbay for treatment. - by Tahna Meru

Main Engineering

With the warp core offline, due to a crack in the intermix chamber established during the fight, as well as damaged dilithium crystals, Lieutenant Gnaxac climbed inside to launch immediate repairs. Lieutenants Vylaa zh'Tisav and Doz Finch arranged his equipment as fires and other mechanical issues raged in their vicinity, leading to at least one fatality. Although tumultuous, the core was fixed, but the reinitialisation delayed as they discovered a second microfracture. To prevent fatigue, Finch and zh'Tisav swapped places with Gnaxac and with use of sealant and a welder, worked quickly to repair it a second time, doing so in difficult heaving conditions as the ships inertial dampeners struggled to keep up with its violent thrust manoeuvres.

Once the core was brought back online, they tracked its progress meticulously, disturbed soon after by the arrival of drones that had infiltrated their deck using unknown micro-transportation technology. A deadly skirmish ensued. With blades, Finch defended Gnaxac from a wandering drone, as zh'Tisav and a security team took on the rest. Once the core was secured and safe again, an EMP reverberated throughout the decks, setting conduits and consoles ablaze in Main Engineering, adding the next stage to their Damage Control: Firefighting. - by Doz Finch

Second Interlude

After a desperate battle with the Borg, the crew of the Gorkon have discovered a tiny ray of hope. Survivors, eking out an existence in the former home of pirate lords: Ma no Umi.

Act Three: As the World Caves In

Despite valiant efforts from many, no one had identified the event—or series of events—Johnson had changed. It was the single most important piece of information they needed; without knowing what he had altered, there was no way to undo it. All the research pointed to a single source of truth, the sole well of knowledge: a Borg Unimatrix. And so here they were, trying to pull a data heist in the very heart of the Collective. - From Vice Admiral Quinn Reynolds - As the World Caves In.

Seeing no alternative route, specialised away teams are dispatched to a certain Unimatrix Seventeen, with the goal of uncovering the specific data containing the turning point of the timeline, to enable them to find some way of restoring it. Infiltrating the complex will involve a number of different meticulous tasks — exfiltrating the historical information, sabotaging the unimatrix's systems, creating diversions to distract any active drones in the area, and stealing a half-built sphere as their conduit to the past.

Data Exfiltration: Unimatrix Seventeen

  • Recover the historical information required — but the node it’s stored within is physically hard to access, and they’ll need to overcome various obstacles to reach it.

As the Data Exfiltration Team prepared for the task ahead on Unimatrix Seventeen, Lt. Commander Tahna Meru noted the minimal security as strange, to which Lt. Commander Greg Aegam confirmed bringing a number of explosives for their potential use. Moving through the complex, they came upon one of the doors through which the "unusual architecture" as described in their brief was expected, and Pace immediately set to work, forcing the doors into maintenance mode in order to get them open. It was upon opening the doors that intense heat barrelled out and innards of the room revealed in the form of an ever-changing series of platforms at odd distances. Putting their heads together, Tahna pondered whether or not there was a pattern to the moving platforms, whilst Aegam suggested moving over to one — that is until the platform dropped violently and turned upside down, causing all of them to rethink their options on how to get through the obstacle course. Thinking back to the Gorkon's last battle with the Borg, Tahna remembered the drones launching themselves onto the hull, and considered whether or not turning the gravity off in the room in a sort of emulation of that event was a possible solution. The room, perhaps spurred on by their presence, then reacted anyway, prompting all platforms in the room to come to a complete stop. It was Pace then who tested the nearest platform by throwing a tricorder onto it, successfully, until eventually standing on one despite Tahna's panic. Seizing the opportunity, the team all did the same, jumping from one dangerous platform to the next, until all three of them had landed on the other side of the room. Just as soon as the team had arrived to the other side, the platforms behind them reacted again, this time forming a large vertical wall moving slowly in their direction. Thinking on her feet, Pace quickly suggested trying her maintenance trick again or making use of phasers or explosives to get the newest door facing them open, but Aegam had another idea, instead opting to cut a nearby cable with pliers. The action did trigger the doors open, but also simultaneously the speed at which the moving wall was moving in their direction.

They escaped the room without being squished, but now found themselves in another corridor within which the ominous sound of ticking could be heard. Proceeding to the next room, the team came upon the source: a "beautiful" obelisk shaped console surrounded by spinning rings. Analytical and tactical brains hard at work, they each tried to understand the purpose of this next obstacle, with Aegam wondering if pressure plates may have been on the ground underneath it. To test it, Tahna Meru slid her tricorder across the floor with no consequence, confirming that they were at least on safe flooring. Soon after, the team felt the room freezing, stuttering and shifting. In the moments that followed, Vesela Pace approached the obelisk and was immediately thrown backwards into the air by a forcefield, not sustaining any notable injuries. Threading things together, Aegam noticed that the ticking was every twenty seconds, a realisation that spurred Tahna into suggesting the connection of all three tricorders together to amplify their scans of the room and get to the bottom of the countdown. Amidst the ticking and freezing and shifting, Aegam and Pace also noticed display screens shimmering and flickering into existence with every shudder of the room, and so Pace set about overloading the forcefield surrounding the obelisk as a way of shutting down whatever was about to happen.

More to come.

Sabotage: Unimatrix Seventeen

  • Disrupt the Unimatrix’s systems to cover the various team’s tracks and buy us time afterwards to escape and use the retrieved information.

On Unimatrix Seventeen, team Sabotage began by compiling a mental log of the different items they had brought along with them. Commander Jo Marshall had on her person a series of slim infiltration nodes created by Lt. Commander Erin Reynolds, and Lt. Commander Ayiana Sevo a combat knife, grenades and other tools. Their hopeful plan involved injecting the nodes into a nearby junction, but not before affecting a critical power relay first with the intention of resetting numerous areas of the Unimatrix. Noting that the junction was parked in the middle of a stasis cluster, Sevo took on the role of alcove stasis monitoring, with Marshall on node duty. Vice Admiral Quinn Reynolds meanwhile improvised the idea of constructing a surge modulator to avoid other teams within the Unimatrix setting the cascade off prematurely. Getting on with their tasks, Sevo noticed signs of the alcoves finishing their regeneration cycles and did some mitigating, and wondered if Marshall or Reynolds work was perhaps the reason. Having noticed a power fluctuation caused by damage to the EPS network, Reynolds relayed the information to her team, prompting Marshall to suggest rewriting the relay's error-checking algorithms in such a way that the fluctations would look like simple routines. A shuddering of the deck followed the suggestion shortly after, causing the team to work quicker and move to their next location: a distribution node.

Near the node, Ayiana Sevo conveyed readings confirming that the drones in their alcoves were in a semi-permanent regeneration cycle and that the power within their chambers had been priotised to keep them in stasis mode, adding weight to a developing theory that something wasn't quite right with their area of Unimatrix Seventeen. Spurred on by another rumbling beneath their feet, this time with more severity, Quinn Reynolds suggested slipping a series of subtle changes into the complexes code base, adjusting the operating parameters so that they were out of manufacturing tolerance, then widening the range of variances the monitoring systems would accept before action. Sevo, following a similar train of thought, added that they redefined their priorities or tweaked the power settings, causing overloads and drains in various systems. In the minutes that followed, busied by their work, Reynolds confirmed that the skeleton of a Borg Cube was within the framework of the Unimatrix section they were standing in, asking Sevo to investigate it further with it having been the Trill's own earlier deliberation.

More to come.

Diversion: Unimatrix Seventeen

Team Diversion, comprised of Lieutenant Vylaa zh'Tisav, Lieutenant JG Taelon and Ensign Russell Standish, began their mission somewhere within Unimatrix Seventeen similarly to other teams: they began by taking mental stock of the items they had brought along with them. Backup weapons such as chain detonators were brought by zh'Tisav, whilst Taelon had on his person disruption-centric devices known as blossomers. The resident doctor, Standish, meanwhile had brought hyperbiplexuric acid in time release containers, a couple of disintegration field generators and ultrabroad band channel disrupters, as well as a self-replicating plasma orb. Quickly jumping into action, Taelon started with the suggestion of finding a nearby datanode and disrupting that first, to zh'Tisav's agreement who added viniculums and power conduits to the list. On their journey, the team found an EPS conduit behind a grate, something instantly exploited by zh'Tisav who carefully planted a detonator for later explosion. A blossomer, also described as a seed by Taelon, was then dispatched through a wall by the El-Aurian, a disruption device capable of covering its own tracks. As the team moved on they found a data node in a larger room surrounded by data storage, consoles and stasis chambers. As part of an intricate plan to depressurise an adjoining archway and release the drones into nearby space, zh'Tisav rigged the exits to the room to explode on their departure, as Taelon with prevention in mind made use of the acid brought by Standish to burn through the clamps that would have normally released the drones from their alcoves. Taelon shortly after dispatched another of his blossomers into the heart of the central datanode itself to cause additonal disruption. Once the work was done, Standish suggested that the team secure themselves inside the alcoves to stay safe from the blast, an idea met with hestitation from both Taelon whose cybernetic enhancements mad have been detected by the alcove, and zh'Tisav whose towering height she felt may have posed another problem. Protected by a shield created by ARIA — Taelon's assistant android — the team blew the archway, sending several drones into space as planned, before moving onto another area.

The team soon arrived to a tall atrium-like room with walkways crossing over their heads, and alcoves within which drones this time began exiting in response to their diversion tactics earlier on. Eager to avoid detection, the team sealed themsleves off into a side-room, an opportunity seized by Taelon who connected to ARIA with a wire to download a map of the area they now occupied. After finding node 432-587-35D on the map, Taelon told the team they would need to go upwards, something they realised would only be possible through a ventilation shaft above them. Vylaa zh'Tisav, after some thought, suggested using the power lines clamped into the walls as a means of climbing there, uncertain that they had the capability of doing it another way. It was Taelon then who, in agreement, adjusted the idea so that they did use the wires but instead as ropes with Russell Standish in the lead.

More to come.

Grand Theft Sphere: Half-built Borg Sphere

  • here is a half-built Sphere with a drive installed for time travel; it’s our way into the past, but first we have to get it functional and liberate it from the Collective.

Donning environmental suits with built-in manoeuvrability thrusters, tethers and a display screen fixed onto their arm sleeves, team Sphere exited through the cloaked threshold of the Gorkon — made invisible thanks to the Romulan vessel it was latched onto — and began their floating expedition through space towards a half-built Borg Sphere, with the intent to steal it. On a backdrop of scintillating stars, the three officers, held together by one large tether, began by discussing the plan in action. Lieutenant Gnaxac confirmed that he had brought a standard engineering toolkit, whilst Ensign Nera Ay had with him the medical equivalent. Using the targeting reticle technology in their helmets, and their individual tethers, they began their descent with Lieutenant Doz Finch the first to make footfall, her landing hard and stabilised by gripping onto a bit of clefted framework, with the other two officers close behind her. Once the team had secured themselves, now parked on the outer edge of the Sphere facing away from the Unimatrix, they searched for and found an entry point, and soon after used their tethers to climb down into what they discovered was a junction that connected two other corridors. Despite minimal power to the junction, they also found that the environmental conditions were not suitable yet to remove their helmets. Finch this time revealed that she had brought on her person a pair of hover-drones capable of three dimensional mapping, and suggested that both she and Gnaxac release them in the separate corridors whilst Nera tracked the information as it fed into his tricorder. Once settled on a corridor, they pressed forward and eventually came to another unfinished corridor with a giant hole in it, fit for an elevator shaft. Despite how far down the hole went, Finch suggested they didn't backtrack due to the time-critical nature of the mission, and that they instead rappelled down.

As team Sphere rappelled down into the dark and murky depths of the barely-powered sphere, Doz Finch found her tether had caught on a jutted beam, unable to continue any further. Gnaxac nimbly made his way back up his tether, and noted that her tether had become frayed, asking that she remained still whilst he used a laser cutter to pry it free. Finch held onto Nera's tether for support as the Ferengi released hers from the beam, only for a piece of it to fall down past them 60ft into the umbrageous unknown. With safety in mind, Finch points out a nearby level as an alternative detour route, having noticed a series of consoles and shield emitters in the walls. Moving quickly but steadily, they angled and positioned themselves onto an extended ledge that led into the new corridor, and once inside Nera began by activating a console with his gloved hand, instantly bringing up the alphanumeric language of the Borg. Perplexed by the language, the team considered what to do next, when Gnaxac had the idea to interface with the console using his tricorder; it was Gnaxac's algorithm that then activated the environmental technology in their corridor, including shields and air, allowing them to finally remove their helmets. Affected by interference deeper inside the Sphere, Finch's hover-drones go offline, and so the team turn to an internal map of the ship instead able then to get a fuller picture for their next move.

More to come.

Secondary Teams

  • Split in two, one half of the team works to find Johnson amidst the swarm of drones onboard Unimatrix Seventeen, liberating and transporting viable drone candidates along the way, whilst the other half receives them in the Gorkon's sickbay for rehabilitation.

More to come.


Notable SIMs

Act One & Interlude

Act Two & Interlude

Act Three

Mission Reports & News

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