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And now the hunters become the hunted... Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 3.4 - Face Off) #Amalgaverse The surviving strike teams act on their orders, converging on the guest deck, where Harven Zax is being held.  Surprisingly, they meet no resistance.  One squad moves toward a closed door, rifles raised.  From behind it comes a voice, rich and theatrical: “Confined like a common felon!  Herded about by ninnyhammers in pajamas!  I, who have dined with ambassadors and been toasted by admirals, left to cower while my life hangs by a thread!” The squad leader signals.  The door slides open. Inside, a heavyset man sits with his back to the entrance, his broad shoulders draped in an extravagant embroidered coat, hand raised in a grand gesture to an empty room. “Let the canker-blossoms come.  Let history record that I faced my fate as I faced every audience: seated, composed and magnificent.” The soldiers move in, slow and silent, and fan out behind the chair.  The man doesn’t turn.  For the first time, one of the soldiers speaks, the voice flat and distorted through the helmet: “Harven Zax?” The chair swings around. The face looking back at them is wrong. It has the rough shape of a face, but it’s smooth and featureless, like soft putty or a candle left too long in the sun. “No,”it says. Then the man begins to change.  His body melts into a surge of golden-amber liquid and rises out of the chair, stretching and swelling into something monstrous.  It towers over them, hunched, all hooked claws, wrong-jointed limbs, and eyeless head.  It opens its maw ringed with needle teeth, throws back its head and shrieks. Now the strike team gives ground, backing away with their rifles still trained on the thing in front of them.   Before they can recover, Carter, Lucinda, and Aeryn come out of hiding and take them apart hand to hand, three very different fighting styles that turn out to work well together: Carter’s tactical discipline, Lucinda’s surgical precision, and Aeryn’s Peacekeeper brutality.  When the last soldier drops, the three women exchange looks of grudging professional respect. The creature shrinks, softens and settles into a familiar form: Odo, adjusting his uniform with obvious distaste. “A little over the top, but circumstances demanded it,”he says. Back in the corridor, the remaining strike teams find themselves surrounded by O’Neill’s team on one side and Sheppard’s on the other.  It turns out the orders that brought them here never came from their commanders.   They came from Data and Rommie, who cracked their comms and sent them straight into a waiting ambush. Then Data reports from the bridge.  The last strike teams are down or captured.  And the cruiser, abandoning its own soldiers, is breaking away from the Enterprise. What do you do? A) Lock a tractor beam on it.  Hold the cruiser in place, and its crew can answer some questions. B) Give chase.  Disable its engines before it can go to warp. C) Let it go.  Secure the Enterprise and find out who’s under those helmets. Choose! Recruit a crewmate: Share this with a fellow fan! Then turn on notification so that you don't miss a moment of this mission! New to the mission? Catch up with our Previously On in the reply below.

And now the hunters become the hunted... Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 3.4 - Face Off) #Amalgaverse The surviving strike teams act on their orders, converging on the guest deck, where Harven Zax is being held.  Surprisingly, they meet no resistance.  One squad moves toward a closed door, rifles raised.  From behind it comes a voice, rich and theatrical: “Confined like a common felon!  Herded about by ninnyhammers in pajamas!  I, who have dined with ambassadors and been toasted by admirals, left to cower while my life hangs by a thread!” The squad leader signals.  The door slides open. Inside, a heavyset man sits with his back to the entrance, his broad shoulders draped in an extravagant embroidered coat, hand raised in a grand gesture to an empty room. “Let the canker-blossoms come.  Let history record that I faced my fate as I faced every audience: seated, composed and magnificent.” The soldiers move in, slow and silent, and fan out behind the chair.  The man doesn’t turn.  For the first time, one of the soldiers speaks, the voice flat and distorted through the helmet: “Harven Zax?” The chair swings around. The face looking back at them is wrong. It has the rough shape of a face, but it’s smooth and featureless, like soft putty or a candle left too long in the sun. “No,”it says. Then the man begins to change.  His body melts into a surge of golden-amber liquid and rises out of the chair, stretching and swelling into something monstrous.  It towers over them, hunched, all hooked claws, wrong-jointed limbs, and eyeless head.  It opens its maw ringed with needle teeth, throws back its head and shrieks. Now the strike team gives ground, backing away with their rifles still trained on the thing in front of them.   Before they can recover, Carter, Lucinda, and Aeryn come out of hiding and take them apart hand to hand, three very different fighting styles that turn out to work well together: Carter’s tactical discipline, Lucinda’s surgical precision, and Aeryn’s Peacekeeper brutality.  When the last soldier drops, the three women exchange looks of grudging professional respect. The creature shrinks, softens and settles into a familiar form: Odo, adjusting his uniform with obvious distaste. “A little over the top, but circumstances demanded it,”he says. Back in the corridor, the remaining strike teams find themselves surrounded by O’Neill’s team on one side and Sheppard’s on the other.  It turns out the orders that brought them here never came from their commanders.   They came from Data and Rommie, who cracked their comms and sent them straight into a waiting ambush. Then Data reports from the bridge.  The last strike teams are down or captured.  And the cruiser, abandoning its own soldiers, is breaking away from the Enterprise. What do you do? A) Lock a tractor beam on it.  Hold the cruiser in place, and its crew can answer some questions. B) Give chase.  Disable its engines before it can go to warp. C) Let it go.  Secure the Enterprise and find out who’s under those helmets. Choose! Recruit a crewmate: Share this with a fellow fan! Then turn on notification so that you don't miss a moment of this mission! New to the mission? Catch up with our Previously On in the reply below.

The help Kirk needs comes from the last place anyone expected... Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 3.3 - Crossfire) #Amalgaverse While O’Neill and Sheppard’s teams take the fight to the strike teams, Carter’s team digs in to defend the guest deck, leaving Kirk to hunt the beacon with Scotty, Teal’c, and Data.  The signal leads them to main engineering, but there’s nothing there to see.  Then Data recalibrates his tricorder, and something shimmers into view, clinging to the warp core housing: a small, many-legged mechanical crawler, cloaked until now. Teal’c pries it loose.  Scotty cuts its power.  The signal dies, and across the ship, the lights flicker back on.   “Main power restored, Captain,”announces Data.  “Shields are back up and at full strength.” “Then their reinforcements are cut off,”says Teal’c.  “We need only defeat those who remain.” Scotty turns the device over in his hands.  Someone carried it aboard and set it loose.  It crawled through the vents to the warp core and latched on, dampening the ship’s power and knocking out every system.  Then it started broadcasting the Enterprise’s position and guiding the strike teams’ transporters straight in. “It’s a wee bit of genius, Captain,”Scotty begrudgingly admits.  Then, pocketing it: “I’m keepin’ this.” The team falls back toward the guest deck.  But on their way, a strike team rounds the corner dead ahead.   Another immediately closes in from behind.  Kirk’s team takes cover behind a bulkhead, pinned down, as the masked soldiers advance in perfect step.  There’s nowhere left to go. Suddenly, behind the advancing strike teams, the turbolift doors slide open. Algernon fills the doorway, his rotary cannon leveled.  He opens fire, and the soldiers caught in the open go down. He steps aside.  Behind him stands Maia, the utility android who joined the crew after their last mission.  She fires, her weapon finding the breaches in the enemy’s armor. She steps aside.  Then Mira drops from the ceiling hatch, a pistol in each hand, firing wildly, cackling with pure delight. She too steps into the corridor, revealing Dunsel, armed with a soup ladle.  He trundles over to a fallen soldier, raps him several times, then hurries to catch up. Kirk’s team comes out of cover.  Kirk looks from Maia to the two escaped prisoners, now very well armed. “They offered their assistance,”says Maia.  “And you appeared to require it.” They were in the brig when the power failed.  The force fields went down with everything else, so the pair availed themselves of the opportunity.  “Our former employers likely sent those squads to tidy up loose ends, among them Mira and myself, just as your tailor foresaw,”says Algernon.  “Such ingratitude rather settles the question of allegiance, wouldn’t you agree?” There’s no time to celebrate.  With internal sensors back, Data can finally see that O’Neill and Sheppard have taken out their opponents, but the remaining squads are converging on the guest deck. What do you do? A) Reinforce the guest deck.  Carter’s team is holding, but every surviving squad is converging on her position, and she’s outnumbered.  Sending everyone to help could turn the tide, but it leaves the bridge with a skeleton crew, and the strike teams have already shown they know exactly where to hit the ship. B) Hijack their comms.  Data has isolated the encrypted chatter between the soldiers’ helmets, and Rommie, who is herself a warship’s AI, can help him crack it.  Once they’re in, they can feed the squads false orders, sending them the wrong way or straight into an ambush.  But it takes time to break the encryption, and if the strike teams realize their comms are compromised, they’ll switch to hand signals and the advantage will be gone. C) Turn the guns on their ship.  With power back, the Enterprise can fight.  Open fire on the cruiser holding position over the saucer and cripple it, leaving the boarders with no ride home.  But the cruiser will fire back, and Carter’s team is on its own until the battle is over. Choose! Recruit a crewmate: Share this with a fellow fan! Then turn on notification so that you don't miss a moment of this mission! New to the mission? Catch up with our Previously On in the reply below.

Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 3.2 - Bad Company) #Amalgaverse Kirk doesn’t wait for the mystery ship to arrive.  He has teams take up positions at key points on the ship.  Kirk, Sheppard, Carter, and O’Neill each lead a team.  On emergency power, there’s no internal sensor grid to track intruders, so every team will be fighting blind. The guests, meanwhile, have been confined to the guest deck.  Zax does not take it well: “Am I to hide in a cupboard like a lily-livered shag-bag while these blackguards hunt me like a stag?” “Yep, pretty much,”says Sheppard. Then the mystery ship drops out of warp.  Dark and angular, it glides over the dead Enterprise and settles above her saucer, hovering like a hawk over its prey. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, all across the Enterprise, the air begins to shimmer. Columns of cold white light flare to life in darkened corridors, in an empty Ten Forward.  From the columns step a squad of five soldiers, identical in matte grey armor and featureless masks, rifles already raised.  They move in silence, as a single unit. O’Neill’s team is the first to engage.  Phaser beams splash harmlessly off the soldiers’ armor O’Neill opens up with his P-90, and the bullet’s punch straight through.  Two soldiers drop, and the other falls back. “Good old bullets,”says O’Neill.  “They never go out of style.” Data reports.  The beacon isn’t only calling these mercs in.  It’s guiding their transporters.  As long as it’s active, they can keep beaming in more squads, and the moment they find Zax, they can beam him straight out. The mercs have the numbers, and there aren’t enough hands to do everything. What do you do? A) Hunt down the beacon.  Send a team to find it and kill it.  It’s the only way to stop the reinforcements and keep Zax from being beamed away, but it pulls people out of a fight. B) Fall back and protect the guests.  Pull every team back to the guest deck and turn it into a fortress.  If the mercs can’t reach Zax, they can’t take him.  But it hands them the rest of the ship. C) Take the fight to them.  Use the Jefferies tubes and service crawlways to pick off the squads one at a time.  It could break them before they regroup, but it leaves the guests with almost no protection. Choose! Recruit a crewmate: Share this with a fellow fan! Then turn on notification so that you don't miss a moment of this mission! New to the mission? Catch up with our Previously On in the reply below.

You're aboard the Enterprise setting a trap for the traitor in your ranks. Join the stakeout! Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 3.1 - The Stakeout) #Amalgaverse Captain’s Log , supplemental: Mr. Scott has repaired the warp coils, and the Enterprise is back at full warp.  We’re behind schedule but still within the window for delivery.  Our passengers have been told we’re out of danger.  That isn’t entirely true.  Logs recovered from the cruiser’s utility drone confirm that its engines were deliberately sabotaged, and whoever did it is now a guest aboard my ship.  Tonight we’ve set a trap, with the drone as bait.  If our saboteur wants to keep their secret, they’ll have to come for him.  And we’ll be waiting. Kirk has reassured his guests that the repairs are complete and the delivery is on schedule.  He adds, in passing, that Carter and Data are working on Dunsel.  Curiously, the drone’s memory stores were wiped, but they’re confident they can fully restore them by morning. Dunsel is parked in the science lab for the night, apparently unguarded.  In reality, crew members are lying in wait while others monitor the lab on a hidden feed. Hours pass.  Nobody comes.  Internal sensors show all four guests in their quarters the entire night. Then, the warp core goes offline.  The Enterprise drops out of warp and the ship goes dark except for emergency lighting and life support. Scotty reports that the core is intact, but something has knocked it out, and he can’t tell what.  On the bridge, Data picks up a subspace signal coming from somewhere inside the ship: a beacon, broadcasting the Enterprise’s position.  Then long-range sensors show a ship approaching at high warp. The trap was set for the mole, but the mole had other plans. The mystery ship will arrive in minutes, and there aren’t enough hands to do everything. What do you do? A) Locate the beacon.  Silence it before the mystery ship can lock on to the Enterprise’s position.  It’s somewhere aboard, and the search will pull crew away from defending the ship. B) Prepare to repel boarders.  Place armed teams at key points and a guard on Zax.  The ship will be ready for a fight, but the beacon keeps transmitting its signal. C) Hit them first.  Load a strike team onto the puddle jumper and board the mystery ship before its crew can board yours.  It could end the threat before it starts, but it sends your best fighters off the Enterprise, leaving you at a clear disadvantage if you are boarded. Choose! Recruit a crewmate. Share this with a fellow fan! Then TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS so that you don't miss a step on this mission!

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Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 2.5 – Persons of Interest) #Amalgaverse With all hands sheltered in the shielded core, the baryon sweep rolls across the Enterprise, a red glow moving section by section from the nacelles to the engineering hull, then finally up and over the saucer.  The subspace organisms burn and flake away into space, and the hull comes up clean. But the sweep has scorched the warp coils.  “Cooked,”says Scotty, “like a Burns Night haggis.”  He starts repairs while the Enterprise limps on through the corridor at reduced warp.  The margin on Zax’s delivery is shrinking by the hour. With the ship out of danger for the moment, the crew turns its attention to the passengers. Thor volunteers to ask Zax what makes him worth all this trouble.  Zax is delighted to tell him, launching into a series of personal reflections that provide absolutely no insight into his current circumstances but paint an excruciatingly detailed portrait of his childhood on Rigel and his strong opinions on Andorian theater.  Two hours in, Thor raises a hand and says: “Stop talking.”  Zax falls silent, mid-sentence.  “Thank you,”says Thor.  He leaves, later reporting: “I learned nothing.  Except that Andorian theater is apparently very derivative.” Aeryn Sun takes a seat across from Lucinda in Ten Forward and attempts to engage her in conversation.  But Lucinda neither confirms nor denies anything, and politely turns every question back on Aeryn. “She never sits with her back to the door,”notes Aeryn, “and always keeps her right hand free.  Clocks anyone who comes within three metras of her.  She’s ex-military.  I’d know.” Daniel shares a meal with Milo, expecting small talk, and ends up deep in a debate about the Ancients. “He made a couple of great points about ascension I’d never even considered,”marvels Daniel.  “And I’ve actually ascended!” G’Kar, no stranger to diplomats, finds Robespierre happy to discuss his distinguished career, including the three promotions he was unfairly denied.  Every question about the mission, however, meets a polite and immovable wall. “He reminds me of a Centauri I know,”says G’Kar.  “All smiles, and a vault of secrets behind them.” Then Carter calls you to engineering.  She and Data have been piecing together data recovered from Dunsel, who trundles nearby, cheerfully greeting the same wall panel for the third time. When the cruiser’s engines failed, Dunsel apparently ran a diagnostic and logged his findings before anyone could stop him.  The failure was no accident.  Someone sabotaged the engines and forced the cruiser out of warp, which is how the mercs knew exactly where to find it.  Then they tried to bury the evidence by wiping Dunsel’s memory stores.  The wipe damaged his neural network, which explains his odd behavior. Someone aboard that cruiser sabotaged their own ship.  And that someone is now aboard the Enterprise. What do you do first? A) Search the guest quarters.  Fast and direct, but a careful mole will have hidden anything worth finding, and you’ll have tipped your hand.  Also, a diplomat’s quarters are off limits, and Robespierre will make sure Starfleet hears about it. B) Request background checks from Starfleet Command.  They’ll be thorough but slow, and the answers may not arrive before the delivery. C) Surreptitiously question them about their whereabouts in the hour the cruiser was sabotaged, but don't tip your hand. D) Confront them.  Gather all four passengers, announce there’s a saboteur among them, and watch how each one reacts.  It might shake something loose, or it might drive the mole to ground. E) Use Dunsel as bait.  Let word slip that his memory can be fully restored, and watch who comes for him.  It could catch the mole in the act, but Dunsel may not survive a second attempt. Choose! [END OF ACT TWO] Recruit a crewmate. Share this with a fellow fan! Then TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS so that you don't miss a step on this mission! See below for our Previously On recap - or check out the glorious Amalagaverse website: amalgaverse.link/index.html by @ugorur