Bravo Fleet
We have hit the halfway mark of New Frontiers! Apologies for the tardiness of this update – it’s been a busy week. But not as busy a fortnight as it’s plainly been for you all! The fleet is getting thoroughly stuck into the adventures of the Shackleton Expanse, from the mystery and politics, the diplomacy and the horror, the intrigue uncovered and the explosive truths. Remember that we have a long way to go – and that what matters here is the journey! But, to keep us up to speed with the journey so far, it’s time – that fortnightly update…
ACT 2: NOVEMBER 8th – NOVEMBER 21st
Bravo Fleet Senior Staff
USS Atlas
The Atlas has met with the Ivalan leadership and after a formal state banquet, the crew have discovered that the Doctrine of Unseeing’s influence has reached a wide and vast number of people. When a small group of civilian freighters, who are heavily armed, surround the Atlas, action is taken to ensure a war between the Ivalan Union and the Federation is not declared. The Ivalan leader, offers the Doctrine a way out by giving up the defences surrounding one of the planets in the Ivalan system, hoping this will give them time to uncover what is happening to her people. Just as things are about to go their way, Captain Corbin is attacked telepathically by an unknown source, somehow linked to the Doctrine.
Challenger Squadron
The away team wakes to find themselves underground. They are brought before The Committee, who are suspicious of the newcomers. The Committee allows the team limited freedom to move around while they decide what to do with the Starfleet officers.
USS Endeavour
Endeavour rendezvouses with Sirius Squadron, embroiled in local politics where the Federation’s presence is challenged by the militaristic but idealistic Orvas Protectorate. The investigation of the origins of the Vadia IX fissure finds a new lead when the builders of the mysterious facility are confirmed as members of the Orvas species. Endeavour makes diplomatic contact with a bullish Orvas starship commander, who refuses to cooperate – until both ships receive a distress call from an Orvas colony, where political extremists have seized hostages. Quickest to the site, Endeavour sends an away team to resolve the crisis through negotiation, only to find the extremists a strange, spiritual, violent cult, who self-immolate after releasing the hostages and releasing cultists. And, moments before the explosion, Commander Airex sees in the crowd the impossible: the face of the missing, Vezda-possessed Jack Logan.
Polaris Squadron
In the Chorad system, severe temporal distortions prevent the USS Polaris from assessing conditions on Chorad IXa with sensors or probes. With the limits of observation reached, Fleet Admiral Reyes secures permission from the wary local government to interview the only person to ever escape Chorad IXa, and from the survivor’s fragmented, out-of-sequence recollections, they learn that the anomaly may be artificial, its source buried deep beneath the lunar surface. Using experimental technology to avoid temporal resection, an away team descends into the anomaly and discovers a world unstuck in its own moments, where midday sun and midnight shadow coexist and where words are heard before they are spoken. Among the ruins, they find the colonists caught in looping instants, workers frozen mid-argument, medics trying to save those already dead, and desperate messages scrawled across the walls, evidence of a settlement driven to madness by the shattering of time.
USS Yorktown & RRW Devoras
A persistent signal was traced by the Yorktown and Devoras to a hidden installation on Quorath VII revealing that the Romulan Free State has been injecting falsified Republic orders, doctored newsfeeds, and manipulative data into Quorathi communications. While the Free State warbird prepares a diplomatic broadcast to sway the Council, a joint Starfleet and Romulan Republic team lands on the barren moon under cloak and infiltrates the relay facility. Inside, they discover it fully active but abandoned, remotely controlled in real time from the warbird, and they begin working to disable it quietly before the Free State can twist the narrative against them.
Task Force 17
USS San Clemente & IKS Y’tem
After the fall of the Shroud, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey IKS Y’tem and the Federation starship USS San Clemente are among the first to enter the newly opened Caelari system. A joint rescue of endangered pilgrims earns them entry to the holy capital of Varanesh, where they discover the sacred Spires are actually ancient resonant machines that can broadcast thought and emotion. Shared dreams, panic and revelations about an older, darker purpose of the Radiance begin to fracture Caelari society. Both crews struggle to keep the peace and provide aid without turning the future of an entire religion into just another Klingon or Federation decision.
Task Force 47
USS Atlantis & USS Republic
Back aboard Republic, Lt Saez attempts to cheer up Lt Beckman with a bold little flight adventure, only to beat Commander Sadovu and Dr Pisani at their proposed experiment of getting Beckman to look out a window, triggering a response from the helmsman that falls far outside the norm. Summoning Dr Terax from Atlantis to assist, the two doctors are busy figuring out what to do when Beckman speaks once more, again proclaiming they aren’t safe and they should leave Leytan III before what ‘broke the roads’ returns. Meanwhile on the surface, a night time encounter with some of the locals turns into a proper first contact as Commander Camargo welcomes some natives into the Starfleet camp. After a brief discussion, the natives express their interest in learning more about the monolith as well, which Camargo grants as an exchange of information – they’ll trade what they learn and learn what they can about the Leytans. Exploration is after all why they are here.
USS Hart
Hart’s away team have made it to the surface of the Zhelicar mine, where they meet the rebellion’s unwilling leader, Nysstiss. It quickly becomes clear that the truth of the rebellion is a far cry from the story fed to them by the Concord. As the curtain of diplomacy that hides the reality of the authoritarian government is pulled away, the away team is forced to retreat from the moon. Unfortunately, not everyone makes it back.
Hypatia Division & USS Wasp
As Hypatia’s science expedition on Nareen continues, her team learn a concerning truth; the planet, once home to millions, had been devastated by orbital bombardment centuries ago. Convinced that the Draxans might be able to answer some of her questions, Noli prepares to reach out, but a telepathic transmission with scary implications for a member of the crew causes the Division to split up. Elsewhere, hunted by the Draxans in a nearby asteroid field, Captain So-Mi finally decides enough is enough and orders Wasp to bloody the Draxan nose. When a second strange signal is received, Wasp and her Klingon escort pursue the Draxans out of the system, unaware of what is transpiring with the rest of their task group…
USS Fox
In the short time the Fox away team has been on the planet of Brynar, it has become increasingly apparent that something far more advanced has been silently pulling the strings. From a mysterious being that spoke Common Earth English, to the discovery of teleportation, shielding, and psionic technology coveted by the dominant religious faction. Now the away team is moments from uncovering the truth behind the mysterious energy pulses that has been gathering at the heart of the ‘Bones of the Gods’ where the locals engage in a nearly suicidal ritual to try to covet these powers for themselves, and unintentionally, Commander Angelus has taken the center stage.
Task Force 72
USS Blythe & IKS Slivin
The Blythe has been shot down by a Ferengi shuttle armed with a black market Breen Energy Dissipator Weapon. The Slivin and CC conduct revenge operations/a proportionate response. The Soval has arrived, just as the Dergans rise up to caste of the yoke of Ferengo oppression. Tyler attached his name what will become known as the Schwarz/Tyler Memo.
USS Kirk
Arriving above Hecate#7b to search for the missing Romulan Republic science vessel Selquar, the USS Kirk is ambushed by a D’Deridex cruiser belonging to the Free States. Mortally damaged, the Kirk is forced into a crash landing and sinks to the bottom of a poisoned lake on the Hellworld. With only 3 uses of her transporter before it fails, Lt Commander Lane Hanley determines to lead an away team to rescue the survivors of the Selquar, whilst the rest of the crew attempt repairs. Ambushed by an ancient combat drone in the Dead City, Hanley loses half of her team but manages to locate three Republic scientists of the twenty marooned by the ruthless Tal Shiar Major Silak. Lane discovers that the long – dead Garsedi race mastered the technology of preserving themselves via memory engrams and that Major Silak covets the stored personalities of the former command of the Northern Compact forces that annihilated their world. A virtual – treasure trove of military secrets & innovation that would see the Free States restore themselves to a level of primacy akin to that of the former Star Empire, unless Hanley and her crew can intervene & thwart that terrible ambition.
USS Thunderchild & IKS T’Ong
The crippled USS Thunderchild, ambushed and driven into Paldor’s storms by K’Rath’s squadron, claws her way back to orbit after repairs hoping to get word out after discovering his forcible occupation of the peaceful Secundi. At that exact moment the relic IKS T’Ong decloaks above the refineries, Captain K’trok publicly branding K’Rath a dishonorable coward and daring him to single combat… only to be refused. With K’Rath’s three ships now targeting the T’Ong, the battered Thunderchild deploys herself to shield the Secundi civilians, forging an uneasy alliance between a dying Klingon idealist and a wounded Starfleet crew against a common enemy.
USS Victory
When a blast of unknown energy erupts from the enigmatic Orantei Station, the USS Farragut is crippled in space, its crew fighting a desperate last stand against ruthless boarders while their captain and executive officer race through the bowels of a station ruled by a corrupt, predatory intelligence and stalked by the fanatical Pilgrims drawn to its power. Arriving in the system, the USS Victory and USS Anthemius battle through a flotilla of Pilgrim ships to rescue the shattered remnants of the Farragut’s crew, only to embark on a darker mission: trace the origins of the cult and learn the fate of the Farragut’s missing commanders.
Task Force 86
Da Vinci Division
For the crew of the USS da Vinci, things have returned to some sense of normality; though they cannot rule out further attempts to control their minds. They now have on board a ‘message buoy’ left by the Romulan Captain; which they are in the process of collecting information from Things for her sister ship have spiraled out of control as those same hostile forces envisage horrors upon the minds of the USS Grus’s crew; eventually forcing all but one of them to abandon ship, for what they believe may be safety on the planet below. A planet which has identified itself as Harha’kuv.
USS Falcon
The USS Falcon has relieved the USS Leif Erikson in orbit above Palrilles IV. The away team remains under the planet’s surface, having met an indigenous life-form and been taken to their village, which is contained within a large subterranean cavern. The away team has spent almost a week with them, learning about their history and their customs.
USS Sovereign
There is definitely something going on in the depths of the Ruins of K’Shar, something that is definitely a mystery that the Sovereign’s away team will have to figure out further on into the story. Unfortunately though, the storm had begun to move faster and became more intense and violent; more so, that Lieutenant Ruben Ortiz chose to pick up his friends outside the city first, is a smart move; that is, until a colossal sized worm had engulfed the cargo shuttle completely, forcing the remainder of the team to flee back to the temple on the ATV, where the four remaining team members were forced to delve deeper into the temple to avoid the wrath of the storm. Meanwhile, the bridge crew of the Sovereign had witnessed what happened and are in motion to save the away team as best as they can.
Valhalla Division
In a remote stretch of the Shackleton Expanse, the IKS H’Poc investigates an unexpected energy signature on a world where none should exist. During the survey, hidden orbital platforms suddenly activate and cripple the ship, forcing a crash landing on the planet below. The USS Valhalla and USS Sentinel pick up the distress call and move to respond.
Task Force 93
Deep Space 12 Division
As both ships move deeper into the ion storm, a strange distortion disrupts the sensors and isolates each crew. While the Galileo recovers an unconscious alien, the T’Seran secures a damaged fragment of the shuttle belonging to the same species. Neither side understands what they’ve found, only that the storm seems to be reacting violently to their presence. Each crew realizing their piece of the puzzle is somehow connected to the ion storm, in ways they don’t yet understand.
USS Fairfax & USS Neptune
After an orbital analysis of the 4th planet, the crew of the Neptune and Fairfax believe they have located two artificial structures on the surface of Vraekton IV, both on land and under sea. The vessels dispatch shuttles to investigate, but during the decent; Fairfax’s shuttle is disabled by intense environmental phenomena in the upper atmosphere and makes a crash landing. Meanwhile the Neptune’s shuttle successfully sets down in the southern ocean.
