After the excitement of the journey to tIhoS pagh’lan, being saved from Orion pirates by a Gorn battlecruiser, and retrieving one of the station’s wayward, disgruntled inhabitants from an asteroid belt, the crew expected that might be the end of the excitement here at the edge of nowhere.

Instead, we were “gifted” an adventure to tIhoS pagh’lan II, a nearby planet with a burgeoning population of proto-Vulcanoids in the early stages of societal development.

We were tasked with setting up an observation station, commonly called a “Duck Blind.” We expected and received no call to directly engage with them, and Commander Pytha ran the operation entirely by the numbers, despite encountering an early mutation which may have held sway over the entire direction the race might’ve taken. Adm. Clarke has sent his regards on respecting the Prime Directive despite what must have been an emotional and stressful observation period.

Also of note, during this operation the USS Stalwart was recalled to the asteroid belt to assist with medical and firefighting needs in a titanium fire caused by shoddy safety procedures from the civilian mining efforts in an older operation. My recommendation for improved safety protocols is on record with the station and Starfleet, but there is little which can be enforced directly. I fear this just may be a fact of life here on the edge of civilization.

In the midst of an interminably long meeting with General Kraddock’s personal administrator, Bekk Valador, my crew contacted me with a shipboard situation, to which I gratefully retreated. “Gratefully” – so I thought. 

It turned out that a member of our crew, an Engineer named Casanova, was actually an alien entity that had been electrically puppeteering Casanova’s body since long before arriving on the USS Stalwart. 

When this was revealed, Nova reacted to the entity’s subterfuge with understandable concern, but found herself at odds with Commander Sivak’s assessment of the situation. As a result of their different interpretations, Sivak charged Nova with numerous violations of Starfleet rules and regulations. When she failed to follow the order to withdraw to her quarters, he locked her in the brig.

Once the senior staff were able to convene and discuss as a group, we realized we needed more information; I requested further reports of anyone who had visited the L-Class planet where Casanova had become inhabited. Were there any other crew members who had exhibited similar behavior, possibly been killed and now hosting electrical entities? Had other survey ships seen crew act strangely afterward?

We also investigated previous incidents where an alien energy entity had taken residence in a humanoid, and there were more reports than we had expected. 

When Nova and Chief Tactical Officer Cool Cat finished their research, they came to report, and asked to do so in private. Once in my Ready Room, Nova directed a single-shot, kill-setting-only phaser derringer at me, which I managed to ablate partially with a flung PADD. 

A “Crewman Smith” who identified himself as Starfleet Intelligence interrupted Nova’s research and convinced her that there was a possibility the First Officer and I were compromised by the electrical entity, and told her the derringer was a scanner that could determine the difference. 

After the failed assassination attempt, my Tactical Officer suggested we build a ruse around faking my death before pursuing the “Starfleet Intelligence” operative.  However, Security Chief Bulat used a PADD to allow Nova to identify which “Crewman Smith” was the one in question; the moment the crewman was identified, Stalwart’s ship systems immediately went haywire. 

Crewman Smith began using Captain-level codes to control forcefieds within hallways to keep partitioning himself as he progressed towards the Shuttle Bay for presumed exfiltration and escape. Despite our best efforts, Smith had complete control of the ship. 

En route, Smith encountered and repeatedly attempted to kill an uncooperative Casanova, but found his weapons ineffective at stopping the entity, which leapt into Smith, killing him. 

Post-Action notes: Entity-in-Smith is now going by “Chris.” The entity noted the context differences between Sivak’s and Nova’s interpretations, and provided an understanding solution which viably addressed all concerns. Even with this, Adm. Clarke has declared that further insubordination or flouting of Starfleet rules and regs will not be tolerated. 

Crewman Smith had a synaptic scrambler with a deadman’s switch in his brain. Reverse engineering revealed that this handmade device had likely been implanted voluntarily. While the contents were encrypted, the public key portion was identified as a passphrase containing text of Chapter 14, Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter. 

Starfleet told us there were no adventures to be had out here near The Vast, and that has been consistently shown to be untrue. So it was with some concern that I approached their actual “adventure” into it, an exploratory session that could lead us deep into territory previously unexplored by Starfleet and her allies. 

We were tasked with a scientific exploration directed by the famed scientist Professor Demetreo, who had pieced together a method for navigating the Vast’s anomalous regions via a map, derived from an incognito stay among the Mentella, a pre-warp civilization on the edge of the Vast, and learning their unchanging oral histories. With this map, we were able to navigate through to their legendary Home of the Gods — though it was not without incident.

During our journey at warp, our warp field touched briefly on the portion of the Vast which defies expected behavior, causing it to “twitch.” A field lanced through the ship, resulting in visions for members of the crew who found themselves on the other side of that energy barrier which passed through the Stalwart. For myself, I saw a vision of our Klingon friend, Kraddock; he was holding a Bat’leth and said, “We are all guilty.” 

When we arrived at the planet, we discovered a completely dead ecosystem, with no signs of life. A single energy source remained, which we investigated. We found a single remnant of the previous Althosian civilization, apparently this was their homeworld of the Althosian Empire, Teradane. It was the final record of a humanoid scientist, whose family lived in that world. She used her final moments to record for posterity the early warp technology and — more amazingly — the method for navigating in The Vast. She simply wanted future visitors to be able to navigate safely, avoid disaster, and know that her life mattered.