Adventure Source: These Are The Voyages

Meetup Link: https://www.meetup.com/Star-Trek-Gaming/events/263895426/

Game Date: December 8 2019

Session Post: https://www.ob1knorrb.com/sta-episode-3-border-dispute/

Teaser: The U.S.S. Nightingale, a Nova-class Federation science vessel, has accidentally crossed into the Romulan Neutral Zone. Moments after the mistake was discovered, a Romulan warbird decloaked and opened fire. The attack took out most of the Nightingale’s engineering section and engineers. However, the Nightingale did manage to fire back and appears to have damaged the warbird. Both ships are now stuck in the Neutral Zone until they can effect repairs.

Unfortunately, the Romulans are insisting they will take the Nightingale and her crew back to Romulus to stand trial for war crimes. But things are not as they seem. Can the players win a battle of wits with a Romulan captain and save the crew of the Kimura’s sister ship, the Nightingale, or will this encounter lead to war?

• Ensign Wolfgang Ratzel (Terry)
• Lt. Cmd. Taemin Rahn (Garrett)
• Lt. Jr. Maria Gallo (Nick)
• Lt. Cmd. Rowan Tonelli (Jaime)
• Cmd. Xedrik (Trevor)

Important NPCs:

• Commander Mheven, Captain of D’Deridx Class Warbird I.R.W. T’Varen
• Lt. Tellek (real name unknown) Science Officer/Romulan spy on U.S.S. Nightingale

Notable Information: It was discovered that Lt. Tellek, a Science Officer on the U.S.S. Nightingale was actually a Romulan spy that had been embedded in Starfleet over eight years ago. Tellek escaped with data on the Nova Class starships and about the Federation forces along the Neutral Zone. Fortunately because Starfleet is now aware of what data was stolen, the damage is minimal.

Mission Recap: The U.S.S. Nightingale, a Nova-class Federation science vessel, sister ship to the U.S.S. Kimura, has accidentally crossed into the Romulan Neutral Zone.
They believe it is due to a failure of their navigation array, but according to the Romulan treaty, this may be considered an act of war. Moments after the mistake was discovered a Romulan warbird decloaked and opened fire. The attack took out most of the Nightingale’s engineering section and engineers.
However, the Nightingale did manage to fire back and appears to have damaged the warbird. Both ships are now stuck in the Neutral Zone until they can effect repairs.
Unfortunately the Romulans are insisting they will take the Nightingale and her crew back to Romulus to stand trial for war crimes once their ship can leave.

The Kimura is the closest ship to the Nightingale and is ordered to assist the Nightingale and defuse the situation whatever way they can. It is made clear that they are not to enter the Neutral Zone themselves unless it is a dire emergency.

Admiral Hebert also includes a copy of the transmission Starfleet received from the Nightingale’s first officer explaining that Captain Blake was killed in the attack along with most of the Engineering crew and that the ship has sustained heavy damage with most systems down other than life support.

Upon arriving at the Neutral Zone, communication is established with Commander Lewis of the Nightingale as well as with Commander Mheven, Captain of D’Deridx Class Warbird I.R.W. T’Varen.
Captain T’Kor manages to negotiate with Commander Mheven to be allowed to beam over some Engineering and Medical teams to the Nightingale, but Commander Mheven insists that a Romulan observer be allowed to beam over as well to monitor what is going on.

Lt. Cmd. Rowan Tonelli heads up the Engineering Team, which includes Ensign Wolfgang Ratzel.
Cmd. O’Nnyah heads up the Medical Team, which includes Lt. Jr. Maria Gallo.
Cmd. Xedrik and Lt. Cmd. Taemin Rahn also go along to assist with organizing the repair and relief efforts as well as doing some investigation into what happened.

It is discovered that just before she died in her quarters, Captain Blake activated the ‘Romulan Protocol’, and emergency procedure which locks out and encrypts all data in the computer system.

It also seems suspicious that a small ship like the Nightingale was able to inflict such heavy damage on a ship as large as the T’Varen, enough to take out it’s warp engine. Even though the shields would be down after coming out of cloak, it seems unusual that a trained Romulan crew didn’t manage to get the shields up before the Nightingale fired.

The Romulan observer stays with Commander Lewis on the bridge, keeping tabs on the communications going on with the various teams on the Nightingale. While Commander Lewis does want to get to the bottom of what is going on, her main priority is the safety of her ship and crew so she is happy to turn the investigation over to Cmd. Xedrik and his team.

They take a look at the navigation station on the bridge and confirm that there is no fault with the console. They decide to question the navigation officer, Lieutenant Dallon. He is deeply upset, blaming himself for the navigation error that has caused the death of his crewmates.
He had done a routine course check and realized that the ship had gone off course. While the navigation systems showed they were on course, a more detailed position check proved they had slid into the Neutral Zone.
This forethought to make a position check may have given the Nightingale precious moments to prepare before the warbird decloaked.

Cmd. Xedrik and Lt. Cmd. Rahn decide that they will need to investigate the navigation sensors, which will involve doing an EVA outside the ship.
Once they make their way to the navigation array they discover that it has been sabotaged. It is an expert job. Instead of causing a failure of the array, it has lengthening its scan cycle. This means the system is only checking its position once in a while rather than constantly. As nothing was actually wrong, the fault remained undetected. But this fault will have had to be carefully timed. Only at this point on the Neutral Zone border would the sabotage have caused the ship to cross over, traveling straight ahead instead of making a vital course correction. So the saboteur must have carried out their work just an hour or so before the attack, and must therefore still be aboard the Nightingale!

Lt. Cmd. Tonelli is kept very busy prioritizing which systems need to be fixed in what order, and deciding whether to skip fixing some of the safety systems to get the Warp Engines back on-line sooner. They decide that the risk isn’t worth it and decide to complete the work on the safety system first.
A team is also sent out to work on sealing the breaches in the hull plating on the outside of the ship. This will allow the emergency force fields to be disengaged, freeing more power and making it easier to use other ship’s systems.

Cmd. O’Nnyah goes to sickbay and spends most of her time there helping out the Nightingale’s Chief Medical Officer, Lieutenant Commander G’Trel. With no computer and no power the medical records of the crew are unavailable and the Emergency Medical Hologram is unavailable.
Lt. Jr. Gallo helps the rescue teams stabilize and move wounded crew members from around the ship to sickbay.

Captain Blake’s body is stored in a cargo bay near the sickbay that has been turned into a makeshift morgue. Lt. Cmd. Rahn enlists the help of Lt. Jr. Gallo to take a closer look at Captain Blake. Although she does have a nasty wound on her head, consistent with a bulkhead falling on her, her actual cause of death was asphyxiation. There are also marks on her neck that are consistent with strangulation, and many of her other wounds might also have been caused by physical combat.

Lt. Cmd. Rahn decides that getting the computer system back on line would be helpful in figuring out what has happened, as well as being useful for the Medical and Engineering team. Lt. Tellek, a science officer on the Nightingale offers to assist. He is a geologist by trade and doesn’t have enough medical or engineering skill to be helpful in those areas, but is reasonably good with computer systems. He also says that his, and the other scientists, experimental data is in the computer and that they should try and save it in case the Romulans allow them to leave without the Nightingale.

As they are working on breaking through the lockout and are on the verge of succeeding, Lt. Cmd. Rahn, being Betazoid, picks up an uncharacteristic feeling of excitement and anticipation coming from Lt. Tellek and suddenly realizes that it is Lt. Tellek who is the saboteur. He also realizes immediately after that he is alone with him and that his shipmates are scattered all over the place. He makes an excuse about needed an extra bit of equipment to Lt. Tellek to try and buy some time and get some separation from him but is only partially successful. Lt. Tellek manages to finish downloading the data and sets off one of the relay’s in the computer room to explode. He beams away just as reinforcements arrive. The Romulan observer on the bridge also beams out at the same time and the T’Varen warps away. Tellek’s plan to make it appear that he and Lt. Cmd. Rahn had died in an unfortunate explosion in the computer core failed, but he did manage to escape.

With the departure of the T’Varen, the rest of the repairs on the Nightingale are able to be completed, and it and it’s crew are safely returned to Federation space.