And yours also the night (episode)

In this first episode, USS Pegasus sets out to start the exploration of the galactic region known as the Labyrinth, starting with investigating the silence of a dilithium mine in the Alpha-Redfield system.

Prologue
"Mein Vater sagte immer, als die Menschen das erste Mal die Warpmauer durchbrachen, war es eigentlich eine Flucht vor der Vergangenheit, vor dem Krieg, dem dritten Weltkrieg, der die Erde in Trümmer gelegt hatte.

Doch was hielten die Weiten des Alls für uns bereit? - Mehr Tod, mehr Krieg. Auch nach dreihundert Jahren Warpantrieb konnten wir dem Krieg nicht entkommen. Es ist die tragische Konstante im Dasein der Menschen, dass der Krieg uns immer wieder findet, egal, wie weit weg er zu sein scheint. Keine Mauer kann die Finsternis aufhalten..."

The prologue of the episode starts with the Battle of Kareka and depicts the battle from the perspective of Allison McNemerra and especially the loss of her brother.

Act One
Several years after the war, in 2379 USS Pegasus arrives at Outpost 311 picking up a number of cewmembers for her first regular mission, heading into the Labyrinth. Lt. Commander Vren and Doctor Aziz are among the officers to be taken onboard, which happens shortly after the Starfleet ship enters orbit above Outpost 311. Welcomed by the first officer, the officers receive quarters and are informed about a senior staff meeting at 08:00 in the morning - which they attend.

Captain McNemerra relays information about ship procedures, i.a. naming Sirnas Vren the Second Officer, before retiring to the bridge and Lt. Commander Illathir begins with a short mission briefing, informing everyone that Starfleet is sending them to the Alpha-Redfield System, more precisely to investigate the undue silence of the dilithium mine positioned on Redfield III. Standard procedure calls for a status report every four weeks, Redfield III has not sent one for six weeks, alerting Starfleet.

After a short tour through the ship, led by Cmdr. Illathir, the crew disperses to learn about their new positions, inspecting the mission operations and science laboratory for instance. Shortly after Pegasus sets out for the Redfield system. The time during the voyage is used by all senior officers to continue familiarization with shipboard systems and erasing minor glitches.

Once arrived in Redfield, cannot obtain any life signs from the planet's surface, but can detect a Cardassian ship within orbit around Redfield-III. The standby powered ship is revealed to have been involved in rescue operations, answering a distress call from the mining outpost by an away team. Oddly enough during the rescue operations, the crew has apparently been attacked. Aware of a possible Cardassian plot, Cpt. McNemerra orders an away team to investigate the situation on the planet.

Act Two
Following the Captain's orders, Cmdr. Illathir sets up two groups for the away team, one consisting of him, Dr. Burgen and Cmdr. Urisis along with security personnel and the other one headed by Cmdr. Vren and consisting of Lt. Aziz, Lt. Rell and Petty Officer Zhukov, who beam down on the planet - due to the inhospitable nature of the planet using space suits.

Cmdr. Vren's group enters the colony in its shuttle bay and immediately realizes that one of the shuttles exploded, heavily damaging the bay. Furthermore the failure of the outpost's power system also powered down all signal enhancers, causing communications to fail due to the ore's radiation. Also phasers and tricorders have only reduced capabilities, putting some stress on the crew. Further investigation reveals a heavily damaged Cardassian shuttle outside the bay.

The four person team leaves the bay, following the plan of meeting the other group in the center of the station. Investigating the laboratories first, the crew fails to find any parts helpful for creating a makeshift signal enhancers. But they find sample container tubes, which house an unfamiliar kind of worm-like creature, approximately 15 cm in size. On their way towards the workshop, they hear breathing sounds from inside an open Jeffris tube, but cannot make out its source. The workshop contains some flashlight, which they obtain and in a side room, home to a laser welding machine, they manage to spot an apparently injured Cardassian, who - due to the polarized nature of the glass between the two rooms - cannot detect them and vanishes before they can open the door and approach the person. They also find bones of a Bolian person. Further investigting the occurences on the station, the group of Cmdr. Vren enters the reactor hall and reviews the power system status, realizing that the plasma flux regulator is burned out and needs replacement for the reactor to resume operations. Shortly before leaving the reactor room, the crew hears sounds from one of the upper levels and climbing the stairs find a Cardassian, crouched over remains of a body, apparently eating them.

The Cardassian attacks in total francy and can only be overcome with phaerfire, which in turn calls more of the alienated victims on the scene. The away team overcomes more of them on the way out of the reactor room.

In front of it, they finally meet a survivor, the Bolian Petty Officer 2nd Class Jenra Sterres. However they are attacked by more affected Starfleet Personnel and fall back deeper into the outpost. Streams of affected personnel are drawn by the noise and the away team around Lt. Cmdr. Vren falls back constantly, before finally the 2nd away team led by Cmdr. Illathir can bring some relief. More orderly the united groups fall further back, persued by more attackers. A crashing air duct cover crashes into Cmd. Illathir, rendering him incapacitated and Cmdr. Vren in command.

In the center of the outpost, they meet Erek Varr, a Cardassian officer, who helps them climb via a Jeffries Tube into the outpost's sickbay, leaving the attackers behind and giving the away team a moment of rest.

Act Three
In sickbay the crew meets also Ensign Kathy Jameson, a communications engineer, and learn that by mining deep into the stone, the outpost's crew have set some life form free, which apparently infected large amounts of the personnel. The resulting power failure led to the fact that communications failed. Ensign Jameson was able to create a makeshift sublight transmitter, which eventually led the Cardassians into the Redfield system. The rescue efforts failed, trapping the Cardassians on the outpost, of whom only Varr remains.

The away team and three survivors formulate a plan to reinstate power to the outpost and thus enable the transporters beaming them into safety: Lt. Aziz will lead a group consisting of Petty Officer Zhukov and Ensign James, for her knowledge of the outpost, through the outpost - creating noise with the modified transmitter, which mostly works as speaker now. Cmdr. Illathir, still unconscious, will remain in sickbay, helped by Dr. Burgen and Petty Officer Sterres. The rest of the away team, supported by Erek Varr will enter the mining operations area of the outpost and retrieve a plasma flux generator from one of the mining drillers' plasma burners to repair the station's reactor. Based on the remark of Ensign Jameson, the crew knows that the internal sensors are inoperative and therefore cannot be used for obtaining their signals for the transporter. Modifying a number of medical tricorders from sickbay to act as sensor replacement, the crew sets out to fulfill their plan. Also thanks to the survivors, the team learns that the affected can only distinguish between themselves and non-affected by smell. To make them attack each other and thus render them less dangerous, the team decided to use flour-x gas usually found in the shuttle hangar and burn their mocous membranes rendering their smell sense useless. Both teams make their way to the hangar, encountering just a small number of affected crew and find the desired gas bottles, preparing them for their escape, before going to the lower levels.

The teams separate in the 1st sublevel, which was reached via a turbolift tube. Overcoming only mild resistance by the affected crew, the Lt. Aziz and his companions create the desired noise and draw the large majority of affected crew to themselves. In the meantime Cmdr. Vren enters the mining operations of the outpost, where his team encounter the same worm-like creatures that the away team initially found in the laboratories, but in stasis. They can dispose of them only to realize that a large amount of crew members is approaching their direction due to the noise of Lt. Aziz' team. The group around Cmdr. Vren hides in a side corridor and the mass of affected personnel is drawn out of the mining operations, into the higher levels of the outpost. Eventually Vren's team finds one of the huge plasma driller's and Cmdr. Urisis begins dismounting the plasma flux regulator.

At the same time, Aziz and his team encounter several affected crewmembers, overcoming them hardly. Finally making their way to the shuttle hangar they are opposed by three more crewmembers, who begin attacking them. Aziz orders to fire on own discretion and tries to reach the hangar, in order to draw the affected into it, as he is carrying the speaker. While Ensign Jameson is able to follow him, Zhukov begins firing on two of the affected, before trying to follow her comrades. Slipping on the bloody ground, she severly damages her helmet, impairing her view dramatically. Aziz reaches the hangar bay door and begins firing on the affected, but realizes that a major group of affected is coming their way, approaching Zhukov quickly. Aziz is hit by a punch by one of the affected, but can dispose of him with his phaser. Jameson is able to slip into the hangar bay, where the Lt. orders her to climb the walls as planned to get out of the affecteds' reach. It becomes clear that Aziz has to draw back into the hangar for the plan to unfold, making it impossible for him to help Zhukov, who by now has got up. He orders her to take cover and hide somewhere else, continuing to make noise and draw the affected after him.

With the wave of affected in pursuit, he enters the hangar, drops the speaker in the centre, close to the gas bottles and begins climbing the wall with the help of the magnetic boots.

Meanwhile, Cmdr. Vren reaches the reactor room, meeting only the outskirts of the tide of the affected. Overcoming the opposition quickly they enter the reactor room, where the chief engineer begins the repair of the reactor. Viewing the large crowd of affected from far, the team is finally approached by Illathir, Burgen and Sterres - the Cmdr. recovered and decided to meet with the rest of the crew, demanding a report on the status and informing Vren about the death of Petty Officer Zhukov. After they meet, they suddenly hear the thunder of an explosion running through the outpost.

As planned, Aziz was finally able to reach the hangar's roof, attaching himself to it with the help of a safety hook and then fire on the gas bottles. Underestimating the effect of the following explosion he is thrown against the wall. The explosion and debris kills a large amount of the affected, the remaining loose their ability to smell as planned, beginning to attack each other.

Eventually Lt. Cmdr. Urisis finishes the makeshift repairs, restoring power to the outpost. This allows Cmdr. Illathir to establish communication with Pegasus, informing them about the situation and the infection, ordering full bio-filter scans for the transport. Once the stage is set, all crewmembers activate their medical tricorders, which act as internal sensor replacement and are finally beamed back onboard - just before the remaining affected can reach and attack Vren's team.

Back onboard the crew reports to the Captain and Vren reccomends a posthumous award for Petty Officer Zhukov, whereas Lt. Aziz offers to inform the family. McNemerra notes that this is her duty but recommends him to write an additional letter with the exact circumstances of her death as he was present. Finally it is decided that the outpost is destroyed with a torpedoe salvo from orbit due to the huge danger the disease poses for any possible visitor.

Epilogue
"Der Krieg mag wirklich eine Konstante im Leben der Menschen sein, eine Krankheit, deren Symptome wir manchmal lindern, aber die wir niemals heilen können. Eine Finsternis, die nie ganz vertrieben werden kann. Aber ist es nicht so, dass in der dunkelsten Nacht selbst eine Kerze weit zu sehen ist, dass es ohne Schatten auch kein Licht gibt? Was für Menschen wir sind, zeigen wir in den grausamsten Momenten unseres Lebens und dann ist es besser sich von Hoffnung und Mut leiten zu lassen, als von Angst und Hass und vielleicht können wir so Brücken bauen - wie tief auch immer der Abgrund sein mag - und vielleicht können diese Brücken erreichen, was Mauern nicht können: Den Krieg besiegen."

Open Questions

 * Where did the creatures come from - Redfield III does not allow lifeforms to form?
 * Will the sickness affect others who have been present on the planet?
 * How will the Cardassians react to the rescue of Erek Varr?

Narrator Section
none yet