After defeating a rogue hologram and a couple hundred Devidians in last week’s episode, “What Lies Beneath”, the Federation News Service traveled into the past to take on the deadliest enemy of them all – Starfleet! With some pluck, courage and help from an unexpected friend, we did manage to complete our mission.
The wraith-like Devidians infest the Ferengi-owned Drozana station, which serves both the Klingons and the Federation from its orbit deep within the Klingon-Federation Neutral Zone. We’d tracked their incursion down to an interdimensional portal deep within the station that appeared to lead into the past.
Our contact, Section 31 operative Franklin Drake, confirmed our suspicions. Time travel had been approved in this situation, as long as we didn’t tell too many people, anyway. We had the replicator make us some period-specific clothing, and returned to the depths of the station – and into the past.
Wow! They really did like the bright colors back in the 23rd century. Bold, primary colors and lots of straight lines. Drake had cautioned us against any interaction with the people of the past, but that wasn’t going to be as easy as all that. Despite our clothing, they knew us for intruders right away. The station was under quarantine – people had been falling ill, from causes unknown. We recognized the symptoms of Devidian infestation right away, but the people in the past had no technology that could reveal the specific source of the infestation.
We would have to scrounge through the station for parts AND try to remain unnoticed.
I DID say “try”, but the old time humans weren’t quite as dumb as they looked. Before long we had security squads tracking our every move. We tried to avoid them as much as we could, but we did leave a few stunned crewmembers in our wake.
How did people ever USE this old stuff? Seemed rebooting a computer took three separate consoles to manage; disassembling a console required the whole Geek Squad and … well, I hope the Drozana crew enjoy their new triolic pattern enhancer. But they’ll never know, will they?
We tracked the infestation to a quarantine area. A Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy was in charge, and apparently he was quite famous in his day. He was suspicious of us, but with so much of the crew drained and the rest under lockdown, he pressed us into service as the only mobile people within reach, since all the security crews had been running ragged chasing phantoms.
Or, you know, people from the future. (Shhh!)
Dr. McCoy had us scan the ill for signs of synaptic unease. When we had some good baseline readings, we programmed some cortical stimulators and passed them around. They did seem to be working. McCoy rushed off with the good news while we continued scavenging consoles for parts.
That completed, we brought the detector to the main power grid and hooked it in – the Devidians were all around us! We took them out as best we could. The working detector found the source of the infestation – the comet that was near the station in both their time and ours. The Devidians were using the comet to power their temporal incursions. We would have to deal with that somehow.
Mission completed, we started toward the time portal – until we realized that suffused with triolic radiation as we were following the battle, we would never survive the trip back. Who could we ask for help…. Doctor?
McCoy made it clear that he knew much more about us and our mission than he let on, but he’s never one to pass up help. We saved a lot of lives, and he’d be glad to help us chelate off some of the radiation. (He hadn’t yet gotten the casualty reports re: the security details we left lying on the shag carpeting below).
That detail finished, we happily returned to preset times and reported our findings to Mr. Drake. He informed us that we would have to return once more to the past to deal with the comet – but this time, we’d be taking our ships.
But that’s next week’s mission, “Night of the Comet”.
Had a lot of fun with this mission. I didn’t write about something knew Cryptic has been trying, and I should have: Last week’s mission and this week’s changed in small ways depending upon your character. Acid jets in Drozana could be overridden if you were a science officer; tactical officers could deploy some automated defenses to help fight off the Devidians. In this week’s episode, diplomats had additional dialog choices, and your conversation with McCoy had slight changes based on your profession.
As before, the Klingon version was largely the same as the Federation. How could Klingons blend in in a Federation station in the past? Simple! The Klingons of the past looked different! The Feds wouldn’t even recognize the Klingons for what they were. Which would be fine, except my Klingon IS an old style Klingon.
At one point you stumble across a security team and try to claim that your team is ANOTHER security team who found the invaders, knocked them out and stole their clothing. Yeah. They didn’t buy that, either.
Lots of puzzles, three new daily missions, well-scaled for solo or group, this was probably the best mission in the Devidian arc so far.