7: Bones of Eden
At the heart of the starless expanse, the Carter finds the
spatial anomaly that threw the slowboats so far off course, and learns that it
can send ships through time. They must chase Lt. Vandermar, whose returning to
1960's Earth's to stop the birth of Kahn accidentally unmakes the Federation!
But what are the moral implications of allowing the Eugenics Wars?
Hook
"After weeks in the Long Dark, I still can't believe
that we're only halfway across, and that this is the fastest route back to the
Sagan. Still, it is the fastest route, and at Warp 6 we're making good time.
And finally, at least, we have something to look at: the Heart of Sin nebula is
looming before us, and even if Dr. Cotton at Sagan hadn't asked us to give it a
thorough going over, I would anyway, just as something to do. The Andorian
ships salvaging the Aristophanes are nearby, and Sigfried has arranged a swap
of entertainment broadcasts to give the crew some new diversion. Andorian drama
is decidedly strange, and awfully bloody. Apparently Crewman Rey likens it to
Hong Kong Police Drama of the late 20th century, where honor is avenged with
gunplay. What a strange and dangerous time.”
I assume there will be any number of questions about the
nebula their scans will reveal a very strong distress signal coming from the
Gamma 1 – the slowboat they were looking for back in the first episode! It
shouldn’t be anywhere near here! Further scans show that there are pockets of
dark matter and subspace fractures inside the nebula. That slowboat was picked
to make sure there was no chance the players think the thing is actually in
there. Once they get the whole message they’ll hear that it’s the Gamma 1’s
captain broadcasting a signal about the ‘bump’ that they hit, which corresponds
with the message they pulled out of the wreckage in episode 1
Plot Turn 1
Further research will show that the nebula is not a standard
Idari Class dark matter nebula, but a rarer Mar-Obscura class nebula - the sort
that has temporal subspace fractures! They'll find this out when their scans
start echoing back at them, and they begin picking up radio chatter from other
ancient ships, including subspace ones from the frequency that the Andorains
used during their first warp flights. I figure once they spend some time doing
some research they'll get the following data based on how well they roll:
History or History -
Federation: "The Gamma One's radio call matches the designs of the time,
and the other signals match similar slowboat ships from the timeframe, and are
likewise distress calls about hitting a 'bump'. The other calls match the
records of various other ships, dating back well over 200 years.
Communications/computer use A: "That's clearly the
Gamma One's signal, but there is no way that it could be here. We must be
dealing with some sort of echo. Digging through the static, there are other,
less well defined signals. The most corrupted one I could salvage made
reference to the Yena Kolari, or Greater Orion. That's the term for the Orion
empire back when they *had* an empire, and the last time they used that term
for it, Terran Pharaohs were building pyramids.
Computer use B: "Combining the normal effects of both
nebula and dark matter with these rifts makes the entire Heart of Sin into a
non-causal area. By going through records, we've found 6 distinct cases of
timekeeping errors recorded with ships passing through the edges of the rift.
It's not a constant - there are 22 such transits, now counting ours - and none
of the timekeeping errors were significant. But then, none went in far.
Space Science A: "The Nebula isn't an Idaria class, as
it had been designated. It's a Mar Obscura class, only the second of its kind
found in Federation space. These care classified by not just pockets of dark
matter, but by a high occurrence of subspace rips, similar to the one we
encountered in the Burning Nebula. It's impossible to read whether those rifts
exist just in the outside edge, and what measure of safety there is in the
center of the nebula.
Space Science B: "These rifts differ in that they are
non-casual fractures in subspace - whatever generated them, they existed both
before and after the instant of generation. Functionally, each rift serves as a
hole not into just subspace, but through time.
Space Science C: "Given the nature of the transmissions
and our scans of the area, this non-casual event is reaching its terminus. It
exploded from here some time ago, and it's compressing back to this point.
That's not a totally accurate image - imagine a sphere in space-time, and this
nebula is its bottom pole. Now, fill the sphere with liquid, and say the
subspace fractures were shaken into the liquid, but had a greater density. They
have all now settled here.
Space Science D: "What could have caused this remains a
mystery, but a careful reading of the starcharts indicates that the Sin Expanse
might not be natural. The Nebula might be surrounded by empty space because
whatever created the Nebula destroyed everything nearby. The force must have
been enormous.
I figure this as being in the conference room, after the
various departments have analyzed the data. This cross department analyzing
will give sufficient time for Vandermar to find out what's going on and how he
can use it. Towards the end of the meeting, the communications officer will get
a message coming in from the Andorian ships, asking for one last conversation
before they depart the area.
Pinch 1
Vandermar, one of the crew members picked up from the
slowboat in episode 2 and a fugitive from the Eugenics wars, becomes aware of
the nature of the Heart of Sin Nebula and sees it as an opportunity to go back
and prevent the Eugenics wars. He enters the shuttle bay, clocks the security
guard with a surprise shot, grabs his phaser and stuns the other man in the
room – if there is a PC security officer or a cadet then he can be here, but
make it clear that this is one of those ‘this has to happen’ scenes and that
Vandermar is spending drama points or their equivalent like water to assure
that. Vandermar will then fire a couple of shots into key conduit panels,
knocking out the ships systems temporarily. With their ability to stop him
limited, he steals a shuttle and heads into the warp.
The bridge crew will find out about this when they suddenly
drop to emergency power and the shields go dead. Sensors will register damage
amidships, but the exact information will be confusing. There should be some
good panicked minutes of repairing the ship and trying to figure out what
happened, with a sketchy screen view of the shuttlecrat vanishing at warp speed
into the nebula.
To add to this mess the comm officer is in contact with the
Andorians, who are still some distance away. Once the Horus disappears into the
nebula, the message shifts suddenly from an offering of aide to a threat from a
fully armed Adorian ship!
Midpoint
Midpoint here is them going from investigation of the nebula
to an emergency of having to fix the altered timeline. Since they were in the
Nebula they were unaffected by the time shift, but now they have to decide what
to do and how to do it. The Andorian ship, well, the new Andorian ship has
enough firepower to pose a serious threat to the Carter even if she were in
peak condition, but is an hour or so away. The damaged system can be repaired
quickly by some creative rerouting of power conduits, so there should be no
longer term sense of dead in the water.
I wonder if the players will as readily realize what
happened – if they don’t some history rolls will make it clear that somehow the
Eugenics wars didn’t occur, humanity never made first contact and the Andorains
and Vulcans, without humans to act as a social lubricant between them, never
joined forces. In any case, they have till the Andorian ship turns up to figure
out what to do, and try to guess exactly what occurred. The Carter can certainly
survive the travel back through the Nebula’s time rifts if the Horus did, but
they might be concerned about that and start making emergency preparations for
the voyage.
One thing that will come up is the research on 20th century
earth that the historian has been performing with Rey (the other 20th
century slowboat refugee) and Vandermar, combined with local records. That
should open things up for a few possibilities of where he'd go.
A complex History test reveals one record that a 'Superman'
made, commenting on their being the scions of Brahmins. As we all know,
Brahmins are the highest Hindu caste, which fits with Kahn's Indian heritage.
Of course, as time goes on Knox, knowledge will give her a
growing sense of the timetable. I'm abstracting from Gre Cox’s Eugenics Wars
books here (Gary Seven vs. Kahn; they’re worth reading), but the project itself
should take place in India, in the late 1960s. In the early 1960's the
scientists involved were still in their various institutions, the core of whom
were doing work in the New England universities. Dr. Singh is still at Harvard.
Vandermar is following the Brahmin reference in its
colloquial sense, and is tracking down likely biologists/biotech people in the
Boston region. This will fairly quickly connect him with Dr. Singh, who will
likely think she's being stalked by a mad killer.
Which, on a certain level, she is.
Pinch
2
This is the trip through time – at least I sure hope the
players think they have to follow the Horus - which should feel rough and tumble, not
something worth repeating except to get back and generally shake the crew up,
but not too much. Some damage to the shield, a panel shorting out, and if they
roll really poorly have the eps conduits go down again. However, they are able
to track the Horus' trail through the rifts back to Earth, Spring of 1963. May
15th, to be exact.
A time when all the eyes of the world were on the sky, and
they run into some good old fashioned Air Force or Nasa Interference They
nearly hit Gordon Cooper, in one of his 22 orbits of earth in Mercury 9 (the
faith 7 capsule) between the 15th to the 17th. This should make their arrival a
little problematic, but the subspace rift they need to return through is just
beyond Saturn. This is a chance fo the helmsman and science officer to show
off, but even a failure means they make here, just with a damaged ship; a
critical success means one panel shorting out and some cinematic bouncing
around.
Plot Turn 2
The sensors on the Carter pick up the signal from the Horus,
but they aren't anywhere near India - they're in New England - specifically the
wilds of Maine. What the heck is he doing there, you may ask, or you may just
throw dice at me for a really bad pun. In any case, there is evidence that he
dropped off somewhere and sent the ship on autopilot to here. He was dropped
off near Boston, some 36 hours ago.
Armed with this new knowledge, the PCs will have to track
down the people that Vandermar is tracking down, and that takes them to
beantown. They'll have to confront various types of legalistic hurdles and
informational ones to get the info they need, as well as one massive moral
dilemma:
This is open ended of the GM, as any group of players is
going to approach this differently. In my case we had a) a medical officer who
was a fan of baseball and the Red Sox in particular (sad news, Red Sox Nation –
the Eugenics Wars interrupted the timeline enough that the Sox never broke
their World Series losing streak…) and the PCs parleyed that into a chance to
win some money betting on games with her 20th century souvenir $20
bill. The PCs will likewise have to find a way to get the resources they need.
If there are PCs who aren’t people who would be commonly accepted or afforded
respect on the streets of Boston in 1963 then the GM should work in a scene to
address that, given that this is Star Trek.
Resolution
The whole of the game from here on in is pretty loose, based
on what they do, but it should ultimately lead them to Dr. Singh's offices at a
science facility outside Harvard. There is some fairly tight security, but
depending on where the Carter is they might just be able to beam by it. I leave
it to player ingenuity, and the only thing I want to have is an encounter with
students trying to get them to join the equal rights movement, hoping that they
can change the world.
The final scene of this should involve chasing Vandermar or
somehow interrupting him in the offices of Dr. Singh. They will have to be
extra careful that she doesn't realize what's going on, but instead take this
insane intrusion as a reason to move her facility elsewhere. Like back home to
India.
As per the laws of Star Trek the return time trip is small
potatoes but they might have to figure out what to do with Vandemar, if he’s
still among the living.
