Recap: Seven Years' Bad Luck

Part One

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The Waverider rejoined the USS Sally Ride just before it arrived at the Hadriepsis research facility. The facility is best known for its state-of-the-art Borg liberation center, but it's also the site of cutting-edge research on all aspects of Borg physiology and psychology. The Ride was being sent to pick up a cadre of newly liberated officers to be stationed on Starbase Diversity, as well as some experimental technology just becoming ready for deployment.

However, when the ship arrived at the starbase facility, it didn't answer their hails. Life scans indicated that the station's personnel were all present and in good health, and there didn't appear to be any technical problems. Suspicious of the situation, Captain Orenn ordered yellow alert.

Some explanation presented itself when a spatial anomaly appeared on the opposite side of the station from the Ride. Attempts to divine the nature of the anomaly were stonewalled by the ship's computer, which claimed to be guarding classified information. At least one trait of the anomaly quickly became clear when it deposited a starship in space that hadn't been there before.

The ship appeared to be of Federation design, but no one could quite identify the class. Its IFF beacon was also unrecognizable to the crew. It immediately fired up its transporters, beaming personnel and cargo out of certain areas of the station. It ignored hails, just as the station had done -- at least until the Ride used a tractor beam to block its transporters.

At that point, the captain of the ship, a weathered human named Captain Derreth, deigned to parley with the Ride. He identified his ship as the "ISS Minotaur," which meant little to most but a lot to Orenn. Derreth insisted that his only interest was in extracting his people from the facility and leaving, but Captain Orenn refused to let him make off with the Federation equipment that he was obviously beaming aboard his ship by the crateful.

The Ride also beamed a team aboard the station, to retake control of the decks that were occupied by Terrans. This put a thick layer of frost over the negotiations with Captain Derreth, however. The team easily regained control of the station's tactical systems, but were immediately set upon when they attempted to retake the command deck. Between the weapons fire aboard the station and the blocked transporters, it became clear that Derreth wasn't going to make a clean getaway, and the furious Terran closed communications.

Deciding that his priority was to prevent the Terrans from escaping with whatever they were after, Orenn immediately ordered the Sciences department to act on their plans to collapse the spatial anomaly the Minotaur had used to arrive. The Terran ship moved to protect its escape route with lethal force, opening fire immediately. The Sally Ride's recent upgrades and a considerable amount of recent battle damage to the Minotaur put the two ships on a fairly even footing... until the Ride's team aboard the station retook the command deck and joined in with the starbase's defensive systems.

Unexpectedly, the Minotaur exploded. Examination of combat logs revealed that as soon as it became clear they had no hope of escape, Derreth scuttled his own ship, detonating its warp core in a suicidal attempt to cause the maximum damage to both Hadriepsis and the Ride.

Orenn's report to Admiral Walker was inconclusive. It's not clear what the Minotaur was after, and clearing up that uncertainty is the top priority the Admiral has handed down. The Terran personnel captured aboard the starbase -- most of whom appear to be mirror duplicates of starbase personnel -- are the obvious first place to go for information. There is also considerable concern about the conduct of one of the Ride's engineers, a Lt.Cmdr Night. He has been scheduled for special counseling sessions with tr'Dar.

Part Two

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After destroying the ISS Minotaur and capturing its incursion team aboard the Hadriepsis research facility, the Sally Ride was stationed in the system as part of a larger task force to guard against further incursions from the mirror universe. The first order of business was to determine the basis of the Minotaur's interest in the facility.

To that end, a group including personnel from the Sally Ride and the facility attempted to question a prisoner, Jaron Teller, who had been posing as his own parallel self aboard the station for weeks. Between the facts security officer Cor was piecing together from the physical evidence and the background knowledge of this universe's Teller held by a Hadriepsis scientist named Kilani, Orenn hoped to pressure the prisoner into revealing information about his mirror adversaries' plans.

Unfortunately, the interrogation was cut short by Night, who sabotaged the brig's systems to prevent interference and then attempted to beat the information out of Teller, in spite of specific orders to exercise restraint. Unfotunately for that plan, Teller was anything but a pushover, proving to be a perfectly capable match in hand-to-hand combat. The fight only concluded when station security reinitialized the brig's security systems and put both combatants down with a dose of neutrozine gas. For his trouble, Night now has his own cell in the brig, right next door to Teller's, where he awaits a court martial.

However, a shadowy organization within the Federation appears to have dispatched an agent to Hadriepsis, and that agent seems to agree with Night's extreme stance regarding the mirror universe. This puts the Sally Ride crew in a difficult spot, attempting to piece together what they can about the Terran Empire's interest in the research facility while not being entirely sure which of their allies are working toward the same goals.

Cor's investigation of the station's logs has at least revealed that the mirror team got aboard the starbase through a series of secret transports from the surface of Hadriepsis D, the planet around which the station orbits. It seems that agents enter this universe on the surface, transport into their duplicates' quarters during the sleep cycle, and place them into stasis, leaving them free to impersonate them without worrying about any awkward meetings. It's likely that there are still mirror agents on the surface, or that more are on their way.

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Part Three
The regular sensor sweeps set up to monitor the surface of Hadriepsis D didn't take long to pay off. When a dimensional breach occurred, the Sally Ride crew were ready and beamed quickly to the area. With assistance from Starfleet personnel stationed locally, they began a search for the epicenter of the spatial distortion they had detected.

The search seemed fruitless at first, leading them to an area where clearly nothing was amiss, but Captain Orenn noted a computer error related to the orbital research facility. First officer Seven investigated, and discovered that the station was broadcasting skewed navigational information.

Lieutenant Benton contacted the Sally Ride, which created its own orbital maps. With these, the away team quickly located the real source of the dimensional breach.

When they arrived, they were shocked to find Night, somehow free from his captivity, in a room full of corpses and one nearly catatonic alien survivor. He immediately launched into a rant filled with threats and gloating about the inevitable victory of some "empire."

He overplayed his hand, though, when he physically attacked Orenn. To do so, he had to turn his back to Lieutenant Benton, who had spent the entire standoff slowly moving laterally to set up a flank attack. The Lieutenant saw his opportunity and felled the rogue officer with a stun beam to the back.

Some quick transporter work saw Night returned to the brig and the unidentified alien relocated to sickbay. At this point, Lt. Commander Zoril felt that it was time to reveal her origin in the mirror universe's equivalent of MACO to the rest of the bridge crew. She and Orenn briefed their colleagues on the situation, finally putting most of the ship's officers on the same page.

Once that conference had concluded, Orenn, Seven, and Zoril went to interrogate Night. It became quite clear -- if it hadn't already -- that he was an agent of the Terran Empire. He alluded to a Starfleet admiral who helped him escape the brig previously, but his attempts to seduce his way out of Orenn's custody weren't exactly an unalloyed success.

More information was gained in sickbay by Benton and Lieutenant Cor. The alien, a girl named T'Soni, belonged to a species with innate dimensional sensitivity. She had been forcibly augmented by agents from the mirror universe to create natural bridges between the two realities, allowing communication and even small-scale transport, but only by exacting an extreme physical and mental toll from her.

In particular, it became clear that these agents, and the ones responsible for the Hadriepsis raid, were not loyal to the Terran Empire, but another faction entirely. Night had killed them because that was his mission: to stymie their efforts on behalf of the Terrans.

This new faction is the mirror equivalent of MACO. They are locked in conflict with the Terrans over how to deal with the Borg threat in their universe. The Empire, recognizing a superior military force, is convinced that only evacuation to newly invaded territory in this universe is a viable option. MACO is an unsanctioned resistance, not unlike this universe's Maquis, who refuse to flee and are desperately seeking any advantage over the Borg.

This leaves the Sally Ride in a difficult position. If they allow mirror MACO to succeed, they will compromise the security of the Federation on behalf of an organization that has proven willing to abuse and enslave people in this universe. If they defeat this alternate MACO, they will remove the last reasonable alternative for people in the mirror universe, and their only hope will be the Terran Empire's invasion of the Federation.

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Part Four
Lt. Commander Zoril had long suspected that the ISS Cerberus, the ship she brought with her to this universe, might be a target for a raid from her home reality. What T'Soni overheard during the communications links she powered for mirror MACO confirmed that the ship's location was being investigated by agents from that universe. As a precaution, Captain Orenn and Admiral Walker had the ship moved from its hidden location in the Briar Patch to a more secure one.

However, shortly after bringing aboard supplementary personnel to assist with the challenges presented by its dealings with the parallel reality, the Sally Ride received word that the Cerberus had broken contact while in transit. Fortunately, a beacon that had been installed on the experimental Terran ship would allow Starfleet to track it. Bringing the Galaxy-class USS Independence and the Intrepid-class USS Krakow for support, Orenn moved to intercept the presumably stolen vessel.

Meanwhile, a combined science team from Sally Ride and the Hadriepsis research facility was working on the problem of differentiating between those native to this universe and those that belonged to its mirror. Their solution, presented by Ensign Yenzoc and Hannibal, used the deep scanning abilities of the matter transporter to detect minute differences in elementary particles. However, this process would require the subject to be put through a transporter, with the usual limitations of that device.

Before a test could be arranged, the Ride entered sensor range of the Cerberus, which was accompanied by a smaller vessel of unfamiliar design. Lieutenant Cor's analysis of the ship led him to compare it to a current-generation Defiant-class ship. Given the extensive upgrades to the Cerberus and mirror vessels' fierce tactical reputation, he advised that a fight should be avoided.

Fortunately, the Cerberus's thieves seemed interested in parley. They slowed to impulse and hailed. Despite Zoril's conviction that they would find the vessel under the control of the Terran Empire, the man who appeared on screen was none other than Orenn's alternate, a self-styled admiral and MACO leader.

The Terran Empire was represented, however, by Lieutenant Benton's mirror equivalent. A formerly feared Terran warlord, the "Butcher of Tellar" had fallen to Admiral Orenn, who displayed his human prize for public humiliation to win the loyalty of Benton's former victims for MACO.

Admiral Orenn also brought allies. The escort vessel Basilisk accompanying him was captained by the doppelganger of Aztroz Restagh, a Sally Ride engineer, and his bridge was patrolled by an armored "enforcer" suspiciously similar to security officer Cor. As so often seems to be the case, the mirror incursion had not simply pitted brother against brother, but twin against twin.

Admiral Orenn seemed willing to consider the possibility of a mutually beneficial deal with his opposite number. However, his possession of the Cerberus and his tactical strength put him in a very strong bargaining position. The Sally Ride's captain, for his part, seemed to be thrown off balance by the outlandish tableau on his main viewscreen.

T'Soni, distressed by the appearance of her former captors, retreated to the captain's ready room with counselors Aeldarus and Narciso, who had hoped to reorient her in her new place and time. With their help, she was able to psionically detect the presence of other members of her species aboard the MACO vessels, likely suffering the same circumstances she had at MACO's hands. The counselors got a message to the bridge crew notifying them of this additional complication.

However, the negotiations quickly went south when Zoril, convinced that MACO's palaver was nothing but a delaying gambit, attempted to trigger a shutdown mechanism aboard the Cerberus. MACO, accustomed to such Trojan Horse strategies from the Terran Empire, had already located and disabled the backdoor. Even so, Admiral Orenn was furious at the attempted treachery.

He didn't have a chance to act on his anger, however. Immediately after Zoril's failed sabotage attempt, a massive disruption split the space between the ships: a tunnel from the mirror universe, depositing a Borg cube from their reality into ours.

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Part Five
The Borg cube that descended upon the Sally Ride from the mirror universe didn't attack immediately -- instead it began reaching out on communication frequencies, attempting to regain contact with the hive of its universe. This gave the Starfleet and mirror MACO forces precious seconds to concoct a defensive strategy.

The Galaxy-class Independence was the clear choice to take the brunt of the assault. The tactical officer aboard the Intrepid-class Krakow was known to have quite a stockpile of exotic weapons, so Captain Orenn ordered that ship to load up transphasic torpedoes. Tactical scans of the cube suggested that its adaptations were very different from those encountered in this universe, meaning that while it was a fearsome offensive machine, many historical Starfleet strategies would catch it flat-footed.

Even so, it was crucial for the Starfleet ships and their mirror rivals to work in concert. Despite suspicions on both sides, an impromptu battlefield alliance was formed.

Flying in formation, the mixed force used the Independence as a defensive break, then swept past it to pummel a single shield arc. The Krakow, still loading transphasic weapons, was limited to beam fire, but the Ride made up for it with a devastating wave of quantum torpedoes and a nest of mines to hinder the cube's maneuvering. The mirror MACO ships let loose with their own exotic weapon system, using disposable one-shot beam focusing arrays to overcome adaptive shielding.

The onslaught battered down the shield arc and caused the kind of hull damage only a Borg cube could possibly have shrugged off -- but that's exactly what it did. The counteroffensive was monumental, leaving plasma fires raging all over the Independence and Cerberus. Even the nimble Sally Ride took enough fire to completely overwhelm her deflectors and cause breaching on some decks. Just as it became clear that the task force would not survive another attack run, Krakow finally reported ready for a transphasic bombardment.

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And what a bombardment it was. Just as unprepared as the cubes that faced USS Voyager decades ago, this one took the torpedoes directly in its deeply cratered side and broke entirely in half. The structural damage was finally great enough that what was left of the ship wouldn't pose a threat.

But surviving the mirror Borg was only half of the task facing the Sally Ride. There remained the matter of putting a stop to mirror MACO's incursions into this universe.

The mirror forces, lacking Starfleet's edge in counter-Borg technology and tactics, had come out of the fight much worse for wear. While combat would still be devastating for both sides, the Federation would be the clear victor, putting them in much better negotiating territory.

The Admiral Orenn who hailed after the battle still resented the attempted sabotage before the Borg arrived, but he couldn't help but be chastened by the Federation forces' performance in the battle. He took Orenn's explanation that the saboteur was a subordinate acting alone at face value, though he took a moment to criticize the Sally Ride crew's "lack of discipline."

After a great deal of haggling, a deal was sketched out. MACO would release all imprisoned Aetraxi to the Federation and cease all incursions into this universe. They also handed over this universe's version of Night, whom they had tardily brought to expose his mirror duplicate's treachery. In exchange, Starfleet would provide the technological means to drive back the Borg encroaching on the mirror universe, including ship-to-ship countermeasures and best practices for Borg drone liberation.

A particular sticking point was Captain Orenn's insistence that the mirror vessel Cerberus remain in this universe; the Admiral was just as adamant that it be returned to defend its home dimension. In the end, the matter was settled by simple intimidation -- MACO simply couldn't survive a battle in their current state. The Sally Ride captain did agree to provide Starfleet assistance with repairs to the Basilisk.

However, this brought on another debate, this time among the Starfleet personnel aboard the Ride. Counselor Narciso brought up the significant ethical dilemma of interfering so profoundly in the future of the mirror universe, even to avert a Borg invasion. Though MACO was hardly a pre-warp civilization, Starfleet would be handing them technology they didn't have in an effort to influence their development. Would such an action violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Prime Directive?

After considering the argument, Orenn decided to go ahead with the deal in spite of the counselor's objections. He did suggest that Narciso raise these concerns farther up the chain of command.

Once the Sally Ride had received the transports from MACO and command of the Cerberus, the entire group made their way back to the Briar Patch for repairs, and after a shift break, the bridge crew made their way to the lounge for some R&R.