The Pridorn were a fascinating sub-species on Sakaria, still somewhat of a scientific enigma to even veteran genealogists within the Federation.

Despite confusion over their physiology, their history had been well documented. Sakaria knew how the Pridorn came to be, they just didn’t know the intricate details of it, and that was the way it was meant to be.

According to history, tens of thousands of years ago a dying race landed on Sakaria realising their time in this universe was almost at an end. They had been forced from their world in a brutal war and were close to extinction. The few that had escaped to their now long abandoned Sakarian colony began to begin extensive scientific research on the preservation of their race. This ended up in many forms of genetic experimentation. A refusal to accept their fate. Of course, such experiments needed test subjects and there was a whole planet of untamed and uncivilised Sakarians to play with. Still in their earliest forms of community and governments. Seeing their invaders through primitive eyes as their creators, their Gods, they willingly laid down their lives for the good of their makers.

They spent hundreds of years researching and mutating, evolving their way to death, one route of research exploring cellular regeneration as a way of sustaining themselves. They found they key to re-activating the body after it died so that upon death, the body would recreate itself from the inside out. Every gene in the body would be recoded, rewritten, reborn into something entirely new. The memories and the mind would remain while their physical body would turn to energy then back to physical matter in a whole new pattern. Essentially when they died the old mind would be given a new body. Unfortunately there were a few side effects. One of which was personality. While it would largely be the same person with the same thoughts, memories and beliefs, they could in essence be a completely different person. The first life cycle may see a happy-go-lucky soul turn into a cynic in their second life cycle, a hero in the third and a villain in the fourth.

Another problem they faced was eventual exhaustion of the cycle. Quick successive deaths would result in the system failing and the subject dying young. They’d also have to face natural death, though no subject lived beyond nine hundred years of natural death before the cycle gave up on them and if the subjects higher functions shut down there was no chance of revival or resurrection.

As the invaders disappeared the experiments they conducted remained to carry a strange legacy. It took centuries to understand why it happened and it would take thousands of years to understand how it happened. Regardless, anyone born of Pridorn blood would be given a gift of long, multiple lives. Other races across the Kolar Region were given other gifts, some had none. But every race who lived in the region were effected by the slavery of their ‘Gods’.

In his third life cycle Kristan Lakotda was a hero, a military man who would fight any battle to protect his home. He was a patriot. A soldier. More than that, he was a high profile officer of the Kolar having served in every order and commanded battles of legendary status. When he entered is fourth cycle the Sakarians were bitter. Their hero ran away.

Carrying the shame of his brother exodus, Colonel Masi Lakotda took his fathers name, Dar, and slowly tried to recapture his siblings glory for himself. Living in Kristan’s shadow, Masi remained a patriot throughout all of his life cycles. Now in his sixth, he stood opposite his younger brother. Wondering why after all thse years he had returned home.

“Terrible office.” Masi commented, breaking a long and awkward silence. The last time he saw his brother was literally another lifetime ago. They hadn’t come face to face since he watched Kristan die in battle. A pointless skirmish, but one that began his ascent to Sakaria One. When he saw his brother fall, he took charge and managed to be the hero of the hour.

For years he assumed Kristan was dead. He hadn’t heard from him until the alliance with the Federation began not so long ago. Part of him was disappointed when he heard the news that Kristan Lakotda was alive. He hated the thought of living in anyone’s shadow again.

Seeing nothing but contempt in his brothers eyes, Kristan began to wonder what kind of man Masi had turned into. He’d hoped for a warmer welcome than that. “Thank you for your assistance.” He replied coldly. “Have you sent ships to follow the attackers?”

“No.” Masi quickly responded.

Staring at the man blankly, he began to wonder if he had even read the brief situation report he’d sent Sakaria One. Considering all his attempts to call the General had been ignored, it was safe to assume everything with his name on it was deleted unread. “I have reason to believe they’re heading towards Federation space.” Lakotda shot back. “If they are, we need to…”

“We need to what?” Masi stopped the captain in his tracks, strolling round the outer walls of the small office compartment. “Divert resources from our territory to save theirs?” He paused, looking his brother in the eye. “This is not my problem, captain. Nor should it be yours.”

“And why is that?”

Ready to deliver a lecture, Masi smiled. “You may have walked out on Sakaria, but this is still your home. Not Earth or the Federation. As a citizen of the Kolar your loyalty should lie here.”

“I am a Starfleet captain.” With each word, Lakotda’s reply seemed to get louder. “And we are part of the Federation now and we have a duty to…”

“You had a duty once and you walked away from it.” Masi interrupted, darting towards the captain. “My job is to protect the Kolar, the Federation is not my problem.”

With his brother getting closer, Lakotda raised an eyebrow, trying to regain his calm. “This city belongs to the Federation, you didn‘t have a problem protecting it.”

“Sha Ka Ree has a lot of distressed Kolar citizens living in it. As long as this threat is leaving my territory, that’s good enough for me.” Masi argued. “You have your own forces to deal with Federation affairs.”

“Oh I see…” Lakotda smiled. A patronising, almost smug, smile. “With the Kolar joining the Federation your job just isn’t that important any more. You’re forced are being downsized to home defence while Starfleet takes over your turf and you’re throwing a childish tantrum over it.”

“You best remember who it is you’re talking to…”

“I know exactly who I’m talking to, brother.” Lakota’s tone lowered, his voice on the verge between anger and calm. “All these years on, some extra gold on your chest and you’re still nothing more than a spoiled child whining about not getting to play with the best toys.”

“How dare you, captain.” The General hissed back. “You better keep in mind that I’m not only your brother, but chief of staff of the MOD, your superior officer and I can have your commission for such disrespect.”

“And you could lose your precious power trip for putting an ally at such obvious risk out of petty jealousy and spite. We both know that if those contacts could out-gun Sakaria One, Earth’s defences don’t stand a chance.”

“And what? If Earth falls I won’t lose any sleep over it.”

“Let me guess…” Lakotda was the one pacing the walls of the office now, mulling it over in his head, disregarding every sensible thought in his head just looking for the right buttons to push. “If Earth falls so does Starfleet and you’re job is safe and secure, the most powerful son of a bitch in the region?”

“Starfleet’s glory days are well behind them, their annihilation will keep them from taking us down with them.”

Kristan stopped behind his desk, taking a deep breath as he heard those words come from his brother. He felt ashamed by his selfish way of thinking. Though a small part of him was struck by guilt, wondering if Masi would still be this bitter if he hadn‘t left Sakaria. “You used to be an honourable man.” The captain finally said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “What happened to you?”

“You’re the one that’s changed Kristan.” Masi knew it was a lie as he said it but he didn‘t care. He wasn‘t willing to lose this battle. “You’ve forgotten what it takes to be an officer of the Orders. You’ve gone soft, given your loyalty to a weak and pathetic government. Our father would be ashamed of what you’ve become.”

“I don’t think I’m the one he’d be ashamed of.” Kristan said as he locked eyes with the man he thought he knew so well. “You’re willing to sacrifice an entire world to save your own career. You’re an embarrassment to the uniform.”

Another few moments of silence passed as Masi looked for a safe response. “If anything you’re the embarrassment and I assure you I‘ll have you removed from this position by the end of the day.”

Stalemate.

Lakotda smiled as he watched his brother storm out of his ‘horrible‘ office. “Go ahead and try Masi.” He shouted, making sure he got the last word. “I’m not gong anywhere.”

Gasping for breath through the waves of smoke filling his bridge, Morgan grabbed a handful of cabling from underneath the scorched deck plating, hauling as much as he could as the panels around him hissed, overloading under the pressure.

Leaving the deck plate open, charred circuits exposed, the lieutenant dragged the handful of cabled to the far side of the room. With one eye on bypassing the master power line to a more stable route, he kept watch over his crew stations as they scurried together to put the final pieces of the plan together.

When they were first attacked the plan was to run. Morgan didn’t care where, all he knew was that he was outgunned and the enemy knew more about him than he did about them. But running didn’t work for long. The enemy were able to knock out most of their primary systems in one shot. Then they took out all weapons and defensive capabilities leaving the Nosferatu an open target.

As a last resort Morgan ordered his engineer to prep their transwarp drive but as the enemy kept firing they began to lose most base functions. With ships systems taking heavy damage automatic flight control was sent offline, leaving Valaris to manually enter the transwarp coordinates and configure the drive herself from memory. It was a tense moment, but it worked. They kept running.

Transwarp speeds were too fast for anyone to even contemplate using weapons. It was far beyond any technology they’d ever known. Despite the enemy having a distinct technological advantage Morgan figured they couldn’t be advanced enough to defy the impossible. He took the chance, he ran so fast that even if they were caught, they couldn’t be killed.

It had been hours. So much time had passed that he wasn’t sure how long it had been. But not a moment was boring as the small crew came together in getting their hands dirty, putting the ship back together again with gum and spit as it raced through space longer than it was ever designed to be capable of.

The ship was coming apart at the seams. But there was hope.

“How about that one?” Morgan asked his tactical officer as he switched a series of isolinear chips around to accept his new power configuration. Still watching the panels around him as he worked “In the middle of a nebula, a lot of interference…”

As her captain made the suggestion, Valaris highlighted the nebula on her display and zoomed into a planet on the map. “If we enter the nebula our sensors will be affected as well, sir.” She stated, reading through the data on file for the nebula and the planet resting inside an uncharted, hazardous solar system.

Trying to wave smoke away as he pushed his way to Val’s side, Morgan shrugged. “This ship is flying itself apart and that planet is a few minutes away.” As he pulled himself into his chair, he reached into his pocket for his flask as he nodded towards his pilot. “Marty, lock in a course for Derani’sal Gaius Twelve.” Taking a mouthful he opened shipboard communications and gave the orders to his crew to put the plan into action. There was no going back now.

It wasn’t much of a plan. There was nothing complicated or heroic about it. All the running had forced them to stop for breath.

With the properties offered by the nebula they could easily hide, and with the planet they were heading to being in the thick of it all, it had the best change of giving them enough cover to get back on their feet long enough to think of a safe way to get back to Sha Ka Ree.

A few minutes after giving the order, Morgan regretted his decision. A combination of interference and minor inaccuracies in the calculations sent the ship too far. With their sensors blinded in the eye of the storm, the ship jumped out of transwarp below their estimated target. Instead of ending up in orbit of the planet, they breached the atmosphere. With the ships design purpose that wouldn’t be a problem. It could fly almost anywhere. But after the attack it was dead in the water and sinking fast.

Through the windows all the bridge crew could see were the flames as the ship began freefalling through the thick, chaotic lower atmosphere of the planet, hurtling towards the ground.

Bolting to his pilots position in the lower flight pit ahead of his chair, Morgan dropped his flask to shout suggestions and commands to Marty. Nothing was responding, nothing was stabilising their position. Then he suggested it.

“Transwarp.” The bold and confident voice of rookie pilot Marty Michaels seemed to mask his fear as they plummeted towards the rocky ground below. “Everything else is down, but if I can get another transwarp jump I could lead us out of here.”

“Oh hell no.” Morgan responded instantly.

“Captain.” Val interrupted, shouting almost manically down to the pit. “It’s our only chance.”

Pausing in shock for a moment, Morgan smiled. “You finally called me captain without an argument…” He said, slapping his communicator. “Engineering, give me one more transwarp jump.”

As the wind began piercing through the buckled hll of the ship, Morgan could hear his engineer reply. “Captain, the ship, she can’t take it.”

“Perry, we’ll die if we don’t try.” Morgan shouted down the line, “Marty, Val… do it and don’t break my damn boat!”

Giving each other a quick glance, the captains crew began typing at their panels franticly to key in the right instructions before they smashed into the planets surface. If they had more time, they’d be have planned somewhere to go. They’d have came up with a set of coordinates to head for but there were too many variables. They didn’t have time to figure out a destination or calculate how far they could travel. All they had time for was the right then, right now.

Boom.

With a flash the ship vanished before it hit the rocks of a mountain valley. The blinding light from the gas clouds in the atmosphere suddenly transformed into a field of stars with a flash of light.

A moment of silence passed for everyone as if they were all waiting to be attacked. No one had time to check for their pursuers. If they’d followed them into the nebula, if they’d tracked them all the way. But there was nothing now. No weapons blasts hitting the hull, nothing. “Were we followed?” Asked Morgan, breaking the silence to be sure.

With her captains eyes fixed on her, Valaris checked the sensors. “No sign of them sir.” But as her captain gasped his first breath of relief, and she watched him celebrate their good fortune by lighting a cigar he had stashed in his pocket, she was forced to change her report. “Wait. Unknown contact directly ahead.”

Knowing they had no weapons to speak of, Moran checked their escape route. “Can we get another transwarp jump?”

“No sir.” Marty answered. “Engineering reports that we’re burned out. It’ll take a while to repair the damage.

“Crap.” Morgan sighed, stepping back up to Val’s position, blowing smoke away from her as he rested his cigar on her panel. “Can you identify? Is it them?”

Val tried to boost power to the sensors, but there was too much damage to be sure. To answer the captain she had to point out the good old fashioned way as she nodded towards the window. “No sir.” She answered as she saw Morgan’s gaze follow hers. “It’s Romulan.”

“Oh that’s good.” Morgan said as he squinted to try and get a better look at the old Warbird ahead of them. He couldn’t make out the markings. It was either an Empire Warbird or one of the old models sold off to the Imperial Romulan State. Though considering the old Romulan Empire separated Kolar and Federation space, he was going for Empire. Which would probably result in them being boarded, tortured and generally treated in a very nasty way.

Either way, Romulan’s didn’t tend to come into this part of space without warning and they couldn’t have jumped far enough to pass over into the Empire border. “They’re not firing, that’s a good sign…” muttered Morgan as he turned his gaze to Val’s panel, tapping at it as if it’d suddenly magically operate with a nudge.

“No, but they are hailing us sir.” Valaris responded calmly. “Do we answer?”

Thinking for a moment, Morgan sucked on his stress relieving cigar. “We’re screwed on the weapons front, right?” He asked. Answered with a nod, he slapped his commbadge. “Perry, any chance we can boot up that transwarp drive again?”

“Are you kidding me?” Came the reply of a less than happy engineer. “Even if the drive hadn’t completely burnt out, our structural integrity is so poor I’m scared to sneeze in fear of blowing the roof off.”

Closing the channel Morgan figured it was safe to assume that option had been turned into a confirmed ‘no’. “Alright Val, open the channel.” He ordered with a pause to let his tactical officer push a few buttons so he could be heard. “This is Captain James Morgan of the Federation Scout Raven-Three. How can I help you?”

It didn’t take long for a friendly voice to return the message. “Captain Morgan?”

He recognised the voice instantly. His saviour. “Amy?” He blurted out, forgetting all sense of professional courtesy. “How in the blue hell did you get on a Warbird?”

When standing in the abandoned city, the sight of Romulan troops materialising in front of her, she assumed she was screwed just as Morgan had when he spotted the Warbird. Outgunned she was ready to give up in the hope they’d be treated well and the Romulans would have a doctor on bard who could deal with the incapacitated and slightly insane Dr de Luca.

She was wrong on both counts.

“We’re here on the request of Kristan Lakotda.” Their commander greeted. “He asked us to keep an eye on you and assist if a problem arose.”

On his way to Sha Ka Ree, Lakotda had met with some friends in the Imperial Romulan State, people he could trust to watch over him. The kind of people Rogan had asked him to find. Since meeting with the captain the ship had been following the Dauntless and when Morgan sent Kirkpatrick out with the ship into Deadspace, they received orders to watch her back.

Not one of the Dauntless crew had been told about the Warbird assistance yet when the ship left it detected them instantly and had fired while they were cloaked. With shields down they took some damage. Damage that took time to repair and when their sensors were back online they detected two human life signs and went to investigate.

Sharing information, Amy and the Romulan Commander Gretal had speculated that one member of her team had killed Kirkpatrick’s security detail and returned to the Dauntless. Chief Tolan Jucarr. Moments after he was beamed aboard the ship attacked the Warbird and then left immediately. No one could be sure of the reason, but Amy knew it was something to do with the terminal de Luca had tried to hack into.

Amy had brought her science officer aboard the Warbird and they all got on their merry way to Sha Ka Ree, but the further they travelled the more erratic de Luca became. Spouting information that didn’t make sense, seemingly blurting out every thought he was having at every moment whether he was conscious or not. The Romulan doctors didn’t know where to start, not only as they had no familiarity with human physiology, but the Sakarian implants that let him link with the alien terminal were an even bigger mystery to them.

With a quick patch job on their warp systems, Amy led the Romulans back to Sha Ka Ree. That was until they found the Nosferatu on their sensors jumping right on front of them.

Once the confusion was over, the Nosferatu was dragged into the Romulans cargo bays, left at the mercy of a Romulan repair team. Morgan did the official meet and greet when they entered the cargo bay and left them in the hands of Satullo to get to work on putting the ship back together. A task he was merrily staying away from.

With the repair crew following Satullo’s lead, Morgan welcomed the Gretal in the most diplomatic way he could. “Cheers for the pickup.” He said without any sense of cheer while he extended his flask. “Drink?”

Staring at the officer for a few moments, Gretal gave his assessment to Kirkpatrick as he stood in the Nosferatu’s cargo bay, slightly under whelmed with the welcome. “The lieutenant is not the model officer, is he?”

With a smile, Amy nodded. “It’s the hair, isn’t it?” She joked as they both turned their gaze to Morgan.

Checking himself, Morgan put his flask away before closing and tucking in his tunic. “I’ve been telling Starfleet that, but they just won’t let me go.” He replied, not caring much what Gretal, or anyone, thought of him. “Have you contacted Sha Ka Ree to tell them you found us?”

Amy sighed. “We can’t get through to the city, communications in this area seem to be jammed.”

Not a good sign, but Morgan had enough bad news to enquire further so asked the next question on his mind. “What happened to the Dauntless?”

“Hijacked, we think.” Kirkpatrick informed the Lieutenant. “Did the captain send you to find us?”

“I was doing a bit of recon. We got attacked and made a run for it.” Morgan paused. “No offence, but should we really be discussing Starfleet business with the Romulans?”

Understanding Morgans concern, Gretal nodded and answered the question before Amy could. “We’re with the Romulan Imperial State, besides if there is an infiltration within the Federation it effects us all, lieutenant.”

With a nod, Morgan led the trio to the back of the cargo hold towards a stack of crates, quickly re-arranged them into a comfortable seating arrangement. He’d have invited them into their crew lounge for a discussion, but with the damage the ship had taken the room was out of bounds and if they were going to exchange information, he wanted to be comfortable “Fair enough.” He said before telling them his tale…

Trying to look between the clumsily placed cables and wiring channelling what little power the city had, Tenagra squinted at the panel next to the steps leading to the relay room. Taking in the numbers flickering in blue, he shook his head and tried again. Even rubbing his eyes didn’t change the result.

Something was seriously wrong.

Turning his attention back to his over-stressed console, he tapped away to have it show him the time and date. 2406.4.06 was the date according to the city’s internal systems and it was just turning mid-day. He still didn’t believe it.
With a grunt and a few moans the tired engineer used his link to Sakaria One to synchronise the time. It didn’t change.

Dropping his head to the console, he uttered to one of the passing crew to get him some coffee as he finally accepted how long he’d been ploughing through the city’s internal systems trying to wrap his mind around the evolution of the Lockdown virus.

Since being activated the lockdown had grown and adapted. It was no longer just a basic computer program, it had taken control of the entire system. Re-writing command level systems at will, learning more about them and changing them to suit it’s needs to ensure no one could defeat it. Tenagra felt like it had started a personal little war with him. He wouldn’t be defeated by a computer.

He’d tried to stay one step ahead of it, but every time he thought he had it beat he’d noticed that it out-classed every move he made before he’d even thought of it. The only thing keeping key systems active was the link to Sakaria One and they weren’t fond of the fact that he’d taken over their systems to run the city. Or at least, essential parts of the city to allow some communication and movement to keep the population calm and controlled.

Despite his determination there was no way he could beat it, not with a head to head challenge. There was only one solution but it was a drastic measure. He planned to wait until the last possible moment to unleash that idea and focus his energy elsewhere; the source of the problem.

At this stage if they found who had activated and reprogrammed the lockdown there was no way that person could just enter their access codes and stop it. The virus had grown far beyond that. It had defended itself well. But if he could find the person responsible, they could at least stop them from doing any more damage.

The good thing was, he was getting closer. He’d narrowed his search results and found out how the program had been rewritten.

With one of the power cores inactive and ready to be taken offline, that system had been abandoned. But according to access reports, someone had been using it in the past few months, re-routing power to docked vessels, industrial replicators, other minor systems and trying to use it to tamper with internal security. Their own private undetectable network. It was good work, no one had noticed until it was too late after all. If he was wearing a hat, Tenagra would tip it in that persons general direction.

Despite the mystery programmers genius, they had a flaw. Overconfidence. They didn’t think they were going to be caught so easily. Maybe they thought the lockdown would tie the crew’s responses up or that it would distract all attentions. They didn’t think Tenagra would figure out he was beat.

Security logs weren’t permanently erased from the database. There were still a few lingering clues that could be tied together to find them.

As one of his crew set his coffee beside him, Tenagra heard a chirp from a console he had manufactured to operate independently from the city’s systems, tied in through Sakaria One. It was a trademark design typical of his work. Panels clumsily wired together resulting in a mismatching mess of technology. But it worked better than most of the standard interfaces. No one could quite figure out how he could create such bizarre machines that still seem to work.

Without leaving his chair, Tenagra pushed himself, rolling over to his new toy anxious to find out what it had to say. With it’s independent software he figured that was the best console to use to decrypt and piece together all the information he needed to find out who the culprit was. The virus couldn’t infect an interface it wasn’t aware of.

Running his fingertips over the clunky panels, his eyes widened as the information he was waiting for scrolled out before his eyes. Quickly he copied the information to his Link and darted towards the turbolift to the upper levels. With the name he’d just saw, the one who had activated the lockdown, there was no time to wait. The captain had to know. Now.

“Ensign…” Lakotda shouted towards Kunis as he stormed out of his office, still not calm after catching up with his brother. After sitting in his office fuming for an hour, he opted to leave and do something productive instead of waiting to hear from his people in the field and having his messages to the Prime Minster ignored. “Have you head anything?”

“Nothing, sir.” She replied calmly. “I can’t seem to raise anyone from Federation space.”

As he began circling the command section of the epicentre, Lakotda began to think out loud. “We should still have ships in this region… Rogan would have had captains he trusted, like Jorell…” Turning his attention to Chel’si, he brought her into the conversation. “Commander, who can we trust?”

“We still have some of Horal’s ships near the border, Region Group A1” She replied. “They’re all transwarp capable.”

“Ensign, contact those ships and send them towards Earth.” Lakotda ordered. “We don’t have General Dar’s support, so don’t ask for access to Sakaria One’s comm system, just do it.” As Kunis got to work, the captain turned his attention back to Chel’si. “Have we heard anything from the Dauntless or Nosferatu?”

Shaking her head, Chel’si looked at her panel. “No sir. Dauntless went off the grid when they crossed the border of Dead Space, Nosferatu disappeared earlier.”

“We won’t be able to contact Dauntless while they’re in that area.” He thought aloud, he’d hoped to have heard something back from them by now but he wasn’t ready to give up hope. “The Nosferatu could be gone, are we able to send out a search and rescue team?”

“We can’t launch any of our ships here and without the General’s support our best option is to contact the ship closest to their last location.”

“That might not be wise.” Lakotda added. “I sent the Nosferatu to investigate Riesman’s task force, the closest ship may not be friendly.”

“If that’s the case, they might be in enemy hands already.” Chel’si replied. “But I think we should try. We have to assume some people are on our side, if not we’re in a very grim situation.”

“Stay positive and hope for the best? Hopefully it’s not wishful thinking.”

“We’re all in the dark here captain. I just think it’s best not to cut ourselves off from all the options just yet.”

Giving her a nod, Lakotda made his way towards the transporter. “Do it. But tread carefully.” The captain ordered before bringing his attention to Navarro. “Commander, how’s your aim?”

“Sir?” Navarro asked, confused.

Smiling, Lakotda stepped towards the science console the commander had taken over. “We still have Kukuri fighters, I want you to find a capable pilot and…” But before the captain could finish his request, he caught a glimpse of his engineer out of the corner of his eye.

“Step back, captain.” Tenagra shouted, stepping out of the transporter with a rifle in hand. With confused expressions looking towards him, an unwelcome lecture from Chel’si and a patronising comment from one of the MACO’s in the room about being careful with weapons, Tenagra shut all the voices up with one sentence. “Navarro activated the lockdown.”

All eyes turned to Navarro as the MACO’s grabbed their phasers and pointed them at the commander. Though as soon as Tenagra named and shamed him, it was clear he wasn’t going down without a fight.