An oceanic drilling rig hits something below the seabed on an independent colony planet, Sirsa III, and it pushes up and sinks the rig, and only a few manage to escape. A large vessel, that becomes known as the Juggernaut is seen floating on the surface where the drill rig had been, and it sends out an unmanned drone that starts bombarding the capital of the colony complex, New Astana. Reluctantly, Governor Gretchen Kolova calls on Starfleet for help, and the Starship Shenzhou, with Captain Philippa Georgiou, is sent to assist. Disabling the drone proved easy, but they are reluctant to destroy an unknown vessel. They do discovery that the mining company (the Kayo Mining Consortium) that owns the planet had deliberately hidden evidence of a former civilization, and Starfleet realizes the danger of the Juggernaut, and sends Captain Christopher Pike’s Enterprise to ensure the Juggernaut is destroyed, even at the cost of the colonists’ lives. Georgiou is senior to Pike, and despite Admiral Anderson’s orders, insists on trying to find an alternative solution. Spock (from the Enterprise) and the Shenzhou’s new First Officer, Lieutenant Michael Burnham (Spock’s human foster-sister – Sarek & Amanda had taken care of her after her parents died) gain access to the Juggernaut, and together manage to negotiate several potentially deadly tests, before meeting up with the ship’s intransigent AI that offers them the right to become slaves of the Turanian Dynasty, which had died out 9 million years previous (the same as the estimated age of the Juggernaut). The Shenzhou’s Second Officer, Saru, and the Enterprise’s Commander Una (Number One) investigate the remains of the ancient native civilization and find evidence that the Juggernaut had wiped them out after ‘testing’ them. The Turanian Dynasty had sent out these kinds of vessels to find potential slaves or wipe planets clean for colonization. As the Juggernaut grows stronger, the Shenzhou and Enterprise are forced to attack it, but Burnham and Spock manage to disable the vessel’s power source, and the Starfleet vessels use tractor beams to pull it into orbit before fully disabling it, thus saving the remaining colonists. However, the colony has to be removed while the ancient civilization is studied, and the Governor and others face prosecution for concealing evidence and taking some Starfleet personnel hostage. [Timeline: May 2255]
When a fungus destroys the crops and food supplies of the colony on Tarsus IV, it is initially thought that Starfleet would not be able to get assistance to them for just over a month, which would be too late for many, if not most of the 8,000 colonists. But Starfleet finds some other ships, and Commander Philippa Georgiou (waiting for her new posting to the U.S.S. Defiant) gets assigned to the U.S.S. Narbonne (with Captain Aurobindo Korrapati) which will be the first ship to arrive. They are disturbed by the lack of contact with the colony or the small Starfleet post on the planet, so they are almost there before they hear that Adrian Kodos had taken command of the colony and had 4000 of them executed in order to ensure the survival of the remainder. Kodos had tried to have the Starfleet team (led by Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca) killed, but 3 of the 5 survive. When the Narbonne arrives, they are able to restore order, and sabotage an effort by Kodos supporters to abscond with a transport vessel. Lorca (whose girlfriend, Balayna, had been among the colonists who had been killed) makes it his goal to track Kodos down. Lorca’s efforts are helped by a boy, James Tiberius Kirk, locating a picture of Kodos. The Narbonne team helps Governor Gisela Ribiero (who had been restored to her position after Kodos fled) restore order in the colony, and Lorca tracks down the caves that Kodos and his supporters are hiding in. In the final shootout in the caves, an explosion caused by a case of thermite grenades being hit results in the apparent death of Kodos, according to DNA results from remains. However, Kodos had had the foresight to switch the DNA records for himself and his assistant, Ian Galloway. The Enterprise, with Captain Robert April, is among the next group of Starfleet vessels to arrive. The following year, Kodos (using the name Ian Galloway and having changed his appearance substantially) leaves Tarsus IV aboard the transport vessel Philomela, taking with him little except his copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 11 years later, Shannon Moulton (who had been an 8-year-old girl at the time of the massacre on her home world of Tarsus IV) writes a history of the events after interviewing as many of the survivors from both sides who would agree to be interviewed (including Georgiou). [Timeline: 2246]
Sylvia Tilly is having problems sleeping with her first day of Command Training Program coming up tomorrow, and Michael Burnham gets her talking about how she got into Starfleet.
Tilly tells her about how her mother (a rather dominating diplomat) had been running her life after her father had left for a mission in Starfleet (her parents were divorced and Tilly worried that she was the one that had broken them up). Her mother, Siobhan, gets Tilly sent to an exclusive school for potential diplomats (which her mother wants her to be, although Tilly is interested in astromycology – which her mother disparagingly calls ‘mushrooms’). The school is on Talaris IV, and Tilly tries to fit in, making friends with her roommate, Risera, and starting an engineering club, but she upsets Risera when she gets annoyed with the girl for not being neat enough, and she drops the engineering club to keep her mother happy. She was really hoping to excel in a mock diplomatic summit, but a large hat that was part of her costume causes her to mess up her performance, and she gets totally discouraged with the school. By hacking into the school’s security system she manages to escape with a fake ID and boards a cargo ship, the Constance Markievicz, planning to get off at the first planet they stop at, Oyseen. However, the bag with her ID is stolen on the first day, and Tilly stows away after the first stop (where she didn’t risk getting off without the ID, knowing her mother would have organized a search). When she starts repairing things on the ship, she gets discovered by the ship’s lady engineer, Salla Mannin, who gets her doing repairs to help pay her way, but the captain (Reah Maris) insists she get off at the next stop, the planet Zymne. That turns out to be a rough and ready colony world, but Tilly is starting to fit in when, the next day, her grandmother (Adele), her step-grandfather (Quinn), and her father (Lieutenant Iain Tilly, a zenoarchaeologists) with his ship (the Dorothy Garrod) turn up, having tracked her down. Her father arranges to have her join him on his ship where she proves herself useful even in an emergency, and his captain, Yindi Holden, ends up sponsoring her for Starfleet Academy (which her mother is definitely not happy about, but goes along with).
After hearing the story, Michael asks Tilly if she had ever asked her father what broke her parents up, and when Tilly says she hadn’t, Michael suggests she place a call to him. She does, and she learns that it was just that they had incompatible lifestyles. Finally, everyone can get to sleep.
The Enterprise is about halfway through a one-year mission exploring the dense region known as the Pergamum Nebula when they get word that war with the Klingons had broken out. Pike orders the ship out of the nebula, thinking they would be needed for the war, but they are told not to return, and before they get through the nebula, they are hit by something. That something had been a photon torpedo fired by a Lurian pirate ship, the Deathstrike, captained by Baladon. The Enterprise escapes, but the Lurians are captured by the Boundless. The Boundless consist of five sentient races that emerged on the planet K’davu, who had been driven from their homeworld by a sixth species, the crab-like Rengru, who they had been at war with for centuries. Apart from battling the Rengru, the Boundless also raid any ship that wanders into the nebula, taking any crewpersons to add to their fighting force and taking any technology that the Boundless think might be useful in their fight. The Boundless and their captives are encase themselves in a battle suit that also provides them with sustenance and recycles their waste products, and they can also be remotely controlled to ensure obedience. The Boundless argue that this is for everyone’s benefit, because if the Rengru are not contained, they will overrun the galaxy. Unaware of all this, the Enterprise goes to study the planet Susquatane, and the 30 members of the science teams on the planet (including Spock and Lieutenant Connolly) get abducted by the Boundless, who also destroy the six exploration sites with nuclear detonations, making Pike think that all thirty had been killed. Kormagan, the leader of the Boundless group that had taken Spock and the others, soon recognizes the abilities of the Enterprise scientists that she has and keeps pulls them out of the fighting force. Seeing the advanced capabilities that the Enterprise has, she attempts to capture it when it arrives at the rift in the nebular called Little Hope or Hellmouth. Spock participates in the raid, hoping to be able to destroy the ship rather than let it fall into the hands of the Boundless. However, the Rengru arrive and interrupt the attack. Spock was already among the advance Boundless team on the outside of the Enterprise saucer section (the ship had split into saucer and stardrive sections when a warp core breach seemed likely) and Spock gets spun off the ship and heads towards an ice-moon. The saucer section of the Enterprise crashes upside-down in the ocean of another moon (which they call Defoe) that is covered in a liquid-methane ocean, and the stardrive section escapes into the nebula. Spock had seen a cryo-volcano on his moon, that gets called Skon’s World, but he lands on the far side from it, and takes months to walk there. During that time, he gets in communication with Pike, but during the months of his hike, his battlesuit drains its power and he finally abandons it, expecting to die taking readings of the volcano with his tricorder. He also gets a vision of the ‘Red Angel’. By that time, the one engineer left on the saucer section, Dr. Avedis Galadjian (a brilliant theoretician but initially useless at directly operating anything) works out how to get the saucer right-side-up, and when the impulse drive is repaired, he devises a plan to get the saucer back into space. They rescue the unconscious Spock from his moon, but then find themselves under attack from the Rengru. The stardrive section had been under intermittent attack from Rengru, and then Una (Number One) has one of the Rengru beamed into the brig. When she tries to communicate with it, it appears to attack her, piercing her at the back of the neck, and she and the Rengru collapse together, unconscious. Weeks later, she revives (still with the Rengru attached to her back) and the other Rengru begin the act differently. Kormagan’s Boundless had been attacking the Rengru at an area called the Varadah Gap when the Rengru suddenly stop fighting and head off towards Little Hope. When Kormagan realizes the Enterprise is there, and especially when she finds out about transporter technology and thinks the Rengru are after it, she has the Boundless ships follow them. Actually, Una had found out what the Rengru were doing and was directing the Rengru so she could show the Boundless what had really started the conflict. The Rengru lead the two halves of the Enterprise, along with Kormagan and several other leaders of the Boundless who had hoped to steal Enterprise’s transporter technology, back to K’davu. The original ‘attack’ by the Rengru had been an attempt to rescue the other races on the planet after they had realized that their sun was going to become more erratic, endangering life on the planet. They built structures to preserve facilities, and by attaching themselves to the other races, they could physically protect them. Unfortunately, they were unable to talk to others, although they had something like telepathy between themselves, and could communicate with others when physically connected, as Una was. The Boundless are invited back to K’davu under Rengru protection, and Kormagan finally agrees to let the Boundless make their own individual choices of what to do. Another Boundless leader, Quadeo, brings out a nuclear bomb, but Pike (using Spock’s old battlesuit) disposes of the bomb down an old mineshaft before it goes off. The Rengru assist in repairing the Enterprise and in rejoining the two sections, then it heads off home. It is a year and a half after it started what was supposed to have been a year’s mission, and they hear that the Klingon war is over. Spock has still not recovered from his ordeal, and frequently mentions “Earth, Qo’noS, Vulcan, Andoria”; he is taken to Starbase 5 for treatment. [Timeline: October 2256 to October 2257]
Taking place in an alternate universe, Discovery has to make numerous jumps in quick succession while taking vaccine for the deadly Symbalene blood-burn to various planets as the contagion spreads. During many of these jumps, Paul Stamets has ‘spore dreams’ in which he hears someone calling to him. Then Stamets and Ensign Sylvia Tilly start experimenting with transmitting messages through the mycelial network and, when they try using a radio signal, they pick up what Stamens thinks might be a distress call. Then Discovery gets called to take the Symbalene blood-burn vaccine to Benecia, but Discovery stops unexpectedly within the mycelial network, Stamets disappears, as does all of Discovery’s spores and their mycelial ‘forest’. They also find that Discovery’s hull is being damaged by something they come to know as the JahSepp. Stamets is found to have left the ship under some form of compulsion wearing an environmental suit, and he returns with a semiconscious human who they find is named Doctor Hugh Culber. Culber is found to have been in the mycelial network for a substantial period of time, and in his own universe he was married to Stamets. Both he and Stamets, but no other of the Discovery crew, are able to see the giant space-tardigrade that had first been used to access the mycelial network, and who calls itself Ephraim. When sensors are enhanced, it is found that most of the mycelial spores are still aboard Discovery but have been moved out of phase. When they move the spores back, aliens also appear who had seemingly been trying to abscond with the spores. Then an alien craft appears, slightly out of phase from Discovery and, when Discovery tries to contact the mostly organic ship, it moves into phase with them. The Maliganq (which is how the aliens refer to themselves) aboard the alien ship had also got stranded when their spores got contaminated and, when Discovery had arrived, they identified the spores but hadn’t realized there was a ship and crew there. The total quantity of recovered Prototaxites stellaviatori spores was not sufficient to allow both ships to escape from the mycelial network, but the network (which links universes and times) allows them to send a message back in time to Justin Straal aboard the U.S.S. Glenn to get them to bring their supply of spores. That gives them enough for all three ships to escape to their own universes. Culber, who had started a relationship with Stamets, had hoped to return with Discovery, but finds himself left behind with Ephraim. Stamets is distraught at the separation but, after a lot of encouragement from Tilly and Captain Burnham, he contacts their universe’s Hugh Culber who is a doctor aboard the U.S.S. Hood. Ephraim is apparently the only one of his kind who is willing to move between universes and interact with humans and others who live in linear time, and he is finally able to reunite the lost Hugh Culber with his universe’s Paul Stamet who had been searching for him on their Discovery. [Timeline: about a year after the Glenn’s first successful spore jump, at least in the universe that this Discovery calls ‘home’.]
Emony Dax is the sole survivor of a medical team aboard the shuttlecraft Leizu that goes to assist the U.S.S. Farragut when it is affected by a mysterious cloud that drains the red blood cells of the crew members it attacks. Her team-leader, Rodolfo Eagan, tells her, before he dies, to take diagnostic kits that contained information on the cloud to Starbase 23 with instructions to get them to Leland. Ex-Emperor Phillipa Georgiou had escaped from the Thionoga prison, along with Sean Finnegan (who she knew as Blackjack in her own universe, and who used to be Kirk’s nemesis at the Academy), where she had been on a mission for Leland of Section 31. The effects suffered by the deceased crewpersons on Farragut are identified as being the same that had occurred to the crew of the freighter Jamada Rohn in the space governed by the Triple Compact or Troika, 24 years earlier. The late Captain Georgiou had had a contact (Quintilian) in Troika space (she had met him while trying to save the lives of those on the Jamada Rohn), so Phillipa Georgiou, assisted by Emony Dax and Finnegan, is given the task of trying to locate the Jamada Rohn by Admiral Katrina Cornwall (representing the Federation Security Agency) and Leland (representing Section 31). Georgiou had some knowledge of the region because, in her original universe, she and her forces had killed everybody there except for those she enslaved. She believes the mysterious cloud is what her universe calls a blood devil and that it may have been a superweapon that she had hoped to take control of from the Troika region. She thinks she might be able to use it to regain her empire. Georgiou, Dax and Finnegan travel into Troika space aboard the shuttle Boyington, but after they land on Casmarra (one of the three inhabited planets in the area) the shuttle is impounded. The Troika races ban other races from their space, except for a few, including Quintilian and his Veneti traders, who facilitate business between the three planets and the outside universe when necessary. The meet-up with Quintilian seems to go well, but when Georgiou tracks down the wife (named Jerada) of the captain of the doomed freighter to try to locate where the ship is, it results in the three of them being ordered out of Troika space. Instead, they locate their shuttle, Boyington, and escape to the second Troika planet, Dromax, where they have learned the Jamada Rohn had been taken. They have also learned that this universe’s Captain Georgiou and Michael Burnham had made an apparently unauthorized trip to Troika space five years previous. On one of the warring moons of the Dromax gas giant, they locate the Jamada Rohn and Georgiou tries to escape on it while ditching Dax and Finnegan, but Dax (who had been an Olympian athlete) gets aboard as the ship is about to leave. Finnegan had had a tooth knocked out by Georgiou on Thionoga, and Section 31 had repaired the damage, but the replacement tooth had contained a miniaturized transmitter that allowed Leland, aboard the NCIA-93, to rescue him from the Dromax. Finnegan tells Leland that Georgiou is heading for Oast, and they try following. On Oast (the third Troika planet, which is hidden in a nebula) Georgiou finds the blood devils are contained in an underground chamber that, on orders from Captain Georgiou, is only accessible to Oastlings. However, the Oastling keeper, Umyda, recognizes Georgiou as being close enough to Captain Georgiou and opens access. That allows Quintilian to beam in as well. He had gathered a force consisting of his own Veneti traders, plus some Dromax and Cassamarrans, and was planning on using the blood devils as weapons to force the submission of the Federation and the Klingons, who he blames for the destruction of the colony where he was born. The Jadama Rohn’s crew had been killed when the containment failed during Quintilian’s first attempt at using a blood devil, and it was that same creature that had later attacked the Farragut. The blood devils were an accidental creation when an adventurous Oastling named Anowath had tried using the Cascade on Dromax, which reproduces anything submerged in it, including living beings, but in a defective form. Georgiou does not think much of Quintilian’s plans, and she uses another tooth transmitter (in the tooth that she had knocked from Finnegan and which had been fitted in him by Cornwall) to call in Section 31. With the joint efforts of Georgiou, Dax, and Section 31, they eliminate the threat of Quintilian’s forces, and Quintilian ends his life by walking down into the pool with the blood devils. Troika space is opened up, but Oast with its shrine containing the blood devils is off-limits to all. In the aftermath, Dax and Finnegan end up on a health research mission and Georgiou is sent back to Qo’noS by Leland. [Timeline: year 2257. The Jamada Rohn crew had been killed by the cloud in 2233]
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Story 1: In the Mirror Universe, Captain Burnham is believed to be dead after an attack on the imperial flagship Charon, and Lt. Detmer becomes the new captain of the I.S.S. Shenzhou. At least, she does until Airiam has the bridge crew gassed and takes over the captaincy herself. Emperor Georgiou died on the Charon and her cousin, Alexander, becomes emperor. Georgiou had adopted Burnham and had appointed her as successor, but she is assumed to be dead. Emperor Alexander has plans to kill off all aliens and populate everywhere in the empire with humans and has tailored a toxin specific to each race and devised a way to spread it around a planet. The I.S.S. Constellation is going to be the first to deliver the toxin, and Qo’Nos is the target, but Airiam has the Constellation attacked and has the container with the toxin beamed to her ship. Burnham had been on Qo’Nos in discussion with the Klingon rebel leaders, L’Rell and Koll, along with Amanda Grayson. Airiam brings the four of them aboard the Shenzou and they head back to Earth to take the fight to Alexander. That effort doesn’t seem to be going well at first, but Alexander is killed, and Burnham declares herself Emperor. However, Airiam had had a batch of the toxin adapted to attack human DNA and has it delivered to the area of San Francisco where Burnham’s coronation is going on. Burnham and all her human guests are killed, and Airiam declares herself as emperor.
Story 2: In a more normal universe, Drs Stamets and Straal receive a sample of prototaxites stellaviatori, that they refer to as Stella, and find that it grows rapidly. Dr Stamets discovers that when a chemical is applied to one specimen of it, the same chemical turns up in other, isolated, specimens of Stella. He believes it shows transfer across space of matter by the fungus, but when Stamets and Straal present their results at a conference on Alpha Centauri, they are largely ridiculed. However, Straal is approached by Commander Zev Rebholz who tells him that Starfleet is interested in their work, and Stamets meets Culber, a Starfleet doctor. Although the initial meeting doesn’t go that smoothly, the two start a long-distance correspondence. Stamets and Straal test a system for transporting a frog-like creature to Deneva Station, and it succeeds, so they go on to build a human-sized mycelial transporter. Stamets and Straal argue over whether it is ready for a human test yet or not and, fearing the two might split up, one of their assistants, Charlie, tries it himself with fatal results. Stamets studies the data from the unauthorized failed attempt and discovers what went wrong and makes adjustments so he can make his own attempt. That succeeds, and their next presentation at Alpha Centauri is a resounding success, and they are approached by Starfleet who are interested in developing the technology for use as a starship drive. Stamets is against teaming with Starfleet initially, but comes to see the advantage. Straal is assigned to the USS Glenn and Stamets is assigned to USS Discovery. Stamets is delighted to find that Doctor Culber has also been assigned to Discovery. Stamets also gets a cadet who had been sending messages to him, Cadet Sylvia Tilly, as one of his assistants.
Comic book format
Aftermath: In the aftermath of the Klingon-Federation War and the disappearance of Discovery, Spock has taken leave on Vulcan and is reminiscing about Michael Burnham. Then Captain Pike calls on him to act as his advisor in a peace conference with Chancellor T’Rell of the Klingon Empire, to be held on Vaset. At the conference, T’Rell asks to speak to Spock privately (he still hasn’t resumed his Starfleet posting) and she asks Spock to advise her of any indications of rebellion among her supposed supporting staff but, soon after that, an explosion wrecks the conference hall. Spock is able to rescue Pike and then free T’Rell from her Klingon captors. She then takes remote control of her cleave ship, which has been taken over by the rebels, and crashes it into a mountain. Before taking her shuttlecraft back to Qo’Nos, she informs Pike that no treaty with the Federation will be possible at this time, but they part on amicable terms. Spock has realized where his place is.
Captain Saru: Discovery is being repaired in Earth orbit after the war and their interaction with the Mirror Universe, while most of the crew are on shoreleave. Then word comes in that contact has been lost with the research vessel USS Dorothy Garrod, which Tilly had been visiting. Admiral Cornwell reassigns Saru as temporary captain with orders to take the largely functional Discovery with a skeleton crew (including Michael Burnham) and locate the Garrod. They track the Garrod to a migratory pocket nebula, but that proves to be an ambush. Orions, under the command of Virra had taken the crew of the Garrod captive, and they likewise seize a team led by Burnham who beam aboard the Garrod to investigate what happened. The Orion pirates had found a way to cloak themselves in the nebula. Virra says that she requires a high price for the return of the captives, and Saru strikes a deal with Virra whereby she would beam the captives back to the Garrod and the Discovery crew would beam over to it as well, and Virra would be given Discovery. However, Saru has Tilly use Garrod’s sensors to track where the Orions beam from (to locate their ship), and he stays aboard Discovery, secretly disrupting their efforts to get the ship operable and disabling as many Orions as possible. He also locks Discovery’s weapons on the hidden Orion vessel. Virra is left with no option but to concede defeat. Garrod and Discovery return to Earth, and the Orions are allowed to leave. Neither Saru nor Burnham are awarded captaincy of Discovery, but Burnham encourages Saru that he will get his own full captaincy one day.