Graduation Day

[T'Lulu May Soong]

Mission Title: Graduation Day

Synopsis: The Captain has been scheduled this year to deliver a commencement speech for the graduation ceremony at Starfleet Academy.  The day is now approaching, so the Discovery has laid in a course for Earth.

Along the way, the ship has intercepted the path of what appears to be a Vulcan ship, simply suspended in space.  Noting that there was still extra time before they needed to reach Earth, the crew decided to investigate.

Starting Point: USS Discovery comes across a ship suspended in space.  They try to hail it, to no response.  They send an away team to board the ship to see if everything is okay.  When they get there, they find that their ship is completely empty.  Not a single living being aboard that ship!  Their next step is to investigate their ship and computer systems to find out where their ship was headed, what happened to the crew, and how to recover them.

Story points that must be passed?: After investigating their logs, they discover that the Vulcan ship was on an investigation mission to fulfill missing information in the Vulcan star chart database.  There is a star system in their database for which the entry is almost entirely blank.  No one of record has explored the system and had been able come back with their findings.  So this particular Vulcan ship decided to take a peek for themselves.

Before too much longer, the away team found out exactly how this Vulcan crew vanished... as they were abducted in the very same way!  It turns out the crew, and now the Discovery's away team, had been abducted by a team of Romulans and materialized to a planet of the star system in question.  For several years now, a particular crew of Romulans had set a trap at this particular star system to lure curious Vulcans.

The away team finds out that the Romulans have been using this trap to study Vulcan mythology, as in, how much of it they still believed in in the present time, and what of this mythology they can use to eventually manipulate the Vulcan race as a whole.  At this point, they haven't gotten very far toward this end game, but alas, "research" went on.

Meanwhile, science and engineering teams on the Discovery have been investigating Vulcan records to find that little by little, Romulans had been injecting misleading information into their database, in hopes Vulcan explorers may find it and be intrigued enough to investigate.

The away team finds the Vulcan prisoners and confronts the Romulan captors. As it turns out, at least one of the members of this away team is Vulcan, and first uses tactics to persuade the Romulans to let everyone go.  For obvious reasons that doesn't work, so now the team breaks up.

One teammate goes to tactical battle with the Romulans, while another tries to configure their computer systems to send everyone back to the ship, and the Vulcan teammate assures the prisoners and finds a way to release them.

End Goal: The away team must recover the Vulcan prisoners and return them to their ship, and the Discovery must escort them to a safer zone away from the Romulans' trap area. The crew must also leave with an understanding as to why this group of Romulans did what they did.  Once everyone is recovered, the Discovery must promptly make their way to Earth just in time for the Captain to deliver her commencement speech.  To encourage the young graduates to be excited for the adventure, exploration, and cultural interaction that awaits them, I'm sure the Captain can draw from their last experience for inspiration.

Departments: (To make sure everyone has something to do.)

- Flight:  Keep the ship on course toward Earth; alert the Captain that there is a ship ahead exhibiting strange behavior; halt the ship for investigation.

- Engineering: Study the Vulcan database for anomalies surrounding the particular star system this Vulcan ship was trying to investigate.

- Operations: To keep an eye on the away team and report all actions by them.

- Security and tactical: Part will accompany the away team; part will remain on the Discovery to make sure the away team and Vulcan prisoners can be rescued, and how.

- Medical: Part will accompany the away team; part will stay on board as needed to recover the away team upon return, as well as the Vulcan captives.

- Science: Work with data sent from the away team to help determine the technology of the means of abduction the Romulan captors used.