Mission Title: The Ghosts of War
Synopsis: While charting a small nebula, the Discovery discovers an ancient, derelict alien vessel. But the team assigned to investigate the ship soon succumb to violent, paranoid impulses.
Starting Point: While charting a small nebula, the Discovery discovers an ancient, derelict alien vessel.
End Goal: The Discovery must safely retrieve its away team and avoid being destroyed by the alien vessel.
Story points that must be passed?:
I) Discovery begins charting the nebula, and discovers the derelict vessel.
II) Away team beams over to the vessel to investigate it. They find the alien humanoid crew dead, and the ship damaged. Probably in some long-ago forgotten conflict. The vessel is, however, repairable.
III) Away team becomes increasingly paranoid and violent, and quickly becomes convinced, against all reason, that the Discovery is a threat. They break off contact, implement an improvised transport inhibitor (or figure out how to raise the alien ship's shields), and begin repairing the ship to prepare it for battle.
IV) Discovery does not know why contact has been broken off, and must begin brainstorming solutions to the problem.
V) The alien vessel is brought online, and begins to attack the Discovery.
VI) The Discovery must survive the encounter, disable the alien vessel, and recover their ailing crew.
VII) Medical teams on the Discovery (probably working with the Science department) must learn that the away team was infected by an intelligent, psionically networked bacteria resistant to transporter filters. This bacteria was the actual 'crew' of this alien vessel, manipulating humanoid hosts to perform acts on their behalf. When the alien crew died centuries ago, the bacteria remained, waiting for new hosts. The away team provided these new hosts, and the bacteria- possibly driven mad by centuries of isolation without hosts- resumed their ancient war by infecting their new hosts with violent thoughts.
VIII) Simple antibiotics can cure the away team, though this is technically the genocide of an alien race, so ethics dilemmas may present themselves.
Departments: (To make sure everyone has something to do.)
- Flight: The Flight officers will have a grand old time maneuvering the ships in battle (perhaps one could be on the away team while another can be on the Discovery, so we can have dueling Flight Control officers.)
- Engineering: An engineer on the alien ship away team will be repairing it, while one on the Discovery will be dealing with battle damage during the fight.
- Operations: An ops person on the away team will help with repairs and power management there, while one on the Discovery will deal with damage control and power distribution during combat.
- Security and tactical: There will doubtless be security on the away team, who will become the alien ship's tactical officers. Meanwhile the tactical officer on the Discovery will conduct opposing fire during combat. Security on the Discovery may need to subdue away team members who are rescued until they can be cured.
- Medical: The Medical teams, working with science teams, must figure out what happened and how to stop it. Medical team members on the away team will become part of the alien ship's crew, likely treating battle injuries.
- Science: There will doubtless be science members on the away team, as well as on the Discovery. On the Discovery, they will work with Medical to diagnose and cure the away team, and they will also duel with away team member science officers who use science tricks during the battle to spoof sensors, etc.