1.7 Above the Highest Sky (mission)

<-- Previous Mission | Next Mission -->

## Mission

The *Tempest* investigates a massive spaceship and its inhabitants, discovering it is a generational ark ship whose passengers have forgotten the nature of their existence.

## Summary

### Cold Open

Aboard the bridge of their ship, an alien crew powers up an experimental drive system. They engage the drive and their massive ship jumps away from its dying planet of a home.

### Part 1

The *Tempest* is investigating an unusual subspace signal emanating from an immense, cylindrically shaped ship traveling at impulse speeds. The crew scans the ship and discovers it's divided into two sections - a large hollow habitat within the cylinder but which returns limited sensor data and a superstructure running along the top of the cylinder into the ship's drive section, which can be more cleanly read by the *Tempest's* sensors, but which reads completely inactive. The crew hail the ship but receive no response and send over an away team consisting of Maddox, Teal, Goodspeed, and Holden. Unable to beam into the habitat portion, they beam into the superstructure and find a huge but dark, dusty, and inactive control space.

Goodspeed and Holden are able to activate a console and work out a basic understanding of the ship. They learn it's general trajectory is leading it towards the Klingon Empire but that it has been in space for centuries or millennia but is in no immediate danger. Another console confirms that the cylindrical portion is a large habitat and that there is a nearby turbolift that will take them into the habitat from the superstructure. The crew are also able to pull up a live feed of the habitat interior and discover a pre-industrial society roughly equivalent to Earth's medieval period, though much cleaner and more orderly. Finally, they learn that the ship's total capacity is a few million but is currently inhabited by only ten thousand people.

The crew debates whether or not the Prime Directive applies to the situation and Maddox orders Goodspeed and Holden to investigate the ship's drive section while Maddox and Teal investigate the habitat itself. Maddox and Teal take the turbolift from the superstructure to the habitat and step into a small broom closet. The exit through the closet's opposite door and emerge into a small shop with an elderly shopkeeper behind the counter. They attempt to communicate with him but he flees into the back of the shop without engaging them at all.

Maddox and Teal then step out of the shop into the village's "outside." In the sky above them, the sky is blue but, instead of a small disk, the "sun" is a strip of light that runs the length of the cylinder. They start to make their way towards a large cathedral like structure is built into the cliff that marks one end of the cylinder. Along the way they encounter a woman with a small child and while the child offers the two a hello, her mother scoops her up and runs off in the other direction before they can engage her in conversation.

Goodspeed and Holden arrive at the ship's engineering section, discovering that the ship is capable of faster than light travel, but that it operates on principles different from a conventional warp drive, which spurs more discussion about whether or not the Prime Directive applies.

### Part 2

Maddox and Teal continue their journey to the habitat's main tower, Teal suggesting that this may be an ark ship and that its inhabitants may have forgotten that knowledge and no longer realize they are living aboard a spaceship. Maddox orders Eele to reverse engineer the ship's trajectory to find its origin point, which Eele is able to pin down to somewhere near the borders of the Gamma and Alpha Quadrants, far beyond known space.

Suddenly, Maddox and Teal are surrounded by six men in dark uniforms, each wielding a baton with an electric endcap. The men surround the away team and demand they come with them to the tower, which Maddox readily agrees to.

They are brought into a grand chamber and before an old man in elaborate dress, who identifies himself as Otho Genla and demands to know who they are. Maddox and Teal are hesitant about revealing their identity as aliens and try to remain circumspect about it while they work out what's going on. Teal senses that Genla is genuinely confused and believes the habitat constitutes the entire universe. He orders his guards to search them. The two crewmembers resist the guards but their phasers, tricorders, and communicators are confiscated from them and placed on a nearby table.

Holden overhears their situation through the commlink and starts to make his way back to the habitat to assist them. Meanwhile, Goodspeed continues to investigate the ship's systems and discovers that the artificial sky of the habitat is a roof that can be retracted to reveal a view of space. He ties the controls to do so into his tricorder and joins Holden on his way back to the habitat. They enter through the same broom closet and store as Maddox and Teal and start to make their way to the tower. Along the way they come across a deactivated computer terminal, which they're able to power back on. They realize the terminal is one of many spread throughout the habitat that control various aspects and necessities of life, but that all of them are deactivated, their original purpose forgotten by the inhabitants. Holden uses the panel to scan the tower and locate Maddox and Teal.

Goodspeed and Holden continue towards the tower and are able to find a side entrance. But while Holden manages to sneak inside, Goodspeed is spotted by guards before he can enter the tower. He signals to Holden to press on without him and holds the ceiling control tricorder over his head and plays god by threatening the guards to bend the sky with his rage if they harm him. But the guards have no sense of what this means and are unimpressed, tackling and disarming him instead.

### Part 3

Holden continues sneaking inside the tower, avoiding guards and discovery and eventually reaching an antechamber off to the side of the chamber Maddox and Teal are being held in, where he's able to observe without being seen himself.

Otho Genla inspects the crew's equipment, idly fiddling with the phaser when a large panel on the back wall lights up and a person sized chamber inset into the wall rotates into view. One of the guards leaves the room and returns with another prisoner, this one dressed similarly but not identically to the other guards. They force him into the chamber. A computerized voice asks Genla for confirmation and he confirms, pronouncing the word like an incantation or prayer. Bright light fills the chamber and then dissipates. The chamber slides open again and the man falls out limp and unconscious, and then carried out of the room. Genla explains that the man sacrificed his memory as part of a daily ritual to keep the universe from ending and this particular man just so happened to be an enemy guard loyal to an insurgent Otho named Harnot.

Maddox attempts to curry favor with Genla by telling him the phaser is a powerful weapon and he will fight for Genla against Harnot. The sounds of a large commotion down below on the streets come through the chamber's window, where guards in similar outfits but a different color are brawling with Genla's guards. The guards restraining Goodspeed drop him to join their comrades and he takes the opportunity to run into the tower, though the guards still have his equipment.

Holden takes advantage of the confusion by stunning Genla. The guards still in the chamber spin around in surprise but Teal is able to grab her phaser off the table and draws it on the guards. The crew restrain the guards and interrogate Genla, and when an attempt at accessing the large computer panel fails, Maddox tries to trick the Otho into cooperating by saying he will help him hold onto power. Genla claims, with sincerity, that he has to stay in power, otherwise the ritual will be broken and the universe will be destroyed in the process.

The away team leaves the Otho behind and returns to the superstructure section of the ship, managing to retrieve Goodspeed's equipment in the process. Once in the superstructure, they investigate the ship's systems some more and learn that a computer glitch caused a system to run a diagnostic cycle everyday and that resetting the cycle by using the chamber was an accident of circumstance. The crew fixes the glitch so that the diagnostic cycle will no longer run and then discuss whether or not they should retract the ceiling and reveal the truth to the inhabitants. Ultimately, they decide not to and return to the Tempest, reporting the situation to Starfleet so a science team can follow up.

<-- Previous Mission | Next Mission -->