If At First You Don't Succeed

If At First You Don't Succeed is the eighteenth episode of the third season.

Tagline
On a mission to the Synton system, the RIS is caught ambushed by Klingon pirates while supposedly escorting an hitherium shipment. They realize that they have to help a planet survive.

Act One
Zama sets course for the Synton system. When he arrived, he revealed that the ISC sent them after a hitherium shipment. Upon arriving at the Synton system, near the Hydran border, a ship attacked them while unshielded, disabling their siege disruptor, among other things. Vaebn Mairex gets to work getting the tractor beam as well as the impulse drive repaired. Also, the Romulans attacked the Klingon pirates back. Their attack drained the shields of the enemy ship, and then used the cloaking device to undertake the repairs needed after the sensor array was hit in a Klingon attack.

Act Two
During the battle, the Romulans have hit the engines, forcing the Klingon pirates to cloak in order to repair their ship. After the Romulans went out of cloak, they activated the tachyon scanners, detecting the Klingon pirates and the Romulans engaged the Klingons while they were still under cloak, destroying the pirate ship. They discover that there were no Klingons in the wreckage as they plotted a course to intercept the freighter. Said freighter sent out a distress call and they fly to their aid. However, closer examination revealed its payload to be, making the freighter a flying bomb.

Act Three
Upon contacting the Interstellar Concordium Pacification Army, an admiral tells them to destroy the phony freighter in order to save the planet. Brianna Reiss warns the Hydran count on the surface as the other crewmen fought the freighter. When they fought the freighter, they had to maintain safe distance because of the explosion it could result in. Once the freighter exploded, they realized that they saved a system and the reverse thrust was reported as successfully repaired. They learn that the real freighter is en route to the system and that hitherium was used in life support systems and by the natives.

Act Four
The crew discovers that the natives of the planet use hithernium to shield themselves from radiation poisoning. The Hydrans on this planet are under theater deflector shields and they have learned than a volcanic eruption is at the origin of the problems the planet is going through and the ISC is sending in industrial replicators. Taev Radaik has suggested that they use their own replicators to make hithernium. Their solution involved beaming in landfills and feeding the waste into the replicators so they could make the hithernium for the locals. Once the hithernium beamed down, the locals start consuming anew.

Act Five
But the Romulans realized that they made a major miscalculation and they needed more waste from the landfill to fulfill their order. The Hydrans seemed reluctant to allow the Romulans to take 15 more tons of landfill waste but Rakelli mused about exploiting the Hydran religion to their advantage, by posing as people sent from the God of Landfills. Brianna poses as the Goddess of Landfills and she finds herself in the Hydran palace, kneeling before the Hydran governor while claiming that the goodwill shipment from the ISC is a miracle from the God of Landfills. They finally proceed to feast with the "Goddess of Landfills".