| RIS Bouteina episode | |
| "Humans, Romulans and Space-Beasts" | |
| |
| Season: | Season 4 |
| Stardate: | 64170.50 |
| Year: | 2387 |
| episode chronology | |
| Previous episode: | "Spoiled Rotten" |
| Next episode: | "Vosteage" |
Humans, Romulans and Space-Beasts is the first episode of the fourth RIS Bouteina season.
Tagline[]
The crew has picked up a space-borne creature that seems to create sensor interference by itself. What lies beyond the sneaky sensor blip?
Summary[]
Act One[]
The crew of the Bouteina have received some news from the Hydran High Court pertaining to the mutiny led by children while they were on a survey flight. They were picking up pirate ships on sensors but they did not engage the Romulan ship even when they entered the weapons range of the pirate ships. The Romulans suspected that the pirates used multi-adaptive shielding to protect themselves from detection. But the sensor blip seemingly disappeared and they began to suspect that it was something capable of jamming the sensor readings. Upon locating the source of interference, they contact the Hydran Keepership.
Act Two[]
They had to wait three hours before the Keepership could finally come to relocate the beast and, in the meantime, the crew eats ice cream because the tribble supply has been dwindling. The muriyz have arrived with four freighters in tow in the Xavian system, supposedly to fulfill a commercial contract. When the Keepership finally arrived, a Mohican-class ship came and they gave the Romulans their battle plan, who made them engage the bulk of the enemy. The battle begins when Annika Hansen sends Larugo to chase after the enemy and makes the fighters leave the shuttlebay to engage the enemy ships.
Act Three[]
In the shuttlebay, the maintenance crews load the plasma torpedoes in the fighters as they prepare their next combat sortie. However, the Hydran Stinger-class fighters are closing in just after they left their mothership. Otto Mann quickly disables one of the fighters and, when Rolindra is about to shoot down the second fighter, she must return to the mothership. Relm saves their honor as the mothership fires at the freighter that took away the hanyurii. Two freighters, flying in close formation, have fired the fusion beams as they have begun to attack themselves. However, their commanders sensed something.
Act Four[]
However, since the recharge time of an overloaded fusion beam emitter is 30 seconds, the Hydran poachers had to wait a bit before they could attack again. The Q-ships are under fire when they fired the fusion beams again, making the Romulans' topside and underside shields go down, forcing the hull breaches to be repaired on the underside. Meanwhile, the concerted efforts of the fighter pilots are successful and they damage a freighter. In a desperate move, the far freighter performs an high-energy turn, before it explodes. The other fighters return at warp to assist the mothership because they feel that it needed it.
Act Five[]
Once they arrived on the scene, the three remaining fighters punch a hole but Otto's fighter was hit and he returns to the shuttlebay as well. Vox'ula benefitted from the hole to fire photon torpedoes at the hole in the ship, destroying the freighter. As the RIS Bouteina engages the tractor beam, it towed the hanyurii towards the asteroid belt. M'Rex made a surprise to Linde and Largo using the wreckage from the battle: an ancient replicator, with which they made ice cream. Relm drank bloodwine with her ice cream while Dhiemm flatly refused to drink bloodwine but took a pail split.
Background[]
This mission is partly inspired from the mission of the TOS video game Starfleet Command (game) called Midwife, the first mission in the Hydran storyline.