Star Trek Expanded Universe
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There's no Coffee in the Nebula is the twelfth episode of the third RIS Bouteina season and is the halfway mark of both the season and the series, as planned.

Tagline[]

After tracking a sneaky sensor blip for three days, the crew of the ship loses patience, especially since they were flying into a zone of Grust 7 subspace turbulence. They wonder what they lost track of and they are investigating into the matter.

Summary[]

Act One[]

Putal loses patience over a sneaky sensor blip that seemed to elude the ship for several days. They have detected traces of coffee from the blip while Otto Mann comments about piloting a Norexan-class ship being much cooler than driving a school bus. Taev then commented that he also was an enlisted back in the day. Relm got weighed again and she weighed 840 kg this time around. Upon arriving at the last known location of the blip, they see a tornado-like subspace anomaly, prompting the declaration of red alert. They also detect a Talarian freighter, yet they found no Talarian onboard.

Act Two[]

After Annika Hansen ordered battle stations, the ship engages the enemy freighter and it fired merculite rockets, being destroyed in the nebula. The ship has its impulse drive suddenly taken offline and Vaebn Mairex gets to work to reactivate them. Otto complained that he couldn't do what he wanted with the Bouteina's controls, while the enemy impulse engines were being targeted. After the enemy X-ray laser weapons were fired, the enemy shields were penetrated and the impulse engines are taken offline once again. Once the Talarian freighter was disabled, the transporter crews stand by to beam in coffee.

Act Three[]

After salvaging the coffee from the pirate freighter, they proceed to destroy the enemy ship. However, this was just the beginning. Brianna Reiss, in an attempt to ease the stress on the crew, allowed everyone to drink as much coffee as they needed. Taev ordered Zama to take the conn, but he wouldn't, claiming that he had llhrei'sian, forcing Brianna to take it instead. They go to the heart of the matter, discovering a high concentration of ions. As they flew away from the tornado, the ship did not have its engines stopped this time. Later in their investigation of the phenomenon, they readied a probe.

Act Four[]

Once the probe was ready for launch, Vox'ula aims the probe at the center of the phenomenon. The turbulence was not enough to cause llhrei'sian either, though. As the probe was activated, it detected nadions and even chronitons. The ship about-faced, giving its occupants llhrei'sian when the ship came closer from the center of the phenomenon. They suspect that the thing is a place of collision between normal space and subspace. The close ranges have even broken the ship's vocoder. Otto is dispatched to investigate the subspace phenomenon as it thinned out, but his shuttle's engines did not even start.

Act Five[]

Vaebn tries a last-ditch solution to restart the ship's engines: purging the EPS conduits leading to the warp coils. They finally identified the phenomenon as a subspace ghost, with Brianna and Taev telling them of their times as cadets and how they met them in the field of battle. The former flies the ship at one-third impulse to get them away from the ghost while the EMH is activated and go for another holodeck session. In the meantime, Annika tests the World of Warcraft component that could interact with holographic players without them hacking the servers. This time around, this safety net worked.

Background[]

The title of this episode is inspired from a famous coffee-related quote attributed to Kathryn Janeway, in VOY: "The Cloud". Also, the quote in question was used in three different ways during the episode.

Memorable quotes[]

"There's coffee in the nebula!"
Taev Radaik
"Still convinced that there's coffee in the nebula?"
— Putal
"Dhiemm, there's no coffee in the nebula."
Taev Radaik

External link[]

RIS Bouteina episodes
Season 1
"The Departure" • "Distress Call" • "Take Me Out to the Zoo" • "Marianela" • "What about some D'oh!" • "Fundraiser" • "Declaration of Warcraft" • "No Child Left Untested" • "Manhunt" • "Eidolon" • "Four Redshirts and a Shirt" • "Merry Christmas" • "We're All In This Together" • "Marriage and Honeymoon"
Season 2
"Cloak, baby, Cloak!" • "Fury of the Prison Ships" • "Women's Dark Frontier" • "Easter Eggs" • "Bowser Shakedown" • "Sphere of Influence" • "Broken Bread" • "Extraordinary Summit" • "My Carpet, Tis of Thee" • "The Whole Kitten Kaboodle" • "Battle at the Grave of Thoughts" • "Redshirt Distribution" • "Bottle to Throttle" • "Quantic Fissure" • "Quantic Return" • "Blackrock and Roll" • "Kingdom Hospital" • "Monster-in-a-Box" • "A Tale of Two Holodecks" • "Grinch and Scrooge" • "Miracle in Whoville" • "Battle of Eight Beat" • "Planet of the Cheaters" • "How the Charter Was Won"
Season 3
"Yesterday's Lyrans" • "The Measure of a Romulan" • "Cost of Captivity" • "Hussade Contract" • "Degree of Liberty" • "Days of Wine and D'ohses" • "Doctor Rihanna" • "Grade Inflation, Part One" • "Grade Inflation, Part Two" • "Grade Inflation, Part Three" • "Holographic Family" • "There's no Coffee in the Nebula" • "Tobacco Quest" • "Super Size Me" • "Super Size Me Again" • "Limit at Plus Infinity" • "The Day Where Students Have Stopped Calculating" • "If At First You Don't Succeed" • "Going, going, gone" • "Drug Wars" • "Monopolis" • "TV Dinner" • "Love Plan" • "Spoiled Rotten"
Season 4
"Humans, Romulans and Space-Beasts" • "Vosteage" • "Ice Cream Parlor" • "Gogmagog" • "Relief and Refuge" • "Real Estate Liberty" • "High Priestess of Evacuation" • "Limit at Minus Infinity" • "Low-Cost Vacation" • "Back to School" • "Tribble Resupply" • "Midwife" • "Night of the Were-Hawks" • "Forlorn Hope" • "Party Quest" • "Combinatorics Nightmare" • "Redshirt Computer" • "Party School" • "Just Cause" • "Kathelet"
Season 5
"Resolution on Krant" • "Hilbert Hotel" • "New York Convention" • "Propane Dream" • "Hospital Blues" • "Home Sense" • "Homeward" • "Dr Jekyll and Dr Hyde" • "Varlamov Steak" • "Credit Card Scholarship" • "Black Sox" • "Jockship" • "Two-Speed Intellect" • "Toy Dream" • "A Hockey Game Broke Out" • "Ultimate Wager" • "Cigarette Redshirt" • "Rator III Awaits" • "Hystelic Kingdom"
Sequel: Star Trek: The Stoneship Files
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