After securing a supply of dilythium crystals to fuel the warp drive, the intrepid crew of the Hawking left the Ferrengi station and continued their voyage to the black hole on the edge of Federation space. Not long after their departure, external sensors on the ship’s hull detected the presence of an alien stowaway moving around. Deputy security officer Barrak Mar suited up and led a squad out to deal with the unknown threat. The team encountered a giant, faceless space monkey trying to build a nest among the life support systems. Barrak Mar instructs the beast to desist and is mauled for his trouble. Jockk and Dinor open fire, but do more damage to the ship than the enraged space monkey. Utilizing his keen German intellect, Doctor Zimmerman gives orders for the men in the transporter room to target the stowaway and transport it into a secure cell in the ship’s brig.
The team received an urgent communication from Captain Treznek advising that Ensign Bob had not reported for duty. A quick scan of the ship located the absent crewman on the holodeck. Upon arrival, the crew found that the holodeck could not be shut down and the safety protocols had been deactivated. With no alternative, the team enter the dangerous hologram to retrieve their imperilled comrade. They find themselves in a raucous medieval tavern that Jockk recognises from the Conan stories penned by Robert E. Howard. A surly bartender directed the team to a large black tower in the centre of town, which Ensign Bob had expressed a desire to climb, for some reason. Fortunately, the wayward crewman conveniently left his rope dangling from a tall balcony. Unfortunately, a pack of lions inconveniently attack the team as they begin the torturous climb. Reaching the balcony, the team follow a spiral staircase winding upward to the lofty spire. Along the way, they are waylaid by a giant spider, which is soon dispatched with Starfleet efficiently. At the top of the tower, the team find Ensign Bob about to be sacrificed by cultists. It is all very quaint. The team dispatch the cultists and rescue Ensign Bob. He promises never to recreate his peculiar fetishes in the holodeck again.
Ensign Bob must have been pretty pivotal to the smooth operation of the Hawking, as the ship makes great headway once he has been returned to his post. The artificial wormhole that the Borg are using as a backdoor into Federation space looms large on the ship’s monitors. There is no sign of the Borg, but an Andorian research vessel is floating nearby. Captain Treznek hails the research ship. The Andorians are having a wonderful time monitoring this curious anomaly and are reluctant to let the crew of the Hawking blow it up. They revise that opinion when a Borg ship starts to emerge from the sinister vortex. The crew of the Hawking spend 10 minutes arguing about what to do about this unwelcome development, by which time the Borg ship has cleared the wormhole and transported hostiles into the engine room to assimilate the ship into the Borg collective. Deputy security officer Barrak Mar decides he should probably do something to stop that happening and leads a squad down to the engine room. By this time, over 70% of the ship’s systems are under Borg control and most of the engineering department have been assimilated. Fortunately, the damage to the systems is reversible by deleting the ship’s cookies and running Norton Anti-virus Pro. Unfortunately, the assimilated crewmen have to be destroyed.
Having defeated the boarding party, the crew of the Hawking launch their super torpedo into the gaping wormhole to destabilize and destroy it before any more nasty surprises pop out. The explosion tears open an even large hole in reality, sucking up both the Hawking and the Andorian research vessel. The wormhole spits the Hawking out into deep, uncharted space. There is no sign of the Andorian or Borg ships. The crew of the Hawking are completely alone.
Maybe it is being lost in deep space that is making the crew of the Hawking behave so curiously…. Or maybe it is the weird alien space jelly that is clogging the maintenance shafts! Doctor Zimmerman investigates the yellow slime and soon finds himself playing host to a homicidal parasite! Sharing is caring, so he decides to spread the infection among the rest of the crew, summoning unsuspecting colleagues to med-bay for a ‘routine examination’. Deputy security officer Barrak Mar notices something strange is going on when crew members starts eating the toxic gel packs from the engineering storeroom. It soon becomes apparent that only Barak Mar, Engineer Dinor and Pilot Jockk remain uncontaminated by mind-altering alien goo. They proceed to the armoury to stock up on non-lethal armaments with which to pacify their compromised crewmates. Unfortunately, Doctor Zimmerman locks onto their position with the ship’s transporter and teleports them into the cage occupied by the giant, faceless space monkey. Dinor disrupts the force-field, enabling the team to escape, but simultaneously releasing the giant, faceless space monkey to rampage through the ship. Barrak Mar makes a mental note to recapture the beast later. Before the team can celebrate their freedom, Zimmerman locks on again and transports them into one of the slime-filled maintenance tunnels. Parasitical larvae try to invade their orifices! An access panel slides open and Herr Zimmerman peers in, encouraging the team to surrender their orifices for invasion. Jockk stuns the doctor with his phaser, scrambling the bug in his brain and also freeing the rest of the crew from its mental servitude. The day is saved!
