Captain’s Log Stardate 194873.4

While prepping for our journey through the Lokrian Nebula, which is the second largest known entity, we encountered a fleet of ships. The ships contained a large group of roughly 7,000 runaway slaves from a mining colony on K-Alpha-4. They were all made up of a species of people known as the Parum who have a complex, adaptive gender and sexual dimorphism attribute to their species that allows them to morph into specific job roles and have bodies which are best suited for those roles. The species was enslaved by the Kremda and kept in a “worker form” which allowed them to have great physical strength and agility, however, it also physically reduces their brain size and capacity for complex thought. Though I have not unearthed the full story of their escape, I suspect some of them were able to morph out of this form and into other forms seen on their ship such as the “warrior form” or the “ambassador form” which in turn allowed them to successfully plan and carry out an uprising.
We contacted their fleet due to severe damage to their ships shields and engines. When we offered them engineering aid for their ships, they mistook us for Romulans and told us they were seeking asylum in the Romulan Star Empire. While giving them engineering and medical aid aboard their ship, we invited their leader Hala’ee and some of her crew aboard the Electra to better assess the situation. This is when we learned of their enslavement. Without revealing where we were from, we were able to inform them that we were not Romulans, but that we were willing and able to aid them through the nebula. This came about because they told us they were being harried by Kremda forces and would likely not make it through the nebula without assistance. We agreed to help them and they agreed to lend us forty of their personnel who were qualified and quick learners to assist us in our ship functions and scans of the Lokrian Nebula.
Engineering was able to modulate the shields so that they would protect us from the kithium particles in the nebula that would interfere with our equipment. Though we would not be able to use transporters while inside the nebula. Additionally, Lieutenant Junior T’Lyn and Ensign Vash as well as Lieutenant Cruz and Ensign Fox, were able to come up with a tactically sound flight arrangement that would also (with the help of shield extenders) enable us to expand our shield bubble around the flotilla as well as the Electra and the Dagger, which would be used as a snub fighter in case of attack. This plan, however, required us to lower our shields for approximately a minute. After scanning the area, we began the shield modulations.
While the shields were down a fighter ship emerged from the shadow of a nearby moon, rendering them invisible to our scanners. While our shields were down, they fired upon the Electra and we took some hull damage. We were able to disable the ship and render them defenseless. At which point on of the fighter ships from the flotilla broke off and attempted to destroy the ship, after hailing them and having them refuse to stand down we beamed the ship’s crew, a total of three people, aboard the Electra and allowed the fighter to destroy an empty ship. We provided medical aid to our prisoners and took them to the brig. While in the brig, one of them expressed the willingness to tell us information about the Kremda. We gathered the information they were willing to tell and gave them a separate brig cell.
With shields now up, I ordered our crew back on the ship to go through the nebula. Lieutenant Commander Connors refused, remaining behind on the flotilla’s lead ship to treat the sick. While passing though the nebula, we detected another ship and fired upon them, disarming them, and causing severe damage to the ship, forcing them to retreat. At this point, despite my warnings and the dagger’s preventative fire, the two fighters of the flotilla broke formation and flew after the ship causing our shields to crash. The two fighters were destroyed by hiding enemy ships and we were ambushed by a cruiser carrying boarding vessels. Two attached to the Electra, one attached to the ship on our port side and three more attached to the flotilla lead ship. Our crew armed themselves and defeated the landing parties. I had the hallways sealed and the spores which were used by the mutineers were used to knock out all personnel in the hallway so that we could safely evacuate our people from those hallways and capture any surviving invaders. During this time, the dagger took severe damage and had to make an emergency landing on the port side ship. We then disabled the cruiser, rendering its weapons and engines in operable. However, the cruiser was destroyed in the process. After the threat on our ship was neutralized two away parties comprised of myself, Petty Officer Jacobs, Crewman First Class Ipsen, and Crewman Second Class Bent and Ensign Vash, Cadet Solace, Crewman First Class Al Farabi, and Bern Gehring (one of the Parum) were sent to the port and forward ship respectively. While aboard the port ship, I was acting as medical officer for the away team. When we landed, we found massacred bodies everywhere. We were able to pick off the enemy troops using non-lethal force. Crewman Ipsen was injured during the fighting, and I hid him under one of the dead bodies. We made it to their front lines where we were able to identify the presence of our missing crewmembers by their phaser fire among all a machine gun-like fire from the enemies. We were able to take out their machine gun, however, I sustained extreme injuries from one of the enemies who was guarding the gunmen.
Once the machine gun was neutralized, one of the Parum were able to give me emergency battlefield surgery using a mixture of our medical kit and their medical expertise and supplies. Now that I was no longer bleeding out, I sent people to retrieve Crewman Ipsen and joined up with Crewman First Class Hollins and Ensign Fox. Ensign Fox had diverted shield to Crewman Hollins in the crash, taking most of the damage herself. We were able to regroup and head back to the ship. Meanwhile the other landing party was able to retrieve four of our personnel who were taken hostage, including Doctor Connors. They were also able to negotiate the surrender of the remaining enemies. During the fighting we lost approximately 400 of the Parums, we suffered casualties on our crew but none of our crewmembers were lost.
After we passed through the remainder of the Nebula with no further complications, there were 300 Parum who requested to stay on the Electra, we were able to take the most qualified 40 personnel in medical, tactical, and science as well as the families of the Parum personnel, many of our officer graciously gave us their quarters for these families. They will be joining us for the remainder of the journey home and seeking refuge now in federation space. Among the crew is a qualified doctor who can take over medical from the Cadet after some training. We plan to drop our prisoners off on a planet on our current side of the nebula giving us enough chance to get well away from the nebula before they are able to get back to the Kremda and report in about us.