Philadelphia Mision 03: "Edge of the Prime Directive"

Captain's Logs

Capt Lucas Leeot

Stardate 20412.29

Stardate 20412.29 Captain Lucas Leeot reporting.

Having been ordered to look into a missing Star Fleet probe on the planet Rekan IV the Philadelphia and its crew set course and arrived in good time having introduced the Philadelphia’s new First Officer; its former CMO Commander Brett Jacobs.

Having discovered the planet was populated by a potentially pre-warp civilization Commander Jacobs and I decided to send down two away teams, one to each hemisphere in order to determine the situation. However the instant they beamed down through heavy interference we lost contact and transporters because of a fresh storm. The efforts of the Philadelphia from then on were concerned primarily with restoring communications and transporters.

Meanwhile on the equator Commander Jacobs team, consisting of Ensign Harn and Lieutenant Bevelle, emerged into a heavy storm. Commander Jacobs was forced into a crevice and captured by local forces that believed him to be a member of an opposing faction; later imprisoned. The other two members of the away team fell across a civilian who claimed to be a member of a transport crew that had dumped him on the planetoid.

The southern team; Our Chief Science Officer Colso; Mancilla, our CEO and Lieutenant Braggins from the tactical department were involved with another group of locals who they persuaded to help them find missing probe parts.

Commander Jacobs however was interrogated by his captors and discovered that the probe technology had been developed into advanced technical knowledge using its self-replication properties. The others of his team helped him to escape and the Commander was left to decide upon a course of action.

Given the highly advanced technology of the locals he was with; not yet warp capable but a huge leap on primitive technology, the Commander decided that involvement to try and further remove probe elements would be further against the Prime Directive than the probe’s existence on the planet to begin with.

Because of this the Commander made the decision to use the technology the locals had to escape within the bounds of the directive in order to prevent the away team being captured and forced to give up their own technical knowledge.

In search of these ends the away team managed to procure an orbital shuttle, power it up and escape with it; making contact with the Philadelphia using adapted sensors. Returning to the Philadelphia though was not as simple as I and the Commander had hoped; the civilian who had claimed to be an engineer sabotaged the shuttle that later exploded within the Philadelphia shuttle bay just after he beamed off onto an unknown ship.

No information was found on this ship as transporters and sensors were returned to functionality; allowing the crew to beam up the missing southern away team who had attempted to shut down the function of a replicator they had discovered there, believing it to be the only one in existence – against their orders not to get involved if possible.

In the team that the crew had been unable to contact the away teams however a shuttle had been sent down to investigate; it crash landed on the northern hemisphere and the away team consisting of three new crewmembers and some of our medical staff was subjected to an alien viral agent; the contaminant filters cleared it out but not before it severely injured several members of the team.

This team though was also beamed up along with the shuttle wreckage and I determined that we needed to return to Starbase rather than maintain our presence above the planet as there was no possibility of removing the probe fragments without severely damaging the culture further than the probe’s presence had already done so.