235. Hear No Evil (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant picks up a scientist who has orders for the ship to take him to the Nygel system. Despite getting on the captain's nerves with all of his demands, the scientist's trip to Nygel is mostly uneventful. He and his ship are dropped off on the outskirts of the system and the Valiant proceeds on to the Colossus system to deal with a pirate problem there.

Once the pirate problem is dealt with, the Valiant prepares to head off on it next mission. That changes when a computer disk is discovered in the room belonging to the scientist. On the disk is information identifying the Nygel system as the location of the planet Nimue, which is off-limits to all visitors due to the addictive properties of listening to the songs of the inhabitants, a whale-like species. The continued listening to the songs also leads to insanity. that Nygel and Nimue were one and the same place was not detected because NSF records had been purged of all references to the planet, it's inhabitants, and the effects of the songs.

So, the Valiant returned to Nimue and began to search for the scientist. He is discovered under one of the polar ice caps. Transporting him proves to be impossible, and open communications with him proves to be dangerous. When the scientist begins broadcasting on a broad-band range that anyone in the area can pick up, T'Garr decides that it is time to retrieve the man whether he likes it or not. The transporter is used to remove chunks of the polar ice cap. The ice is the put into the path of the scientist's ship. The first few obstacles are avoided by the scientist, but when he attempts to get past another set by flipping his craft over and going into a power dive, he crashes into one of the ice chunks, and his ship explodes.

The Valiant makes contact with the inhabitants after figuring out how to strain out the harmful musical harmonics. The inhabitants seem quite laid back. They explain that they can not alter the way they communicate, they were fascinated by the antimatter explosion that the scientist's ship caused, and they hinted that a Precursor ship was buried on the floor of the planet-wide ocean. The Valiant then resumes her duties.

236. Quarantine Order (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant docks at the NOC to swap out the fuel and oxygen supply, and to pick up new orders. The ship is soon assigned a patrol area and starts off toward it.

En route to the patrol area, the doctor receives a call from Ahrlein Station. The call tells of a strange series of deaths aboard the station. The primary symptom appears to be the disruption of the cells in a person's body. The Valiant cganges course to Ahrlein Station, but is hardly underway when a massive systems failure occurs. While engineers scramble to find the cause of the ship's system problems, the doctor and a small team of Nexus officers proceeds to Ahrlein Station to investigate the situation there. The doctor is able to discover that deaths at Ahrlein Station are being caused by a criminal, and is not a disease running loose on the station. This hypothesis is strengthened when Medical Center is attacked, and the Nexus personell confront two criminals, Plague and Ooze.

Plague turns out to be easy to defeat, after he is chased through the station and finally cornered. Capturing Ooze however, tuens out to be a bit tougher, with his ability to shapeshift. He is captured with the help of Lt. Kit.

It seems that the two villains planned on reducing the station's personell compliment through fear of a plague, at which time, the two criminals planned to rob the station. The doctor and the rest of the Nexus team returns to the Valiant where they find that the ship's power system has been repaired. One of the techs at the NOC had reported to work intoxicated, and had accidently altered the control settings controlling the composition of the fuel later shipped to the Valiant

237. The Turning of Dark Pages, Part 1
(DD, BP, ET)

Captain T'Garr is shocked to find that he is implicated in the theft of the OS2 computer from the laboratories on Byte. Nexus Admiral Hamilton furnishes T'Garr with the lab's taped records of the theft, in which it seems that T'Garr was responsible for the incident. Neither the admiral nor T'Garr believe any of this. The admiral suggests that T'Garr go to Minar and hide out there until the whole situation blows over. Instead, T'Garr, Doctor Hayes, Arliss, and Black Widow slip off the Valiant and secretly proceed to Byte to do their own investigation. En route, they board one of Arliss' private ships.

The NIS however, has other ideas abot the disposition of T'Garr. An NIS officer, Commander Richard Leighton comes aboard the ship and orders Acting-captain Kyle Winston to turn over the ship to NIS control. When Winston refuses, Leighton pulls a pistol on him. Winston motions to the security officer on the Bridge, who moves toward Leighton. Leighton then turns and shoots the security officer, killing him. Winston still refuses to relinquish command of the ship, and will only do so when provided with orders to the contrary. Leighton leaves the Bridge. later, the Valiant's NIS officer, Lt. Katalin Dobai delivers orders placing her in command of the ship. Winston relents, and she immediately turns command of the ship over to Commander Leighton.

T'Garr and the others reach Byte. Arliss and Hayes transport into the sealed laboratory and check out the place. Hayes finds a genetic trace of the criminal responsible, and Arliss hacks into the computer database and sensor logs. They barely manage to get back to the ship because Arliss tripped a computer alarm, but the recovered sensor logs seem to indicate that the criminal headed toward the Center Space Station.

Once at Center, the group makes contact with a weapons supplier, who they believe may have purchased the computer. He replies that he doesn't know what they are talking about, then after they leave, he calls the NIS. As the group is preparing to leave the area around the Center Space Station, the Valiant arrives. Efforts to evade the Valiant fail, and the group is soon being chased by their old ship.

Arliss takes her ship, the Swiftwind into an asteroid belt, hoping to lose the Valiant. Leighton stops the Valiant outside the asteroid field, and sends in the shuttles. Attempts by T'Garr and Black Widow to disable the shuttles without killing the pilots fails, although placing mental images in their minds about the failure of their warp cores are more successful than the tactic of shooting asteroids and scattering debris across the path of the fighters.

When Leighton orders the Valiant to fire a spread of torpedoes into the asteroid field, that is the last straw for Winston, who had been called to the Bridge. He again orders Leighton to leave the Bridge, but Leighton instead murders him.

The Chief Engineer, Commander Amanda Fitzsimmons, who had been monitoring and recording the events occuring on the Bridge, takes this opportunity to rally the crew to her support. The crew mutinies against Leighton and the NIS. Then Fitzsimmons broadcasts the recording of the death of Commander Winston, and tells the crew that the Valiant is to be considered detached from NSF service until measures can be taken to remove the NIS from the command hierarchy of the NSF. The Valiant then leaves, heading to Minar to let those who do not agree with Fitzsimmons leave the ship.

Within hours of Fitzsimmons' declaration, the governments of the substates of Minar, Kia, and Xlae (the minims, the tykay, and the myshi) declare their agreement with Fitzsimmons, virtually plunging Nexus into a state of civil war.

238. The Turning of Dark Pages, Part 2
(DD, BP, ET)

T'Garr and the group continue their investigation into the theft of the OS2 computer prototype. Their search takes them to an information broker on Ophir who gives them the route the ship carrying the computer was supposed to take. The trail leads them into Hesperian territory, where they discover the wreckage of the ship. The OS2 computer is also recovered. At this point, the group surmises that the entire chain of events was a wild goose chase, and that whoever stole the computer wanted them to spend a great deal of time tracking it down.

While all of this is happening, a thief attempts to break into T'Garr's residence on Collangata. The attempt is a miserable failure, although the thief manages to escape.

A couple of days later, the villian group known as the Ultimates attack the police perimeter surrounding the T'Garr residence. During the confusion, a man slips into the residence. He moves through the living room to the stairs. As he gets to the top of the stairs, Anna T'Garr meets him, thinking that he is her husband. When she rushes into his arms, he tenses up involuntarily, and she backs away with the sudden realization that the man standing before her is not her husband. The man pulls a gun from his jacket and fires, hitting Anna in the shoulder. The force of the blast sends her through the bannister of the staircase, and she falls to the stairs below. Then man then kidnaps young Tatiana and leaves Anna T'Garr to die. He sets a thermal gernade in the house, which detonates as the police are investigating the scene.

T'Garr and the group link up with the Valiant, which is in the vicinity of the NOC. Gathered just outside the system is a fleet of 6 VALIANT Class ships, which are preparing to engage the NOC in an attempt to retake the Nexus system from the NIS. After an attack plan is formalized, the ships do a warp jump into the system and proceed to attack the NOC's four ion cannons. However, the battle is joined by three VALIANT Class ships loyal to the NIS, and a nasty firefight ensues. During one volley, the bridge of the Valiant is hit, and 1/3 of the Bridge explodes, killing about 20 people on Decks 1 and 2. The battle is finally halted by the NSF and NIS, who call a meeting on the NOC. At the meeting, Lucien informs the NSF and NIS that he is taking over the leadership of the NIS, and that he will run the intelligence agency as an integral part of the policies of Nexus. Colossus is not convinced, but the alternative is continued fighting. The NSF accepts the decision, and the rebel ships rejoin the NSF.

Colossus heads to Collangatta where he finds what has transpired there. Using satelite information, the Valiant is able to discover that a ship left the area around the T'Garr residence and travelled to a private launch site, and from there the ship went into space and headed to an abandoned planetary defense post called Bryson Station.

The Valiant heads to Bryson Station, where three teams of marines, headed by T'Garr, Marko, and Sandreyla transport to the surface. Once there, the teams find various traps which eliminate most of the non-superpowered marines. The search for the criminal behind all of this ends when they find him in the station's power core. Tatiana is shackled to the core and is unconscious due to radiation leakage from the core. The villain, Fearmonger, threatens to detonate the core if anyone threatens him. T'Garr manages to convince Fearmonger (via Mind Control) that acid has just splashed onto his face. When he goes to claw at his face, Fearmonger activates the destuct switch, but the command short circuits some of the circuits in the conduit above his head, and with a loud explosion and a shower of sparks, the ceiling over Fearmonger crashes down.

Tatiana is taken aboard the Valiant and she is placed in radiation therapy. However, the radiation damage is too severe, and she slips into a coma.

T'Garr is given temporary command of the NSS Poseidon while the Valiant is undergoing repairs.

239. Unity (JH, TDS, CC, GG) (PBEM) (NR)

The team responds to NSF concerns about the cessation of comm traffic in the Kagena area in the SW Sector. Once they arrive on the scene, they discover that the planets Kagena and Pannett have been attacked, and all of the people living there have been killed. An ion trail leads to System 347, which the group realizes is the home of AIC.

Once they reach System 347, they discover a HUGE Markann fleet that inexplicably allows them to orbit the planet. AIC then uploads a virus to the Valiant and sends a Markann boarding party aboard the ship to get a complete data record of the ship's database.

After restoring ship's systems, the group mounts a daring infiltration of the AIC central energy core. They leave an antimatter charge under heavy opposition and leave. The Valiant manages to get out of the area before the planet explodes.

240. Stricken (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant is patrolling the Hesperian border when they receive a distress signal from a ship. No specifics were given in the call. When the Valiant responds, they discover the ship to be drifting in space, its crew dead.

As the investigation into the derelict is continuing, the Valiant is attacked by unidentified raiders, who severely damage the ship. As if this is not enough, the crew of the derelict is found to have died from a disease which crystalises the blood, and cases start appearing on the Valiant. Before long, the captain has fallen ill, as has his already-stricken daughter.

The group is contacted by General Furyama, who tells them that the raiders have been active in the area for some time, and offers to take an observer along while he tracks them down. This is successfully accomplished, and the doctor manages to find a cure for the disease in time to save both Tatiana and her father.

241. Vengeance (DD, BP, ET)

The group is called by the NIS after a group of professional thieves break into the Nexus Repository and steal 36 Blue Crystals, which are the central component in T/D engines.

What the group discovers is a plot to launch the crystals on warheads, detonating them at strategic points, which will cause intense temporal disturbances throughout most of the galaxy. The mastermind behind the plot is an ex-Drolian commander who was injured in an engagement with a Nexus ship, where the nexus ship was destroyed. The captain of the Nexus ship was Capt. T'Garr, Colossus T'Garr's father.

(SOUNDTRACK: This episode used music from the movie "Tomorrow Never Dies")

242. Power One (DD, BP, ET, JW)

The Valiant is ordered to attend the ceremony marking Achamandra's first fusion-based power satelite which will provide power to the surface of the planet.

While the festivities are going on, super-powered terrorists hijack the station and threaten to crash it on the planet's surface.

T'Garr orders the group to go aboard the station to apprehend the criminals. They manage to subdue all of them, but one uses psychic powers to get the doctor to transport him aboard the Valiant. Once there, the criminal proceeds to break out of the containment procedures put in place. Once this is done, he breaks into Weapons Control and proceeds to start firing on the Poseidon, which had also been attending the ceremony.

The criminal is finally apprehended again, and the ceremony is allowed to proced.

243. The Admiralty Ball (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant is chosen to host the annual Admiralty Ball, and the crew is quickly whipped into a frenzy of preparations. The ball starts off well, except for a young member of the High Nexus who is infatuated with T'Garr, and uses her powers to attempt to impress him.

That problem becomes the least of T'Garr's worries when he is informed that one of the shuttles carrying guests was hijacked and is now in the shuttle bay with passengers trapped aboard. NSF Security boards the ship and discovers the passengers unconscious and the pilots dead.

The hijackers turn out to be Psyren, Shroud, and their toddler son, Random. Psyren and Shroud have hatched a plot to steal Arliss' staff so that Psyren can gain its power. The two villains escape, and lead the group on a very difficult chase to a nearby planet, where they bail out of a stolen shuttle and let it slam into a densely inhabited portion of a city. The NSF officers manage to capture the two villains after Psyren is knocked unconscious and Shroud surrenders.

244. Timeshatter (JB, BP, ET)
(Guest GM: DD)

Colossus T'Garr is sent to Minar to participate in a diplomatic conference. While there, he is informed of the destruction of the Valiant, which had been in orbit. Evidence is uncovered which points to T'Garr as the person responsible for the explosion.

As the trial proceeds, the group investigates the matter and discovers a plot by a renegade Timekeeper from Nexus' future who is attempting to ruin T'Garr's career. The group foils the plot with the help of a Timekeeper.

245. The King of Diamonds
(DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant is called to the Sheba system at the request of Prince William, who believes he may be the target of an assassination plot. His fears prove to be correct, and the group foils the attempt. The group is detained by legal matters because the doctor was arrested for interfering in police business and resisting arrest. In response, T'Garr asks the planetary government to detain the members of Prince William's bodyguard detail because they fired indiscriminately into the crowd in an attempt to subdue the attackers.

246. The Prince's Plan (DD, BP, ET)

The NSF commander at Sheba is reported missing and the group is called in to investigate. They discover and foil a Scorpius plot to start a war between Nexus, Hesperiam and the Drolian Empire by launching ships toward the other territories. The ships are disguised as Hesperian and Drolian ships and are ordered to attack Nexus worlds along the borders.

The group also uncovered a plot to manufacture "super" soldiers using body parts from locals, who are murdered to suit the soldiers.

247. M'Rell Returns (DD, BP, ET)

The Valiant is called to Acheron and the senior officers are informed that there has been an increase in Markann activity along the border. It appears that they are searching for something in the asteroid fields which litter the border.

Upon arrival at the border, it doesn't take the Valiant long to find a squadron of Markann fighters scanning the asteroid field. Just inside scanner range, the Nexus crew notes a planet razer. The group realizes that one of the asteroids is large enough to hide a small ship in. T'Garr orders the Valiant forward and they are able to get a detailed scan of the asteroid. They discover a Markann planet razer which crashed on the asteroid. They also detect one life sign, which is transported aboard. The Valiant then fights its way back across the border.

The life sign turns out to be the clone of Emissary M"Rell, who reveals that the original M'Rell was killed by Purists after the failure of her recent plots against Nexus. NSF officials refuse to prosecute the clone for M'Rell's past deeds. Instead, she is allowed to open a liason office on Kia.

248. Rogue (DD, ET)

The Valiant is ordered to stop a menace that is destroying ships in the SE Sector. When they investigate, T'Garr and the crew discover that the attacks are being carried out by a rogue pilot from Arachnia. When T'Garr disables the ship and demands the pilots' surrender, the pilot asks for political asylum. T'Garr confers with his superiors at NSF Command and then drops the shields. The fighter craft then explodes.

249. The Disappearing Act
(JB, BP, ET) (Guest GM: DD)

The Valiant is making a port call at Nexus when they are confronted with a rash of unexplained disappearances of people on the Nexus moon Ebronessa. When they investigate the disappearances, they soon discover that all of the subjects are clones.

The search for answers uncovers the work of Doctor Jeremy Trenton, a brilliant, but insane scientist who had been performing cloning experiments on humans before they were banned by a Nexus law. After the law was passed, Trenton went underground to continue his research.

By the time the team started looking on Ebronessa for Trenton, the list of the vanished included at least one NIS officer and Arliss Cain as well as two other crewmembers from the Valiant. Captain T'Garr led a team which raided one of Trenton's labs and rescued Arliss and the others. Trenton managed to escape to a merchant ship in orbit. Arliss and the rest of the victims had apparently been captives of Trenton for at least one year.

Once they discovered the destination of the transporter beam, the group boarded and started looking for Trenton. Meanwhile, Arliss, who had been sent to the medical center after her arrival on the Valiant, transported to the merchant ship and started her own search for Trenton. She discovered him in a corridor of the ship and subdued him. Then, she pulled her phaser, set it to KILL, and aimed it at him. T'Garr, who had been watching from nearby, yelled "Lieutenant, NO!" Before she could fire however, she was subdued by other crewmembers of the Valiant.

Trenton was detained and placed in the Valiant's brig, but Arliss secretly altered the files sent to the NSF, flagged the files a national security concern, and forwarded them to the NIS, which demanded custody of Trenton. He was then tried before the secretive Star Chamber and executed.

250. Flash Forward (---) (NR)

This episode catalogs the next fifteen years of Nexus history, with emphasis on the on-going Hesperian Civil War, and the return of the "gods". Arliss Cain becomes the commander of the Valiant II after the original ship is destroyed in battle. Colossus T'Garr is captured during that battle, and Lucien, working behind the scenes as President of Nexus, orders Cain to use a weapon on a Hesperian planet...the weapon obliterates the planet, and Lucien uses the threat of their continued use to get T'Garr and the other prisoners back.