Some time after the colony ship’s repairs, the fleet’s course takes it near a binary system with an object that deflects long-range scans. At Lt. Domino’s request, Commander T’ven investigates the object in a shuttle and learns it is a ship of similar design to the one that attacked them before, but damaged and derelict. The engine core is leaking radiation, making a solo away team unsafe. T’ven calls the fleet their way to investigate further.

An away team of T’ven, Kalen, Lt. Hobbs, and Vulmos is assembled. Plogh administers radiation inoculations to the team. Kalen, using designs from past Starfleet missions, assembles modified life support belts to ward off radiation, and the team goes in EVA suits in order to further protect themselves. Once beamed aboard, the team looks for crew or information on the damage, eventually finding a robotic body in a corridor, which they beam back to the Odyssey for further study.

Opening a sealed door reveals a repair bay with eight of the robots within, all malfunctioning and moving to attack. While the engineers and Vulmos take cover, T’ven bravely stands his ground and stuns half the pack of robots before being downed by their return fire. Kalen downs a few more, and the last ones stumble out of the bay and their power cores are immediately disabled by the radiation, revealing the repair bay is shielded. The team gets T’ven inside and uses his EVA suit’s medical interface to rouse him.

Investigation of the repair bay’s computer system reveals a wealth of information. The ship is Pralor in origin, who are the adversaries of the Cravic, the robots who attacked the Odyssey before. An ambush by Cravic ships disabled this one, and should have destroyed it save for luck. Kalen and T’ven find a wealth of information beyond that, including the ship’s mission (signals intelligence) and tactical capabilities. They store all of the information on isolinear chips for future review.

Contacting the ship, the the crew discusses the reality of the situation – there may well be other robots aboard, relatively safe in better-shielded compartments. With the focus shifting from salvage to rescue, the away team makes their way to the ship’s engine core after collecting parts, and create a plan. Hobbs will handle the reactor shutdown procedure and system checks, Kalen will make the physical bypass of the ship’s broken EPS junction, and Vulmos will handle power regulation during the procedure. Hobbs has trouble with all of the automated safety subroutines, drawing out his part of the job. But once the reactor is powered down, Kalen handily resolves the repair and bypassing of the damaged power component. Vulmos, however, hesitated for some reason at his stage of the procedure, and the power core began to breach. Only quick intervention from Kalen staved off an explosion, at the cost of further damage to the core.

The situation in hand for the moment, the away team is relieved by a security team bid to watch over the core. Meanwhile, Kalen uses the advanced biobed in sickbay to study the robotic body found in the corridor. After salvaging his memory cells, Kalen learns firsthand the Pralor military plans and strategy the unit was privy to. Sensor data from the ship retrieved by Vulmos reveals that the Pralor/Cravic conflict spans a swath of space more than 200 light years in diameter. That is a two-month long journey in contested territory. The captain resolves to find a means to get through that territory as safely as possible.

That opportunity comes when the radiation dissipates and the ship’s command unit meets the security team, requesting to speak with the captain. It visits the Odyssey, meeting with the command staff in the observation lounge to discuss their first meeting. When the captain declares that their intent was salvage until realizing the ship’s inhabitants were still potentially active, the command unit expresses gratitude for the unbidden assistance, and asks if they want anything in return. The captain asks for a safe way through their space. Though the Pralor ship’s complement was severely depleted, the command unit agrees, though it will take some time.

While they wait for their reward, Kalen brings up the possibility of aiding the Pralor in solving an issue he discovered in their repair database – the Automated Personnel Units cannot build new power cores – all of them that are damaged beyond repair represent the death of that unit. He believes there are avenues of research that may assist the units in resolving their fatal flaw. However, Sebastian chimes in definitively – the Prime Directive prevents their assisting the robots in that endeavor. Kalen reluctantly acquiesces, requesting that he be given leave to return to the Pralor ship in order to confirm they left no Starfleet tech behind, which is granted.

A safe route, one that taxes the Odyssey’s remaining power reserves, is provided. After some negotiation, the Odyssey is also authorized to visit a nebula along the course to potentially replenish power. However, they are forbidden to visit any of the systems along their path. The passage now negotiated, the Pralor flag the Odyssey as a friendly non-combatant, and the fleet parts ways with the robotic starship.

The last shot of the episode is of a Starfleet data module sitting conspicuously on the corridor floor of the Pralor frigate.

As the crew deals with various personal troubles, the captain is interrupted by an alert from the bridge. The Harge, the fleet’s colony ship, had its warp engines fail and is signalling distress. It needs a planet to set down on and will likely need its warp coils repaired. Domino finds two options a few light years apart – an inhabited planet, and one that was previously inhabited, according to the Banean star charts. The Odyssey opts for the uninhabited one, and tows the Harge there with the fleet following behind.

Once there, they find a planet with several ruined cities, reclaimed by time. The colony ship sets down near one and requests engineering support. Lt. Kalen and his engineering team report on the planet and determine the warp coils need to be rebuilt. Luckily, he’d stripped the Atlantis of her warp coils, and brings those spare parts to bear, quickening the repair process considerably. Separately, curious about the ruins, Domino, Selveth, Vulmos, and a pair of security officers beam down to investigate the buildings, guided to points of interest by T’ven using the ship’s sensors.

The ground teams’ work proceeds apace. The old warp coils are pulled with help from the Sikarian crew, and the Starfleet crew works on fabricating the replacements. Domino and team learn of unique, fungal/plant super blooms that are sprouting in many places in the colony site, and learn of new and unfamiliar elements used in the colony’s structural materials. The first problem arises when Crewman Jones asks Kalen to be relieved, citing not feeling well. He’s beamed to Sickbay and treated by the EMH. Plogh hears of this and beams back aboard from the Ves’Targ, learning upon examining Jones himself that the crewman was exposed to a slow-acting neurotoxin. He begins investigating immediately, seeing similarities to toxins he had previously seen in his work.

Now they’re on a clock. The captain is looped in, who seeks to control the information to prevent a panic. T’ven reaches out privately to the leaders of both ground teams and lets them know the situation. Kalen’s team continues working, but is losing ground as the team’s exposure starts to lay them out. It comes down to Kalen and the Sikarian crews racing the clock to try and get the Harge’s warp drive functional. Domino and her team realize that a toxin’s danger increases with duration of exposure, and so she rigs some of the team’s equipment to emit various containment fields, learning she can keep the toxin at bay via tetryon fields – not useful as a cure, but as a barrier to further exposure. Vulmos is able to get a scan of the neurotoxin, and secretly shares it with the other Romulans aboard ship. They look through their database of info and learn of a similarly made toxin the Romulans have seen – used by someone known as the Butcher of Adosia Station. Kalen and Selveth both seem troubled to learn this information.

As the ground teams work, a large, unidentified warship speeds into the system. Captain Tchang, seeing the danger, orders yellow alert and suggests the fleet retreat, keeping the Ves’Targ at hand. The unknown warship arrives and announces itself to every comm in the system – “You are trespassers in sovereign Cravic territory. You have one hour to leave, or be destroyed.” With the situation laid out to everyone, Kalen opts for drastic measures in order to get the colony ship running – he pulls out every extraneous safety feature, the systems that diminish the colony ship’s warp signature and limits its speed – he tears the complex Sikarian machine down to its basest functions, skipping more than three quarters of the work he would have to do in order to return the engine to function. Domino and her team retreat to the colony ship, preparing to leave. They realize though that their ascent will be after the deadline, though not by much. With most of the Sikarians afflicted by the toxin, leaving the surface falls to Domino, Kalen, and Selveth. Domino begins breaking all the proper procedures for powering up in order to get the Harge moving faster.

With warning, the captain orders a tactical assessment. T’ven learns the warship has nearly impentetrable shields, and extremely powerful tetryon-based beam banks. It’s dangerous, to be sure, but less so to the Odyssey than the Harge. Tchang tries one last attempt at diplomacy, pleading for only thirty more minutes, before the deadline. In response, at the moment time expires, the Cravic ship reorients and begins firing from orbit at the rising Harge. Options expended, the Odyssey joins the fight, interposing itself between the Harge and the warship and firing a spread of torpedoes. T’ven’s skills mean that a few of the torpedoes sneak through, doing some superficial damage to the warship’s hull. But in response, it fires repeatedly at the Odyssey, entirely draining the shields and striking the front saucer, damaging the sensors and injuring Skrillix in the Canteen.

The Harge clears orbit while the Odyssey spars with the warship, and working together, Domino gets the colony ship close while Kalen use’s the colony ship’s array of tractor beams to ‘punch’ the warship out of the way. The combined graviton beams are successful in pushing the warship away, ruining its kill shot on the Odyssey, and the two ships use the opening to warp away. The warship doesn’t give chase. In Sickbay, Plogh has ably found a retrotoxin to inoculate the exposed, and using the ship’s medical supplies and the EMH, synthesizes enough to return the Harge’s crew and all the exposed Odyssey crew to health.

The captain asks for a debrief in the observation lounge, opening the bar within to the senior staff for a relatively successful mission. On his way there, Kalen is pulled aside by Ulun, a biologist from the Romulan faction. He asks Kalen to inquire as to how Plogh solved the problem – neurotoxins aren’t cured in a day. Kalen agrees, and poses the question to Plogh, who cites his previous exposure as a surgeon to various horrible weapons over the years. Selveth talks about someone the Romulans knew as an enemy, who killed the entirety of a Romulan holding named Adosia station once using a very similar toxin to the one they were exposed to. The parallels have troubled her. But she was able to learn that the Cravic who attacked them were automated personnel units – artificial lifeforms, likely executing their last orders to protect the worlds of their creators. Dominos charts their course and has an idea of the warship’s patrol route, in case they want to avoid it.

Once the debrief wraps up, the crew retreats to their lives to process. Plogh works on a bonsai in his quarters, ending with throwing the shears in anger. Captain Tchang briefly connects with Kemman, who is having trouble adapting to life on the ship. Life continues, and the Odyssey does too.

After a few months of repair, reorganization, and travel, the convoy has changed. The Sikarians have a council of captains that vote on their behalf, and the Odyssey has had personnel changes as a few of the Romulans volunteered to receive Starfleet commissions to ease the tension between their factions. Lt. Commander Selveth takes over science, and Lt. Kalen steps in as the Odyssey’s chief engineer. The convoy is adapting to their plight, with the Odyssey developing relationships and new social groups.

All that is interrupted by an automated Starfleet distress signal. The Odyssey breaks from the convoy in order to investigate, and the ship comes upon a relatively unremarkable solar system, save one thing – an M-class moon orbiting a gas giant, with a wormhole remnant close by, leaking neutrino radiation into the ionosphere. The signal’s source is the planet, and after Lt. Domino and Lt. Kalen use probes to scout the wormhole and the surface respectively, they learn that the signal is coming from the wreckage of an old Starfleet ship.

An away team heads down in a Type-9 shuttle. The team, consisting of Captain Tchang, Lt. Domino, Lt. Kalen, and Counselor Perrik, deal with the atmospheric disturbances created by the radiation on the way down. After some deft maneuvering from Lt. Domino, the shuttle sets down a short walk to a colony site the probe had detected. There, they are greeted by hundreds of colonists – all human.

Their leader, a man named Dan Hansen, introduces himself and the colony’s oldest resident, a Vulcan named Sivak. The colony is descended from the crew of the Atlantis, NX-05, one of the first ships Starfleet made for exploring, and one that was believed lost during the Earth-Romulan war. Two hundred years later, they call their settlement Tusaya, and have made a civilization here. Discussions ensue – there is decades of history to catch up on, on both sides. And with that, Hansen believed that the Odyssey’s arrival heralded their rescue. Separately, Kalen quietly brings up an excellent point – many of these colonists may only know of Romulans as boogeymen or enemies. Not as friends.

Investigations and conversations abound. The colony has survived via adaptation of the remains of the Atlantis’s crew equipment. The issues of genetic degradation with such a small population were dealt with via intervention from Sivak. They had secured and tended to a water source, had long-term food sources, and were careful and considerate of their environment. Several of the colonists are curious about the newcomers, but aren’t interested in a rescue. Six generations had passed since the crash. These were people who had known no other way, and many were happy with the life they had built. The colonists give the Odyssey crew permission to salvage whatever they can from the Atlantis’s wreckage, and the engineering crews focus on its warp components.

With things reaching a head, Tchang recalls the convoy to their position, and meets with the council, discussing both aid and whether anyone would like to call this place home. Most of the council is sympathetic, but are uninterested in providing more than perfunctory assistance. Otel, the leader of the colony ship, puts forward utilizing the colony ship to form a technologically advanced colony site on the planet, but it would involve displacing several thousand Sikarians, and the space is critical for now.

Finally, a call is put out to the fleet – this is an opportunity to put down roots. Anyone who would like to join the colonists of Tusaya may – and any Tusayans wanting to see the stars and hopefully someday Earth may join the Odyssey. In the end, less than a hundred from either source trade – around fifty humans join the fleet, and seventy Sikarians opt to land and join the colony. Databases are swapped, supplies are provided, after a heartfelt goodbye message from Sivak, the convoy continues on its journey.

Captain Tchang wakes up to her daughter shaking her. She’s back on Starbase 364, the day the Odyssey left. Trying to shake the bad dream, she falls into the family moment. Elsewhere, T’Ven wakes, having a similar realization. In order to confirm his suspicions, he does a security sweep and finds Barnett, who he didn’t know about at launch. They bring their findings to Admiral Hebert, who postpones the Odyssey’s launch.

Plogh awakes on the Jor, which should be destroyed. He tries to scan for temporal anomalies without luck, before reaching out quietly to T’Ven. The pair begin investigating the situation fervently, especially as crew start disappearing without explanation.

After the Captain’s symbiont shows signs of having its neural energy drained, Plogh confirms – they’re all slowly being drained of neural energy. T’Ven, using mind melds that he is only somewhat trained with, is able to free the Captain, Plogh, and himself from the mass delusion. In the real world, the Sikarian spy had been possessed by an energy being and was leading them into the dark matter nebula to feed its brethren. Working together, the crew killed the possessed Sikarian, remodulated the shields, and raced through the nebula.

Once on the other side, the toll was counted. Many Sikarian casualties, several Starfleet ones, including a brain dead Annira. T’Ven, hypothesizing wildly, garners assistance from Plogh and one of the captain’s former hosts in order to mind meld with Annira and bring her back from the brink, sharing his neural energy with hers. Annira is in need of serious bed rest, but is expected to make a full recovery.

The fleet, ragged and tired, pulls into orbit of the planet Mondrea to seek respite to repair before moving on.

After tracking a Kazon fleet pursuing them, the convoy speeds up – and the Kazon do too, slowly catching up. After three days of steadily closing the gap, the crew meets to discuss options. Engineers across the fleet need time to manage their engines – a half day, likely.

Domino suggests an audacious port of rest – a rapidly dissipating plasma storm. They take refuge within. Simultaneously, they launch a modified probe broadcasting the Odyssey’s warp signature. This only fools the Kazon momentarily, giving the crew pause. That concern deepens when a Kazon scout is detected waiting for them outside the storm.

An investigation reveals that someone aboard is passing information to the Kazon. Tensions rise when evidence points to the Romulans, but T’Ven and Domino spring a trap that catches a Sikarian posing as a Starfleet technician.

The spy contained for now, the Klingons pilot their stolen Kazon ship out of the storm, learning that the Kazon sects have united in order to capture and pillage the Odyssey. Having learned of the goal, and of their mole, the Odyssey and Klingon ship disable the scout, launch another probe, and use their mole’s secret channel to misdirect the Kazon behind them.

With a small amount of breathing room, the fleet races for the dark matter nebula that creates part of the border of Kazon territory. Kemman reveals that the nebula is occupied by restless spirits, and the Kazon avoid it. The Captain orders the Tiro ahead to scout the edge of the nebula and it finds a line of Kazon warships waiting for them.

Knowing they need to take their chances with the nebula, Captain Tchang arranges the fleet and runs the gauntlet. A well-times deflector pulse from the cloaked Tiro ignites an energy discharge in the nebula. The discharge gives them an opening, but also disables the Tiro. The fleet slips through the gap and disappears.

The convoy parks near a binary pulsar to allow the Odyssey to try an audacious plan – using a pulsar in sight of the Federation’s telescopes to send a one-way message. Lieutenant Annira, the mastermind behind the idea invites Lt. Cat Domino, the ship’s flight controller, to aid in both the construction, and calculation of the trajectory to send the message.

Meanwhile, the Sikarians put on a tribunal in an attempt to further establish justice with regard to Gathorel Labin. Counselor Perrik interviews him, and the Captain is selected as an advocate for the victims. Commander Sebastian steps in as an advocate for the accused.

While the tribunal progresses, T’Ven oversees the disassembly of a shuttle to fortify the captured Kazon Raider. It’s decided that the Klingons will crew it, rotating between it and the Odyssey. While working, a bekk named M’rek joins the work, despite lacking technical skill.

A strange collection of exotic particles leaves the message project on hold while Domino and the Romulan astrophysicist Vulmos investigate. In typical Romulan style, Vulmos assumes a threat, whereas Domino hypothesizes it may be chaotic space interacting with ours.

She turns out to be right, and her experience with the phenomenon reveals that this is an indication of a weakening in subspace originating farther away, and that this is just a unique circumstance, a trimetric fracture. With no immediate threat, the pair work to circumvent its effect on their message home.

The tribunal involves intense interviews with Sikarians, Ensign Barnett, and an impassioned plea from Commander Sebastian. Finally, after discussion as a group, the chosen Advocates opt to believe in a person changing, and prepare to find him a role somewhere in the convoy.

However, the suspicious bekk prompted T’Ven to involve Plogh, and the pair narrowly miss the assassination of Gathorel. While initially, evidence points to M’rek, dogged investigation reveals a desperate Romulan named Kumir framed M’rek. The tribunal is rendered moot, and the Sikarians struggle with the end of the situation.

Finally, Domino sends the message, utilizing the trimetric fracture to amplify the signal. The Starfleet members (and Selveth) send messages home. The Klingons pool their character limits to send back a poem glorifying their dead commander.

With their one-way message sent, the convoy warps away.

Approaching a cluster of stars unique for their density of Class-M worlds, the convoy opts to take some time to explore the cluster’s worlds. The Posel and Odyssey stay on course, though they slow for the scattered ships to return. While they travel, the Odyssey opens the holodecks to the Sikarians, allowing for as much leisure as possible given the circumstances.

This is all cut short when the ship receives a garbled, barely-legible distress call – a woman indicating that their ship’s warp drive was damaged and they were stranded in space. The Odyssey jumps to the rescue, leaving the Posel to continue on-course.

As they approach, the visual sensors give the crew pause – the distress call is coming from a Predator-class carrier, the big planet-killer ships the Kazon have wielded against them to dire effect twice before. This one was stricken though, with obvious damage and leaking theta radiation. As they wonder at the possibility of a trap, Sebastian brings the Kazon prisoners taken on the Class K planet up to the captain – one has been asking after her.

She meets with the boy, named Kemman, and gains perspective on the Kazon. She asks for Kemman’s help in rescuing his people, and while they are from a different sect than the boy, he agrees. T’ven, Plogh, Lt. Hobbs, and one of the Klingon bekks beam over with Kemman and locate the one who sent the distress signal. It’s another Kazon child, this time a girl named Heklara. Plogh inoculates her and the friends she reveals against further radiation, and realizes that the children have survived due to an evolutionary process that the adults of their kind lose. Hobbs gets transporter pattern enhancers set up and assists T’ven with downloading the contents of the Predator’s database.

The away team is able to beam most of the children to safety via the enhancers, but secondary explosions from the damage to the Predator begin taking apart the ship, destroying too many of the enhancers. Left with only one option, T’ven leads the team and the remaining children to the Raider docked with the Predator. After a harrowing journey, they get aboard the Raider, dislodge from the docking clamps, and blast away as the Predator finally succumbs to its damage.

Back on the Odyssey, they detect Kazon coming to investigate the distress signal. The captain asks Kemman and the crew for options, and settles upon getting the children home to their people via the nearby Class M planet. To assure they are taken home, she leaves a Type-9 shuttle and two volunteers behind, with orders to catch up when the Kazon retrieve their children.

The Tiro heads off on a mission to Banea, where the locals have some renown as astrophysicists and builders of space telescopes of exceeding accuracy. As the planet is being blockaded by its neighbor, the Tiro goes, with Tchang, T’Ven, and Plogh along with the Romulan pilot, Pabian, and a noted astronavigator from each faction in the convoy.

Upon arrival and insertion past the convoy, the crew meets Tolen Ren, leader of the scientific institute collecting information on nearby space. He had been seeking information on the blockade from anyone with the ability to collect it, as their telescopes had been ordered shuttered to prevent hostility with the blockading Numiri. The captain offered the Tiro’s scans in exchange for star charts, and Ren was only too happy to oblige. While they gathered the data, Ren hosted a meal for the scientists and the crew to converse, and learn of each other.

That was interrupted by an attack by terrorists, who stunned most of the scientists and crew, including the captain. However, T’ven protected the crew, flipping tables and stationing himself near the captain. And Plogh managed to take a hostage, who explained the situation. The Numiri and Baneans have been fighting border wars for years, and the Numiri wanted plans for an interstellar torpedo targeting system, something Ren inadvertently created and buried.

The captain woke up, and got involved. Convincing all involved to task their government, the Numiri allowed the Odyssey to approach in order to facilitate negotiations. It took most of a month, but at the end of things, the Odyssey flew away from Banea with its goal, and with the potential start of peace between these two species.

A few weeks’ travel has the ship arrive at Zill’gan station, a neutral trading station and repair yard. The administrator, Jojjal, authorizes a berth for all the ships on the convoy while they barter. Ultimately, a large quantity of replicated water buys their way aboard and use of the repair facilities.

The crew spreads out in order to find parts for their sickbay, and hydroponic plants. They locate an Ocampa merchant who sells them (of all things) Earth potatoes and onions. And then weird stuff starts happening, starting with the trading crew losing several hours. Chroniton bubbles are appearing randomly aboard the station – shifting time within the bubble forward or backward.

Via tricorder and triangulation, the crew finds that a piece of tech hidden on a portion of the station given to pirates is the reason for this. They get involved unofficially via Plogh and Skrillix showing up as independent troubleshooters, warning them. They ask for help – and Zesh swings in to disarm the machine.

As the Sikarian convoy waits in an uninhabited system, the Klingon ship Jor, separated from the Odyssey in the initial transport to the Delta Quadran, appears. After a blitz attack damages the convoy’s largest ship, they send out a distress signal to recall the Odyssey while they hide in the atmosphere of one of the planets. A tense stand-off occurs when the Starfleet ship arrives, eventually broken when Captain Tchang and Commander Klaa of the Jor agree to continue honoring their alliance from the Alpha Quadrant. Klaa is unimpressed by shepherding the Sikarians, and sends his second, ship’s surgeon Plogh, to observe the situation with repairs on the planet below.

While Tchang and Plogh discuss the situation and the fact that Gathorel Labin is aboard the ship getting repaired, the Kazon arrive and attack from orbit, launching a few landing pods to attack the repair teams. Tchang, T’Ven, and Plogh, along with a few security staff from both ships, take down the Kazon attack with ease and return to their ships, recognizing another running fight in their near future.

Taking what he’s learned so far from their fights with the Kazon, T’ven opts to focus fire upon the Kazon’s sensor arrays, making it impossible for their more powerful weapons to make a clean hit. The Jor joins in this, crippling the bigger Kazon ship handily as a swarm of smaller ships head for the Sikarians. The Odyssey begins swatting their engines, and the Jor is struck by a lucky shot from the carrier, crippling her. Klaa calls for the Jor to ram the Kazon carrier, seeking an honorable death in combat. Seeing an opportunity for the young Klingon crew to earn more honor than in death, Plogh covertly signals to the Odyssey their situation, and joins his crew in being beamed off the Jor seconds before it crashes into the carrier and explodes.