It didn't take us long to discover the pain stick among the other sarcophagi. As we pondered who may have left these things here, we started the holoemitter. We were astonished as it projected an image of Koress delivering a sermon to his acolytes. We recalled that he said at the time of the murder this is what he was doing. Instead of having ten witnesses for his alibi, he was actually using the holo as a cover whilst he killed Valerie. To this day, we still don't know why he did it, but we hypothesize that Valerie discovered that Koress was working for the Marauders as she explored the monastery. Whatever happened, now we had our culprit!
Koress must have guessed at our discovery as he was nowhere to be found. We started a systematic search of his quarters. Although his chest was empty, Tren found that his water font had a hidden switch in the bottom. When he twisted it, a spiral staircase opened in the ground, leading into darkness.
We decided that enough was enough and we sent Thavliss back to the ship for phasers and tricorders. I was damned if we were going into that darkness unprepared!
We descended quickly into the heart of the asteroid. The interior was an ancient mine. It was clearly a couple of hundred years old and poorly maintained, although the metal that it was made from was laced with neutronium.
As we progressed through several old doors, we were suddenly blasted by a modern, Klingon defence turret. Tren's last minute warning allowed us to dive out of the way and avoid injury. Tren mnaged to take out the turret with a well-aimed shot to the power cable. Never one to miss n opportunity, Akio managed to salvage the turret and turn it into a portable, heavy weight weapon.
Moving further through the mining complex, we encountered malfunctioning plasma generators that nearly killed Tren and me. After passing through this, we encountered another one of those hostile aliens that we met on Borgonia. Those things are vicious and nearly took Tren's head off! We blasted it with phasers and I finished it off with a Batleth.
The final room of the asteroid was some kind of industrial smelting plant. As we entered, the noise and heat was overwhelming! A hologram of a humanoid was being projected over a console. Two enormous pots of molten neutronium were contained at floor level. Akio could not even estimate the power requirements for heating that much neutronium!
We carefully moved into the room. Tren detected three life forms. One of those was Koress, who was knelt in supplication above a second smelting pot. The second lifeform was a cyclopean creature of dissolute nightmares, seemingly created from a mass of writhing tentacles. It floated above the second pot and seemed to be providing the power via some kind of trans-dimensional conduit.
Predictably, a Ruk android was at the end of the smelting plant, poring over the controls of an Iconian gateway.
We rapidly hatched half a plan, and Tren fired a phaser at Koress as he prayed. The old Klingon fell silently into the molten metal. I have seen no more eerie death than this in all my time in war. Klaxons immediately began to sound the alarm and Thavliss took a shot at the Marauder creature. As he blasted, the frame of a Klingon Android emerged from a pod. It was similar to the androids from the Doomsday Machine, but it appeared to have been constructed from Neutronium. Tren's blasts caused it no harm. Thavliss had more success, as his attack on the creature resulted in it fleeing back to it's own dimension.
Theorising that only a Klingon would be able to operate the gateway, Mabrin guided Kreng through using the Iconian gateway to transport the android into one of melting pots at the same time that another hostile alien emerged. We gave it the same treatment as the android.
As we savoured our victory for a moment, Tren heard an eldritch psychic voice in his head, uttering unspeakable words of horror that were anathema to any soul in our dimension. The words were synchronised to the shaking of the asteroid as the Marauder pursued a strategy that we had seen before of destroying any evidence of their presence, just as they had on Romulus.
We used the gateway to return immediately to the Arizona and used the transporters to beam all the Klingons off the asteroid and into the brig where they were searched.
As this was all happening, Mr Vas'Ir said he had an urgent report. All Federation news channels were now reporting that the Arizona had been aiding the Andorian enemy in the war and the ship and its crew had been declared outlaws. We are now the galaxy's most wanted criminals!
And the adventure continues...