2389/08.1

Canopus Station is completed. As the main reactor is brought online and the station's systems power up to full, the first survey of the Carpathia Star System is undertaken. The first thing of note to be detected during this period is the world of Carpathia about which the Station orbits, a dusty desert moon which is besmirched by a single oasis of green forest 60 miles across. Visual sensors can see the blemish of green starkly against the desert, but every other sensor bounces off.

An Away Team is sent to investigate, flying in using one of Canopus's Arrow class runabouts. But once they pass over the boundary of the forest, they lose all power. It is only thanks to the quick actions of their pilots that the Runabouts back up systems come online, and they are able to effect a landing at the centre of the forest. What they find there is a tapered alabaster tower, like a wine flute with the cup snapped off. With no communications to the outside world, the Away Team investigate the strange tower.

Machines periodically appear from the forest, great white centipedes that disgorge elemental materials into anti-gravity conveyor systems that run into the tower. They don't interfere with the Away Team, seemingly oblivious to them as they go about bringing the tower more and more material from beyond the forest. As night falls the Away Team settles in for the night, hearing nothing from the verdant forest. Not even the sound of insects.

Part way through the night a sound does reach them and alerted the Away Team seek out the source. In doing so they are ambushed by Reka, who quickly subdue them at the behest of an amphibian alien called Gastarox. Claiming to be a member of a species called the Mercantile Academia trapped on Carpathia by the arrival of Canopus Station, who had been seeking knowledge about the builders of the tower (The Priors), he took the away team captive and made his escape.

Canopus Station attempted to intercept his craft but failed in doing so. Sending the USS Resolute in pursuit, the two ships travelled a short 10 light-year hop to a place called The Mire. Within the sphere of tortured space that hid it, the Sleepers Bazaar was a place where Gastarox could make some small profit of his misadventure on Carpathia. The Away Team was sold to the Harbour Master, the operator of the Bazaar, but two of them were kept for Gastarox's own inquisition.

The USS Resolute was able to gain entry to the Sleepers Bazaar, treating with a biomechanical construct seemingly stitched together from spare parts of meat and machines, and were granted access to the bidding floor of the Bazaar. There they were able to successfully gain the freedom of their Away Team, and apprehend Gastarox and his two captives.

During this bidding process they also gained the attention of a Concordance official called The Lord Provider, a figure there to acquire more soldiers for their holy crusade. The Concordance battleship, an ancient and ill-equipped vessel, left the Bazzar first and would obviously attempt an ambush when the Federation starship attempted to leave. Before leaving, the USS Resolute destabilised the Prior machine that was keeping The Mire functional, causing it to fail and the area of effect of tortured space to begin to expand outwards. With this distraction, the USS Resolute was able to escape The Mire, and in doing so defeat the Concordance battleship.

On the return trip to Canopus Station they arrived to find that Expedition Three from the Milky Way had arrived, and had begun to set up the Carpathia Shore Battery among the moons of Tangerine Dream. A small flotilla of support craft, and the Starfleet Corps Of Engineers construction ship USS Please Read The Instructions, had arrived along with automated cargo barges.

And just in time to, as a Starfleet warp signature from the opposite side of the system appeared...followed closely by a number of chase craft. Invasion had come to Carpathia.