Stardate 3177.3: It is Remembrance Day, and everyone on the Enterprise wears a badge in honor of ships and crews that were lost. Only Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh does not put on the badge that would commemorate the colony ship SS Puget Sound she was on and that was raided by the Gorn. The Enterprise arrives at Finibus III to deliver a new AP 350 air filter for the colony. But no one responds. A landing party discovers evidence of a massacre but no bodies. Then a vessel with survivors appears. Since their ship is heavily shielded, it is not possible to use the transporter. Pike orders to extend the deep space transport tube for them to cross over. When a small hostile alien ship appears, it is not possible to raise the shields because of the tube. The Enterprise sustains heavy damage, six crew members and three civilians are killed. La'an recognizes that the attackers are the Gorn, who have used the survivor ship as a bait. She recommends to retreat to the atmosphere of a nearby brown dwarf. Shields and sensors wouldn't work in there. But Spock comes up with a way to detect enemy vessels through changes in the Coriolis forces. After ensuring that the Gorn can't locate the Enterprise, Pike orders to drop the last operational photon torpedo on the enemy ship. It gets destroyed. But the explosion gives away the location of the Enterprise for a much bigger Gorn vessel. Pike takes the ship deeper into the atmosphere. When it is necessary to seal off the lower decks, a crewman is left behind and dies. A pursuing smaller enemy ship implodes. In sickbay, it turns out that Una is heavily wounded and needs surgery, but she orders M'Benga to give the last available blood plasma to another crew member. When she wakes up, she sees that M'Benga tapped his own blood to save her life. La'an and Spock take a shuttle to find a way to escape. La'an asks Spock for a mind-meld in the hope to find something that may help defeat the Gorn. She remembers that her brother decrypted the light code that they used to communicate. She also recognizes that Spock lost a sister. Using light signals, they get the big Gorn ship to destroy the last smaller one. Hemmer and Uhura are trapped in the main cargo bay and are struggling to get the AP350 powered down. But it is too late. The device will explode. It is necessary to vent the bay to get rid of it while they are still inside. As the brown dwarf is about to be sucked into a black hole, Pike orders a risky maneuver close to the event horizon and uses the AP350 as a decoy. When it explodes in space, the Gorn are under the impression it was the Enterprise and retreat. Uhura and Hemmer survive. La'an decides to put on the badge.

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