Talking to Dr. Culber, Georgiou is very reluctant but eventually agrees to a complete scan of her body to get to the bottom of her neurological disorder. She hacks into the scan results and it looks like she is dying. Book receives a message from his homeworld Kwejian that Osyraa, the Emerald Chain leader, threatens the planet with destruction. He requests the Discovery to interfere, but Admiral Vance only approves of an observer mission. On the Discovery, Stamets and Adira combine the already known data about the Burn with the new one obtained from Ni'Var, tracing the origin to the Verubin nebula. They also discover an audio signal that is being sent from there, which manifests itself as music but is heavily distorted. After filtering out natural sounds from a neutron star, it all boils down to a Federation distress signal. Adira sets out to also decode the embedded message. Burnham beams down to Kwejian with Booker where they meet Kyheem, his old friend. Unlike Book, Kyheem maintains an old deal with the Emerald Chain that provides the planet with a repellant against sea locusts that would eat the harvest, in exchange for the valued tranceworms. After killing her nephew for his failure on Hunhau, Osyraa sets a course for Kwejian. When her heavily armed cruiser shows up in orbit, she demands the extradition of the Andorian Ryn, the former Emerald Chain member, who is still aboard the Discovery. Saru refuses. In order to emphasize her demands, she fires photon torpedoes at the protective shields of the Sanctuary on Kwejian, which begin to weaken. In order not to cause a diplomatic incident, Tilly comes up with the idea that a "rogue Federation officer" could attack the cruiser with Book's ship and target the vulnerable spots that Ryn knows of, a task that falls to Detmer. On the planet, Kyheem gets into a fight with Book over the question of Ryn, but they eventually agree to work together. Osyraa has to retreat after her ship has taken damage. Book and Kyheem establish a telepathic link with the sea locusts, which is boosted with help from the Discovery to drive the creatures back into the sea. Back on the Discovery, Book tells Burnham that he considers to stay on the ship.

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