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When we were last aboard the starship Discovery six weeks ago, Booker and Ruon Tarka had fled the ship with Starfleet’s highly secretive, new adaptation of the spore drive and President Rillak is none too happy with either Captain Burnham or Admiral Vance. Burnham’s personal relationship with Book has caused Rillak to lose some faith in her ability to deal with the situation, actually insisting she not be involved in trying to track him down, and with Vance because he was the one who trusted Tarka with this project and, apparently, his own personal security information surrounding the project because that was the only way Tarka could have gotten the device out of Starfleet HQ.
Now the fear is that Book and Tarka are going to engage in a first contact scenario with the beings that created the DMA, or cause some kind of interstellar war by blowing the whole thing up. Complicating matters is some new information about the DMA — it turns out that unknown species 10-C didn’t create the DMA as a weapon of destruction, it’s actually plowing through the galaxy to mine boronite, and attacking this mining operation would most certainly appear as an act of war that the Federation does not want. So Rillak and Vance send as many Starfleet ships out to locate and intercept Book and Tarka before they do something stupid. What they do know is that in order for Tarka to build his bomb, he will need to procure an element, isolinium, something that can only be found on the Black Market … and Book now realizes why Tarka dragged him into this operation. A former smuggler is the one person who would know where to procure such a rare and expensive element. Starfleet has four prospective dealers in sight and that is where the ships are headed.
Vance pays a visit to Burnham, knowing that the Starfleet targets are too obvious. He also knows of Burnham’s past with Book, and gives her some unsanctioned orders to pursue Book and Tarka while still carrying out her official duties of trying to get more information about Species 10-C which requires the acquisition of some star charts from the edge of the universe. Luckily, Burnham knows she can kill two birds with one stone by getting in touch with one of her old smuggling contacts where Federation personnel are not permitted. Burnham goes off on her mission with Lieutenant Joann Owosekun at her side, hoping to get the star charts and the isolinium, and perhaps catch up with Book at the same time. She isn’t sure he will be there, but it seems the most likely place and when she makes an offer for the element, she’s told there is another interested party so she knows Book is there. But with two parties, there is now a bidding war and both Michael and Booker have to come up with a large stack of latinum to pay the price.
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To meet the price, Book and Tarka take a job looking for cheaters in the casino. To compete with Book, Owo volunteers to enter into a sort of MMA battle with a giant beefcake of a man, assuring Michael she’s up to the challenge. While it is taking Book longer than expected to find the cheaters — and now knowing Michael is also there to bid against him — Owo take a fall in her first match, but insists she’s got this a second time when the odds are 10-to-1 against her. She doesn’t, but she insists on going one more time when the odds increase to 45-to-1 … and she wins. Book also manages to find a cheater by the way the being blinks, believing it to be a signal to someone else in the casino. Going on the chase to stop the cheat, Book discovers the creature is a Changeling (like Odo from Deep Space Nine). With both of them armed with enough to pay for the isolinium, their contact decides the bring in two more interested parties from the Emerald Chain for a ‘friendly’ card game.
While inspecting the isolinium to make sure it’s pure, Michael suggests to Booker that they work together to make sure their opponents don’t win the game and get the material. The ploy actually works, and in the end it comes down to one last hand between Book and Michael, for which they go all in. Book wins, and even though Michael tries to appeal to him to do the right thing and return to Starfleet with her, explaining how Tarka dragged him into this scheme, he tells her that he wasn’t dragged. Book puts his person mission of vengeance against Species 10-C above his relationship with Michael and leaves with the isolinium. An interesting point, during the card game Owo tried to chat with Tarka about why he was was doing what he was doing, pushing deep to see if he was driven by some kind of loss. Tarka began to tell her about the deep loss he has suffered, but before he gave away too much information, he clammed up but this might be something she can present to Michael.
Returning to Starfleet with a ‘failed’ mission, Rillak is both pleased and disappointed with both Vance and Burnham for their actions. She can’t be too angry because Burnham did acquire the data they needed, but she didn’t get the isolinium. It turns out when Michael was inspecting the material, she placed a tracker on it, and now they know exactly where Booker and Tarka are parked. Can they now get to the men before they start a new intergalactic war?
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