

Nichols sabotaged the ship's Weapons Room by installing an incorrect circuit breaker in the charging unit for hand-held phasers, rendering many of the ship's Phaser Ones and all of its Phaser Twos defective. Without supposing another corrupt officer, then Nichols may also be the first officer or he found out by other means. It is therefore unclear who leaked information about the dilithium. The nature of the dilithium cargo was reportedly only known to Captain Jarvis, the first officer, and the Security personnel. They contacted Chief Engineer Nichols and offered him a deal. However, news of it was leaked to Orion agents on the station. The dilithium was loaded in secret at Starbase 36, where the crew took leave. The cruise was so successful that, four months in, the Starbound was given the secret and important mission of transporting dilithium from Tarba to Starfleet's Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars while on its way back to Earth. On the way, Security Chief Darryl Adin had Sestok reprogram the ship's computer because it beat him at chess, alleging that a previous crewmember had programmed it to cheat. Their safe and non-urgent mission was to transport supplies between a number of planets.

Circa the year 2359, the Starbound was used for a six month-long training cruise for recent graduates of Starfleet Academy, under Captain Enid Jarvis.
