The 2383 escape in which a group of young prisoners found the abandoned USS Protostar and used it to break out of the Tars Lamora prison colony.
In 2383 Tars Lamora was a mining prison colony in the Delta Quadrant run by a figure known as the Diviner, enforced by his robot Drednok. One of its young prisoners, Dal R'El, dreamed of escape, and his chance came when the Diviner sent Drednok after a troublesome prisoner called Zero.
While searching the deep mining levels, Dal and the Brikar Rok-Tahk caused a rock collapse that uncovered an abandoned Starfleet ship, the USS Protostar. The ship's universal translator let the group talk to one another for the first time, and their band grew to include Zero, the engineer Jankom Pog and the nearly indestructible Murf.
When Drednok and the Diviner's daughter Gwyn caught up with them, the youngsters took Gwyn hostage and flew the Protostar out of the colony. Aboard they met a training hologram modeled on Kathryn Janeway. The Diviner had been searching for the Protostar for years, and its escape set off a chase across the galaxy.