Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years

by David A. Goodman

  This first assignment was considered a wild success, and after returning Klaang to Qo’noS, Enterprise continued on its originally planned extended mission. As stated in Cochrane’s speech in the breaking of ground for the Warp 5 complex, Enterprise would explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations.

  ABOVE: Soval, Vulcan ambassador to Earth.

  And because Enterprise, to paraphrase Cochrane, was going where no Human had gone before, necessity became the mother of invention. Many of the devices and protocols that would become commonplace on ships of the Starfleet were developed on this first voyage. It was the first time that hand phasers (in the form of early phase pistols) were used by a starship crew, considered to be a more humane weapon because it introduced the “stun” setting. The ship’s communications officer, faced with the nearly impossible task of translating a vast number of new languages, developed her own version of what would become the universal translator. The tactical officer, finding he had to ready the ship for more battles than anyone expected, refined the defensive systems and created a protocol that would evolve into the starship color alert system. But perhaps the greatest template the first Enterprise created was exemplified by Archer himself. From that first mission of the first starship, it became abundantly clear that the man or woman who would have the job of captain could not just be an explorer.

  ABOVE: Sub-commander T’Pol, the first Vulcan to serve on a Starfleet ship.

  ABOVE: A study by a Federation research subcommittee trying to determine the roots of the conflict between Klingons and Humans found it traced back to this internal report by the Klingon High Council on the incident involving Klaang’s crash on Earth and subsequent return. The report was made public in the Empire, and had far-reaching effects. After the effect of Archer’s actions became known, the Federation subcommittee recommended strict guidelines before engaging in first contact with an alien species. Its report would directly lead a few years later to the creation of the Prime Directive.

  * * *

  REPORT TO KLINGON HIGH COUNCIL ON ARCHER

  TRANSLATED FROM THE KLINGON

  * * *

  Lo! Here is the record of the High Council on this, the two hundred thirty-second day of the six hundred eighty-fifth year of Kahless!

  There has been an attempt to dishonor and disgrace the Klingon people! A warrior, Klaang, from a noble family, on a mission of honor for his people, discovered that outside agitators were fomenting civil discontent in the Empire. Chased down by Suliban agents of the notorious Cabal—who seek to gain advantage over the superiority of the Klingon race—his ship was attacked. Outmanned and outgunned, Klaang, with the superior piloting skills of a Klingon warrior, was able to bring his ship to a landing on the planet of the race known as Humans, an inferior puppet race of the Vulcan Dominion. Klaang outmaneuvered the inferior Suliban, but a Human vermin, unwilling to face the Klingon warrior in honorable combat, shot him with his coward’s weapon.

  Klaang’s life should have ended honorably. If the honorable body had been delivered to the High Council, the information that Klaang encoded in his DNA would have made its way to us. But the inferior Humans intervened! They cured his wounds with liquids and powders that are abhorrent to the Klingon warrior! They claim no knowledge of our ways, but this is a lie! What kind of race would save a life of a warrior so clearly superior? So clearly made to conquer them! They have purposely disgraced Klaang and by extension the Klingon people, and have tried to hide behind the weak face of ignorance. The Human race is not to be trusted; they are meddlers and without honor. From this day forward, they shall be considered enemies of the Empire.

  And that the Klingon people not be disgraced by these actions of the Humans, the High Council deems that Klaang is now dishonored, his house stripped of its titles and its lands seized. Klaang will spend the remainder of his life on the penal asteroid Rura Penthe. The honor of the Klingon people has been saved!

  * * *

  “I learned very quickly,” Archer said late in life in a speech to a graduating class at Starfleet Academy, “that I had to be a police officer, a rescue worker, and, probably most important, a diplomat. I wasn’t trained for most of it.” Fortunately for Earth, it was Archer’s natural, though reluctant, skills in this last area that led several new species to see Humanity as their ally. This would prove especially true with one of the founding members of the Coalition of Planets and, later, the Federation: Andoria.

  THE ANDORIAN INCIDENT

  Andoria, an icy world in orbit around the gas giant Andor, was an unusual place to find life, and what did survive there was as resilient and formidable as you would expect. Blue-skinned humanoids with antennae whose movement reflected their owners’ emotions, the Andorians broke free of the shackles of their cold, barren world and moved out into space in the hope of finding more hospitable land on which to live. What they found very quickly were the Vulcans, who inhabited the neighboring star system. Immediately suspicious of the emotional, arrogant, and aggressive Andorians, the Vulcans sought to contain them. This only made things worse, and for one hundred years the two races maintained a peace that was rarely peaceful. The Vulcans were concerned that the Andorians were planning aggression, and the Andorians were convinced that the Vulcans were continually spying on them as a prelude to invasion.

  One of the manifestations of this conflict occurred at the monastery of P’Jem. For centuries this Vulcan sanctuary, on a planet in a system only a few light-years from Andoria, was a place of quiet contemplation where monks practiced the Kolinahr, an ancient ritual meant to purge all emotion. The Andorians, however, were convinced that the monastery was a cover for a secret Vulcan spy station, and made several unsuccessful attempts to uncover it. On June 19, 2151, within two months of leaving Earth, Enterprise stumbled into the middle of this ongoing conflict.

  The Enterprise had stopped at P’Jem to learn more about the monastery. “I was merely curious, I’d never seen a Vulcan monastery before,” Archer told Forrest later. “I didn’t think it was going to get me in so much trouble.” He didn’t know that a squad from the Andorian Imperial Guard had taken the monks prisoner while searching for proof of the spy station. Upon landing, Archer’s party was also taken prisoner.

  The Andorian commander, Thy’lek Shran, assuming Archer was in league with the Vulcans, tortured Archer for the information. In an attempt to escape, Archer accidentally uncovered the monastery’s secret: beneath it there was a surveillance station, which was, in fact, spying on the Andorians. He exposed this secret to Shran, who expressed to Archer that the Andorian people were in his debt.

  The incident helped Andoria to see Earth as an ally. However, it did little to ease the tensions between Andoria and Vulcan: shortly after finding the surveillance station, the Andorians destroyed it along with the sanctuary. The Vulcans blamed this on Archer’s interference.

  The troubles between Vulcan and Andor came to a head on the planetoid of Weytahn, and this conflict found Earth—and Archer—playing a decisive role. More than sixty years before, in 2093, the Vulcan High Command had been concerned that the Andorians were planning on using Weytahn to launch an offensive against Vulcan. They demanded an inspection, which the Andorians refused. In response, the High Command annexed the planetoid, renamed it Paan Mokar, and forcibly removed the Andorian colonists, leaving the planet deserted and monitored by an observation satellite.

  The loss of this colony was a sore point for the Andorians for many years, and in 2152 they finally took action: The Imperial Guard sent a division to retake the planetoid. The Vulcan High Command retaliated by landing its own troops. Fighting broke out in the abandoned colony, and, with the forces evenly matched, it looked to be a long and bloody conflict. Because of his personal experience surrounding Weytahn/Paan Mokar, Ambassador Soval was dispatched from his posting on Earth to find a diplomatic solution, but with the lack of trust between the two parties, the hopes for peace looked grim.

  ABOVE: A map of Andoria. The
map indicates bodies of water that are in fact always frozen.

  ABOVE: The initial introduction between Humans and Andorians went from violence to mutual respect in a matter of hours. This is largely considered to have occurred because the first Earthling to meet the Andorians distrusted the Vulcans as much as they did. Commander Shran, who went on to a seat on the Federation Council, wrote about this encounter in his autobiography. It does not completely line up with other non-Andorian accounts. Although Andoria and Vulcan had long been allies at the time that Shran wrote this, it is clear that he had not completely shaken his view of them.

  * * *

  EXCERPT FROM SHRAN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  TRANSLATED FROM THE ANDORIAN

  * * *

  Chapter 5: The Pink Skin

  I hated Vulcans. When I was given my orders to take my ship to P’Jem, I was filled with sickness. Though they are now our allies, some say our brothers even, it is easy, very easy, to remember a day when they were our adversaries. I didn’t trust them; how can you trust a species that is so comfortable with lying? They say they have changed, that the strict teachings of Surak now make them incapable of lying. If I was the soldier I was back then, I would say this too is a lie. But times have changed. I take them at their word.

  Then, however, my experience told me the opposite. I had very little proof that the sanctuary on P’Jem was hiding an observation post, that the Vulcans were breaking the treaty and spying on us. But my natural distrust of Vulcans drove away any skepticism I might have had. I arrived on P’Jem and took to beating the Vulcan monks. It is not satisfying beating a Vulcan; they refuse to show pain, to show an emotional response. As a result, you end up dealing out much more abuse than you should, because it appears to be having no effect. The Vulcans wouldn’t break, and I was just about to give up when the Pink Skin arrived and we imprisoned him.

  He denied any knowledge of the listening post, but I was sure that he was part of the Vulcans’ plan to deceive us, that he was working with them, helping them spy on us. So I went to work on him. His response was different than the Vulcans; it was clear I was causing him pain. I continued my efforts, and this only led him to taunt me! I didn’t understand this Pink Skin!

  There was still no evidence of a listening post; we searched the monastery completely more than once. My men were losing faith in our mission. I expressed unwavering certainty that we would find something, but the truth was that doubt was starting to creep into my thinking, too.

  The Pink Skin meanwhile had cleverly called for help from his ship, During the subsequent firefight, the entrance to the listening post was revealed to me. I thanked the Pink Skin. If it had not been for his interference I would never have found it. He was an anomaly to me; he worked with the Vulcans, yet he distrusted them as much as I did, seemed to take pleasure in revealing their secret. And it would turn out our common distrust of the Vulcans would lead me to bring all three worlds together.

  * * *

  There was luck for both sides in the fact that the Andorians had put Shran in charge of the invasion force. “I knew from my experience as a soldier,” Shran wrote in his memoirs, “that to win this fight on the battlefield would be too costly.” When the Vulcans sent a communique to discuss terms for a cease fire, Shran, though suspicious, offered to negotiate through the one “pink skin” he trusted: Jonathan Archer.

  “I am not at all comfortable with this prospect,” Soval wrote to his superiors, “but it is the only avenue currently being offered. Logic suggests we pursue it.” He requested Earth divert Enterprise.

  Because of the trust Shran placed in Archer, Earth—through Archer’s negotiations—was able to bring the two parties to the negotiating table. A lasting, peaceful resolution to the conflict was reached.

  This would be the incident that defined Earth’s role in the Galaxy—as peacemaker and mediator among the many diverse species and planets. The question as to why Humans are so adept at bringing disparate and often warring species together has long perplexed historians.

  The great historian John Gill, in one of his comprehensive surveys, Small Steps and Giant Leaps: A History of Humankind in the Galaxy, points to a possibly critical factor: “Each of the other dominant species in the Alpha Quadrant had lived on a united homeworld for centuries before venturing out into the Galaxy; war was a distant memory for them. When conflict presented itself with aliens there were not enough personal memories in the individuals involved for them to instinctively avoid such conflict.”

  Humans, however, were different. “When we left Earth, war and its horrors were fresh in our collective and individual memories,” wrote Gill. “We looked to avoid conflict, to understand who our adversaries were—and who they were not—and to never jump to the conclusion that fighting was the only solution. Even when conflict broke out, Human individuals looked for ways to end it peacefully.”

  ABOVE: Ending a century-long conflict, Vulcan agreed to withdraw from Weytahn and cede ownership of the planetoid to Andoria. This final article lays out the one circumstance under which the treaty will he considered abrogated, and which threatened to send both parties back to war. “It was bomb that never went off,” Jonathan Archer wrote in his autobiography. It is interesting to note that there was only one species listed in appendix A: Humans.

  ATTACK ON EARTH

  February 3, 2153, became a date much like September 11, 2001, was for the former United States of America—the date of a surprise attack, the reverberations of which would last far beyond the conclusion of the immediate conflict. In the case of 3/2/53 (as it would come to be known), it wasn’t just one country attacked, but the entire planet. It was the first alien attack Earth had ever faced. The attacking ship was a one-occupant vessel that came out of a subspace corridor and cut a destructive swath from Florida to Venezuela, then self-destructed. Seven million lives were lost.

  “The attack stunned, then enraged, the entire Human race. What had been a short and peaceful age of space flight came to an end with a war brought to Earth.

  The story of why that probe attacked Earth began centuries before—not just in another part of the Galaxy, but in another dimension entirely.

  ABOVE: A rendering of the Xindi probe that attacked Earth.

  THE XINDI AND THE SPHERE BUILDERS

  Not much is known about the race alternatively called “the Sphere Builders” and “the Guardians” other than they were technologically advanced and that they lived in another universe with a completely different molecular structure. “Conditions in their universe were becoming unlivable,” wrote the Xindi historian J’Acov in The Great Diaspora: The History of the Xindi, “so they chose ours as their new home.”

  In order for the Sphere Builders to live in this universe, however, it was necessary to reconfigure it on a subatomic level. This reconfiguration would make it impossible for the life that currently existed in our universe to survive. To complete this project, the Sphere Builders constructed seventy-eight moon-sized spheres.

  Through a technology that is still not fully understood, the spheres created a web of gravimetric energy that could put in motion the reconfiguration necessary to support their life-forms. This web became an area called the Delphic Expanse—2,000 light-years across and surrounded by thermobaric clouds that subspace communication could not penetrate. Thus many star systems and species in the Expanse were cut off from the rest of the Galaxy.

  T’Pol, who was the only Starfleet scientist to examine the spheres, wrote in her log, “Left unhindered, the spheres eventually would not only reconfigure the Delphic Expense, they would turn the entire universe into a space livable for the Sphere Builders, as well as making it unlivable for other life forms, including us.”

  ABOVE: A translated excerpt from the Xindi classic Our Home, a collection of stories written for Xindi children. The story excerpted here tells of the Arboreal child J’Acov’s first encounter with an Avian on the final day of their planet. (J’Acov was also the name of the well-known Xindi historian
who, as a child, survived the destruction of Xindus, but who would never confirm that this story was based on his own experiences.)

  ABOVE: Jonathan Archer had several run-ins with Klingons, but the most serious was his intervention to help the Arin’Sen. They were a subject species of the Empire, and Archer succeeded in helping a ship of Arin’Sen refugees escape a Klingon ship’s pursuit. Archer was eventually captured for this “crime,” tried on the Klingon colony of Narendra III, and sentenced to life imprisonment on the penal asteroid Rura Penthe. He escaped, but the Klingons responded by putting a bounty on him, which technically was never lifted throughout his life.

  * * *

  KLINGON BOUNTY ON ARCHER

  TRANSLATED FROM THE KLINGON

  * * *

  WANTED!

  JONATHAN ARCHER

  HUMAN

  MURDERER, TERRORIST

  DESCRIPTION

  Height: 1.84 meters

  Weight: 81.7 kilograms

  Remarks: Archer is commander of a rogue Human ship bent on the destruction of the Klingon Empire. He was last seen in the general vicinity of Xantoras.