Approach with caution.
CAUTION
Jonathan Archer is an escaped felon. A renegade and terrorist, he is convicted of the most heinous crimes against the Klingon government. Archer is also a suspect in other terrorist attacks against other races throughout the galaxy.
REWARD
The Klingon High Council is offering a reward of up to 9,000 Darseks for information leading directly to the apprehension of Jonathan Archer. The full amount will be paid upon delivery of the felon, dead or alive.
Any member of the Klingon Military is authorized to function as an intermediary for the High Council and provide compensation for the execution of this bounty.
* * *
According to firsthand accounts from individuals who interacted with the Sphere Builders, among their technological advances was their ability to study future timelines. They saw that the biggest impediment to the completion of their plan was the future Federation. “And because they also foresaw that Earth would be a necessary component in the establishment of the Federation,” J’Acov wrote, “the Sphere Builders instituted a second plan to ensure the success of the first. They chose a world they could manipulate into becoming an enemy of Earth.”
Their choice was Xindus, a planet within the Delphic Expanse. It was a unique world in that it developed six separate intelligent species: Arboreals, Aquatics, Insectoids, Reptilians, Primates, and Avians. The Sphere Builders manipulated the mythologies of all the species by visiting individual representatives of each species over the course of hundreds of years and presenting themselves as supernatural beings.
“The Guardian came to me,” a Xindi Reptilian named Char’dus relayed in an oral tradition, “and told me our people, the Reptilians, were the true leaders of all the other species of the world.” Similar myths among the other Xindi species asserted each species’ natural hegemony. The only species that didn’t believe the stories of the Sphere Builders/Guardians were the Xindi Avians, who refused to see Wingless aliens as gods.
The Sphere Builders’ influence on the other races, however, was profound, and a century-long war for domination of Xindus ensued that eventually resulted in the destruction of the planet. The Avian Xindi were obliterated into extinction. The other five species went out into space in what became known as the “Great Diaspora.”
The Sphere Builders helped the Xindi navigate the Expanse and led them to a new home planet. The Sphere Builders then told the new Xindi Ruling Council (which comprised representatives of all the surviving species) that they had looked into the future and saw that beings from a planet called Earth would destroy the new Xindi home. It would be necessary to strike against Earth before the Humans could strike against the Xindi.
The once-warring Xindi species united under their new cause. A Xindi Primate named Degra designed a formidable weapon and tested the prototype against Earth itself in the belief that the Earthlings would not be able to trace the source of the probe.
They were wrong. Through a never-revealed source, Jonathan Archer found out not only that the Xindi—and ultimately the Sphere Builders—were responsible for the attack, but also their location in the Expanse. Despite the many tales of horror about previous ships that had entered the Expanse, Enterprise traveled there in a quest to find the Xindi and defeat the plans of the Sphere Builders. Archer and his crew were able to destroy the spheres, disrupting the gravimetric web. They eventually made allies of the Xindi, who many years later joined the Federation. As of this writing, the Sphere Builders were never heard from again.
ABOVE: The only known image of a Xindi Avian.
IF YOU WANT PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR
The attack on Earth would change Human affairs dramatically. Starfleet and the United Earth Government suddenly realized how vulnerable they were. “We only had one ship to fight the battle with Xindi and [the Sphere Builders],” Admiral Forrest wrote in a memo to the United Earth Council. “if we don’t make a commitment to build a Warp 5 fleet, we will be leaving ourselves open to other threats, and the next time we’re attacked we might not prevail.” The age of peace was over.
The experience with the Xindi also had a profound effect on Jonathan Archer personally. “When I left Earth,” he said in a speech to Academy cadets many years later, “I was kind of a lighthearted explorer. The experience with the Xindi changed that. I lost that lightheartedness, but it was necessary. We have a role to fill, and we can’t take it lightly.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The experience in the expanse also transformed Archer’s impression of the role Earth would play in the future of the Galaxy. According to Archer, the difficulties with the Xindi were part of a larger conflict that he called “The Temporal Cold War” (TCW) that involved beings from the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirty-first centuries, some of whom showed Archer future events through time travel. Archer did not appear to have foreknowledge of Earth’s participation in forming the Federation, but he is our only source on the TCW. Many have doubted its plausibility, some even going so far as to say the assertions were symptoms of a messianic complex that compelled Archer to put himself at the center of history. “To employ a cliché,” John Gill wrote, regarding the TCW’s veracity, “only time will tell.”
Archer wasn’t the only one who had changed; the Xindi war put all Earthlings ill a new frame of mind: if you want peace, be prepared for war. As it turned out, the timing of this change in Earth’s attitude was fortuitous. The seed of the greatest conflict the Alpha Quadrant had ever faced was taking root.
THE ROMULANS
As is well known, the Vulcans were once an emotional, warlike people that found peace through their embrace of the teachings of Surak. But at some point after they discovered warp drive, a group of Vulcans who called themselves Romulans rejected the teachings of Surak and secretly left Vulcan to establish their own world. In the millennia of that intervening period, they developed a society that was warlike but by no means barbaric. The Romulans embraced the passions of emotion but also valued high culture and civility. They were ruled at first by an imperial Senate, which appointed a praetor. By the 2100s, however, the praetor had usurped the power of the Senate and become a dictator.
For much of their history, the Romulans were primarily driven by a desire to protect themselves, and believed that the best way to do this was to expand their influence to neighboring star systems. To maintain control of these star systems, however, they needed more resources, so their expansion needed to continue. Thus, the Romulan Star Empire was born. Throughout this expansion, they managed to keep their origins and home planet’s location secret to many of the advanced species in the Alpha Quadrant. No one outside the Empire knew what a Romulan looked like, including the Vulcans. But though the Vulcans had forgotten their distant brothers, the Romulans had not forgotten them.
In 2153 the influential Minister V’Las became administrator of the Vulcan High Command. This appointment was, in fact, the fulfillment of a decades-long Romulan plot: V’Las was a Romulan who had replaced the real V’Las as a very young man. Over the decades that he had been a Vulcan minister, the Romulan was able to steer Vulcan on a course toward imperialism. “Controlling Earth and containing the Andorians were policies seemingly based in logic,” wrote John Gill, “but looked at objectively, they were naked colonialism.”
THE COALITION OF PLANETS
Enterprise’s first years in space were considered an unqualified success. Because of the efforts of Jonathan Archer and his crew, Vulcan and Andoria had reached a peaceful settlement of their long conflict; the Tellarites, the pig-like species that valued arguing as a form of communication, also found themselves making peace with their enemies, the Andorians. United Earth Minister Nathan Samuels decided to capitalize on this success. In an attempt to form a strong, long-lasting alliance, he invited delegates from around the nearby galaxy to Earth to found the Coalition of Planets. Worlds that had kept to themselves—Rigel, Denobula, Coridan—were now sending delegates to Earth to become part of this grand adventu
re, but it almost ended before it began.
Terra Prime, the anti—alien group founded decades before on the fears of some Humans that aliens would invade and conquer their home, had lost its influence over the years as Earth saw the benefits of being part of the galactic community. That was until the Xindi attack. Anti-alien sentiment was again on the rise.
Terra Prime’s leader, John Frederick Paxton, seized this opportunity. With new recruits, he landed on Mars and seized control of the verteron array, a powerful weapon Earth had developed to destroy stray asteroids and meteors. But the weapon could also destroy ships almost anywhere in the solar system. Paxton gave the aliens on Earth an ultimatum to leave immediately. “Fortunately,” wrote Samuels in his autobiography, “there were too many people who would not let Earth slide back into a barbaric isolation.” Paxton’s plot was defeated.
A month after this final crisis was averted, the Coalition of Planets was incorporated. Though it was a step in the right direction, and a few of the Coalition members would also be founding members of the Federation, it would unfortunately take a much larger conflict to bring these worlds together permanently.
ABOVE: The Romulan spy service, the Tal Shi’ar, replaced the real V’Las with their Romulan spy sometime in the mid-twenty-first-century. As this counterfeit V’Las moved up the ranks of High Command, he exercised an influence on Vulcan diplomacy while also providing his homeland with valuable intelligence. V’Las would send coded signals over subspace, which would then be decoded and transcribed on documents for the Romulan leaders. The following is a report regarding the first encounter between Romulans and Humans. The value of V’Las’s position is apparent, as in this case he was able to include the Starfleet report on the incident, along with as his own analysis.
* * *
SECRET COMMUNIQUE FROM V’LAS TO RUMULAN TAL SHI’AR
TRANSLATED FROM THE ROMULAN
* * *
I have attached a copy of a report from the Earth Starfleet Command regarding the incident around Unroth III. As you will see, the Earth starship managed to gather a substantial amount of information regarding our mine technology. There are several things in this Starfleet report that should concern us.
1) The Earthmen were also able to penetrate our cloaking technology on the mines, though they were not able to do the same on our ships. But, as the report recommends, I have confirmed that Starfleet engineers have set to work on improving their quantum beacon technology to nullify our advantage in this area.
2) The Earthmen had the ability to understand our language. It is unclear how they did this, but it speaks to the unique abilities of at least one of their personnel and/or advanced computer processing capabilities to be able to so quickly and completely translate our spoken language.
3) The Earth starship was not destroyed, and they were able to quickly repair the damage to their ship. This shows a formidable resourcefulness and technical expertise if we should ever find ourselves in conflict with them.
Nowhere in the report does it mention any relationship between Vulcan and Romulus, and I have made further inquiries to confirm this. Fortunately, the Earth starship struck the minefield before they were able to descend to the planet, where they may have found our abandoned base, and the incident will at least temporarily guarantee that the Earthmen will not visit Unroth again.
* * *
ABOVE: The Romulan destruction of Starbase 1 in 2156.
CHAPTER II
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THE ROMULAN WAR
* * *
2155-2160
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“Before you declare to your people that a war is inevitable, ensure your own victory is as well.”
—Gileus, praetor of the Romulan Empire, 2155
For a week during the negotiations of the charter for the Coalition of Planets, T’Jan, the Vulcan delegate, had held firm in her position. The Andorian Ambassador Thoris was becoming infuriated and Nathan Samuels was watching all his hard work come apart.
The delegates had met at the end of January 2155, and for most of February, negotiations to ratify the charter went smoothly. Samuels was able to bring the disparate species together to establish peace through trade, as well as agree on a workable structure to resolve disputes. He wanted, however, to go an extra step. He dubbed it the “my enemy is your enemy” clause: a clause that stated the worlds of the Coalition would join together to face common adversaries. All of the delegates were interested in this provision except T’Jan. As would be expected from a Vulcan, she was coldly logical and she unapologetically stated the position of her government. “We will not be held responsible,” she said in a closed meeting of the delegates, “for the other members of this Coalition’s irrational need to incite conflict.”
“I thought Thoris was going to leap across the table,” Samuels wrote in his unpublished memoirs. “As the arguments started to get out of control, I called a recess.” Over the next week, Samuels had one-on-one meetings with the delegates to calm them down, but he could not prevail upon T’Jan to change her mind. So Samuels and the delegates returned to the table and Samuels withdrew the military alliance clause. “We accomplished so much,” Samuels wrote. “I didn’t want it to go out the window for something I expected I could get later.”
The charter was ratified March 1, 2155. However, the fact that it was not a military alliance would have profound effects on the planet Earth.
THE ROMULAN PROBLEM
Although Samuels didn’t know it then, the leader of the Romulan Empire, Praetor Gileus I, agreed that the Coalition of Planets could be on the cusp of a military alliance.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Recently, many internal Romulan documents have been smuggled out of the Empire. Among them are detailed government communiqués from this period, giving us a greater understanding of the actions of their leaders—and the motivations behind these actions—during the war.
Gileus was well aware of the Coalition negotiations, and they concerned him. Gileus had first been responsible for the attempt to bring Vulcan into the Empire, as well as the attempts to surreptitiously sow conflict between Andoria, Vulcan, and Tellar, all of which had backfired due to Human intervention. To him, Earth was Romulus’s greatest threat.
ABOVE: The portrait of Gileus I, which was used on Romulan currency.
“Senators,” Gileus said in a speech to the Romulan Senate, “is it not clear that this so-called Coalition of Planets is nothing more than a euphemism for the Empire of Man?”
Although ambitious and cruel, Gileus was also a careful, intelligent ruler. Up until this time, he had made sure the Empire only challenged adversaries it was sure it could defeat: less advanced worlds with ample resources that could easily be controlled. To the life-forms on these worlds, Romulus was the most powerful force in the universe; they had no idea that there was anything as big or bigger than the Romulan Empire and thus never attempted to rebel. The Empire, however, was now at a crossroads. They continued to need new resources but bordered several potential adversaries who were now united. In a remarkably frank journal that Gileus secretly kept, he relates the problem he faced. (Gileus had written the journal as a day-to-day chronicle of the war for his son, who he expected would one day succeed him.)
“I know if I move against one, the others might easily fall in line to support it. But I understand power on Romulus relies on the comfort and prosperity of the people. If I deprive the people of these comforts, my political enemies will challenge my authority. I need to expand into someone else’s territory in order to take control of their resources. I need a target that will both guarantee some of these resources and potentially undermine the Coalition.”
In 2156, Earth presented him with one.
THE TRAGEDY OF STARBASE 1
For the three years previous to the signing of the Coalition Charter, Starfleet was already under way with one of their most ambitious plans: the Starbase Project. Recent circumstances had compelled Starfleet to recognize the need for bases outside the Sol sys
tem. The Utopia Planitia shipyard had a fleet of Warp 5 ships coming off the assembly line and a Warp 7 ship was already in the planning stages. It would be impractical for these ships to return to Earth when they needed servicing. In addition, the people of Earth had established colonies on remote worlds and expected Starfleet to protect these outposts. So work was under way to find habitable planets on which to build bases, as well as appropriate locations to build orbital facilities when a ground base was impractical.
Late in 2154, an uninhabited and unclaimed world forty-five light-years from Earth was chosen for the first of these bases, a planetoid around the red dwarf Algeron. However, the problem as to how to move the labor and material to build the base stood in the way of its completion until more Warp 5 ships were ready.
For this reason, Admiral Avram Gardner, the commander-in-chief of Starfleet, was impatient for more ships. In an internal memo to Nathan Samuels, he made the case for the vital need of starbases.
“There is no reason that we shouldn’t share the base with our trading partners in the Coalition,” wrote Gardner, “as long as Starfleet maintains the authority to run it as it sees fit. It seems to me that if we offer the base’s facilities to any of our fellow Coalition members who agree to help transport resources and crews to Algeron, we may find there is some interest.”
It was an understatement. Almost all of the species in the Coalition saw this as a potential asset for them. In exchange for a usable base maintained by Earth, they only had to give up any claim to the planet it was built on. With the Coalitions cooperation, Gardner got quick approval from the United Earth Government to begin construction of Starbase 1.
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