Within a month Tellarite and Andorian ships, along with Earth’s Columbia NX-02, had brought the first construction team to the planetoid. This group of technicians and engineers informally named themselves the “Starfleet Corps of Engineers.” A year later, when they had finished the base and Gardner was looking to keep this efficient crew together to move them to a new project, the title was made official.
The base opened on February 8, 2156, and was a model for all the starbases that would come after it: clean, comfortable offices and homes around a state-of-the-art maintenance facility. Coalition planets began to use the base and it became a hub of activity and trade. By the time the base opened, work had already begun on Starbases 2 and 3. Despite the steady stream of alien traffic, the strict codes of conduct instituted by Starfleet made Starbase 1 an orderly, civilized outpost.
ABOVE: Starbase 1, under construction in 2155.
An outpost, it turned out, built on gold. An unusual magnetic field around the planet had kept superficial surveys by other species from detecting what was an enormously rich geologic deposit on this small planetoid, including castrodinium, a very dense substance used in construction of space habitats, and dilithium.
Starfleet engineers unearthed this treasure trove almost immediately upon breaking ground on the base. And since the Coalition allies had given up all claims to the planet, that vein now belonged exclusively to Earth. It was the first time in history that Earth had its own source of these rare elements, and many species resented what they considered a wild stroke of luck for their Human colleagues. As it would turn out, the discovery was not lucky at all.
Algeron was located just outside the Romulan border, and because no one in this part of the Galaxy knew what Romulans looked like, Gileus was able to send Romulans disguised as Vulcans to the base to bring him an exhaustive amount of information about it. And the discovery of valuable resources on the planet set a plan in motion on Romulus. Gileus had his military prepare for war, and he brought in his naval chief of staff, Admiral Mindar, to personally plan an attack on this starbase and claim it for Romulus.
Mindar, however, was against this idea; a career officer, much older than Gileus, and the veteran of several wars of conquest, Mindar was hesitant to go to war with the Humans based on his impressions of what he’d heard and read of them. “In a limited number of years,” Mindar wrote to a colleague after the war began, “the Humans have gone from being unknown in the Galaxy to being at its social and political center. That, in and of itself, made it a species we should have been more cautious about attacking.” But Gileus wanted action, so his admiral followed orders.
On March 11, 2156, Gileus sent a subspace message in his name claiming that the Algeron system belonged to Romulus, and ordering Earth to vacate immediately. The intention was subtler than it seemed. The Romulans were a cause of concern to many species in the quadrant, and as a result of the message, several Coalition member governments ordered their ships to steer clear of Starbase 1. The United Earth Government, on the other hand, had made a large investment of time and resources establishing the base, so Starfleet held its ground. All this played right into Gileus’s hand.
“I knew the details of the [Coalition] charter,” Gileus wrote in his journal to his son. “I knew the other members were not required to join a war on Earth’s behalf.” By claiming the system, he accurately predicted that Earth would not readily abandon its base, and that non-Earth ships would soon stay away.
After the threat from Gileus, Gardner lobbied hard for a stronger military presence in the Algeron system, but Samuels and the ministers of Earth, with the memory of the destruction caused by the Xindi war fresh in their minds, resisted initiating an action that might unintentionally start a war. Gardner, frustrated by the inaction and worried about his personnel on a vulnerable base, sent the Columbia NX-02 and the new Excalibur NX-03 to the area for “scheduled maintenance.”
The next step for the Romulans was a surprise attack on Starbase 1. Planned to occur two months after the warning, it gave aliens enough time to give Starbase 1 a wide berth, so the attack would affect Earth forces alone. Taking over the planet would serve two purposes: Romulus would gain badly needed resources and it would have an accurate test of the willingness of the Humans to fight.
On May 18, 2156, a fleet of five Romulan warbirds under the command of Admiral Mindar entered the Algeron system. The NX-02, under the command of Fleet Captain Erika Hernandez, and the Excalibur, under the command of Captain Bran Stiles, immediately saw that they were hopelessly outmatched. The Romulans were jamming all communications with Earth, so Hernandez ordered Stiles to escape the system and warn Starfleet Command. Stiles was reluctant to leave Columbia alone to defend the base, but followed his orders and left the system. Two of the Romulan ships broke off from the attack to pursue Excalibur, while Columbia fought the remaining three. Outgunned and outmatched, Columbia was quickly lost with all hands. The three Romulan ships moved in and destroyed the base, then landed ground troops to fortify their position and root out any survivors. By the end of the day, the Romulan flag was planted in the center in what had been called Main Street on the base.
Meanwhile, Excalibur could not escape the jamming of the two Romulan ships in pursuit. The lone survivor of Excalibur, first officer Bryce Shumar, relayed what happened in an oral history of the war published on its fifth anniversary. “Captain Stiles knew that the Romulans were faster at warp, and that eventually we would be run down and have to engage in ship-to-ship battle. He also knew our chances were slim against two Romulan ships, and it was paramount that Earth be warned.”
ABOVE: “The Victory of Algeron,” a painting commissioned for the senate chambers. At war’s end it was quietly taken down.
ABOVE: The following excerpts from the Columbia’s ship’s transcription record, or “black box,” were discovered many years after the Romulan conflict. The record survived the destruction of the Columbia and was found in wide orbit around Algeron.
As the Excalibur approached the border of the Gamma Hydra system, Stiles ordered his science officer to scan ahead for any comet magnitude five or greater. “The captain gambled that the Romulan sensors wouldn’t be able to penetrate the tail of a comet,” Shumar said. They discovered one, and Stiles ordered his helm to alter course for it. “He then ordered me to take a subspace buoy into a shuttlepod.” Stiles brought Excalibur out of warp directly into the comets tail. The Romulan sensors momentarily lost Excalibur. “Once we were in the tail of the comet, Excalibur launched my shuttlepod,” Shumar said, “and Excalibur left, heading off in a different direction.
“The captain guessed that the Romulans would assume he’d used the comet in an attempt to lose them.” As Excalibur successfully led the Romulans away, Shumar flew the shuttlepod out of the comet’s tail, launched the subspace relay buoy, and contacted Starfleet.
“I was in that shuttlepod for two days,” Shumar said, “wondering what happened to Excalibur.” It was Enterprise that rescued him. “I hadn’t met [Jonathan] Archer before, but the question was barely out of my mouth when I could read the answer in his face.” Excalibur had been destroyed. As it turned out, Stiles’s effort to warn Starfleet as soon as possible made no difference to the outcome of the battle, but choosing Shumar to survive would affect the outcome of the war.
ABOVE: Though newspapers were long out of use, this article, published digitally over the worldwide computer service, was read by over two billion people within the first ten minutes of it being posted.
SAMUELS’S MISTAKE
When the news of the attack on Starbase 1 reached Earth, there were two very different reactions. At Starfleet, Admiral Gardner immediately wanted Earth to declare war on Romulus. But the United Earth Council saw things differently. “We have to take responsibility for the fact that two of our ships in orbit of the planet provoked them,” Minister Samuels said in a meeting of the Council. A slim majority of the Council agreed, and asked for Gardner’s resignation as commander of S
tarfleet. Admiral Rafael Douglas was promoted in his place. Douglas, an orderly and detail-driven man, gave the impression that he would be more cautious in his dealings with the Romulans.
With the belief that the attack was a misunderstanding or reaction to provocation, Nathan Samuels immediately set out to diplomatically engage the Romulans. He sent a subspace message on the same channel that Gileus had used, sternly objecting to the Romulan attack with this warning: “I seek immediate discussion with the leaders of Romulus, or Earth will be forced to take difficult action.”
The statement was meant to be a threat; instead, the Romulans perceived it as an invitation. “I did not expect so weak a response from the Earthmen,” Gileus wrote. “They were clearly irresolute and could be wiped out much more easily than I had initially believed.” He immediately sent his ships back with the intention of destroying the rest of the Human fleet and isolating the Human homeworld in preparation of an attack. “There’s no doubt,” Gileus wrote in his journal, “we will win.”
EARTH AND ROMULUS GO TO WAR
Romulan ships quickly made bold attacks against Earth’s ships. Enterprise found itself engaged in a battle at Galorndan Core against two Romulan battle cruisers. But Enterprise was Starfleet’s most battle-hardened ship and crew, and managed to destroy one of the ships and damage the other before successfully getting away.
Romulan ships also attacked ships carrying dilithium, castrodinium, and trititanium to Earth. Class-I starships, still in service, provided easy targets for the Romulan battle cruisers. The Romulans were very careful to only attack cargo vessels on their way to Earth, so as to never threaten the property on its way to other Coalition planets.
Losses were heavy. On June 1, 2156, Samuels, finally understanding the reality of his situation, declared that Earth was at a state of war with the Romulan Empire. The United Earth Council tasked Admiral Douglas and Starfleet with winning it.
Despite the Councils previous policies, Douglas hadn’t been sitting idly by; he had long expected this, and had been making preparations. Since the attack on Starbase 1, Starfleet had been inundated with requests from people wanting to enlist. Douglas had been quietly aggressive about cherry-picking individuals with valuable skills, especially engineers, whom he immediately sent to Utopia Planitia to help finish the other Warp 5 ships under construction. This influx of labor was directly responsible for two more Warp 5 ships coming off the assembly line less than three weeks after war was declared. Douglas knew he needed them.
In an internal Starfleet memo to the rest of the Admiralty, Douglas laid out three clear problems Earth faced in prosecuting the war: “1) We don’t know where the Romulan homeworld is, which prevents us from retaliating at the heart of their Empire. 2) We have no allies in the war. 3) We don’t know what Romulans look like, which makes it difficult or nearly impossible to curtail Romulan spying.”
For the first problem, Douglas knew the Romulans had a huge advantage: no one knew where their home was. The borders of the Empire were well defined, but Douglas presumed (correctly) that those borders were far away from the center of power. Though he couldn’t waste ships and labor on a vain search for this secret world, Douglas knew he needed to put as many ships as possible outside of the Sol system to take advantage of any intelligence that came his way regarding the location of Romulus.
The three Warp 5 ships, Enterprise, Constellation, and Atlantis, were not ordered to return to Earth to defend the Sol system as other ships were. The two new Warp 5 vessels, Defiant and Lexington, would also stay outside of the Sol system. Earth would have to be defended by the slower ships in the fleet. Douglas also put Admiral Gardner in command of Starbase 2, an orbital facility near the Betreka nebula, so that a commander with experience would be in the forward area.
Regarding the second problem, Douglas knew there was little likelihood that any Coalition planets would openly join the military effort. But because the Romulans had been attacking shipping and the Warp 5 ships were being kept out on the frontier, Douglas had no effective way to supply these ships on the front lines. The only feasible solution in that regard was the Coalition. For this, Douglas went to Samuels. “I knew this couldn’t be an official request,” Samuels wrote in his memoirs, “but I also knew that the other Coalition members recognized the hard fact that Earth was taking on an Empire that threatened all of them. If we won, they all won.”
Most of the Coalition members saw the logic of this argument. Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites immediately agreed to ship food and medical supplies to Starfleet vessels fighting the war, and, later, to secretly supply ordnance and spare parts.
Regarding the final problem—the Romulans’ spy network and the mystery of their appearance—Douglas laid out his plan in the same memo: “It is clear from the attack on Earth and Starbase 1, as well as their knowledge of the cargo shipping routes, that the Romulans have a very competent spy network.”
Douglas proposed strict security guidelines for Earth and any bases and colonies. Samuels got the United Earth Council to go along. The measures, laid out in a United Earth Government directive, were draconian: “1) Every alien on Earth or one of its colonies is to be registered and confirmed as a member of the species it represents through medical testing. 2) Any alien whose identity the authorities cannot verify is to be detained. 3) Said alien’s government will be directed to remove that alien from Earth or its bases or colony.”
It was ironic that, only a few years before, Samuels had helped fight off the bigoted elements who sought to eject aliens from Earth. He now presided over the largest government-sponsored wave of anti-alien paranoia in the planet’s history. A propaganda campaign was begun, elevating the public’s fear of these intergalactic “monsters.”
On the face of it, it looked as if Starfleet didn’t stand a chance in a one-on-one battle with the Romulans. The Romulans had had warp drive for much longer, so it was assumed that they had a much larger, more advanced fleet than Earth. But maintaining an Empire had its costs, and the Romulans needed to properly allocate their resources. Before the war with Earth, their military leaders did not think the Romulans needed fast ships to keep order on the primitive planets that were under their control. Most of their considerable fleet was made up of large, slow ships used to move passengers and material, only armed with weaponry useful for attacking either planetary targets or slow-moving primitive spacecraft.
Still, at the beginning of the war Romulus had fifteen Warp 5 battle cruisers to Earths five, and that advantage should have been enough to guarantee a Romulan victory. If Gileus had obeyed a strategy of attrition, he would have eventually won. But he wanted to strike at Earth with one large, decisive blow. This strategy was his undoing.
THE OCCUPATION OF DENOBULA
One of the first species to visit Earth after the Vulcans were the Denobulans. This unique species was technologically advanced and could be either peaceful or warlike. Confined to the one continent on their home planet, with living space at a premium, Denobulans valued strong and complicated familial bonds. But to the Romulans, the Denobulans mattered for only one reason: At warp speed the Denobulan system was only a few days away from Sol.
“Mindar tells me that for Romulan ships to attack the Human homeworld,” Gileus wrote, “they need a staging area.”
Heavy cruisers traveling the distance from Romulus to Earth at high warp for weeks would be at a huge disadvantage if they also needed to engage in battle. Gileus decided to use the Denobulan system as his staging area. “One might think that we will give up the advantage by giving the Earthmen warning,” Gileus Wrote, “but I have complete knowledge of Earth’s defense systems. Surprise is not necessary.”
Because the Denobulans were not at war with Romulus—nor allied with Earth—Gileus and his military advisers projected that they would be unprepared for an attack and easily subdued. The Romulan ships could move in, rest, be serviced, and then travel the two days to Earth and completely wipe it out. He placed the mission under the command of
his greatest warrior, Admiral Mindar.
But if Mindar was reticent about the initial attack o Starbase 1, he was even less enthusiastic about a campaign to the Sol system. “With all due respect, we had months to prepare for the attack on the Earth base,” Mindar wrote to his praetor in a memo. “To give me only two weeks to come up with a battle plan for the invasion of Target One [Earth] seems ill advised.” Though many spies had corroborated all the information Mindar used on Starbase 1, he only had the one source—Minister V’Las of Vulcan—for the information about Earth. But, again, he followed his orders.
On October 1, 2158, after traveling for three weeks at Warp 5, ten Romulan battle cruisers entered the Denobulan system. The Denobulans had an orbiting spaceport, which the Romulans immediately boarded. They proceeded to kill every Denobulan on it. Mindar knew he had a planet full of Denobulans to be dealt with and that they had a reputation for being fierce fighters when they needed to be. He would need to give them pause in any consideration of interfering with the Romulans while they used the Denobulan facilities to prepare their vessels. He sent a short subspace message to the Denobulan center of power: “Do not interfere, or this attack will only be the first.” He then ordered his ships to fire on the Denobulan continent. The attack was devastating; over three million Denobulans were killed. It served its purpose. The Denobulans would be occupied with this catastrophe for far longer than Mindar needed to get his ships ready.
By this time, Admiral Douglas at Starfleet was well aware that there was a Romulan attack force two days away from Earth, and he hoped that the preparations he had made were enough.
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