ABOVE: A popular propaganda poster from the war that appeared all over Earth, translated into many languages.
THE BATTLE OF SOL
Mindar was correct to be concerned about his intelligence on Earth. Gileus had trusted that V’Las had provided up-to-date intelligence on the Sol Systems defensive precautions. However, since the Vulcan stewardship of Earth had ended and the two planets were now in an equal partner alliance, the Vulcan government was less aggressive in gaining knowledge of Earth’s security precautions. And United Earth—especially Starfleet under command of Admiral Douglas—was not sharing any more information than necessary.
The Romulan fleet had three targets. The first was the verteron array on Mars. Generally considered to be the center of Earth’s defenses, the arrays original purpose was to use the power of the faster-than-light particles to divert comets and asteroids in the solar system. However, verterons, when accelerated, could also be very destructive. The Romulans knew the array could target a ship or planet almost anywhere in the solar system. Their first move was to come out of warp very near Mars and quickly destroy the array.
The second target, which was to be hit simultaneously, was the shipyard of Utopia Planitia, also on Mars. Earth had stepped up starship production as part of the war effort, and there were now six more Warp 5 ships in various stages of construction. If these ships were completed, Earth would be closer to equal with Romulus. If they were destroyed, the loss would be insurmountable.
The third target was Earth. “I believe once we destroy Earth, morale will be crushed,” Gileus wrote, “and the remaining Humans in the Galaxy will lose the will to fight.” Knowing the other Warp 5 ships had not been recalled to Earth, Gileus believed that once the verteron array was destroyed, his fleet of ten of Romulus’s most advanced ships could easily take on whatever vessels Starfleet still had in the system. The war would soon be over.
The ten Romulan ships came out of warp just above Mars, and, as planned, the fleet immediately split. Within minutes, five of the ships had successfully destroyed the verteron array, while the other five, headed by Mindar, moved into a geosynchronous orbit over Utopia Planitia.
After the battle of Sol and before his execution, Mindar demanded the Romulan Right of Statement, an ancient tradition wherein a convicted criminal is allowed to record the reasons for his crime in as much detail as he wants. This statement was part of an immense package of material later smuggled out of Romulus. “I was concerned,” Mindar said in his statement, “when our scans of the shipyard showed only a few superstructures. My initial thought was that our intelligence had overestimated Starfleet ship production.” At the moment, however, he had to proceed with his orders. His fleet destroyed the shipyard.
This was the first piece of the Romulans’ plan that went wrong, and using Denobula as a staging area was the cause. When Starfleet Command detected the Romulan ships heading toward Denobula, Douglas guessed that it was a prelude to an invasion of Sol. His first order was the evacuation of all ships and personnel from Utopia Planitia. Any ship that could lift off on its own was ordered to, and other ships in the solar system were ordered to Mars to tow those that couldn’t move under their own power. Even half-finished constructs lifted off or were towed via grapplers from other ships. This ragtag fleet left the Mars orbit for a hiding place behind the Ceres asteroid. The Romulans were far too distant from Earth to detect the migration. Thus, the shipyard that Mindar destroyed was completely empty.
After destroying the verteron array and the Utopia Planitia shipyard, the Romulans broke orbit and set a course for Earth. But as soon as they did, one of Mindar’s ships was hit with a powerful verteron beam, completely destroying it.
“I was stunned,” Mindar said in his statement. “I had seen the verteron array on Mars destroyed with my own eyes.” He had no idea where the beam could be coming from.
What he and Gileus did not—could not—know was that the verteron array on Mars was no longer the center of Earth’s defenses. Years earlier, after the Mars array had been hijacked by the Terra Prime movement, Starfleet decided it was too vulnerable. So without the knowledge of even their closest allies they constructed a second verteron array on the surface of Venus. Hidden under Venus’s dense cloud cover, and operated remotely from Earth, it was the best-kept secret of Earth’s defenses. It was that verteron array that was now firing on Mindar’s fleet.
Under attack, Mindar’s ships immediately broke formation. Two more were destroyed before the remainder of the fleet moved to a blind spot directly behind Mars, which Mindar’s science officer calculated the beam couldn’t reach.
But while Mindar considered his limited options, a fleet of a dozen Earth ships came out of warp. The S.S. Intrepid, commanded by the newly promoted Captain Bryce Shumar, having just helped to take the Utopia Planitia ships to their hiding place, now led other ships in an attack on the Romulans. “Our ships were much slower than the Romulans’,” Shumar said in the same oral history in which he described surviving the Excalibur’s destruction. “But we neutralized that advantage. They were penned in. Any attempt to move out from behind Mars made them a target of the verteron array on Venus.” Shumar then pressed the attack very aggressively, taking personal satisfaction in the battle. “Douglas had told me to keep our distance, keep risks at a minimum, but I … well, I pushed our fleet pretty hard, and when I watched that first Romulan ship blow up … look, I wanted payback, and I got it.”
Watching his fleet decimated, Mindar ordered a retreat. As the Romulans tried to move out of the system and go to warp, the Starfleet ships managed to inflict more damage; several of Mindar’s ships were too compromised to retreat. “Rather than be captured,” Mindar stated, “I ordered them to self-destruct according to Romulan tradition.”
Mindar came to the Sol system with ten warbirds, but left with four. It was a crushing defeat from which the Romulans would never completely recover. Six of their fastest, most advanced starships had been destroyed in one battle. Starfleet didn’t know it at the time, but this put Earth on an almost equal footing with the Romulans. And the memory of the battle would live on well past the end of the war. Although Human beings would make plenty of enemies in the coming years, the outcome of the Battle of Sol has, for the last 150 years, prevented any alien species from attempting to attack Earth.
On Romulus, the news of the failed attack on Sol was greeted with rage by its praetor. Gileus now had a total of only nine heavy cruisers. When Mindar returned, Gileus ordered his execution. It was one of many mistakes Gileus made that ultimately led to his downfall. Mindar, despite his defeat, had been a valuable asset.
Although Gileus had many ships in his fleet, most of them were not fast enough to be effective in the war against Earth. And having seen that even his most advanced heavy cruisers were not enough to defeat Earth, Gileus decided to not only order the building of more ships, but also require that those ships have a technological advantage that the Earthlings could not readily overcome.
CHERON
Well before the war, when Romulans encountered an Earth ship for the first time, they had a unique advantage: they could cloak their ships so as to be invisible. But Starfleet had encountered cloaking technology previously, and by the time the war began it had neutralized this advantage to such an extent that the Romulans did not attempt to use it. But now Gileus wanted to try to utilize the technology again, and he returned to the planet that had initially provided him with this tool.
In the southernmost part of the galaxy was the planet Cheron. Though it was within the borders of the Romulan Empire, the planet was too advanced to be easily conquered, so it had the unique status of Romulan ally. Though technologically advanced, Cheron was socially primitive; one-half of its population was subservient to the other based on the color of their skin. As a result, the planet’s ruling elite did not want their hegemony compromised. In exchange for Romulus’s protection, resources, and guarantee of non-interference, they provided their expertise in shipbuilding
, which was based on their utilization of slave labor. After the defeat at Sol, Gileus turned to them, promising Cheron a large reward if the shipbuilders could improve the cloaking technology so that it would be impervious to the Starfleet sensors.
If he had even one ship that could move undetected in enemy territory, Gileus believed he could once again turn the tide of war. He diverted all potential resources to the project. In one of the last entries in the journal to his son, he confided his thinking on this decision. “I know it will place a greater burden on the remaining ships of the fleet and it will create shortages on the homeworld. This is the political risk. But it will be worth it, as in three months’ time, my invisible ship will destroy the homeworld of the Humans while Romulus’s location stays a secret, making a counterattack impossible.” Unfortunately for Gileus, he was wrong on both counts.
ABOVE: Many lives were lost and families destroyed by the Romulan conflict. Starfleet had a policy carried over from the armed forces of a nation-state on Earth: that no one family should carry an undue burden of the war. When casualty reports came to Earth in the first weeks of the war, several members of the Stiles family were among them. Bran Stiles had been captain of the Excalibur and his nephew Rick Stiles an engineer aboard Columbia; both were killed at the attack on Starbase 1. Bran’s daughter, Commander Phyllis Stiles, was a casualty on the freighter Fortunate Son when it was destroyed in a Romulan attack and her brother, Andre Stiles, science specialist aboard the Enterprise, was also killed. When this was brought to Admiral Douglas’s attention, he saw that there was one Stiles family member still serving in Starfleet, Terry Stiles, Bran’s brother and father to Rick. He immediately ordered him home. Douglas’s order came a day too late.
VULCAN’S SECRET
Fifty years before the Romulan War with Earth, a Vulcan archaeologist named T’Pek, examining the ruins of an ancient site, found evidence of a rebellious group of Vulcans that had wanted to embrace their emotions and reject the teachings of Surak. They had left Vulcan over a millennium before, to start anew on another world. This group charted their intended destination before they left, and the archaeologist discovered an ancient tome, called Vulcan’s Betrayal, detailing their plan. The planet’s location was included in the tome, along with the name the group had chosen for their new world: Rom A’losh, meaning in ancient Vulcan, “Raptors Nest.”
ABOVE: The following transcription form the ancient Vulcan text Vulcana’s Betrayal was discovered by the archaeologist T’Pek. “Vulcana” is a reference not to the planet, but to the mother god of Vulcan mythology. “The Dissembler” refers to Surak, whom these ancient Vulcans considered a kind of religious con man who had sought the destruction of their way of life. “Seer” is an ancient Vulcan word that referred to an astronomer, and “Death’s Eye” refers to Shariel, the Vulcan God of Death. Shariel was a constellation in the Vulcan sky, and his “eye” was the topmost star in the constellation.
* * *
EXCERPT FROM VULCANA’S BETRAYAL
TRANSLATED FROM THE VULCAN
* * *
…Vulcana, once our beloved protector, has now abandoned us, and so we reject her. The words of the Dissembler have filled her ears, she believes his lies, and feeds them to her children. We are the only true ones left, but we cannot hold, we must leave for even we fear the lies of the Dissembler who has the power to take our young from us, and thus end us in time. Our seers have found our haven, in Death’s Eye will we hide, build our Raptor’s Nest and in time we—the warriors of the Raptor’s Wing—will return and save Vulcana from her madness.
* * *
Buried in the archaeologists long treatise, this piece of academic information wasn’t considered particularly interesting when it was initially discovered. It had been duly presented to the Vulcan Science Academy and catalogued in its library. However, when war broke out between Earth and Romulus, a member of the Academy, a scientist named Skon (son of the first Vulcan ambassador to Earth), recalled reading this treatise and pulled it out. “Logic suggests to me that this is in fact the origin of the Romulans,” he relayed in a letter written to a fellow Vulcan, “and that they are our distant brothers.”
The person to whom Skon wrote was a close family acquaintance, T’Pau. A former leader of the Syrannites, a group that helped bring the original teachings of Surak back to the center of governing principles, she was now a member of the Vulcan High Council. T’Pau logically concluded that if the Romulans were related to Vulcans there could easily be Romulan spies in the government.
She was correct: V’Las, though no longer administrator of the Vulcan High Command (which had been dissolved), still had influence with many members of the Vulcan High Council.
So, instead of bringing the information to the High Council, she found a covert way to get it to Earth.
She contacted Commander T’Pol, the Vulcan science officer still serving on Enterprise. (Though Vulcan was not at war with Romulus, the High Council had granted T’Pol’s request to continue to serve as first officer on a Starfleet vessel.) Enterprise then secretly relayed the information back to Earth.
Admiral Douglas now had extremely vital information for the war effort. With the location of the Romulan homeworld, he could finally take the war to Romulus.
But he had to be careful; Douglas knew he also had information that that could be extremely incendiary. Human propaganda had done a very good job of painting the Romulans as monsters. If it were discovered that they were essentially Vulcans, Humans would have difficulty trusting their longtime allies. The information could have permanently destroyed the Vulcan/Human alliance. So, thanks to Douglas, the source of how he obtained the location of Romulus was quietly buried. Only a few people on Earth and Vulcan would know the truth; the rest of the Federation would have no idea of the Vulcan/Romulan relationship for more than one hundred years.
Even with the new and valuable information regarding the location of Romulus, Douglas would need to proceed carefully. His intelligence network had told him of the importance of the shipyards at Cheron. But he hadn’t attacked them because of Cheron’s distance; to detail enough ships to cripple the shipyards would give the Romulans enough time to send a force to defend it. He would need another target, equally important, to split their forces. Now that he knew the location of Romulus, he had it.
ABOVE: The Kir’shara, the original writings of Surak, whose rediscovery put Vulcan back on a path toward logic and peace.
ABOVE: Memo from Admiral Douglas to the United Earth Council regarding the location of Romulus. He showed enormous foresight in his recommendation to the Council to keep the source of the information concealed. It was a debt the Vulcans would eventually repay.
ABOVE: T’Pau, once a revolutionary, would eventually become one of Vulcan’s most influential leaders.
THE BATTLE OF CHERON
Douglas ordered Gardner to take command of the forward task force, comprising three out of four of Earth’s remaining Warp 5 ships: Atlantis, Enterprise, and Defiant. (The only ship not included was Lexington. Constellation had been damaged successfully defending Starbase 2, and was being repaired.) On January 10, 2160, these ships immediately set course for Cheron, with the mission to destroy the shipyards. The Romulans easily surmised their plan and sent forces to intercept them. Douglas had expected this, and his experience with the Romulans taught him that they sought to have a vastly superior force. If Starfleet committed three of its advanced ships to a battle, the Romulans would commit the bulk of their war fleet. He was proven right immediately; Gileus sent seven of his nine heavy cruisers to protect the shipyards. Not unexpectedly, Starfleet was outgunned, but Douglas gambled that the second part of his plan would save his fleet from destruction.
The Earth ships reached Cheron and were almost immediately engaged by the Romulan ships, which arrived much sooner than expected. When they did, Gardner, on board Defiant, sent a signal to Lexington, which was stationed several light—years away, just outside the Romulan border. As the Starf
leet ships engaged the Romulans at Cheron, Lexington was joined by several Denobulan warships. Because of the attack on their homeworld, Denobula had been convinced by Samuels to join the war effort with Earth. The small fleet set course for Romulus.
The battle raged at Cheron. It was three Starfleet ships against seven Romulan ships. “We knew this was going to be the decisive battle,” Jonathan Archer said in an oral history of the war. “We knew that we might not return from it, so we fought all that much harder.” They destroyed two of the Romulan ships before they lost Defiant, and Admiral Gardner with it.
The other two Starfleet ships would have almost certainly been destroyed had it not been for a panicked call to the Romulan fleet from its praetor. “Return to Romulus! Protect your home!” It was Gileus’s own voice coming through the comm channels of the Romulan ships. Upon receiving this direct order from his praetor, the leader of the Romulan task force, a less experienced admiral named Tal, reluctantly took three of his ships and headed for Romulus. Now the tide of battle turned, and the two Romulan ships Tal left behind were easily defeated by Enterprise and Atlantis.
“We had fought a war from the position of underdog,” Archer said. “The Romulans weren’t used to being on an equal footing. They folded completely.” Once the Romulan ships were destroyed, the two Starfleet ships then proceeded to destroy the shipyards.
And the defeat was even more humiliating than the one at Sol. Romulus was not yet under attack when Gileus had recalled his ships. Gileus had panicked when the Federation ship and its Denobulan companions were detected. The Romulan military maintained that if Gileus hadn’t panicked and instead let the heavy cruisers stay engaged at Cheron, the Earth fleet would have been destroyed and the defensive systems around Romulus would have protected the planet long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
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