Leighton, carrying the physical and emotional scars of the traumatic experience, became a researcher dedicated to ending the threat of famine in the Galaxy. His friend James Kirk would take a different path.
FORBIDDEN PLANET
April finished his first five-year mission, but during the course of it he fell in love and married his ship’s chief medical officer, Sarah Poole. When Starfleet Command offered him promotion to admiral—a position that would keep him on Earth—April took it, with the expressed desire to start a family. His replacement on the U.S.S. Enterprise was his first officer, Christopher Pike.
In one of his assignments, Pike would become acquainted with one of the most unusual—and dangerous—species in the Galaxy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Captain Pike’s logs of the events that follow have only recently been declassified by Starfleet Command.
The S.S. Columbia was a survey vessel commissioned for scientific study by the American Continent Institute in the year 2230. In 2236, it was lost, not unlike so many ships that ventured out beyond the rim of the Federation during that period.
In 2254, under the command of Captain Pike, the U.S.S. Enterprise received what they thought was a distress call from this forgotten ship. “We followed the distress call to the planet Talos IV,” Pike stated in his logs, “where we quickly discovered that it was a trap set by the Talosians to capture me.”
In captivity, Captain Pike learned a terrible secret about the Talosians—their intelligence had developed to such a level that they were telepathic, and could project illusions into the minds of others. The illusions were indistinguishable from reality. “This society had lost the will to live,” Pike said. “They projected illusions into my mind, and then vicariously experienced my emotional response to the illusions they were projecting.”
ABOVE: Captain Pike and two of his senior officers.
Pike and his crew were eventually released because the Talosians found Humans unsuitable to be kept as captives. When Pike’s report made it back to Starfleet Command, Admiral April flagged it for the Federation Council. The Talosians’ abilities were truly remarkable, and—it was determined—very dangerous. Though Starfleet was devoted to advancement, this was something that no one in the Federation was ready for. Based on the recommendation of both Captain Pike and Admiral April, travel to Talos IV was to be severely restricted.
The individual members of the Federation Council were not disposed to accept this recommendation. The Tellarites saw the potential for profit in such mind abilities, as did the Andorians and some of the smaller worlds. But the Federation President, Kristof Blaque, knew that if the power of the Talosians was as potentially destructive as his experts said, he needed to ensure it never spread beyond that world.
President Blaque made a motion that the Federation Council establish heavy security regarding information about Talos IV, and the death penalty for any Federation member that went there. The extreme nature of this motion was met with incredulity; those species who wanted access to Talos assumed there was no way it would pass. The death penalty had never been a part of the Federation judicial system. But Blaque was an experienced politician, and he lined up the necessary votes from the smaller worlds of the Federation, as well as Vulcan and Proxima. The motion passed by one vote. To this day, visiting Talos IV is the only death penalty offense in Federation law, and has made Talos IV known as the forbidden planet.
The same year that Talos IV became a forbidden planet, James Kirk would graduate from Starfleet Academy. This one officer—already a witness to history—would end up changing it himself.
ABOVE: An anomaly in an unusually open society, Starfleet Command made no effort to explain General order 7 to its personnel for several decades. The fact that it carried the only death penalty for Starfleet officers only made it that much more tantalizing a mystery for cadets up through commodores. (Finding out the backstory behind this most perilous of Starfleet regulations was considered one of the perks of achieving the rank of admiral.) A reconsideration by the Federation Council in 2301 determined that the reasons behind General Order 7 should be revealed as an educational tool However the order is still in effect and violating it still carries the same penalty. It is interesting to note that the seemingly mundane General Order 6 has actually played a much more important role; it was put into effect after the reactor on the U.S.S. Archon exploded because it had used dilithium acquired by barter with an Orion trader.
JAMES T. KIRK
“I faced many challenges throughout my career,” James Kirk told his official Starfleet biographer, “but the ones I experienced earliest in my life were the most profound.” Though both of James Kirk’s parents were Starfleet officers (Kirk himself was born on the Einstein-class ship, U.S.S. Kelvin), he had not considered a career in Starfleet until his experience on Tarsus IV.
“I was living on Tarsus IV with my mother, who was working there temporarily,” Kirk said. “We’d just been through this horrible ordeal. Though we’d both been chosen to survive, many of our friends had died.”
He was standing with his mother when the landing party from the Enterprise beamed into the town square. “I could feel her relief,” Kirk said. “And I knew when we saw the captain that everything was going to be all right.” It was this moment, he said, that made him want to join Starfleet.
The Tarsus IV experience was the key event in shaping the man who would come to exemplify Starfleet. Another formative event in Kirk’s life would occur while he was a cadet at Starfleet Academy. It was Kirk’s first exposure to the Klingon Empire, and it would serve both sides of the captain he would become: the warrior who continually challenged his Klingon adversaries, and the peacemaker, who nevertheless made extraordinary efforts to understand them.
The planet Axanar was at the far end of the Federation border with Klingon space. Unknown to the Federation, it was a subject world of the Klingon Empire. When the U.S.S. Constitution, under the command of Captain Garth of Izar, visited the system, two Klingon D5 ships and one Klingon D7 ship attacked. Garth, though outnumbered, defeated the Klingon ships. The Federation, fearing this stumble into a Klingon-controlled area would start another war, made a move to open talks with the Klingons. Normally, this would have been met with open contempt. But there was a new trend in Klingon politics.
The leader of the Klingon people during this period was a chancellor named Orak. As a very young man, Orak had been a prosecutor in the Klingon justice system. “He was an unusual Klingon in that he was very practiced in the art of politics, diversion, and deception,” wrote Aleek Om, the Aurelian historian in his exhaustive treatise Changing Spots: Klingons in the 23rd Century. As Orak found his way onto the High Council, eventually moving to its leadership, he saw the wisdom in treading more carefully.
“Orak sought Klingons who viewed politics the way he did, as a game of deceit and deception,” Aleek Om wrote. “As a result, the Klingon government became much more conniving during the period of Orak’s rule.” To Orak, the Federation had proven itself to be a very worthy adversary, and Orak ordered new tactics in dealing with them.
“He commissioned the training of spies who would be surgically altered to appear as Federation members,” Om wrote. “Their job would be to both gather information and disrupt Federation initiatives.” Meanwhile, Orak would talk “peace.” The incident on Axanar gave him the opportunity he was looking for to divert the Federations attention from his true motives.
ABOVE: Statue of Orak outside the Klingon Ministry of Intelligence on Qo’noS.
So when the Klingons agreed to a peace conference regarding Axanar, it was a cause for great optimism in the Federation Council. This was the opportunity to build a bridge between the two governments. The Council went even further; information on and one-on-one experience with the Klingons was so rare, the Council directed Starfleet Commander April to send a group of Starfleet cadets along with the diplomats and other Starfleet officers. It was an opportunity to increase their understanding of a major ad
versary. James Kirk was one of these cadets.
“When I arrived at Axanar,” Kirk said to his biographer, “it did a lot to cement my negative opinion of the Klingons.” The planet was a vast slave labor camp, its people growing food and mining resources for use by the Empire.
“I spoke to a few Axanars,” Kirk said, “heard stories of the brutal treatment by the Klingons, the killing of hundreds of hostages for the tiniest act of rebellion, and the complete subversion of the Axanar culture beneath the heel of Klingon oppression.” But he also saw that the Axanars were only producing basic resources for the Klingons.
“They weren’t building spaceships,” Kirk said, “they were growing a lot of food. It was clear that the Klingons had basic needs in their Empire. That maybe open trade was the solution to our problems with them.” This observation, made in his report, moved up the chain of command and caught the attention of many in high places. And regardless of Orak’s true intentions, at the time, the peace mission was considered a success, opening a dialogue with the Klingons that would continue for fifteen years.
Upon graduating from the Academy, Kirk served with Captain Stephen Garrovick, first on the U.S.S. Republic, and then on the U.S.S. Farragut. Garrovick is credited with instilling in Kirk both a reverence for intelligent life, as well as empathy for the needs of his own crew. But there was one final event as a lieutenant on the Farragut that changed Kirk and pushed him to become a great leader.
The Farragut was in orbit around the fourth planet in the Tycho star system when it was attacked by a gaseous creature. Kirk was on duty at phaser control when the creature attacked, killing over half of the Farragut’s crew, including Captain Garrovick.
“I hesitated when the cloud first appeared,” Lieutenant Kirk said in his log entry. “If I hadn’t, the captain and the rest of the crew who were killed would still be alive.”
ABOVE: After the Klingons allied with the Federation, a treasure trove of information became available regarding their internal politics, including the many spy operations Orak had implemented. Added to the many qualifications of a Klingon warrior was a new virtue: guile.
* * *
KLINGON SPY OPERATIONS
TRANSLATED FROM THE KLINGON
* * *
Klingon Secret Service Operations Report
Operative “Arne Darvin” (AKA Kron)
The High Command, due to the oppression of the Organian Peace Treaty, has been forced into a position in which we need to not only develop planets ourselves, but also undermine the Federation efforts to do the same. In accordance with this, the General of Intelligence Operations has initiated a plan to place a soldier under a Human alias in the agricultural administration of the Federation. This stroke of genius will allow one of our soldiers to infiltrate a Federation administrative division with limited security precautions but substantial influence on the efforts of the Earthers.
To determine the appropriate candidate for our substitution, we intercepted communication traffic from the Federation Diplomatic Corps (one of their “peace-loving” bureaucracies) accepting an application from a Human from Proxima Centauri named Arne Darvin. Photographic, biological, and biographic information was gathered by the Intelligence Service, and a physically appropriate soldier named Kron was chosen to undergo surgical transformation in order to become identical to Darvin.
When en route to Earth to begin his training in the Federation Diplomatic Corps, a cloaked bird-of-prey, the B’rel, secretly beamed the true Darvin off the ship and replaced him with Kron. The substitution was undetected, and Kron began his training in the Federation Diplomatic Corps. The true Darvin was immediately executed.
With a focus in agriculture, Kron as Darvin excelled in the undemanding training of the Earthers, and had his choice of assignments on graduation. This week, after five years in the field, Kron was given an appointment as an assistant to the Undersecretary for Agricultural Affairs, a weakling Human whom they let govern development in the Federation sector that borders the Empire. Kron will transmit necessary information to us as needed.
* * *
Feelings of guilt had a profound effect on the young officer. “I’d been kind of bookish and shy before that incident,” Kirk said, “and above all, cautious. I sought to consciously change that. I pushed myself to take risks, to be more aggressive. I couldn’t let something like that happen again.” This conscious change in his attitude had an immediate effect on his career prospects. He became a clear and quick decision-maker, much more of a leader than he’d ever been. It was these combinations of qualities that eventually led him, at age thirty-one, to be the youngest Starfleet officer given command of a starship.
When Christopher Pike was elevated to fleet captain, Kirk was at the top of the promotion list. He was placed in command of the Enterprise. History would record that having this officer on this ship in this sector of space would be the greatest accidental contribution to history Starfleet would ever make.
ABOVE: One of Kirk’s first missions as captain of the Enterprise was a scientific expedition outside of the Galaxy, which ended up solving the two-centuries-old mystery of the fate of the original S.S. Valiant. The ship had kept a running record of all the interactions and orders among the crew, but most of it was destroyed in the tragedy that took the ship. Scientists later theorized that the “magnetic space storm” that the captain mentions in his log may in fact have been an unstable wormhole, which would help explain how an Earth ship from this period was able to reach the Galaxy’s edge.
THE RAPTOR’S RETURN
During the century after their war with Earth, Romulus had undergone many changes. Soon after the war, Praetor Gileus was deposed and replaced by a succession of failed leaders. In the early part of the twenty-third century a new praetor, Varus III, took power. The defeat at Cheron was still a painful memory for the Romulans, and Varus—with the power of the Romulan fleet behind him—had ridden a wave of resentment to the leadership of the Senate. He promised to return Romulus to its former glory.
The documentation the Federation has on internal Romulan politics in this era is limited, but indicates Varus was not as cautious a leader as Gileus was. One source, Pardek, is currently a Romulan senator. He filled in some of the blanks of this particular period in Romulan history at the request of Spock, a former Starfleet officer (who served with Pike and Kirk aboard Enterprise), now serving as a Federation ambassador.
“It was generally agreed that Varus was drunk with his own power,” wrote Pardek, in a correspondence with Spock. “Those members of the Senate who disagreed with him thought he was blindly going down the path of his forefathers, refusing to learn from their mistakes.” He built ships and found planets to subjugate, all the while planning for another large-scale war.
“Unfortunately,” Pardek wrote, “his own motivations dovetailed well with those of the senior military advisers, who were anxious for revenge against the Earth.” Pardek told Spock that Romulus’s division from the rest of the Galaxy had limited their information.
“The Romulan government and its people thought the Federation was really just another name for the Human Empire,” wrote Pardek. “Varus, like his predecessor Gileus, thought gaining control of Earth’s resources would solidify his power indefinitely.”
Varus also had two new advantages: a new cloaking device and a deadly plasma weapon. Over the last century, a more advanced cloaking device had been developed with the help of new generations of Cheron shipbuilders. It would allow ships to cross into Federation space without being detected. The plasma weapon had already been proven completely effective at destroying ships and bases. A Romulan ship with both these attributes was the ultimate weapon.
“Varus was convinced by our military that this ship was indestructible,” Pardek wrote, “that its attack would have to succeed.” He was seduced into thinking no Federation ship could stand up to these weapons, and that the first attack would “send the Earthmen running scared,” easy pickings for the Romulan fleet.
The Romulan flagship, named the Algeron in memory of Romulus’s historic victory there, destroyed four of the outposts along the Neutral Zone. The Enterprise, under Kirk, was sent after it. Kirk was cautious; his orders stated that he was not allowed to enter the Neutral Zone. He was able to both obey this order and find the weaknesses in the supposedly indestructible ship. The ship was defeated, and the Romulan captain, in keeping with tradition, destroyed his own ship, and his crew with it. Kirk almost single-handedly had prevented a war.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This engagement would reveal the secret that had been kept for a century: that the Romulans and the Vulcans were the same species. It would have a profound effect on Kirk’s half-Vulcan first officer, the future Ambassador Spock, who would seek more information about his Romulan brethren and lead him to form a relationship with Pardek, whom Spock would meet during the Khitomer Peace summit.
ABOVE: Part of a cache of documents smuggled out of the Romulan Empire, the following is a transcript of a speech recorded during a special secret session of the Romulan Senate. The speech lays out Varus’s conclusion of the first agreement with the Klingons, and his plans to remake the Alpha Quadrant. The relationship between the Klingons and the Romulans was far from tranquil, but it did lead to the Romulans sharing cloaking technology with the Klingons, in exchange for the Klingons sharing the designs of their D7 ship. It is uncertain if Varus’s use of the term “Earth Federation” was a deliberate attempt to identity the Federation as an Earth-centered Empire, or whether he truly believed it.
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