* * *
TRANSCRIPTION OF A SPEECH BY ROMULAN PRAETOR VARUS III
TRANSLATED FROM THE ROMULAN
* * *
My fellow Romulans,
I come to you to report on our victorious mission to the Klingon Empire. I have successfully concluded negotiations with the High Council, who pledge the Klingons will not interfere with any aggression we take against the Earth Federation.
As part of this agreement, we have opened the door to trade with the Klingons, who will provide us with many tools that will be of use in the coming conflict.
And the conflict is coming, I assure you. Our intelligence shows that the Earth Federation has begun a massive arms buildup. They have completed construction of twelve new battle cruisers whose sole mission is to exploit the worlds not already in the human grasp. Our origin world, Vulcan, is already completely subjugated, and it should be one of our primary goals to release our Vulcan brothers from the grip of the Human hand.
The Humans are not satisfied with their defeat of the Romulan fleet at Cheron. They know it was pure luck that led them to victory, and that if they don’t act soon, the Raptor will take its revenge. They will move against us, of that I am certain. So the thought has burned in my mind. Do we wait for this inevitable attack? Or do we take action? It is after careful consideration and consultation with the brilliant soldiers that I have chosen the latter path.
Our new flagship will destroy the Earth outposts along the Neutral Zone. The Earthmen will send one of their new battle cruisers, and our flagship will destroy it. While the Earthmen cry when their proudest technological achievement is turned to dust by Romulan ingenuity, we will return with an invasion force and take their world. With the Earthmen gone, and the illusion of their invincibility lifted from the eyes of their allies, they will fall to our Empire.
* * *
THE TWO-DAY WAR
During the same period that the Federation was fending off new threats from Romulus, the Klingon Empire was once again undergoing an internal change. Chancellor Orak had passed away, and after a battle for succession to the chancellorship, Koval—a member of a more traditional Klingon family—had seized power by killing the other challenger, a member of the Klaa family.
ABOVE: Symbol of the House of Koval, later adopted by his descendant Mogh.
“The new chancellor had no patience for the long game that Orak had played,” Aleek Om wrote, “and certainly had no patience for peace talks with the Federation.” In 2267, as Klingon negotiators who had been appointed by Orak were ready for a compromise agreement to withdraw Klingon forces from the Disputed Area, Koval took control and changed course.
“In Koval’s view, Klingons should take what they wanted,” Aleek Om wrote, “and they wanted these systems. Koval was tired of the Federation restricting the Empire’s trade opportunities. He believed the Federation was forcing the Klingons to negotiate.” He ordered his ships to move across the border and attack.
Commander Kor, the chief military adviser to Koval, was insistent that Klingon needed a base of operations. The only Class-M planet in the area was Organia—which they perceived as home to a weak humanoid race. Koval sent Kor with a fleet of eight ships to occupy it. At the same time, the Federation, alarmed by the Klingons’ apparent intentions, ordered Enterprise to Organia in the vain hope that Captain Kirk could keep it out of Klingon control.
“In war with the Klingons, we were at a disadvantage,” Kirk said. “We weren’t going to set up a base without the Organians’ permission. The Klingons, on the other hand, wouldn’t ask.”
On Earth, the Federation Council, led by Bormenus of Andoria, had seen the negotiations with the Klingons breaking down and was ready to declare war after the first attack. “As a boy I had heard about the Human minister Nathan Samuels and how he reacted to the attack on Starbase 1,” Bormenus said in an interview with the Federation News Service. “An Andorian would never make that mistake.”
As fleets of ships moved to fight over Organia, what the two sides could not know was that the Organians were not a weak, primitive people. They were, in fact, so highly advanced that they had evolved beyond the need of physical bodies. They only took on their primitive humanoid forms to put visitors at ease. As the two fleets moved toward each other to engage in battle in the space above their planet, the Organians intervened.
ABOVE: Starfleet and Klingon ships face of in orbit above Organia.
On Earth, in the president’s office in Paris, Bormenus was monitoring the reports from the front when he received a message from his fleet that it had been immobilized.
“We were trying to figure out what in hell was going on,” Bormenus said in an interview, “when this elderly humanoid appeared in front of us.” He said his name was Ayelborne and that he was an Organian. “I reached for a knife to defend myself, and it was like fire. The Organian asked me to listen to him, and, left with no choice, I did.”
At the same time, in the High Council Chamber on Qo’noS, Koval was receiving the same report about his own ships—as well as the same visitor. “Koval made a very aggressive move against Ayelborne,” Aleek Om wrote, “running to grab his bat’leth sword, but it was too hot to hold. Ayelborne asked him to listen. Koval then tried to tackle Ayelborne, who was too hot to touch.” Finally, holding his hands in pain, Koval listened.
Ayelborne simultaneously ordered the leaders to communicate with each other and cease hostilities or he would immobilize all their ships and stations. Everywhere. To prove it, he shut down power in all of Paris and in the Klingon capital city.
“The lights went out for five minutes. We had no power anywhere,” Bormenus said, “and when they came back on, Ayelborne was gone, and I was staring at a Klingon on my viewscreen.” Bormenus and Koval also both held a unique disk made of all unknown material, on which floated the words “Organian Peace Treaty between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire.” When the men touched the surface of the disk, subsequent clauses of the treaty appeared, each in their own language, and Ayelborne’s voice read them out loud. Bormenus and Koval studied it and each other for a moment, then Bormenus said, “We should probably figure out how to sign this.”
ABOVE: Unlike any other document of its kind in history, the Organian Peace Treaty was not mutually negotiated by two parties, nor was it a treaty where a victor would impose his will on the defeated. It was an imposed peace by a third party on two waning parties. It was also recorded on a very advanced disk whose technology remains a mystery to this day, as it is able to read the mind of whoever is viewing it and present the treaty in the viewer’s native language. This excerpt illustrates one of many provisions that were intended to inspire the necessary fear to keep Klingons and the Federation from again becoming openly aggressive in their actions against the other. The phrase “permanently returned to their homeworld” was just vague and threatening enough to he a cause of great concern to both parties.
The whole affair was an embarrassment to both sides.
“I grew up in a Federation that expounded peace as a way of life,” Kirk said to his biographer just before his death, “and here I was, ready, almost anxious to go to war. I knew I had a lot of animosity toward the Klingons, and unfortunately it was only going to get worse.”
On its surface, the Organian Peace Treaty outlined terms for the Klingons and the Federation to co-exist peacefully. If a government wanted to lay claim to a planet, it would have to prove it could develop it most efficiently. It also forced each government to allow the other species access to their facilities.
The Klingons immediately took advantage of the treaty. “It was then that Koval was thankful to the vast spy network that Orak had set up,” Aleek Om wrote, “and he set out to move in on planets that weren’t even in the Klingon sphere of influence, but which the Feder
ation had no claim to.” The Klingons made inroads to many of them, such as the planets Capella and Neural.
“We were all very frustrated by the Klingons attempts to circumnavigate the treaty,” Kirk said. “Their freedom of movement in Federation space unsettled a lot of people. It was not a good time.” It also didn’t seem that the Organians were interested in enforcing the treaty.
“They put this thing around our necks,” Bormenus said, “and since we respect the law, we followed it. Meanwhile, the Klingons were making us look like fools and scaring our population with their intrusions. Something had to be done.”
Around this time, the planet Coridan was seeking admission to the Federation, and Bormenus saw an opportunity. “I knew that the basis for much of the conflict between the Federation and the Klingon Empire were the planets in the Disputed Area that had large sources of dilithium.” Coridan, it turned out, had an abundance of dilithium, and it was nowhere near the Klingons’.
“If I could get the Federation another source of dilithium, I could give up the Disputed Area, giving something to the Klingons in exchange for a new treaty that would keep them in their borders.” Bormenus led Coridan through the admissions process, and it became a Federation member.
Bormenus and the Federation Council then made its proposal to the Klingons. The Federation would give up several worlds in the Disputed Area. In exchange, the Klingons would agree to a Neutral Zone like the one between Romulus and the Federation. Klingons would no longer be allowed in Federation space or be free to influence events on the worlds of the Federation. The Klingons, meanwhile, would receive a large supply of dilithium, compensating them for the source they were deprived of following the Organian Peace Treaty. The Klingon High Council readily agreed.
Once the treaty had been negotiated, Koval and Bormenus, along with a considerable entourage of security, went to Organia, looking to receive the blessing of the powerful beings. No Organian deigned to greet them. “After about an hour of standing around their primitive town square,” Bormenus said, “Koval took the document from me, signed it, and said he was leaving.”
ABOVE: The planet Capella IV was of interest to both the Klingons and the Federation because it had a rich source of the rare element topaline, which many civilizations needed for their life-support systems. As a result, the Klingons made a strong, though ultimately unsuccessful, play to acquire mining rights out from under the Federation. This competition mattered little to the Capellans, a rigid and primitive society whose awareness of intergalactic civilizations in no way affected their development (the planet was first visited by the U.S.S. Archon, before the establishment of the Prime Directive). In this excerpt from a mining agreement between Capella and the Federation, with almost anything in the Galaxy to choose from, the Capellans chose to trade for better metal to make swords.
ABOVE: One of the last incursions into Federation space by the Klingons before the establishment of the Neutral Zone involved the mission to annihilate the tribbles. Tribbles were a unique species, essentially balls of fur whose entire systems were devoted to reproduction. A tribble outside of its predatory environment with access to a food supply could reproduce a thousandfold in a matter of days. Considered an annoyance by the Federation, the tribbles were deemed by the Klingons a plague to be wiped out. The “interloper” in the following report refers to a human trader named Cyrano Jones, who is the man responsible for first removing the tribbles from their home planet. It is of continued debate whether the Federation was aware of this Klingon mission and did nothing to stop it.
* * *
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRIBBLE HOME PLANET
TRANSLATED FROM THE KLINGON
* * *
Report to the High Command
I, Koloth, captain of the IKS G’roth, have completed the mission set forth by the High Command. The plague has ended!
I took my fleet of five D7 warships and we began our hunt where the plague began, on the Federation Station designated K-7. There, we found the interloper. He was pathetically trying to undo the plague that had consumed this station, by ferrying them back to the plague’s home planet. We finished his job for him, and destroyed every tribble on that station. The pitiful humans stood by helplessly as my loyal Klingon soldiers vaporized them all, as the tribbles’ screams were suddenly silenced.
We extracted the name of every world where the interloper had brought the plague and set out to find and destroy them. For eight months we scoured worlds for signs of the plague, and only until we were certain that we’d eradicated every one did we move on.
Finally, we ended our campaign at the hell that spawned this vile menace. I myself beamed down to the surface to view this terrible place, and stood on a mountaintop as our D7 ships entered the atmosphere and laid waste to the land with their disruptor fire. It was a glorious sight. The once-green land was a burnt black where nothing survived. Our scientists remarked that there were over a billion species of flora and fauna on this world before we attacked, and all that remained after we were through was blackened cinders. It was glorious! The plague has ended!
* * *
THE PLANET OF GALACTIC PEACE
When the Neutral Zone with the Klingons was established, it was noted by many people that it appeared to be a geographic extension of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Where the three territories met was the Nimbus system, the third planet of which was an uninhabited Class-M world. Ambassador Robert Fox, diplomat-at-large for the Federation, saw an opportunity: this planet could be developed by all three in partnership. He hoped this would be the beginning of a new age, with the three governments learning to work together. The Federation gave Fox approval to try.
After much negotiation it was determined that a Romulan, Klingon, and Federation representative would serve as the ruling council. Settlers would be welcomed and encouraged to work together to build this new world. Fox himself would be the first Federation representative. He would end up regretting the entire thing.
One of the reasons that Nimbus III had never been exploited is that it is remarkably free of anything of value. The settlers who arrived there found nothing useful, and those that remained did so because they had nowhere else to go. Though it did little to further the cause of peace, the three governments dutifully continued to send representatives.
Although the Romulans would stay quiet a very long time, the Klingon-Federation peace was more volatile. “Most of us knew that Nimbus III was a joke,” Kirk said. “My generation was smart enough not to trust the Klingons. They’d tried to fool us too many times.” Kirk’s attitude was prevalent among the Federation population, and over the next twenty years the embers of war between the Federation and the Klingons would continue to glow. At the moment where peace looked like it might finally come, members of both sides looked to fan the embers to flame.
ABOVE: Ambassador Robert Fox fought to establish Nimbus III as a representation of the new age of peace between Romulus, Qo’noS, and the Federation. Its establishment, however, was marred by a lack of planning, poor execution, and what some view as Fox’s focus on his legacy rather than a true vision for the community. Its failure is a mark on the history of the Federation’s peacemaking efforts. This article was written during the period that Fox—and many others—still had high hopes for its success.
ABOVE: The Orion Syndicate was as successful a form of capitalism as has existed in the Galaxy. Unfortunately, like many businesspeople before “them, they tried to influence governments to guarantee their profits. The following opening page of the “business plan” laid out their intentions to stop the admission of Coridan to the Federation.
* * *
ORION SYNDICATE BUSINESS PLAN
ITNEY SHEN’S DILITHIUM MINING CORPORATION
TRANSLATED FROM THE CORIDIAN
* * *
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Itney Shen is one of the many Orion slave owners who has mined and processed dilithium for the Orion Syndicate. The company she has established, Itney Shen LLC
, currently has 48 percent of the dilithium market in the Syndicate, and uses her covert dilithium mining operation on the planet Coridan to provide 93 percent of her product. According to member rules, she has provided 30 percent of her profits in this endeavor to the Syndicate accounts.
Coridan has applied for membership in the United Federation of Planets. Because this will almost certainly interfere with Itney Shen’s operation on the planet, the company deems it necessary to ensure that Coridan’s admission is unsuccessful. The company proposes to the Orion Syndicate that there is an opportunity in preventing Coridan’s admission that will profit the entire Syndicate.
OBJECTIVES
Prevent Coridan’s admission to the Federation
Sow distrust among Federation members
Instigate an interplanetary war between two or more of the Federation members
Sell dilithium to any interested party during this conflict
MISSION
Itney Shen LLC seeks to send an operative disguised as a delegate to the conference where Coridan’s admission to the Federation will be determined. En route to this conference, this operative will eliminate other delegates, ensuring their rivals are to blame. The operative will continue his disruption until success is assured both in undermining the admission and sowing the seeds of an interplanetary conflict.
In the event that the operative is unsuccessful or captured, Itney Shen will provide a ship to attack and destroy the vessel conveying the delegates to their conference. Though this is less likely to start a war, it will protect the Orions’ neutrality.
* * *
Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years Page 12
