Star Trek: The Raptor Reforged in Fire

deathzealotzero

Disclaimer: I do not in any way own anything from the multiplayer game Star Trek Online, or even anything from the overall larger franchise known as Star Trek. I only really claim to own anything that I have created for the purpose of this story. So please support the official release! Thank you.

Star Trek: The Raptor Reforged in Fire
An Alternative Novelization of the Legacy of Romulus Storyline

Written by,

William R. Woods
aka, “deathzealot” or “deathzealotzero”

Foreword

Okay, first of all, I need to mention that I have had an idea like this in my mind for the past couple of years, ever since I started to play Star Trek Online seriously. Basically a novelization of the overall main storyline of the game. Heck. STO was not the first MMO I played, that I started to get ideas for a novelization of the storyline of the game. Both World of Warcraft and Fallout 76 have given me many ideas for various fanfiction stories over the years. Still, I never really put any effort into writing such a novelization as I had other ideas I wanted to explore. It was only the summer of 2022 when I was preparing for that year's April Camp NaNoWriMo, that I decided to actually sit down to see about writing such a story. Mainly thanks to not having any sort of idea of what I wanted to do for that project, as I had way too many ideas swirling around in my head. I then just told myself it was time to choose, and I decided to sit down to do this idea. Still I was going to see about doing a story for both the main Federation storyline of STO and one for the Legacy of Romulus Storyline before seeing which one was better for my muse to focus on. Surprise, surprise. The Legacy of Romulus story managed to win that little competition in my mind. And I managed to write nearly two chapters or so worth of story for this particular storyline. I then revisited it somewhat a year later for that year's April Camp Project and wrote a bit further into the story along with the story’s own Introduction, not to mention with a small outline of where I would be taking the story. As well as a decent amount of background stuff on the larger story.

Next, I need to mention a few things that I want to cover about this overall larger story. Firstly, when I mention it’s an alternative novelization, aka an AU, I mean it. As I am only using the Legacy of Romulus Storyline as a baseline and expanding from that whole idea. This is mainly thanks in part to two main things, the first of course being that Star Trek Online is a video game and a MMO at that which means that there is a need for a sort of tighter focus on the storyline in general. This is a given, but the next part of this is that while I am a Star Trek fan, I am not a total nerd about it. Hence, I am taking a bit of my own interpretation of Star Trek canon and forging my own overall story with what I am picking and choosing for the overall larger Star Trek storyline. If you do not like this then please do not read any further of this story. This does lead me to the second part of what I need to cover. Mainly, like I mentioned I am mainly focusing on my own overall story and only using bits of canon that I actually agree with which means some of the newer stuff of the franchise I am not using at all in this story. Mainly stuff from Picard, Discovery, and Lower Decks. The latter two series I haven’t really watched all that much. Picard meanwhile I only watched bits of the first season and a good chunk of the last season. Finally, I am going to mention that I am mainly following STO Class names for some ships, for example, the T’liss Class is going to be the Romulan ship seen in the original Star Trek series. The T’varo Class meanwhile, is a newer modern version of the earlier design and the Romulan ships used during the Earth-Romulan War and before would mainly be based on ships found in the Star Trek Legacy Video Game. Then there is whole the bit with Bird of Prey and Warbird. For my story Romulans mainly use Warbird for their warships and the Klingons use Bird of Prey for their light warship designs. I know that this is not really all that canon, but as I mentioned above, I am not really going to fully follow canon all that much. Okay. That is about it that, for now anyways.

Still all that said. I still wasn't going to post anything from this story as I wanted to get a bit further into the story till, I started posting anything from it online. I even managed to post snippets from the story on one of the Star Trek threads I am part of while also showing the same snippets to a few friends of mine who are fellow low-end Trekkies and STO players. The result from these little experiments of mine kind of cut off any further idea of posting anything from this story online. I got no response from the online posts, and my friends said it was kind of lame, which really doused any sort of excitement for the story. I am actually quite surprised I managed to get the will really to put a bit more into the story for April Camp that year. Shrug. Still, that year’s July Camp would be literally right around the corner, and once again way too many ideas swirling around in my head to choose just one idea to write for Camp, I decided to test the waters a bit further and post what story I do have written. Maybe if I get a good response, I will do some further writing for this story for that Camp project.

Sadly, I did start to post the chapters I had of this story on Spacebattles as a sort of further test of the whole idea. Figured it would be better to post there than any other site where I normally post my stuff. I could then later expand and post the story on those other sites. That was June of last year and outside of some Likes on the posts I got no real response to the story. Now it is April of 2024 and once again I found myself once again in a Star Trek Mood. Kind of weird that the previous two Aprils I kind of been in that same mood. Shrug. That said, I am going to try for a third time to see if anyone is interested in this story. This time posting at my other main sites, FFN and AO3. At the same time, I am going to be writing the next couple of chapters for this year’s April Camp Event. So, I do hope you enjoy this little story, and experiment, of mine.

Jolan'Tru My Readers!

- William R. Woods

Introduction: Looking Back

The Hobus Super Nova.

That is what many Romulans and others outside of the old Star Empire have said to be the means that brought down the old Romulan Star Empire which led to the following chaos throughout Romulan claimed space. However, the fall of the Star Empire started far earlier with the Hobus Super Nova and the chaos that followed it only the Star Empire’s final killing blow. It could also be argued that it was the actions of Praetor Shinzon and his Reman allies that started the fall of the Star Empire when they killed off the entire Romulan Senate but even then, many do believe that it was far earlier in our history. No. Many Romulans now believe the same as D'tan and his followers have been saying for years. It was our own hubris and past actions against our neighbors that saw us working in the shadows against not only our neighbors but our own people which started the Empire’s real downfall. That said, this following narrative only covers what happened after the Hobus Super Nova and what followed it. Not to mention seeing the formation of the Romulan Republic through the eyes of who would later become known as Legate Harriet Hursag, a Romulan/Human hybrid who became a hero of the so-called D’afw’ein, or Great Reason in Standard Federation Common English, which saw the rise of the Free Romulan Movement through the chaotic happenings of the former Romulan Star Empire, the discovery and later settlement of the new Romulan homeworld of New Romulus, and the formation of the new Romulan Republic on said new homeworld.

Overall, the story of Harriet Hursag started interestedly with a brief meeting between Lieutenant Commander Colin DeVries of Starfleet and Lieutenant Verelan Hursag of the Romulan Star Navy during the final weeks of the Dominion War during an allied briefing in preparation for the counteroffensive against Cardissan Space. This first meeting eventually led to several further meetings between the two officers during other allied briefings and well into the aftermath of the Dominion War which would lead to a growing friendship between the two over the following years. A friendship that grew into a closer relationship. A relationship that would soon see the birth of their half-human/half-romulan daughter Harriet Hursag on April 19, 2387, on the USS Juno, a Defiant Class Escort, commanded by the now Captain Colin DeVries that was responding to the Hobus Super Nova and helping in evacuating the Romulan colony world of Karak II in the Karak system. This included the now retired Verelan Hursag who had retreated to her family’s estate on the colony world thanks to her pregnancy. From there Captain DeVries intended to carry them all to the new Federation outpost at Chiron III across the border however they would be along with several other Federation starships be intercepted by the terrifying modified Romulan mining vessel Naruda which ended up destroying the Juno. Though not before Captain DeVries bravely got his new family along with dozens of other rescued Romulans from Karak II off the ship in the escape pods of the Juno. Escape pods that would soon be rescued by a nearby Romulan warbird who would then take them to the nearby farming colony of Virinat.

The colony of Virinat and the world it was on had once been the site of a small battle between the two factions of the Second Romulan Civil War. During said battle the people of the small colony would be evacuated by the First Free Romulan Movement. After the end of the battle and the civil war the small colony had been forgotten about. At least till it was discovered by a patrolling Romulan Warbird that it had been resettled several years after the end of the civil war by a mix of its original inhabitants and members of the old Free Romulan Movement. The crew of this warbird soon brought several further colonists during the so-called Third Romulan Civil War that preceded the Hobus Supernova. Before finally bringing the rescued colonists of Karak II including Verelan and her young daughter. From there Verelan along with the crew of the warbird would help in forming a brand new defensive militia for the colony which included their ship and whatever weapons they could recover. A militia that could defend their small colony from anyone that would threaten it like pirates or even other Romulans if needed.

After this the small farming colony continued to grow as more and more refugees arrived at the colony. Refugees running from various other colonies and other such places as chaos started to spread throughout the former Romulan Space. The following years saw Verelan peacefully raising her daughter with the assistance of the rest of the colony as the rest of the nearby space went further and further into chaos. Virinat would remain pretty much out of the fighting that now dominated their nearby space. The young Harriet would grow in this peaceful colony as a happy and curious child who was also taught self-defense by the old Romulan soldiers that served as the core of the colony, including her own mother, along with other such needed skills from them all. Thanks to this the young half-romulan/half-human became quite a student and could be often found throughout the colony being taught by the various colonists about their own specialties.

Everything was going quite good for the small colony and its residents as Romulan Space continued to fall into chaos and infighting with Romulan fighting Romulan over some of the most simple of things. The reformed Romulan Star Empire centered on Ratir III under “Empress” Sela and her followers in the Tal Shiar became ever more increasingly powerful yet more paranoid as they started to expand often at the point of a gun. No matter that many just want to go about their lives and not join a whole new Star Empire that was ever more ruthless the last Star Empire. While groups like D’tan’s Second Free Romulan Movement and the Reman Resistance became ever larger, more powerful as they started to gather more followers to their sides.

Meanwhile, while all this was going on in Romulan space the other powers of the galaxy also started to enter a chaotic time of their own. With the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire entering the Third Federation-Klingon War. This came about with the Klingon Empire becoming ever more expansionist, forcibly bringing the Gorn Hegemony into the Empire along with several Orion Clans and became ever more blood-thirsty enjoying the war. Other more minor powers like the Cardissan Union and the Tholian Assembly have their own problems. With the True Way Terrorists Group trying to return the Union to its old ways and the Tholians having to fend off the likes of the reborn Romulan Star Empire trying to move into their space. This saw both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants falling into chaos. Which made many smaller powers like the Nausicans, the remaining non-Klingon allied Orion pirate clans, some of the more greedy Ferengai, and others out there with pirating the innocents trying to keep their heads down in ever increasing chaotic galaxy.

All of which came to a head in late 2407 when the new Romulan Star Empire brutally started to attack peaceful independent Romulan colonies across the Beta Quadrant to forcibly conscript any Romulan at the point of a gun. A few months later would find this happening on the innocent colony of Virinat drawing the young Harriet Hursag into the growing chaos where she would soon become a legend…

- Taken from the Introduction of The Legacy of Romulus: A Look Into the Rise of the Romulan Republic, written by, Scholar M'Ran of the University of New Romulus

Brief Authors Note

This introduction is something that I actually threw together long after writing the official first chapter of the story. As I really wanted something like the spoken introduction that happens every time you start a new character in the game. An introduction that gives you the overall background of the story and introduces you briefly to the world at large. I finally decided to go through with it when I was writing the start of the story's third chapter. It gives a general idea of what is going on with this story and gives a brief background on the main character for the larger story, something that is not included in the mentioned game's introduction as you, the player, basically is making the character's story as you go on playing the game. Other than it serves no other purpose for the story. However, I personally believe it gives a decent introduction into the story that I am writing.

Okay. That is about it for this little introduction. I am sure the following chapters will have larger author notes, as normal for me. Sigh. Anyways till the next chapter! The story truly begins there! Thank you for reading!

deathzealotzero

Chapter One: The Days on the Farm

The independent colony of Virinat and the world it was on had once been the site of a small battle between the two factions of the Second Romulan Civil War. During said battle, the people of the small colony would be evacuated by the First Free Romulan Movement. One of said factions fighting a brief battle over the world itself. After the end of the battle and the larger civil war, the small colony had been pretty much forgotten about by many elsewhere in Romulan Space. At least till recently as numerous refugees from across its entire sector and elsewhere fled to the colony. Thanks in part to the growing chaos that now dominated the former Romulan Star Empire. A chaos that was mainly due in part to the Hobus Supernova and the following destruction of the Romulus Star System. The following years and growing chaos pretty much left the small, peaceful colony alone, outside of those same fleeing Romulan Refugees. All that would change early in the twenty-first year after the Hobus Supernova and the fall of the Romulan Empire…
- Taken from the first chapter of The Legacy of Romulus: A Look Into the Rise of the Romulan Republic, written by, Scholar M’Ran of the University of New Romulus

-o-o-o-

Virinat Colony
Virinat, Virginius Rho Solar System
Japori Sector, Rho Dewa Sector Block
April 5, 2409CE (Human Calendar)
Stardate 85259

‘I can never get enough of this,’ was the thought of the young red-haired woman as she stepped out of the house, she had grown up in. She raised a tanned hand to her face blocking out the light of Virginius Rho Star and used this chance to look over the Virinat Colony that expanded out from the crashed form of an old Romulan T’liss Class Light Warbird that was to one side of the house behind her against a small hill. The Warbird’s starboard wing provided shade over the colony’s central square along with numerous canopies extending the shade from that of the wing towards a major part of the colony. The rest of the colony wrapped itself around the crashed ship and two pairs of tall windmills anchoring each corner of the colony. All but the rolling fields of farmland that covered the northern side of the colony to its eastern side. The entire sight of the colony as it started to wake up and get ready for the day was quite a peaceful sight. It was something the young woman could not get enough of every day she got up to go about her day, hence her earlier thought.

“Harriet!” a voice called from the house behind her making the young woman turn to look back into the house to see a typical aged Romulan female standing in the doorway.

“Yes, Aunt Verina?” the figure of Harriet Hursag asked the woman, the younger sister to her own mother who had mainly raised her with her mother busy with running the colony’s small militia. Though Harriet did know that her mother did love her and the only reason why she put some much time in the Militia was to prevent what had happened to her family’s old home during the chaos that followed the Hobus Supernova happen to their new home.

“Tovan just called; he wants to meet you at Militia HQ. Apparently, something is going on with the North Fields. He says we could most likely hear the screaming of Avark from here,” the older woman mentioned with a small smile on her face. This made the younger Romulan blink in some surprise before sighing and shaking her head as she turned to look towards the Northern Fields which she now noticed had something going on over there.

“It must be the Wild Khellids again. They have been becoming quite brave to come into the colony proper over the past few months,” she mentioned in reply before turning to her aunt once more with a smile on her own face.

“Thank you, Auntie, for passing on the message. I shall be back before the start of the festival to help you get everything ready,” she said to the woman and quickly hugged her.

“It’s fine if you are late Harriet, but yes, I do think I am going to need the help. What with your mother out on a mission with the Mairsuk,” Verina mentioned with a sigh and shake of her own head. Something that Harriet copied for there was something going on with said mission, as no one really knew what the mission happened to be outside of the colony’s Maiori.

“Now go on,” Verina said with a shooing gesture making the younger woman chuckle a bit before starting to move on through the rest of the colony’s main residential section and towards the central square of the colony where much of the colony’s primary buildings were situated including the Militia HQ. As she did so the young woman greeted the various residents of the colony going about their days with many of them all getting ready for the Tapping Festival later in the day. She frowned a bit as she saw a pair of older Romulan males glaring slightly at her, from the corner of her eye. Something she still did not understand all that much, for yes, she wasn’t full-blooded Romulan, being half-human but she was raised as a Romulan. Not to mention her father, had been reasonable for not only rescuing her mother and her recently born self but sixteen other Romulans from her family’s ancient estate on the Romulan Colony of Karak II before it could be destroyed by the sub-space wave that expanded out from the Hobus Supernova. That was alongside a massive amount of aid that the Federation and its Starfleet had moved into the chaotic former Romulan Star Empire which saved numerous other Romulans from death. From the twin homeworlds of the Star Empire itself but other colonies in the way of the sub-space wave from the supernova. So, humans and the Federation in general had become quite notable to many Romulans due to this amount of aid. However, old habits die hard for some older Romulans as centuries of distrust and such for the Federation in Romulan space haven’t gone away all that much really.

Therefore, Harriet continued onwards and did not even give a further glance to the two glaring men exchanging a nod with the aged-looking engineer D’vex who she saw to be looking over one of the colony’s windmills a bit further from that of the two glaring men. Then after a few more steps, she started to smile as she saw the figure of D’Ral, the colony’s Lorekeeper, entertaining around a dozen children with her stories. Before finally, she made it to the Militia HQ where her friend and mentor Tovan Khev was waiting for her just outside of the HQ’s entrance. When she saw him, she smiled slightly remembering her small teenage crush on the older Romulan before a close friendship emerged between the two since her joining the Militia when she turned eighteen an over a year ago.

“Hello Harry,” Tovan said with a wave and a smile as she approached him. She gave him a nod back and a smile of her own. Almost rolling her eyes yet again at the nickname Tovan had started to call her which came from the shortened form of her human first name. A name that was given to her by her father just after her birth. Though from what her mother mentioned she had heard Tovan starting to call her that was that shortened form was often used with the male version of the name and not for the female version. Still, she didn’t mind it all that much anymore for it was a bit original.

“So, I take it that is the Wild Khellids again?” she asked him as she stepped under the shade from the canopy that extended from the roof of the HQ building.

“Pretty much. They managed to make it to the pipes in the North Field early this morning and started to chew on them cracking the pipes in a few places. This is of course drowning out a few of the crops in the field, not to mention the anger from Avak,” he replied with a sigh for this wasn’t the first time that the local wildlife that is the Khellids had managed to make it into the fields to damage the crops.

“Though this is the first time that they have done damage to the pipes,” he said with a shake of his head and a confused look on his face. She blinked at this before stepping into the HQ building itself quickly followed by Tovan.

“That is a bit weird,” she agreed with a frown of her own before looking over at the HQ’s communication terminal and seeing a light blinking showing that they had some message waiting for them.

“How many messages did Avak send us?” she asked with a groan making the third Romulan in the building, one Daise Vorian Geran, who was manning the front desk of the HQ laugh in response. Vorian was yet another member of Harriet’s extended maternal family, a distant cousin whose mother had also been saved from their estates on Korvak III. Hence, when they all had arrived at the colony the two had been raised as siblings.

“Seven Harriet,” the younger Romulan man mentioned after a moment of laughter at her question. Harriet glared lightly over at him before quickly shifting her glare over to the terminal before sighing and moving towards the large closet-like room that held the majority of the Militia’s, and the colony’s, handheld weapons.

“I shall go over to the North Field and see about chasing away the Wild Khellids so the engineers can repair the pipes. Hopefully, I am fast enough that any damage to the crops can be fixed,” she mentioned with a thoughtful tone of voice as she unlocked the door to the armory and quickly grabbed herself an old Class-9 Disrupter Pistol and a holster for it. After a moment of thought she grabbed a second Class-9 Pistol and holster before starting to move out of the armory. She briefly looked at the half-dozen ancient Class-3 Disrupter Rifles that were some of the only rifle-like weapons in the entire colony, outside of the personal weapons of the colony’s dozens of retired veterans, before she moved on towards the door. Near the door, she found a lockbox that held the colony’s only Personal Shield Devices. A relatively new technology the colony only managed to get their hands on a good dozen or so of the small devices. Still, they wouldn’t need it just chasing off some wildlife from their farms therefore she moved out of the armory and shut the door locking it once more. She then threw the second Class-9 Pistol and Holster to Tovan who had been going through the various messages left by Avak before securing her own pistol and holster to her belt.

“Tovan I think you better go check the Eastern Field. I know we didn’t get anything from them overnight, but I do not want to tell the Maiori that a good portion of our main food crop was destroyed,” she halfway ordered the man who only raised an eyebrow, in an almost Vulcan way, before nodding in agreement with her. He then secured his own pistol and holster to his belt before he started towards the door.

“Vorian. You stay here and man the desk. Since we only have around a half-dozen of us at the colony currently with the rest of the Militia off-planet,” she mentioned to her cousin who only nodded with a sigh. She frowned and made for the door herself. Since it was kind of a bad idea, in her opinion, that the rest of the Militia were either onboard the T’varo Class Light Warbird Mairsuk which was the colony’s only orbital defense, or the modified Jarok Class Sloop Nergal that served the colony by running supplies from off-world. Either transporting wines and spirits made by the colony to the nearby neutral spacedock of Drazana Station or transporting needed supplies from Drazana back to the colony. Currently, the Mairsuk was off on some sort of secret mission under the command of her mother with a crew of around fifty Militia and she hoped to be back in time for the festival. However, she noted that she didn’t really know where her mother and the ship had gone off to as the Maiori of the colony had kept the mission to himself. Still, she knew that the Nergal would definitely be back in time as it was on its way back to the colony with a hold full of supplies and its own crew of nearly a dozen Militia. Hence the colony itself was left with only a small number of militiamen to keep the peace around the colony in the buildup for the evening’s Tapping Festival. Sighing, Harriet made her way out of the HQ and towards the distant Northern Fields hoping that the damage to the crops was minor. Or the colony may have a problem in the future.

-o-o-o-

Northern Fields
Virinat Colony

It didn’t take all that much time for Harriet to arrive at the Northern Fields of the colony just time in to hear a blistering dressing down delivered by the field’s own supervisor Avrak to three fieldhands trembling under the angry glare and almost cruel tongue of the older Romulan. This drew a small frown from Harriet, as all three of the fieldhands were young teenage youngsters who had all been born at the colony itself. Hence, this would perhaps be the first major job that they had held, therefore didn’t have a real clue about what was going on, or even had gotten used to the imperious supervisor of the Northern Fields just yet. With a deep sigh and summoning up every bit of her mother’s emotional training, she took a few steps towards the almost now screaming figure of Avrak.

“I do believe you have chastened your fieldhands enough Avrak,” she mentioned almost coldly to the man making the slightly shorter figure of the older Romulan look up at the approaching figure in some brief confusion before it cleared with what seemed to be some relief before the man’s usual sneer replaced it.

“Ah! Harriet. It is about time you got here!” the man mentioned with an almost imperious-sounding sniff before with a wave of his hands dismissed his fieldhands and turned his attention to her. The three now chastened young lads quickly used this time to pretty much disappear away from the area.

“Well, I am now here,” Harriet mentioned with a short nod to the man who only seemed to look at her deeply before sighing and turning waving her to follow him.

“I have been trying to figure out how those blasted critters got into the fields so easily. As we did manage to put up some pretty decent wired fencing to prevent this happening once more after the last time they managed to get through,” he mentioned shaking his head with his sneer replaced with a deep almost confused-looking frown on his face, as he entered the almost lean-to like entrance to the fields, which is the farmer often worked from during crop picking like should have been going in preparation for the evening’s festivities.

“So how had they managed to get in then?” Harriet asked with her own small frown stepping up to the entrance of the Northern Fields which led down towards several raised walkways that ran between the various rows of various crops that were all clustered around a pair of towering domes where the colony’s greenhouses where more delicate food crops where grown. Not to mention the smaller domes of the colony’s more dedicated greenhouses which grew non-food crops that were a bit more delicate than the crops growing in the fields like the Northern Field including some of the dark grapes needed for the colony’s sweet wine production.

“Apparently the same way they are now chewing through the pipes,” the farmer mentioned waving at a nearby table that sported a length of the mentioned fencing making Harriet raise an eyebrow in some amazement for a section appeared to be actually seemed to have what looked to be bites in several places. Allowing several small holes through the fence’s wired front, plenty enough room to allow the small Khellid Drones through the fencing and into the fields proper.

“So, they are after the water pipes then?” she asked the farmer who sniffed and only jutted out his almost pointy-looking chin out through the awning that surrounded the lean-to’s roof and towards the fields proper. Which now that Harriet was paying attention could hear the gushing of water and the low-key chittering of the Khellid Drones. Frowning at this Harriet stepped around the farmer and looked out towards the proper rows of crops that made up the majority of the Northern Fields. She could see the moving figures of the drones through the various rows of crops and the several almost fountain-looking geysers of brown-dirty-looking water erupting from a few different places. As she watched a loud buzzing and chittering sounds could be heard before a new geyser of brown-dirty water erupted somewhere near the back of the fields. Sighing she unholstered her Disruptor Pistol and looked over at the figure of Avrak who had during her perusal of what was going on in the fields retrieved an ancient looking Class-2 Plasma Torch along with a rickety looking mobile toolbox with what looked to have several patching kits stuffed into it.

“What? Have you forgotten I was an engineer with the Star Navy in the past,” Avrak mentioned in a haughty voice at her look, “Just take down those critters and I shall follow behind you to start patching the pipes. Hopefully, once we do that, we start on getting the water drained out of the field and save the crops from being drowned.”

“I remember, but I do also remember those loud rants of yours,” she replied with a small smile gracing her face, as Avrak did not like being an engineer in the Star Navy, having been forced into it by his family, and loudly mentioned it several times in loud rants, before shaking her head ignoring the dirty glare from the man.

“Let’s be about it then,” she mentioned with her small smile being turned into a frown and she started to step down from the platform towards the ground of the Northern Fields already bringing up her pistol to aim at the first Khellid Drone as it came scrambling from the nearby first row of crops heading towards the opposite side of the row. However, Harriet did not let it get that far, and a green lance of disrupter energy pierced through its main body killing it. With that done she moved towards the distant geyser of water with Avrak silently following behind her already with a patching kit in hand.

-o-o-o-

Some Time Later

“And that should be the last one,” Avrak said with a grumble as he shut off his plasma torch nearly an hour later. Looking down at his quick patch jump on the pipe before looking over at the young half-human Harriet as she kept watch for any more of those pesky bugs to arrive through the still ruined fencing. He really was quite impressed with her as she had calmly managed to bring every single one of the blasted things down without any sort of flinch even when one of them managed to nearly surprise her coming from behind her. His shout of warning seeing her whipping around fast and killing that bug as well. Still, he internally sighed in some shame for he had been along several other former members of the Romulan Star Navy who really did not like the idea that there was a half-human, of all things, living with them. This started to wane when he started to get to know the young woman over the years, along with hearing those first reports of numerous Starfleet vessels jumping the border to save all that they could from the subspace wave from the Hobus Supernova. They saved thousands of lives in those first few hours after everything happened. Sighing, he shook his head once more to clear out those thoughts of those chaotic days and noticed that Harriet was now frowning as she eyed the nearest Khellid corpse with some unease.

“These Drones were far worse than the ones we chased out of here a few months ago,” she mentioned kneeling down next to the corpse to look it over closer taking out a tricorder from her belt to scan the thing.

“Now that you mention it, yeah, they are,” he mentioned with a frown of his own, “They attacked when they usually ran at the use of force against them. Not to mention going after the water pipes instead of the crops like they did the last time.”

“I was wondering that as well,” she replied as she looked over the tricorder readings with another more curious-looking frown on her face.

“I am not detecting anything different about these Drones, but from what I remember about these things they are pretty much an extension of their queens. Basically, doing whatever the queens want them to do. So, whatever has changed would have been with the wild queens and not the drones themselves,” she remarked as she got from kneeling and looking towards the west where the nearest Wild Khellid hive was located at with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Though the queens would be protected by those darn pesky flying Warriors. So, you are going to need more than that pistol and a basic uniform if you are going to go after the queens,” Avrak mentioned as he too looked to the west and wondered what was going on with these darn wild critters. The Khellid Warriors were just as much a pest as their smaller groundbound Drone counterparts but with two large wings, they were quite capable of getting into places that were quite hard to protect due to their height. For example, a few months ago a pair of warriors had managed to get underneath one of the colony’s wind turbines and damage one of the turbine’s fan blades when it started to run. They also were a bit larger than the drones and had a halfway decent stinger on a tail-like extension out of their backs which could injure a typical healthy Romulan adult. Though the most dangerous weapons the darn things carried were in fact the acid-like spit they could propel at a decent distance from themselves. That attack could kill a Romulan adult, or any other humanoid species if it was allowed to hit anywhere vital, hence some protection would be needed if going after the warriors. Or the Khellid Queens themselves as the warriors protected the queens in an almost feral matter when they were threatened.

“Yes, that is true, so I shall swing by the Militia HQ and pick up one of the old Class-3 Rifles along with a deflector shield belt before even getting anywhere close to that hive,” Harriet mentioned with a nod before turning to him.

“That said, you going to be okay in finishing everything up here?” she questioned him with a small frown on her face making an equal-sized smile to form on his face replacing his typical sneer before he looked at their feet with the couple of inches of water that managed to gather together around the bottom of the various nearby crop enclosures.

“I should be okay. I shall see about finding that A’vix kid. She is a halfway decent structural engineer and between the two of us we should be able to get the old pumps up and running to drain this access water. At least till D’vex gets back from that fixing that broken down windmill over by the central square,” he replied after turning away from the young woman who only nodded and started to head herself towards the nearest exit of the Northern Fields. He took another glance over his shoulder at her and watched her almost run out of the fields heading towards the Militia headquarters. He really hoped she would be able to find out what in the world was going on here before any further damage was done to the colony. Shaking his head he turned his attention to figure out where that young engineer had gotten to this morning.

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-o-o-o-

Militia Headquarters
Virinat Colony

It didn’t take all that long for Harriet to return to the militia headquarters and after entering through the front door of the small building immediately heading towards the militia’s armory once more. As she did so she noticed that Vorian was no longer at the front desk of the building and appeared to be nowhere else in the building for her rapid entrance would have drawn him to the front. Frowning she quickly noticed that two of the belt-like Personal Shield Devices were missing from the lockbox at the front of the armory. It was then that she noticed that a light was blinking on the headquarters’s communication station. Narrowing her eyes in some concern she moved over to the station and pressed the button near the light. At this, the small screen built into the station blinked on to show the now stressed-looking face of Toran Khev.

“Harry I just back from the Eastern Field when we got a call from Nevala over at the Vineyard the Khellids have swarmed out from their wild hive from that large cave in the cliffside and started to attack the workers gathering the last of the Nectar needed for the final barrels of Sweet Wine for the festival tonight. Nevala had been patrolling around the area, therefore, quickly responded but she was pretty much overwhelmed as there were not only Drones but several Warriors in the pack. Therefore, I took Vorian, two of the PSDs, and a couple of the rifles out to the Vineyard to back her up. I already warned the Maiori and I believe that we will need your help in finding out what is going on with these Wild Khellids,” the other Militia officer reported making Harriet nearly blanched in some shock of her own. Forgot to try to investigate what was going on with the Wild Khellids, for it looked like they needed to beat back this little invasion of the bugs.

“TRIBBLE!” she said using one of the handful of Federation Standard curses she knew and sighed starting to calm herself from her panic that came from Toran’s report. After several moments of calming herself, she then turned to look into the armory, and her eyes quickly were drawn to the very back of the small room which had a large rack-like piece of equipment standing there with something supported inside it. This looked to be a standard Class-IV Romulan Environmental Suit, but at the same time a bit different. As it was quite different from a normal suit as it is modified with several additional armor panels across the body along with its own personal shield device built in. It was similar in nature to that of the suits in use by the workers over at the vineyard which worked with the colony’s two domesticated Khellid Queens which were used to produce the needed Khellid Nectar to make the colony’s Sweet Wine. The armored suits were needed to prevent the queens and their handful of allowed attending Warriors from hurting the workers as they went about their jobs. This particular suit had been taken over by the Militia after it was damaged and was modified with a few more extra armor panels along with its own built-in personal shield device. It was mostly a prototype to be used by the Militia if the colony ever came under attack. So, she thought this would be one of those times it should be used. Her eyes were then drawn to the large Starfleet Type-9B Heavy Compression Phaser Rifle stored next to the suit, a weapon that according to her mother had been given to her by her father before the destruction of the man’s starship. From what she had heard these weapons had been developed for the use of the Federation’s Hazard Teams and later MACOs during the final months of the Dominion War. It was heavier than the standard Dominion War Starfleet Type-8 Phaser Rifle and its own Compression Rifle variant the Type-8B.

Nodding to herself she quickly divested herself of her Militia Uniform’s jacket and quickly walked over to the rack where she quickly suited herself up in the prototype combat-rated environmental suit. From there she stepped over to the rack of Class-03 rifles where she picked up one and placed it on the magnetic lock on her back. That done she turned back to the storage rack and picked up the belt of heavy energy batteries for the phaser rifle which she soon buckled around her now armored waist. It was only then that she hefted the heavy compression phaser rifle lopping its shoulder strap around one forearm before she quickly closed and locked the armory before heading towards the headquarters back door which had the most direct way towards the Western Vineyard. Hopefully, she wouldn’t panic anybody when they saw her like this with an armored suit and heavy weapons. Sighing, she couldn’t think of that right now and quickly opened the door before starting to run down the stairs leading down the small cliffside that encircled the Western part of the colony.

-o-o-o-

Western Vineyard
Virinat Colony

It didn’t really take her all that long to get to the most western edge of the colony which sported both the colony’s small, enclosed vineyard and the nearby wild hive of Khellids. As she got closer, she started to hear the distinct almost humming sounds of the colony’s old disrupter rifles, along with the lower cracking sound of the more modern Class-Nine Compression Disrupter Pistols that fellow militia member Nevala liked to carry around with her during patrols. Coming around the outer edge of one of the Vineyard’s enclosures she quickly spotted the trio of her fellow militia members along with a handful of suited Vineyard workers behind a hastily built defensive barrier. Surrounding the barriers were a literal swarm of dozens of Khellid Drones and a dozen or so of larger Khellid Warriors. All around the barrier, she could see numerous corpses of khellids both drones and some warriors. Still, the three militia members were shooting over the top of the barrier at the swarming bugs with the old rifles from the armory while the majority of the still-suited workers were huddled safely along the bottom of the barrier. All bar one worker who had Nevala’s pistols and was helping with taking down the smaller drones. She guessed that Nevala had handed them over when Toran and Vorian arrived with the rifles along with an extra weapon for her use. Still, as she quickly approached, she could see that while the defenders had managed to kill a large amount of the drones and a handful of the larger warriors, they were slowly but surely being overwhelmed by the superior numbers of attacking Khellids. She started to fiddle around with the phaser rifle controls but before she could do anything she noticed one of the warriors had fired one of its acid-spit attacks at Vorian. His shield sparked before going down leading to her cousin to yelp in some surprise from the shield falling and then moan in pain. The warrior then turned to Toran who had looked over at the yelp from the younger Romulan and didn’t notice the large tail-stinger of the warrior starting to come down to impale him.

“Toran duck!” she called as she quickly selected the third most powerful setting of the phaser and brought up the rifle to her armored shoulder to aim at the warrior. Just as she did, she noticed that Toran had followed through with her yell by throwing himself down to the bottom of the barrier clearing the way for her to fire an almost scarlet-looking red beam of particles at the now confused-looking warrior. The beam quickly hit right below the warrior’s head before suddenly it seemed to convulse in pain before it started to disintegrate into red-colored ash from the powerful phaser beam. However, she didn’t stop and look at her kill but instead using the suit’s built-in thrusters launched herself over the huddled armored workers and the barrier itself. As she did so she quickly switched the Phaser Rifle setting to one she had only read about in the rifle’s manual and brought the rifle up again as she landed a few feet in front of the barrier. Firing the rifle again she was pleased to see the beam now was actually split into three smaller beams easily able to kill the swarming drones. For the next few minutes, she couldn’t really recall anything but the odd sparks from the suit’s built-in shields as the warrior’s spit attacks were turned away and a couple of sparks from the drone’s fang-like front teeth trying to chew on her lower legs. At least those drones that managed to get close to her to do so anyway as the tri-beam setting quickly brought numerous drones down. Then she noticed the green beams of disrupters that came in from behind her as her fellow militia members got over their shock at her rapid appearance and started to support her bringing down the larger warriors. Finally, after what seemed like forever, but was actually only a few minutes the last drone was brought down. A few seconds went by before cheers from the workers could be heard from behind her. Turning towards the barrier she found both Tovan and Nevala scrambling over the barrier to rush towards her. As she came down from the adrenaline she noticed her suit’s HUD display showing her shields very low, while the phaser rifle was beeping due to low power, before sighing as she hit the control on the rifle to remove the energy cell from the weapon. She then quickly removed another cell from the belt and slammed it into the weapon making it ready once more.

“Harry! That was amazing!” Tovan said almost breathless as he looked past her at the pile of drone corpses that now surrounded her. Nevala simply chuckled and shook her head at her display. As the other woman was a combat veteran therefore wasn’t all that surprised at what happened.

“Well, it looks like the combat suit passed its first combat trial with flying colors,” Harriet quipped with a small almost proud-like smirk on her face. Tovan looked a bit confused at her choice of words, as she said them in Federation Standard, but Nevala only laughed for she knew Federation Standard as well. Not to mention she was aware of human idioms thanks to being a former exchange officer between the Star Navy and that of Starfleet in her youth.

“That it did Harriet. Still, I don’t think it is over just yet though,” the older woman mentioned now with a frown on her face. Looking over her shoulder at the entrance to the hillside cave that contained the Wild Khellid’s hive. This made Harriet nod in some agreement, but she had something to do before they started to head into the cave. She started towards the barrier at the amazed-looking workers, but she had her eye on the injured form of her cousin now propped up against the backside of the barrier with the earlier armed worker looking over his injured shoulder.

“Are you alright Vorian?” she asked the younger Romulan who looked up at her in some pain before sighing and looking to one side with a wince on his face.

“Yeah, the shield managed to stop much of the acid, but it managed to get a few bits on my shoulder,” he replied shrugging his uninjured shoulder.

“He should be fine Harriet, once we get him to the healers they can take care of the rest of the acid and regenerate the burned skin,” the armed worker mentioned making Harriet look over at her to see that it was Raholi one of two other Romulans in the colony to have similar colored hair to her own, and happened to be Nevala’s adopted daughter which explained the reasoning for her using the other woman’s pistols.

“Thanks, Raholi,” she replied with a smile at the slightly younger Romulan woman before looking up just in time to see the Maiori, flanked by the remaining two members of the Militia at the colony, and Chief Healer T’sak with one of her junior healers almost running up.

“Maiori,” she said straightening to attention along with both Tovan and Nevala at her back.

“Uhlan Hursag,” the older Romulan man said to her with a nod before looking over her shoulder at the piles of dead Khellids before looking over the relieved-looking workers who were now being helped by the other two Militia members along with the two healers. The chief healer herself was now kneeling down at the side of Vorian with a medical tricorder.

“You have done quite well young lady,” the Maiori said after a moment of observing everything turning his attention back to her. This made Harriet almost flush in some embarrassment at the praise for she had always had some awe of the man now in front of her.

“Not really sir, it was Decurion Nevala who first discovered the invading Khellids and Uhlan Tovan who replied to her distress call. I was over at the Northern Fields getting rid of the handful of Drones trying to chew on the pipes over there,” she mentioned making the two older Romulans at her back almost snort at her deflection of the praise onto the two of them. The Mairoi though simply smiled and chuckled a bit at her.

“Yes, I did hear the screaming of Avrak about that from my office,” the man almost joked before he turned serious lying a hand on her armored shoulder.

“No Harriet, you still managed to save everyone here, without any major injury or deaths. That is something to be proud of young one. Your mother will be quite proud of you, and soon I hope she will tell you herself,” he softly mentioned to her making Harriet blink her eyes in some surprise before sighing and nodding at the man. Though she did perk up at the mention of her mother.

“So will the Mairsuk be back for the festival?” she asked the colony’s leader who at her question hesitated a bit before sighing and shaking his head.

“No, I sent her and the Mairsuk all the way to Nimbus III. So, she shouldn’t be back for another week or so,” he mentioned making Harriet’s jaw drop in some surprise. She knew that her mother’s mission with the colony’s only major starship had been some sort of secret, but she assumed it was closer to home. Nimbus III was all the way across the Beta Quadrant from the colony and the local sector that contained the colony’s solar system.

“Nimbus III sports the only major shipyard facility that has remained pretty much neutral in all this chaos between this newly risen Second Romulan Star Empire and the various resistance groups throughout the former First Empire. As to get any more of those more intact wrecks up at the Docking Facility in some sort of operation to better defend the colony with we would need some more dedicated parts,” the man explained seeing her shocked expression at this announcement. Sighing, she only nodded at this before she had been involved from the start with her mother’s project to get a few of the more intact wrecks in orbit of Virinat in some sort of operation. As her mother was quite worried about some of the rumors about unknown attacks on other independent Romulan colonies across the nearby sectors.

“Understood sir,” she replied with a nod of her own at the man before the now very familiar chittering sounds behind her saw her rapidly swinging around with the phaser rifle pointing towards the nearby cave entrance. She briefly noticed that she had spread out her opposite arm to cover the Mairoi while both Tovan and Nevala had also turned around to take knees to point their weapon at the cave entrance. All three militia members could barely see the advancing forms of further drones and warriors heading towards the entrance.

“I do believe we are not done just yet with whatever is going on with the Khellids,” she mentioned with a frown before turning slightly spotting the figure of fellow militia member D’nal who had moved away from helping the workers with the shorter figure of his own partner Nellah. While Raholi had her pistols once more out and covered the entrance with them.

“D’nal get the Maiori and the workers out of here. I shall head into the cave to further investigate what is going on here,” she ordered unlatching the old disrupter rifle she had stored on the back of the combat suit and tossing it to the man who quickly caught it.

“Yes ma’am!” the older Romulan shot back before moving into a guarding position in front of their leader with his partner and waving the older man back towards the rest of the colony.

“Sir this way!” he nodded back towards where that had originally come from. The Maiori only gave him a nod but looked over at Harriet.

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“Uhlan, please report to me when your investigation is finished,” he ordered her making her nod at him over her shoulder before starting to move toward the cave with both Tovan and Nevala at her sides. Briefly, she heard Raholi starting to herd everyone away from the area back towards the rest of the colony. Nodding at this she brought up the heavy phaser rifle slightly allowing her access to the suit’s forearm-mounted control panel. With a flick of a control on the panel, the powerful lights built into the sides of her helmet turned on allowing them all to see into the entrance of the cave. While behind her Nevala turned on a simple belt-mounted flashlight giving them even more light to see as they officially entered the cave. As they did so their lights lit up several drones and a few warriors which they had heard earlier. These bugs were quickly brought down without any effort from the three of them.

“Hmmm… We must have killed the majority of this hive’s population earlier,” Nevala mentioned with a frown a few minutes later as they entered the cave’s main cavern which was mostly a gathering point for the Khellid hive. Hence, when they arrived there was only a couple of warriors and a handful of drones gathered together in the vastly larger cavern. They didn’t last all that long under the fire from two disrupter rifles and one heavy phaser rifle.

“If I remember the original reports correctly the lair of the hive’s senior queens shouldn’t be all that far from here,” Tovan called out sweeping his rifle away from the now dying last Drone and towards a passageway leading deeper into the cave.

“What is that!?” Nevala called out as she started to point towards another of the various passageways drawing their attention to it and allowing them to see a small spider-like robotic thing suddenly appear from the passageway. Frowning Harriet selected a lower-end setting for her rifle and brought the small thing down with a small short phaser blast. She quickly advanced past the wrecked robotic thing and gave a quick jerking nod to Toval while she took a defensive knee along with Nevala. Tovan meanwhile threw his rifle’s shoulder strap over one shoulder and took out a tricorder from a pocket before kneeling down next to the remains of the robotic thing to scan it.

“Interesting. It is entirely mechanical without any sort of biological part,” Tovan reported a moment later with a frown before folding and storing the tricorder away once more. He brought up his rifle again while Harriet quickly digested the information.

“Alright let’s continue on and see what else is going on here. Hopefully, we can figure out who owned that thing,” she ordered standing up from her defensive crouch and started to slowly advance further into the passageway. Both Tovan and Nevala silently followed behind her as they continued onwards. A few minutes later they entered a smaller cavern after destroying a few more of the small spider-like robots and stopped completely dead at what they found at the center of the cavern.

“Fvadt! What in spirits name happened here?!” Tovan exclaimed in outright shock at what they were now seeing. The familiar form of a Khellid Queen was wrapped up in some sort of black and green colored contraption that its arms digging into the sides of the queen while a fifth smaller arm was embedded into the head of the queen. Though thanks to the movement of the queen they saw it was still alive even with the horrid-looking thing wrapped around it. Then they saw that around the queen the various eggs of Khellid drones and warriors sported slightly larger versions of the earlier small robotic spiders wrapped around them as well.

“I don’t know what is happening here, but I think we have found the source of what has happened to the Khellids,” Harriet harshly said with an angry-looking expression on her face before turning to her two companions.

“Go ahead take care of the eggs and whatever those things are with them. If you can take scans of them before you destroy them. I shall take care of the queen,” she ordered the other two who only nodded now with more fierce-looking expressions on their faces. Meanwhile, Harriet had turned to look up at the large queen and the black metal-looking contraption that was wrapped around it. She then looked down at the rifle in her hands and with a slight adjustment to its controls she selected the very last setting of the weapon. A setting she never thought she would need when she first picked it up. She then raised it towards the queen and took a breath before firing a larger red beam from before which pierced through the head of the queen slicing off the clawed arm embedded into the head. The top half of the queen then exploded at the force of the heavy phaser beam, but Harriet didn’t let that detain her as she lowered the rifles slightly and fired a second time directly at the contraption. It was like the queen before it exploded in a decent-sized explosion which didn’t even make a dent in her shields before she turned away and joined in destroying the remaining eggs. Within fifteen minutes every single egg and attached device were destroyed by the three militia members. That done the three then spread out through the cavern and started to scan everything they could with their tricorders trying to figure out any further information on what was going on there.

“Ah. Harriet you might want to look at this?” came a call from Tovan making Harriet turn away from scanning the remains of the queen and the attached contraption. She frowned as she walked over to the kneeling figure of Tovan and she blinked in some surprise to see several corpses of Drones along with a couple of warriors. All were killed but not from the plasma or disruptor weapons used by the colony. Also, not even her phaser rifle could make the wounds she was now inspecting.

“This is very peculiar,” she mentioned out loud before turning away from the corpses and looking over at Tovan. “Alright let’s get a few more scans and then continue to the other Khellid Queen Lairs to see what happened to other queens. Then I do believe we should be done with whatever this happens to be.”

“Yes ma’am!” he replied with a nod before starting to use his tricorder to scan these remains while Harriet moved over to talk to Nevala who was inspecting the remains of one of the warrior eggs. The following hour saw the three of them sweeping through the remaining areas of the cave and finding nothing further like the tech they found earlier. However, they still found some roaming packs of Khellid Drones and Warriors which they easily took care of before moving on further into the cave system. However, other than a few more corpses of Khellids which they did not have a hand in killing, they found nothing else to explain what had happened to this Khellid hive. Neither of the other two queens of the hive could be found, not even their remains. With that done the three members of the colony militia then moved to exit the cave system heading back to the colony.

-o-o-o-

Residence of the Maiori
Virinat Colony
An Hour later

Near an hour later found Harriet, Tovan, and Nevala standing in front of the desk of the Maiori in the office of his residence finishing up their report to the colony’s leader about their findings about this incident. In the small office with the three of them along with the Maiori were the figures of D’vex, the chief engineer of the former Subcommander Malem’s Warbird Mairsuk, and now the colony’s head engineer of the entire colony, and Kenel Khar one of the oldest Romulans living at the colony and one the most well know about the Khellids. D’vex was called in after they reported about the strange machines that they had found in the cave, while Kenel was already here brought in by the Maiori as the incident involved Khellids.

“I don’t know sir; this tech does indeed greatly resemble what we had encountered in the Eridan Belt all those years ago with those missing mining colonies, but as you may recall we didn’t get great readings of that tech. So, I am not all that confident in saying that they are outright the same tech,” the engineer reported after a few moments studying the readings that Harriet and her two fellows had taken along with a small sample of the tech that Tovan had taken with him after they left the cave.

“Hmm… Still, this is very troubling that someone or something really managed to make it to the hive itself and install those devices. Harriet, I know your mother has been training you on how to find out what weapon was used in an attack by the damage done by said weapon. Hence, I ask you if you recognized the weapon used in killing those Khellids you found killed in the queen’s lair?” the Maiori mentioned after a moment of thought and turning to look at the red-haired young half-Romulan who looked a bit surprised at this before after a brief moment of thought shook her head.

“Sorry sir, Mother hadn’t gone over the more exotic weapon types with me before she had to leave the colony for her mission. However, I can say that those wounds on those Khellids were not made by any model of phaser, used by anyone in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, or even any Disrupter used by the old Romulan Star Empire or the Klingons,” she reported making the colony’s leader narrow his eyes in some thought at this report. Harriet mentally squashed the almost panic that she had disappointed the man for she was sure he wasn’t all that upset with her but the whole incident in question.

“Understood. Thank you, Harriet,” he replied with a nod to her before turning to look at the elderly-looking Kenel who herself was going over the various readings the three militia members had taken of the dead Khellids, the modified queen, and the eggs themselves. Harriet was quite pleased with herself that she managed to have her team start those scans, though she was also pleased that Tovan did manage to scan a couple of eggs before destroying them as she directed.

“What do you think about this Elder Khar?” the Maiori asked the woman who was frowning down at the datapad that contained their readings. She blinked up at him at the question before sighing and putting the pad to one side.

“I agree that is something is going on here Maiori and are using the Khellids to do part of their dirty work for them,” she mused out loud before the lines on her face seemed to sag with further worry, “Or at least distracting us from something else entirely.”

“It is the Romulan way after all to distract an enemy at their weakened side before striking from another side to fully bring down their enemy,” she went on with a frown on her weathered face making the Maiori seem to wilt himself from the whole idea at the whole idea of fighting before he seems to recover gaining a measure of inner strength and looking up at those in his office with a new fervor in his eyes.

“Very well Nevala I want you to deputize the more promising members of your training class while rushing the rest of the class through finishing their training,” he said starting to hand out orders to the others first looking up at Nevala who had been reasonable for training new members of the Militia. She only nodded in response to this though her hands did tighten in some frustration. Harriet nearly winced at this for she understood Nevala didn’t really want to make some half-trained militia apprentices she was currently training to be fighting, including her own adopted daughter, but she understood that they really did not have any choice. They needed as many members as possible of the Militia ready in case of any further attack on the colony.

“Understood Maiori. Raholi kept a calm head during the incident therefore I shall see about getting her deputized immediately after this meeting. Then there is Del’el who isn’t that far behind my daughter therefore I shall get him deputized along with Raholi. Meanwhile, Bilaka is onboard the Nergal and I will get her deputized as soon as they arrive back at the colony. From there, I have a handful of others that while I am not all that fully confident with, I do trust them with a weapon in hand. The rest of the class, however, I am not all that confident about putting live weapons in their hands. So, I shall get them started on further weapon training during our next class,” Nevala mentioned after a few brief moments of thought making their leader nod in some understanding before he then turned to look at Harriet making her almost inhale in some shock before smoothing out her features.

“From there Harriet I want every single member of the militia to be fully armed from now on. They have all of the veteran militia members retaining rifles in case of any further incursion into the colony from any threat,” he ordered her making her blink in some surprise at this order before nodding in understanding at this for before now the Maiori really did not want to seem like they were the old Romulan Star Navy or worse the old Tal Shiar with Romulan Colonies before the collapse of the old Star Empire. Hence, the colony militia of the Virinat Colony rarely if ever went about armed as a matter of course making the colony’s residents a bit more comfortable. However, with this latest incident, the colony residents would feel a bit safer to see the militia moving about armed.

“Understood, sir. We do have plenty of the old Class-3 Disrupter Pistols after all, and a few members of the Militia retain their own or family-owned weapons. Therefore, we shall get them all armed and ready by the start of the festival,” she replied making the Maiori nod at her before he shifted his gaze to his old chief engineer.

“Finally, D’vex I want you to get those wonderful young engineer assistants of yours getting a few more of the Environmental Suits we have converted to these new combat suits. As young Harriet here has proven them fully in combat,” he mentioned to the engineer who nodded himself at this order, smirking slightly at Harriet’s own small blush at the praise from their leader.

“Both Tarel and Nilani are not doing anything at the moment therefore I shall see about getting them to start converting another couple of the suits. It really shouldn’t take all that long as they had the materials set aside for a further two suits to be converted,” the calm old engineer mentioned with a nod of his head toward their leader who only nodded. Harriet almost snorted at this because both of those mentioned young engineers who had first put forth the idea of combat suits almost a year ago were quite excited about the project. However, both her mother and the Maiori had been cautious in having further suits converted and put a stop to any other conversions much to the disappointment of the engineers.

“Then D’vex I want you to look over those last two shuttles we got from that ryakna Marik at Drozana Station. After you do that, I want you to head back up to the Dahak and see about accelerating its retrofit into full service. As I am sure we all feel a bit more comfortable with a warbird once again in orbit,” the Maiori mentioned with a nod of his head at the other veteran Romulan who for the first time looked a bit surprised at his leader’s words. Harriet knew that it was mainly thanks to the Dahak, one of the wrecked Romulan warbirds in orbit of the colony which the leadership of the colony had started to bring back into service. It is an old T’liss Class Light Warbird that last saw major action during the various shadow battles between the Star Empire and the Federation nearly a century before now which would lead to the famous Tomed Incident. However, that wasn’t really the reason for the surprise of D’vex though as while the T’liss Class ship was quite similar to that of the newer T’varo Class like the Mairsuk it was even a tad smaller. No. Thanks to it being an older design, it needed a vastly larger crew than the newer T’varo a crew that the Militia didn’t have at the moment.

“Ah, sir, can we actually crew her with what little trained personnel we have right now?” D’vex finally managed to ask out loud now with a frown on his face. “Oh. I agree it would be great to have a viable and operational warbird in orbit, but I doubt we could actually crew it. Our naval training program has barely started after all.”

“We are going to have to find the crew for her somewhere D’vex. With the Mairsuk off on that damn fool mission I sent her on and now whatever this recent incident is about we need a viable combat ship ready and able to defend the colony. If we don’t then our people will suffer for it,” the Maiori declared with an almost cold voice which made all three members of the Militia and D’vex straighten up in attention at the almost command layered in their leader’s voice.

“That said I do not think it will be all that hard to find the needed crew for at least a short minimum crew for the Dahak. For example, I know several of our old crew would be more than willing to once again sail the stars to those that are not on the Mairsuk anyway. Then the Elder mentioned there were around a dozen or so older crewmen around the colony some former members of the Romulan Star Navy, like Avrak, and a few others were civilian spacers of the Empire’s small merchant fleet. All of which would be more than happy to join the crew of the Dahak for a limited time allowing us to get our naval training program together enough to scrap together a full crew for the ship,” the Maiori then mentioned after a few moments of silence in the officer with a quick nod to the aged woman sitting at his side. D’vex blinked in some surprise at this before he nodded.

“The rest of the old crew are willing to get back onboard a proper warbird. Huh,” the engineer mentioned almost to himself before snorting and shaking his head in what looked to be amazement, “Did not expect that. Still, I had forgotten that some of the colony’s civilians are former military like us.”

“Still, that will help, and yeah, using those old hands to give us much-needed breathing room would work,” the engineer continued on with a small smile on his usual expressionless face before it seemed to grow a tad larger as something seemed to come to him, “And we could then use the Dahak as a dedicated training ship for those new spacehands we train. By the spirits, this will work!”

“See I am not totally delusional,” the Maiori managed to say with a small smile of his own once more making the old engineer bark a short laugh at the quip. That done the colony’s leader moved his gaze over to the three members of the Militia remaining in his office.

“That said. I do believe I have detained you three enough. Go ahead and clean up for the festivities this evening,” the man mentioned with a little of wave his hand at the three of them seeing Nevala leading the other two a short bow to the man before leaving the office behind them making Harriet able to breathe normally once again.

“Tough day, wasn’t it?” Tovan said out of the blue making Nevala snort while Harriet only smiled and laughed freely at the quip. However, little did the young half-Romulan know that was going to be one of the last almost free-sounding laughs she would let out in quite a while as unseen darkness slowly started to close around the small colony.

-o-End-o-

Post Chapter Notes

Oomph! This chapter really did not go as I originally planned! For one it is quite a bit longer than I wanted it to be! It’s supposed to be a simple prelude to the real meat of the story, but it got blown up quite longer than that and included things that I do not know where they came from! Still, I did manage to include some things I wanted to do like Virinat having not one but two warbirds, the modern T’varo Class which Malem and his crew arrived at the colony in. While a second wrecked smaller T'liss Class was slowly being restored by the colony to further protect it from the various bad things happening throughout the space of the old Romulan Star Empire.

What I did not really originally plan for this chapter includes the whole bit about the half-dashed armored environmental suit being a thing and the Mairsuk being sent off on a distant mission along with Harriet’s mother. The former came to me when I recently started a second Romulan character for STO and noticed the workers around the Khellid Cave at Virinat sported Romulan EV Suits. That bit combined with knowledge of the colony using nectar from the Khellids to make some sort of wine gave me the idea of them being kind of like beekeepers and that the Khellids are more dangerous than a typical humble honeybee hence the need for the suits. This then got expanded on when it was mentioned how dangerous the Khellid warriors happened to be, and I had the thought that it would be interesting to introduce some sort of combat armor to the story. As STO is supposed to have characters wearing some sort of combat armor suits but thanks in part to players wanting to dress up their characters in various Star Trek Uniforms and other such outfits such as saw armor suits being invisible on characters. Grumble. I wish there was an option in the settings somewhere to turn off such a thing.

Speaking of which, I kind of went a bit strong with my Mass Effect fixation with the combat scene and the armor itself. I do apologize for that but I was going to see about coming back to my various Mass Effect projects for this month’s Camp National Novel Writing Month, but I suddenly got dragged into backstopping a friend in one of the events on STO which dragged my old STO story ideas to the front. Sigh. Still, I am going to see how much I can get this story written before my muse decides to chase another story idea. I do hope you enjoy it!

With that said, I need to mention that like I mentioned in the Foreword I am making up some of my own background info for this story. Part of this is the classification of Phasers used in this chapter. I know that in Canon the Type-1 is the Handheld Phaser, the Type-2 the regular Phaser Rifle, and the Type-3 the Compression Phaser Rifle. The rest of the Phaser Types would be used for shipboard phasers. All of which is used throughout history just with different versions used during the various eras of Star Trek history. However, I do not like this whole thing therefore did my own version. Handheld Phaser Types use regular English numerals, while Shipboard Phaser Types use the Roman Numerals which have higher numbers being the most modern version of the phaser. The example seen in the chapter is the Type-9-B Heavy Compression Phaser Rifle being the most modern version of the Starfleet Compression Phaser Rifles. Speaking of which the Compression Rifles further use a B suffix after the Type number to separate it from the regular Phaser Rifle it is based on. I hope this does make some sort of sense to you all, but I really did not like how that is arranged.

Oh. One more thing. When I was originally planning this story, I decided to use some ship names from David Weber’s Fifth Imperium series for my Romulan characters and my version of the Romulan Flotilla. Hence, the reason for the warbird mentioned in this chapter is to carry the name of Dahak. The name of Mairsuk is a bit more obscure and is one of the ships of the Imperial Guard seen at the end of the first book of series second novel, Armageddon Inheritance.

Okay. That is about it. Time to get to the next chapter which is where things really become a bit different from the game. As this is a novel and a fanfiction, things are going to be a bit different for the invasion of Virinat. Also, we get a first major clue on my major changes to the Romulan Flotilla and the so-called Romulan Republic. It is also going to be my first major space battle for a fandom like Star Trek which shall be interesting to write about if I do say myself. Still till then everyone!

deathzealotzero

Will post the second chapter of this tomorrow and with luck chapter three a day or two after that!

deathzealotzero

Chapter Two: A Darkness Falls

The sacking of Viriant Colony by the Tal Shiar and their Echani allies ended my formerly peaceful life and the start of the figure that would become known as the Republic’s Valkyrie and future Legate of the Romulan Republic’s Self-Defense Forces. Oh. Do not get me wrong, I was in the colony’s militia; therefore, it wasn’t all that peaceful. However, it differed from being a full member of the more professional and military-minded Free Romulan Militia. However, to this very day, I really do not know how I managed to survive that bloody evening of terror and chaos, not to mention those early missions I went on against the Tal Shiar. Was it my father’s spirit guiding me, as my mother told me years later during our reunion, or was it some sort of divine providence that D’tan liked to talk about? I do not know; I am just thankful that I managed to live through it and become the person I am today…

- Taken from an Interview with retired Legate Harriet Hursag by Scholar M’Ran of the University of New Romulus to put together a book about the formation of the Romulan Republic

-o-o-o-

Militia Headquarters
Virinat Colony
April 5, 2409CE (Human Calendar)
Stardate 85259

It did not take Harriet all that long to get cleaned up, for her residence wasn’t that far from the Maiori’s, thanks to her mother being the head of the colony’s Militia. Still, she quickly took a much-needed shower and put on a new militia uniform before heading back to Militia Headquarters. This time with a Class-09 Disrupter Pistol already holstered at her side, and she carried the Type-VIII Heavy Compression Phaser Rifle over one shoulder. She had gotten a liking for the weapon during the earlier incident. While it was heavier than the handful of smaller Class-03 Disruptor Rifles, the colony had she could easily carry it like this due in part to her Romulan heritage. She soon arrived at the headquarters and appeared to be just in time to witness the deputization ceremony for the several Militia Apprentices of Nevana’s Training Class. She internally frowned at the excited looks of the majority of the new members of the Militia sported on their faces. Either they were not told the reason for their rushed deputization into the militia or did not care all that much for they were finally in the Militia.

‘Uh Oh. Not everyone is excited,’ she thought as she met the eyes of her friend Raholi also cleaned up from the incident earlier and was now in a militia uniform. The other redhead was frowning at the almost expressionless form of her adopted mother as she finished a small speech to the new members of the Militia. She also noticed the figure of Del’el a tall young male Romulan at the side of Raholi who was frowning at something or another as he silently listened to Nevala’s speech to the rest of their fellow now deputized apprentices. No. Those two knew something was up and did not like what was going on.

“Hello Harriet,” came the almost quiet voice of her cousin Vorian as he came up alongside her almost making her jump in surprise, “And what is making you frown now.”

“Raholi and Del’el know something is up and do not like it at all,” she almost whispered to her cousin who sighed at this as he looked over their new fellow militia members before he suddenly snorted as he too noticed the excitement shining on their faces.

“Were we that excited when we were deputized?” he questioned with a small smile making Harriet’s frown vanish and dragging a laugh out of her. Reminding her that while Vorian was a year younger than her he had joined the militia at the same time she did therefore were in the same training class.

“Yes, and no. Yes, we were excited, but we grew up with mom’s stories of the Dominion War and therefore had an idea of what was expected of us. It didn’t help that we had old man Biruk as our instructor and not Nevala,” she mentioned with a quick smile and shake of her head making her cousin seem to almost shiver at the mention of their old instructor.

“Gah. You had to mention him, didn’t you!?! I thought I had forgotten all about those painful lessons he had given us,” Vorian mentioned with almost seemed like a whine, but Harriet knew he was overacting for her benefit to cheer her up.

“Sorry. Luckily for these guys he is with my mother on the old Mairsuk and that half-damned mission the Maiori sent her on,” she said almost bitterly before shaking her head with a sigh and looking over at her cousin to see him looking at her a bit worried. It was then she noticed that even with his arm in a sling he had one of the old Disruptor Pistol holstered at his side.

“Are you going to be alright with your arm?” she asked him, making him shrug with his good shoulder.

“It is good for now and I can fight with it if needed but the healers think I should stay off of it for now. Besides it's good that I can shoot with either hand and that is why the holster is on the opposite side of my good arm,” he explained making her nod in some understanding before a sudden loud rushing sounds of impulse engines made everyone around the headquarters just in time to see the thick-winged form of the modified Jarok Class Sloop Nergal flying over the colony towards the colony’s spaceport underneath the other wing of the old crashed T’liss Class Warbird.

“Well, it looks like your girlfriend and the others are back from the supply run,” Harriet mentioned with a small smile on her face making her cousin blush green at the teasing. She knew that, like her Vorian had been introduced to human culture slightly via her mother thanks in part to her relationship with Harriet’s father. Therefore, knew what girlfriend meant.

“She isn’t my girlfriend! Bilaka is just a very good friend,” he replied with narrowed eyes at his cousin making her chuckle slightly as she patted him on his good shoulder.

“Keep telling herself that cousin of mine,” she said with a smirk before turning away from the headquarters, “Still I am sure they are going to need some help unloading. So let’s start to move towards the spaceport. Nevala has it from here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Vorian replied with a nod of his towards her and started to follow now knowing it would be the last time they saw those three youthful and excited faces of the new members of the colony’s militia. Alive anyways.

deathzealotzero

Central Square
Few Hours Later

With the Maiori’s introduction speech finished the Tapping Festival was in full swing with numerous residents of the colony starting to consume from the various food stands that surrounded the colony’s large Central Square. They also were drinking not only basic Romulan ale but the colony’s own branded Sweet Wine as they went about having a good time with their fellow romulans. At the edge of the square, the figure of Harriet smiled and was a bit pleased that her fellow residents of the colony were having a good time. The last few months hadn’t been the best really with the various rumors of the independent Romulan colonies being attacked and the news they had been getting from the still ongoing Federation-Klingon which was tearing apart the Alpha Quadrant in chaos. Then there were both incidents with the Khellids with a good amount of their food crops managing to be damaged by the Khellids attacking the crops and with this latest incident, another smaller portion had been destroyed by the water from the chewed-on pipes drowning them.

Frowning she sipped on a glass of Sweet Kuva Juice that was made from Khellid Nectar and a tropical fruit grown in their enclosed Greenhouse. She really shouldn’t be drinking anything at all as she was on duty after all, but she knew that she had to at least try out the juice because her aunt was one of the figures who had originally created the drink. Pausing, she raised an eyebrow in some interest for this brand of her aunt’s juice was a tad bit different from the version created for last year’s tapping festival. She took another sip and almost whistled in some interest for apparently her aunt was using the small amount of Terran Apples they had received in the last supply run to create this juice. It made quite a sweet, but slightly bitter, juice. Almost reminding her of the single time they had tasted Terran Orange Juice.

Shaking her head from her thoughts on the juice she turned to continue observing her fellow colony residents and reached a hand to set her glass on a nearby table before tightening the shoulder strap of the Phaser Rifle carried over her shoulder. She wished she could have once again worn the new Prototype Combat Suit, but those young engineers were in the process of updating it slightly after rapidly putting together two more suits. Both of which had some upgrades thanks in part to her brief operational report on it and the data the engineers got from the suit’s computer. Still, both of these new suits were now being worn by both Tovan and Raholi during their own patrols of the square. Hopefully, the heavy suits would help them prevent any fights from breaking out among the partying residents. From here she could see the pair of them on the opposite side of the square. Smiling, she could vaguely see that Tovan was trying to flirt with the younger Raholi but she wasn’t having it and continued on with her patrol stern-faced behind her helmet’s faceshield. Harriet knew that the other redhead was still quite upset about forcibly being deputized by her adopted mother into the Militia. Even though she did know something was up, she had actually liked her job at the Vineyard and didn’t like being in the Militia. She was only in the training class to learn to better defend herself in case it was needed. Not to mention slight pressure from her adopted mother. Therefore, Tovan was only flirting with her to try to at least make the younger woman smile at least once, something the older Romulan had done to Harriet more than a few times during their partnership.

Once more she turned her attention back to the partying romulans she could vaguely see the Maiori talking to a few residents near the square’s central stage. He had a glass of sweet wine in one hand while smiling and talking with another of the older residents of the colony, Elder C’ora Naatam while her Aunt Verina was nodding along to something the Elder was saying to the Maiori. She smiled at this quite pleased that her Aunt was enjoying herself, as she had been working really hard to get her juices ready for the Festival over the past few days. Her eyes then were drawn to an approaching figure, a figure that she almost groaned in some annoyance seeing right now.

“Harriet! Come and join the fun,” the figure of N’arra Gev, a tall almost strong-looking male Romulan drunkenly called out to her. N’arra had originally been one of her bullies when they were both young, but when she reached her late teens, the man had noticed her beauty and started to romantically pursue her instead of bullying her anymore. However, she had wanted nothing to do with him, as his earlier bullying kind of killed any thought of dating him.

“N’arra you know I can’t. I am currently on duty after all,” she calmly informed him with a stern frown on her face as she stared at him. However, the man seemed like he didn’t even hear her and just threw an arm, thick with muscles, over her thin shoulders with a boisterous drunk-sounding laugh.

“Oh, come on! It’s the tapping festival after all, time for you to let your hair down and have some fun,” he managed to slur to her trying to lead her towards what looked to be a dance floor in the central part of the square. However, she simply smiled sweetly and pulled her pistol, flipping it over to its stun setting, and pointed at him. Thanking once more that the colony had the Class-9 Pistols instead of the newer Class-12 which didn’t even have a stun setting.

“No, N’arra. As I said, I am on duty. Therefore, if you try to do anything stupid, I will stun your TRIBBLE and throw you in the Headquarter’s Brig to cool off for the rest of the festival. Now please leave me alone as I am going to start my patrol now,” she mentioned to him coldly staring up at his taller figure. The man suddenly noticed the pistol and could only stare at it in some surprise before he started to slowly back off with an almost ugly-looking frown on his face. The appearance of the pistol somewhat managed to sober him up. However, Harriet did not like the now ugly look on his face, but she simply narrowed her eyes at him.

“Okay, no need to threaten me Hevam-blood,” he replied in some anger and a glare at her before starting to angrily walk off towards a trio of other young Romulan males who were now looking at her in some surprise. She quickly recognized them as close friends of N’arra before she sighed in some anger herself at the slur that he had called her. That had been one of the more creative insults her childhood bullies had called her over the years. Basically, calling her human blood or just bad blood.

“You alright Harriet,” came the soft understanding voice of her cousin Vorian at her side. She turned slightly in some surprise to see the young man had managed to make it to her side without seeing him. Sighing, she shook her head and holstered her pistol with almost a snarl.

“Yes, and no. I think I finally stopped the advances of N’arra cold but will now have him as an enemy instead,” she managed to say after a moment of some thought staring at her cousin from the corner of her eye making him sigh as well. He was staring at the now four young Romulan males who were now bugging another young woman further into the partying figures of the colony residents.

“I do agree with that,” he managed to say in response before shaking his head to clear it. He shrugged his good shoulder and turned back to look at her.

“Still nothing to it, let’s get started on our patrol,” he directed her with a nod towards reveling figures of the other colony residents. Sighing, Harriet nodded at this before starting to move towards the square itself before both she and Vorian were distracted as a series of loud groaning and whining sounds could be heard. Almost shaking the walls with its loudness, and then with an almost quick snapping sound, a large beam of energy suddenly speared from somewhere above them and cut through a nearby building making it explode into several large pieces. One of these pieces managed to hit Harriet’s side sending her spinning away from Vorian and blacking out slightly from the force. Luckily for her the Personal Shield Device she was wearing automatically activated right before the piece of debris hit her preventing any real serious injury from the hit. Still, the hit managed to overload the shield shutting the entire device down thanks to the strain.

deathzealotzero

What seemed like a few moments went by before Harriet once again was aware of something happening. She quickly became aware that she was on her back and looking up at the night sky of the colony. A sky that wasn’t a regular-looking starscape but a massive-sized blackened hull of some unknown ship now hovering over the colony firing green-colored energy beams at different targets across the colony. Around her, she could see that fires had started all around the area. It was then that she started to hear sounds, and she was shocked to hear screams of panic along with moans of people in pain. She tried to get up but was roughly shoved back down as a black boot slammed into her shoulder making her groan in some surprise. Looking to one side she could see a pair of stern-faced male Romulans in the uniforms of the Tal Shiar making her eyes widen in some surprise at this appearance of something she only heard about in stories from her mother. Both of them carried what looked to be brand-new Class-15 Disrupter Rifles in their hands, with one now pointing down at her face. She could see that the other Tal Shiar soldier had a boot on top of her Phaser Rifle which was right next to her. This particular soldier was looking down at the rifle in some distaste while the first soldier was eying her.

However, before either soldier could do anything or even say anything to her a pair of light-green colored disrupter energy beams hit them making their shields flare in response. This saw the two of them turn their attention towards where those beams had come from, pointing their rifles in that direction as well. However, Harriet wasn’t about to do nothing as she lay here and quickly drew her own pistol, flipping it over to its highest setting as she did so, and fired it upwards towards the Romulan man still standing over her. While her other hand moved towards her belt and the Personal Shield Device attached to said belt before hitting the reset switch on the device. The heavy disrupter beam went upwards and hit the weakened forward shield of the soldier before flaring slightly and suddenly sparking as it went down. This let the reminder of the heavy beam hit the lower chest of the soldier who yelped in some surprise and shock from the pain from the pistol-rated beam before another vastly heavier beam from her saviors hit him making him scream out as his form dissolved into green-colored ashes.

The second soldier seemed to only blink at this and soon a second disrupter beam hit him overloading his shields with a distinct whining sound from his shield device. Still, he didn’t let this shock prevent him from firing his own weapon and started to fire back in response toward her saviors. That, however, didn’t last long as another heavy disruptor beam hit him piercing right through the tunic of his uniform and his body making him look down at his now ruined chest in some surprise before seeming to sigh and falling down to the ground dead. Harriet meanwhile sighed in some relief before reaching a hand to drag the Phaser Rifle towards her and started to struggle to get up from the ground. A beep sounded and her own shield suddenly snapped into place around her form. As she managed to sit up, she noticed the suited forms of Tovan and Raholi coming down towards her from a short thruster hop across the now chaotic-looking central square.

“Harry! Are you alright?” came the call from Tovan as he landed next to her now sitting up form, while Raholi landed next to another bloodied form nearby. A form Harriet was shocked to see was her cousin, Vorian, making her cry out in some shock. This sight gave her the needed boost and got her back onto her feet before she quickly scrambled to the side of Raholi. Now kneeling at the head of Vorian and with a whimper Harriet realized that her sweet cousin was pretty much dead. His now sightless eyes were staring up at the sky, while a large wooden beam had pierced through his chest.

“Harriet, we need to go! Come on,” came Raholi’s voice in her ear, while Tovan placed a hand on her shoulder. It wasn’t her two friends’ voice calling to her that shook her out of her own shock at the death of her cousin, but a scream that came from somewhere nearby. The scream of a young child. Jolting up she brought her rifle towards the source of the scream to find a young female Romulan child scrambling around the corner of a nearby building while a form of two further Romulan Tal Shiar soldiers raced after her. However, the two soldiers were soon blasted back by one heavy phaser beam and two heavy disruptor beams making the child fall to the ground in tears. Getting up from her kneeling position Harriet moved to scoop up the child and looked down at her tear-stained face, before looking once more back at her the dead form of her cousin before sighing and turning towards the forms of her friends.

“Okay, apparently the Tal Shiar decided to pay Virinat a visit, and I am sure there are plenty of troops all across the colony. Heavily outnumbering us but we cannot let that deter us as we need to do two things,” she started to mention passing the child over to the waiting arms of Tovan.

“The first is to save what civilians we can and get them over to the shuttles. From here it looks like the Spaceport is still intact enough so we can launch them. Secondly, we need to get the colony’s communications back up to send off a distress call about the Tal Shiar attacking us like this,” she continued on with a nod towards a nearby communication station which was sparking and unusable

“While my mother and the Mairsuk will be too far to respond to said call, it doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be others out there willing to help us,” she explained seeing the surprised glances of her two friends.

“Tovan, I want you to get to the spaceport and see about helping D’vex get the shuttles ready for lift-off. As last I heard he was preparing to head up to the Dahak with an engineering crew to start its further retrofit to make it fully operational,” she ordered the older Romulan man who nodded at his orders before Harriet turned to look at Raholi who was keeping an eye on their surroundings. However, before she said anything to the other woman she looked up at her with a frown on her face.

“I shall go with Tovan, as with his arms full of the kid he is going to need someone to support him,” she mentioned making Harriet chuckle slightly at this before nodding in agreement with her.

“Wait, what about Harriet? She is going to need someone with her as well if she goes off to get the colony’s comms back up and running,” Tovan mentioned with a frown of his own as he looked up from staring down at the child in his arms who stopped crying and was staring at the three of them with a curious air while the three adults suddenly looked over to one side as rapid sounds of a nearby firefight pretty much answered Tovan’s question.

“I shall see about meeting up with whoever that happens to be before I get started on repairing the communications,” Harriet mentioned after a moment of silence between the three of them before turning to stare at Tovan, “Go Tovan. I shall be fine.”

At this, both Tovan and Raholi nodded before engaging the combat suit thrusters sending off towards the distant spaceport. Harriet calmly watched them go for a moment and turned to spare a quick look back down at her dead cousin at her feet. She briefly leaned down and closed the eyes of the young Romulan before patting his now pale cheek.

“Bed Aoi Isa Rihan,” she whispered in Old Romulan to him before sighing and starting to move towards the distant firefight going on not far from her position. She hoped she would be in time to save whoever that happened to be as she did not want to find even more dead friends and family. Sadly, she was sure that wouldn’t happen and she would stumble on plenty of dead people that she would know much to her sadness.

deathzealotzero

Courtyard
Virinat Colony

It didn’t take all that long for Harriet to maneuver through the now chaotic-looking and on-fire colony buildings towards the firefight. She almost lost any sort of hope for any ally surviving when the sounds started to die off but when she peeked around the edge of the last building, she was surprised to find the figure of Avrak now kneeling along with two other romulans in the clothes of colony workers before a figure of a Tal Shiar soldier. Around them, were the bodies of two other colonists and several other Tal Shiar soldiers. All looked to be killed by disrupter blasts. Giving the impression that the colonists fought back against the Tal Shiar. A second Tal Shiar soldier was checking the bodies while grimacing as he held one side of his chest where a disrupter beam had pierced through his shields. Turning her attention to the first soldier, she saw him staring down at an angry-looking Avrak who looked ready to lecture the younger Romulan but stayed his tongue much to Harriet’s surprise.

“We have been ordered to round up any of you unloyal colonists, but I do not think the Empire will need the trouble any of you could bring. Therefore, consider this your termination,” the Tal Shiar mentioned as he brought up his rifle, but was in turn surprised by a snort from Avrak.

“Are you a fool or just plain stupid?” Avrak mentioned with a shake of his head. This made the Tal Shiar look down at him in some confusion even with the insults. “The Empire is dead. Has been for the last twenty years or so. What is left is just a corpse that thinks it is still alive.”

This made both Tal Shiar freeze in surprise at this comment before they both started to glare at Avrak who just calmly stared up at the towering Tal Shiar soldier who was now snarling in anger and bringing up his rifle. However, Harriet didn’t let the man even squeeze the trigger and opened fire with her heavy phaser rifle at the standing man who didn’t have time to blink in surprise before he crumpled to the ground with a large hole in his chest. His shields did not have the time to reset after the recent firefight. The second Tal Shiar soldier saw the first go down and was trying to whip up a smaller Class-12 Dispruter Pistol towards her direction, but Harriet just calmly shot him as well making him nearly scream as he was disintegrated into red-colored ashes by the heavy phaser beam. That done Harriet took another quick look around the area seeing that there was no one else in the small courtyard that she found herself in before she moved around the corner of the building. Avrak was already back on his feet and had retrieved the Class-15 Rifle from the body in front of him. At her approach, he turned his newly acquired weapon towards her briefly before seeming to sigh in some relief at her appearance before lowering the rifle.

“Harriet. I am very glad to see you,” the man said with a small smile on his rugged face before he turned towards the two that had been kneeling next to him. The first Harriet was happy to see was the figure of Maleth Crux a Romulan man around the same age as Avrak who had been for the longest time trying to woo Harriet’s Aunt. From what she understood the man had once been a security officer for the old Star Navy who instead of joining the Militia like others of his profession instead became a general farmhand for the colony and normally worked in the smaller Eastern Fields. The other figure Harriet quickly recognized was the young engineer A’vix who had most likely helped Avrak get the pumps in the Northern Fields working after she had cleared out the Khellids from them earlier.

“Same Avrak. I have already seen a couple of people I cared for being killed by those who own these ships,” Harriet replied with a nod upwards towards the floating ships. Maleth froze at this from looting another Tal Shiar corpse looking up at her with an ashen-looking face a Class Fifteen rifle easily fitting in his large hands, while a personal shield device was already attached to his belt.

“Vorian was killed in the opening shots,” she mentioned with a shake of her head making Maleth unfreeze before wincing in some pain.

“Sorry to hear about that Harriet. He will be missed,” the man mentioned with his typical soft voice and a sigh of sadness of his own. Maleth had liked Vorian and enjoyed teasing him about the young man’s crush he had on the Bilaka another young Romulan. Nodding at him Harriet turned her attention back to Avrak.

“Think you and A’vix can get the colony’s communications back in some sort of order to send out a distress call?” she asked the older Romulan who blinked at her in some surprise as he was helping A’vix up from her earlier kneeling position. Before he exchanged looks with the equally surprised A’vix before looking back at her.

“I believe we can Harriet, but why there is no one out there willing to help us with these Tal Shiar Goons attacking us?” he asked now a frown of confusion on his face. Harriet sighed at this before shaking her head.

“Not really. Yes, there aren’t that many out there willing to step in and help an independent colony like us, especially with a force like the Tal Shiar attacking us, but that doesn’t matter. We can get the word out that it is the Tal Shiar who are attacking the outlying colonies that we have been hearing rumors about over the past couple of months,” Harriet explained making Avrak blink in some surprise before he nodded in some understanding as he eyed the various bodies of Tal Shair Soldiers that were sprawled all around them.

“That does neatly explain things, doesn’t it?” he asked out loud before nodding at A’vix who was now looking far better than she was earlier, and turning to look at Harriet.

“Alright let’s do this,” he mentioned with an almost crazed-looking smile on his face. Harriet nodded pleased at this before jutting her chin at the other bodies.

“You got everything you guys needed from them? Like Personal Shield Devices? Extra weapons and power packs,” she asked and was quickly pleased that the three of them quickly nodded their answer at her. Avrak just tapped a long finger against a shield device now mounted on his belt with a little chuckle. This made Harriet roll her eyes slightly at him before turning to address all three of them.

“Okay, we are heading for the heavy communication terminal near the Maiori’s Residence. It should be the easiest to repair any of the other terminals. Not to mention the most robust with it being former military rated,” she ordered before starting towards the opposite side of the small courtyard heading towards the residence of the colony’s leader. The other three colonial Romulans followed behind her slowly eying every shadowed corner for any enemy to jump out at them.

deathzealotzero

Maiori’s Residence
Virinat Colony

A few minutes later found the four of them now right outside the Maiori’s Residence and quickly found the damaged communication terminal along one wall of the residence. Both engineers of their little group quickly got to work repairing it while Harriet and Maleth kept watch out for further Tal Shiar soldiers. As they did so Harriet could only stare out at the colony in some anger and sadness with various out-of-control fires consuming everything along with the distant panicked screams. All of which had the weird-looking ships continuing to hover over the colony almost passively without firing anything else after that first barrage. This sight was something directly from Harriet’s nightmares brought to life making her briefly wonder why the Tal Shiar and whoever owned those weird ships attacked them. They had been just living peacefully and not even doing anything to the Tal Shiar like providing any assistance to the various groups fighting them over the past couple of years.

“Do not let this get to you Harriet,” came the soft almost calm-like voice of Maleth from her side his own eyes sweeping across the nearby approaches to the Maiori’s Residence for any enemies coming towards them. This drew Harriet’s attention to the older Romulan, making her raise an eyebrow at him in some confusion at his statement. With a sigh, the older Romulan nodded to the chaos that was happening around them in their own formerly peaceful home.

“Yes, all of this is a terrible and sad sight. No questions about that. However, you cannot let that sadness and anger you get from this sight get to you. That way is what drove many of our fellow Romulans to become what they are today. Like those Tal Shiar soldiers, for example, for those in this new Romulan Star Empire. Therefore, be better than them and yes, be angry about this but do not let it rule you,” the man mentioned with that typical soft voice of his making Harriet look a bit closer at him seeing the pain and sadness deep in his eyes along with hidden in his face. Thanks to this she was sure that this was not the first time he had seen something like this before now. Sighing she could nod at him before turning to once again scan for further enemies trying to approach her little group.

“Thank you Maleth,” she mentioned after a brief moment of silence between the two of them just in time to see several of her fellow colonials running towards the Maiori Residence with several Tal Shiar soldiers chasing them. Frowning she exchanged a quick look with Maleth before advancing and taking cover behind a ruined pillar before finally turning her attention to the two engineers who had started to look up at the appearance of many new people coming towards them.

“We have several contacts approaching us! Both friendlies and enemies. However we will deal with them, you two keep on going with those repairs,” she ordered before turning her attention to the incoming innocents and the chasing enemy threats. She exchanged one final nod with Maleth before starting to open fire with her phaser rifle at the incoming Tal Shiar soldiers who all stopped chasing the innocent civilians and broke apart to find their cover. Still, this time she was firing at full power, which should hopefully make it easier to bring down the shields on the enemy soldiers. One soldier seemed to sigh and just stop before flopping to the ground as her shot hit him in the chest after a shot from Maleth stripped his shields. Another enemy soldier was cut in a deadly crossover of beams from both her phaser rifle and C’harr’s disruptor rifle tearing him apart brutally. Then a final soldier screamed as he was disintegrated into bright-red cinders and dust as a full-powered phaser blast from her rifle hit him in the chest. A second later every single one of the Tal Shiar soldiers where down either injured or dead while the civilians were left to blink outright shock at their survival.

“Move! All of you get behind some cover and wait,” Harriet finally said as she stood straight up and waved her arms towards the ruined front end of a nearby house. One she was quite aware of was Nevala’s house. The various civilians, after being frozen in surprise for some moments were quick to move to cower behind the various pieces of debris that littered the former front yard of the house. Nodding Harriet turned her attention to the two engineers and saw Avrak now sporting a small smile and nodding to A’vex who was nodding with some relief herself.

“Harriet! Communications are now back up! We also managed to link in one of the old orbital communication arrays as well,” the man managed to report making Harriet sigh in some relief at this statement.

“Alright get over here Avrak and take over. I shall see about sending out that distress call,” she ordered the man who blinked back in some surprise before sighing and nodding in understanding before starting to move towards her covered position. Harriet moved as well meeting the man halfway and exchanged nods with him once more before crouching at the front of the communication terminal. Frowning she first entered the code for the terminal located at the spaceport and was pleased to find it working. A moment later the face of Tovan was on the small screen built into the terminal.

“Harriet! I see you managed to get the communications working!” he mentioned in some relief at her appearance. She smiled slightly at this for she was quite pleased to see him alive and well before nodding slightly.

“Yes, I ran into Avrak, Maleth, and A’vex they all helped me fix this terminal. Anyways. Report Tovan. Are those shuttles ready for launch or not? Also, did you manage to start getting civilians into the spaceport?” she asked him after a moment of thought, making him look over his shoulder at what was most likely the first of the shuttle pads and the shuttle on top of it.

“All shuttles are online and ready to launch. Then between the civilians that have recently arrived at the spaceport’s gate and those we managed to run into on our way here, there are somewhere about three hundred or so people waiting to be evacuated from the colony. Though we still have plenty of room for more people if we need it,” Tovan reported making Harriet nod in some understanding before frowning.

“What about the Nergal? Is it ready to launch?” she asked him and was a bit surprised to see the almost grim look on her friend’s face.

“That unknown ship managed to destroy it in the opening salvo along with a few members of the Militia and Spaceport Workers that were inspecting it after its mission. The explosion also managed to damage a couple of the other shuttles and other craft we had stored in. So, we currently only have five shuttles ready to launch,” he replied making Harrier sigh and shake her head at this before frowning in some concern. She just remembered that the majority of the shuttles stored at the spaceport were small Tiercel Shuttles which at most could carry around eight to ten people in its interior cabin, not including two crew in the cockpit. She knew that they could, in an emergency, carry fifteen passengers, but that still wasn’t enough space for everyone they managed to save.

“Can they take all of the civilians we can save to the dry dock facility and the Dahak?” she asked him after this realization and was quite surprised by the man’s fierce grin on his face.

“They should, as those shuttles the Maiori mentioned earlier? They are those heavy cargo shuttles the Ferengi have been selling to anyone forever. Therefore, no worries if we can carry all of them. If all five shuttles were of this type, we could carry the colony’s entire population!” he replied making Harriet smile very slightly in response pleased that they could carry every single one of the civilians they managed to save from the now ruined colony. She had a moment of being impressed that five shuttles of that type could carry the entire population of the colony, which is something like six thousand or so people.

“Understood. Get those shuttles ready to lift. After I send off that distress call, I am going to start heading towards you with a group of civilians that just showed up here at the Maiori’s Residence. Hopefully, I can gather further civilians as we go, but I doubt we will find that many more, from what I understand talking with Avrak and the others briefly the Tal Shiar are gathering them all up before beaming them somewhere else,” she mentioned making Tovan seem to almost snarl in anger of his own before nodding in some understanding.

“I understand. We shall be waiting for you! And Harriet be careful out there,” Tovan replied before signing off from the communication. With that done Harriet quickly brought up another option on the terminal, one that would transmit her distress call across subspace via the orbital communication array. After a moment she nodded and took a deep breath before starting to record the message.

“To anyone that is hearing this message, this is the Virinat Colony, an independent colony in the Japori Sector. We are currently under attack by the Tal Shiar and some sort of unknown alien ship. We are only innocent farmers and have no real quarrel with that of the new Romulan Star Empire. They just attacked us with no warning at all killing many of us before dragging the remaining colonists somewhere unknown. If you hear this message, please be aware that this may happen to you. Please be safe out there,” she managed to say before entering the command to send the message to the Communication Array. However, soon afterward the terminal started sparking and smoking leading her to leap away from it. Frowning she hoped that the message got through before the terminal was destroyed. She sighed and turned away from it before sweeping her gaze over the waiting figures of her little party and of the still-cowering civilians.

“Alright let us start towards the Spaceport. That is the only way to get out of here,” she mentioned out loud to them all before turning to look at her small party, “Avrak you and A’vix are to follow behind the group while I and Maleth take up the front position. Now let us go before more Tal Shiar shows up!”

With that said she started to lead her small group towards the distant spaceport facility hidden along the side of the crashed and now-burning hull of the T’liss Light Warbird that crash-landed here all those years ago. Frowning Harriet could only give one glance at the now burning hulk that was the Maiori’s Residence and that of her own childhood home a few houses down. Shaking her head, she continued onwards and didn’t look back again.

deathzealotzero

Spaceport Facility
Virinat Colony

Thankfully for the small group, they didn’t run into any real sort of larger threat with only small groups of Tal Shiar soldiers sweeping through the colony for remaining civilians that ran from the opening attack. All of these were easily countered by the armed members of the group which itself grew as a couple of other armed people joined them as they went on towards the Spaceport. Mainly a couple of the remaining members of the Militia and one or two older veteran Romulans with their weapons or weapons stolen from the Tal Shiar. Thanks to this they managed to rescue another dozen or so other unarmed civilians as they went on including a few people who were in the process of being not so-gently hauled out of collapsed buildings by the Tal Shiar. Still, they managed to make it to the gates of the colony’s spaceport soon afterward and were able to witness a small group of Tal Shiar attacking the gates which were easily cut down by the armored figures of Tovan and Raholi along with a couple of other armed Romulans on the top of the gate.

“Come on Harriet! We don’t have all that much time as a larger now fully armed and armored is gathering in the Central Square to attack us here,” Tovan yelled down from his position. Harriet only nodded and shepherded her group through the gates into the spaceport proper. As she did, she was able to look around and was easily able to guess that somewhere around four hundred or so of the colony’s population had gathered safely in the spaceport waiting for the shuttles to launch. Sadly, that was still a very small percent of the colony’s overall larger population with the rest either dead or gathered by those Tal Shiar gathering parties they had encountered since then the opening attack.

With a good tally in mind, Harriet turned her attention to the Spaceport itself and blinked in some surprise to find a few spaceport workers along with a couple of other members of the Militia preparing the shuttles for launch. D’vex wasn’t anywhere to be seen making her sigh in some sadness before she looked at the shuttles themselves. Three of them were the Romulan Tiercel Class Shuttle which had been standard for the use of the Star Navy for around a century or so by this point. Just like she thought earlier, but the other two shuttles she was able to recognize were Ferengi-built Ba’Kar Class Shuttles which are slightly redesigned old Starfleet Class D Heavy Cargo Shuttles that the Ferengi had been selling to anyone with the Gold-Plated Latium for almost four decades. Harriet could easily guess that her mother and the Maiori had planned on using those shuttles to help the Nergal on her cargo runs, but now these two shuttles would instead transport the vast majority of her colony’s people to some form of safety.

Sighing she turned away as Tovan and Raholi leaped down from the gates next to her with their armor’s thrusters while a few other members of the Militia made it to her side along with several others who like Avrak and Maleth who are veteran former Star Navy personnel with weapons or just ready to be useful in some form. She was pleased to see that D’nal, Rilal, and D’ara the other remaining veteran members of the Militia managed to arrive here along with Del’el the other recently inducted Militia member alongside Raholi. Sighing, she could see that none of the other newly inducted members of the militia had managed to make it to the spaceport. Then there was the figure of Bilaka who had been told of Varien’s death thanks to the almost devastated look on her face which made Harriet give her a quick nod and sad smile before turning to address them all.

“Let’s start getting them all in the shuttles now before that Tal Shiar attack group gets here,” she ordered, and they all nodded at her with resolute expressions on their faces.

“Tovan and Raholi get back on top of the gate to keep watch,” she ordered the two who only nodded and quickly took the air once with their thrusters easily getting back up to the top of the Gate. This done she turned her attention to other members of the Militia, all of which had thankfully some training in piloting the shuttles in some way.

“D’nal, D’ara, Rilal, and Bilaka you four each pick a single shuttle and start herding civilians onboard. I shall do the same with the final shuttle before picking up Tovan and Raholi before we take off. Also, make sure you take a couple of our veteran fellows with you when you do. Then we get everyone gathered here onboard we launch heading for the orbital dry dock facility where we can all board the Dahak,” she ordered them making all nod at their order before starting to move on towards each shuttle easily taking a couple of the veteran Romulans along with them.

She was pleased to see that Bilaka, most likely their best pilot, had chosen one of the larger Ba’Kar Shuttles. A shuttle design she had heard was not easy to pilot. Still, Harriet turned away from this seeing that she was left with Avrak and Del’el the other newly sworn Militia member along with a couple of other veteran Star Navy members. That was done over the following several minutes he along with her own smaller group started to herd civilians onboard the closest shuttle to the Spaceport’s gate before finally all of the civilians were onboard the five shuttles. That done Harriet slipped into the co-pilot’s seat, cursing herself for not having joined the various piloting classes most of the Militia went through over the years. Still, she didn’t let that deter her as she knew Tovan had some piloting experience and with that in mind, she quickly connected the shuttle’s comm with that of Tovan’s suit along with the other shuttles.

“That’s it Tovan we are all onboard, get back here now! All other Shuttles prepare for liftoff,” she ordered the man who didn’t even reply and soon the man himself ran into the cockpit before throwing himself into the pilot’s seat and his hands quickly started to fly over the control panels bringing the shuttle fully online.

“The shuttle is secure for launch! Go!” came the voice of Raholi over the comms unit and Tovan didn’t waste time starting to bring the shuttle into the sky alongside the forms of the other shuttles. Harriet saw that the attack group was just racing for the gates and sighed in some relief that they managed to make it before that group of fully armored Tal Shiar goons managed to make it to the spaceport. Still, she leaned forward towards the cockpit’s viewport and eyed the unknown alien ship which she was half expecting to attack the shuttles as they launched or at least snag them with tractor beams for more easy capture of their passengers. However, the ship was quite silent and just seemed to let them go. She hoped that didn’t mean that there was another ship waiting for them in orbit or something like that but as they exited Virinat’s atmosphere that worry was for nothing. As there was nothing directly in orbit of the planet, that any of the shuttle’s sensors could detect anyway. She was sure there was something, like a full starship, cloaked in orbit for it was the Tal Shiar after all and she remembered the horror stories told to her by her mother about them during her time in the Star Navy.

“Okay. Tovan head for the Drydock,” she ordered the man while she leaned against the back of the co-pilot’s seat in some sadness watching a screen showing the shuttle’s aft view and the vast disappearing view of her home.

“Understood,” came the curt response from her friend and with that, the five shuttles filled with several hundred civilians from an innocent farming colony leaped forward at full impulse taking them into the colony’s orbital debris ring leaving behind the burning remains of their home.

-o-End-o-

deathzealotzero

Post Chapter Notes

Oh, jeez! This chapter kind of fought me when writing it! Grumble. I pretty much ignored it for a few days to write some other things thanks to this due to the difficulties I was having. However, after some time away I managed to easily finish it. Still, I do have some issues with it and have removed a few things from the chapter as I was not all that pleased with what I wrote for those pieces. Mostly a more Jedi-like lecture from the one character in this chapter. Not to mention as usual things kind of got away from me, like the addition of two more modified combat suits from the last chapter, while other things like mentioned I did not like were they going which have been removed. Sigh. Anyways. I am glad I managed to get through this chapter finally.

That said. Something interesting kind of baffled me when I was writing the spaceport scene and coming up with the hard numbers for the saved colonist civilians. I was like, okay, in the game there were somewhere around five shuttles that launched from the colony. Something I carried over to this story. However, they were all the standard Romulan Shuttlecraft, which STO calls the Tiercel Shuttle. From what limited amount of data about them that I could find, it carries a similar number of passengers that many Starfleet shuttles can carry. So around somewhere six to ten passengers. That wouldn’t be enough passenger room for around a few hundred saved colonists along with the extra combat or work-rated personnel like the remaining members of the Militia. Hence, I decided to create my shuttle class the Ferengi B’kar Class which is heavily based on the so-called Military Shuttle used in the Kelvin Timeline which for this story are called Class D Heavy Cargo Shuttles, which like those particular shuttles are able to be configured for a variety of different purposes like normal cargo carrying or carrying a couple dozen or so people.

Still, you might wonder why I created my shuttlecraft design instead of using something like the Romulan Runabout from STO, the Kestrel Class, or even a Federation Runabout? Well, I kind of screwed up earlier in the story as I got the Kestrel Class mixed up with that of the Commander’s Gig Small Craft from Star Trek Online. Or what is known as the Romulan Scout Ship seen in one episode of the Next Generation series. Therefore, in the story, the Commander’s Gig ends up becoming the Jarok Class Sloop which becomes the main auxiliary craft of the colony, the Nergal. With it then destroyed during this chapter it couldn’t carry anyone. Sigh. Still, the larger Kestrel Class becomes the new main shuttlecraft of the new Star Empire, its forces, the Tal Shiar, and a handful appearing under the control of the Free Romulan Flotilla.

Speaking of the B'kar Class it along with the Heavy Phaser Compression Rifle Harriet uses in this and the last chapter does set up something that is going to be somewhat of a thing in this story. Basically, unlike the various series themselves equipment and ships introduced by a particular faction will be used by another faction in this story. Like the B'kar Class in this chapter, which was originally designed by Starfleet later the Ferengi came in and started producing their own direct copy which is then sold to pretty much anyone with the funds available. In the various Star Trek series this often does not happen, with only a couple of instances of this happening, like the famous time that some Ferengi got their hands on old Klingon Bird-of-Preys which they used to try to threaten the Enterprise-D in one episode. Just thought to point this out folks!

Anyhow. I do hope you enjoy this chapter, for it is the first time I wrote anything like a true combat scene for Star Trek. Therefore, I kind of leaned a bit heavily on my own limited Mass Effect writing experience in those scenes, which explain things like the thruster jumps from the combat suits, along with my vague memories of games like Elite Squad and its Sequel. With a sprinkle of Star Trek Online ground combat experience for some flavor. That includes the whole disintegration thing being a bit varied which in Star Trek canon is from the higher power levels of a Phaser. I know that, but I do like the idea of it being varied. As for more Mass Effect-based combat scenes, you can expect more of that as the story progresses with the likes of full combat-rated armor systems, full heavy personal shields, and variable weapon load-outs, but still with a bit of Star Trek twist on it. With the likes of various flavors of Phasers, Disrupter Rifles, and close-range weapons. You get the idea.

Okay. A few more things I would like to mention here. The first of which is the whole scene with the Romulan young man trying to hit on Harriet and later insulting her during the party around the center part of the chapter. That is something that is carried over from my early notes for this story in that not everyone in the colony is happy with Harriet being a half-human/half-romulan hybrid which does lead to some hurtful comments to Harriet while growing up. It is also briefly touched on at the beginning of the last chapter, but this is a bit more involved. That does lead to the second point I wanted to mention. I have been trying to keep more human expressions and such out of the story, outside of Harriet’s limited knowledge of them through her mother and the woman’s friendship later relationship with a human man, Harriet's father. This includes things like language which I have used Romulan language phrases in a few parts of this story. One of which is the phrase used by Harriet to say goodbye to her dead cousin in this chapter, which I am saying means “Goodbye my little cousin”. I shall continue to do this throughout the story. However, if my readers do not want them in then I shall stop using them but still try to keep more human-like expressions out of the story. So please, if I do use something that a Romulan wouldn’t say and I didn’t have it mentioned Harriet knowing that from her mother or another Romulan character then please point it out to me for I may have screwed up with my editing pass of the chapter.

One last thing to mention, I promise, is that you may have noticed things in the last two chapters of the story from that of the game. Not just things I have introduced for the fun of it, like the combat suits, but completely different “missions” and such being in play. This of course is mostly from this being a novelization and not a game, but also because there are some things that I did not like about the game itself. For example, the Romulan Starter Ship is called D’vex’s Warbird in its introduction scene in the game which I have changed around. Not to mention changing around some parts of Virinat’s known backstory. This mostly really changed during the next chapter as I never understood the reasoning for those extra ships that were disabled and had to be rescued by the Player Character. That does change with this story with all the colony residents that were saved being carried onboard the five shuttles mentioned in this chapter. Anyways. That is about it.

Okay, that is about it. I shall see about getting started on the next chapter, which covers the “Flight from Virinat” Tutorial Mission, and the final part of the overall “Introduction” Arc of the story. Then we get to the fun part of the story! A completely redone version of the whole searching for a new Romulan homeworld storyline and the rise of a new Romulan Republic. Till then I shall see you later! Thanks for reading!

deathzealotzero

Okay Chapter Two Posted! Chapter Three is finished, but still needs some editing to be done! So expect it to be posted in a couple of days. Chapter Four meanwhile is now being written. Hopefully expect it to be posted sometime next week or so. Thanks for reading!