Star Trek: Tirpitz

We’ve received orders from Commander Genstra to investigate an emergency in the Hyralan sector.  A Federation outpost near Romulan space had requested assistance with a possible ecological disaster.  I was curious why we were being assigned to this mission.  While the Tirpitz has taken part in relief efforts before, she’s designed to be more of a battle ship than science vessel.  Genstra explained that while he believed the outpost’s report of the situation, he wasn’t sure that this was a completely natural event.  We were being sent in first to provide a better appraisal of what was going on in the system, including if we detected the presence of any hostile forces.  

Searching for the radiation source

When we arrived in the Chulan system we contacted the outpost.  We spoke with Kenneth Hughes, the outpost’s science officer, who provided us with more detailed information on problem.  Over the past few days, the outpost’s sensors detected slowly increasing amounts of Eichner radiation in the system.  If the rate of increase continued as projected, it wouldn’t be long before they would need to evacuate personnel from the outpost.  We needed to find the source of the radiation to determine if it would be possible to solve the problem.  Mr. Toran was able to fill us in on what the Federation knew about Eichner radiation and was confident that our ship’s shields would be sufficient to protect us from its effects.  He was also certain that the radiation would not interfere with our ability to detect cloaked ships in the system.  We conducted an extensive survey of the system, and found several asteroids composed of a material that emits Eicher radiation.  Our findings suggested that they had been passing through the system naturally, when the gravity of the planet the outpost was constructed on had pulled the asteroids into orbit.  Our scans also found no enemy presence in the system at the time we were present.  We contacted Starfleet command with our findings to let them know it should be safe to send a science vessel to assist.   

Klingons in Romulan space?

Starfleet Command informed us that the Tirpitz was not going to remain in the system to assist with relief efforts.  While we were carrying out our survey of the Chulan system, three listening stations along the Romulan boarder had gone silent in the Daise system.  As the closest ship, we were being sent to investigate what had happened.  Given the importance of the  listening stations, I was expecting some sort of fight.  When we arrived in the system, I gave orders to start scanning for Romulan ships.  I was quite surprised when our scans picked up several Klingon ships instead.  The Klingons have been long time enemies of the Romulans.  Finding a small task force of Klingon ships attacking a location that provided us a tactical advantage over our mutual adversary was quite troubling.  We ended up needing to engage several of the Klingon ships to drive them off so we could repair the damaged listening posts.  

Attacking the Romulan flagship

With the listening posts restored to working order, we received a priority one distress call from a Federation science team in the Hfihar system.  They had been sent to the system to study the unusual gravitational readings that region of space is known for.  But now they were reporting a series of attacks by Romulan ships.  It would seem they had used the breach in our monitoring efforts caused by the Klingons to sneak a task force past Starfleet patrols.  When we arrived in the system, we hailed the Romulans.  They told us that they were in the system searching several of the planetoids for artifacts from the time period when the Romulans had formed their own society and traveled to this region of space from Vulcan.  And that would have been fine if that was what they were doing.  Their archeological surveys of the planets should have had no contact with or impact on our study of stellar phenomena, and vice versa.  When I pointed this fact out to the Romulan commander, they cut communications and opened fire on us.  We defended ourselves from the initial assault before continuing on to clear the system of enemy ships.  When we disabled the Romulan flagship, the remaining enemy vessels retreated back to the safety of their territory.  We contacted Starfleet Command to report what had happened, and received orders to remain in system to guard the survey mission for the time being.  

Out of Character

So it’s definitely looking like three is going to be the new number of missions the player is going to be asked to do as part of a Sector patrol.  I’m a little conflicted on this.  I’ve always enjoyed the Sector patrol missions because they are more likely to tie in elements from the rest of the Star Trek universe.  The downside is that those stories never seem to pan out beyond the one shot they’re given.  I would like to see more nods to what came before, but maybe by cutting down on it in patrols, we’ll see more of it in the story line missions.  

I was genuinely surprised by the Klingons showing up.  Although in retrospect, it does make a little bit of sense.  There have been a few references in the past to one of the current leaders in Klingon society belonging to the House of Duras.  If I remember correctly, the Duras family has had ties with the Romulans as far back as the Next Generation, when Empress Sela was just a commander and was funneling weapons to the Duras side of the Klingon civil war.  So I could see where the Duras family would be willing to help return all the favors they’ve gotten over the years.  And an alliance of some sort between the Klingons and the Romulans would create a war on two fronts for the Federation.  But the problem is that this is a patrol mission.  As I’ve already said, it’s likely to have been a one time only event, and will never be mentioned again.