T'Karala System
Milky Way Galaxy
Unknown Quadrant
February 11, 2380
0350 Hours, Ship's Time
"On behalf of those aboard the U.S.S. Covenant, we hereby resign our commissions in your respective armed forces. We hereby are also commandeering this vessel. We shall not participate again in your unholy quest to bring unnecessary bloodshed all over this Galaxy, but we will always seek to defend the innocent, the weak, and the defenseless. This is our solemn vow and our sacred covenant. Send your forces against us if you dare, but be prepared to lose heavily. Perhaps when all is made right, we can again fight side by side. But until then, we must unfortunately consider those who serve the OFA as potential enemies."
"IF you do this, don't expect to get a new ship anytime soon, Munro," said one of the Fleet Admiral-level flag officers from Starfleet.
"If this is my last official command for a Federation starship, I'm okay with that, Fleet Admiral Stejenn, as long as I do what is ultimately right in the eyes of my Maker to the best of my ability, and follow Him as best as I can."
He looked at his Bajoran Conn officer Pomya Jehm, and asked her, "Are systems good to go for a departure from this system, Lieutenant Jehm?"
"Ready when you are, Captain. Just give the word."
Munro thumbed a switch on his command chair, and opened a shipwide communications channel throughout the ship. "All hands, prepare for immediate departure! Brace yourselves, and get ready to cross the Red Sea!"
"Don't do this," said a Klingon Dahar Master.
"For Honor and Duty and Righteousness, we must! Sezet, close the channel as soon as I give you the signal."
"Aye, sir," said a light blue-skinned alien of largely-unknown heritage.
"Admiral Karettenu, look after my family no matter what happens as best as you can. It has been an honor and a pleasure to know you," Munro said to a certain Romulan visible on the screen.
"You have my word that no harm will come to any of them. Maybe someday we can debate theological matters once more. We are siblings of a sort, but we must now oppose each other, it seems," said a slightly older Romulan female.
"Our quest to do what is right now begins! Stop us if you can, Omega Force Alliance! Captain Munro of the Covenant out!" He immediately gave Sezet the signal, and the viewscreen went blank as the channel closed. "Jehm, part the Red Sea, and take us away from here!"
The Covenant engaged its warp engines, and departed the T'Karala solar system, also disappearing from the sensors of many ships still in it, and world-based sensors as well. The ship was not cloaked, but it still vanished.
Meanwhile, as the Covenant made its escape to their new secret hideaway, the Dragonstar stayed in the T'Karala system to do what it could for the survivors of the Borg attack, and to search for other survivors. They remained in the system for another week before Omega Force Alliance Command's Council contacted them and gave them new orders. Captain Okeb Zhaalrin, a 59-year-old Andorian, was on the bridge when the orders came in, talking with several members of his senior staff, as they reported about the statuses of the ship and those now aboard. Including his Romulan first officer, a distant kinswoman of, although about three decades older than, Admiral Karettenu, a 72-year-old Subcommander in the Imperial Romulan Star Navy. That first officer of his was Subcommander Thaletha Barom, and she had spent most of her life serving the Romulan Star Empire in its Star Navy.
Other members of Zhaalrin's senior staff included two more Romulans, a Reman, and three humans. It was his young Ferengi Communications Officer who notified him that OFACC had sent him a transmission meant only for his eyes until further notice. "You have the bridge, Subcommander, I'll take it in my ready room, Ensign Praggalda."
An hour later, Zhaalrin returned from his ready room, and sat down in his command chair, as everyone waited quietly to hear what he was about to say. He thought for a few moments, before speaking. After thumbing a switch on his command chair so that everyone aboard could hear, he said, "We have hereby been ordered by OFACC to seek out the Covenant and all those aboard, using any and all possible means to either capture or destroy it and to either capture or kill those who have gone rogue. If anyone has any objections to carrying out these orders, you have 24 Earth hours to communicate them to me or to other members of my senior staff. We are ordered to depart this system by then. Those who do not want to carry out those orders for justifiable reasons will be free to leave at the first available dropping-off port of call. But anyone who remains aboard after we then depart will be expected to do their duty according to our orders."
Dozens of those serving aboard the Dragonstar asked for transfers shortly thereafter. The ship soon docked at a designated space station to allow personnel to leave it. When it finally left that station, it was nearly staffed fully with just over 700 beings aboard it, most of them being organic sentient beings. And then they began searching for any clues that might possibly lead them to where the Covenant might be in the Galaxy.
For the next few weeks, the Dragonstar searched for any clues, signs, or news that might give them useful information as to the present whereabouts of the Covenant and those aboard. But they had no success in gaining any information at all.
Meanwhile, as the Dragonstar and assorted other ships presently under the control of OFACC searched for the Covenant, that ship was still in transit to their new secret hideaway in a nearby system not well-known of by most sentient species anywhere in the Galaxy. In and near this particular solar system, there were several hazards that would have to be navigated carefully by anyone who was seeking to enter the system. Asteroids, along with large debris fields and minefields left by previous conflicts, were just a few of the obstacles that invaders of the system would have to get past.
From the time that the Covenant left the T'Karala system, it would take nearly a month, even with several periods of travel at maximum warp speed, to reach the solar system they sought along their planned flight path. As they continued towards that nearby system, repairs on the ship continued, as situations then allowed. The journey was not easy. Especially whenever random pirates and scavengers sought to steal whatever they then could from the Covenant during occasional skirmishes. The Covenant's complement didn't take any lives at such times, even while defending itself during them. Either on various ships or when pirates or scavengers boarded the ship to try and steal what they could from it. But they did disable most ships so that they wouldn't be able to carry out raids against more civilized targets. Such as civilian merchant ships, for example. And they captured several pirates and scavengers, turning many over to civilian authorities. Others, they recruited.
That helped speed the progress of repairs to the ship. But that still didn't mean that it significantly quickened the pace of travel that the ship was able to achieve on the way to its new secret hideaway somewhere in the Galaxy. At most, the Covenant would probably gain a few days of time on their way there, if fortune favored them in any way at all.
Three days before their expected arrival, two ships that appeared to be simple merchant ships met them nearly two light-years away from their new home system's heliopause. They were the Super Sentai and the Zordon, staffed mainly by humans, with assorted other beings also present aboard them. They had been sent to show the Covenant how to navigate the hazards present in their new home system, from the world that would serve as their home base in it.
The Super Sentai led the way into the system, while the Zordon acted as a rear guard of sorts for the three ships, and the Covenant followed the Super Sentai, for just over one Earth day, until their two escorts peeled off to carry out other tasks they'd normally attend to in the system. That left the Covenant alone, and they were ordered to the system's fourth planet, a world given the code name "Shofar," although that was not its actual local name. Whereupon, once there, they would enter orbit and send a small away team down to the planet to meet with several other beings now there in their new group's home base.
That home base was still in the process of being completely constructed, but work on it had begun about a year earlier, once the uncharted system had been unexpectedly discovered after assorted major battles all over the Galaxy. Ships had come from all over the Galaxy to areas near that system without even expecting to. And most of those ships had ended up in the system, after they discovered the existence of it. At first, appearances in or near the system were completely random, unplanned, and unexpected. But as even more battles were fought all over the Galaxy, certain ships and crews were able to gain increasingly easier access to the entire system than others could by choice, for certain yet-unknown reasons.
By the time the Covenant saw its first escorts leave its sides, there were now several hundred ships in the system, with nearly ninety percent of them being ships with maximum capacities of no more than about sixty people on average, if even that many. They followed six small shuttles to Shofar, most of them appearing to be of Federation design, but not all of them. They couldn't recognize the designs for two of the shuttles at that time, however.
Proceeding through the system at 8,000,000 miles an hour, on average, after being ordered to Shofar and their primary escorts had left them, the journey there took just shy of 44 hours to complete, before they entered orbit as planetary traffic controllers directed them to when they were within transporter range. After doing so, they were ordered to remain in standard orbit until further notice, having actually arrived several hours earlier than they'd been expected to arrive there.