Captain's Log, Stardate: 56801.5
Roughly twelve hours ago I witnessed the destruction of two federation ships which resulted in the loss of nearly one hundred souls. While the Enterprise was able to rescue a third of Voyager's crew, there was nothing that could have been done for those aboard the Falcon Island. And while I know that Captain Lawson made the right choice by destroying Voyager, my transporter chief informed me that there had been nearly a dozen personal still aboard when the ship was went down.
The sight of the Falcon Island slowly breaking apart across the bow of the enemy ship and the horror filled screams that came over the comm channel is not something that I will soon forget.
Merde…
I will not however let these tragic events interfere with my duty as captain of the Enterprise. To do so would only place my ship and crew in more danger than they are already in. They are looking at me to be their rock and I will not fail.
In the mean time I will be heading to Holodeck One, were, at the suggestion of Lawson, Mr. La Forge has linked communications with the holodeck systems. This will allow the senior staff of all three ships to communicate in person without actually leaving their ships. An intriguing idea.
Commander Data walked at his right while the rest of senior staff followed close behind as Picard strode purposefully towards the large double doors of the holodeck. The computer interface to the right of the doors was brightly lit indicating that the holodeck was active and a program running. As he moved to stand before the doors, Data reached out, tapped a button on the panel and the doors began to hiss open.
Jean-Luc found himself walking into one of the many conference rooms in Earth Spacedock. Briefly taking in the highly polished wood table that dominated the center of the room, his eyes were immediately drawn to side wall where the transparent aluminum offered an incredible view Europe and North Africa. His gaze quickly locked onto a small area in the roughly the middle of Europe. La Barre.
He once considered the small village of his birth his home, but it had stopped being that when his older brother Robert and nephew René had died in a fire that had destroyed the family home some eight years earlier. He still felt the pain of their loss as sharply now as he had eight years before.
"Seeing ghosts?" asked a soft voice.
Looking down, he gazed into the eyes of Cassandra Lawson. After a moment he replied, "In a manner of speaking." He was surprised by the raw emotion he heard in his voice.
Lawson was silent as she studied his face, and while her concern was evident, she said nothing for a moment and instead she reached out and gave his arm a quick, comforting squeeze. "Come," she said. "Now that your group has arrived we can begin. I was informed your first officer has reviewed the sensor logs from all three ships."
"Indeed," Picard replied. "Mr. Data," he said over his shoulder.
"Yes, Captain," came Data's prompt response.
Picard lowered himself into a cushioned chair placing the image of earth firmly behind him. He found Data standing before the opposite wall, just off the triangle symbol of ESD. Looking around to see that everyone was seated and waiting, Jean-Luc said, "At your convenience, Commander."
Data lightly tapped a finger on a datapad he held and the spacedock logo was replaced by the visage of the man who had introduced himself as Tarkin. Picard was surprised how cold and hard the man's face was, especially his eyes. Jean-Luc found himself wondering if this man was even capable of feeling anything that resembled sympathy or compassion.
"As you are all aware this is the man who introduced himself as Grand Moff Tarkin, and while his transmission was relayed to us from another location, it is reasonable to conclude that he is human, as preliminary sensor readings indicated that the life signs aboard all four vessels that were encountered were in fact human."
"Who are these people?" Someone seated to Picard's left asked.
"That is impossible to know at this junction. It is worth noting however that after reviewing the algorithms used by the Hydra's computer, the root language spoken by Grand Moff Tarkin originated from earth."
"Descendants of a lost colony perhaps?" Captain Lawson asked.
Data gave a small shake of his head as he looked down, his brow wrinkling slightly and the corners of his mouth turning downward. "While the early years of human space colonization were chaotic, it is highly unlikely that these are the descendants of 'a lost colony'."
"Why, Data?" Picard asked.
"The English language that is spoken today can trace its origins to a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD. Over the intervening thousand years it is very doubtful that an individual from our time could successfully converse with a person from that earlier time. Take the word fire for example. Old English would say fȳr. From there we transition to Middle English and pronunciation changes to firen. Then finally we come to fire. Three distinct words, naming the same thing, taken from different points along the life the same language.
Or the word name, which in Old English was pronounced nama. Or my, which was…"
"Thank you Commander. We get the idea," Picard interrupted.
"But, Data. Humans didn't even have electricity a thousand years ago let alone colonies on other worlds," Geordi stated.
"That is correct. But more so however I believe that for a language to evolve this far from the root dialect, many thousands of years would be needed. Without knowing influencing factors involved however, it is impossible to know with any certainty."
"What you're suggesting, Commander isn't possible." Picard looked down the table and saw Captain Nguyen sitting forward, her elbows resting on the table and her hands folded before her.
"I am not suggesting anything, Captain. I am merely following the trail presented by the evidence. Grand Moff Tarkin is human and he speaking a language that is based off o…"
Nguyen slammed the palm of her hand onto the table and rose suddenly to her feet. "No!" she cried. "It isn't possible. These people are not human and you'd best get that idea out of that metal head of yours."
Rising to his feet, Picard regarded Natia with a calm demeanor that completely belied the rising ire he felt over someone else's verbal attacks at Data. "Captain Nguyen, your behavior is unbecoming of a Starfleet officer let alone a captain." When Natia looked as though she was going to argue, Picard raised his voice as he continued. "If you cannot control yourself, I will see to it that under Starfleet Regulation six one nine you will be relieved of command and confined to quarters until we are back safely in Federation space. Do you understand?"
Captain Nguyen stared daggers at Picard for a moment before looking away and slowly lowering herself back into her chair. "I understand," she said quietly.
Jean-Luc looked intently at the other captain for time before finally turning to Commander Data. "Move to another topic, Commander," he said as he eased himself back to his seat.
"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir," the android replied promptly. Quickly tapping his pad the image on the screen changed from Tarkin's unforgiving face to a split view of the two types of ships that were apparently under Tarkin's command. "The ships we encountered used two distinct types of energy weapons against us. Type one was an ion-based weapon system that appears to be highly disruptive to a ship's systems. Type two was a plasma-based weapon that had devastating effect to the Enterprise's shields even though the ship was only targeted for a few moments before the Enterprise was able to get underway."
"These weapons were mounted on turreted platforms," Lawson interjected.
"Quite right, Captain," Data agreed. Tapping his datapad again, the screen zoomed in for a close up of a two barreled turret that while looked small in comparison to the rest of the ship could in fact fill the room they were currently sitting in very easily. "This is one of plasma-based turrets and while formidable I do believe that it suffers from several exploitable design flaws. The first being the turn rate of the platform itself. I do not believe these weapons have the capability needed to accurately target and fire upon a moving starship at range."
"What kind of range are we talking about, Sir?" Colonel Shepard asked.
"Based on the velocity of the fired energy bolt and observed speed that the turrets were able to rotate, I have calculated a distance of two thousand five hundred meters would be needed to place our ships outside the effective firing range for this type of weapon system."
"You're kidding," Shepard scoffed. "Our runabouts have better range than that."
"If they have such limited range, how were they able to destroy so many Gorn ships let alone a starbase?" Captain Nguyen asked and Picard was relieved to hear that she sounded much more in control of herself.
"While these weapons have limited range against moving targets, a stationary target such as a starbase would not suffer this disadvantage," Worf provided.
"While that is correct, I hypothesize that it was their method of travel that allowed these ships to assault the Gorn position to such devastating effect." Turning to the screen, Data gestured and an empty field of stars replaced the weapon's image. A moment later there were multiple bright flashes of light before the four ships streaked into view. With this scene looping in the background, Data continued. "These ships were detected at the edge of our long range sensors only to disappear and subsequently reappear less than five hundred meters away. "
"Their arrival was preceded by the brief appearance of a portal that seemed to allow access into subspace. Not unlike the technology used by the Xindi during the twenty-second century. While within subspace these ships would be completely undetectable. Thus allowing them to catch the Gorn unprepared."
"But could they detect us while within subspace?" Picard asked.
"I do not believe so, Sir." Data replied.
"Well that's something at least," Jean-Luc stated sarcastically.
"Yes, Sir," Data said. "Another topic worth mentioning is the shielding these ships utilize appears to be far more resilient than our own. So much so that it is not outside the realm of possibility that they would render our weapons advantage of range, moot."
"But the Hydra was able to bring down the rear shields of that first ship," Lawson countered.
"Only after a sustained rate of heavy fire for approximately twenty seconds. A rate of fire that was only possible because of the experimental weapons equipped on the Hydra. And I believe the Hydra's warp jump surprised and confused the enemy ship's crew.
Sensors showed that during the subsequent combined attack from the Enterprise and Red Cloud, the enemy ship redirected shield power from the ventral areas of the ship and rendered the assault virtually ineffective. This was something that did not occur for the period of the Hydra's initial attack."
"Data." Geordi sounded as though he was going to ask a question he really didn't want to know the answer to. "Do you thi…" A sudden voice from the comm system caused his cut his question short.
"Captain Picard, we are receiving a request for emergency assistance from the planet Gorn. They say they are under heavy attack.
Jean-Luc looked over to Captain Lawson who nodded sharply and then to Captain Nguyen who also nodded. Tapping his combadge as he pushed himself to his feet, he said, "Helm, set course for Gorn. Warp nine."