posted
Here is a write-up of the Tomed Incident that I created that I thought I would share (I figure some of you might enjoy it) ...
Background: Tomed is a world with an advanced civilization located in Federation space near many major UFP member worlds and colonies. Tomed has had a long, close relationship with Vulcan, due primarily to their physiological similarities (the Tomedians are Vulcanoid, and may have been a part of the Vulcan Diaspora) and the unique nature of their first contact (the Vulcans discovered Tomed centuries ago, and each was the other world's first encounter with another Vulcanoid species, which instantly bonded the two worlds). Culturally, though, Tomed is more Romulan than Vulcan (their culture could be said to be 'proto-Romulan'), and because of their independent nature, Tomed has never shown an interest in joining the Federation�-though due to their relationship with their Vulcan cousins, they have established good relations with many Federation worlds. Because of Tomed's cultural similarity and their strategic value (their key location within Federation space), the Romulans have had a great interest in Tomed since the late 2260s, when they ended their long period of inactivity in the Alpha Quadrant. The Romulans knew that under the right conditions Tomed could become an ally of the RSE, which would increase the strength of the empire as well as give the empire strategic equality with the UFP (with Tomed as a part of the empire, the core worlds of the Federation would be within easy striking distance of Romulan forces�-much as the Romulan homeworlds already were within easy striking distance from Federation outposts along the Neutral Zone). The Romulans' desire for the annexation of Tomed resulted in the Tomed Campaign, a long-term operation which began in 2272 and consisted of two courses of action: in one course of action, Romulan agents disguised as Vulcans infiltrated the Vulcan Consulate on Tomed and executed operations designed to gradually and subtly generate mistrust amongst the Tomedians regarding the motives of the Vulcans and the Federation; in a simultaneous course of action, Romulan officials began quietly building relationships with key people and factions inside of and outside of the Tomed government that had sociopolitical views similar to themselves. With the beginning of the Federation-Klingon alliance in the late 2290s, the Tomed Campaign became even more important to the Romulans, for they believed that the shift in the balance of power between the UFP and the RSE that would result from the annexation of Tomed was crucial to offset the danger of the maturing UFP-KE alliance; as a result, the Romulans invested even greater resources into the campaign. In 2311, both courses of the campaign finally converged to fulfill the Romulans' goal: Through the work of their covert agents, the Romulans led the Tomedians to believe that the Federation�-through their Vulcan agents�-was engaged in an effort to subvert the government and replace it with a new, pro-Federation government; the subsequent confrontation between Tomed and the Federation coupled with the close relationships cultivated by the Romulans with key Tomedians resulted in an alliance between Tomed and the Romulan Star Empire.
The Incident: In 2311 representatives from Tomed confronted the Federation Council with evidence of serious Federation tampering in Tomed politics. In an awkward response, the Council did not admit to any violations of Tomedian sovereignty, but could not reject the evidence either (because it was indisputable)�-rather, the Council decided to treat the violations in terms of corruption (rogue individuals acting without official sanctioning), and launched an investigation. This response did not sit well with Tomed's representatives, and Tomed immediately severed diplomatic relations with the Federation and put their military on defensive status. On top of the rapid deterioration of relations with Tomed, representatives from some Federation member worlds started to openly question the motives of certain officials and/or groups within the UFP and Starfleet regarding many policies (the memory of the factions within Starfleet that almost caused the UFP to go to war with the Klingons less than 20 years prior was still fresh in the minds of many)�-a process that caused turmoil and something akin to an institutional paralysis in both bodies as investigations were launched into seemingly every level of decision-making and operations. While the UFP and Starfleet were dealing with their internal affairs, the Romulans, using their Tomedian allies, orchestrated a regime change on Tomed and a new pro-Romulan government took power. Almost immediately afterward, an alliance was announced between Tomed and the RSE�-and under the terms of the alliance, the Romulans were allowed to establish a base in the Tomed system. This quick development took the UFP and Starfleet completely by surprise; in response, Starfleet put their Neutral Zone forces on alert, and, in a decision that was later recognized as having been made too hastily, created two task forces and stationed them at bases near Tomed. This fleet movement by Starfleet had the unfortunate consequence of provoking the Tomedians (in their eyes, the fleet movements were an outright hostile act�-and worse, the move confirmed the ill intent of the Federation regarding their world), and within days Tomed responded to the perceived provocation by attacking the Federation bases nearest their system, including Starbase 37 (where one of the task forces was located) and two outposts. The quickness of the attacks caught Starfleet unprepared (despite the fleet movements, Starfleet had not yet gone on full alert in the region around Tomed), and with the sophistication of the attacks�-the Tomed forces had an uncanny knowledge of what targets to hit and what order to hit them�-each of the bases was completely overwhelmed from the start (though each attack was carried out solely by Tomed's military, it was later learned that the Romulans supplied detailed and thorough intelligence for each of Tomed's objectives�-especially regarding Starbase 37). Tomed was not interested in capturing the bases, and instead completely destroyed them and any ships around them, killing thousands of Starfleet personnel as well as hundreds of Federation civilians. Tomed declared the attacks were a defensive measure that was completely justified by Starfleet's act of aggression (their fleet movements); in having Tomed claim the 'high ground,' the Romulans had one aim: to keep the Klingons on the sideline for the expected war between the Federation and the Romulans. The Romulans knew that the Klingons would identify with Tomed in their confrontation with the UFP, and that subsequently the Klingons would not be a Federation ally in a war between the UFP and the RSE that revolved around Tomed (in addition, there was a small chance that the entire situation could derail any UFP-KE alliance�-a chance the Romulans tried to exploit through their operations within the Klingon Empire). With the Klingons out of the picture, the Romulans believed that they could fight the Federation to a stalemate, at which time they expected the Federation would call for a truce and accept the inevitable: the inclusion of Tomed and the surrounding region in the Romulan Star Empire.
The Aftermath: The reaction of citizens across the Federation to the attacks was shock and anger. Militarily, Starfleet quickly sent massive reinforcements to all Federation worlds, colonies, bases, and outposts in the region and started to heavily patrol all sectors around Tomed. Politically, there were immediate calls for war; fortunately, cooler minds�-tempered by intelligence information�-prevailed in the aftermath of the attacks, and the UFP did not immediately declare war on Tomed (and by extension, the RSE). Instead, the Federation Council took a step back from the brink and tried to open negotiations with Tomed�-a move that was in part meant to buy time for Starfleet Intelligence to follow up on some critical developments regarding the Romulan connection to Tomed. Before the attacks, elements within Starfleet Intelligence had begun to piece together data that the Romulans were behind many of the strange events on Tomed that led to the disintegration of relations with the UFP; after the attacks, there was an urgent need to get proof of the interference of the Romulans in Tomed's affairs�-proof strong enough that it would absolve the UFP from any wrong-doing regarding Tomed, and strong enough that it would end the Tomed-Romulan alliance. Starfleet Intelligence achieved a breakthrough 4 days after the attacks: two deep undercover operatives on Romulus were able to gather data on the Tomed Campaign and, sacrificing their cover, escaped from Romulus to Federation space with the information. The data not only confirmed Starfleet Intelligence's theories about Romulan interference on Tomed, but also contained details on all aspects of the campaign�-including information about planned Romulan fleet movements if/when Starfleet moved against Tomed. Using the information gained by Starfleet, the Federation Council publicly revealed the Romulan Tomed Campaign, and announced that a blockade of Tomed would be put in place that would continue until a legitimate government came to power on that world. The government on Tomed, in anger (and desperation), tried to color the Federation's revelations as lies, and requested military assistance from Romulus to help prevent the blockade. The Romulans chose not to respond to the Federation's assertions, but they recognized that most Tomedians would believe the revelations, would be angry about being manipulated by the Romulans, and, in due course, would oust the pro-Romulan regime. Still, the Romulans greatly valued Tomed, and despite this major setback, they desired to keep Tomed within the empire; since keeping them within the empire willingly would soon no longer be possible, the only way the Romulans were going to be able to hold on to Tomed was by helping the pro-Romulan regime maintain its power by force�-and this necessitated assisting Tomed's military in countering the coming blockade. The Romulans knew that they needed to act quickly: their reinforcements had to reach Tomed before Starfleet set up their blockade so that the Romulans could become entrenched on Tomed (for at that point, the Federation's only chance of achieving success would be to occupy Tomed, which was something that the Romulans knew the UFP would not�-and, politically, could not�-do); sending forces after a blockade was set up was not an option, for in that scenario, the only way to hold on to Tomed would be to launch a major assault against Federation forces (both directly against the blockade at Tomed and indirectly at surrounding bases), and this would launch a full-scale war against both an emboldened, unified UFP, and, eventually, the Klingons�-and the empire could not survive such a war. Given that speed was of the essence, in response to Tomed's request for assistance, the Romulans authorized sending special task forces that were already in position near Tomed (as part of a previously-planned reinforcement strategy for Tomed)�-not knowing that this is exactly what Starfleet expected.
The Battle of Cheron: The Romulans sent three task forces to rendezvous at the Cheron system, where they would combine into one fleet, and head for Tomed. What the Romulans did not know was that Starfleet knew the Cheron system would be a staging area for the Romulans (due to the data stolen by Starfleet Intelligence), and had sent a large fleet of their own to wait in ambush (in fact, the reason that the Federation Council publicly announced the blockade of Tomed before it was implemented�-something the Romulans thought was another tactical error on the Federation's part�-was so that Starfleet could lay this trap). When the Romulan task forces arrived, Starfleet attacked, and decimated the Romulan fleet: nearly all of their ships were destroyed (either by Starfleet starships or from self-destructing). In something of a coup, four ships were captured before they could self-destruct; in addition, Starfleet took hundreds of prisoners. With this devastating defeat, the Romulans were forced to abandon Tomed�-and when Starfleet implemented its blockade days after the battle, the Romulans did not attempt to break it. Soon afterward, the pro-Romulan regime on Tomed was ousted by moderates; with this move, the blockade was lifted, and diplomatic relations between Tomed and the Federation resumed.
The Treaty of Algeron: Though losing control of Tomed was a serious setback for the empire, the defeat at Cheron was a devastating blow to the regime on Romulus: the loss of the fleet was disastrous in itself, but the capture of ships and soldiers added humiliation on top of the defeat�-a defeat that was seen by political challengers as avoidable (some in the Senate and military held that those in charge of fleet operations should have assumed that details of planned fleet movements were known by Starfleet when it was realized that the Federation had details of the campaign itself). The result of the defeat at the Battle of Cheron was a purging of the Senate and military: the hardliners/warhawks were ousted (some were prosecuted and even executed), and the moderates/isolationists took over. For Federation diplomats, having Romulan ships and prisoners was an opportunity: the UFP hoped to use their return as a way to bring the Romulans to the table to negotiate a new peace treaty that would re-establish�-and expand�-the Neutral Zone. The offer to return all the captured ships and prisoners to the RSE as a precursor to renegotiating the treaty from the Romulan War was successful�-though not so much because of the Federation's diplomatic efforts as due to the political shake-up on Romulus (the new leadership wanted to get its vessels, equipment, and people back and bring closure to the entire affair as quickly as possible). One condition of the negotiations set by the Romulans, however, was that it include a provision banning the UFP from developing cloaking technology�-it was a key demand for the Romulans, who needed to counteract the problem of their technology being in the hands of Federation scientists for a short time, and it was a concession the Federation was willing to make in order to get what they wanted in modifying and extending the Neutral Zone. With both sides in agreement on the terms of negotiations, the planet Algeron was chosen as the negotiating venue and the location of the hand-over of captured Romulan assets and personnel to the RSE. After the Treaty of Algeron was signed, the moderates/isolationists steered the RSE into other matters, and the Romulans entered a long period of inactivity regarding any Alpha Quadrant affairs.
-------------------- "One person's modus ponens is someone else's modus tollens."
Registered: Mar 2001
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Not too bad....though I doubt the "Tomedians" could have a fleet capable of carring out serious attacks- they are only one world after all. ...now if they were using Romulan ships...
Or even Reman designs (just to be ornery).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I find your constant use of parenthetical thoughts to be... unsettling.
The overall story seems fairly plausible, though I'm not sure I can rationalize the Romulans making this much effort over one planet. I realize you have them trying to draw the UFP into a war, but the same thing might be accomplished by simply occupying the planet and acting... aggressive.
Also, the idea that the Romulans would continue to act on plans that had quite obviously been leaked to the UFP by agents whose cover had been blown is not very likely. From what we've seen of the Romulan intelligence, they tend to abort when things don't go according to plan. They don't improvise and hope things still work out.
But I do like the idea that there was alot of buildup to the actual events though.
posted
Years ago I came up with a story line for the first on-screen female captain in command of the newly commissioned Enterprise-B. Part of the back story involved a young Capt. Mark Jameson (from TNG's "Too Short a Season) as a survivor of the Tomed Incedent.
I never gave much thought to what actually happened at Tomed, just that Jameson's ship was damaged and, when my story picked up, he was at Starbase 4 for the commissioning ceremony of the E-B.
Then Paramount had to go and ruin my fun by introducing Janeway as a captain and depicting the Enterprise-B in Generations.
Nice to have some background here to work with....
Registered: Feb 2004
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Here are my thoughts about some of the points that were made ...
To Jason about the Tomedian fleet: The way I thought it out, the Tomedian "fleet" used in each attack would only need to be a few ships, and they wouldn't need to be Romulan. This is because the key to the attacks wasn't the number of vessels (or sophistication of weapons), but knowing what the weaknesses were at each location and fully exploiting them--and that's where the Romulans came in: they provided very detailed information from their spies on exactly what to hit in order to maximize destruction with the least amount of effort, which helped make the attacks devastating and very quick (meaning no recovery time for Starfleet forces). Also, the way I figured it, the Romulans would want the attacks to be done solely by Tomed forces anyway, because then it would not look to outsiders (primarily the Klingons) like Tomed is just a puppet of Romulus.
To Aban about the massive use of parenthetical thoughts: Yeah, that's mainly because I'm not a real writer--I suppose if I submitted this in a creative writing course, the teacher would have a field day correcting me.
To Aban about why Tomed would be so important to the Romulans (Why put so much effort into that planet, and why wouldn't they just cut their losses when their campaign was uncovered?): Well, what I was trying to show with some of the background was that Tomed was valuable to Romulus because of two equally strong reasons (strong for Romulans, anyway): 1) Strategically, since Tomed is somewhere between Vulcan and Romulus, then if Tomed was part of the RSE, it would move the border between them and the UFP further away from Romulus. There would be more 'cushion' between the UFP and RSE in addition to just flat-out more territory for the RSE. 2) Emotionally, since Tomedians were similar to Romulans--more similar to them than to Vulcans--then there would be a special bond between the Romulans and the Tomedians (especially, of course, the ones who were socio-politically pro-Romulan). This bond would be strong enough that if things got rough, the Romulans would not think of just abandoning their 'brothers'. What I was going for in showing an emotional as well as strategic reason for the Romulans wanting Tomed in their empire was that the passionate side of the Romulans is just as significant to their psychological make-up as the 'scheming' side is. Does that make sense? I should say I wasn't trying to present the Romulan fleet movement at the end as improvised (they just implemented a plan that they already had set up for other reasons)--I just thought that their choosing to execute that plan at that time was motivated by their passions, which made them 'sloppy.' I wanted to somehow have their passions be responsible for the mistake of using a plan that they should have known better than to use. (I always liked the idea of passion being both a defining difference between Romulans and Vulcans, and a potential source of mistakes by the Romulans--something I took from what Garak quoted Tain as saying about the Tal Shiar.) I probably need to re-write that section.
To Aban about the Romulans sticking to a plan that was leaked: I knew that was a weak spot, so I'm probably going to re-write that. The reason I had these agents 'blowing their cover' was to emphasize how deep they were, and that the information was so secret that the only way they were going to be able to pass it and not be killed immediately after the Romulans heard Starfleet had it was to leave Romulus post haste. But I suppose I could either clarify that or re-write it or something. One thing that I didn't keep in my final version was the idea that when the Federation exposed the Tomed Campaign, they only exposed historical data--Starfleet Intelligence kept a lot of the information they knew out of public view so that they could "catch the Romulans red-handed." So maybe somehow I need to work that idea back in so it doesn't make the Romulans look so stupid (though like I mentioned above, I wasn't going for 'stupidity' as much as 'sloppiness').
To Aban about the build-up: Thanks. I wanted the story to show something that I have picked up from episodes of ENT and TNG, which is that the Romulans plan for the long term. I suppose I could also add something about part of the reason that Romulus was so bonded to Tomed was because of the long relationships some of their operatives had with Tomedian natives.
-------------------- "One person's modus ponens is someone else's modus tollens."
Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
Not to denigrate your story (which is fine), but I have some questions about the Tomed Incident from supposition from a certain episode of TNG, "The Pegasus." (I know, not another dragging of that episode into the annals of Star Trek discussion...)
Anyway, from what was implied in that episode, I always thought the Tomed Incident had something to do with the Federation using cloaking technology at least up until 2311, when for some reason this pissed off the Romulans to the point where they did something that caused thousands of Federation deaths. Even though lives were lost, there obviously wasn't a war after this happened because the Romulans then decided to isolate themselves. The point that the Pegasus had an illegal cloak seemed to affirm the speculation that the Tomed Incident had something to do with Federation cloaking tech.
Anybody have th actual quotes from the episode where Riker & Picard are discussing the Pegasus' experiments?
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
I'm wondering why do civilians have to die during the Tomed Incident? I prefer not to have a "9/11" scenario created for Tomed since from what I understand an incident that did two things- drive the Romulans into isolation and have the Federation be banned from creating cloaking technology. I imagined that Tomed would more be a location near Federation/Romulan space where a fiasco/disaster occured when a Federation starship using Federation cloaking technology had a run-in with the Romulans or when the Federation captured a Romulan ship with an experimental phased cloaking device similar to the one onboard USS Pegasus.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
Well, Tomed supposedly was a "preamble to war", and a "bloody" one to boot. Lots of corpses could be inferred from those words, even if Picard is in a habit of exaggerating (Broken Bow being "disastrous" and all)...
OTOH, Picard fancies himself a rather impartial judge of history. Perhaps the incident involved a UFP invasion of Romulan space with the help of cloaking devices? Not meek reconnaissance, but an all-out, Pearl Harbor -style preemptive attack where body parts were flying, performed in order to ensure UFP triumph in an upcoming war (and perhaps thus prevent that war altogether). Despite being devastating, the mission was an overall failure, though, and left the Feds exposed to a powerful Romulan retaliation. The Romulans chose to exploit the situation in another way: the Feds had no choice but to accept harsh terms for continuing peace.
This would be an ideal setup in that it would not involve the Feds actually losing a war (an unlikely event at that juncture of history, or overall), but would still make them the underdogs in the negotiating tables.
posted
Based on the fact that despite Starfleet getting their hands on a cloaking device in the 2260s (which apparently was quite compatable) and we never hear of Starfleet using them, its possible they never intended to use them on board ships and thearfor it was a consession given because they knew it wouldn't matter. The Romulans however, being paranoid would probably expect cloaked Starfleet ships at any time and take this agreement as quite in their favour
Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Which is what David George III thought, too, when writing "Serpents Among the Ruins". The intertwining of the cloaking device into his scenario was somewhat convoluted, but generally the conditions of "The Enemy" and "The Pegasus" were met in that story...
Hard to tell whether the Feds used the cloak or not, since we part ways with Kirk soon after he captures one. And when we occasionally revisit him during the following two decades, he flies either a desk or a hijacked ship, and no longer performs the sort of infiltration missions where cloaks would be used.
And of course, just because we don't see cloaked UFP ships is no proof for anything.
To Dukhat: To me, "The Pegasus" had more to do with the Treaty of Algeron than the actual Tomed Incident, so that's why I didn't even consider doing something about cloaking technology in my story.
To Vice-Admiral Colorge: Yeah, having civilians die was something I'm still not sure about. I figured I had to have civilians involved to try to get to "thousands f Federation lives," because if they were all Starfleet casualties, that to me would indicate something bigger than an "incident" occurring. One thing I thought of modifying in my story was that maybe the Tomedians' attacks somehow led to many civilian deaths later--like by destroying one of the outposts, some critical medicine that was meant for a colony got destroyed (the idea being that the outpost the Tomedians attacked was a research facility, not a military facility). Something like that.
To Sol System: I took Tomed to be a planet because of the brief discussion T'Pol and the other Vulcan had in one of the episodes of the Vulcan arc in ENT. The talk of a mission on Tomed prompted me to think of Tomed as a location, and I just went from there.
-------------------- "One person's modus ponens is someone else's modus tollens."
Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
Of course, Tomed being a planet does not preclude it being a starship as well.
We have little idea on how Romulans name their ships, but planetary names might be fairly typical. Fans of Geoff Mandel's Star Charts at least would consider planets the standard source for Romulan ship names... Canonical Federation starships feature planetary names relatively seldom, though.
quote:To me, "The Pegasus" had more to do with the Treaty of Algeron than the actual Tomed Incident, so that's why I didn't even consider doing something about cloaking technology in my story.
The thing is, Picard specifically stated the number of years ago that the Treaty of Algeron banning Fed cloaking tech was implemented, and it ended up being 2311 - the same year as the Tomed Incident. Hence my supposition about the TI having to do with a cloaking device.
Registered: Jun 2000
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