Hello! Ric here with a Federation lore byte looking at the Vulcan’s actions during the
early days of the Earth-Romulan War. Sorry if things sound a little off, lots of DIY
has the place a bit barren so sounds might be different. So with that out of the way,
let’s jump into this interesting time in Starfleet’s history.
You see, things were not promising for the fledgling interstellar power of Starfleet,
even with the backing of the newly formed Coalition of Planets. For a start, Earth had
been singled out as the glue that had brought the Andorians, Humans, Tellarites and Vulcans
together and as such was the priority target for the Romulan Star Empire.
But on top of this was another factor, the early growing pains of the organisation that
would eventually give way to the United Federation of Planets. I mentioned in the prior videos
that Vulcan had a bumpy start with Humanity, and this did not simply disappear with the
creation of the Coalition. In late July, 2155, The Vulcan High Command, under the leadership
of the Syrranite and Kolinar practitioner, T’Pau chose to withdraw from active frontline
engagements with the Romulan Star Empire. This caused much discomfort among the other
members of the Coalition who admitted that they could not make up for the loss of the
Vulcan’s fleet in patrolling and holding back increasingly aggressive Romulan forces,
such as those who seized the Calder system and destroyed the original Kobayashi-Maru.
The reasoning behind this drastic, not-very-team-spirited action from the Vulcans was twofold and mostly
confidential. First off, the Romulans had been deploying
a new weapon, one that could hack into a ship’s systems and usurp control an entire vessel.
There had yet to be counter system created that could repel this sort of attack which
had proved successful against the Klingons, see the early Starfleet Klingon video for
more, and the Vulcans. In fact, Vulcan ships were at greater risk,
considering the similar systems upon which the vessels operated to Romulan design. The
only vessels that seemed nearly immune to the Romulan remote weapon were Earth’s,
pretty simply, because they were less advanced. That’s right, full Battlestar Galactica
up in this war, Human ships were just to rubbish in comparison to the other contemporary powers.
Not only that, but Vulcan ships, the most susceptible, were currently the fastest warp
ships in the local area being able to attain warp 7 and cruise at warp 6 easily. This was
far ahead of human ships that capped out at 5.2, Romulan ships which had similar specs
and the Klingons who could only reach warp 6 with a healthily-maintained bird-of-prey.
A rarity. So logically, the Vulcans concluded that they
needed to keep their vessels away from the frontlines, while the Romulan hijacking software
was in play, thus, denying them any potential prize of a warp 7 engine. Equally, the Vulcan
High Command was still abiding by its Prime Directive somewhat, and didn’t want to give
up its warp advancements to Humans or anyone else for that matter.
There was another reason for the withdrawal too, one kept a deep secret within the highest
command of the Vulcan council and the Vulcan Ministry of Security. Some had in fact, recently
learned of the heritage of the Romulan Star Empire as those who left Vulcan en masse beneath
the Raptor’s Wings before the time of Awakening on Vulcan. This was kept as a highest priority
secret as the Vulcan’s didn’t quite know what to make of this revelation and were busy
conducting their own counters for infiltrating Romulan society.
On top of this, recent worries from Earth, such as the Terra Prime incident had the Vulcans
concerned at the levels of xenophobia that may come their way if Starfleet found out.
Kind of understandable, but honestly it demonstrates a profound lack of trust in their allies.
Then again, this is the 2150s Vulcans were dealing with here, still in the midst of their
reformation. The decision to keep quite was made by the ministers and the Vulcan Security
sectors. Seriously, the amount of people who knew really was probably around a dozen.
Vulcan Security is divided up into several Bureaus. First up, there was the local security,
the V’Kor which were roughly analogous to a police force. The V’Shar is the intelligence
service in the same way as Starfleet Intelligence was or the Tal Shiar was to the Star Empire.
The V’shar was further spit into divisions. The Internal Security was a relatively small
department that dealt with things like uncovering spies and Vulcan isolationists. While the
Scientific Bureau focused on staying apprised on all the latest advances and breakthroughs
from other species. Galactic Security deployed agents in the field
and analysts to comb data concerning the larger galaxy. Naturally, they had a strong focus
on Romulus, considering the current circumstances and even managed to imbed a Vulcan agent on
Romulus. Agent Sopek was placed under the cover identity of a Romulan called Ch’uihv
who had to undertake actions on behalf of the Star Empire to maintain his deep cover.
They also temporarily recruited Section 31 operative, Charles “Trip” Tucker, which,
oh yeah, he’s alive in the Romulan War Enterprise books. And it gets a bit messy because the
holographic record of 2161 we see in the finale of Enterprise had been doctored by Section
31 to say he died in then instead to keep his missions classified. That needs its own
video. Tucker had been on a similar mission on behalf
of Section 31, which had taken advantage of his injury in 2154 to fake his death and use
him as an infiltrator to gain info on Romulus. His services were then “commandeered”
by the V’Shar, which means that Vulcan Intelligence on some level was even aware of the existence
of Section 31, even if they did not fully understand its scope and duty at the time.
The V’Shar was still greatly involved in the Romulan-Earth War however, even if the
High Command had made the unfavourable move to pull its vessels back for core defence.
They continued to analyse and operate in the shadows, tracking Romulan movements and supply
information to Earth’s own Starfleet Intelligence. Such contributions included uncovering the
Romulan shipyard of Archernar II which was making worrying progress towards achieving
war 6 or even 7. An advantage that they could not afford the Romulans whose ships were only
just breaking warp 5, like Starfleets. As it was, Starfleet was in danger of falling
even further behind the Romulans as it rapidly tried to produce more NX-01 class vessels,
but as mentioned in the series, in 2154, the Columbia and Enterprise were the only two
at the time. The NX-03 and 04, Challenger and Discovery respectively were still incomplete
by mid-2155. Starfleet had been forced to rearm the old Daedalus class vessels with
as much of the NX improvements as they could and launch these. So on paper, Starfleet matched
the Star Empire for warp speeds, but in practice they only had two ships and a bunch of older
warp 4 vessels. One contribution that the Vulcans did make
to try to even the field without direct intervention was the installation of a warp detection grid
around Coalition planets to provide early warning of approaching Romulan ships, supposedly
even those under the early cloaking prototypes. Tension between Starfleet and the Vulcans
did rise in 2155 because of their actions, but nonetheless, they accepted any and all
help the Vulcans deigned to offer. Shame that only three months later, in October, the Daedalus
Class USS Yeager NCC-76, was ambushed by three warbirds over Deneva colony despite the detection
grid. The V’Shar continued to exist as part of
the Ministry of Security well into the 24th century and by this time, much like many other
facets of Vulcan’s infrastructure benefitted from a close working relationship with Starfleet,
which itself was now a multi-planet, multispecies organisation like its parent, Federation.
So thank you for listening to another instalment of the Early Starfleet history, this section
drawn from the novel, Beneath the Raptor’s Wings, part of the Romulan War series and
I am to bring you more apocryphal tales from this time. But if there’s anything in particular
you’d like me to look at, shout it out below. I’m building info on the Andorians early
involvement, but not much so far. Thanks again for watching, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see
you next time, goodbye!