Personal Log: Ben Versteegt

Admiral Lonal, Starbase Earth
Personal log.

It seems like so long ago since I left Starbase K'taria to lead our forces from the Sol system. In fact, it has only been a couple of weeks. After Sol was taken from the Federation and Earth and its neighbouring planets were occupied, I left K'taria on board my personal warbird, the RNS Fire Owl. When I arrived here, Starbase Earth, a new Romulan Starbase in orbit of the planet, was already under construction, and I did not have to wait long to take up residence here. The war was going well at that time. We had just conquered Earth and were planning to attack nearby Federation systems. No one would be able to oppose us.

And then the Borg came. The Andor system, far away from here, near the Klingon front, was all but obliterated. Millions of lives were lost in the Borg assault. Admiral Vulnis, in charge of all military operations in that region of the empire, hastily scrambled a fleet of 25 out-dated warships and personally led the attack on the Borg cube in his warbird. I sent reinforcements, but they would not arrive in time. Admiral Vulnis was on his own.

And yet, despite the odds being against him, he and his fleet hit the cube with every weapon at their disposal... and won. When the battle was over, Admiral Vulnis' attack fleet had been greatly reduced in size, and many brave soldiers lost their lives that day... But the universe was safe from the Borg threat once again. Inspired by this great, miraculous victory, all Romulans throughout the empire strived to work and fight even harder in honour of the heroes of Admiral Vulnis' fleet.

The boost in morale led to more and more victories for the Romulan Star Empire, and I had the good fortune to be the architect of some, if not most of them. I realised that we had been silent for too long. We had allowed the Federation to survive and the Ferengi to expand. Their ships roamed freely along our borders, occasionally trespassing into our territory and scanning our systems. Although the Federation could no longer harm us, the Ferengi continued to taunt us by expanding their influence and persuading alien races to take up arms against us. They had to be stopped. We could no longer complacently sit by and only act when a ship entered our territory. We had to take a more active part in the war against the Ferengi.

For that reason, I sent a task force consisting of six destroyers, two scouts, two battle cruisers and four troop transports to sector S-9, the same sector I had told the reinforcements to go when Admiral Vulnis needed help fighting the Borg. Our ships had detected a wormhole in that area, which led to an area of space, a dozen sectors away. The wormhole's exit point was only a few sectors removed from Ferengi space. Using the wormhole, the task force was able to take the Ferengi forces by surprise. While they fought off any Ferengi presence and attacked them from behind, conquering the Arvada system in the progress, I ordered the Romulan forces at Sol to attack the Ferengi from the right. After we destroyed a few of their outposts with great ease, our adversaries quickly went on the defensive.

The tactic was a success. The Ferengi were unable to oppose our forces and retreated to their inner systems, leaving the outer systems vulnerable. As one task force kept the Ferengi busy, two other task forces conquered two of the outer Ferengi systems -- Quadra Sigma and Thetis quickly fell into our hands. Meanwhile, I had sent a task force to a nearby Federation system too -- the cursed Titus system, site of a Romulan defeat at the hands of the Federation a few months ago, was finally ours. We took over the system before the Federation could mount a defence. However, the other Federation systems in the area have now all powered up their orbital batteries and have started to dig themselves in. They will not fall as easily as Titus had... But they will fall.

And so, after a mere ten days of extensive fighting, the Ferengi have lost three systems, half their outposts, and they are cut off from their allies, the Federation. The end will come to them soon. We are picking off their outposts and their systems one by one. Soon, they will no longer be a threat to us. The Federation and the Klingons have already been reduced to mere nuisances, and nobody even remembers the Cardassians anymore. There is no doubt who the victors are in these parts of the galaxy: the Romulan Star Empire will soon have dominance over all.

End personal log.

Categories: BOTF