STO: Tales of the War #20

Personal log. That’s how these journals go, isn’t it? How did I even get involved in this? I’m no soldier, just a biologist.

At first I thought that the sharp decline in the local animal population was a side-effect of Iconian weapons, or perhaps a disease or migration. That lasted until I found the remains – scat, tracks, and bits of fur. These showed the signs of some kind of new alpha predator, hunting the epohhs and vivvers and everything else that walked on New Romulus. This wasn’t a huge surprise; large areas of the planet remain unexplored even now, and I’d expected to be finding new animals for centuries.

Whatever this animal was, though, it wasn’t something indigenous. I already knew that the various Iconian servitors and Heralds had been causing havoc on Mol’Rihan, but in retrospect it should’ve been obvious that the Iconians – past masters at genetic alteration and the creation of servant species – would have their own biological weapons to subvert the ecosphere.

So far, the Heralds and the other servitors like the Elachi had been engaged in hit-and-run strikes on allied positions, appearing from nowhere and overwhelming the allies with a massive strike, then vanishing. After the death of M’tara, though, something changed. The Herald attacks became more vicious and more frequent, especially on New Romulus. And I’d found evidence that the Iconians had departed from conventional warfare with the introduction of engineered predators, pathogens, and of course the Elachi abductions and conversions.

At first I thought this was because the allied forces had killed M’tara, but now I’m not so sure. The Elachi haven’t been targeting Federation or Klingon forces for abduction like they have Romulan colonies. The Solanae, hiding in subspace, haven’t reappeared, but now it seems like the destruction of Hobus was no accident, and they’re the species that would know the most about damaging subspace shockwaves.

This feels personal. The Iconians are targeting New Romulus and the Romulan people, and not just because of the old gateway. Crateris suffered an outbreak of an engineered plague. Gasko station’s chief of security was subverted by a neural parasite. The Iconians want to hurt us specifically.

But why? And what can we do about it? The allied forces were barely able to stop M’tara, and at a huge cost. If there’s a reason for the Iconians to pay special attention to us, we don’t even know what it is, and we may be exterminated before we ever find out.

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