Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years Read online

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  “Then Zee put on music and started to dance. The Vulcans weren’t having any of it.” Solkar offered to give Cochrane a tour of his ship, and Cochrane, now seriously inebriated, asked if there were any Vulcan women on board. When Solkar said there weren’t, Cochrane decided he wasn’t interested and returned to the bar, continuing to drink until he passed out.

  “Zee’s passed out on a table,” Sloane wrote. “The Vulcans are looking at me; I don’t know what to do. And then I didn’t have to do anything, because a couple of helicopters started circling around.” The Vulcans got in their ship and left.

  ABOVE: The Vulcan ship, T’plana-Hath, in San Francisco.

  ABOVE: The New New York Times headline announces Cochrane’s flight and the arrival of the Vulcan’s. Though the original New York Times was destroyed along with the city during the Eugenics Wars, New New York was established on its ruins, and surviving journalists sought to at least temporarily resurrect the illustrious paper of record.

  THE VULCAN STEWARDSHIP

  Solkar didn’t go far. He went into orbit and reported back to Vulcan. The information he and his crew had gathered convinced the High Command that Earth needed more in-depth study. And because he’d made the first contact, the High Command immediately appointed Solkar the first ambassador to Earth (“Logically,” Solkar said later to his grandson Sarek, “I knew more about the current Earth situation than any of my colleagues.” Sarek would eventually follow in his footsteps and become Vulcan Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets, located on Earth). He was told to return to Earth and begin negotiating a treaty between the two worlds. Vulcan would, in the meantime, prepare a follow-up survey mission to assist him.

  Solkar, looking for a liaison to the Earth’s governments, thought immediately of Cochrane. He returned to Montana and asked Cochrane for his assistance to begin a dialogue with the governments of the world. Although Cochrane didn’t want to get involved, Solkar persisted.

  “Logic suggested,” Solkar wrote to his superiors, “that Cochrane’s reluctance to assume the post as spokesperson for his species would help to guarantee he wouldn’t be serving his own ambitions.” Cochrane relented, and took Solkar to San Francisco.

  The diplomats who were permanently stationed in the city to enforce the peace treaty that ended WWIII were already aware of the aliens who had landed in Montana. Given the years of conflict on Earth, they fully expected that the first contact was a prelude to an alien invasion.

  Matthew Root, a diplomat from the European Hegemony, the government of the European continent, was in San Francisco when radar detected the alien ship approaching the Presidio. He later wrote in a letter to his wife: “We thought ‘this is it,’ but everyone was too afraid to call in for help. We’d all seen the ship take off from Montana, and since then no military wanted to be the aliens’ target. So when they landed on the green lawn, we simply opened our hands and hoped they were peaceful.”

  Solkar and the Humans immediately began negotiating a treaty. At the same time as he reached out diplomatically, Solkar also covertly supervised survey missions that were gathering as much information as they could on the state of Earth. His surveys found that although Earth was in a relative state of peace, the continued existence of hunger, disease, and pestilence created a looming threat of war all over the planet. And now that the Humans had warp drive, they had the means to spread their gift for destruction to the rest of the galaxy.

  ABOVE: A Katric Arc, where Vulcans store the Katra (living spirit) of their honored dead. This one purportedly held Surak’s.

  Solkar produced a comprehensive 7,000-page report; its conclusion implied a direct threat to Vulcan interests, and an unusual admission that remained confidential for centuries. His final line read, “The Human race is in many ways reminiscent of pre-reformation Vulcan; left unchecked, it will undoubtedly move out into space and gain access to technological tools that will a) lead to their own self-destruction, and/or b) increase the emotional savagery already prevalent in this section of the Galaxy.”

  Unknown to the population of Earth, the Vulcan Science Council and the High Command immediately placed the Sol system under Vulcan stewardship. Historians would mark this decision as the seminal moment when Vulcan “logic” became justification for an increasingly colonial agenda that slowly led the culture away from the teachings of Surak. But it also had many positive effects: the Vulcans were technologically dominant in the Alpha Quadrant, so their chief rivals, the Klingons and the Andorians—who certainly would have been more exploitative of the primitive Humans—stayed clear. And it protected Earth from itself, allowing time for the Humans’ culture to catch up with their technology.

  As Solkar negotiated with the Humans, he made logical assumptions about his leverage. “The primitive barbarity of the Humans made it inevitable that they would see the Vulcans as a chance to advance technologically,” he wrote in his report, “so we can use this enticement to help guide Earth to a more peaceful society.”

  The High Command offered a limited form of trade and controlled access to advanced technology, medicine, subspace radio, and information about the nearby galaxy. But Solkar refused to negotiate with individual nations. “If the Earthlings do not find a solution to negotiate with one voice,” Solkar wrote in his study, “nationalistic competitions will immediately reignite.”

  Though World War III had already put Earth on the slow road to unification, the enticement of advanced technology was a major tipping point, and within a year the nations had established the Trade Council of Earth. Though in no way even close to a world government, the Trade Council established one voice in their dealings with the Vulcans—and an equitable system to share any knowledge that was gained in that relationship.

  During this period, Zefram Cochrane saw a marked increase in his own personal influence. “The Vulcans had all this information about the nearby planets and all they had to offer,” Cochrane wrote in his autobiography, “but they weren’t going to take us there. So the only way to get to these new worlds was my engine.” The companies and nations of Earth started commissioning ships.

  With an influx of capital, Cochrane thought he would finally be able to indulge in pure research. But that was not to be. “I went right from being an underground inventor to a major industrialist. I never got to be just a scientist.” Still, he said, “I took a lot of pride watching my engine being mass-produced and put in a variety of ships.”

  Meanwhile, the Trade Council of Earth saw that the resources that would help solve the problems of their planet—among them dilithium, anti-radiation medications, and terraforming technology that would help revive a decimated world—were now within reach, but the Vulcans made it clear they weren’t going to hand them to Earth. This had a further unifying effect on Humanity, as the nations saw that they had no choice but to work together to find their way out into the Milky Way. Wanting results as fast as possible, the Trade Council approved a grand project that they hoped would help to relieve the pressures on what was still a dying Earth: the Great Experiment.

  THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

  Only a few years after Cochrane’s warp flight, the government of the Americas, in an attempt to be the first to get a foothold in space, took advantage of the new warp engine and built a spaceship christened the S.S. Valiant. “The project was rushed, and its crew of twenty-five was lost in space within a few years of its launch in 2065. (Their fate would not be discovered for another two centuries.)

  The Valiant crew’s one major discovery before it was lost was a habitable planet with no intelligent life, discovered near the star 61 Cygni A, about eleven light-years away from Earth. This fired up the imagination of one woman, Davida Rossi, chief minister of the Trade Council of Earth. “This,” she said in an oral history created during the project, “is what the people need. A new world to replace the old one.”

  ABOVE: The Vulcan requirement that Earth "trade with one voice" forced the nations of Earth to hammer out an agree
ment by which to do that. Hence, the Interstellar Commerce Act to establish the Trade Council of Earth.

  Rossi immediately launched what she dubbed the Great Experiment. Rossi negotiated protocols with the Trade Council for the first worldwide space program, requiring participation of every nation to complete it. This was a step up from the initial trade agreements, because it required that the nations produce and provide, and not just receive. The project inspired some significant achievements: the New Berlin colony was established on Earth’s moon and, a few years after that, the Utopia Planitia base on Mars.

  ABOVE: The original Utopia Planitia shipyard on the surface of Mars, circa 2090.

  These outposts of Humanity initially had a singular purpose: to provide construction and supply bases for an interstellar ship to colonize the newly discovered planet. Simultaneously, an international team of scientists was commissioned to design a colony ship, and manufacturers were contracted to build it. Mining colonies were set up in the asteroid belt to provide the necessary resources for construction.

  It was an unbelievable undertaking, unlike anything in Earth’s history, and three years after the discovery of the planet, the ship was complete: the S.S. Conestoga, named for the wagons used by settlers in the nineteenth-century American West. The ship would carry 200 colonists in suspended animation to this new planet, named Terra Nova—literally “New Earth.”

  Chosen for command of the mission was Captain Andrew Paul Mitchell, a genuine war hero. At the age of twenty-one, Mitchell had graduated from the last class of the Air Force Academy. “I came out of an Air Force family,” Mitchell said in an interview just before the launch, “and my parents remembered what it was like to live in a free America.” As an adult, Mitchell bristled at the authoritarianism that had taken over his country, and eventually he became part of the underground, playing a crucial role in overthrowing Colonel Green’s government.

  Mitchell was believed to be a perfect choice for the mission. “He was a bold, brave, uncompromising leader,” Rossi wrote. “He had lost his entire family in the war, leaving him with no ties to Earth. I thought he was perfect, but ironically it was these qualities that would make me regret my choice.”

  ABOVE: Davida Rossi and Andrew Paul Mitchell with two Vulcan advisers in front of the “Great Experiment,” the Conestoga.

  It took nine years for Conestoga to reach the new world. Once there and awakened, Mitchell and the rest of the colonists—also chosen for their lack of ties to Earth—happily cannibalized the ship to build their colony. There was no going home. When the first transmissions from the new colony were received, the world celebrated. And Minister Rossi immediately implemented plans to repeat her success. Rossi communicated to Mitchell that a second ship was already being built, and a new group of colonists being selected.

  But the trip to Terra Nova was an arduous one, and survival on the planet was far from easy. The colonists, led by Mitchell, felt that their accomplishments were all their own. They didn’t want to be dictated to by Earth. “I couldn’t believe it,” Rossi said. “Mitchell told me they didn’t want the new colonists, that they wouldn’t accept them.”

  Rossi, communicating with Mitchell via subspace, grew resentful of his attitude. “I lost my temper,” Rossi said. “I told Mitchell he wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for me. And each time we spoke, it got worse.” Finally Terra Nova ceased to respond. Rossi, assuming Mitchell was purposely cutting off communication, continued to try to contact the colony, even apologized, but with no success.

  “It had gotten so heated between us,” Rossi said, “that I worried a second colony ship might actually be attacked. So I canceled the project.”

  The fact that the colony had been decimated by an asteroid impact would not be discovered until decades after Rossi’s death. As a result, she took unnecessary responsibility for what she considered her greatest failure. Yet the endeavor ended up a watershed moment, requiring such a level of resources and labor, and holding so much promise for so many people that it solidified the working relationships between the nations of Earth. Twenty years later, in 2099, a United Earth Government was founded, and its Constitution was built on Rossi’s protocols for international cooperation to build the Conestoga.

  SLOW AND STEADY

  Despite its long-term influence, at the time the Terra Nova colony went silent, the project was considered an epic disaster. The experience convinced Earth to refocus. Another plan, developed during the construction of the Conestoga but put on the back burner, was now brought to the forefront.

  “The biggest problem Humans face in traveling to the stars,” Cochrane said later in life to one of his many biographers, “Was that dilithium was not native to Earth. If it had been, we wouldn’t have needed the Vulcans at all.”

  The Vulcans had been willing to provide only a small continuing supply, so if Humanity was ever going to independently explore the stars, Earth had to develop its own pipeline. This created a dilemma: In order to explore the stars, Humans needed dilithium, but in order to acquire it, they needed to explore the stars. The only way to do that was to trade. Thus, the Earth Cargo Service (E.C.S.) was established.

  The infrastructure developed for the building of the Conestoga was immediately turned over to the E.C.S. There were still enough resources on the moon, Mars, and the mining colonies of the asteroid belt to build more interstellar ships. And there were resources unique to the Sol system so that the traders had something to trade. With a small supply of dilithium, and a new engine designed by Cochrane himself that could reach Warp 1.8, the first wave of cargo freighters—the J class and later the Y class—were built, loaded, and launched.

  Because these new ships would carry cargo that had to be protected and monitored, and enter trade routes where they would encounter other ships, the crew could not be in suspended animation. Though it was faster than Humans had ever traveled before, the years involved in reaching other inhabited solar systems required that the trading ships be crewed by people willing to spend the greater chunk of their lives in space.

  “Fortunately for the space program,” Davida Rossi said later, “Earth was still pretty terrible. We thought we would have trouble getting volunteers but it was the opposite. There were hundreds of people for whom Earth held no attraction.” As a result, generations of Human children would be born and raised between the stars. Nicknamed “Boomers,” their life-long experiences in interstellar space travel would eventually become vital to the initial successes of the future Starfleet. They were the first Human ambassadors to other worlds, bringing the wonders of their neighbors in the nearby galaxy home to Earth.

  The trade routes eventually opened up; the ships returned to Earth from the Vega Colony, the moons of Tenebia, and Trilias Prime with not only dilithium, but other goods and information from species who, unlike the Vulcans, were very willing to trade with Earth.

  It took a long time, but as a result of this period of trade, Humans also learned ways to revitalize their planet. The irradiated soil was healed and rejuvenated with anti-radiation treatments. Food production began again, this time without the divisions and competitions caused by separate governments, but rather with the idea of feeding everybody. Space industry employed first hundreds of thousands and then millions. Education became a requirement to survive in the new age, and the trade council helped re-establish schools and universities throughout the world. Self-enrichment and individual achievement became the goals of the Human race. Earth was entering a golden age.

  WARP 5!

  In 2101, Cochrane, looking for peace from his fame on Earth, led an expedition to terraform a colony in the nearby star system of Alpha Centauri. Because of the attention Cochrane brought to this project, the Proxima Centauri colony thrived and would eventually become a civilization in its own right.

  In 2121, Cochrane returned to Earth. Although he was known to say that he was old at thirty (and years of alcohol abuse and exposure to radiation indeed made him look like a man of sixty when the
Vulcans arrived on Earth), at ninety, Zefram Cochrane was indeed actually getting old. The advances in medicine developed as a result of interstellar trade extended his life, but too much damage had been done early on. He was a wealthy, powerful, influential man who had lived to see his world almost destroyed, then reborn into a paradise. Yet he was frustrated. “I got to help build Proxima, but I really wanted to see the Galaxy,” Cochrane said. “It was all out there, but I would never get to it.” Like many men of his time, he had begun to blame the Vulcans. “They had ships that could travel at Warp 5,” he said, “and we still hadn’t broken Warp 2.” Cochrane decided his last living act would change that.

  He found his answer in the graduate work of a young engineer named Henry Archer, then an associate professor in engineering at the State University of New York at Albany. Archer’s PhD dissertation was a workable design for a Warp 5 engine.

  “I’m reading this thing,” Cochrane said, “and I can’t believe it. This kid had pulled together every scrap of information we’d learned about traveling faster than light, and that was only in the first third. He then laid out a plan.” Archer laid out the steps of developing the infrastructure necessary to invent the myriad new technologies necessary to build this engine.

  “It was brilliant,” wrote Cochrane. “He covered everything. It helped me see that my engineers and I had wanted to change things overnight, which is why we couldn’t crack it. I had to accept that this wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime. But it was going to happen.” Cochrane acted immediately.

  According to an interview with Henry Archer published in the Albany Times-Union newspaper, Cochrane simply showed up without announcement at Archer’s modest home near the university. When Archer’s eight-year-old son Jonathan answered the door, Cochrane smiled and asked if his father was at home. The young Archer, who had been instructed to expect a repair person, said his dad wasn’t home and asked Cochrane if he was going to fix the refrigerator. Cochrane didn’t skip a beat, saying, “I’ll give it a shot.”