Posts Tagged ‘Balance’
The starship USS Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk is inspecting a line of manned Federation outposts, only to find they are being destroyed by an unknown enemy. The latest to fall is Outpost 4 near the Romulan neutral zone. Lieutenant Commander Spock explains that the neutral zone came into being following the Earth-Romulan War treaty a century earlier. (The map of the neutral zone displayed Romulus as well as a second planet called Romii, despite Spock’s spoken reference to Romulus and Remus). Due to the lack of use of visual communications, the two races have never seen each other and only communicated over subspace radio. Kirk fears the Romulans are preparing for another war. Kirk discovers that the attacker is a lone Romulan Bird of Prey equipped with a cloaking device. The cloak is not perfect; the Enterprise can track the ship, which is returning home to report on weaknesses in the Federation’s defenses. The Enterprise taps into the Romulans’ internal security camera, revealing that the Romulans appear identical to Vulcans. Lieutenant Stiles, who had family fight and die in the Earth-Romulan War, begins to suspect the Vulcan Spock of treason. During a briefing over the Romulan ship’s capabilities, Spock advises Kirk to attack the Romulans before they can reach the Neutral Zone. Spock believes the Romulans are an offshoot of the Vulcans from their age of savage warfare, before the philosophy of logic took hold. If the Romulans have rejected logic …