Setlik III massacre

The **Setlik III massacre** was a major event during the Federation-Cardassian War, resulting in significant loss of life on both sides.

The Federation colony of Setlik III was believed by the Cardassian Union to be the staging ground for an assault on Cardassian space, and a strike force was dispatched to the colony to destroy it. Despite no such military base existing, the Cardassians attacked the colony and killed over a hundred civilians. The USS *Rutledge*. under the command of Captain Ben Maxwell, was the first vessel to respond to the colony's distress calls. Landing parties from the *Rutledge* were instrumental in repelling the Cardassians and saving the surviving colonists. (TNG: "The Wounded")

Afterwards, Miles O'Brien would become known as the "Hero of Setlik III" and would be decorated for his actions in combat on the surface, when he led two dozen men against the Cardassian regimental garrison at the Barrica encampent. (DS9: "Empok Nor")

Amongst the casualties were Maxwell's family, as well as *Rutledge* crewmembers Will Kayden, Christopher Durham and Raymond Boone. Boone's death was unknown at the time, as he was captured and replaced with a surgically-altered Cardassian operative. The deception went unrevealed until 2370. (DS9: "Tribunal"; *Star Trek: Pendragon*: "Ceremonies of Innocence")

## Sequence of Events

*The sequence of events related in this section is based upon a theory presented at the ST-vs-SW.net Tech Archive, with minor details taken from the novelization of the DS9 episode "Emissary." This represents the established continuity for* Star Trek: Pendragon*. Other interpretations may differ.*
The Cardassians came to Setlik III in force expecting a larger battle than what they found. After taking the planet (in what the Federation would call a "massacre"), the Cardassians left a regiment of the Cardassian Mechanized Infantry behind to secure the outpost's array, and they started to dig in near or within the Setlik settlement and try to make use of any intel they could get. The Cardassians set up sensor jamming equipment while doing so.

On 2 September 2362 (stardate 39685.5), the following events took place on Setlik III:

The *Rutledge* arrived after hearing the distress call the outpost was barely able to send (which the Cardassians did not have known about), and dispatched the *Galor*-class warship present. All communications with the colony were out and sensors showed survivors fleeing to the outlying district with heavy casualties in the main settlement. With communications down, a plan to transport survivors to the ship while in orbit had to be abandoned.

Captain Maxwell personally chose a squadron of men to accompany him on the away team over his first officer's obligatory, but halfhearted, objections. These men included Tactical officer Lieutenant Granger, Ensigns Timothy Sinclair and Christopher Durham, Petty Officer Miles O'Brien, Crewmen Will Kayden and Raymond Boone, as well as Volodzhe, Meier, Tsao, Rendell, Lind, and Garcia.

The away team discovered that over a hundred colonists had died, including Captain Maxwell's family, and learned that there were still survivors, fleeing the settlement. Maxwell split his men into two groups to search for the survivors, and they began trying to figure out a way to beam the colonists up to the *Rutledge*.

Maxwell took O'Brien, Sinclair, Durham and Kayden with him, while the others split into teams with orders to find survivors and have them beamed to the ship. With Cardassian forces less than a kilometer away, it wasn't long before combat ensued.

Maxwell's team found a group of civilians and engaged the Cardassians pursuing them through the streets of the colony. Kayden was shot while trying to save a group of small children from the wreckage of a building, and he died in O'Brien's arms while Sinclair and Maxwell looked on. O'Brien took his revenge, vaporizing the Cardassian *glinn* who had shot Kayden, the first time he had ever taken a life. O'Brien was horrified and disgusted by the atrocities of the Cardassians, and that mixed with his horror and self-loathing at having become a killer. The latter redoubled the former, and for the first time O'Brien was genuinely enraged, quietly smouldering.

Maxwell and O'Brien led the civilians to the colony's transport center, where Durham set about to jerry-rig the transporters. The Cardassians engaged the team in a firefight, and Sinclair and O'Brien fought hard to buy Durham the time he needed. Lieutenant Granger and his group arrived to assist, and cut the Cardassians down. Durham finished the work on the transporter, and was able to beam the colonists and Captain Maxwell to the *Rutledge*.

Shortly there after the *Rutledge* came under attack from three Cardassian ships, and O'Brien's squad was trapped on the surface, severely outnumbered by Cardassians from the infantry's nearby Barrica encampment. The *Rutledge* was forced to break orbit, but continued the fight over the next several days.

On the run and without starship support, the squad tried to hold out, but the Cardassians managed to separate them. Cut off, Raymond Boone and other *Rutledge* crewmen were captured by the Cardassians, and taken back to the Barrica encampment, where the Obsidian Order agents present began plans to replace them with surgically-altered infiltrators.

Sinclair and Durham hunkered down in the outpost's armory, and spent over 16 hours holding off the Cardassians before reestablishing contact with O'Brien and the others. The Cardassians stormed the armory just before sunrise. Durham took a shot meant for Sinclair, and died in his arms (releasing the Darrum entity from corporeal form). Sinclair set his phaser on overload and placed it among the photon grenades. He bolted from the armory just as it exploded, taking at least a dozen Cardassians with it, and vaporizing Durham's body. Sinclair hooked up with O'Brien, who had taken charge of the unit after the the death of Lieutenant Granger.

In orbit, the *Rutledge* emerged victorious, but heavily damaged. Her transporters were down, communications shaky at best, and the squad on the surface was in ever-deepening trouble, as Cardassian reinforcements had arrived while the *Rutledge* was engaged in battle.

O'Brien decided that the squad would have to beam up to the ship using a field transporter on the surface, though they had to make it past half a regiment of Cardassian soldiers. O'Brien's actions are effective and almost Cardassian themselves in their ruthlessness. None of the remaining squad members remaining had much experience with field transporters, however, so O'Brien took on the task. Just as an overwhelming force converged on their position, O'Brien got the 13 men remaining up to the ship.

With prisoners having been taken, a sensitive piece of equipment in enemy hands at the outpost, the *Rutledge'*s tactical officer dead, not to mention his own family, Captain Maxwell decided that they had to go back. He promoted O'Brien to tactical officer, and they began working on a plan.

In the interim, however, Starfleet ordered them to depart because their transporters were still down, and the *Rutledge* was little more than a target should Cardassian ships reappear. Knowing that the *Rutledge* did not have the ground warfare equipment necessary to take on the entire Cardassian military force on Setlik, Starfleet Command ordered Maxwell to rendezvous with additional Federation starships, planning to all return in force within a handful of days.

O'Brien, however, concocted a plan that they believed would work. They would send a force of thirty men to land on the planet, setting up an explosive that will destroy the outpost's equipment and as many Cardassians as possible. The assault force would then use the explosion as a diversion to enable O'Brien's party to try to rescue the prisoners before they were taken to Cardassian prison camps, which would likely occur before the Federation ships could arrive. The *Rutledge* officers would then "run like hell," and either try to get back to the shuttle and make a run out of the system or hold out at a defensible location on the surface until they are rescued by the Federation force. Maxwell approved the plan, and the men were sent down in a shuttle, landing at a distance from the settlement.

The Cardassians, meanwhile, recognized that they were working under time pressure. They learned that Federation ships were en route, and also knew that the only thing keeping the orbiting Federation ship from blowing them to bits was the collection of prisoners they were holding. With the Cardassian fleet weakened by long years of war at that point, the strategic situation was not good at Setlik, and it was decided that the men on the surface would have to be withdrawn. The Cardassians reasoned the planet was theirs, but it simply could not be held. The military was furious, having sent sent enough ships the first time around to make a fight of it if the planet had been a proper staging area, but now those forces were engaged elsewhere and a Federation outpost's comm/sensor array wasn't enough of a target to fight over.

The situation was viewed as an opportunity by some, namely the Obsidian Order. The Federation prisoners at Setlik had been treated the same way Cardassians treated all their prisoners of war, that is, badly. Raymond Boone had died at Barrica, but the Obsidian Order decided that he could be replaced. With time of the essence, an operative had been quickly chosen. With information sent from Setlik, the operative was transformed into Raymond Boone. There was no opportunity for memory alteration, and the operative would have to use all of his guile to believably pass as Boone. He was loaded on a ship, and sent to Setlik.

Meanwhile, O'Brien's men trudged through the barren terrain to the Setlik settlement, a journey which took at least several hours. They had managed to avoid Cardassian pit traps, despite the fact that tricorder readings were limited through the Cardassian jamming, and their own efforts to hide themselves. Upon approaching the settlement, they decided to wait until evening to move in and plant the explosive.

That night, O'Brien and Sinclair planted the explosive at the array. However, they team realized that the prisoners were being held too close to the array to guarantee their safety. While O'Brien tried to devise a new strategy, however, a member of the the team was discovered en route to their position, and the battle was joined.

The fight did not go well initially for the *Rutledge* crew. Men were getting hurt and dying as the Cardassians randomly bombarded the area where the Federation troops had been headed, and Cardassian skimmers and assault vehicles were en route. The Cardassian forces passed between the comm array and the prison area effectively shielding it from much of the potential blast. O'Brien blew the array at that point, damaging the Cardassian vehicles. But with the original plan of a quiet jailbreak out the window, O'Brien's options had narrowed.

To survive, the wisest move would've been to run into the mountains, leaving the prisoners behind. Even if O'Brien had chosen that option, however, there were enough Cardassian patrols grouping at the rear periphery of the settlement to make the escape time-consuming, and the risk of their location being pinpointed extremely high. O'Brien came up with an idea that seemed ludicrous at first glance, but proved to pan out. The Cardassians would expect the Federation force to try to escape now that they'd blown the array, either "running the blockade" of the patrol groups or finding some other undefended route of escape. O'Brien noted that the Cardassian vehicles seem to be deploying in a pattern designed to cut off such routes.

Instead of making one of the obvious moves, he moved his men toward the Barrica encampment, carrying the fight to the enemy's doorstep. O'Brien's team (about twenty men remaining) drove the Cardassians out of the Barrica encampment and recovered the weakened prisoners, including the Boone impostor. Using the Cardassian equipment, they rigged another explosion, destroyed Barrica, and returned to the *Rutledge*.

With their base camp gone and the prisoners in Federation hands just as had been desired, the Cardassians withdrew. By the time the Federation ships arrived, there was little for them to do.

## Casualties

The following people were known to have died at Setlik III:

* Over one hundred colonists, including the family of Benjamin Maxwell.
* Over twenty members of the *Rutledge* crew, including:
	+ Raymond Boone
	+ Christopher Durham (Transporter officer)
	+ Granger (Tactical officer)
	+ Will Kayden (technician)

## Aftermath

Maxwell, O'Brien, Sinclair, and the prisoners of Barrica all had difficulties adjusting to life after Setlik III.

Raymond Boone seemed to have more trouble than most, but no one was suspicious of this, because everyone who was a prisoner of the Cardassians had come back changed. Boone was released from Starfleet service (and the Cardassians were infuriated by their operative's failure). He was left to live as a human civilian, and in that role he cut off ties with the family of the man he'd replaced, moving to the Federation border colonies to act as a spy. He was not discovered as an impostor until 2370. (DS9: "Tribunal")

Depsite becoming known as "The Hero of Setlik III," O'Brien eventually came to regret his actions as a soldier, and especially having killed. He transferred from the *Rutledge*, and took extended leave in Ireland before joining the crew of the USS *Enterprise*-D as a conn officer in 2364, later becoming a transporter operator. It was five years before O'Brien took the tactical position again, during the blockade and Romulan encounter in the Klingon Civil War, but he quickly returned to the transporter room. The events of Setlik III would haunt O'Brien for many years afterwards. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", "The Child", "Redemption II", "The Wounded", DS9: "Tribunal", "Empok Nor")

Sinclair also returned to Earth, settling down in Colorado with his wife. He attended a few counseling sessions, but internalized his trauma. He returned to space duty six months later, but the post-traumatic stress and false guilt over Durham's death haunted him. That was compounded after he barely survived the destruction of the USS *Cerberus* in early 2364, and Starfleet ordered him into weekly counseling sessions, which he maintained for the better part of a year. The shadows of Setlik III would continue to haunt Sinclair for the rest of his life. (*Star Trek: Pendragon*)

## References

* TNG:
	+ "The Wounded"

* DS9:
	+ "Distant Whispers"
	+ "Paradise"
	+ "Tribunal"
	+ "Empok Nor"

* PDN:
	+ "Restoration"
	+ "The Distant Fire"
	+ "Wounded Soldiers"
	+ "Ceremonies of Innocence"
	+ "Wings As Eagles"
	+ "Approaching Emmaus"

* Novels:
	+ *Emissary* novelization
	+ *The Slow Knife*

## Notes

* "The Wounded" gave the impression that the Setlik III massacre took place during the late 2340s, but later evidence from the DS9 episode "Tribunal" indicated the year 2362. Many fans sites go by the information from "The Wounded" and "Realm of Fear", and place the attack in 2347. However, *Star Trek: Pendragon* goes by the (more concrete) timeline established in *Deep Space Nine*, based on references in "Tribunal" to Boone being captured "eight years ago," and O'Brien's entry into Starfleet in 2350 ("twenty-two years" before "Rules of Engagement") . This article reflects that viewpoint.

## External links

* Setlik III massacre article at ***Memory Alpha***, the canon *Star Trek* wiki.
* Setlik III massacre article at ***Memory Beta***, the non-canon *Star Trek* wiki.
* Setlik III massacre article at ***Star Trek Expanded Universe***, the fanon and fanworks *Star Trek* wiki.
* Debate over the dating and events of Setlik III