Battle At Midnight

The **Battle At Midnight**, or more commonly scribed as the **Second Battle of Earth**, was the final battle of the Iconian War, part of an Iconian Empire operation intended to bring about the complete military defeat of the United Federation of Planets. It is the largest Starfleet operation in history, and is believed to be the largest battle in known history in terms of the number of starships involved. It involved every known major power in the Milky Way Galaxy at the time with the exception of the Borg Collective and Tholian Assembly.

The Herald vanguard arrived at Earth at approximately 0000 hours Pacific Standard Time. The gateways were visible from the surface of Earth and Luna to the unaided eye. Some accounts claim that the clocks in San Francisco chimed midnight as the gateways appeared. Regardless, this has led to its popular name, the *Battle At Midnight*.

Despite all projections indicating that the fall of Earth was a certainty and would occur within hours, a last minute parley between a representative of the Alliance and L'Miren of the Iconian Empire led to a lasting cessation of hostilities and the end of the Iconian War.

# Background

After the disastrous Battle at the Herald Sphere, the Alliance was operating from a back footing for the remainder of the war against an organized and much more aggressive enemy in the Iconian Empire. Total military defeat was all but inevitable. The Iconian Empire pressed their advantage to either contest or outright control interstellar space throughout the Milky Way galaxy, while Starfleet was reduced to an almost purely defensive force. Their remaining resources were focused entirely on research and development into unconventional means of defeating the Iconians, and faced repeated setbacks.

Having established control of the war, the Iconian Empire elected to assemble the bulk of their forces and begin to systematically eliminate the major powers of the galaxy. The United Federation of Planets was selected as the first target due to their highly competitive science capabilities, high population, and a perception that they would concede more readily than other factions, considered important in impacting the morale of others and forcing further capitulations. Plans were made for the military conquest of the homeworlds of all four of its founding members, but it was expected that the Federation would surrender after only the fall of Earth and, unlike Qo'noS and New Romulus, that Earth would fall quickly to a ground invasion as soon as orbital dominance had been established.

The Alliance was well aware that the Iconians were gathering their fleets for a major move, and it was expected that their target would likely be to force the surrender of one of the main powers in the Alliance, most likely either the Federation, the Romulan Republic, or the Klingon Empire, with an outside chance that it would be the Cardassian Union. The Alliance thus prepared a significant part of their remaining forces to move and defend whatever the final target was. Priority access to the Alliance wide Transwarp Gate Network was to be given to the ships of the targeted nation, both so that they would be able to defend their homes, and to mitigate the risk of having fighting ships surrender later due to the Iconians threatening their families and homes. The Alliance as a whole made hasty refits to as many ships as possible using all that they had learned and all the technology they had developed from fighting the Iconian Empire so far.

Elsewhere, less than twenty-four hours before the attack began, L'Val's own fleet amassing at OL-272 was attacked by Starfleet's 26th Fleet. It is believed that this fleet was to reinforce the main invasion force at Sol, and had it been allowed to participate that the outcome of this battle might have been very different.