Disaster at Rikantha (SH266)

## Disaster at Rikantha

The Romulans, under the guidance of Houses Selnirak and Notrub’illah, selected the Rikantha System for rapid development in Y132. The ostensible reason for the selection was trade with a Jindarian caravan, which had been found mining the system’s asteroid belt. Rikantha was otherwise a poor prospect as a colony world. The Romulan Empire poured trillions of credits into the system, and the only apparent return on the investment was the comparatively meager trade with the caravan. Huge numbers of sublight freighters entered and left the system, often in convoys under military escort, and often supplemented by freight and commando birds. Houses Selnirak and Notrub’illah went to great lengths to maintain friendly relations with the Jindarians, but despite these relations were never able to accomplish the one trade they were seeking with apparent diligence: warp power. The Jindarians, while often expressing thanks for the friendship and generosity of the Romulans, steadfastly refused to give them tactical warp technology.

House Selnirak cemented its relationship with the caravan, however, by arresting spies from Houses Rama’ch and Casifax who had attempted to suborn Jindarians to gain access to the designs for warp engines. These gestures of integrity on the part of House Selnirak and its ally Notrub’illah earned Jindarian trust. Envoys from the two houses were treated as honored guests aboard Jindarian asteroid ships over the years. All of them studiously avoided doing anything more than mentioning that the Romulan Empire would be willing to pay for warp engine technology, and promptly dropped the matter when their hosts declined to discuss it or politely indicated that it was not going to happen. The Jindarians were quite pleased with the manners of the Romulan envoys, and gradually dropped their guard. The Romulans even invited the Jindarians to maintain active fire controls so as to scan for the movements of Romulan ships and provide warning if they felt the ships were intruding too close to the Jindarian asteroid ships, but the Jindarians declined. They also declined offers of a formal alliance, but agreed to a mutual defense of the system against “hazards of space”, i.e., space monsters, but not against any other Romulan enemies.

It will never be known if the Romulan “charm offensive” would have eventually borne fruit. Perhaps if the Romulans had continued trying the Jindarians might have given their friends warp technology, or at least assisted them in developing their own. It will also never be known if the Romulan effort was ever anything more than a long-term plan to lull the Jindarians into a sense of security.

During the middle of Y141, several Romulan fleets, controlled by Houses Selnirak and Notrub’illah, crept into system under their new cloaking devices. Large convoys that passed through at the same time under escort further masked the ships’ presence. The fact that the Jindarian asteroid ships were all operating on passive fire control, and the various mining and other shuttles operating at the time simply did not have the capability to spot the cloaked ships, only furthered the infiltration. As was typical, the Jindarian asteroid ships were operating independently and widely separated, and each of the five ships of the caravan was the focal point of a Romulan fleet.

The Jindarians had one final defense against surprise by the Romulans, and that was the difficulty of finding a Jindarian asteroid ship in an asteroid field when it did not want to be found. The Romulans would know the general area, but attempting a specific search would be detected. To further prevent the success of such a search, the asteroid ships would routinely change location within their area of operation. What the Jindarians did not know was that the Romulan shuttles that had visited their ships (under the guidance of a Jindarian shuttle or a Jindarian tractor) had dropped “rocks” on their approaches and departures. These rocks had just enough acceleration to bring them, over a period of weeks,
into contact with the targeted asteroid ship. They were not, of course, true rocks, but highly sophisticated (for the Romulans) beacons. All of them were waiting for activation codes, but were otherwise inert. It is not known how many of the beacons the Romulans attempted to land on each asteroid ship, and how many failed to land, or simply failed in the period between placement and activation. Each was coded to self-destruct if it did not make contact with an asteroid with the minimal mass of a Jindarian asteroid ship in a set time (to prevent the beacons from attaching to a non-Jindarian rock).

Jindarian watch standers suddenly found their sensors and subspace communications filled with the constant hammering of signals coming from their own ship, while Romulan warships decloaked and launched plasma torpedoes.

## Aftermath

The Romulan attack was a disaster. While few Romulan ships were destroyed (all told, the five fleets lost six Hawks, four Warbird cruisers of all types, and one Vulture), the *Jemaal’s Glory* was the only ship the Romulans came close to disabling. The Jindarians left the asteroid belt shortly after this event, but it is not clear if that was a direct result of the Romulan attack, or if they had decided it was time to move on even before the Romulans struck. It would be nearly two decades more before the Romulans would have warp technology.

## References

1. ↑ Steven V. Cole (2010). *Star Fleet Battles Module Y3*. (Amarillo Design Bureau), pp. 43–5.