<USS Avalon> The Event

  
The Event
Cochrane Institute, New Montana
 
The citizens of Alpha Centauri B II, who had not  thought of themselves as 
'colonists' for generations, were unprepared for the  violence of the first 
attack.  Nor had anyone anticipated the target of  that violence.
 
Only the grove of fig trees planted by the great man  himself more than two 
centuries earlier survived.  The rest of the Cochrane  Institute lay in ruins.
 
By the day that ended with the gathering storm of war  had begun as any other 
on a world complacent and too used to peace.
 
It was late winter in the Northern Hemisphere of New  Montana; the stars 
Centauri A and Centauri B rose together in the dawn.   Only during summer is 
sunlight present for a full twenty-six hours each  day.  That's the season when 
the 
orbit of Centauri B's second planet places  it between the two larger stars 
of the ternary Alpha Centauri  system.
 
More than thirty major buildings formed the main  campus, their dusky red 
forms sweeping up a gentle rise of green  foothills.  The structures that 
commanded the hilltops looked out to Lily's  Ocean to the east and the rugged 
Rockier 
Mountains to the west.  
 
One of the uppermost buildings was a Starfleet  installation.  The research 
performed there was restricted, ensuring that  Starfleet's capabilities would 
always remain significantly more advanced than  those of civilian ships, 
privateers, and any potential 'peer  competitors'.
 
Officially known as Facility 18, the building was older  than the others, 
constructed almost ninety standard years earlier.  Its  historic facade of 
intricately sculpted, red Centauran sandstone was set off by  bold horizontal 
timbers of pale, native Lincoln trees.
 
Facility 18's stark and sleek interior, however,  revealed signs of regular 
rebuilding and upgrading.  The most recent  changes dated from the frantic 
months toward the end of the Dominion War.   Though the realization was never 
discussed in public, the leadership of  Starfleet was uncomfortably aware that 
the 
war's heavy price for survival had  also spurred one of the most productive 
periods of scientific advancement  Starfleet had experienced for generations.
 
On this date, Facility 18 was preparing to run a static  test on a prototype 
warp core.  The prototype warp core was scheduled to  come online at 0800 
hours.  For this test, it would produce a warp bubble  approximately four 
meters 
in diameter.  
 
If the test was successful, space trials would follow,  with a prototype warp 
core installed on a test sled.  But the test was not,  and Starfleet's 
Advanced Warp Development Group paid the price of that  failure.
 
Everything had occurred exactly as planned... for  eighteen seconds.
 
That's when the warning alert flashed.  A minor  power surge.
 
The impossible, however didn't occur until 0802, when  the warp field flared. 
 That finally triggered the automatic cutoffs, and  then for no reason, the 
chamber's sensors went offline.
 
A team went in and examined the core, which was still  offline, and for the 
next seven minutes nothing.
 
At 0809, the test core exploded.
 
The surge along the power conduits to the antimatter  generator released 
magnetic containment.  In the next ten seconds, there  were seven more 
explosions. 
 In less than a minute, all thirty buildings of  the institute were in 
flames.  
 
Two minutes later, eleven hundred and thirty-five  personnel perished.
 
Only the fig trees survived.  Planted by the man  whose genius had made the 
United Federation of Planets possible, and now the  only living witnesses to 
the beginning of the Federation's end.
 
 
(Please note that this is reproduced and edited  to this shortened version 
from a prior written medium, without consent. (c) CBS  Studios)




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