Letters of Marques
After the transfer of captain Rivers to the Boudicca, Ahmed is promoted to captain of the Rosenante.
It turns out that his first test as captain will place his ship and crew well outside the boundaries of Federation Space.
The Mission began with a communication for Admiral Talbot of Starfleet intelligence.
Prince Khamal, the hereditary leader of the Meldovian people had been kidnapped on the eave of a peace treaty that would bring an end to a 400 year old war between the Meldovian and Arturian factions (both of the Cartenian race).
While traveling to Arturia Prime from Meldovia III to conclude the peace treaty, Orion pirates and slavers attacked the Prince's convoy and took the Prince and many other Meldovians prisoner.
At the request of the Vulcan Arbiter T'Val, Admiral Talbot assigned the USS Rosenante to the task of locating and recovering the Prince before the peace negotiations fail.
Salid is order to rendezvous with the Arbiter and take on an Arturian, Meldovian and the Vulcan delegations. He is then ordered to proceed into Orion space and locate and rescue the Prince.
Using their untried cloaking system, the HISS system, the Rosenante sliped into Orion Space to begin their investigation at the heart of the Orion Syndicate's notorious slave markets on Barakos IV.
Three away teams are sent to the surface to procure supplies, search for clues to the Prince and gather intelligence.
One of the away teams is tasked with the acquisition of a Orion style shuttle craft to be used in future phases of the mission. This team consisting of the first officer, Janeway, Lt. Dralar, and the CEO Lt. Paul Bird succeed in their mission, but not before Lt. Bird is killed in a senseless brawl by an individual using a poisoned blade.
Bird is transported back to the ship, but the poison works quickly and he is not able to be revived.
the second away team, consisting of Lt. Ro'Dal, Ensign Weaver, PFC Nunez and Lt. Caskie, and Ensign T'Kron search for Meldovians among the slave pens of the market. they are successful in rescuing three Meldovians and a Half-Orion/Half-Betazoid woman named Sodra, who claims to have information concerning the whereabouts of the prince.
Sodra turns out to have no information at all, instead using her telepathic powers to pluck a few relative pieces of information from Weaver. However, she has done no harm and is restricted to quarters until such time as her disposition can be determined.
Ro'Dal and Caskie do recover three Meldovians with the aid of a new ally, Nodel, who is an amthropoid, a species not yet discovered by the UFP. Their new ally leads them directly to the last three Meldovian slaves in the marketplace.
The third away team, consisting of Lt. Sullivan, Ensign Raschen, and Chief Sheridan make contact with Raschen's grandfather, a reputed Bounty hunter by the name of "Easy Ed" Raschen. They get a solid lead on whom may have the prince, an slaver named O'Banyan at Xanadu Gothos.
Once all three teams have returned to the ship, the senior staff question those that were brought aboard at Barakos IV.
It rapidly becomes apparent that there was a spy within the Prince's circle of advisors, and that information, coupled with the discovery of an encrypted message into Orion space originating from the Rosenante, leads to speculation that there is now an enemy spy aboard the Rosenante as well.
Maddox and Weaver are given the task to decrypt the message in the hopes of discovering it's origins.
With information acquired from Nodel it is determined that there was a Meldovian of some importance shipped to Haldor II. While it is unknown if this is the Prince, it is worth investigating and so the Captain orders course set and the Rosenante underway to the Haldor system.
En route, the Holographic marine Program, Ramirez, suddenly activates and attempts to assassinate the Captain and several other key members of the ship's senior staff.
Chaos ensues as the crew struggle to regain control of the ship's computers and disable the hologram from operating. It quickly becomes apparent that the saboteur is responsible.
Meanwhile Nodel confides in Ro'Dal that he has heard the voice of a slaver on the ship. This voice he insists is the exact same voice that he heard near the Meldovian cells on Barakos IV.
Nodel and Ro'Dal hatch a plan to potentially identify their would-be slaver and set the plan into action.
With several of the ship's systems off-line, as a result of Ensign Weavers attempt to stop the holographic marine by disengaging the Cochrane Accelerator field in the main computer and then physically destroying the holographic buses with a hand phaser, the Rosenante takes refuge inside an asteroid belt to avoid detection while the stealth systems and other ship's critical systems are repaired.
Once those repairs are completed, the ship continues on to Haldor II, where their sensors detect the presence of a living facility protected by an environmental shield.
With no ships in the immediate vicinity, Ahmed orders the ship into a geosynchronous orbit and tasks Lt. Sullivan, Ensign Weaver, lieutenant Matrix and Lieutenant Caskie to accompany a security team to the surface with the intentions of rescuing the single Meldovian life-sign found on the planet.
After recovering the Meldovian from the planet Haldor II, it became quickly apparent that the individual that they had acquired was a traitorous captain who had been responsible for the ease of the Prince's kidnapping.
Having no other choice the captain ordered the new prisoner interrogated and the Rosenante to set course for Torven III. The only other lead that they had to the possible whereabouts of the Prince's location.
Once arriving in the Torven System, Salid opens negotiations with the trader Doyle O'Banyan, And ex-marine turned smuggler and slave trader. In return for a promise to aid in his rehabilitation, Salid agrees to accept O'Banyan's assistance in recovering the prince. The Trader had already secretly sent an assault group against Morella in the hopes that they could acquire the Prince.
Surprisingly, the assault works and the Prince as well as O'Banyan's missing daughter is recovered, allowing the Rosenante to return back to Federation Space in time to guarantee the successful signing of the Peace between the Meldovian and Arturians and the formal formation of the Cartenian Commonwealth.
Thier mission completed, the Rosenante heads to Geneva for some R&R and After action inspections.
