 |
Timeline Change Imminent! This article contains information that no longer applies to the current version of Star Trek Online. It is provided only for historical purposes. |
Ghosts of War, Part II (ST-HI6PMJ2Y8)@NCC-89471
"Ghosts of War, Part II" (ST-HI6PMJ2Y8, aka "Extraordinary Rendition") is the second of six missions in the Ghosts of War series.
Synopsis[ | ]
Historical context[ | ]
This mission takes place in an alternate 2409, several weeks after the events of the Cryptic-authored Romulan Mystery story arc and Part I of this series.
Plot summary[ | ]
The player is contacted once again by Admiral Madelaine Youngs of Starfleet Intelligence with orders to proceed to Bironex Depot, a space station jointly operated by the Romulan Star Navy and the Tal Shiar. The player's mission is to extract an Intel agent known only by her codename of "Black Snow", who while infiltrating the station's crew on another assignment has obtained information on the whereabouts of rogue Romulan Senator Veledrus, who is believed to have been behind the thalaron attack on Verena III (whose aftermath the player witnessed in Part I).
The player arrives and approaches Bironex Depot. (Without a cloaking device, the ship must carefully dodge the ships surrounding the station, taking care to avoid coming close enough to any one ship to attract their attention.) Black Snow signals the player, who then beams her aboard. The player's ship is discovered before she can leave, but Black Snow somehow talks the station commander into letting the ship go. Once the ship is safely out of the system, Black Snow reveals that she is the offspring of a Vulcan and a Betazoid, with a set of psionic abilities considered extraordinary by both races' standards, which - as the player has just observed - have proven quite useful in her role as an Intel agent.
Black Snow then reveals what she has learned: Veledrus himself was once with the Tal Shiar, and has maintained his ties to that organization as a Senator. He was away from the Imperial Romulan Senate at the time of the Verena III attack, and Black Snow believes he carried out that operation from a Tal Shiar outpost hidden among Debrune ruins on Barradas III. The player's mission will be to lure Veledrus back to that outpost - on the Federation side of the former Neutral Zone - so that he can be captured for interrogation without violating Imperial Romulan space.
The player arrives at Barradas III and then, after evading detection by a Romulan vessel briefly entering the system, beams to the surface. There, the player and away team finds that the Tal Shiar outpost's entrance is being concealed and guarded by an elaborate holographic system, which they must disable before entering the outpost. Once inside, Black Snow uses her psionic abilities to distract the facility's guards, and then to trick the station's commanding officer into contacting Veledrus to ask him to return (and to providing the satellite system schematics).
The ploy works, and Veledrus is taken into custody aboard the Starfleet Intelligence vessel S.S. Fleming - but he turns out to be carrying a concealed bomb, which he detonates aboard the Fleming to devastating effect, apparently killing Admiral Youngs and enabling Veledrus to escape to a backup Starfleet vessel, the Prometheus Class Escort U.S.S. Monticello. Even more disturbing, he turns out not to be the real Veledrus at all, but a shapeshifting impostor who murdered the real senator before the Verena III attack and then assumed his identity.
The player searches the Monticello for the impostor but to no avail; only after returning to the player's own ship is it discovered that the impostor has now taken the form of the Monticello captain and absconded with her Gamma section to a safe distance, forcing the player to fight off her remotely piloted Alpha and Beta sections and her Captain's Yacht. The player and ship survive, but the Gamma section is nowhere to be found; as long as she and her impostor captain are missing, there's no telling how much chaos and destruction they can inflict upon the galaxy.
Outline[ | ]
Mission text[ | ]
Objectives[ | ]
- Extraction
- Ghosts of War, Part II
- Approach Bironex Depot
- Hail Black Snow
- Beam Black Snow aboard
- Leave the system
- Silent and Invisible
- Evade Romulan detection
- A Cloak of Light
- Follow Romulan to post entrance
- Kill giant spiders
- Follow Romulan to post entrance
- Follow Romulan to post entrance
- Kill giant spiders
- Concurrent objectives:
- Obtain west holoemitter frequency
- Obtain south holoemitter frequency
- Obtain east holoemitter frequency
- Initiate signal jamming field
- Return to post entrance
- Mistress of Puppets
- Concurrent objectives:
- Defeat Tal Shiar officers
- Defeat guards
- Find Black Snow
- Defeat Tal Shiar officers
- Talk to Black Snow
- Defeat Tal Shiar command staff
- Download satellite schematics
- Concurrent objectives:
- Springing the Trap
- Defeat Tal Shiar squadron
- Hide behind closest moon
- Approach Veledrus's entourage
- Defeat Veledrus's entourage
- Hail the S.S. Fleming
- Snared Senator
- Talk to Adm. Youngs
- Concurrent objectives:
- Talk to Major Tarnak
- Talk to Senator Veledrus
- Talk to Black Snow
- Find Adm. Youngs
- Contact Black Snow
- Flight of the Intruder
- Search this deck
- Search cargo bay
- Examine cargo bay crew
- Talk to Capt. Sadak
- Separate Ways
- Perform sensor sweep
- Defend yourself and the Fleming
Walkthrough
- There is no walkthrough for this mission, yet. You can help STOWiki by writing it here.
Gallery[ | ]
Extraction
Silent and Invisible
A Cloak of Light
Mistress of Puppets
Springing the Trap
Snared Senator
Flight of the Intruder
Separate Ways
"Ghosts of War, Part II" promotional graphic
Notes[ | ]
- This mission's alternate title references the controversial practice of delivering some captured terrorism suspects to secret bases for interrogation, often used by the administration of US President George W. Bush following the attacks of September 11, 2001 - similar to what Starfleet Intelligence plans to do with Senator Veledrus in this mission.
- Of the six missions in this series, Part II has undergone the most iterations between its originally published version and the current one. Early versions had the player pick up Black Snow from a holodeck safe house, and deliver Veledrus to a secret Starfleet Intelligence base whose location was kept secret in a manner similar to that used by the Dominion's Founders in DS9 episode "Broken Link". The mission then ended with Veledrus escaping Intel custody.
- The first major revision replaced the holodeck scene with the extraction of Black Snow from Bironex Depot behind enemy lines. Due to the need for stealth and secrecy, the player was "ordered" to use a small craft instead of a starship (though like any other Foundry mission, there was no way to enforce a small-craft requirement). Subsequent revisions did away with this, encouraging the use of a starship with a cloaking device or stealth build instead. (Again there's no way to enforce this, though the mission is easier to complete with stealth or a cloak.)
- This revision also had Major Tarnak getting captured along with Veledrus, with both being transferred to the S.S. Fleming (which did not appear in the mission's original form), from which Veledrus then escapes and somehow teleports to the U.S.S. Monticello. The search of the Monticello was also added at this point, as was the final space battle.
- Bironex Depot (and the system in which it resides) is featured in Romulan Republic mission "Valley of the Shadow II".
- Most of this mission takes place on or in orbit of Barradas III, a planet featured in TNG episode "Gambit, Part I".
- Veledrus is reported to have been poisoned to death with a felodesine chip - the same method Alidar Jarok used to commit suicide at the end of TNG episode "The Defector".
- The U.S.S. Monticello is named for the estate of United States President Thomas Jefferson (as well as several other localities in the US and Europe). Early versions of the mission had the Monticello as a Gryphon-class escort; this was changed to Prometheus-class in the first major revision, so that she could separate and two of the sections (plus the captain's yacht) keep the player's ship occupied while Veledrus escapes aboard the third section.