This is a galaxy wide transmission
of the United Federation of Planets.
The United Federation of Planets Historical Society,
in association with Memory Alpha, presents...
The Four Years War!
Stardate 2241.03, the planet Archanis IV.
Founded nearly a century before,
this research outpost has grown
into a flourishing full-scale city.
It is a shining example of Federation progress.
There could be no Federation without Earth!
And the fact that the humans could
lead the formation of the Federation
just a few years after their
war with the Romulan Empire is...
nothing short of extraordinary.
But it represents something very
different to the Klingon Empire.
Growing tired of diplomacy, the high-chancellor proclaims:
If words were water, the humans would drown us all.
The bad blood between the humans and the Klingons,
meant that the job of preventing war and
leading the peace delegations, fell to Vulcan.
Regrettably, we failed.
For 12 hours, the Klingon disruptors do not stop.
Archanis is reduced to rubble.
Thousands of its inhabitants are dead.
Countless more are missing.
The first victims of what will come to be
known as, "The Four Years War."
[Admiral Ramirez] They had been expanding their empire
for 200 years before the Federation was formed.
That there would be a conflict,
with the Klingon people, at some point,
was obvious, to most of the members of Starfleet.
Klingons were certain that they could
merely take anything they wanted.
Starfleet's early losses did little to
dissuade them of that notion.
[Garth of Izar, Captain of the USS Ares]
Koriana VI, Vesta, Archanis,
we took some major beatings, the first six months.
For most of that first year, our mission was
just to slow them down, while we fell back.
Unfortunately, the Klingons were unconvinced
the Federation was any sort of match for them.
And their belief in their superiority,
left us little room to negotiate.
Well, at that point, about the only thing we
were doing, that impressed the Klingons, was...
dying well.
And, there was plenty of that.
The Klingon supreme commander,
the architect of the invasions,
was a warlord named Kharn.
"Kharn , the undying" is what they called him.
The Klingons revered him, with good reason.
Vulcan intelligence is, if I may say, unparalleled, but...
even for us, he was a mystery!
It wasn't until the formation of the Federation,
that the high council began to take Earth, seriously.
And even after the Federation was
formed, many on the high council,
thought it is a mere political alliance.
Starfleet was never seen as
a match for the imperial navy.
Certainly not one that would
impede the growth of the empire.
Their whole civilization, their whole culture,
is a monument to the art of war.
The early campaigns. Yes, the
Klingons were toying with us.
They were using a strategy known to
the Klingon people as vuvHa'chu'wI' to'
vuvHa'chu'wI' to'
Which loosely, roughly translates as
"The strategy of least respect."
The epitome of their...
arrogance, occurred during
the ambush of Inverness V.
The Inverness system, as you call it,
was our first objective.
Inverness, five planets, all colonized.
Stardate, 2243.3
The highly populated dilithium rich
planets, of the Inverness system.
[Kharn] For your kind, those planets were
merely a source of dilithium.
For us, those planets are sacred.
God damn Inverness V.
What a mess!
It was the first time they used it on us.
It was an old Klingon tactic.
They had a word, natlhchu'wI'.
It means, "The Devourer!"
Day after day,
it was the same thing.
I get called into support some kind of counter-attack.
By the time I got into orbit,
my orders had been changed.
Attack called off, battle was already over.
We'd pull out of warp...
into a junkyard.
Fragments of starships bouncing off my hull.
Fragments of the crews, as well.
Eighteen starships destroyed
Pick up the survivors, beam them up.
We'd be beaming them up, and
one of two things would happen.
The transporters would blow out, or the
Klingons would show up and start shooting.
I could look down from orbit and see trails of smoke.
For miles.
Well that was it, something had
to change, or we were done!
An Andorian acquaintance once said:
"Don't push the pink-skins to the thin ice."
It wasn't very eloquent, but...
the Klingons found it to prove quite prophetic.
After two years of almost constant defeat, the head
of Starfleet, Admiral Slater is forced to step down.
Across the Federation, billions
wonder, who would replace him.
I was on the bridge of the Xenophon.
It was my first ship in the war.
An old Marklin class destroyer
With Lt. Cain, our comms officer said that there
was a fleet-wide broadcast from Starfleet.
I told him to punch it up on the big screen.
And that's when we heard it was Ramirez.
That name spread like wildfire.
You ask anybody where they
were when they heard it and...
they'll remember.
We are facing an enemy,
that is consumed and committed to our total destruction.
His first speech to the Federation council was, incredible.
An enemy that demands to be fought, and we will fight!
There were 40000 people in Archer Arena.
But I say to you our greatest challenge,
is not the might of a Klingon fleet.
And they all wanted one thing.
The greatest challenge laying
before us, is to do what must be done,
without undoing the dream of the Federation.
Hope!
For myself, I have but one fear:
Destroying the dream of the Federation.
Compared to such a loss,
I DO NOT FEAR THE KLINGON EMPIRE!
It was a good speech.
Until I heard Admiral Ramirez speak,
I had not foreseen the possibility of a peace
between the Federation and the Klingons.
Nor had I foreseen the possibility
that the Federation might win.
The battle-cry of Admiral Ramirez
sweeps across the Federation.
The first goal was to create a class of ship that could
spring Starfleet back into action, back into battle!
We had to leapfrog Klingon technology.
It was called the Ares class.
It was exactly what we needed.
We had over a dozen other worlds working on it.
It was the first pure warship that Starfleet had ever built.
As for Vulcans...,
though we had limited our contribution to propulsion,
environmental and defensive technologies,
there were many who wanted us to end
our participation in the war, altogether.
The Vulcan's going to do, what a Vulcan's going to do.
But the Andorians, they were
happy to supply us the phasers.
Stardate 2244.1, near the planet Signus III.
There will always be,
detractors who think you are taking the initiative
too soon. That you are rushing the offensive.
I disagreed.
The leadership of Admiral Ramirez is a welcome change.
But his grand plan has yet to be tested in battle.
We had the ships,
and we had a core of battle-tested commanders.
it was time to take the initiative.
Well that was Ramirez's first roll of the dice.
and they landed exactly the way we wanted
them to, the way we needed them to.
The codename was Operation Pegasus.
Pegasus was the first test of the Ares class
against the ship it was designed to defeat,
the D6.
The Ares class looked good in simulations, real good.
But data can only take you so far.
The only true test for a combat vessel, is combat.
The new Federation ships were, unexpected.
And then there was Garth. [Laughs]
That mad Izar and son-of-a-bitch.
That was his day.
Garth likes to play down his
contribution, don't you believe it.
What he did that day, no captain had ever done.
We got lucky!
It was Sonya's maneuver that gave me the opening.
Sonya pulled a feint to starboard.
Garth just went for it.
It was like a Klingon maneuver.
It was a new ship.
they said she was tough, I wanted
to see what she could take.
After the battle of Signus III,
our ship captains started giving the
Federation its due as a worthy adversary.
and for the first time, we took notice of Garth of Izar.
It was a Klingon that gave me that name.
I guess there are a lot worse things,
that a Klingon could call you.
Yeah, sure, I'll tell you.
They called me "Queen, Bitch, Whore of the Federation."
The Ares class had withstood its first trial by fire.
It passed with the gauntlet victorious.
The Ares had proven itself and it continued to prove itself.
It was bigger, faster, more agile, drip drop.
And it was better armed than anything we'd, had before.
We had lost the advantage.
At the time, Starfleet crews preferred
to fight among their own kind.
Crews might be Andorian or
Tellarite, or Vulcan, or Human.
Each of which had their own strategy and tactics.
One never knew who, you are fighting.
And knowing one's enemies,
is the first rule of war.
With the launch of their newer ships and the
experience their commanders had gained,
our progress was slowed.
It was, frustrating to fight Starfleet.
Confident in their Ares cruisers, this brash core
of captains took back three systems in 30 days.
But the war was not over, yet.
Stardate 2244.9
Starfleet's next generation heavy
cruiser is behind schedule.
Admiral Ramirez has himself arrived
to deal with the problem,
when he receives a coded transmission,
from Starfleet intelligence.
The Klingons were building something.
Something big.
We heard these rumors about the D7.
We'd proven we could take on the Klingons
But the D7, changed all that.
D7 would break the back of Starfleet.
We had three shipyards,
across the Klingon Empire, build her.
If the Klingon high council, had listened to Kharn
If the high council had listened to me,
they would have had D7s at Signus III.
The D7 would have been ready for battle.
And all our new class Ares ships,
would have been cut to pieces.
And we would have defeated, the Federation.
It had become an arms race,
a war of technology.
The new class of ship was proving
more complicated than we realized.
We needed more time.
If the Klingons launched them first, we would
have been outmatched and outgunned, again.
And by now, the Klingons had learned better than to...
squander that advantage.
I needed another option.
I went to my three best captains: Garth, Robau, Trask.
And I asked them each for a plan of action.
The admiralty had three different plans.
The first one, wasn't worth spit.
The second one, was a good plan, solid plan.
But the third, was Garth's!
Garth asked me, out of the blue, if we could have a drink?
That's when I told her,
I had an idea for a battle plan.
My first reaction, let me just say this,
I was really glad we were drinking.
Garth and Sonya came into my quarters.
I showed him a rough outline of my
plan and I said "What do you think?"
Sam sat there.
He looked at it, and looked at it,
and then he looked at me.
And he said:
100 percent insanity.
A bloodbath, waiting to happen.
That was Axanar.
Axanar, its capture would put the Klingons
within striking distance of Andoria,
Tellar Prime, Vulcan and Terra.
It is the heart of Federation space.
Further, Kharn's spies discovered that
Starfleet's next generation heavy cruiser,
was being built in orbit over Axanar.
This is his chance to destroy Starfleet's
only match for the D7.
Garth of Izar knows Axanar is a target,
that Kharn cannot refuse.
When Garth first presented his plan,
to battle the Klingons on Axanar.
My first thought was...
how far he'd come.
I mean he was always an extraordinary
explorer before the war.
But I knew, in his heart, he was first a soldier.
We didn't sign up to be warriors.
That's not what Starfleet's about.
We proved that we could do, what we
needed to do, to defend the Federation.
I'm proud of everyone who I served with,
Especially those that didn't make it back.
So I signed off, on the plan.
To end conflict with one final battle.
To end it at Axanar.
D7 was the ultimate expression of the Klingon warship.
Technologically superior to anything in the quadrant.
We would launch her and devastate,
the Federation fleet.
Stardate 2245.1, the D7 enters the war!