Battle of the Bassen Rift
| Battle of the Bassen Rift | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conflict | Reman coup | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Late AD 2379, stardate 56844.9 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Bassen Rift, Romulan Star Empire | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Federation / Romulan victory | ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
In the Star Trek fictional Universe, the Battle of the Bassen Rift was an engagement primarily involving the USS Enterprise-E and the Reman Warbird Scimitar, directly following the coup e'tat within the Romulan Star Empire in 2379. The battle occurred on stardate 56844.9, and is chronicled in the events of the movie Star Trek: Nemesis.
Coup on Romulus
Disillusioned by the recent changes in the Romulan Empire's relationship with the United Federation of Planets, which had been in large part precipitated by the events of the Dominion War, elements of the Romulan military, conspiring with the Remans, lower-caste members of Romulan society inhabiting the planet Remus, effected a coup d'etat, assassinating the Romulan Senate and installing the mysterious Reman Shinzon as Praetor. Upon receiving word of the coup, Starfleet dispatched the USS Enterprise-E, commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, to ensure that the shakeup would not destabilize the peace. Aboard the Reman Warbird Scimitar, the crew of the Enterprise first encountered the new Praetor Shinzon, who revealed himself to be a clone of Picard originally created to infilitrate Starfleet. Subsequent events revealed several things in succession: First, that Shinzon and the leaders of the coup intended to cripple the Federation; second, that to this end, the Scimitar was equipped with a deadly thelaron-based weapon, to be used to devastating effect against Earth; finally, that Shinzon was in fact dying as a result of the cloning process that created him, and required a blood transfusion from Picard which would certainly be fatal. For this last reason, the Captain was kidnapped and held captive on the Scimitar in preparation for such a procedure. Lieutenant Commander Data was able to rescue Captain Picard, and the Enterprise retreated towards Federation space in order to rendezvous with a fleet of vessels in hopes of stopping the Scimitar's assault.
The Battle
The retreat back to Federation space involved traversing the Bassen Rift, an area in which all subspace communications were disrupted. Shinzon, aboard the pursuing cloaked Scimitar, initiated the battle here knowing the Enterprise could not call for help.
According to a tactical analysis by Lieutenant Commander Worf before the battle, the Scimitar was protected by primary and secondary shielding, and armed with fifty-two disruptor banks and twenty-seven torpedo bays. In addition, the Scimitar was fitted with previously unseen cloaking technology that allowed weapons to be used while the ship was still cloaked. These armaments render the Scimitar vastly superior in firepower to any known Sovereign-class vessel.
The Enterprise, outgunned, outmaneuvered, and unable to even see her enemy, was able to inflict only minor damage on the enemy vessel through mostly hit-or-miss dispersal patterns and phaser spreads, while taking heavy damage in return. The battle was briefly interrupted with the arrival of two Romulan Norexan-class Warbirds; the Romulan military had decided that Shinzon's plan to destroy Earth, as well as the consequences of his deteriorating mental condition, would lead the Romulan Empire into an unjustifiable war. The Scimitar, under fire by three vessels, suffered modest damage before disabling both Warbirds by concentrating its overwhelming firepower.
Counselor Deanna Troi, taking advantage of her emphathic abilities, allowed the Enterprise to momentarily locate the cloaked ship. The Scimitar was hit squarely with several of the Enterprise's quantum torpedoes, causing its cloaking device to fail, and prompting Shinzon to change his strategy by ordering a boarding party aboard the Enterprise to recapture Captain Picard. This boarding party was eventually defeated by security forces led by Commander William Riker and Lieutenant Commander Worf.
However, having exhausted her complement of photon torpedoes, her phasers at minimal strength, her shields presumably having been penetrated and most systems running on emergency power, the Enterprise appeared to be near defeat, and was confronted face-to-face by the intact Scimitar and the apparently victorious Shinzon. Picard, however, recognized his final opportunity and ordered the Enterprise to ram to the Reman vessel. The collision wrecked both ships, including the conventional weaponry aboard the Scimitar, leaving Shinzon with only the Scimitar's thelaron weapon to finish off the Enterprise.
Knowing that the mutagenic bioweapon left no hope of escape for the Enterprise and her crew, Captain Picard, armed with only a phaser rifle and a personal sidearm, beamed to the Scimitar in hopes of confronting his nemesis and somehow shutting down the firing sequence. As Commander Geordi La Forge predicted, the remains of the heavily-damaged transporter systems finally failed as a result, stranding the Captain aboard the Scimitar. In the ensuing firefight on the Scimitar bridge, Picard was able to kill Shinzon, but the shock of doing so had stunned him beyond action. Data had followed the Captain by literally throwing himself across the space separating the Enterprise and the Scimitar, departing from an exposed section of the Enterprise's damaged hull (with the help La Forge) and gaining access to the Scimitar through an airlock. Before Captain Picard realized his intention and could stop him, Data used the Emergency Transport Unit he had brought along to beam Picard back to the Enterprise. He then fired into the thelaron generator, destroying the Scimitar completely in the process.