Star Trek: Elite Force II Diaries Part Eleven

This is my exploration of Star Trek: Elite Force II where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. Now let’s continue Star Trek: Elite Force II…

Lieutenant Munro’s personal log, Stardate 57077.6. I had just beamed back to Enterprise after retrieving coordinates for the Exomorph master control facility, under control by a Romulan faction known as The Empty Crown. En. Gonzales had been killed in the line of duty.

After reporting to sickbay to have my cosmetic surgery reversed, I was summoned to the observation lounge so I headed to the bridge and provided my mission report. Cpt. Picard said that Gonzales “made his choice” knowing he might die, but it was Picard himself who decided that I was to take the ensign on that mission…

We set a course for Tolochon II, as per the coordinates on the PADD I had retrieved, and Picard told me that I should take some time off. I agreed, but only after the mission was over. The captain then told me to see Lt. Tuvok at 1800hrs for a debriefing, so I had a little time to kill. As luck would have it, Kleeya contacted me to ask that I meet her in stellar cartography on Deck 11 just before En. Murphy asked to see me in her quarters on Deck 7. I decided to go and see Kleeya, as I could then hit my own quarters right after seeing Murphy.

Kleeya started with an apology, feeling that if she had doubted Krindo more then Gonzales wouldn’t have died. Nor would the crew of the USS Dallas, I thought, but I doubted she could have stopped Krindo in any case, so none of this was directly her fault. She then explained that she wanted to glorify her people over other races, which… well, I’m human, and we’ve had issues with people doing that over the centuries… I told her that we all make mistakes and that I would help her correct this one. We then shared an embrace, and I’m not sure what happened next as then it was the briefing?

Picard, Tuvok, and Kleeya were discussing the upcoming mission to the master control facility on Tolochon II. We were told that the Exomorphs were created to do labour, but their military applications were soon realised, followed shortly by them turning on the Idryll. They exterminated 95% of their race before being shut down, and the surviving Idryll as a result fell into a dark age without science or literacy. Korban asked what weapon was used to exterminate the Idryll, and Kleeya explained that it was intelligence; an Exomorph called the Archeopendra gained sentience and took control.

The plan was to get in and out of the Neutral Zone without the Romulans detecting us. Plan B was to explain things and hope they believed us. On the surface, we were splitting up into two teams; one in a shuttle to create a distraction, the other to beam in near the entrance and go inside. I’m not sure why I was being sent in with two people and the 10 other members of the Hazard Team were being put in a single shuttlecraft. It severely limited my strategic options.

What gave me more options was Tuvok explaining how we could call down orbital bombardments, decimating an area with phasers and quantum torpedoes. To be frank, I was a little concerned that quantum torpedoes were overkill since I was potentially in the blast radius, and Enterprise was equipped with photon torpedo launchers as well.

Lieutenant Munro’s personal log, Stardate 57080.1. Korban, Chell and I beamed down after the shuttle had begun its assault. Murphy called to say that the shuttle had been damaged and power levels were fluctuating. I told them it was fine, but the distraction of the call was enough to allow a Romulan to beam in nearby and shoot Chell, requiring him to return to Enterprise.

Korban and I strode onward, but towers had been erected along the route to house snipers. I called down a strike on the first one, then we fought off some charging Romulans. I found a weapon called Rom x Rad by my heads-up display, which I took to be a rocket launcher but in fact just seemed to launch napalm projectiles — I would later be told that it was a radiation disruptor. Taking cover behind some rocks, I called another strike on another tower, and once that was down we strutted confidently through the gate and Korban was shot.

After beaming my remaining teammate back to Enterprise, I once more wondered why I was doing this solo. For once I actually wanted some backup, I needed it, but all I got from the ship were supplies beamed into strategic locations… I continued to fight my way through the Romulans and called down a couple more torpedo strikes before reaching an area with a heavily barricaded door and a large Exomorph. Once it was dead, I called in a strike on the door to gain entry. I was told that we had a limited number of torpedoes for orbital strikes, and yet Tuvok fired six of them at the door which was blown open by a single volley.

Entering the cave system, I fought off some Romulans across magma streams until I reached the other side where the main facility was. All I had to do was cross an open, heavily fortified area covered in Romulans… But it gets worse because after they were all dead, a big Exomorph hovered over the walls and started firing at me! The others could fly, but this one wasn’t just picking a direction and going ballistic, it was hovering over my head raining down energy blasts.

About the time I finally killed the creature, two D'deridex class Romulan vessels decloaked near Enterprise. Picard explained what the Federation was doing in the Neutral Zone, giving data about the Exomorphs and The Empty Crown to the commander aboard one of the warbirds. He managed to convince them that it was folly to believe Commander Suldok who was claiming the site held no military application, and then contacted me to warn that friendly Romulans were joining me.

The handful of friendly Romulans were met by a force from The Empty Crown, so I left them to it and entered the facility via elevator. Suldok began ranting over the public address system as I made my way through the traitorous corridors, some partially flooded with magma, and all of them bearing some kind of Romulan resistance. After a while, Suldok told his people that there was only one Federation infiltrator and asked “how hard can it be to kill him?”

I finally reached a lift down to a lower level with a single Exomorph hanging from the ceiling — until a big one burst through a door to join us. Since I couldn’t use the now-busted doors, I had to utilise the handy hole which had been blown through one of the walls and leading into another cave system. Unfortunately, it appeared that I had seen the end of the Romulans, and had to contend with some of the toughest types of Exomorph instead! It was a good thing that I had literally every weapon at my disposal, as there were the cloaking ones, the huge ones, and even another one of the hovering ones as I breached deeper inside the facility.

Suldok sat behind the master controls, which were behind multiple force fields and suspended above magma, with a few thin rock paths giving me any manoeuvrability. And I needed that as wave after wave of small Exomorph attacked me, though I felt that it was clearly not the facility running at full speed. You might have thought that Suldok was safe behind his force fields, but he decided to keep throwing grenades at me, which required opening one of the fields — and allowing me to return fire.

As Suldok succumbed to his wounds, he did something which summoned an Archeopendra! It was like a skeletal snake, with a humanoid head and torso protected behind a carapace which opened to allow it to fire at me. It taunted me, proving that it had some kind of sentience like Kleeya had claimed. It claimed that damaging it was causing more of the smaller Exomorphs to appear, but my Tetryon Gatling gun proved to be enough, and I beamed back to Enterprise. Throughout this whole ordeal, I had eliminated 815 enemies with 38% accuracy.

The Romulan warbirds allowed us to leave the Neutral Zone, but not before the commander and Picard had a discussion about how the Attrexians had covered up knowledge about the Idryll having been more advanced than them, in order to use them as cheap labour. I wouldn’t have thought that the Romulans particularly cared about other races outside of their space, but it is what it is.

Picard congratulated me on the bridge, and Tuvok chimed in saying that I should be proud of what I had accomplished. The captain agreed and said that he was going to recommend that Starfleet employ Hazard Teams on all vessels, particularly exploratory ones.

I then went to see Kleeya, as we had a lot to celebrate, and despite the heavy price, she said that it was worth it to see her people’s true history finally revealed. She thanked me for showing her a whole new world, so I asked her to visit Earth with me, literally a whole new world for her to see. She agreed, and asked how soon we could begin our cultural exchange. I leaned in to kiss her, and she reciprocated. I know this is a personal log so I could go into detail, but I’ll just leave it at her saying “Oh, Alex.”

Lieutenant Alexander Munro’s personal log, signing off.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A really fun couple of games in a genre that you just never saw before or since for Star Trek. You always play as a pilot, a captain, or an admiral so getting to be boots on the ground (or space station) has been fun to experience. While I remembered bits of the first game, I can only assume that I played this once before (if at all) because I had an inkling of déjà vu now and then, but never anything definitive.

I do have a couple of questions that I suppose I’ll never get answers to. Why was Stemmons played off as a bad guy when he had the right idea: Munro’s experience made him an ideal teacher of small-group tactics. Sometimes the best use of someone’s abilities is for them to teach others, and Munro could have shown the potential of more Hazard Teams.

Next up, why was Murphy assigned to chief of security on the USS Dallas, yet was only an Ensign? Not even Lieutenant Junior Grade, a straight-up Ensign and she’s supposed to lead a team of security personnel? On the subject of Murphy, is she the only person ever referred to by her first name, exclusively? Tuvok calls her Murphy, but everyone else is “Telsia” this and “Telsia” that. Okay, also Sydney Stockman got the same treatment a couple of times…

It felt strange to have so many characters included when most of them didn’t do anything. There’s a Denoblian member of the Hazard Team who has several conversations with a Vulcan about chess, yet neither of them participate in missions. The returning cast are basically just guest appearances: Chell did almost nothing, Chang actually did nothing, Jurot did less than nothing… Though going back to the Vulcan and Denoblian, I got a kick out of the NPCs having ongoing plots — kudos to the writer for some excellent world-building there.

One last thing I wanted to mention is about the Stardates. I liked the fact that they were included, it makes it feel like time is actually progressing. What I didn’t like was that they seemed to be chosen at random. The website that I used to work them out into real dates (TrekGuide.com) definitely existed in 2003, so the resources were there. I highlighted the egregious errors, such as USS Dallas encountering the Exomorphs several months before they evacuated the crew “three days ago”, and Enterprise taking five days to react to a distress call from Taravar VII. What I didn’t mention is that all of the Stardates after Viok Epsilon V occur between midnight and 4am, so I’m curious what the shift structure is like under Picard!

I recommend Star Trek: Elite Force II, it’s a great time despite my minor issues with it. It’s available on GOG and runs fine on Windows 11. Live long and prosper!