Cassiopeia Crisis

The Cassiopeia Crisis, forerunner of the current Federation-HoH conflict, was a severe escalation of previous United Federation of Planets-Harmony of Horizon confrontations. Captain Zara ka'Athnon of the USS Courageous elected to begin an investigation into the Harmony of Horizon, following a lack of success against the Harmony by Task Force Beyond.

Morshadd
Capt. ka’Athnon began her investigation into the Harmony on the world of Morshadd, believing it most likely to hold recent clues to Harmony activity. ka'Athnon asked Courageous to be dispatched to Morshadd to assist in the aftermath of the Bombing of Morshadd and the beginning of the Seasons of Strife. Adm. Michael Thuir, commander of TF Beyond, assented to this mission.

Embassy Row
Upon arriving on Morshadd, Capt. ka'Athnon, assisted by Cmnd. Sharizz, transported to the mostly destroyed embassy row. Upon arrival, they were informed that the Horizon embassy was suffering a severe fire in its basement. Quaestor Terinex, head of the Romulan delegation, handed over all information that the Tal Shiar had managed to collect on the Bombing to Capt. ka'Athnon.

Embassy Entrance
Capt. ka'Athnon then entered the Horizon embassy, the floor collapsing and plunging her into its basement level, out of which transport was impossible. However, she managed to connect to the Courageous from the embassy's computer system, which was already linked to that of the Courageous. The building continued to collapse, Capt. ka'Athnon being rescued from the collapse by Specialist Branches-of-Green, who had been comatose only moments earlier.

Kelsatha
Following her escape from the embassy, Capt. ka'Athnon proceeded to the Yrillian mercenary vessel Kelsatha. On board, after meeting with parts of the crew and distributing feedstock for disaster relief, Capt. ka'Athnon and LtCm. Peter Woodruff met with Ferash th'Koalthyk, a former member of the Andorian Guard. th'Koalthyk had secured military sensor scans and shipping manifests for the Morshadd system in the months leading up to the bombing, and handed those over to Capt. ka'Athnon. The data contained reference to a GumCo-flagged freighter carrying a crew consisting primarily of Tauni, including a former member of the Naval Intelligence Directorate, disgraced by association with the UFP-era Kelownan Liberation Committee.

Cassiopeia and the Deadly Islands
Upon returning to the Courageous, Capt. ka'Athnon went to her quarters to review the available data and decide upon her next course of action. All electronic feeds in or out of Capt. ka'Athnon's quarters were suddenly blocked, with the exception of a single computer monitor, which began to speak in an artificial voice, informing Capt. ka'Athnon that it represented an interest within Starfleet dedicated to investigating the Harmony of Horizon. The entity controlling the computer would eventually be revealed as the rogue Singer Zarael Alains.

Capt. ka'Athnon elected to not inform her crew or officers of the presence of Cassiopeia, as Zarael barely trusted her alone at the time. From Morshadd, the Courageous left for the Deadly Islands, following the MV Teamwork, a GumCo flagged freighter. Cmnd. Sharizz had Captain Aaron Wolfe, of Starfleet Intelligence, smuggled aboard the Courageous in order to support the investigation. Wolfe revealed that the Horizon was disturbingly capable of staying on message, changing the message instantaneously whenever necessary, but with different messaging nodes. He also revealed that once SFI had begun to investigate this, the pattern had changed, and individual officials suddenly began to give individual answers, and that SFI and Diplomatic Service agents ghosted at far higher rates than normal when working against the Harmony.

The Wolfpack Appears
While ka'Athnon and Wolfe were on the station, the Corporate Wolfpack of the Coreward Border War moved in to surround the Courageous. Cmnd. Sharizz was instructed to take the ship away from the station, leaving Capt. ka'Athnon behind, in order to evade the Wolfpack. Courageous escaped the station unharmed, while damaging three Wolfpack vessels in the process. One of the vessels damaged, a Bird of Prey, proceeded to return to the station

Taking the USS Good Friends and the Teamwork
Capt. ka'Athnon, along with Petty Officer grav Bellar, posing as station inspectors, went out onto the hull of the Bird of Prey, where they got access to internal systems, dumping anesthetic gas into the ship. With the crew captured, Capt. ka'Athnon brought her away teams onto the ship, renamed the USS Good Friends. ka'Athnon convinced the Bird of Prey escorting the Teamwork to join with the wolfpack, while she handled escort.

The MV Teamwork herself was quickly boarded, with Capt. Wolfe beginning to pull data from the ship. However, a self destruct was activated aboard the Teamwork, with Wolfe managing to secure little information before the ship was destroyed. The information that was secured, however, was critical: revealing that the Harmony of Horizon had hacked into the Beya-War refereeing system, allowing them to win matches that they otherwise would not have. This revelation would permanently end any chances of affiliation between the Harmony of Horizon and the Outer Space Alliance.

Dark Horizon
With data from the Teamwork secured, along with portions of its crew and a number of people held in the brig. Those half in the brig included Colonel Maekpeis, perpetrator of the Spirit Massacre and former member of the Naval Intelligence Department and the Kelownan Liberation Committee. Maekpeis had deliberately lobotomized himself, though poorly, dealing severe damage to his brain, but likely freeing him from Singer control. Maekpeis suggested that Starfleet was highly compromised, including the USS Spirit herself, even before the bombing.

Courageous met up with the Good Friends within several days. Following the rendezvous, Cassiopeia recommended visiting a deep space black site, in order to recover information that would be crippling to the Harmony of Horizon and its network of Singers.

Black Site
Capt. ka'Athnon ordered the Courageous to proceed to the coordinates of the black site, while dispatching the Good Friends to the Outer Space Alliance, in order to broadcast news of HoH cheating, expected to cripple their influence operations there.

Ikeigenoi
On Ikeigenoi, support for the Horizon was crashing, as Singer Crae ros Janner interacted with his Federation counterpart, RAdm. Michael Thuir. They then traveled to the city of Saaopolis, where a severe dust storm cut off their communications. A group of Harmony agents, posing as Bolian mercenaries, abducted the pair of officials, along with other Federation and Harmony personnel.

Cassiopeia's Introduction
With orders to proceed to unknown, seemingly random coordinates, combined with lockdowns of her quarters and the installation of secured lines, Cmnd. Sharizz and Capt. Wolfe began to suspect that something was afoot with Capt. ka'Athnon. Wolfe and Sharizz confronted ka'Athnon in the halls of the Courageous, armed. Cassiopeia intervened violently, slicing off Wolfe's arms with a forcefield, and then temporarily blocking Capt. ka'Athnon from requesting aid. ka'Athnon, however, talked Cassiopeia into saving Capt. Wolfe, ultimately beaming him directly to sickbay.

Revelations
Once at the Black Site, Cassiopeia revealed herself as the Singer Zarael Alains, and began to reveal the deepest secrets of the Harmony of Horizon, having Capt. ka'Athnon beamed over to the Black Site disguised as an 'avatar form'. The entire true history of the Harmony was exposed, from the fall of the old Imrael Republic within the Alpha Quadrant. The origin of the Singers of the Harmony, traumatized school children, was also exposed, as they began to forcibly reactivate implants used to create the Harmony net, giving them control over other Horizonians.

Other, more immediate revelations also followed, including message logs indicating that a member of the Federation Council itself was compromised. It also indicated that the Bolians were nearly completely subverted, and that the Harmony was in effective control of House Rithe, along with revealing other influence networks across known space. Critically, it also revealed that the Harmony had direct access to all Starfleet message traffic. It also became apparent that the Harmony regularly completely erased incidents from the historical record, including their disastrous intervention against the Padani, which involved the deaths of several Singers and an entire expeditionary fleet.

It also turned out that the Singers had believed the Federation to be a similar society to their own. They had spent the first years after contact desperately trying to make contact with the 'Real' Federation, their counterparts, only to discover that none existed.

Consequences
Following an extended period of time on board the Black Site station, Capt. ka'Athnon beamed back aboard the Courageous, while Zarael fought to cover the escape, ultimately dying in the attempt. Unfortunately, a computer virus had been planted by the station's Singer, Tallael, preventing all of the recovered data from being preserved. Much of it, however, was preserved, allowing for the Federation to ultimately begin counter-Harmony operations. The escape would still not be completely clean, Tallael activating Zarael's agents onboard the Courageous, including the son of Shey ch'Tharvasse, Tebaas th'Tharvasse. He and Ensign Iulianna Innach attacked the personnel assigned to guard them, with Tebaas being killed. This would ultimately lead to the resignation of Adm. ch'Tharvasse, during the beginning of the full Federation-Harmony conflict.