The USS Virgo, NCC-956321, launched from Deep Space 15 on Stardate 58948 without a glitch. With a crew complement of several Bajorans, Klingons, a few Vulcans, many Humans, and even one Tanzaran, the USS Virgo is fit for its mission: to explore the Gamma Quadrant for a period of ten years; five years heading away from the Federation and five years back. For this dangerous mission, Starfleet assigned a crew of officers, NCOs, and civilians with no families, and/or no one who would miss them too much. Captain Stephen Maruu, a man with no family or place to call home, was assigned as CO of the Virgo. Maruu's First Officer, was a devout and celibate Vulcan named Surok.
Before reaching the Gamma Quadrant, the Virgo's most exciting battle was one between two been fighting over a girl in the Mess Hall. Quickly, that situation was dealt with by the slightly inexperienced Lt. JG Jonathan Lataro. Upon reaching the Gamma Quadrant on Stardate 58967, however, the tranquility experienced turned to surprise as the Virgo rocked from its first attack. The quick thinking and expert piloting of Ensign K'Lara saved the day as she caused the two attackers to fire upon each other with their own weapons.
The attackers were a race called the Kirusans. Their weapons were not even slowed down by standard Starfleet shielding, and their own shields were invincible against photon torpedoes. Of the two ships that had attacked, one had been destroyed, the other simply floated dead in space. A team along with Lt. Lataro and two head engineers, Ensigns Trent and Garza, was sent to the second ship to find out who had attacked them. On the Kirusan ship, the away team uploaded valuable information to their PADDs for later analysis. A group of survivors surprised the away team, and a firefight ensued. Lt. Lataro got into a hand-to-hand battle with a Kirusan which ended in a draw as the team escaped to the Virgo just before the Kirusan ship exploded. The Kirusans, Lataro discovered, could use their own eyes like very powerful phasers.
Back on the Virgo, Lt. Lataro was slowly becoming enamored with Ensign K'Lara. A promotion soon followed. Lt. JG Lataro became a full Lieutenant, and Ensign K'Lara became a Lieutenant Junior Grade. The festivities held after the promotion were planned by the Mess Hall's cook and bartender, a Trill named Lazarus Kox.
Once engineering had completed analysis of the information collected onboard the Kirusan ship, it was ready to be presented to the crew. The Kirusans were a race of ruthless warriors. They lived in an area of space that borders the Alpha Quadrant called the Kirusan Breadth. The Breadth spanned a total of two thousand light years across. The Kirusans had intense egos and were disgusted by every species other than their own. Their ultimate goal, to be the only species left in the galaxy after a great war, was promised them by their gods, whom they called the Shahtar. The Shahtar were composed three main gods: Loret, Parok, and Ourha. According to myth, the Shahtar were thrown off their home planet by evil demons who controlled the planet where the Shahtar used to live. So, the Kirusans were in a constant war with the followers of these demons. The demon followers were called the Vokorhta and the Jenkhapmahtar. Kirusan ships ran with what they called a graviton drive which bent the gravity waves that cross the universe in order to propel themselves through space. The graviton drive served the same function as a warp drive, but instead of running on a matter/antimatter reaction, Kirusan vessels ran on extremely high amounts of radioactivity. The Kirusan chronoton missiles, the ones with which they attacked the Virgo, were also highly radioactive and skipped through subspace enabling them to go through almost all types of shielding. The Kirusans, however, never expected to be shot at with their own weapons so they were easily defeated with Lt. K'Lara's maneuvers.
All of this information allowed the Virgo to put up new and improved shields that would defend them against the Kirusans. Nevertheless, they were surprised when they passed a planet that had been completely destroyed by Kirusan weaponry. Shocked, the Virgo moved on with its mission.
Five days later, three Kirusan convoys attacked and disabled the Virgo completely. Rather than finishing off the job, the Kirusan convoys retreated. The crew wondered at why the Kirusans would leave them dead in space and why they would wipe out an entire planet, and the answer came soon enough.
The Virgo entered an area of space called the Taboo Sector on Stardate 59068. In this area of space, the Virgo met the Jeorri, a race of beings that had been reduced to a few planets slowly running out of power to run their ships. They were forbidden to expand beyond the confines of their reservation. Any planets they colonized or mined were eradicated, and any ships they flew out of the Sector were disabled and their crews left to die. The Jeorri, however, had a hidden ability. They are potentially a very powerful and manageable warrior race. For this reason, the Dominion came to their homeworld, Jeor, over a millennium ago and took members of their species to create the Jem'Hadar, or the Jenkhapmahtar, as the Kirusans called them. These Jeorri derivatives were genetically engineered to answer to a race of beings called the Vorta, known by the Kirusans as the Vokorhta.
The Virgo was escorted to one of their paradise planets within the Sector named Denmar IV by their newly appointed ambassador to the Federation, Second Lieutenant Lili Roen. On the planet, Captain Maruu met with Major General Etik Pemon, an easygoing man who liked his new Federation friends and wished to make them feel as at home as possible. The crew was invited on stay on Denmar IV for a week. During that time, Lieutenants Lataro and K'Lara became romantically involved. Captain Maruu was not left behind as he conducted romantic "negotiations" of his own with the young Jeorri ambassador.
During that week, the Virgo signed a treaty with the Jeorri and showed them how to use the cheaper and cleaner warp drive. As a sign of friendship, a Jeorri vessel, captained by Major Kidel, would accompany the Virgo for the remainder of its journey. Lt. Roen, however, would be staying with her father on the planet Volvan, just outside the Taboo Sector. Upon arriving at the planet, Gian Roen, Lt. Roen's father, threatened to open fire on the Virgo. Apparently, this was his way of forcing the Virgo to leave orbit before six Kirusan warships dropped out of warp. Of the six ships, one pursued the Virgo and its Jeorri companions. Major Kidel's ship was reduced to atoms by a shot from the Kirusan warship's left missile tube. The right one was about to fire when the Virgo released a photon torpedo that caused a nuclear blast meters from the warship, destroying it. The Virgo, however, was unable to save Volvan. Lt. Roen then decided to spend the return to the Federation with Captain Maruu once the mission was over.
Later that same day, the thought of beefing up the Virgo's targeting systems and phaser canons were played with. The three dead crew members were fresh on everyone's minds. These were the first to die under Captain Maruu's command. If it were up to him, he would make them the last.
The dead were all but forgotten when a Klingon battle cruiser was discovered floating dead in space. An away team made up of Ensign Trent, Chief Medical Officer Lt. Richardson, Lt. K'Lara, and Lt. Lataro, boarded the runabout USS LaForge and traveled to the hulk of the J'Rigagh. There, they discovered that the Klingons had been trying to explore the Gamma Quadrant in secret and long before the Federation. Just as the Kirusans treat all strangers, they attacked the Klingon ship. The Klingons, however, fought so strongly, that the Kirusans resorted to kamikaze bombardment which destroyed the Kirusan vessels and stranded the Klingon ship. The two sides then resorted to hand-to-hand combat on the J'Rigagh where only one Kirusan survived. The first away team uploaded as much information as they could. They even managed to take the Klingon ship's cloaking device in hopes of adapting it to the Virgo.
The information that was downloaded from the ship, however, was corrupted and could not be retrieved. Captain Maruu was not as pleased as expected by the results of the away mission. Even though the mission led to Lataro's promotion to the rake of Lieutenant Commander and K'Lara's promotion to full Lieutenant, this bothered Lt. Lataro to the point that he felt compelled to take a shuttle and haphazardly continue the mission on his own. Once onboard the J'Rigagh, Commander Lataro headed for the cargo bays. Cargo Bay One, still pressurized, held some cages with animals still alive. As Lataro soon discovered, it also held the lone survivor of the Kirusan attack on the Klingons, a very angry Kirusan. He subdued Lataro. Captain Maruu and Lt. K'Lara came to the rescue. Using wit over brawn, Maruu made the Kirusan fire at him with his phaser-eyes. This caused a hull breach in the J'Rigagh, expelling Maruu and the Kirusan into space. Maruu was safe due to his environmental suit, but the Kirusan died of exposure.
The Kirusan onboard the J'Rigagh was found to be a great Kirusan warrior, possibly an infiltrator who helped destroy the Klingon ship from within. Once he had accomplished his mission, the Kirusan had remained in the only pressurized area of the vessel: Cargo Bay One. He survived by feeding off the animals in the cargo bay until the Virgo arrived. Soon after this discovery was made, Commander Lataro was released from Sickbay to welcome a new member of the security team: Ensign Sitto Lan. Meanwhile, Ensigns Garza and Trent had been hard at work repairing the Virgo. Before long, she was back and ready for action.
For the next month, the Virgo became the protector of the Jeorri, stopping the destruction six out of nine Jeorri planets by the powerful Kirusans. In the meantime, Lt. Dana Nori worked on the dissection of the Kirusan warrior. Kirusans, it was discovered, have two hearts, a larger brain than that of a Human, three lungs, and a very simple digestive system with acids that could melt titanium alloy. The eyes of the Kirusan which allowed him to fire phaser blasts from them, however, were still a mystery. It was decided that Lt. Nori would probe into the Kirusan's head in the next few days. It is in that conversation between Lt. Nori and Captain Maruu that we first begin to see hints of sexual tension between the two. Maruu, however, quickly focused and abandoned the thought. Lt. Nori, on the other hand, proceeded to investigate the object of her attraction.
Commander Lataro was worried about dissecting the Kirusan's head. He had noticed that the Kirusan had not even begun to decompose since its death over a month before. He communicated his feelings to the captain, suggesting that the resident android, Ensign Solacetta, perform the autopsy under strict safety protocols. The captain, worried for Lt. Nori's safety, agreed with Lataro: a decision to which Nori herself was vehemently opposed. In the meantime, Ensign Javier Tara, a newly assigned tactical officer, adjusted to his new surroundings.