"Down With Gareth Tau" - Federation News Network bulletin

Posted on Fri May 14th, 2021 @ 7:20pm by Rear Admiral Gareth Tau

BYNAUS, JANUARY 2389 - The Alpha Quadrant is a dynamic region of space where many Federation members call home. Citizens of the Federation look to Starfleet not only to discover new worlds and make new allies, but also ensure the general defense and stability of everyone within its borders. By Federation law, all people are given equal treatment and consideration, and yet there are those who are less equal than others. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Bynar homeworld of Bynaus. And no man is more deserving of public censure regarding it than Commodore Gareth Tau, head of its Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

Located in the Beta Magellan system, Bynaus is a hop, skip, and a jump away from both Federation and Starfleet Headquarters on Earth in the Sol Sector. Even so, when the system was ravaged by a supernova in 2364, the Bynars were left to fend for themselves. Although they narrowly avoided the extinction level event, it was through forced espionage involving the USS Enterprise-D because Starfleet could not be bothered to render aid at the time. In the 25 years since, there has been no humanitarian aid offered to the struggling Bynars. Commodore Tau has continued this egregious tradition of noncommittal negligence.

Concordantly Bynaus has become a cadaverous husk of its former glory, its residents forced to sequester themselves within an interactive Augmented Reality interface which masks the unadulterated horror that is the abject failure of Starfleet upon their world. Bynar officials have shared on condition of anonymity that the token acknowledgement granted by the Federation in the form of a planetary embassy has in fact done more harm than good. Client races within the Cardassian Union have fared better.

When this journalist began to dig into the murky waters of Starfleet’s subterfuge surrounding recent events on Bynaus, it became clear that racial prejudice and discrimination perpetrated against the cybernetic Bynars left them fending for themselves during a campaign of domestic terrorism. For years, their cultural values based upon all things binary have rendered them alienated and despised by the Federation at large. Antiquated; regressive; problematic. Such pernicious labels have denigrated their honored race to such degree that the Federation’s own ambassador saw fit to sell them out to a Ferengi kingpin of crime. It is with sordid pleasure that I pass on the report that Ambassador Hannok perished at the hands of his criminal cohorts. But if that was where the story ended, then Commodore Tau would have plausible deniability.

As it turns out, an investigative team from Memory Theta, a clandestine acquisition agency under the auspices of the OSI, had been on site for several days before the ambassador’s outing and subsequent death. Commodore Tau’s specialist team made absolutely no known report to Starfleet Command regarding the illegal crimes that they must have discovered, if not aided and abetted. If not for the distinguished JAG Officer, one Captain Pron, conducting a probe into the reports received by his office, then the Bynars would most certainly be laboring beneath the crushing weight of Starfleet corruption even now. When contacted for comment in regards to the failure of Memory Theta to observe and report as per standard Starfleet protocols, Commodore Tau declined to comment.

Bynar authorities, on the other hand, have had a heyday in sharing their reports to anyone who will listen. They claim that not only did Federation Ambassador Hannok collude with Ferengi Marauders, but that they used his Special Access Program to infiltrate the master computer mainframe. In so doing, they released a virulent malware that nearly crashed the entire system. The necessary security updates to prevent a systemic crash and protect Federation cyber-security, most of which is predicated on Bynar source code, is said to have irrevocably altered the fundamental binary essence of Bynaus from the orientation of their synaptic processors to the designation of their given names. It is suspected that the Memory Theta team colluded with Ambassador Hannok in his treasonous actions to some degree, as the anonymous Bynar source indicates it was he who first brought them to their world. As before, Commodore Tau’s OSI has refused to comment on the matter.

To add insult to injury, there even appears to be a war of retaliation amidst the bureaucrats in attempts to keep the cat in the bag. The aforementioned JAG Officer, Captain Pron, has been placed on administrative leave following his medical leave -- yes, he suffered physical violence in the course of his investigation against Ambassador Hannok and his team of specialists under OSI jurisdiction. Moreover, the Deputy Director of Internal Affairs, Commodore Thaddeus Hightower, has been placed under arrest for consorting with a Ferengi crime lord known only as the Black Nagus -- crimes suspiciously similar to those of the OSI specialist team, this mysterious Memory Theta. It should be noted this would not be the first war of commodores with collateral damage inflicted upon innocent souls and diligent junior officers.

But just who is this self-appointed Secret Police Captain Gareth Tau who has the brass to play fast and loose with the fate of entire worlds? Commodore Tau rose to prominence after muddling from one assignment to another by riding the coattails of one respected mind after another – Captains Isaac Smith and Roslyn Graham, as well the illustrious Admiral Zachary O’Connell, just to name a few. As a consummate rank-grabber with a lust for power, it would appear that Gareth Tau has doubled-down on Starfleet’s exploitation of whomever is outside the public eye. His OSI, also known as Task Group Hecate (a gaggle of classified facilities and vessels aptly named after the Greek goddess of sorcery and darkness), is nothing short of a public menace. Anything less than a full Article 32 investigation and subsequent life sentence for this man would be an inexcusable abrogation of justice.

This journalist would fear reprisal and censure from the commodore’s office, but that would require a formal acknowledgement of the allegations set forth. No such luck, it would seem.