Zhen'tok

The Zhen'tok are a now dead species which inhabited a planet in the Alpha Quadrant. They were known for their excellent linguistic capabilities. They are responsible for the Klingon's level of technology, and were destroyed when a Klingon armada destroyed the surface of their planet.

Pre-discovery
The Zhen'tok reached a space fairing level of technology during Earth's 18'th century. The Zhen'tok discovered the Klingon homeworld years later and found them to be technologically inferior. General Kahless of the Zhen'tok fleet travelled to the surface and began sharing technology with the Klingons. The Klingons took the technology and rebelled, forcing the Zhen'tok to leave the planet. One of the Klingon leaders took for himself the name of Kahless and he re-wrote history to include him in many battles. The Klingons portrayed the Zhen'tok as hostile in their history. This hostility was inherrited and inevitably ended in the destruction of the Zhen'tok by the Klingons.

Encounters with the SS Ironman
The first contact between a human and a Zhen'tok was in 2026 when the SS Ironman encountered a damaged Klingon ship with a Zhen'tok and a Klingon aboard. (Star Trek: First Steps - The Klingons) The Zhen'tok was able to quickly learn English and communicate with the Ironman crew. From him, the crrew of the Ironman received coordinates to the Zhen'tok homeworld. The Ironman crew went to the coordinates when Admiral Psamtik was infected with the macrophage. The Zhen'tok offfered to treat him if the Ironman crew would help them prepare their planet for the Klingon armada. The Ironman crew performed these tasks, and Admiral Psamtik was cured. The Zhen'tok also refit the Ironman so that it could stand a chance against enemies like the Klingons.

Before the arrival of the Klingon armada, the Zhen'tok were able to move 2% of their population into stasis pods beneath the surface of their planet.

The Message
Several weeks after leaving the Zhen'tok homeworld, Commodore Sergei Dmitrikov entered into a stasis pod. A computer malfunction began linking his brain to the new Zhen'tok computers. To Dmitrikov, all of this turned into a dream of an alternate reality where he was fighting in World War III. When the Ironman crew retrieved him form stasis, he found a message burried in the Ironman's systems. The message told him the code necessary to retrieve the Zhen'tok beneath the surface of their homeworld.

Kahless' Refugees
While in Etamnanki space, the Ironman discovered a Zhen'tok colony hidden on a planet. The leader of this colony was General Kahless. The Ironman crew joined forces with the Zhen'tok when their colony was destroyed by the Unknowns. The Zhen'tok fleet under General Kahless was presumed destroyed after the Ironman discovered that they had been lead to a star whicht he Etamnanki forced to go supernova.

Fate of the Zhen'tok
With Commodore Dmitrikov in stasis on Earth, the Zhen'tok beneath the surface are unable to awaken from their stasis. The planet has undergone ecological sucession and is believed to be habitable again.