8: Debacle at Caleb IV
The Empire's Backhand Blow
“There’s Something Wrong with Our Fucking Starships Today.” – Captain Bavv-Mellen
“Caleb IV was an avoidable tactical disaster, but an unavoidable operational one. Thank god it happened when it did.” – Angella Fukuhara
“Theirs not to reason why”
Chief Petty Officer Ivy Knightwick liked her work. 18 years in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers had taken her across the galaxy on projects of all shapes and sizes, from relay satellites to planetary weather systems to immense Watchtower class Starbases that dwarfed the collection of antiquated vessels the Corps used as runabouts. “As a kid on Alpha Centauri, I never imagined it,” she reflected, “but considering that every night I sat on my grandfather’s knee as he told me stories about growing up on the last of the Warp-2 Earth Cargo ships, I suppose it was fate.” Knightwick didn’t join out of star-wonder, though – for her, enlistment in the corps of engineers had been an escape from a 4-month custodial sentence on Alpha Centauri for several bouts of grand theft auto and property damage. “I stole cars as a kid so I could take them apart,” she noted dryly. “It wasn’t the best idea I ever had, but it got me into the Engineer Corps.” The path from technician third class to Petty Officer was a long one, filled with a lot of arduous battles with officers and technology alike, but by 2259 Knightwick was one of an elite cadre of Starfleet Engineering crews who could turn “rocks to replicators” if they put their minds to it.
On the 12th of September 2259, however, Knightwick was finishing final pressurization checks on the USS Kyber Pass. 10 days of work had passed in a blur as the two transport pods were deconstructed, and a whole orbital station put together from old Starship parts as quickly as the 400-person teams aboard the Percy Hobart could manage. The tall, irregular profile of a Sviagod class Starbase took form quickly in the shadow of the swirling clouds of Caleb IV, even as delays due to system incompatibility, irregular connection ports, and the constant threat of detection by the Klingons pushed the construction time up and up. “We couldn’t work with much heavy machinery because we hadn’t been able to bring much – beyond laser welders, we were limited to four worker bees and the hand tools we had. Commander Tu didn’t like it one bit, but we managed, even if we had to bolt bulkheads together with hand-wrenches and seal them with thermo concrete until we could bring in the outer shells.”
The Corps of Engineers, however, always got the job done, and as Knightwick and the rest of the engineers completed their final checks and began pressurizing the internal atmosphere, most of their members let out a sigh of relief. Once the station’s reactor became operational – along with the shields and phaser banks – the most dangerous part of the operation would be over. Soon, they could kick back and relax while the starships faced off with the Klingons. The Klingons would move on, and so would the Engineers, away from this system so far away from the Federation.
The Undivae-Caleb system is not remarkable, beyond its strategic location. It is nestled on the edge of the Triangle-Phalanx area, deeper into the Beta Quadrant than the Klingon Trading centre of Mastocal or the colony world of Khitomer. It was even further from the Federation: the closest outpost was the Starfleet base on Gibraltar, and its 10 Officers and 40 Marines hardly counted.[1]
Caleb, however, was now full of Starfleet vessels – twenty, in fact, of all shapes and sizes, lying in a defensive formation around the Starbase. Their commanders were all on edge. Their heavy support – the capital ships of Battlegroups Excalibur and Richelieu – were missing, lost in the Triangle, out of communication with the Escort Groups and the Engineers for over a week. The only heavy ship they’d managed to find was the Marco Polo, the Advanced Sensor vessel that monitored the edge of the system. The “hammer” of Operation Singapore – the name for the plan to draw the Klingons into the confrontation at Caleb – was missing, and with it, the whole plan was thrown into jeopardy. The only hope was that the Klingons would be late too.
General Korok of the Imperial Navy was not late. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Both Klingon Fleet Groups had been monitoring the moves of Task Force Remagen closely. Klingon tactical sensors – still lightyears ahead of Starfleet – charted their every move and allowed Korok to pick his exact moment of engagement. He’d even been able to track the Battlegroups for a while. Now, late on the 11th, they’d been lost in the triangle. Korok, however, took this as a good sign. Broken contact meant that they were moving away, not closer to Caleb IV, still lost in subspace interference. The opportunity to crush the Escort Groups and the Starbase was now available, and like all good Klingon Commanders, he wasted no time in seizing it. Breaking the Starfleet force was more than just a chance to gain glory for the empire and crush its enemies – it would give Imperial forces free reign in the Triangle and beyond. L’Rell’s reassertion of Imperial authority over subject worlds and vassals would be a great deal easier if the Earther fleet had been crippled in the open for all to see. Their weakness would clear. And so, Korok moved in on Caleb IV.
The Marco Polo, stationed several AUs from the main force in orbit of Caleb VIII, first picked up the warp signatures of several D6-Ds, but soon enough what appeared to be a small patrol had turned out to be 23 Klingon ships of all sizes.[2] While Marco Polo could not provide a concise breakdown of the fleet, it was clear that a substantial Klingon force was now closing on Caleb IV with the intent to do battle. This was correct – the force identified, 2nd Fleet Group (2FG) under Admiral Morev, significantly overmatched the fleet arrayed against them, with six D7 Battlecruisers alongside another half-dozen D6s, 4 D5s, 3 Raptors, 2 I2 Destroyers, and 2 Birds of Prey.
With the two Escort Groups spread out in a wide defensive position across the orbits of Calebs II-V, it was paramount that significant force was concentrated to defend the Starbase as soon as possible. This was not difficult – but it would mean losing the sensor net that had been thrown out over the last three days. Reluctantly, Bavv-Mollen conceded that keeping Kyber Pass intact was the priority. The shuttles were recalled, and their parent ships were ordered to make best speed for Caleb IV. By 1640 – 15 minutes before the expected arrival of the Klingon fleet – the six vessels guarding Kyber Pass had been reinforced by a further eleven, including the Malcom Reed. Aboard the Reed, Sh’O’Leary could feel the tension as the ship readied itself for battle.
As the Chief Engineer, his job now was to keep the ship’s systems – defensive and otherwise – functioning for as long as possible. It was not an easy task – especially with the Capella class, where much of the control systems still functioned on the same principles as the Archer-Type warp 5 engine. “You had to watch everything – everyone did. There was no way for one person to monitor everything – I had seven personnel just for system monitoring. It was better than the alternative, though.” Sh’O’Leary was right – as much as the Marvick drivers were “bloody fiddly”, as Montgomery Scott famously put it, they were incredibly resistant to cascade power failures and easy to repair if things did go wrong. Either way, the Malcolm Reed wasn’t able to take its chances. Like all the other ships, it was no match in a one-on-one engagement with the Imperial Battlecruisers, but if the lighter vessels could combine their firepower, they might be able to blunt the Klingon assault for long enough that the heavier vessels under Drake could come to their aid.
The first Sh’O’Leary knew of the Marco Polo’s sighting was when the Red Alert sirens started blaring. “Captain Cartwright’s voice came over the tannoy, telling us the enemy had been sighted on the edge of the system. We expected more, but that was it. I won’t lie, it didn’t make any of us more comfortable.” The Malcolm Reed’s engineering crew did the best they could to prepare for action, however, battening down the hatches, preparing override and bypass circuits, and securing and shutting down non-essential systems, but after that had been done, they had to simply sit and wait. “We just wished we knew more about the Klingon force, except that they were coming, and there were a lot of them.”
There certainly were “a lot of them” on the way, and at speed. Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc still hadn’t managed to get through to Drake or Mendez, leaving them completely in the dark on the whereabouts of the Main striking force of Task Force Remagen. The question of whether or not the Klingons would order Starfleet to leave or fire first was answered quickly when a shuttle from the USS Vela Gap was destroyed by a Klingon scout ship. There would be no negotiation here. It would not have been beyond the two Captains to cut their losses and pull out, but it would have meant leaving Kyber Pass – the vital part of the whole plan – behind. While a Sviagod could be moved around after construction, to a certain extent, there was no way to move it beyond about ¼ impulse speed. Abandoning it, apparently, was not an option either Captain considered. With 14 vessels to the Klingons 20-odd, it seemed like approachable odds. The decision was made to stay and fight.
The problem was that there weren’t 20 Klingon ships; there were 45. The Klingon force had split in two long before Marco Polo made sensor contact. Fukuhara had done well to give the Escort Groups the intelligence it had – 2nd Fleet Group had been pushing its’ scouts well ahead to clear the way for a surprise attack, and Fukuhara’s position in the southern pole of Caleb VIII kept her ship safe as it watched the assault pass by. It meant, however, that her sensor redoubt would not pick up the movements of the 5th Fleet Group out on the edge of the system. The same electromagnetic interference that saved the Marco Polo blinded her and made sure Korok’s trap was shut without any delays. 5th Fleet Groups’ long flank march out around Caleb VII shielded it from the sensors of both the main fleet and Marco Polo ,and would continue to mask it for much of the 12th and 13th. Korok’s plan was a good one – with the bulk of the heavier vessels in 2FG, they made the perfect centre of gravity for the Klingon attack. They would attempt to batter the front door down, drawing the core of Star Fleet into their battle, while 5th Fleet Group (5FG) moved out of sensor range before “speeding like a Targ in mating season” for the Kyber Pass. It was a typical pin and manoeuvre plan, but the Klingons had a key ace up their sleeve – the sensor gap.
It is well known to us now that Klingon military sensors were a generation more advanced than Federation ones. While Starfleet sensors were primarily designed with scientific study and general-purpose use in mind, Klingon sensors were built to detect specific signatures, namely warp cores, weapons fire, ion trails, and other signs of vessels. It was said that the sensors on a D7 Battlecruiser could tell if a phaser had been fired from a light-year away, but even if that was an over-exaggeration, it could not be denied that the ability of Klingon warships to spot their foes greatly outmatched that of Starfleet’s. The “Sensor Gap” had been massively highlighted during T’Kuvma’s War, especially by the failures of Eaves-Beyer drives, which supposedly “lit up like a pulsar” on Klingon sensor systems. Countermeasures like the Advanced Sensor Redoubt project and early “Aztecing” schemes had been used to try and mitigate the disadvantage, but there had been little success. Korok knew that both his fleet groups would be easily able to manoeuvre and pin the Starfleet force where they wanted to, even with the subspace interference within the Caleb system.
This was all to come, however. With what appeared to be the whole Klingon fleet still bearing down on Caleb IV, Bavv-Mellen ordered Escort Group Two (EG2) – consisting of the Cowpens, Chesapeake, Molly Cobb, Sergei Nikolov, Gordo Stevens, Margo Madison and Henry Wallace - into a picket formation near Caleb V. It was, hypothetically, a well-practised formation. Starships would form line abreast at around 300,000 km intervals along a line of enemy advance, with the outermost vessels at around 600,000 km to provide a further sensor net. The idea was not to provide a defensive front – such a thing is always a functional impossibility in space – but to detect the enemy as soon as possible and form up into smaller pairs of vessels to counter their strongest line of attack. Single ships could attempt to slip past the line, but a pairing (or even a single ship) could easily be detached to deal with the breakthrough, forcing the enemy to break up their formation. They were, essentially, the same tactics that had been used at the Vela Gap and the Battle of Mars nearly a century earlier to smash superior Romulan forces. However, then they had been used by forces acclimatized to Starships combat in formations. The Starfleet of 2259 was not the United Earth Stellar Navy of 2159. While fleet exercises were held annually, they were poorly attended, and ships on detached service (roughly 64% of the fleet) rarely, if ever, conducted war games with multiple vessels. Since 2240 there had been only five “fleet engagements” (Axanar, Inverness, Donatu V, Binary Stars and Hromi), and of these only one, Axanar, had been a resounding victory for Starfleet. While small unit actions were common along the Tholian and Kzinti border regions, many of the lessons there had not been passed on, and what lessons had been learned were not been good ones. A lot of Starship Captains shared the “Garth of Izar” view on fleet formations: figure it out on the day.
“Figuring it out on the day” may have worked against the poorly organised Klingon navy of 2241, but not against the new fleet that was bearing down on Caleb IV. Sturka had spared no expense in turning combat-experienced but undisciplined crews into the best-trained crews in the quadrant, with extensive drills, live-fire training and war games – luxuries that the Klingon Navy had never experienced before 2257. Sturka understood well that it was the discipline – especially fire discipline – that mattered most. Too many engagements in the last war had been lost because trigger-happy captains had let loose with disruptors and torpedoes at maximum range and given away advantages in detection and position. Crews were taught to learn their ranges properly and to use their superiority in sensor technology and target detection to pick out weaker vessels before closing to ranges where hits were guaranteed.[3] Those who complained about skulking in the dark, or letting enemies slip away were punished with severe demotion – a change from the usual practice of a brutal knife-fight on the bridge, but twice as humiliating for many captains. Most accepted new training tactics and drilled their crews hard. Early tests of new fleet practices had paid off against Orion pirates and the odd unlucky Starfleet ship, but now they were to be tested in combat in fleet operations.
The fleet reforms had been welcomed by the small professional corps of the Navy, including prominent Admirals like Korok, but for others, the concept of a restrained, rapier-like navy reeked of “Romulan thinking” or worse, “Earthers”. It would be egocentric of a Federation narrative to presume that their enemies learnt all their lessons from them, but from Captain Kor, we know that at the very least, Sturka was informed about the tactics displayed by Kelvar Garth and Gabriel Lorca. He may have also drawn from personal experience of the violent, focused, and deadly operations of the Romulan Fleet, but more in developing strategies to counter them than in copying their tactics directly. Sturka may have been a shrewd learner, but at heart, he was still a deep xenophobe. The enemy was not to be idolised. Zym, Son of T’ai, like many in L’Rell’s officer, had baulked at both the massive expense and the institutional implications of professionalisation, but “The Boss” won the day, with a qualification: get proof that there was a payoff. 2nd Fleet Group was about to do that.
Initial contact would be made with the Klingon Fleet at 19:52. The seven ships of Escort Group 2 (EG2) had no chance to spot the Klingon warships before they could close to combat range. The first shots came from a pair of I2 destroyers, which hit the USS Chesapeake square in its’ saucer section, damaging its shield emitter immediately. Then two groups of raptors opened fire at 400,000 kilometres on the other Valley Forge ship, USS Cowpens, which veered away to protect her port shields to the enemy. Bavv-Mellen knew his force was under pressure, but he remained resolute – so far, he detected only 11 Klingon vessels bearing down on his force, of which half were lighter Birds-of-Prey. The scourge of Burnhams’ war, upgrades with targeting equipment since the armistice rendered their speed moot. The Cowpens, even at its venerable 39 years, was able to deliver crippling hits on at least two of the light ships, but not without slipping out of position, allowing several Klingon ships to push a gap between it and the Margo Madison, which had been attempting to support her.
The Klingon attack pressed through the gaps that opened, attacking the older vessels as the newer types attempted to come to their aid. The Valley Forge had been a capable class, able to match (and regularly beat) Klingon destroyers and light cruisers in engagements even a decade earlier, but now it was sluggish, underpowered, and under-gunned compared to the Imperial ships. Even with covering fire from their supporting ships, both Cowpens and Chesapeake were doomed. Cowpens would take a direct hit to her saucer from a photon torpedo 28 minutes into the engagement, wrecking her entirely and forcing her captain to abandon her. While the Cowpens was able to evacuate the crew to the Sergei Nikolov, the Chesapeake was less lucky; with the rest of the escort group driven off, she was hit by a full disruptor barrage from a D6-D cruiser, collapsing her shields and overloading her warp core. She went down with all hands lost. Two Starfleet vessels had been destroyed in roughly an hour’s fighting; even though the Klingons had lost four of their own, with three others crippled, they still outnumbered Escort Group Two significantly.
By this point, Kyber Pass had finally been able to get its advanced subspace relay online, and with it contact Drake. The news was not good: The main force was still five to six hours away and had been forced to split up to avoid being detected. Drake knew that Battlegroup Excalibur (under Captain Mendez) was ahead of her, but she didn’t know where exactly it was. Their orders, however, were to hang on and keep the Klingons engaged for as long as possible. By around 20:30, the bulk of 2nd Fleet Group was within engagement range, including the main force of D4-E, D6 and D7 cruisers. The cruiser force pushed further on the weakest links in the chain, targeting the Hoover class ships Henry Wallace and Margo Madison. The Hoover classes were considered able to match older D6s – they were nimble vessels, and they could pack a punch with three-photon torpedo tubes on her ventral hull. They were supposed, in theory, to be able to match a D7 for some time – not defeat one, but at the very least, with the new upgrades, hold them at bay for a time.
This theory was about to be put to the test, however. Morev brought up two D7 wings to punch through EG2 as soon as possible. The four D7s went straight for the Henry Wallace, glancing off phaser beams and dodging photon torpedoes as they closed to 150,000 km before firing. The D7s manoeuvrability – often compared to Federation scout vessels – was always a shock to Starfleet Captains, and that was certainly true at Caleb IV. Even with the Molly Cobb covering her, the Wallace could never get all her Torpedo tubes to bear on the D7s, which began to dive in for short-range disruptor barrages before moving back out to harass her and the Margo Madison at longer ranges. At around 21:24, a group of D6-A Battlecruisers made an attack run on the Molly Cobb, which was forced to turn head-on and face them, leaving the Henry Wallace alone.
The Molly Cobb should have stayed close and relied on the mutual protection of the Wallace, but her captain wasn’t thinking in those terms. It had devolved into an individual battle, both through Klingon tactical planning and Starfleet tactical inadequacy, and that was a kind of battle that the Starfleet ships were simply not equipped for. The Henry Wallace was pounced on instantly, all four D7s turning in a wide arc before opening fire. The Starfleet ship fired a fusillade, catching one D7 in its’ nacelles and forcing it to break off, but the others pushed on, firing as they came. The Henry Wallace shot back one last spread of photon Torpedoes before its shields collapsed, disappearing in a flash of light. A minute later, the Margo Madison disappeared in a similar flash, three D4s circling her as she tried to pull back closer to the Molly Cobb. Bavv-Mellen, shielding his eyes from the explosion on the bridge of the Gordo Stevens, turned to his first officer and muttered. “There’s something wrong with our bloody starships today.”
Bavv-Mellen was right. Despite half a dozen computer reworks, overhauls of shield grids and targeting systems, and the continued attestation of Starfleet Operations that they were still suitable for active duty, the Eaves-Beyer types were beyond remedy. Their power systems couldn’t take the strain of combat, and under sustained fire, they collapsed entirely. Cowpens and Chesapeake had been understandable losses – they were old vessels, pulled out of mothballs – but the Margo Madison had been launched just before the Battle of the Binary Stars. It was a telling sign that Starfleet ships were significantly outclassed by their Klingon opposites, and unable to match the Klingon ability to upgrade and retrofit their ships repeatedly. With the warp core of the Margo Madison still lighting up his viewscreen, Bavv-Mellen gave the order to fall back towards Caleb IV, the Klingon force in hot pursuit. The only saving grace was that they were now within the inner gravity well of the Star, meaning that the pursuit was at full impulse – giving Escort Group 1 at least two hours to prepare for the attack. It was not long. Drake’s forces were still nowhere to be seen, and 2nd Fleet Group was now within direct sensor range of Kyber Pass’s long-range net.
Only 1.5 AUs from the Kyber Pass, The USS Molly Cobb, Gordo Stevens and Sergei Nikolov turned to fight. The three Shepard Class vessels had been top-of-line cruisers when they had been built, comparable with the Loknar, but had not aged as well. Their performance in T’Kuvma’s War had been subpar with faults developing in her power systems during long patrols and combat periods, and discussions about possible refits and withdrawals had been ongoing since the end of hostilities. They were, however, maintained in high numbers due to their high firepower output (mounting four dual heavy phasers) even though their shield grids were light as best, and just as compromised by the Eaves-Beyer faults as the Hoover Class. Some conversions had been made during the war to improve this limitation, and such attempts had been made on the Molly Cobb after the armistice. Not much could be done to upgrade her power grid, however, and limited action before Singapore had not been promising. In the end, the Molly Cobb’s engineer had made the decision to rip out most of her power relay system, rebuilding it from the bottom up with off-the-shelf parts from the mothball yard at Axanar, an extremely time-consuming project that wasn’t even finished by the time she went into action.
The three vessels knew they were sacrificing themselves to buy time for Drake and the rest of Task Force Remagen, but that was their duty, and they accepted it well. The Klingons (at least according to Kor) openly acknowledged the immense bravery of all three ships in turning to stand against at least 8 Klingon ships, but that didn’t stop them from bringing every weapon they had to bear on Starfleet ships.
The first to go was the Gordo Stevens, Bavv-Mellen’s flagship. She had destroyed a D5 and a raptor when a pair of D6s attacked her dorsally, pinning her where she couldn’t turn to bring her more powerful shield grids to bear. She took a direct hit to the bridge, which killed the captain and all of the bridge crew but the first officer. Clambering over debris and their colleagues, they ordered the crew to abandon the ship immediately. Of the 261 crew, only 63 would be picked up. The Sergei Nikolov had disabled two Raptor-type vessels when a D6-A fired a volley from its starboard side, shorting out her entire shield grid and damaging her warp drive. She limped away at impulse drive, her captain and first officer both dead, the Klingon battlecruisers on her tail. Before the closest one could fire, it was struck by phaser fire from the Molly Cobb.
Yasmina Nasiri, Captain of the Molly Cobb and veteran of the Battle of the Binary Stars, ordered the stricken ship’s second officer to pull back. Placing her ship between the other vessel and the Klingons, she and her crew braced for the worse. Despite the losses they’d inflicted, the full weight of 2nd Fleet Group was now on her, with all three cruiser wings now within weapons range. Her shield already weakened, it didn’t take long for the inevitable, despite the best efforts of her helm and navigator. After forcing one of the six Klingon vessels to break off, she took a disruptor volley from the remainder, overloading her shields in one move and disconnecting the warp drive from the power grid.
The Molly Cobb took six direct photon torpedo hits while her shields were down. Two passed straight through her saucer section and detonated on the underside; one smashed her forward sensor array; another blasted a large hole in deck 2. The fifth blew out her shuttle bay. The sixth torpedo hit crashed through hull plating to embed itself in the roof of the main engineering deck, only a few meters from the warp core but failed to detonate. Ten seconds later, said warp core reconnected to the ship’s systems and with it the shields. She limped away under her own power, still firing every weapon she had at the foe as she did, keeping the cruisers at bay until the Nikolov could move away. It wasn’t over for her, however, and even as the Klingon force pushed around her, Molly Cobb kept fighting alone, using her single operative phaser bank and torpedo tube (which was now being reloaded manually) to lash at any Klingon vessel that got to close. One pair managed to close to kill range but as the Cobb braced itself, the attackers were both hit amidships by rapid firing photon torpedoes. One of the Klingon ships exploded immediately, damaging a flanking D5; the other, leaking plasma and fuel, turned away, too wounded to keep up the fight.
The D7s had been hit by two Loknar class ships; USS Tryla and Capor Bona. They were the advanced guard of Battlegroup Excalibur and had been pushing nearly Warp nine to reach EG2 as soon as possible. The Loknar was an Andorian-designed vessel. A rival project to the Constitution, it had been side-lined for the heavy cruiser until the 2250s. It had a workhorse of the Tholian and Romulan borders, and now it came into action against the Klingons, the foe it had been designed to fight, and showing itself to be more than ready. The warships firing on Molly Cobb were forced to pull back, allowing the crippled ship to limp back towards Caleb IV. The legend of the ‘Unsinkable Molly Cobb’ had been born. Nasiri would be awarded the Star Cross for her efforts.
Despite their valiant effort, however, the Loknars were just as effective as their counterparts earlier on the day against the heavier Klingon ships. and both were heaving damaged by the more numerous Klingon cruisers. As the two frigates veered away from the D5 group, the Klingon warships suddenly found themselves faced with the USS Excalibur – the only Constitution Class vessel in the task force. The first D5 opened fire, lashing out with photon torpedoes, but Mendez anticipated the move. Excalibur cut to port dorsally, lifting herself over the volley before swinging back down and opening fire with her Ventral phasers. Twice the size and power of her dorsal arrays, they caught the D5 in her stardrive section, causing a power failure. Mendez didn’t stay around the finish her off; the other two were already moving to engage Excalibur, breaking off their pursuit of the support group. They hit her squarely with their first barrage of disruptor fire, damaging the number 2 and 3 shields severely but Mendez pushed his ship until she had swung past the forward arc of the second Klingon cruiser, then again smashed their stardrive sections with phaser and photon fire. Excalibur took a beating too; even with their limited dorsal firing arcs, the Klingons were able to score half a dozen clean hits on her, damaging her impulse drives and shields enough for Mendez to escape any further assault.
Even wounded and with an escort wing of raptors and I2 destroyers bearing down, Excalibur continued to fight, using durability to take fire while giving it out with just as much fury. At one point as three raptors tried to encircle her, Mendez order a full volley, all 12 phaser batteries firing at once at targets in their arc. It blew out three different power relays, but the shock prevented the Klingons from closing in for the kill. The destroyers continued to harass Mendez as he led them on a circuitous route away from the remains of Escort Group 2. By this point, however, Battlegroup Excalibur (BGE) was now fully engaged, with the Loknars now joined by the Paula L. Tyler and the Konig in a close-range brawl with the Klingon nattlecruisers. The ventral arc of attack that Mendez had come from meant that his ships had attacked Morev’s forces from their rear quarter, where fewer weapons could initially be brought to bear, giving the Starfleet vessels a brief firepower advantage. This was not wasted. Konig score a direct hit on the D7 that Caper Bona had damaged, destroying its warp drive and leaving it to drift without power, while the Loknars pinned several D6s in a brutal turning battle. Excalibur, having survived its brawl with the Destroyers, continued to wreak havoc with the lighter vessels. At around 03:25 am, she found herself facing a D7-A. Most of the battle had drifted away from the two vessels, which faced each other alone. This was the first of a legendary confrontation: The Constitution Class Starship versus the D7 Battlecruiser.
On paper, the two ships had a lot in common. Both were designed as long-range, long-mission craft, though with different purposes in mind for said missions. Both had been designed as next-generation ships of the line, built on superlative power bases that could handle an array of new equipment. Both types were considered the best in the fleet, poster-boys for both Starfleet Exploration and Klingon might. For many in far-flung systems, they were the Federation and Empire. On a technical level, there were some differences. The Constitution accelerated faster, both at impulse and warp. The D7 had a much smaller sensor signature, closer to that of a scout craft, and it handled like one too, with a much tighter turning circle than the Constitution. The D7 was capped at warp 7, while Constitutions could easily push warp 8 or more regularly.[4] While the D7 carried fewer weapon mounts than the Constitution (8 disruptor cannons and 2 torpedo tubes to 12 phaser banks and three tubes) the Klingon weapons were significantly more powerful. A single volley from a D7 could bring a ship’s shields crashing down in one go if it was fired at the correct range. While both vessels had been in service from the mid-2240s and onwards, there had been few run-ins that had resulted in armed conflict. The last before First Caleb IV had been at Starbase 13 , when Captain Pike had confronted a Klingon Warship in the Pharos Incident.[5] Since then both ships had undergone major refits in weaponry and shield grids.
Both Excalibur and the Klingon ship, the IKS Orion, were from the first production run of their class. Excalibur was one of the “Big 12” original Constitutions built at the San Francisco Fleet Yards that conducted the first batch of Five-Year Independent deep space missions, while the IKS Orion had been the only D7 to see action in the Four Years’ War in an inconclusive skirmish near the Alshanai Rift. While Excalibur had charted sectors in the Tholia region, Orion had laid on mothballs due to a lack of crew or funds. She had been reactivated earlier in 2259 and rapidly rebuilt with modern systems, including a prototype rapid-fire torpedo system. It was this which opened fire first, spitting half a dozen balls of red, gleaming light out at the Federation starship. Excalibur jostled under the blows but returned fire, using her speed to push for the Klingon weak points underneath the long forward boom of the vessel. The D7 fitted aggressive Klingon doctrine, and as such lacked much weaponry on its flanks or rear, beyond lighter disruptors on the flanks and rear. The Constitution, however, had weapons mounts spread well across its hull, so from all angles, at least 4 Phaser beams could be brought to bear on a target. With able commanders, the speed of the Constitution could be used to take advantage of that to hit the Klingons in their weak spots before they could turn. Excalibur excelled in that on the 13th, and the Orion took four phaser beams to its underside before it could pivot to bring its heavy disruptors to bear. The Klingon captain reacted quickly though and turned his vessel on a dime, so that by the time Mendez had brought Excalibur around to fire her forward torpedoes the two ships were face to face. Both ships fired at the same time, and both took significant damage, Excalibur’s forward shields buckling while Orion lost power to her rapid-fire torpedo system and forward disruptors. They traded shots at medium to long-range after passing each other, firing photon torpedoes erratically. Both ships broke off eventually, Orion limping into the cover of another D7, while Excalibur turned to aid the Konig, which was under attack. The duel had only lasted a few minutes and was highly inconclusive, but significant. Unlike other Starfleet ships so far, the Constitution had gone one-on-one with a D7 and survived without significant loss, while giving the vaunted battlecruiser a bloody nose.
Battlegroup Excalibur and 2nd Fleet Group were now locked into an engagement, with neither side able to gain the upper hand. Unlike EG2, there were no “weak points” in BGE; no vessels that the Klingons could mark out to crack first, and with Fukuhara breaking orbit from Caleb VIII to join the fight, the odds were beginning to equalize. Much to Mendez’s frustration, however, the Klingon force remained between him and Caleb IV. Battlegroup Excalibur, despite its best effects, would be unable to lend support to Escort Group One. Mendez signalled Vr-Melloc to inform them of the situation and told her that Drake would be on station within the hour. EG1 was to hold the position until relieved.
“Ringside to a Turkey Shoot”
Aboard the Malcolm Reed, Sh’O’Leary had been kept updated on the demise of Escort Group 2 through the tactical display on the bridge, which he’d had piped down to a screen in engineering. “It wasn’t pretty,” he said, “but it was pretty satisfying to watch Excalibur and the Big hitters smash the Klingons up.” A wary crewperson asked him whether he thought this meant a general war. Sh’O’Leary shrugged. “I told him I’d give him a reply when we got back to Starbase 10.” He very nearly said ‘if’ but decided against it. By this point, Molly Cobb and Sergei Nikolov had joined Escort Group 1, forming up at the end of the line closest to Caleb IV and Kyber Pass. EG1 was just as poorly equipped for engaging as EG2 had been, barring the Capella class ships, which had a reputation for being tough as nails, even if their weapons were a little lacking. Of main concern was Kyber Pass itself. While she was now under her own power, with active shields, sensors, and life support, she lacked weapons to defend herself.
“We were doing our best, but the little bastards wouldn’t accept the power,” Knightwick recollected. “It was absurd. We had 16 phaser banks and four photon launchers, and none of them worked. No matter what we tried, they simply wouldn’t accept any power!” Unbeknownst to the Engineers, there was nothing they could have done to get the weapons to work. All of them had been taken from the mothball yard at Axanar in a hurry and without a thorough examination, and crucially without any power compensation relays. If the SCE engineers had known this, they could have bypassed the whole system, or built a new one, but there was no way for them to know this without ripping the phaser banks apart – something they didn’t have time for. While 2nd Fleet Group had been engaged by Mendez and Battlegroup Excalibur, it was still possible that the Klingons could break through to Caleb IV in some strength. EG1, facing now in the direction of that battle, was ready to face them.
It was not, however, ready for General Korok. 5th Fleet Group’s approach was well coordinated, using the shadow of Caleb VIII to mask its movements before approaching Caleb IV at low impulse, masking its energy signature as much as possible. Once again, the Klingon sensor advantage came into play, and the repositioning of Escort Group One was identified with ease. Korok aimed to “roll up” the Starfleet formation from the right, falling onto it as it attempted to reposition into a line between FG2 and Kyber Pass before punching a hole straight through them and capturing the station. While capture went against his explicit orders from Sturka, Korok was much more interested in the possible coup that a captured Starbase might represent and altered his attack formation to protect his Marine-carrying D7s. They would lead the attack, which would only graze EG1 on its’ way to the Starbase. Vr’Melloc would know nothing of any of this until 12:50 on the 13th. Just after the start of the second watch, the USS Tarsus IV spotted a motion blip right at the edge of its’ sensor range. A moment later, it came under fire from a completely unexpected direction, the ship reeling under attack from three different Klingon warships.
Tarsus IV had always been an unlucky ship. One of six “colonial” Gustav Mahler class vessels that had been paid for by public subscription, she was launched on the exact same day that Governor Kodos gave his infamous decimation order to murder half the population of the colony. Her dedication plaque (which carried his name as a benefactor) had to hurriedly be replaced; soon afterward, her antimatter pods also had to be replaced after they developed a serious leak. On her first mission to help establish a colony on Kahinu’s World, she suffered a complete power loss in both her hangar decks, forcing her to return to Starbase Seven for a complete overhaul mere weeks after she had left spacedock. Tarsus IV spent most of her career limping between second-line work and repair yards and had been placed on mothballs in 2255 after a fault in her air filtration system had flooded her atmosphere with nearly lethal levels of carbon dioxide. She was only at Caleb IV because the vessel Drake had wanted – the USS Saladin – had been delayed. It was no surprise that she barely had time to fire a few bursts of phaser fire before her shields collapsed. Even with the USS Ohinaka coming to her aid, she was doomed, unable to outmanoeuvre the nimble Birds of Prey that plagued her. Wisely, her Captain abandoned the vessel. Only 12 of her 300-person crew were killed, most evacuating in the large compliment of warp shuttles. They were the lucky ones.
Tarsus IV had sat at the rightwards end of EG1, supposedly at the far end of the line from the Klingon attack. Instead, Korok’s 5th Fleet Group had hit the Starfleet Squadron perpendicular to its forward front with full force. 22 Klingon vessels – mostly Raptors, Birds of Prey, I2 Destroyers, and D5 Light Battlecruisers – were now pushing on the flank of the EG1. Vr-Melloc ordered the group to break formation and engage as soon as possible. It was a rash order – despite the intensity of the Klingon attack, there was sufficient time and space between them and Kyber Pass for EG1 to realign in a new defensive position. But Vr-Melloc wasn’t thinking in those terms. Instead, they focused on making sure the Klingons were too busy fighting the escort group to push on the Starbase. It worked, to an extent. EG1 was able to engage the Klingon light vessels in force, with the Malcolm Reed and the Vela Gap working together to disable or destroy three Birds-of-Prey within 20 minutes. The Bird of Prey – long the scourge of Starfleet vessels due to its high speed and manoeuvrability – was beginning to show its flaws and age by 2259. Cheap to build and favoured as both a privateering and peacekeeping vessel by the Great Houses, their reliance on speed and surprise was no match for a square hit from the Mark VII phaser banks of a Constitution Class, or even the Rapid-Fire pulse phasers of the Magee. The K23s and D5s managed better and inflicted heavy damage on the Ohinaka and the Vela Gap, but it appeared that EG1 had managed to stall the Klingon flank march.
What Vr’Melloc couldn’t see was the seven-ship group that was now moving at full impulse directly for Kyber Pass. The USS Smolensk had seen them and moved to intercept in a futile display of bravery. The old, dependable Anton Class ship tried valiantly to stop them, placing itself between the Klingons and the Starbase but it was no use. After 20 minutes of furious fighting, she lost antimatter containment and went down with all hands. About three minutes after that, the Vela Gap collided with an out-of-control Raptor. Both ships disappeared in another brilliant fireball, visible from The Kyber Pass.
“We were ringside to a turkey shoot,” Knightwick commented. “There wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. Warp cores were popping off like fireworks on Federation Day while we sat there like morons.” Despite their frustration, there was little the Engineers could do about it. Their own vessels were even more vulnerable – The Ptolemy class transports didn’t have the shield grids to withstand sustained attack, while the Ionia – the main SCE vessel – was an antiquated Horizon class vessel, worryingly obsolete even if it hadn’t been converted to serve as an engineering support craft. The only capable craft near the Starbase, the Detroyat Class USS Gyges and USS Kraz, had already swung out to try and form a screen, but they had also been stripped down to act as support craft too, with only four phaser banks to the normal ten on each ship. “We’d started preparing the scuttling charges when one of the Klingon vessels went up in a flash. It took a second for us to figure it out, but then Admiral Drake’s voice came over subspace. Hell of a cheer we made then, even if we regretted it later.” One of the D6s closing on Kyber Pass had taken hits from three vessels (USS Avenger, Windjammer and Zheng He) and had overloaded her warp core. Battlegroup Richelieu had arrived. “The cavalry never turns up on time anymore’, Commander Pocock said to me. Wish they weren’t so goddamn right.”
Where had Drake been? It was a difficult question to answer. Drake claims that her force was moving at the best speed for Caleb IV, but the fact that Battlegroup Excalibur had arrived and had time to loop around to attack 2nd Fleet Group over twelve hours before Battlegroup Excalibur entered the system makes this claim sceptical. She had, quite simply, gotten lost. It seems impossible to imagine a Starfleet task force getting lost in the 23rd century, but in space, anything is possible. In Drake’s case, a later study of the flight logs of the USS Miranda and Richelieu in the 2270s revealed that the entire fleet had been carried by a subspace eddy that pulled them approximately 8 light-years off course. With the complicated manoeuvres the fleet was taking to avoid Klingon patrols, they may not have noticed, or assumed that their initial course plots had been wrong. Captain Benek of the Detroyat would state at the Nogura Inquiry into Caleb IV that a stellar mass near system P-944-Q had been ignored by Drake and thus not factored into the estimated arrival time at Caleb IV. Drake denied this, but the fact that Battlegroup Richelieu turned up so late into the battle – and so long after Battlegroup Excalibur – is undeniable.
Either way, BGR had taken far too long to arrive. It was a force that packed a punch, with three Bolivar Class Starships alongside 2 Saladin Destroyers.[6] It was, however, in the wrong place. Expected to drop out of warp behind EG1, Battlegroup Richelieu stumbled straight into 5th Fleet Group right as it was forming up to make a final push on the Escort Group. The results were brutal. Drake’s force was thrown straight into the action without forming up properly, and even though the Windjammer and Zheng He had blunted the initial attack, the Klingon force had been much more prepared for engagement than them. Once again, the ‘Sensor Gap’ meant the Klingon Warships were much more prepared for combat than the Starfleet ships, and even though a D6 had taken a clean hit, the others were already pouncing on their would-be attackers. USS Montreal – one of three Coventry Class cruisers – took a volley from two D7s and lost all power, while the rest of the fleet struggled to break through to the rest of EG1.
The fight to break through was hard enough that BGR couldn’t disengage to defend Kyber Pass properly, despite Drake attempting to do so about 30 minutes into the engagement. It would have been possible to reposition earlier on, but the Admirals’ focus on the original goal – re-establishing contact with Escort Group One – distracted her from the Klingon’s manoeuvring. Despite losses, 5th Fleet Group had successfully wheeled itself so now it stood between the Starfleet ships and Kyber Pass.
“We were buggered”, Knightley wrote. “Thank god for our sensor net, otherwise we’d have been Bat’leth souffle.” Kyber Pass spotted three D7s breaking from the main force again at around 18:50 pm. “We saw them about forty minutes out. There wasn’t much choice, really. We weren’t gonna fight, and if we were, what with? Laser Drills? Replicators?” Wisely the Engineers chose to withdraw, with most personnel evacuating onto the USS Percy Hobart and Wolaston, while a stay-behind team readied the station for destruction. “It was one thing to fuck off. It was another thing to fuck off and leave the Klingons all of our handiwork to take apart.”
Commander Tu had originally intended to detonate charges to scuttle the station, but as the D7s closed, there wasn’t the time. Instead, he ordered the crew off onto the Percy Hobart while he went over to the Ionia. The Ionia was a Daedalus Class vessel – older than anyone who served on her, she had been built back in 2172 when Caleb IV wasn’t even on Federation Star Maps. She was slow, unreliable, and disliked by her crews, but the Corps of Engineers maintained her anyways as an auxiliary vessel for hauling heavy machinery and Worker Bees. Ionia was scheduled for breaking up after Singapore, but Tu had one final use for her.
“[Commander Tu] took the Ionia and did something stupid – so stupid, I was upset it wasn’t my plan. He rammed her into the Kyber Pass, and then shoved the both of them right into the gas giant.” It wasn’t the most elaborate of plans, and the Ionia wasn’t very maneuverable once it’d been crashed into a Starbase, but it worked. Tu, having ordered their crew off after the ram, put the ship into maximum impulse, then high-tailed it to the shuttlebay. As his shuttlepod left the Ionia, there was a moment of trepidation as the Ionia struggled against the immense weight of the Starbase, then the two massive bodies began to move, first slowly, then at significant speed towards Caleb IV itself as the D7s could only watch on. The Engineering vessels slipped behind a moon and jumped to warp before the Klingons could catch them. About 20 minutes later, the Kyber Pass disappeared into the gas giant, soon crushed by the huge forces at its center. Commander Tu would be awarded the Karagite Order of Heroism for “significant gallantry and quick thinking in the face of enemy fire.” None of the Engineers or support crew had been killed or injured in the entire engagement, much to their relief.
The same, however, could not be said for the fighting force. With Kyber Pass burning up in the atmosphere of Caleb IV and the Support Group falling back, the Klingons turned back on EG1 and Battle Group Richelieu. By 19:00 hours, Drake had quickly abandoned any attempt to break through to EG1’s position. Instead, the plan changed to a regroup on the Richelieu’s side of the Klingon Force. Escort Group One, with great effort, managed to break through after 20 minutes and link up with Richelieu and the others, thanks to the aid of the three Avenger class ships. These vessels – predecessors to the vaunted Miranda class – had their first proper combat trial at Caleb IV and passed with flying colours. Avenger and Miranda’s intense fire on several D6s allowed Molly Cobb and Sergei Nikholov to withdraw behind them, with the Malcolm Reed and Duluth following behind. Ohinaka III – far too heavily damaged to withdraw – was abandoned soon after, her crew transferred to the Unitarian V before she was scuttled. Even with both groups combined, Drake’s odds were grim. Two of Battlegroup Richelieu’s ships had been lost trying to keep the hole in the Klingon battle line open, and another – the D’Mallac’arra - was venting plasma from both nacelles. 13 vessels, most of which had significant damage, were facing 21 Klingon ships of equal strength, and all in much better condition. Mendez’s force was evening the odds against the Morev, but the Klingon fleet remained resolute. There would be no unified defence. The Klingons were simply too strong – too aggressive – fighting too close to the Starfleet battle line to allow for any re-organization. There was no hope.
At 22:00, Drakes issued the order to withdraw. BGR, still more able to match the Klingon battle line, held its position as the remaining five vessels of the escort group jumped to warp. Thirty minutes later, Drakes’ force pulled out too, its’ departing shots disabling a trio of pursuing D5s. The D’Mallac’arra was abandoned, her engines set to overload while her remaining crew escaped in warp shuttles. Their last message to command mentioned a Klingon scout trailing them. Nothing would be heard of them again. Korok did not attempt to pursue Drake’s force. Their fight had hurt them a lot harder than Starfleet had realized. 5th Fleet groups’ Antimatter reserves were depleted from the high-warp maneuvers that enabled their outflanking operation. Their work was done – even if the prize of the Starbase had been lost, the losses inflicted on Starfleet were just as glorious a victory.
It would take until 7 am on the 14th for Excalibur and Mendez’s force to completely break contact. Their stalling action against 2nd Fleet Group was the only saving grace of the entire engagement, but even that wasn’t much to speak of. Starfleet had gone to Caleb IV to fly the flag and remind the Klingons that they were still to be reckoned with. Instead, 17 ships had been lost and Starbase destroyed, with minimal casualties on the Empire’s side.[7] Operation Singapore had been an unmitigated disaster in all ways possible. The Eaves-Beyer class of vessel had been essentially written off as a combat vessel. Decades of Starfleet combat training had come to naught in a fleet operation, where captains had been unable to work properly in battle lines and squadrons under any pressure of any kind. Korok’s signal back to Sturka at Imperial High Command said it all:
“Starfleet defeated: enemy routed. Glorious victory against the Earthers achieved. Force superiority in Penthe Belt [The Triangle] is guaranteed for the rest of the year. Fleet Groups will return to patrol and conquest duty. Long Live the Klingon Empire.”
“All measures short of a General War”
It took Task Force Remagen 25 days to limp back to Starbase 12, shepherding damaged vessels at warp 2.5 or lower back into Federation Space. The news of the disaster had traveled faster and had escalated through the rumour mill of the frontier. The Support Group, detached from the main force, had taken on supplies in the Bakers’ Dozen, where the story of Kyber Pass’s loss expanded to the loss of all the major starships. By the time news reached Starbase 10, sources suggested that the entire fleet had been lost, and that a massive Klingon fleet of over 200 vessels was closing in on the Starbase to finish Starfleet off. Templeton – infamously the only cool head in the entire triangle – was skeptical, but increased convoy escorts and patrol duties, nonetheless. They would wait for official confirmation from Starfleet Command before setting any emergency plans into motion. The merchant navy couldn’t wait that long, however. Orders came to restrict any movement within 4 parsecs of Klingon bases. The Association of Outer Free Worlds closed itself to traffic on the 1st October, and would not open its’ borders again until the new year; their defense forces would open fire on Federation vessels twice before then.
The first official report, however, came not from Federation Central but from the Klingons. On the 30th of September, early warning posts near Khitomer received a wide-band transmission from the “Imperial Chancellery”. It was a surprise, and at first, the analysts are the monitoring station on Rator II believed it was a fraud, but eventually, the frequency was confirmed as an official Klingon one. The signal was short, and sharp:
“ALL FEDERATION VESSELS ARE WARNED TO STAY BEYOND 2 PARSECS FROM SYSTEM KNOWN TO YOU AS UNDIVAE-CALEB. THIS SYSTEM IS OCCUPIED BY THE KLINGON EMPIRE IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN OUR INTERNAL SECURITY. ANY FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO OCCUPY THE SYSTEM WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ACT OF FORMAL AGGRESSION. ANY ATTEMPTS TO INTERFERE WITH KLINGON ACTIONS OR TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY WITHIN THE LINE OF T’KUVMA’S DECLARATION WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ATTACK ON THE EMPIRE ITSELF.”
This message – all 72 words of it – was the first official act of diplomacy with the UFP the Klingon government would ever make. It was a profound shock to Starfleet Intelligence for multiple reasons. It confirmed, for one, that L’Rell’s government was maintaining some of the central control that it attested to have. Secondly, the acknowledgment of “formal acts of aggression” was new. As far as policymakers in Paris and the Presidio were aware, the Klingons had no real concept of “peace” or “war” in the diplomatic sense. “Formal” aggression – as it is understood in human diplomatic parlance – was not something that the Klingons were supposed to understand. But, apparently, they did; at least enough to use it in messages with the UFP.
It was, however, confusing for the local commanders who received it. News of the disaster at Caleb IV led most to conclude that open warfare in the Disputed Area was about to return. Many commanders went into disaster mode, recalling outpost crews and long-range patrols to defend key positions. Starbase 24’s commander would recall the listening posts on Quiberon and New Wake Island, leaving a gaping hole in the flimsy sensor net that protected Starfleet assets. A captain near Ardana had panicked and destroyed several communications relays to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Other moves were just as drastic, as were demands for reinforcements. Starfleet Command hadn’t even received a fall after-action report from Drake before they were being bombarded with demands for more destroyers and cruisers to counter the hordes of Klingon warships that were, supposedly, just around the corner.
“Everyone kind of lost it,” recollected Peter Toussaint, whose small staff on Starbase 19 were soon overwhelmed by requests for aid from Klingon Command. “I didn’t have the authority to sign off of any re-assignments they were being requested, and they just kept coming. We didn’t know if Drake was even alive, let alone where she was.”
When Drake finally arrived at Starbase 12, she did what she could to restore order. The panic settled as well as it could, but the damage was done. Trade routes had been disrupted and communications severed. Patrol routes had been thrown into chaos. And on top of all that, 2nd Fleet had effectively had its operating strength cut by two-thirds. Drake’s gamble had blown up her face, and the message from the Klingons was clear: don’t try that again. The Admiral’s miscalculation had caused more than a Klingon assertion of dominance. The panic that had been caused by the rumours only resurged after the official reports came in. The Orion stock markets collapsed, and there was a run on Federation credits at the Botchtok embassy. Private vessels essentially abandoned the border area in expectation of a return to general hostilities. Even back on earth, the General Assembly and the Security Council both met in emergency talks to discuss the implications of a return to open warfare.[8]
Back on Starbase 10, Drake and Templeton worked to prepare the meagre assets they had for a full-scale attack, perceiving the natural follow-up to the defeat to be a complete sweep of Starfleet from the Triangle. The remaining vessels were hastily prepared to combat, while Marines fortified the planet below for a siege. A week passed. Then another one. Klingon raiding continued, pushing on fringe outposts and traders for easy prizes, or scooping up tramp ships carrying Suliban refugees. But no fleet attack was made on Starbase 10, or any other Starfleet outpost. The panic subsided just as quickly as it began, and the blow Starfleet had expected never came.
It appeared that, for a time, Starfleet had some breathing space. There would be no long, laborious inquiry process before action was taken. Everyone in the Presidio knew that Drake was simply not up to the task, and mounting criticism before Caleb IV reached a critical mass in the aftermath. Under pressure from President Th’Rhahlat to find a scapegoat, the Admiralty decided it was better to remove her sooner rather than later. Her transfer orders were waiting for her when she reached Starbase 12, with reassignment to the Kzinti border marking the end of a long career on the Klingon Border. In her place came Vaughan Rittenhouse, promoted from command of the 4th Fleet to assume total control of all Federation forces along the Klingon Border.
Rittenhouse was already a controversial figure by 2259. Admiral Nogura referred to him in a note to Robert Stone as “someone who shouldn’t be left alone with other people’s wallets”. Matt Decker simply called him a “shithead”. But he was best summed up by his predecessor as Commander, Starfleet, Robert Comsol, who noted that “[Rittenhouse] seemed to be under the delusion that the Douglas Macarthur was a hero to be emulated, as opposed to being the strange vainglorious antihero he really was.”
The Macarthur comparison went deeper than Comsol’s snide remark; even as early as his days at the Annapolis naval academy, Rittenhouse had somewhat been obsessed with the 20th-century general. His biography of the man (panned by most historians of Earth’s second world war) attempted to paint him as a flawed democratic crusader, ignoring his crimes against the American population and the danger his intense vanity posed to liberal institutions. It is easy to understand how Rittenhouse idolized Macarthur; like him, he was the fourth son of a longstanding military family: his father had served at the battle of Cheron as an Ensign and had been part of the formative generation of Starfleet personnel. He’d also grown up on the frontier, with the New Paris colony standing in for the Old West of North America from his birth in 2200. His parents had also uprooted him to the capital, moving to New York, Earth in 2211. His time at Starfleet Academy was marred by extreme hazing of “dunsels” – a term for a useless cadet, derived from the DunSel corporation’s scandalous supply of colony vessels with poorly-built spare parts. His father – now Chief of Staff of Starfleet made sure that he got safe postings and easy promotion out of the academy – a controversial act of nepotism resented by both Rittenhouse and his contemporaries.
Rittenhouse’s career as a combat commander began during Operation John Brown, where he led a trio of Kestrel class destroyers in combat against up-gunned Orion cruisers. Whilst his write-up of the battle painted the danger he faced as quite drastic, more recent work seems to suggest that the Orion Cruisers were running short on deuterium – making the danger much smaller. Either way, Rittenhouse’s own position as a battle-winning officer and self-dubbed “Frigate Leader” made him popular for a time amongst those officers, and the regional colony leaders, merchant representatives and prospectors whose livelihoods he protected. His first memoir – also titled “Frigate Leader” sold incredibly well, despite its dubious provenance.
His prominence as a leader only grew in the 2240s. Even though he missed Donatu V, he saw serious action himself against Kzinti raiders and paramilitaries in the meantime. Promotion to Commodore saw his take command of Starbase 16, bordering the Tholian Assembly. Once again, he was in a frontline position – though here he spent more time protecting colonies and convoys than engaging with the Tholian fleet. It was good for his PR game, however: at a time when Starfleet was ignoring the needs of the colonial leadership, Rittenhouse was listening – even if just to give himself ammunition for further literature. His second book – The Donatu Incident – was a fierce attack on Starfleet’s strategy and tactics in the run-up to Donatu V: a bold move from a Captain who did not see action in that conflict. Despite this, the book was well-read, at least enough to be in the public mind during T’Kuvma’s War.
Promotion in 2252 to Rear Admiral saw him bumped to a staff position as chief of the department of fleet readiness. Four years at Starfleet Command did not ingratiate Rittenhouse to his peers. His outspokenness only got worse behind a desk, and the constant stream of requests, memoranda, and dossiers that flew upstairs to Starfleet Operations and the Chief of Staff’s office went from frustration to running gag. Several requests to have him bumped sideways or upstairs were denied – despite his criticisms and detractors, Rittenhouse was incredibly competent; his work in reordering and streamlining fleet readiness operations would be valuable during both Burnham’s War and the aftermath. Rittenhouse had one ace other up his sleeve: the support and patronage of Uncle Shu himself.
Ch’Shukar had always taken a shine to Rittenhouse, who’d combined tactical skill and quick-thinking with a lot of old-fashioned brown-nosing to get himself in Uncle Shu’s good books. Both were considered ‘outsiders’ from the Admiralty establishment. Their views on fleet operations also aligned a lot with each other, and Ch'Shukar had respect for Rittenhouses' combat experience against the Kzinti and the Tholians. As C-in-C of the Reserve Fleet, he'd worked closely with Rittenhouse on fleet readiness, and the collective work had been pivotal in getting much of the category C reserve into action to defend the core worlds during the oncoming hostilities. Rittenhouse would write another book in this period, too, publishing The Glorious Dead? in 2255. This work was speculative fiction, instead of historical analysis, and spun a warning tale of a Federation too wedded to peace and harmony to properly defend itself against a vicious, unstoppable Klingon invasion. It was not read well, mainly due to its less than positive views on democratic scrutiny and checks on Starfleet power, but one of its core ideas - that if the Federation had the industrial and economic means to secure itself if only the politicians put their minds to it - would become a cornerstone of radical Unionist thought in time. In the meantime, the work of the armchair novelist was lampooned by those who had better knowledge of the empire than an admiral who'd never seen a Klingon face-to-face.
Rittenhouse would, however, get his chance to fight the Klingons after the Battle of the Binary Stars. With Drake bumped to 2nd Fleet Commander, Rittenhouse was promoted to command the smaller 4th Fleet. It is perhaps unfair to blame the collapse of the 4th Fleet on its’ CO. By the time Rittenhouse took control, it had already been mauled significantly by Klingon attacks in and around the Alshanai rift, and its operational range beyond Sauria was hemmed in by major supply line cuts. Rittenhouse pushed his crews to the limit, and once again demonstrated intense bravery as a frontline captain (much to the detriment of his command ability). His own penchant for military victory over strategic goals cannot be ignored, however. Even this early on, Rittenhouse found nothing of value in civilian concerns and demands, even when they aligned with overall strategic goals. Their demands for convoy escorts and planetary defences contradicted his desire for a decisive engagement, even when it became increasingly clear that the Klingons were not going to take him up on that. He’d remained in command of 4th Fleet after the Armistice and played a strong hand in its’ rebuilding, using his personal influence to ensure that the 4th was delivered a large number of Saladin, Pioneer, and Larson class vessels instead of Eaves-Beyer vessels, a sensible action that had the unintended effect of pushing those defective ships onto 2nd Fleet. Once again, Rittenhouse made no friends amongst his peers doing this but earned the adoration of even more junior officers and subordinates, who became ever more loyal to the Admiral.
Ch’Shukar had been pushing for Rittenhouse to be put in charge of Klingon Border Operations since the Command had first been created, against significant pressure from the rest of the Admiralty and the civilian government. Th’rhahlat’s opposition, while severe, disappeared after Caleb IV. His military focus – written up before (and after) as Jingoism – was now a vital asset in a theatre that was supposedly about to become a warzone. Civilian leaders – whose opinions of Starfleet were always fickle – were suddenly very appreciative of an officer who appeared to have some sort of plan for securing the border. Rittenhouses’ promotion to Vice Admiral, and his appointment as Chief of Operations, Klingon Command, were confirmed on October 30th.
Rittenhouse made his mark on Klingon Command early. Overnight, the staff roster of Klingon Command was doubled from 26 to 62 officers, along with 31 more clerks. Liaison officers with the Merchant navy and Transport Command would follow soon, all to be based at Starbase 19, now officially the permanent headquarters of Klingon Command. More changes would come after Rittenhouse would arrive on station on November 9th. His first act in person – rather infamously – was the fire all of Drake’s aides, including Peter Toussaint. Toussaint didn’t mind. He’d never liked Rittenhouse, who was far too interested in the military mission to be trustworthy. “We’re explorers and humanitarians. Sure, the defensive arm is part of that job, but it should never be the whole job. It was all Rittenhouse seemed to care about. Besides,” Toussaint added, “I couldn’t trust a man who thought Rule Britannia was an acceptable song for the 23rd century.”
The young staff officer wouldn’t be out of a job for too long. Before he’d even finished packing his bag, he’d received a message from Admiral Nogura at Starfleet Operations. The “Grand Old Man” wanted Toussaint on his staff. “I couldn’t refuse, really. You don’t refuse a request from Admiral Nogura. It’s like letting down your own parents.” Nogura’s need for new staff was unsurprising. Starfleet Operations had the largest purview of any of the sub-departments of Starfleet, excluding the semi-official divisions of Starfleet Science, and Nogura’s own personal ‘interests’ and projects only made it larger. Toussaint’s experience, however, was needed not to aid the Admiral’s interests in Signals intelligence and Command Training programs. They were needed to help formulate a new strategy for the Klingon Border, and for challenging threats to the Federation as a whole.
The first result of this re-assessment was the pivotal Directive 1832-B of November 12th, 2259. Better known as the “No Peace Beyond the Line” memorandum, this directive from Commander, Starfleet established several critical precedents for how Starfleet would treat the Disputed Area for the next 30 years. It had been written as a direct reply to the Klingon message, but most of its contents were the result of the experience of the post-armistice settlement, and the nature of Klingon action since. It was an acceptance that peace – Federation peace, within the treaty area – was a complete impossibility, and that ignoring that reality was only detrimental to Starfleet and the UFP. Starfleet simply lacked the ships, and at present new production was being outstripped by Klingon shipyards. Klingon incursions – a regularity since the armistice – were no longer to be treated as an oddity, but as an inevitability in a “zone of limited security and authority”. Peacetime rules of engagement were to be followed by Starfleet, but Captains were to be expected to face action within the zone.
Furthermore, the directive authorized commanders to take “all measures short of war” to prevent the loss of Federation territory and assets to the Klingons. Whatever “war” looked like – a general war – was nebulous, to say the least, but Starfleet was admitting that conflict of some kind was a distinct inevitability even if peace was to be maintained. If Klingon encroachment was to be prevented, Starfleet believed that it would have to be confronted at the point of incursion and not afterward. This factor fed into the most shocking part of the directive: section 5 part 1. This subsection – part of the article detailing exemptions and suspensions of various orders – authorised the suspension of the Prime Directive in certain circumstances, as authorised by the Federation Council. These circumstances included:
It was a serious roll-back of how General Order One had been understood. Prime Directive violations had been accepted – and retroactively authorised – on several occasions before 2259, but never had they been authorised in such a general way. It was an understandable concession; the Disputed Area was full of pre-warp races at all levels on the civilizational scale, many of whom lay on strategic trade lanes or possible invasion routes. While almost everyone within Starfleet Command was uncomfortable with causing cultural contamination on such a scale, it was considered a price worth paying for security. It was, however, at this point, a hypothetical – all such actions required a sign-off from senior command and the President, both of whom indicated that they considered giving such authorisation to be “an impossibility”. The section did, however, open the UFP and Starfleet to aiding and supporting warp-capable planets in ways beyond diplomatic – the loan and delivery of arms would no longer be a prime directive matter. This had caused a massive battle within the Security Council, where Ambassadors Sarek and Tilly expressed serious concern about the precedent it would set. They were, however, outvoted by those who were more ready to play the realpolitik game.
The realism of Directive 1832-B shocked many in the Admiralty, but to those who had experience in the Disputed Area since the armistice, there was nothing surprising about it. The directive represented merely an official acknowledgment of how bad the situation had gotten. The Klingon Frontier was falling apart at the seams, and a “backhand blow” like Operation Singapore was never going to work; it had, in fact, only made things worse. A complete readjustment of strategy and operations was absolutely necessary, and Admiral Rittenhouse, apparently was the man to do it. Ch’Shukar certainly thought so. “Vaughan can do it,” he told Matt Decker. “He’s a tough man, and not a very nice one, but he can fix what [Drake] broke. Just see where we are next year, and you’ll understand that I’m right.”
Rittenhouse wasn’t about to wait a year to make a difference; he welcomed the directive and jumped on it immediately. His staff went to work organising new, permanent convoy routes, routing as much civilian traffic as possible onto monitored space lanes and trade spines. With the approval of the council (by a single vote), he began to transfer a dozen obsolete vessels each to the Acamarian and Kobaxian governments. Both powers had requested Federation aid on and off for the last decade, and Rittenhouse’s’ calculated delivery of said aid – in the form of century-old Powhatan and Dragon class cruisers – helped shore up their support for the UFP and protect trade. By handing over the protection of their space to their governments, Rittenhouse immediately freed up five starships for other duties.
Arms shipments to the Acamarians and the Kobaxians would not make up for the dire state of Klingon Command. Only two years old, it had seen a third of its’ entire strength written off as combat losses or non-operational. The Klingon Empires’ threat had only grown, their warships having proved themselves superior in combat on multiple occasions. Caleb IV had only underlined how hasty Starfleet’s’ defensive preparations were, and how there was no real way for them to stand in the way of a concerted Klingon attack in the short term. The Empire knew that.
But no attack would come. Not at the end of 2259, and not in 2260 either.
[1] The Romulan Base on Gibraltar would not be discovered until 2274.
[2] The ‘D6’ was used to designate the K’T’Orr and Korrok type vessels. The D6-D (Korrok) was a Four Years War era design that was well known for its high speed, short range and extreme sensor visibility.
[3] Most of our knowledge of this early Klingon fleet training (before the opening of the Orbital Fleet School in 2261) comes from Kor, who helped strategize the new programmes with Sturka as “Liaison” from the chancellor.
[4] D7s could and did push as high as Warp 9 on several occasions, but usually had to have their engines completely rebuilt afterwards. The D7K and D7M “K’tinga” could both reach Warp 8.7 regularly.
[5] The Pharos Incident (2253) had involved a dispute over a planetoid in the Marrat Nebula over Project Pharos, a SCE plan to build a subspace “lighthouse” to put an end to smuggling, piracy, and other illicit trade.
[6] The Avenger-Class was collective name for four of the Prototype Miranda-Class vessels, the other 3 being designated Surya class.
[7] Imperial records record 23 losses on the Klingon side; 8 of these were, however, birds of prey. Only 7 D6s and D7s were lost.
[8] The General Assembly is another term for the full assembly of the Federation Council.
“Caleb IV was an avoidable tactical disaster, but an unavoidable operational one. Thank god it happened when it did.” – Angella Fukuhara
“Theirs not to reason why”
Chief Petty Officer Ivy Knightwick liked her work. 18 years in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers had taken her across the galaxy on projects of all shapes and sizes, from relay satellites to planetary weather systems to immense Watchtower class Starbases that dwarfed the collection of antiquated vessels the Corps used as runabouts. “As a kid on Alpha Centauri, I never imagined it,” she reflected, “but considering that every night I sat on my grandfather’s knee as he told me stories about growing up on the last of the Warp-2 Earth Cargo ships, I suppose it was fate.” Knightwick didn’t join out of star-wonder, though – for her, enlistment in the corps of engineers had been an escape from a 4-month custodial sentence on Alpha Centauri for several bouts of grand theft auto and property damage. “I stole cars as a kid so I could take them apart,” she noted dryly. “It wasn’t the best idea I ever had, but it got me into the Engineer Corps.” The path from technician third class to Petty Officer was a long one, filled with a lot of arduous battles with officers and technology alike, but by 2259 Knightwick was one of an elite cadre of Starfleet Engineering crews who could turn “rocks to replicators” if they put their minds to it.
On the 12th of September 2259, however, Knightwick was finishing final pressurization checks on the USS Kyber Pass. 10 days of work had passed in a blur as the two transport pods were deconstructed, and a whole orbital station put together from old Starship parts as quickly as the 400-person teams aboard the Percy Hobart could manage. The tall, irregular profile of a Sviagod class Starbase took form quickly in the shadow of the swirling clouds of Caleb IV, even as delays due to system incompatibility, irregular connection ports, and the constant threat of detection by the Klingons pushed the construction time up and up. “We couldn’t work with much heavy machinery because we hadn’t been able to bring much – beyond laser welders, we were limited to four worker bees and the hand tools we had. Commander Tu didn’t like it one bit, but we managed, even if we had to bolt bulkheads together with hand-wrenches and seal them with thermo concrete until we could bring in the outer shells.”
The Corps of Engineers, however, always got the job done, and as Knightwick and the rest of the engineers completed their final checks and began pressurizing the internal atmosphere, most of their members let out a sigh of relief. Once the station’s reactor became operational – along with the shields and phaser banks – the most dangerous part of the operation would be over. Soon, they could kick back and relax while the starships faced off with the Klingons. The Klingons would move on, and so would the Engineers, away from this system so far away from the Federation.
The Undivae-Caleb system is not remarkable, beyond its strategic location. It is nestled on the edge of the Triangle-Phalanx area, deeper into the Beta Quadrant than the Klingon Trading centre of Mastocal or the colony world of Khitomer. It was even further from the Federation: the closest outpost was the Starfleet base on Gibraltar, and its 10 Officers and 40 Marines hardly counted.[1]
Caleb, however, was now full of Starfleet vessels – twenty, in fact, of all shapes and sizes, lying in a defensive formation around the Starbase. Their commanders were all on edge. Their heavy support – the capital ships of Battlegroups Excalibur and Richelieu – were missing, lost in the Triangle, out of communication with the Escort Groups and the Engineers for over a week. The only heavy ship they’d managed to find was the Marco Polo, the Advanced Sensor vessel that monitored the edge of the system. The “hammer” of Operation Singapore – the name for the plan to draw the Klingons into the confrontation at Caleb – was missing, and with it, the whole plan was thrown into jeopardy. The only hope was that the Klingons would be late too.
General Korok of the Imperial Navy was not late. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Both Klingon Fleet Groups had been monitoring the moves of Task Force Remagen closely. Klingon tactical sensors – still lightyears ahead of Starfleet – charted their every move and allowed Korok to pick his exact moment of engagement. He’d even been able to track the Battlegroups for a while. Now, late on the 11th, they’d been lost in the triangle. Korok, however, took this as a good sign. Broken contact meant that they were moving away, not closer to Caleb IV, still lost in subspace interference. The opportunity to crush the Escort Groups and the Starbase was now available, and like all good Klingon Commanders, he wasted no time in seizing it. Breaking the Starfleet force was more than just a chance to gain glory for the empire and crush its enemies – it would give Imperial forces free reign in the Triangle and beyond. L’Rell’s reassertion of Imperial authority over subject worlds and vassals would be a great deal easier if the Earther fleet had been crippled in the open for all to see. Their weakness would clear. And so, Korok moved in on Caleb IV.
The Marco Polo, stationed several AUs from the main force in orbit of Caleb VIII, first picked up the warp signatures of several D6-Ds, but soon enough what appeared to be a small patrol had turned out to be 23 Klingon ships of all sizes.[2] While Marco Polo could not provide a concise breakdown of the fleet, it was clear that a substantial Klingon force was now closing on Caleb IV with the intent to do battle. This was correct – the force identified, 2nd Fleet Group (2FG) under Admiral Morev, significantly overmatched the fleet arrayed against them, with six D7 Battlecruisers alongside another half-dozen D6s, 4 D5s, 3 Raptors, 2 I2 Destroyers, and 2 Birds of Prey.
With the two Escort Groups spread out in a wide defensive position across the orbits of Calebs II-V, it was paramount that significant force was concentrated to defend the Starbase as soon as possible. This was not difficult – but it would mean losing the sensor net that had been thrown out over the last three days. Reluctantly, Bavv-Mollen conceded that keeping Kyber Pass intact was the priority. The shuttles were recalled, and their parent ships were ordered to make best speed for Caleb IV. By 1640 – 15 minutes before the expected arrival of the Klingon fleet – the six vessels guarding Kyber Pass had been reinforced by a further eleven, including the Malcom Reed. Aboard the Reed, Sh’O’Leary could feel the tension as the ship readied itself for battle.
As the Chief Engineer, his job now was to keep the ship’s systems – defensive and otherwise – functioning for as long as possible. It was not an easy task – especially with the Capella class, where much of the control systems still functioned on the same principles as the Archer-Type warp 5 engine. “You had to watch everything – everyone did. There was no way for one person to monitor everything – I had seven personnel just for system monitoring. It was better than the alternative, though.” Sh’O’Leary was right – as much as the Marvick drivers were “bloody fiddly”, as Montgomery Scott famously put it, they were incredibly resistant to cascade power failures and easy to repair if things did go wrong. Either way, the Malcolm Reed wasn’t able to take its chances. Like all the other ships, it was no match in a one-on-one engagement with the Imperial Battlecruisers, but if the lighter vessels could combine their firepower, they might be able to blunt the Klingon assault for long enough that the heavier vessels under Drake could come to their aid.
The first Sh’O’Leary knew of the Marco Polo’s sighting was when the Red Alert sirens started blaring. “Captain Cartwright’s voice came over the tannoy, telling us the enemy had been sighted on the edge of the system. We expected more, but that was it. I won’t lie, it didn’t make any of us more comfortable.” The Malcolm Reed’s engineering crew did the best they could to prepare for action, however, battening down the hatches, preparing override and bypass circuits, and securing and shutting down non-essential systems, but after that had been done, they had to simply sit and wait. “We just wished we knew more about the Klingon force, except that they were coming, and there were a lot of them.”
There certainly were “a lot of them” on the way, and at speed. Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc still hadn’t managed to get through to Drake or Mendez, leaving them completely in the dark on the whereabouts of the Main striking force of Task Force Remagen. The question of whether or not the Klingons would order Starfleet to leave or fire first was answered quickly when a shuttle from the USS Vela Gap was destroyed by a Klingon scout ship. There would be no negotiation here. It would not have been beyond the two Captains to cut their losses and pull out, but it would have meant leaving Kyber Pass – the vital part of the whole plan – behind. While a Sviagod could be moved around after construction, to a certain extent, there was no way to move it beyond about ¼ impulse speed. Abandoning it, apparently, was not an option either Captain considered. With 14 vessels to the Klingons 20-odd, it seemed like approachable odds. The decision was made to stay and fight.
The problem was that there weren’t 20 Klingon ships; there were 45. The Klingon force had split in two long before Marco Polo made sensor contact. Fukuhara had done well to give the Escort Groups the intelligence it had – 2nd Fleet Group had been pushing its’ scouts well ahead to clear the way for a surprise attack, and Fukuhara’s position in the southern pole of Caleb VIII kept her ship safe as it watched the assault pass by. It meant, however, that her sensor redoubt would not pick up the movements of the 5th Fleet Group out on the edge of the system. The same electromagnetic interference that saved the Marco Polo blinded her and made sure Korok’s trap was shut without any delays. 5th Fleet Groups’ long flank march out around Caleb VII shielded it from the sensors of both the main fleet and Marco Polo ,and would continue to mask it for much of the 12th and 13th. Korok’s plan was a good one – with the bulk of the heavier vessels in 2FG, they made the perfect centre of gravity for the Klingon attack. They would attempt to batter the front door down, drawing the core of Star Fleet into their battle, while 5th Fleet Group (5FG) moved out of sensor range before “speeding like a Targ in mating season” for the Kyber Pass. It was a typical pin and manoeuvre plan, but the Klingons had a key ace up their sleeve – the sensor gap.
It is well known to us now that Klingon military sensors were a generation more advanced than Federation ones. While Starfleet sensors were primarily designed with scientific study and general-purpose use in mind, Klingon sensors were built to detect specific signatures, namely warp cores, weapons fire, ion trails, and other signs of vessels. It was said that the sensors on a D7 Battlecruiser could tell if a phaser had been fired from a light-year away, but even if that was an over-exaggeration, it could not be denied that the ability of Klingon warships to spot their foes greatly outmatched that of Starfleet’s. The “Sensor Gap” had been massively highlighted during T’Kuvma’s War, especially by the failures of Eaves-Beyer drives, which supposedly “lit up like a pulsar” on Klingon sensor systems. Countermeasures like the Advanced Sensor Redoubt project and early “Aztecing” schemes had been used to try and mitigate the disadvantage, but there had been little success. Korok knew that both his fleet groups would be easily able to manoeuvre and pin the Starfleet force where they wanted to, even with the subspace interference within the Caleb system.
This was all to come, however. With what appeared to be the whole Klingon fleet still bearing down on Caleb IV, Bavv-Mellen ordered Escort Group Two (EG2) – consisting of the Cowpens, Chesapeake, Molly Cobb, Sergei Nikolov, Gordo Stevens, Margo Madison and Henry Wallace - into a picket formation near Caleb V. It was, hypothetically, a well-practised formation. Starships would form line abreast at around 300,000 km intervals along a line of enemy advance, with the outermost vessels at around 600,000 km to provide a further sensor net. The idea was not to provide a defensive front – such a thing is always a functional impossibility in space – but to detect the enemy as soon as possible and form up into smaller pairs of vessels to counter their strongest line of attack. Single ships could attempt to slip past the line, but a pairing (or even a single ship) could easily be detached to deal with the breakthrough, forcing the enemy to break up their formation. They were, essentially, the same tactics that had been used at the Vela Gap and the Battle of Mars nearly a century earlier to smash superior Romulan forces. However, then they had been used by forces acclimatized to Starships combat in formations. The Starfleet of 2259 was not the United Earth Stellar Navy of 2159. While fleet exercises were held annually, they were poorly attended, and ships on detached service (roughly 64% of the fleet) rarely, if ever, conducted war games with multiple vessels. Since 2240 there had been only five “fleet engagements” (Axanar, Inverness, Donatu V, Binary Stars and Hromi), and of these only one, Axanar, had been a resounding victory for Starfleet. While small unit actions were common along the Tholian and Kzinti border regions, many of the lessons there had not been passed on, and what lessons had been learned were not been good ones. A lot of Starship Captains shared the “Garth of Izar” view on fleet formations: figure it out on the day.
“Figuring it out on the day” may have worked against the poorly organised Klingon navy of 2241, but not against the new fleet that was bearing down on Caleb IV. Sturka had spared no expense in turning combat-experienced but undisciplined crews into the best-trained crews in the quadrant, with extensive drills, live-fire training and war games – luxuries that the Klingon Navy had never experienced before 2257. Sturka understood well that it was the discipline – especially fire discipline – that mattered most. Too many engagements in the last war had been lost because trigger-happy captains had let loose with disruptors and torpedoes at maximum range and given away advantages in detection and position. Crews were taught to learn their ranges properly and to use their superiority in sensor technology and target detection to pick out weaker vessels before closing to ranges where hits were guaranteed.[3] Those who complained about skulking in the dark, or letting enemies slip away were punished with severe demotion – a change from the usual practice of a brutal knife-fight on the bridge, but twice as humiliating for many captains. Most accepted new training tactics and drilled their crews hard. Early tests of new fleet practices had paid off against Orion pirates and the odd unlucky Starfleet ship, but now they were to be tested in combat in fleet operations.
The fleet reforms had been welcomed by the small professional corps of the Navy, including prominent Admirals like Korok, but for others, the concept of a restrained, rapier-like navy reeked of “Romulan thinking” or worse, “Earthers”. It would be egocentric of a Federation narrative to presume that their enemies learnt all their lessons from them, but from Captain Kor, we know that at the very least, Sturka was informed about the tactics displayed by Kelvar Garth and Gabriel Lorca. He may have also drawn from personal experience of the violent, focused, and deadly operations of the Romulan Fleet, but more in developing strategies to counter them than in copying their tactics directly. Sturka may have been a shrewd learner, but at heart, he was still a deep xenophobe. The enemy was not to be idolised. Zym, Son of T’ai, like many in L’Rell’s officer, had baulked at both the massive expense and the institutional implications of professionalisation, but “The Boss” won the day, with a qualification: get proof that there was a payoff. 2nd Fleet Group was about to do that.
Initial contact would be made with the Klingon Fleet at 19:52. The seven ships of Escort Group 2 (EG2) had no chance to spot the Klingon warships before they could close to combat range. The first shots came from a pair of I2 destroyers, which hit the USS Chesapeake square in its’ saucer section, damaging its shield emitter immediately. Then two groups of raptors opened fire at 400,000 kilometres on the other Valley Forge ship, USS Cowpens, which veered away to protect her port shields to the enemy. Bavv-Mellen knew his force was under pressure, but he remained resolute – so far, he detected only 11 Klingon vessels bearing down on his force, of which half were lighter Birds-of-Prey. The scourge of Burnhams’ war, upgrades with targeting equipment since the armistice rendered their speed moot. The Cowpens, even at its venerable 39 years, was able to deliver crippling hits on at least two of the light ships, but not without slipping out of position, allowing several Klingon ships to push a gap between it and the Margo Madison, which had been attempting to support her.
The Klingon attack pressed through the gaps that opened, attacking the older vessels as the newer types attempted to come to their aid. The Valley Forge had been a capable class, able to match (and regularly beat) Klingon destroyers and light cruisers in engagements even a decade earlier, but now it was sluggish, underpowered, and under-gunned compared to the Imperial ships. Even with covering fire from their supporting ships, both Cowpens and Chesapeake were doomed. Cowpens would take a direct hit to her saucer from a photon torpedo 28 minutes into the engagement, wrecking her entirely and forcing her captain to abandon her. While the Cowpens was able to evacuate the crew to the Sergei Nikolov, the Chesapeake was less lucky; with the rest of the escort group driven off, she was hit by a full disruptor barrage from a D6-D cruiser, collapsing her shields and overloading her warp core. She went down with all hands lost. Two Starfleet vessels had been destroyed in roughly an hour’s fighting; even though the Klingons had lost four of their own, with three others crippled, they still outnumbered Escort Group Two significantly.
By this point, Kyber Pass had finally been able to get its advanced subspace relay online, and with it contact Drake. The news was not good: The main force was still five to six hours away and had been forced to split up to avoid being detected. Drake knew that Battlegroup Excalibur (under Captain Mendez) was ahead of her, but she didn’t know where exactly it was. Their orders, however, were to hang on and keep the Klingons engaged for as long as possible. By around 20:30, the bulk of 2nd Fleet Group was within engagement range, including the main force of D4-E, D6 and D7 cruisers. The cruiser force pushed further on the weakest links in the chain, targeting the Hoover class ships Henry Wallace and Margo Madison. The Hoover classes were considered able to match older D6s – they were nimble vessels, and they could pack a punch with three-photon torpedo tubes on her ventral hull. They were supposed, in theory, to be able to match a D7 for some time – not defeat one, but at the very least, with the new upgrades, hold them at bay for a time.
This theory was about to be put to the test, however. Morev brought up two D7 wings to punch through EG2 as soon as possible. The four D7s went straight for the Henry Wallace, glancing off phaser beams and dodging photon torpedoes as they closed to 150,000 km before firing. The D7s manoeuvrability – often compared to Federation scout vessels – was always a shock to Starfleet Captains, and that was certainly true at Caleb IV. Even with the Molly Cobb covering her, the Wallace could never get all her Torpedo tubes to bear on the D7s, which began to dive in for short-range disruptor barrages before moving back out to harass her and the Margo Madison at longer ranges. At around 21:24, a group of D6-A Battlecruisers made an attack run on the Molly Cobb, which was forced to turn head-on and face them, leaving the Henry Wallace alone.
The Molly Cobb should have stayed close and relied on the mutual protection of the Wallace, but her captain wasn’t thinking in those terms. It had devolved into an individual battle, both through Klingon tactical planning and Starfleet tactical inadequacy, and that was a kind of battle that the Starfleet ships were simply not equipped for. The Henry Wallace was pounced on instantly, all four D7s turning in a wide arc before opening fire. The Starfleet ship fired a fusillade, catching one D7 in its’ nacelles and forcing it to break off, but the others pushed on, firing as they came. The Henry Wallace shot back one last spread of photon Torpedoes before its shields collapsed, disappearing in a flash of light. A minute later, the Margo Madison disappeared in a similar flash, three D4s circling her as she tried to pull back closer to the Molly Cobb. Bavv-Mellen, shielding his eyes from the explosion on the bridge of the Gordo Stevens, turned to his first officer and muttered. “There’s something wrong with our bloody starships today.”
Bavv-Mellen was right. Despite half a dozen computer reworks, overhauls of shield grids and targeting systems, and the continued attestation of Starfleet Operations that they were still suitable for active duty, the Eaves-Beyer types were beyond remedy. Their power systems couldn’t take the strain of combat, and under sustained fire, they collapsed entirely. Cowpens and Chesapeake had been understandable losses – they were old vessels, pulled out of mothballs – but the Margo Madison had been launched just before the Battle of the Binary Stars. It was a telling sign that Starfleet ships were significantly outclassed by their Klingon opposites, and unable to match the Klingon ability to upgrade and retrofit their ships repeatedly. With the warp core of the Margo Madison still lighting up his viewscreen, Bavv-Mellen gave the order to fall back towards Caleb IV, the Klingon force in hot pursuit. The only saving grace was that they were now within the inner gravity well of the Star, meaning that the pursuit was at full impulse – giving Escort Group 1 at least two hours to prepare for the attack. It was not long. Drake’s forces were still nowhere to be seen, and 2nd Fleet Group was now within direct sensor range of Kyber Pass’s long-range net.
Only 1.5 AUs from the Kyber Pass, The USS Molly Cobb, Gordo Stevens and Sergei Nikolov turned to fight. The three Shepard Class vessels had been top-of-line cruisers when they had been built, comparable with the Loknar, but had not aged as well. Their performance in T’Kuvma’s War had been subpar with faults developing in her power systems during long patrols and combat periods, and discussions about possible refits and withdrawals had been ongoing since the end of hostilities. They were, however, maintained in high numbers due to their high firepower output (mounting four dual heavy phasers) even though their shield grids were light as best, and just as compromised by the Eaves-Beyer faults as the Hoover Class. Some conversions had been made during the war to improve this limitation, and such attempts had been made on the Molly Cobb after the armistice. Not much could be done to upgrade her power grid, however, and limited action before Singapore had not been promising. In the end, the Molly Cobb’s engineer had made the decision to rip out most of her power relay system, rebuilding it from the bottom up with off-the-shelf parts from the mothball yard at Axanar, an extremely time-consuming project that wasn’t even finished by the time she went into action.
The three vessels knew they were sacrificing themselves to buy time for Drake and the rest of Task Force Remagen, but that was their duty, and they accepted it well. The Klingons (at least according to Kor) openly acknowledged the immense bravery of all three ships in turning to stand against at least 8 Klingon ships, but that didn’t stop them from bringing every weapon they had to bear on Starfleet ships.
The first to go was the Gordo Stevens, Bavv-Mellen’s flagship. She had destroyed a D5 and a raptor when a pair of D6s attacked her dorsally, pinning her where she couldn’t turn to bring her more powerful shield grids to bear. She took a direct hit to the bridge, which killed the captain and all of the bridge crew but the first officer. Clambering over debris and their colleagues, they ordered the crew to abandon the ship immediately. Of the 261 crew, only 63 would be picked up. The Sergei Nikolov had disabled two Raptor-type vessels when a D6-A fired a volley from its starboard side, shorting out her entire shield grid and damaging her warp drive. She limped away at impulse drive, her captain and first officer both dead, the Klingon battlecruisers on her tail. Before the closest one could fire, it was struck by phaser fire from the Molly Cobb.
Yasmina Nasiri, Captain of the Molly Cobb and veteran of the Battle of the Binary Stars, ordered the stricken ship’s second officer to pull back. Placing her ship between the other vessel and the Klingons, she and her crew braced for the worse. Despite the losses they’d inflicted, the full weight of 2nd Fleet Group was now on her, with all three cruiser wings now within weapons range. Her shield already weakened, it didn’t take long for the inevitable, despite the best efforts of her helm and navigator. After forcing one of the six Klingon vessels to break off, she took a disruptor volley from the remainder, overloading her shields in one move and disconnecting the warp drive from the power grid.
The Molly Cobb took six direct photon torpedo hits while her shields were down. Two passed straight through her saucer section and detonated on the underside; one smashed her forward sensor array; another blasted a large hole in deck 2. The fifth blew out her shuttle bay. The sixth torpedo hit crashed through hull plating to embed itself in the roof of the main engineering deck, only a few meters from the warp core but failed to detonate. Ten seconds later, said warp core reconnected to the ship’s systems and with it the shields. She limped away under her own power, still firing every weapon she had at the foe as she did, keeping the cruisers at bay until the Nikolov could move away. It wasn’t over for her, however, and even as the Klingon force pushed around her, Molly Cobb kept fighting alone, using her single operative phaser bank and torpedo tube (which was now being reloaded manually) to lash at any Klingon vessel that got to close. One pair managed to close to kill range but as the Cobb braced itself, the attackers were both hit amidships by rapid firing photon torpedoes. One of the Klingon ships exploded immediately, damaging a flanking D5; the other, leaking plasma and fuel, turned away, too wounded to keep up the fight.
The D7s had been hit by two Loknar class ships; USS Tryla and Capor Bona. They were the advanced guard of Battlegroup Excalibur and had been pushing nearly Warp nine to reach EG2 as soon as possible. The Loknar was an Andorian-designed vessel. A rival project to the Constitution, it had been side-lined for the heavy cruiser until the 2250s. It had a workhorse of the Tholian and Romulan borders, and now it came into action against the Klingons, the foe it had been designed to fight, and showing itself to be more than ready. The warships firing on Molly Cobb were forced to pull back, allowing the crippled ship to limp back towards Caleb IV. The legend of the ‘Unsinkable Molly Cobb’ had been born. Nasiri would be awarded the Star Cross for her efforts.
Despite their valiant effort, however, the Loknars were just as effective as their counterparts earlier on the day against the heavier Klingon ships. and both were heaving damaged by the more numerous Klingon cruisers. As the two frigates veered away from the D5 group, the Klingon warships suddenly found themselves faced with the USS Excalibur – the only Constitution Class vessel in the task force. The first D5 opened fire, lashing out with photon torpedoes, but Mendez anticipated the move. Excalibur cut to port dorsally, lifting herself over the volley before swinging back down and opening fire with her Ventral phasers. Twice the size and power of her dorsal arrays, they caught the D5 in her stardrive section, causing a power failure. Mendez didn’t stay around the finish her off; the other two were already moving to engage Excalibur, breaking off their pursuit of the support group. They hit her squarely with their first barrage of disruptor fire, damaging the number 2 and 3 shields severely but Mendez pushed his ship until she had swung past the forward arc of the second Klingon cruiser, then again smashed their stardrive sections with phaser and photon fire. Excalibur took a beating too; even with their limited dorsal firing arcs, the Klingons were able to score half a dozen clean hits on her, damaging her impulse drives and shields enough for Mendez to escape any further assault.
Even wounded and with an escort wing of raptors and I2 destroyers bearing down, Excalibur continued to fight, using durability to take fire while giving it out with just as much fury. At one point as three raptors tried to encircle her, Mendez order a full volley, all 12 phaser batteries firing at once at targets in their arc. It blew out three different power relays, but the shock prevented the Klingons from closing in for the kill. The destroyers continued to harass Mendez as he led them on a circuitous route away from the remains of Escort Group 2. By this point, however, Battlegroup Excalibur (BGE) was now fully engaged, with the Loknars now joined by the Paula L. Tyler and the Konig in a close-range brawl with the Klingon nattlecruisers. The ventral arc of attack that Mendez had come from meant that his ships had attacked Morev’s forces from their rear quarter, where fewer weapons could initially be brought to bear, giving the Starfleet vessels a brief firepower advantage. This was not wasted. Konig score a direct hit on the D7 that Caper Bona had damaged, destroying its warp drive and leaving it to drift without power, while the Loknars pinned several D6s in a brutal turning battle. Excalibur, having survived its brawl with the Destroyers, continued to wreak havoc with the lighter vessels. At around 03:25 am, she found herself facing a D7-A. Most of the battle had drifted away from the two vessels, which faced each other alone. This was the first of a legendary confrontation: The Constitution Class Starship versus the D7 Battlecruiser.
On paper, the two ships had a lot in common. Both were designed as long-range, long-mission craft, though with different purposes in mind for said missions. Both had been designed as next-generation ships of the line, built on superlative power bases that could handle an array of new equipment. Both types were considered the best in the fleet, poster-boys for both Starfleet Exploration and Klingon might. For many in far-flung systems, they were the Federation and Empire. On a technical level, there were some differences. The Constitution accelerated faster, both at impulse and warp. The D7 had a much smaller sensor signature, closer to that of a scout craft, and it handled like one too, with a much tighter turning circle than the Constitution. The D7 was capped at warp 7, while Constitutions could easily push warp 8 or more regularly.[4] While the D7 carried fewer weapon mounts than the Constitution (8 disruptor cannons and 2 torpedo tubes to 12 phaser banks and three tubes) the Klingon weapons were significantly more powerful. A single volley from a D7 could bring a ship’s shields crashing down in one go if it was fired at the correct range. While both vessels had been in service from the mid-2240s and onwards, there had been few run-ins that had resulted in armed conflict. The last before First Caleb IV had been at Starbase 13 , when Captain Pike had confronted a Klingon Warship in the Pharos Incident.[5] Since then both ships had undergone major refits in weaponry and shield grids.
Both Excalibur and the Klingon ship, the IKS Orion, were from the first production run of their class. Excalibur was one of the “Big 12” original Constitutions built at the San Francisco Fleet Yards that conducted the first batch of Five-Year Independent deep space missions, while the IKS Orion had been the only D7 to see action in the Four Years’ War in an inconclusive skirmish near the Alshanai Rift. While Excalibur had charted sectors in the Tholia region, Orion had laid on mothballs due to a lack of crew or funds. She had been reactivated earlier in 2259 and rapidly rebuilt with modern systems, including a prototype rapid-fire torpedo system. It was this which opened fire first, spitting half a dozen balls of red, gleaming light out at the Federation starship. Excalibur jostled under the blows but returned fire, using her speed to push for the Klingon weak points underneath the long forward boom of the vessel. The D7 fitted aggressive Klingon doctrine, and as such lacked much weaponry on its flanks or rear, beyond lighter disruptors on the flanks and rear. The Constitution, however, had weapons mounts spread well across its hull, so from all angles, at least 4 Phaser beams could be brought to bear on a target. With able commanders, the speed of the Constitution could be used to take advantage of that to hit the Klingons in their weak spots before they could turn. Excalibur excelled in that on the 13th, and the Orion took four phaser beams to its underside before it could pivot to bring its heavy disruptors to bear. The Klingon captain reacted quickly though and turned his vessel on a dime, so that by the time Mendez had brought Excalibur around to fire her forward torpedoes the two ships were face to face. Both ships fired at the same time, and both took significant damage, Excalibur’s forward shields buckling while Orion lost power to her rapid-fire torpedo system and forward disruptors. They traded shots at medium to long-range after passing each other, firing photon torpedoes erratically. Both ships broke off eventually, Orion limping into the cover of another D7, while Excalibur turned to aid the Konig, which was under attack. The duel had only lasted a few minutes and was highly inconclusive, but significant. Unlike other Starfleet ships so far, the Constitution had gone one-on-one with a D7 and survived without significant loss, while giving the vaunted battlecruiser a bloody nose.
Battlegroup Excalibur and 2nd Fleet Group were now locked into an engagement, with neither side able to gain the upper hand. Unlike EG2, there were no “weak points” in BGE; no vessels that the Klingons could mark out to crack first, and with Fukuhara breaking orbit from Caleb VIII to join the fight, the odds were beginning to equalize. Much to Mendez’s frustration, however, the Klingon force remained between him and Caleb IV. Battlegroup Excalibur, despite its best effects, would be unable to lend support to Escort Group One. Mendez signalled Vr-Melloc to inform them of the situation and told her that Drake would be on station within the hour. EG1 was to hold the position until relieved.
“Ringside to a Turkey Shoot”
Aboard the Malcolm Reed, Sh’O’Leary had been kept updated on the demise of Escort Group 2 through the tactical display on the bridge, which he’d had piped down to a screen in engineering. “It wasn’t pretty,” he said, “but it was pretty satisfying to watch Excalibur and the Big hitters smash the Klingons up.” A wary crewperson asked him whether he thought this meant a general war. Sh’O’Leary shrugged. “I told him I’d give him a reply when we got back to Starbase 10.” He very nearly said ‘if’ but decided against it. By this point, Molly Cobb and Sergei Nikolov had joined Escort Group 1, forming up at the end of the line closest to Caleb IV and Kyber Pass. EG1 was just as poorly equipped for engaging as EG2 had been, barring the Capella class ships, which had a reputation for being tough as nails, even if their weapons were a little lacking. Of main concern was Kyber Pass itself. While she was now under her own power, with active shields, sensors, and life support, she lacked weapons to defend herself.
“We were doing our best, but the little bastards wouldn’t accept the power,” Knightwick recollected. “It was absurd. We had 16 phaser banks and four photon launchers, and none of them worked. No matter what we tried, they simply wouldn’t accept any power!” Unbeknownst to the Engineers, there was nothing they could have done to get the weapons to work. All of them had been taken from the mothball yard at Axanar in a hurry and without a thorough examination, and crucially without any power compensation relays. If the SCE engineers had known this, they could have bypassed the whole system, or built a new one, but there was no way for them to know this without ripping the phaser banks apart – something they didn’t have time for. While 2nd Fleet Group had been engaged by Mendez and Battlegroup Excalibur, it was still possible that the Klingons could break through to Caleb IV in some strength. EG1, facing now in the direction of that battle, was ready to face them.
It was not, however, ready for General Korok. 5th Fleet Group’s approach was well coordinated, using the shadow of Caleb VIII to mask its movements before approaching Caleb IV at low impulse, masking its energy signature as much as possible. Once again, the Klingon sensor advantage came into play, and the repositioning of Escort Group One was identified with ease. Korok aimed to “roll up” the Starfleet formation from the right, falling onto it as it attempted to reposition into a line between FG2 and Kyber Pass before punching a hole straight through them and capturing the station. While capture went against his explicit orders from Sturka, Korok was much more interested in the possible coup that a captured Starbase might represent and altered his attack formation to protect his Marine-carrying D7s. They would lead the attack, which would only graze EG1 on its’ way to the Starbase. Vr’Melloc would know nothing of any of this until 12:50 on the 13th. Just after the start of the second watch, the USS Tarsus IV spotted a motion blip right at the edge of its’ sensor range. A moment later, it came under fire from a completely unexpected direction, the ship reeling under attack from three different Klingon warships.
Tarsus IV had always been an unlucky ship. One of six “colonial” Gustav Mahler class vessels that had been paid for by public subscription, she was launched on the exact same day that Governor Kodos gave his infamous decimation order to murder half the population of the colony. Her dedication plaque (which carried his name as a benefactor) had to hurriedly be replaced; soon afterward, her antimatter pods also had to be replaced after they developed a serious leak. On her first mission to help establish a colony on Kahinu’s World, she suffered a complete power loss in both her hangar decks, forcing her to return to Starbase Seven for a complete overhaul mere weeks after she had left spacedock. Tarsus IV spent most of her career limping between second-line work and repair yards and had been placed on mothballs in 2255 after a fault in her air filtration system had flooded her atmosphere with nearly lethal levels of carbon dioxide. She was only at Caleb IV because the vessel Drake had wanted – the USS Saladin – had been delayed. It was no surprise that she barely had time to fire a few bursts of phaser fire before her shields collapsed. Even with the USS Ohinaka coming to her aid, she was doomed, unable to outmanoeuvre the nimble Birds of Prey that plagued her. Wisely, her Captain abandoned the vessel. Only 12 of her 300-person crew were killed, most evacuating in the large compliment of warp shuttles. They were the lucky ones.
Tarsus IV had sat at the rightwards end of EG1, supposedly at the far end of the line from the Klingon attack. Instead, Korok’s 5th Fleet Group had hit the Starfleet Squadron perpendicular to its forward front with full force. 22 Klingon vessels – mostly Raptors, Birds of Prey, I2 Destroyers, and D5 Light Battlecruisers – were now pushing on the flank of the EG1. Vr-Melloc ordered the group to break formation and engage as soon as possible. It was a rash order – despite the intensity of the Klingon attack, there was sufficient time and space between them and Kyber Pass for EG1 to realign in a new defensive position. But Vr-Melloc wasn’t thinking in those terms. Instead, they focused on making sure the Klingons were too busy fighting the escort group to push on the Starbase. It worked, to an extent. EG1 was able to engage the Klingon light vessels in force, with the Malcolm Reed and the Vela Gap working together to disable or destroy three Birds-of-Prey within 20 minutes. The Bird of Prey – long the scourge of Starfleet vessels due to its high speed and manoeuvrability – was beginning to show its flaws and age by 2259. Cheap to build and favoured as both a privateering and peacekeeping vessel by the Great Houses, their reliance on speed and surprise was no match for a square hit from the Mark VII phaser banks of a Constitution Class, or even the Rapid-Fire pulse phasers of the Magee. The K23s and D5s managed better and inflicted heavy damage on the Ohinaka and the Vela Gap, but it appeared that EG1 had managed to stall the Klingon flank march.
What Vr’Melloc couldn’t see was the seven-ship group that was now moving at full impulse directly for Kyber Pass. The USS Smolensk had seen them and moved to intercept in a futile display of bravery. The old, dependable Anton Class ship tried valiantly to stop them, placing itself between the Klingons and the Starbase but it was no use. After 20 minutes of furious fighting, she lost antimatter containment and went down with all hands. About three minutes after that, the Vela Gap collided with an out-of-control Raptor. Both ships disappeared in another brilliant fireball, visible from The Kyber Pass.
“We were ringside to a turkey shoot,” Knightwick commented. “There wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. Warp cores were popping off like fireworks on Federation Day while we sat there like morons.” Despite their frustration, there was little the Engineers could do about it. Their own vessels were even more vulnerable – The Ptolemy class transports didn’t have the shield grids to withstand sustained attack, while the Ionia – the main SCE vessel – was an antiquated Horizon class vessel, worryingly obsolete even if it hadn’t been converted to serve as an engineering support craft. The only capable craft near the Starbase, the Detroyat Class USS Gyges and USS Kraz, had already swung out to try and form a screen, but they had also been stripped down to act as support craft too, with only four phaser banks to the normal ten on each ship. “We’d started preparing the scuttling charges when one of the Klingon vessels went up in a flash. It took a second for us to figure it out, but then Admiral Drake’s voice came over subspace. Hell of a cheer we made then, even if we regretted it later.” One of the D6s closing on Kyber Pass had taken hits from three vessels (USS Avenger, Windjammer and Zheng He) and had overloaded her warp core. Battlegroup Richelieu had arrived. “The cavalry never turns up on time anymore’, Commander Pocock said to me. Wish they weren’t so goddamn right.”
Where had Drake been? It was a difficult question to answer. Drake claims that her force was moving at the best speed for Caleb IV, but the fact that Battlegroup Excalibur had arrived and had time to loop around to attack 2nd Fleet Group over twelve hours before Battlegroup Excalibur entered the system makes this claim sceptical. She had, quite simply, gotten lost. It seems impossible to imagine a Starfleet task force getting lost in the 23rd century, but in space, anything is possible. In Drake’s case, a later study of the flight logs of the USS Miranda and Richelieu in the 2270s revealed that the entire fleet had been carried by a subspace eddy that pulled them approximately 8 light-years off course. With the complicated manoeuvres the fleet was taking to avoid Klingon patrols, they may not have noticed, or assumed that their initial course plots had been wrong. Captain Benek of the Detroyat would state at the Nogura Inquiry into Caleb IV that a stellar mass near system P-944-Q had been ignored by Drake and thus not factored into the estimated arrival time at Caleb IV. Drake denied this, but the fact that Battlegroup Richelieu turned up so late into the battle – and so long after Battlegroup Excalibur – is undeniable.
Either way, BGR had taken far too long to arrive. It was a force that packed a punch, with three Bolivar Class Starships alongside 2 Saladin Destroyers.[6] It was, however, in the wrong place. Expected to drop out of warp behind EG1, Battlegroup Richelieu stumbled straight into 5th Fleet Group right as it was forming up to make a final push on the Escort Group. The results were brutal. Drake’s force was thrown straight into the action without forming up properly, and even though the Windjammer and Zheng He had blunted the initial attack, the Klingon force had been much more prepared for engagement than them. Once again, the ‘Sensor Gap’ meant the Klingon Warships were much more prepared for combat than the Starfleet ships, and even though a D6 had taken a clean hit, the others were already pouncing on their would-be attackers. USS Montreal – one of three Coventry Class cruisers – took a volley from two D7s and lost all power, while the rest of the fleet struggled to break through to the rest of EG1.
The fight to break through was hard enough that BGR couldn’t disengage to defend Kyber Pass properly, despite Drake attempting to do so about 30 minutes into the engagement. It would have been possible to reposition earlier on, but the Admirals’ focus on the original goal – re-establishing contact with Escort Group One – distracted her from the Klingon’s manoeuvring. Despite losses, 5th Fleet Group had successfully wheeled itself so now it stood between the Starfleet ships and Kyber Pass.
“We were buggered”, Knightley wrote. “Thank god for our sensor net, otherwise we’d have been Bat’leth souffle.” Kyber Pass spotted three D7s breaking from the main force again at around 18:50 pm. “We saw them about forty minutes out. There wasn’t much choice, really. We weren’t gonna fight, and if we were, what with? Laser Drills? Replicators?” Wisely the Engineers chose to withdraw, with most personnel evacuating onto the USS Percy Hobart and Wolaston, while a stay-behind team readied the station for destruction. “It was one thing to fuck off. It was another thing to fuck off and leave the Klingons all of our handiwork to take apart.”
Commander Tu had originally intended to detonate charges to scuttle the station, but as the D7s closed, there wasn’t the time. Instead, he ordered the crew off onto the Percy Hobart while he went over to the Ionia. The Ionia was a Daedalus Class vessel – older than anyone who served on her, she had been built back in 2172 when Caleb IV wasn’t even on Federation Star Maps. She was slow, unreliable, and disliked by her crews, but the Corps of Engineers maintained her anyways as an auxiliary vessel for hauling heavy machinery and Worker Bees. Ionia was scheduled for breaking up after Singapore, but Tu had one final use for her.
“[Commander Tu] took the Ionia and did something stupid – so stupid, I was upset it wasn’t my plan. He rammed her into the Kyber Pass, and then shoved the both of them right into the gas giant.” It wasn’t the most elaborate of plans, and the Ionia wasn’t very maneuverable once it’d been crashed into a Starbase, but it worked. Tu, having ordered their crew off after the ram, put the ship into maximum impulse, then high-tailed it to the shuttlebay. As his shuttlepod left the Ionia, there was a moment of trepidation as the Ionia struggled against the immense weight of the Starbase, then the two massive bodies began to move, first slowly, then at significant speed towards Caleb IV itself as the D7s could only watch on. The Engineering vessels slipped behind a moon and jumped to warp before the Klingons could catch them. About 20 minutes later, the Kyber Pass disappeared into the gas giant, soon crushed by the huge forces at its center. Commander Tu would be awarded the Karagite Order of Heroism for “significant gallantry and quick thinking in the face of enemy fire.” None of the Engineers or support crew had been killed or injured in the entire engagement, much to their relief.
The same, however, could not be said for the fighting force. With Kyber Pass burning up in the atmosphere of Caleb IV and the Support Group falling back, the Klingons turned back on EG1 and Battle Group Richelieu. By 19:00 hours, Drake had quickly abandoned any attempt to break through to EG1’s position. Instead, the plan changed to a regroup on the Richelieu’s side of the Klingon Force. Escort Group One, with great effort, managed to break through after 20 minutes and link up with Richelieu and the others, thanks to the aid of the three Avenger class ships. These vessels – predecessors to the vaunted Miranda class – had their first proper combat trial at Caleb IV and passed with flying colours. Avenger and Miranda’s intense fire on several D6s allowed Molly Cobb and Sergei Nikholov to withdraw behind them, with the Malcolm Reed and Duluth following behind. Ohinaka III – far too heavily damaged to withdraw – was abandoned soon after, her crew transferred to the Unitarian V before she was scuttled. Even with both groups combined, Drake’s odds were grim. Two of Battlegroup Richelieu’s ships had been lost trying to keep the hole in the Klingon battle line open, and another – the D’Mallac’arra - was venting plasma from both nacelles. 13 vessels, most of which had significant damage, were facing 21 Klingon ships of equal strength, and all in much better condition. Mendez’s force was evening the odds against the Morev, but the Klingon fleet remained resolute. There would be no unified defence. The Klingons were simply too strong – too aggressive – fighting too close to the Starfleet battle line to allow for any re-organization. There was no hope.
At 22:00, Drakes issued the order to withdraw. BGR, still more able to match the Klingon battle line, held its position as the remaining five vessels of the escort group jumped to warp. Thirty minutes later, Drakes’ force pulled out too, its’ departing shots disabling a trio of pursuing D5s. The D’Mallac’arra was abandoned, her engines set to overload while her remaining crew escaped in warp shuttles. Their last message to command mentioned a Klingon scout trailing them. Nothing would be heard of them again. Korok did not attempt to pursue Drake’s force. Their fight had hurt them a lot harder than Starfleet had realized. 5th Fleet groups’ Antimatter reserves were depleted from the high-warp maneuvers that enabled their outflanking operation. Their work was done – even if the prize of the Starbase had been lost, the losses inflicted on Starfleet were just as glorious a victory.
It would take until 7 am on the 14th for Excalibur and Mendez’s force to completely break contact. Their stalling action against 2nd Fleet Group was the only saving grace of the entire engagement, but even that wasn’t much to speak of. Starfleet had gone to Caleb IV to fly the flag and remind the Klingons that they were still to be reckoned with. Instead, 17 ships had been lost and Starbase destroyed, with minimal casualties on the Empire’s side.[7] Operation Singapore had been an unmitigated disaster in all ways possible. The Eaves-Beyer class of vessel had been essentially written off as a combat vessel. Decades of Starfleet combat training had come to naught in a fleet operation, where captains had been unable to work properly in battle lines and squadrons under any pressure of any kind. Korok’s signal back to Sturka at Imperial High Command said it all:
“Starfleet defeated: enemy routed. Glorious victory against the Earthers achieved. Force superiority in Penthe Belt [The Triangle] is guaranteed for the rest of the year. Fleet Groups will return to patrol and conquest duty. Long Live the Klingon Empire.”
“All measures short of a General War”
It took Task Force Remagen 25 days to limp back to Starbase 12, shepherding damaged vessels at warp 2.5 or lower back into Federation Space. The news of the disaster had traveled faster and had escalated through the rumour mill of the frontier. The Support Group, detached from the main force, had taken on supplies in the Bakers’ Dozen, where the story of Kyber Pass’s loss expanded to the loss of all the major starships. By the time news reached Starbase 10, sources suggested that the entire fleet had been lost, and that a massive Klingon fleet of over 200 vessels was closing in on the Starbase to finish Starfleet off. Templeton – infamously the only cool head in the entire triangle – was skeptical, but increased convoy escorts and patrol duties, nonetheless. They would wait for official confirmation from Starfleet Command before setting any emergency plans into motion. The merchant navy couldn’t wait that long, however. Orders came to restrict any movement within 4 parsecs of Klingon bases. The Association of Outer Free Worlds closed itself to traffic on the 1st October, and would not open its’ borders again until the new year; their defense forces would open fire on Federation vessels twice before then.
The first official report, however, came not from Federation Central but from the Klingons. On the 30th of September, early warning posts near Khitomer received a wide-band transmission from the “Imperial Chancellery”. It was a surprise, and at first, the analysts are the monitoring station on Rator II believed it was a fraud, but eventually, the frequency was confirmed as an official Klingon one. The signal was short, and sharp:
“ALL FEDERATION VESSELS ARE WARNED TO STAY BEYOND 2 PARSECS FROM SYSTEM KNOWN TO YOU AS UNDIVAE-CALEB. THIS SYSTEM IS OCCUPIED BY THE KLINGON EMPIRE IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN OUR INTERNAL SECURITY. ANY FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO OCCUPY THE SYSTEM WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ACT OF FORMAL AGGRESSION. ANY ATTEMPTS TO INTERFERE WITH KLINGON ACTIONS OR TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY WITHIN THE LINE OF T’KUVMA’S DECLARATION WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ATTACK ON THE EMPIRE ITSELF.”
This message – all 72 words of it – was the first official act of diplomacy with the UFP the Klingon government would ever make. It was a profound shock to Starfleet Intelligence for multiple reasons. It confirmed, for one, that L’Rell’s government was maintaining some of the central control that it attested to have. Secondly, the acknowledgment of “formal acts of aggression” was new. As far as policymakers in Paris and the Presidio were aware, the Klingons had no real concept of “peace” or “war” in the diplomatic sense. “Formal” aggression – as it is understood in human diplomatic parlance – was not something that the Klingons were supposed to understand. But, apparently, they did; at least enough to use it in messages with the UFP.
It was, however, confusing for the local commanders who received it. News of the disaster at Caleb IV led most to conclude that open warfare in the Disputed Area was about to return. Many commanders went into disaster mode, recalling outpost crews and long-range patrols to defend key positions. Starbase 24’s commander would recall the listening posts on Quiberon and New Wake Island, leaving a gaping hole in the flimsy sensor net that protected Starfleet assets. A captain near Ardana had panicked and destroyed several communications relays to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Other moves were just as drastic, as were demands for reinforcements. Starfleet Command hadn’t even received a fall after-action report from Drake before they were being bombarded with demands for more destroyers and cruisers to counter the hordes of Klingon warships that were, supposedly, just around the corner.
“Everyone kind of lost it,” recollected Peter Toussaint, whose small staff on Starbase 19 were soon overwhelmed by requests for aid from Klingon Command. “I didn’t have the authority to sign off of any re-assignments they were being requested, and they just kept coming. We didn’t know if Drake was even alive, let alone where she was.”
When Drake finally arrived at Starbase 12, she did what she could to restore order. The panic settled as well as it could, but the damage was done. Trade routes had been disrupted and communications severed. Patrol routes had been thrown into chaos. And on top of all that, 2nd Fleet had effectively had its operating strength cut by two-thirds. Drake’s gamble had blown up her face, and the message from the Klingons was clear: don’t try that again. The Admiral’s miscalculation had caused more than a Klingon assertion of dominance. The panic that had been caused by the rumours only resurged after the official reports came in. The Orion stock markets collapsed, and there was a run on Federation credits at the Botchtok embassy. Private vessels essentially abandoned the border area in expectation of a return to general hostilities. Even back on earth, the General Assembly and the Security Council both met in emergency talks to discuss the implications of a return to open warfare.[8]
Back on Starbase 10, Drake and Templeton worked to prepare the meagre assets they had for a full-scale attack, perceiving the natural follow-up to the defeat to be a complete sweep of Starfleet from the Triangle. The remaining vessels were hastily prepared to combat, while Marines fortified the planet below for a siege. A week passed. Then another one. Klingon raiding continued, pushing on fringe outposts and traders for easy prizes, or scooping up tramp ships carrying Suliban refugees. But no fleet attack was made on Starbase 10, or any other Starfleet outpost. The panic subsided just as quickly as it began, and the blow Starfleet had expected never came.
It appeared that, for a time, Starfleet had some breathing space. There would be no long, laborious inquiry process before action was taken. Everyone in the Presidio knew that Drake was simply not up to the task, and mounting criticism before Caleb IV reached a critical mass in the aftermath. Under pressure from President Th’Rhahlat to find a scapegoat, the Admiralty decided it was better to remove her sooner rather than later. Her transfer orders were waiting for her when she reached Starbase 12, with reassignment to the Kzinti border marking the end of a long career on the Klingon Border. In her place came Vaughan Rittenhouse, promoted from command of the 4th Fleet to assume total control of all Federation forces along the Klingon Border.
Rittenhouse was already a controversial figure by 2259. Admiral Nogura referred to him in a note to Robert Stone as “someone who shouldn’t be left alone with other people’s wallets”. Matt Decker simply called him a “shithead”. But he was best summed up by his predecessor as Commander, Starfleet, Robert Comsol, who noted that “[Rittenhouse] seemed to be under the delusion that the Douglas Macarthur was a hero to be emulated, as opposed to being the strange vainglorious antihero he really was.”
The Macarthur comparison went deeper than Comsol’s snide remark; even as early as his days at the Annapolis naval academy, Rittenhouse had somewhat been obsessed with the 20th-century general. His biography of the man (panned by most historians of Earth’s second world war) attempted to paint him as a flawed democratic crusader, ignoring his crimes against the American population and the danger his intense vanity posed to liberal institutions. It is easy to understand how Rittenhouse idolized Macarthur; like him, he was the fourth son of a longstanding military family: his father had served at the battle of Cheron as an Ensign and had been part of the formative generation of Starfleet personnel. He’d also grown up on the frontier, with the New Paris colony standing in for the Old West of North America from his birth in 2200. His parents had also uprooted him to the capital, moving to New York, Earth in 2211. His time at Starfleet Academy was marred by extreme hazing of “dunsels” – a term for a useless cadet, derived from the DunSel corporation’s scandalous supply of colony vessels with poorly-built spare parts. His father – now Chief of Staff of Starfleet made sure that he got safe postings and easy promotion out of the academy – a controversial act of nepotism resented by both Rittenhouse and his contemporaries.
Rittenhouse’s career as a combat commander began during Operation John Brown, where he led a trio of Kestrel class destroyers in combat against up-gunned Orion cruisers. Whilst his write-up of the battle painted the danger he faced as quite drastic, more recent work seems to suggest that the Orion Cruisers were running short on deuterium – making the danger much smaller. Either way, Rittenhouse’s own position as a battle-winning officer and self-dubbed “Frigate Leader” made him popular for a time amongst those officers, and the regional colony leaders, merchant representatives and prospectors whose livelihoods he protected. His first memoir – also titled “Frigate Leader” sold incredibly well, despite its dubious provenance.
His prominence as a leader only grew in the 2240s. Even though he missed Donatu V, he saw serious action himself against Kzinti raiders and paramilitaries in the meantime. Promotion to Commodore saw his take command of Starbase 16, bordering the Tholian Assembly. Once again, he was in a frontline position – though here he spent more time protecting colonies and convoys than engaging with the Tholian fleet. It was good for his PR game, however: at a time when Starfleet was ignoring the needs of the colonial leadership, Rittenhouse was listening – even if just to give himself ammunition for further literature. His second book – The Donatu Incident – was a fierce attack on Starfleet’s strategy and tactics in the run-up to Donatu V: a bold move from a Captain who did not see action in that conflict. Despite this, the book was well-read, at least enough to be in the public mind during T’Kuvma’s War.
Promotion in 2252 to Rear Admiral saw him bumped to a staff position as chief of the department of fleet readiness. Four years at Starfleet Command did not ingratiate Rittenhouse to his peers. His outspokenness only got worse behind a desk, and the constant stream of requests, memoranda, and dossiers that flew upstairs to Starfleet Operations and the Chief of Staff’s office went from frustration to running gag. Several requests to have him bumped sideways or upstairs were denied – despite his criticisms and detractors, Rittenhouse was incredibly competent; his work in reordering and streamlining fleet readiness operations would be valuable during both Burnham’s War and the aftermath. Rittenhouse had one ace other up his sleeve: the support and patronage of Uncle Shu himself.
Ch’Shukar had always taken a shine to Rittenhouse, who’d combined tactical skill and quick-thinking with a lot of old-fashioned brown-nosing to get himself in Uncle Shu’s good books. Both were considered ‘outsiders’ from the Admiralty establishment. Their views on fleet operations also aligned a lot with each other, and Ch'Shukar had respect for Rittenhouses' combat experience against the Kzinti and the Tholians. As C-in-C of the Reserve Fleet, he'd worked closely with Rittenhouse on fleet readiness, and the collective work had been pivotal in getting much of the category C reserve into action to defend the core worlds during the oncoming hostilities. Rittenhouse would write another book in this period, too, publishing The Glorious Dead? in 2255. This work was speculative fiction, instead of historical analysis, and spun a warning tale of a Federation too wedded to peace and harmony to properly defend itself against a vicious, unstoppable Klingon invasion. It was not read well, mainly due to its less than positive views on democratic scrutiny and checks on Starfleet power, but one of its core ideas - that if the Federation had the industrial and economic means to secure itself if only the politicians put their minds to it - would become a cornerstone of radical Unionist thought in time. In the meantime, the work of the armchair novelist was lampooned by those who had better knowledge of the empire than an admiral who'd never seen a Klingon face-to-face.
Rittenhouse would, however, get his chance to fight the Klingons after the Battle of the Binary Stars. With Drake bumped to 2nd Fleet Commander, Rittenhouse was promoted to command the smaller 4th Fleet. It is perhaps unfair to blame the collapse of the 4th Fleet on its’ CO. By the time Rittenhouse took control, it had already been mauled significantly by Klingon attacks in and around the Alshanai rift, and its operational range beyond Sauria was hemmed in by major supply line cuts. Rittenhouse pushed his crews to the limit, and once again demonstrated intense bravery as a frontline captain (much to the detriment of his command ability). His own penchant for military victory over strategic goals cannot be ignored, however. Even this early on, Rittenhouse found nothing of value in civilian concerns and demands, even when they aligned with overall strategic goals. Their demands for convoy escorts and planetary defences contradicted his desire for a decisive engagement, even when it became increasingly clear that the Klingons were not going to take him up on that. He’d remained in command of 4th Fleet after the Armistice and played a strong hand in its’ rebuilding, using his personal influence to ensure that the 4th was delivered a large number of Saladin, Pioneer, and Larson class vessels instead of Eaves-Beyer vessels, a sensible action that had the unintended effect of pushing those defective ships onto 2nd Fleet. Once again, Rittenhouse made no friends amongst his peers doing this but earned the adoration of even more junior officers and subordinates, who became ever more loyal to the Admiral.
Ch’Shukar had been pushing for Rittenhouse to be put in charge of Klingon Border Operations since the Command had first been created, against significant pressure from the rest of the Admiralty and the civilian government. Th’rhahlat’s opposition, while severe, disappeared after Caleb IV. His military focus – written up before (and after) as Jingoism – was now a vital asset in a theatre that was supposedly about to become a warzone. Civilian leaders – whose opinions of Starfleet were always fickle – were suddenly very appreciative of an officer who appeared to have some sort of plan for securing the border. Rittenhouses’ promotion to Vice Admiral, and his appointment as Chief of Operations, Klingon Command, were confirmed on October 30th.
Rittenhouse made his mark on Klingon Command early. Overnight, the staff roster of Klingon Command was doubled from 26 to 62 officers, along with 31 more clerks. Liaison officers with the Merchant navy and Transport Command would follow soon, all to be based at Starbase 19, now officially the permanent headquarters of Klingon Command. More changes would come after Rittenhouse would arrive on station on November 9th. His first act in person – rather infamously – was the fire all of Drake’s aides, including Peter Toussaint. Toussaint didn’t mind. He’d never liked Rittenhouse, who was far too interested in the military mission to be trustworthy. “We’re explorers and humanitarians. Sure, the defensive arm is part of that job, but it should never be the whole job. It was all Rittenhouse seemed to care about. Besides,” Toussaint added, “I couldn’t trust a man who thought Rule Britannia was an acceptable song for the 23rd century.”
The young staff officer wouldn’t be out of a job for too long. Before he’d even finished packing his bag, he’d received a message from Admiral Nogura at Starfleet Operations. The “Grand Old Man” wanted Toussaint on his staff. “I couldn’t refuse, really. You don’t refuse a request from Admiral Nogura. It’s like letting down your own parents.” Nogura’s need for new staff was unsurprising. Starfleet Operations had the largest purview of any of the sub-departments of Starfleet, excluding the semi-official divisions of Starfleet Science, and Nogura’s own personal ‘interests’ and projects only made it larger. Toussaint’s experience, however, was needed not to aid the Admiral’s interests in Signals intelligence and Command Training programs. They were needed to help formulate a new strategy for the Klingon Border, and for challenging threats to the Federation as a whole.
The first result of this re-assessment was the pivotal Directive 1832-B of November 12th, 2259. Better known as the “No Peace Beyond the Line” memorandum, this directive from Commander, Starfleet established several critical precedents for how Starfleet would treat the Disputed Area for the next 30 years. It had been written as a direct reply to the Klingon message, but most of its contents were the result of the experience of the post-armistice settlement, and the nature of Klingon action since. It was an acceptance that peace – Federation peace, within the treaty area – was a complete impossibility, and that ignoring that reality was only detrimental to Starfleet and the UFP. Starfleet simply lacked the ships, and at present new production was being outstripped by Klingon shipyards. Klingon incursions – a regularity since the armistice – were no longer to be treated as an oddity, but as an inevitability in a “zone of limited security and authority”. Peacetime rules of engagement were to be followed by Starfleet, but Captains were to be expected to face action within the zone.
Furthermore, the directive authorized commanders to take “all measures short of war” to prevent the loss of Federation territory and assets to the Klingons. Whatever “war” looked like – a general war – was nebulous, to say the least, but Starfleet was admitting that conflict of some kind was a distinct inevitability even if peace was to be maintained. If Klingon encroachment was to be prevented, Starfleet believed that it would have to be confronted at the point of incursion and not afterward. This factor fed into the most shocking part of the directive: section 5 part 1. This subsection – part of the article detailing exemptions and suspensions of various orders – authorised the suspension of the Prime Directive in certain circumstances, as authorised by the Federation Council. These circumstances included:
- When a hostile power has interfered with the development of a planetary culture
- When a planetary culture requests aid from the Federation
- When a significant number of lives would be put at risk if contact were to be avoided
- At the discretion of Flag Officers Vice Admiral and higher.
It was a serious roll-back of how General Order One had been understood. Prime Directive violations had been accepted – and retroactively authorised – on several occasions before 2259, but never had they been authorised in such a general way. It was an understandable concession; the Disputed Area was full of pre-warp races at all levels on the civilizational scale, many of whom lay on strategic trade lanes or possible invasion routes. While almost everyone within Starfleet Command was uncomfortable with causing cultural contamination on such a scale, it was considered a price worth paying for security. It was, however, at this point, a hypothetical – all such actions required a sign-off from senior command and the President, both of whom indicated that they considered giving such authorisation to be “an impossibility”. The section did, however, open the UFP and Starfleet to aiding and supporting warp-capable planets in ways beyond diplomatic – the loan and delivery of arms would no longer be a prime directive matter. This had caused a massive battle within the Security Council, where Ambassadors Sarek and Tilly expressed serious concern about the precedent it would set. They were, however, outvoted by those who were more ready to play the realpolitik game.
The realism of Directive 1832-B shocked many in the Admiralty, but to those who had experience in the Disputed Area since the armistice, there was nothing surprising about it. The directive represented merely an official acknowledgment of how bad the situation had gotten. The Klingon Frontier was falling apart at the seams, and a “backhand blow” like Operation Singapore was never going to work; it had, in fact, only made things worse. A complete readjustment of strategy and operations was absolutely necessary, and Admiral Rittenhouse, apparently was the man to do it. Ch’Shukar certainly thought so. “Vaughan can do it,” he told Matt Decker. “He’s a tough man, and not a very nice one, but he can fix what [Drake] broke. Just see where we are next year, and you’ll understand that I’m right.”
Rittenhouse wasn’t about to wait a year to make a difference; he welcomed the directive and jumped on it immediately. His staff went to work organising new, permanent convoy routes, routing as much civilian traffic as possible onto monitored space lanes and trade spines. With the approval of the council (by a single vote), he began to transfer a dozen obsolete vessels each to the Acamarian and Kobaxian governments. Both powers had requested Federation aid on and off for the last decade, and Rittenhouse’s’ calculated delivery of said aid – in the form of century-old Powhatan and Dragon class cruisers – helped shore up their support for the UFP and protect trade. By handing over the protection of their space to their governments, Rittenhouse immediately freed up five starships for other duties.
Arms shipments to the Acamarians and the Kobaxians would not make up for the dire state of Klingon Command. Only two years old, it had seen a third of its’ entire strength written off as combat losses or non-operational. The Klingon Empires’ threat had only grown, their warships having proved themselves superior in combat on multiple occasions. Caleb IV had only underlined how hasty Starfleet’s’ defensive preparations were, and how there was no real way for them to stand in the way of a concerted Klingon attack in the short term. The Empire knew that.
But no attack would come. Not at the end of 2259, and not in 2260 either.
[1] The Romulan Base on Gibraltar would not be discovered until 2274.
[2] The ‘D6’ was used to designate the K’T’Orr and Korrok type vessels. The D6-D (Korrok) was a Four Years War era design that was well known for its high speed, short range and extreme sensor visibility.
[3] Most of our knowledge of this early Klingon fleet training (before the opening of the Orbital Fleet School in 2261) comes from Kor, who helped strategize the new programmes with Sturka as “Liaison” from the chancellor.
[4] D7s could and did push as high as Warp 9 on several occasions, but usually had to have their engines completely rebuilt afterwards. The D7K and D7M “K’tinga” could both reach Warp 8.7 regularly.
[5] The Pharos Incident (2253) had involved a dispute over a planetoid in the Marrat Nebula over Project Pharos, a SCE plan to build a subspace “lighthouse” to put an end to smuggling, piracy, and other illicit trade.
[6] The Avenger-Class was collective name for four of the Prototype Miranda-Class vessels, the other 3 being designated Surya class.
[7] Imperial records record 23 losses on the Klingon side; 8 of these were, however, birds of prey. Only 7 D6s and D7s were lost.
[8] The General Assembly is another term for the full assembly of the Federation Council.