4: The Redshirt Election
The rise of Byss Th'rhahlat
“I’ll be honest, Ken, I deserved that.” - President Barreuco, to Kenneth Wescott, after losing the Vote of No Confidence, April 4th, 2258
“In the Name of God, Go!”
The silence of Th’Rhahlat in March 2258 has been discussed time and again. It is known that from at least early December, he had concluded that he would not back Barreuco for re-election at the very least. At the time, it was assumed that he was not opposed to the president continuing until his scheduled term ended in November. Others (such as Wescott) thought that his silence was a sign he was leaving room for Xaall to lead the charge as the primary candidate for the President’s office. His official biographer, Seb Cousins, argues ruefully that he was merely waiting for the anger in the chamber to exhaust itself before putting the knife in Barreuco’s back himself.[1] Th’Rhahlat’s own diaries give little away on the subject, but it is clear from other sources that he was up to something in the last days of March.
Notably, he met with several non-council officials who were gathering on Earth for First Contact Day, including Earth Prime Minister Franz Morris, Martian First Minister Tia Masters and several members of the Colonial Committee.[2] His focus on the Colonial Committee – with whom he had an unsteady relationship due to his vocal opposition to their “cronyism for Federation Central” tells us much about how his opinions were changing. Barreuco may have been aware of this – she may have been an arrogant, self-assured leader, but she was not an incompetent one. But compared to the other brushfires she was dealing with the first week of April, the prospect of the Andorian Ambassador forming a coalition against him was probably not something he thought much of. “[The President] thought the main attack would come from Councillor Xaall, of all people. He spent a lot of time holed up with Sarek trying to sound out where he and the Vulcan Caucus would land if there was a confidence vote. I considered it a waste of time, to be honest.”
Wescott’s judgement was right here – as important as it was to keep Sarek and his bloc in line, especially with the declining support from the Terran group, the more important votes were being lost in the lower halls of the Palais as Xaall’s group of malcontents grew larger and larger. Xaall never denied his plans to run for President, so it is not surprising that the Tellarite Councillor became the focus of Barreuco’s plan to quash the revolt.
The President, with typical bravado, decided to head the plotters off before they could set their plans in motion. “[Barreuco] got wind that Admiral Ch’Shukar was visiting the Palais on Sunday, April 4th for a short meeting. She didn’t know to see who, or even if he was meeting anyone, but she decided something was afoot. So, she called an emergency meeting of the Council instead.” Calling an emergency meeting – on a Sunday, furthermore – was an obvious sign that the President had decided to have the fight here and now, instead of waiting for the inevitable.[3] Calling the meeting the day before First Contact Day guaranteed she would be speaking to a full house of Councillors, and not their junior representatives.[4] It would not be an easy day in Paris, for sure.
“The first sign of trouble should have been the muted silence when the President entered the Chamber”, Wescott wrote of the session that began at 2:30 pm on that warm April day. “We’d expected to have to shout through calls for resignation before she could be heard, but instead we got quiet murmuring and whispers from the benches. It was an unsettling start to the proceedings; I’ll say that much.” Watching from the viewing gallery, Wescott could tell something was up simply from the murmuring of the Tellarite bloc, who sat around Councillor Xaall passing hurried notes as the Barreuco prepared himself.
Undeterred by the clear scheming, the President opened by thanking the assembled Councillors, before moving on to address the criticisms raised against her in the recent weeks. The President, sensibly, started off by defending what she had achieved. It was difficult to argue that the improvements to subspace communications were a failure or a poor choice of action, or that limiting Orion ‘commerce’ in Federation space was a foreign policy failure. Little attempt was made to criticise the president at this stage, beyond a heckle of “get on with it” from New Parisian Councillor Simon McNeil. Th’Rhahlat sat in silence, “lounging in his chair with what could best be described as a bored look on his face.”[5] The President’s tone soon changed as she went on the offensive, accusing her opponents of “an opportunistic attack on the core of our political society at a time of crisis.” She continued as the murmurs rose to more vocal complaints, painting the “Xaalites” (as she dubbed them) as “a collection of parochial individualists more determined to protect their planetary rights than to contribute to this great interstellar project of ours.” The yells reached a peak as the president turned to challenge those who accused him of betraying the same colonial voters who she had pledged to support.
“You say that I have abandoned Federation colonies. You say that I turned a blind eye to their concerns. That I left them undefended. That this office of mine was more interested in vanity projects than in the defence of our citizens. You cannot accuse me of something I had no hand in. Starfleet Command has the duty of protecting this Union. This office acted under the guidance of those we were told were better informed; those who were better judges of the situation; and in the times when we believed that those ‘better informed’ persons were wrong, we stood our ground and made our case, and were told not to interfere in the business of the Federation Starfleet. Well, my dear colleagues, what has that brought us? It brought us a fleet that cannot protect us. It brings us convoys that cannot reach their destination. At best it brings us indecision; at worst, it veers from passivity to hyper aggression.”
The chamber’s indignation rose to a new level at this point. Wescott had never seen them like this before. “It was like being in the Congress Hall on Tellar Prime. They were angry enough as they were, and the President just wasn’t helping.” Despite the increasing calls of “coward!” and “resign!”, Barreuco pushed on. “You tell me I have failed as a leader. Perhaps I have, in failing to hold Starfleet accountable for its failure. But to attack this office at this time of national crisis is to do the work of our enemies for us. What we need at present is unity: unity in a common cause; in our common beliefs and ideals. If Starfleet is to be reformed, if confidence is to be restored in this Union, a steady hand at the helm is needed. Do we really need a change in government – a change in leadership – when the Klingon Empire is waiting in the wings for a chance to pounce? Do you want to do their job for them?” As the chamber began to reach a fever pitch, Barreuco turned to stare down at Ambassador Xaall, who glowered back from his seat. “I only ask that this house remember that we are in this together. This is not a time for discord. This is a time to maintain the course that has kept this Federation – this unprecedented galactic experiment of ours - together for nearly a century.”
It was an incredible gauntlet to throw down. The Federation President had always led by consent, working to build coalitions of supporters from across the chamber. Barreuco’s choice – to confront the crisis in an adversarial fashion, instead of as a peacemaker – was an unprecedented step from a President. Even President Qasar, whose administration had fallen apart at the seams over the colonial crises of Tarsus IV, Wellingborough and Archanis IV, had never resorted to such a challenge. Accusing Xaall and his followers of having no faith in the Union – or even of unwittingly aiding the Klingons – was a dangerous step to take – and one the Tellarite was inevitably going to follow up on.
“Xaall said what we expected him to say, to be honest. He decried the failures of central government. He blamed us for depriving the member worlds of their right to autonomy at a time they needed that right the most.” Wescott was not impressed, to say the least. “Xaall’s attack lines may have been somewhat on the mark, but his reasoning, as always, was heading the wrong direction to where it should have been going.” There was much credit to be had for punishing the President for failing to conduct Burnham’s War adequately – much less so for saying the solution was less central power. The fact was that while Xaall was willing to strike back as adversarially, he was never going to challenge the president properly. It wasn’t his style. Xaall liked his ideological principles – perhaps too much to be an effective politician. He could not compromise – even when making a political attack. But his points still landed, especially when it came to the president’s incoherence as a leader in a time of crisis.
That line of attack was hammered home by the Benecian Ambassador, who was then followed by the militant Makusian Ambassador, who spoke next in fiery support of the President. While he refrained from an outright demand to censure Xaall, his speech did nothing to ease the tension, and his comment that “the Councillor for Tellar Prime talks to us as if the Romulan War was merely a children’s story” did nothing but stir Xaallite outrage. This bickering exchange continued for almost 20 minutes, as the two sides tore each other (politely and eloquently) apart. “It was the most adversarial I have ever seen the Chamber,” Sarek wrote in the 2261 edition of his memoirs. “The President had generated an upswell in emotion that was unbecoming of a statesperson and seemed unable to stop it.” Soon it became clear that were only two voices left unheard that needed to be heard – Sarek himself, and Th’Rhahlat. Once the Loktaran Ambassador had finished their diatribe against “the evils of mismanagement”, the President turned to choose the next speaker. Both Sarek and Th’Rhahlat stood to catch his attention at the exact same moment. The president’s next move was fateful – instead, as many expected, of granting the floor to Sarek (always the safest move), she turned to her left and gave the floor to Th’Rhahlat. The roars from the Xaallites began to hush as all eyes turned to the Andorian Ambassador. Would he speak out now on the president’s behalf? Would he call for harmony? Or would he turn his ire on the Xaall at the last moment?
Th’Rhahlat waited for the chamber to calm down before he spoke, and when he did, he began with a low, quiet voice. “I think we are all aware, Madam President, that there is a need for unity. There is a need for leadership. There is a need to ask questions of ourselves, and our institutions, that we may have avoided in the past. These are things that we can all agree on. No one, especially not I, could ever say that this Federation of ours is perfect. It has its flaws – we all do – and the best we can do as individuals and statespersons is to acknowledge our weaknesses and grow from them. Learn from them. Strive for better things – to improve our Union as much as we improve ourselves. The last 18 months have shown us that not only is there room for improvement, but a moral and strategic imperative to do so. I would agree with the President when he says that we need a steady hand at the helm. I think we can all agree that we need leadership that can be trusted to keep this union together. Do I think President Barreuco is the person to do that?” The Andorian paused and turned to finally look down at the centre podium. “I do not.”
“A lot has been demanded of this Council. You demand we accept your setbacks as something any leader would face. You demand we think of your triumphs when your failures have set this union back decades if not more. You demand our trust when you have betrayed that of the voters and this council. You wish us to hold Starfleet accountable for its failures when it has been your duty to do so on our behalf. To act as if members of this council have not, time and again, expressed misgivings about the conduct of the Starfleet Command and been met with deflection and obstinacy from your office is insulting to the intelligence of this chamber.”
“I will not stand here and say that what you say is a falsehood. The institutions of the Federation do need to be reformed for the galaxy we live in. Perhaps you are right to demand we rethink the role of the Federation Starfleet. Perhaps you are right that we cannot afford to suffer any more setbacks. I most certainly agree that we cannot afford at this point to let things continue as they have. But it is patently absurd to me, and to many others that this president – who considered our recent hostilities to be nothing more than a brush war – who refused to grant Starfleet the powers they demanded to operate properly – who in a moment of crisis would choose to blame others instead of shouldering the burdens of her high office – should be allowed to even consider himself the right person to lead us in this time.”
“Madam President, four years ago I supported your campaign for office because I believed you could see a path for the Federation that would take us truly into the twenty-third century. I thought that you could forge a government that would bring the core of our society together with its fledging siblings on the frontier. Instead, you have led us into the biggest disaster since the Romulan War. You have left our colonies, our allies and our friends isolated in a hostile galaxy. I do not doubt that there is a way out of this state of affairs, but we must plot that course with fresh leadership and fresh ideas, not with broken promises and flawed plans.”
“You want us to judge you on your achievements, Madam President. You want us to judge you on what you have done in office. Well, let me tell you what you have done, sir. You have failed to protect your constituents. You have failed to ensure their security, their safety, and their prosperity. You have failed to protect this Union from its enemies and yet you continue to demand we put our trust in you. You insist to us that you are the only person who can fix problems of your own creation and expect this council to take your word for it. Who do you think you are to demand trust from us after the last eighteen months? You have asked us to come together behind a united cause: behind a common belief. I think I know what that common belief is: that you have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, Madam President, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”[6]
As the chamber roared into life, Barreuco sat stunned, staring at Th’Rhahlat, who held her gaze firmly. Eventually, the President came back to her senses enough to begin calling for order, attempting to bring some control back to the body. It is difficult to know what Barreuco intended to do next; whether she was going to offer a rebuttal to an attack by one of her longest supporters or look to aid from the rest of her bloc. Whatever her plan was, she would never get to see it through, for the moment the chamber began to quiet down Council Xaall leapt to his feet.
“Xaall didn’t wait to be called. Instead, he just stared down at the President and demanded that the council be allowed to hold a vote of No Confidence in its’ chair.” There was a moment of shocked silence before the chamber immediately exploded again, as several councillors jumped up to second his motion while others attempted to shout them down. Motions of No Confidence are incredibly rare in Federation political procedure: since the foundation of the Council in 2161, they have only been called six times, with only two successful motions in that time. They are considered somewhat of an archaic procedure, dating from a time when the Federation Council served as closer to an overarching supernational body than the pseudo-central government it was in the 2250s. The last use of a motion had been in November 2245 and had toppled the Qasar administration in a landslide vote. That had been a completely different set of circumstances, however.
This motion had not been a planned move by Xaall (at least not for the 4th of April), but the energy in the chamber made it unavoidable. Despite everyone’s expectation of a much longer, vicious session, Th’Rhahlat had struck right to the core of the grievances in one swift blow. If the final attack on Barreuco was going to happen, it was going to happen now. Calling it so close to an election seemed also to hammer home Barreuco’s failings – her term only had a mere 6 months left at this point. “It was an insult. Xaall knew that. But he did it anyway.” Wescott’s view of the vote was very much resigned to its inevitability. “Once we were in a position where the Federation Council had to decide whether they wanted to line up behind the President, we were screwed. He’d never bothered to convert popular support into political support – she didn’t think she needed to.”
The vote did not take long; there is no cycling into separate lobbies or queuing up to vote like in older, more archaic bodies. The vote was called at 3:50 pm Paris time; by 4 pm, Barreuco had returned to her seat at the front of the chamber floor, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. Through their traditional role as the “Speaker” of the Federation Council, the results of a division are read out by the President. Thus, when the president stood up from her seat with an unreadable expression on her face, the entire chamber dropped to a hush instantly.
“The Ayes to the left, 38.” There was a pause for a second, as the president looked down at the screen in front of her. She swallowed, then looked back up. “The Noes to the right, 35.”[7] The president’s next words were not picked up on the speakers over the roar from the council, which cheered and booed with equal gusto. Once their immediate reactions had ceased, the president continued her duties in a quiet, sombre tone. “Under the terms of Article 21b of the Articles of the Federation , this council has found it has no confidence in the President of the United Federation of Planets. A special election will be held 80 days from now.”[8]
As Barreuco stepped away from the podium and walked into the council lobby floor, she could not help but twitch as the councillors behind her began congratulating Xaall. Wescott was waiting for her outside. “The President looked at me for a long, hard moment, sighed and then said. “I’ll be honest, Ken, I deserved that.”
No one doubted that the President would fight the election: she had more than enough votes in the chamber to pass the nomination process. The real question across all of First Contact week on everyone’s lips was “Xaall or Th’Rhahlat?” It was a moot point, in hindsight. The Tellarite Ambassador, despite his bellicosity, was deeply uninterested in the premiership. In fact, it was he who initiated the fateful meeting between himself and the Andorian Ambassador on First Contact Day that launched Th’Rhahlat’s campaign. “Xaall did not like central authority, or much of anything Archerism believed in. However, he despised Barreuco more, and that was enough for him.” Xaall was also distinctly aware that most of his opposition group would not follow him into an election – better, he believed, to bide his time and cement his support base for the next electoral cycle.
When Th’Rhahlat announced his intention to run on April 12th from the Shran Centre on Andoria, the Barreuco campaign accepted the challenge with apprehension. “We believed we knew how Th’Rhahlat worked,” Wescott wrote of the mood in the president’s office. “But then again, we also thought we would win a motion of no confidence.” The Andorian Ambassador sailed through the nomination process on the 17th, clearing the minimum number of supporting ballots before the president did. The election of 2258 had begun.
Barreuco vs. Ch’Shukar
It was clear by mid-May that the election was not going very well for President Barreuco. Gauging public opinion and mood across the Federation is a difficult task – our current pollsters barely manage it with 80 years of communications improvement on their predecessors in 2258 – but even the murmurs and hunches that reached the Barreuco campaign were enough to make it clear that unless there was a serious course correction on her part, she would most likely be looking for a new job at the end of July. The coalition that had carried her into office in 2254 had never been as stable as they had imagined – what relationships had survived in the Palais de Concorde had fundamentally not translated to political loyalty amongst the Federation electorate, for a myriad of reasons. It is worth remembering that “electioneering” on an interstellar scale was still arguably in its infancy, even a century after the election of President Haroun Al-Rashid. What experts there were, however, did not predict a good result for the President.
The election had quickly become fixated on the conduct of the Klingon conflict, as the public turned out to be deeply uninterested in infrastructure reforms when they were weighed against the war dead.[9] While there had been some significant rallies on Earth, Mars and Terra Nova, a few whistle-stop events on more distant planets had received much a more muted reception. Most elections in the UFP had not involved widespread campaigns across the Federation. Some had, especially in the first 40 years, but the rapid growth of membership and territory from the 2200s onwards made it impossible. Presidents’ speeches and rallies tended to be recorded and passed on to outer worlds, where electioneering was handled by local agents, politicians, and other interested individuals. 2258 was different; even with the limitations on deep space travel caused by the war, Th’Rhahlat was able to make it out far beyond the core worlds on a limited tour, making it as far as Benecia, the Rigel Colonies, and New Paris. It was an unprecedented step and one that directly undercut Barreuco’s winning strategy four years earlier.
It worked incredibly well; it was one thing to hear that a distant candidate had your interests at heart, and another thing entirely to see them in the flesh or shake their hand. By late May, Th’rhahalat’s campaign was steadily chipping away at the president’s base of support. His simple message of “A United Front, A United Federation” was cutting through to a polity that had long felt left behind by a government that had done little to expand its powers as the Federation grew. Barreuco’s own choice of slogan – “a strong and stable society” was proving to be more ironic commentary than an inspirational rallying cry in an election that saw him appear weaker and weaker by the day. While Presidents themselves are rarely ever affiliated with political parties, they are often endorsed by them, and Barreuco’s support amongst the organised planetary political parties was dramatically smaller than it had been in the 2254 election.
Events had also not helped her case. The loss of Admiral Cornwell and the USS Discovery near Xahea in a failed warp drive test hammered home the worrying situation in Starfleet. [10] The explosion had also crippled the USS Enterprise, which was forced to withdraw to Earth for four months at a time when the Klingon fleet was stepping up aggressive patrolling. The overworked 2nd Fleet was hard-pressed to maintain any resemblance of security on its’ patrol routes, an issue underlined by the rapid growth of piracy across most of 2258 as once-secure systems became bases for raiders. Confidence in the Federation was ebbing away rapidly, and to many, the cause seemed to be right at the top.
The President’s fate wasn’t sealed, however. As May turned to June, some wondered whether she might be able to weather the crisis, as her push for a stronger Federation core helped solidify her support base. What was curious, however, was how little her campaign had focused on Starfleet. It wasn’t as if her opponent had centred them in his campaign – it was just intriguing to most observers that she had chosen to ignore Starfleet reform when it was guaranteed to be a central issue in her prospective second term.
A significant amount of historiography has been devoted to understanding why Barreuco attended the Inquiry meeting on June 8th. Some, like Rel bavv Wren, have said that she was going to directly challenge Starfleet to prove her worth against them; others, like her official biographer Carlos Tzu have argued she felt obliged to go, considering how much the election campaign had become about Starfleet. A.G. Conte, however, is probably closer to the mark when they concluded the President decided to attend “because people told her not to, and when she was on edge, she didn’t like being told what to do.”[11] Perhaps she thought, with the knowledge that Th’Rhahlat was off world, she could seize the opportunity to steal a march on the “Starfleet Question” by controlling the narrative. Whatever her reasons were, against the advice of her staffers Barrueco announced her attention to attend Admiral Ch’Shukar’s deposition to the Starfleet Committee.
A permanent committee meeting did not legally require the president’s presence: merely that of the five councilmembers who were on said committee. There was some precedent to President’s attending said meetings – especially when the issue was politically contentious – but not during an election campaign. So, when she strolled into the meeting five minutes before it began, there were more than a few surprised looks from the attendees, especially the Starfleet officers preparing to deliver their findings.
Matt Decker was finishing his adjustments to Admiral Ch’Shukar’s notes when Barreuco arrived. “I looked up from my notes to see [the President] conversing with Ambassador Tilly. Honestly, that was the last thing I’d been expecting. I turned to Ishita and said, ‘what the hell is she doing here?’ she looked up and groaned, which about summed up our feelings on the matter.” The Inquiry’s staff had spent the last two months frantically working to turn their 300-page report into something that could lead to tangible change in the way Starfleet operated. They’d pulled support and ideas from countless more sources than they had originally envisioned – even going as far as to liaison with the UESPA and Andorian Imperial Guard and even discuss ideas with the Federation Marine Corps. It was a tight sell, but also a complicated, technical one, designed to appeal directly to the well-informed members of the Starfleet Committee. It was not one designed for soundbites in news roundups.
“Uncle Shu” had painstakingly worked to keep himself and his juniors out of politics since the election had begun. This was not because he thought it was irrelevant – more that he didn’t want politicians to use the review for their own means. “[Ch’Shukar] had a game plan. We didn’t know what it was yet, but he had one, and he made sure we stuck to it even if we didn’t know what we were doing.” Files were kept in sealed drives on a need-to-know basis, and despite various attempts by councillors, journalists, and other Starfleet Admirals to get a look at what would be said on the 8th, no one had succeeded. When Admiral Ch’Shukar stepped up to the podium at 1:30 pm, the assembled Ambassadors, press and visitors were watching with bated breath.
Ch’Shukar did not pull any punches. He made clear the structural failings of Starfleet Command: their inefficient decision-making process; the unproductive imbalance between Exploratory and Tactical Command; the poor state of Starfleet logistics; the collapse of confidence in the ability of the fleet to protect colony worlds and space lanes. He detailed in full the structural failures of the Starfleet Command, ignoring the uncomfortable looks he was getting from Admiral Luteth as he did so. His briefing on the technological and design failures of Federation Starships was grim news to many who had wondered why Starfleet losses had been so widespread. “It was very business-like stuff, to give him his credit. We didn’t know much about Uncle Shu at this point, but in that first half an hour we learnt a lot. Primarily, that he only ever says something if he feels he needs to, and if he does you better listen.”
The most chilling part of the presentation was the conclusions on Federation Security. The collapse of the 2nd and 4th Fleets, along with the losses faced on other fronts to compensate, would have serious effects on all of Starfleet’s missions in the region. Beyond the knock-on effect on Scientific and Exploratory missions, the lack of ships would mean a significant reduction in planetary aid missions, convoy escorts and more critically, the ability of Starfleet to counter aggression from any enemy. “Federation Starships,” he warned, “are not just warships, and they not just science vessels. They are the physical embodiment of Federation values: compassion; security; friendship; a desire to know more and a will to improve. And for the millions of our fellow citizens who live out on the frontier, they are the only link between their new homes and their old. Unless drastic action is taken the improvements in connectivity, in space lane safety and in internal security made in the south-eastern quarter of Federation space will be reversed within the next five years, with all the ramifications to governance that entails.”
Ambassador Tilly spoke up at this point. “Are you saying that unless we devote ourselves to reforming and refitting Starfleet, we could face another Tarsus IV?”
“If by that, Ambassador, you mean we could see a collapse in the ability of the Federation to sustain its colony worlds, then yes I do.” The implications here were immense – Tarsus IV still haunted Federation politics as an example of what happens if expansion outstripped the ability of Federation central to support it.
“Do you have a solution?” Tilly asked, not really expecting one. The affirmative response from the Admiral should not have been a surprise, but the raised eyebrow from the Earth Ambassador (and from the President) betrayed their shock.
To make up for the fleet losses, Ch’Shukar proposed a complete reassessment of the design standards and provisions for new Federation Starships. Instead of focusing on large, high-power vessels, the current priority was smaller ships – frigates, destroyers and most critically light cruisers – that could perform the day-to-day patrol work of Starfleet adequately. Several of these designs – such as the Avenger, Diana and Laikan Class – had been stuck in development hell for most of the 2250. These would prioritise over the high-cost plan to build four new Constitution Class vessels.[12] There would also be an expansion in the construction of Pioneer and Capella class ships, which had proved themselves capable as all-round utility cruisers despite their limited size and range.[13]
Alongside plans for new light cruisers, the Admiral suggested that Starfleet could alleviate the losses of the Klingon War within 50 months, if not earlier. While on paper most of the ships on the drawing board were not as technologically advanced, the new ships (unlike almost all of the pre-war fleet) would be built from the bottom up around the duotronic systems of Richard Daystrom, putting them miles ahead of their replacements in raw computing power. What was more controversial was his additional suggestion that Starfleet Command should invest in a fleet of short-range, high-power “Fast Starships” to be used on the Klingon and Romulan front.
This design brief had existed for several years – the first Kirov class ships had been launched as early as 2254, as had the initial prototype Ranger class – but had been rejected after trials had found them to be unsuitable for long-term patrols. Ch’Shukar proposed turning this flaw into an advantage: their spaceframes would allow them to carry heavier weapons for shorter operations instead of focusing on sustainability. Matt Decker (who had helped put the suggestion together) put the proposal more bluntly. “We were proposing they build a bunch of battlecruisers and organise them into permanent combat squadrons. No one said that out loud, but we all knew that’s what they were. We wanted to build D7 killers.”
The administrative reforms were the biggest challenge. Ch’Shukar proposed the abolition of the Admiral’s Council as a key decision-making organisation, to be replaced by a single body that would sit above both the Tactical Command and the Exploratory Command. The position of “Commanding Officer, Starfleet Operational Command” would have authority over the planning and nature of day to Starfleet operations, as well as directly over the fleet organisation and strategic directives. Tactical Command would be given direct authority over Exploratory Command based on the discretion of the new ‘Commander, Starfleet’ to prevent any dispute over authority in time-sensitive situations. “Commander, Starfleet” would sit on the new “Admiral’s Council” – now renamed the “Joint Board of Starfleet Admirals”. This body would, however, be an administrative and grand strategic one – it would not be tasked with making day-to-day operational decisions for Starfleet’s operating forces.
The operating structure of fleets would be reformed around potential fronts, as opposed to focusing on the old “compass” point system, with a specific “Klingon Border Operations Command” to cover the length of the Klingon border along with other new commands to cover the Romulan and Tholian Border. This, combined with a clear chain of command from the top to the bottom, was patently designed to turn Starfleet into a force that could fight a military campaign seriously. Ch’Shukar’s plan would represent the biggest restructuring of Starfleet since its’ foundation in 2161. While he was not asking for the end to the scientific mission, he was asking for the powers to be put in place to side-line said mission when the time was deemed necessary. It was a significant change in Starfleet’s role – one that had been discussed for a long time but dismissed by an Admiralty that did not see it as necessary and politicians who considered it to be too contentious an issue to talk about. But now it could not be avoided. What was presented here was a clear path to a stronger Starfleet that could protect Federation Interests without (arguably) sacrificing its Humanitarian and Scientific role.
Then Barreuco made his fatal mistake. “[Barreuco] had listened in silence so far,” Wescott noted. “She’d made a few notes, nodded politely, the usual stuff. However, when the Admiral began discussing permanent fleet patterns and new ship classes, she perked up. When Ch’Shukar paused for any comments, the president leaned forward, meeting the Admiral’s eye line. ‘Are you asking, Admiral, to turn the Federation Starfleet into a military organisation?’ She asked the million-credit question. Someone had to. We just wish she hadn’t been the one to do it.”[14]
The question the President had asked had plagued Starfleet since its parent organisation had been founded in 2141: was it military service or not? As far as the constitution was concerned, it wasn’t the defence of the United Federation of Planets, at least legally, handled by the individual defence forces of the member worlds, acting in conjunction and coordination with the Federation Starfleet. As far as the founders were concerned, Earth Starfleet’s role as the primary defence force of Earth over the UESPA was an exception to the rule.[15] Starfleet was meant to be a scientific and exploratory agency that could, in emergencies, act as a defensive arm. Thankfully, Federation political culture had no intention of repeating the “founder worship” that had doomed many a constitutional democracy to stagnation and decline. When it needed to change how it worked, it did.
By the 2180s and 90s (arguably even the mid-2160s) it was clear that Starfleet’s role in exploration and expansion meant that it could not avoid its role as military service. The simple fact was that the rate of expansion was rapidly outstripping the capabilities of the member-world defence forces. Starfleet had more resources than all of them combined. Her ships were faster and increasingly better armed, and more importantly, their ships were the ones that had to fight off Nausicaan and Orion Pirates or protect colonies from Klingon raids. So, Starfleet, whether it liked it or not, took on many less obvious but more important elements that define a military fleet. It set up patrol routes; designed and launched ships to serve as border pickets and convoy protection vessels; held fleet exercises and wargames; expanded the Academy in San Francisco; drew officers from the great military academies, and built its own at Portsmouth, England and Laikian on Andoria. T’Kuvmas War, along with the campaigns against the Tholians, Kzinti and Orion merely confirmed that Starfleet was taking on the role of a military organisation. That didn’t mean it was any good at that role, however, or more importantly that it wanted it. By asking the question out loud, Barreuco wasn't just accusing Ch'Shukar of jingoism; she was accusing Starfleet of abandoning her mission: in a sense, she was blaming Starfleet for taking the role it had no choice but to take.
It is quite clear, in retrospect, that Ch’Shukar had been waiting for that question. He didn’t make it so clear in his own writings on interviews, attesting that he hadn’t prepared for the question, but frankly, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made Rear Admiral.[16] He was ready, and he needed to be.
He looked up at the President's podium for a second, in thought, then shook his head. "No Madam President. I am saying that unless we change how Starfleet operates, it will have no choice but to become one. The Federation is a large and expanding union, and as such, it has a multitude of interests that must be defended. Eighteen months of hostilities have confirmed that even against a disorganised military campaign, we are incapable of engaging in any military action with a power that has any parity with us. I think we can agree that is an unacceptable situation."
"But Admiral," she countered. "You are asking me – and this council - to authorize a programme of expansion not seen since the Romulan War. You are suggesting that Starfleet centralise authority in military hierarchies. You are proposing that Starfleet go against nearly 100 years of operating procedure and create standing fleets. As I understand it, Admiral, you would have us create a fleet of dreadnoughts to lie in harbour so they can sally forth to fight the Klingons." Barreuco, never missing the opportunity to make an overzealous, convoluted, and esoteric jab, leant forward in her chair to glare down into the chamber. "I'm not sure Starfleet needs a new Jackie Fisher, Admiral Ch'Shukar, does it?" Barreuco was tapping into a century’s worth of unease about the military aspects of Starfleet Command. Many feared the concept of Starfleet (and thus the authority of Federation Central) having its hands on a fleet of all-powerful warships mustered and ready to enforce authority on member worlds when they did not bend the knee to the powers that be. Militarisation had only ever come in reaction to over-the-horizon threats like the Kzinti, Orion and Klingons, but even the Federation political class remained incredible sceptical of an exploratory force armed that was better armed than most other nations’ armed forces. The universal presence of Starfleet within the UFP – as an aid agency, scientific body, colonising arm and in some cases judicial body – made the prospect of militarisation even more concerning. Appealing to the Archerite principle of limiting Starfleet’s military aspects was a natural path for Barreuco to choose, and probably more of an instinctive reaction than a calculated one.
Uncle Shu was very much aware of this line of attack and wasn’t about to roll over in front of it. “I do not know who Jackie Fisher is, Mr President, so I cannot tell you whether Starfleet needs him or not. However, I can tell you what it does need. It needs new ships. It needs new bases. It needs a new operational structure. It needs decisive leadership from the smallest ship to the highest admiral, and it needs it now.”[17]
“Why now, Admiral?” the President asked. “Surely, we can wait to see how the situation. If we expect aggression from the Klingon Empire, then aren’t we are almost asking for it?”
Ch’Shukar visibly bristled at this accusation. “This reform is not about fighting the Klingon Empire, Mr President. It is about making sure our space lanes are safe. About protecting our colony worlds from piracy and slave-raiding. This is about bringing Starfleet into the 23rd century. This is not the galaxy of Shran and Archer sir. While the Federation is larger, the galaxy we live in is much busier. It is full of those who at best view our ideals with scorn, and at worst wish destruction on us all.”
Barreuco retorted, “Admiral, Starfleet’s primary mission is to seek out new life; to explore strange new worlds; not to practice gunboat diplomacy and build fleets of warships.”
Ch’Shukar’s answer was immediate. “There is no point, ma’am, in seeking out new life and new worlds if we cannot defend them. We discovered that in the Romulan War a century ago and have had a harsh reminder in the recent Klingon conflict. We must show strength to our adversaries if we are to continue our primary mission.”
Barreuco seemed to be taking every reply from the Admiral personally at this point. “And giving Starfleet more powers is the way to do that? Has this council not, countless times in the last decades, decided otherwise without significant ramifications to our security?”
“There have been consequences sir. The Tholian Incursions. The Four Years’ War. Our recent war with the Empire. Those conflicts would not have been so serious, or our losses so great, if Starfleet had been given the adequate resources to prepare for them by the Federation Council.”
“Federation Central cannot be held responsible for tactical failures.”
“But, as I have detailed, it has some responsibility in the internal failures of Starfleet. We cannot deny that. Change needs to come, sir, otherwise we will not be able to face our enemies with confidence. That is what our job as Starfleet officers is, Madam President. But we cannot do that without the right resources, or political support.”
“At this point,” Wescott notes, “we decided to get him the hell out of there. The President was taking this whole thing far too personally. She had, however, decided not to look at the messages we were sending to her console, which was an extremely bad habit of hers.”
Wescott was considering sending an aide to the Council floor to intercede when Ambassador Sarek cut in. “I think, Madam President, we should let the Admiral finish his presentation before deliberating the merits of his proposals. Or, I might add, his ideological standpoint.”
Barreuco, caught out by this intervention (and by the naked condescension in Sarek’s voice), faltered at this point, before sitting back down. It was hard not to miss the sheepish look on her face, or the look of disapproval on Ambassador Tilly’s. She had made a fool of herself by challenging Ch’Shukar on something that was (quite rightly) deemed a necessary step to make Starfleet a functional force going forward. Her deeply defensive nature meant she took much of it personally – even if it had never been aimed at him in the first place. Uncle Shu had aimed his ire at Federation Central’s ambivalence towards Starfleet and the President had deliberately stepped into the firing line.
Building an Arsenal of Freedom
Would Barreuco have still lost if he’d hadn’t staked her political career on beating Ch’Shukar? For a very long time, that was the consensus. It was what she believed; what Th’Rhahlat believed, and Broadhurst and Wescott after him. “Political consensus still says that people care about Starfleet,” Wescott would comment on the matter. “Whether they say it or not, you don’t come after Starfleet unless you’ve got a damn good reason to.”[18] What Wescott ignores here is that the opposition groups that eventually brought Barreuco down were not related to her struggle with the Starfleet reforms. Barreuco was the last of an old school of hands-off Federation leaders, whose approach to governance had been harshly punished by the colonial disasters of the 2240s. Her approach to foreign policy and inter-member relations was always going to be a wild disappointment on the frontier, especially when compared with Th’Rhahlat’s concise and clear promises for electoral reform. Barreuco could not compete with an opponent who promised an end to the dominance of the core worlds so succinctly, especially when such reform was tied so strongly to promises of stronger security arrangements on the edge of Federation space.
The President’s electoral coalition was never as strong as either she or her closest supporters imagined it to be. When the results came on July 13th, the scale of the swing against the president was clear. Almost all the votes that had brought him into power in 2254 had turned out for Th’Rhahlat, who was able to gather a comfortable majority of 52 councillors within a few weeks of polling day. Wescott remembered running into Barreuco a few days later as they began packing their offices to leave. “I’d like to say she took it on the chin. She really hadn’t. She spent ten minutes telling me how Uncle Shu and Th’Rhahlat had conspired to ‘do him in’. Honestly, I think She needed a break from work anyway.”
What effect did the confrontation in the committee have? What can be agreed on, is that by casting Starfleet Reform as a necessity caused by political failures, Ch’Shukar all but guaranteed that most of his reforms would be passed: if not by this Federation Council and the next president, then by their successors. He had tied the failure of the war to the failure of Barreuco’s political generation, and their ambivalence towards the defence of the Federation. Success for Starfleet, and survival for the Galaxy’s largest democracy, could only come if she was defended well. Uncle Shu had laid out a plan to do so (and successfully presented it as the only plan), and Barreuco’s refusal to accept it only made sure that said plan would be adopted as soon as possible.
July and August were bittersweet months for Starfleet. Th’Rhahlat’s victory was seen by many as a sign for cautious optimism. However, they remained thinly stretched across much of the Klingon Disputed Area, which was rapidly becoming an extremely lawless part of Federation Space. Freebooters, prospectors, pirates and others were filling the void, and the few ships on patrol were hard pressed to try and maintain any semblance of law and order. More worryingly, Klingon warships were turning up in places further and further away from the ceasefire line, threatening convoys, and challenging Federation vessels in greater numbers than before.
President Th’Rhahlat’s inauguration speech on September 7th, delivered from the steps of the Palais de Concorde had made it very clear that whatever else happened in his presidency, he was not about to step away from the question of Starfleet or Foreign Policy. “If we are to maintain this Federation of as a bastion of democracy – a beacon of hope amongst the stars, then we must – no, I say we need to act as more than a refuge for the masses. We must become an arsenal of freedom that can protect those who cannot be protected. We must become a warehouse of salvation for those who cry out for aid in times of desperation. We must become a library of liberty, where those who yearn for freedom can discover its roots and become their better selves. We must discover new ways to say ‘friend’ and ‘ally’. We have a duty to protect what we have as a Union, yes: but we have a further, higher duty: to extend that union, and that protection, to all who ask for it. We must present a united front to the galaxy, but not a hostile one.”
Admiral Ch’Shukar would meet the new President four days after the Inauguration on September 11th. They had spoken briefly at the Federation Day Parade a month earlier, but only now did they meet to discuss policy. It is often forgotten that the two men did not like each other. Ch’Shukar thought that the incoming President was far too parochial, a micromanager who preferred tinkering with small problems to the grand problems of leadership; that he had a bad taste in political allies and a worse taste in romantic partners. Th’Rhahlat thought that “Uncle Shu” was far too happy to speak back to superiors even when he knew he was wrong; that he had no respect for elected officials, and none for the exploratory aim of Starfleet either, and more importantly (to Th’Rhahlat at least), that the Admiral had no time for Andorian Synthetic Classical.[19] The two men, however, had mutual respect for each other, based almost entirely on the only thing they had in common: they meant what they said.
It is unclear why exactly the meeting had been called in the first place. The President’s diary says that he had invited the Admiral to discuss the implementation of the review’s suggestions, which had been dubbed the ‘Ch’Shukar Plan’ by the Federation Media. The Admiral’s memoirs, however, attest that the president had invited him in to “put [him] in his place.” Whether or not Th’Rhahlat’s aim had been to make his authority clear, Ch’shukar had no intention of being cast aside. “I made it very clear to the president that the scale of this plan meant that it could not simply be handed over to the Admiral’s council, who would then be expected to disband themselves and form a strict chain of command. They would never do that. Starfleet needed direct leadership - firm leadership. I laid out the extent to which my plans needed clear guidance from start to finish. They couldn’t be handed over to a committee. One person would have to do it. I would have to do it.” Whether the Admiral was that brazen in the meeting is unknown, but whatever Th’Rhahlat thought of him, he agreed that Starfleet needed clear leadership if this plan was to succeed.
The President gave Ch’Shukar an unreadable look, then simply said “You want the job, then.” He didn’t need to say which job. The Admiral said he did, and supposedly, that was the end of the argument. The rest of the two-hour meeting was spent doing what both liked doing most: agreeing with each other about what vital work needed to be done. The Shukar Plan was approved on the 14th of September by the Federation Council, with the changes to the command structure of Starfleet authorised to begin on the 17th. The position of Commanding Officer, Starfleet Operational Command would be created on that day, with Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar as its first official holder.
Starfleet had spent most of the year waiting to see what would come of the Ch’Shukar report, and the collective sigh of relief on the 14th was almost unanimous. “We were damn worried we’d done all that work for nothing,” Matt Decker wrote to his wife when he heard the news. “Now Uncle Shu was in the central chair. We’d have been happier if he’d ended up in that chair a year ago, but we take what we get at the end of the day.” The next two months would see drastic changes at the top of Starfleet as the reforms were implemented. Six new ship classes were approved for mass production in eight weeks of furious committee meetings and sent to the construction lines as quickly as possible. The new reorganisation of fleet commands, while drastic and somewhat confusing, was merely the codification of what already existed on the frontier. Agatha Drake, C-in-C Second Fleet, was promoted to the much-deserved position of Vice Admiral and made CO of the newly formed Klingon Command, with the 2nd & 4th fleets under her along with the smaller Triangle Squadron. More critically, Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter was rewritten to reprioritise the role of Starfleet Intelligence over that of other security services on the advice of Commander Ash Tyler.
New names were also brought into the ranks of the high command. Heihachiro Nogura was promoted to full Admiral and made Chief of Starfleet Operations, where he would oversee the review and overhaul of much of the recruitment and training procedure of Starfleet personnel, shaping the careers of many of Starfleet’s greatest captains. The members of the review board received their marching orders with a spring in their step. Mendez, Decker, and Gupta returned to the centre chair of their new commands (the Excalibur, Constellation and Ish-v’kar respectively). Captain Stone would become head of the new (and already controversial) Starfleet Wartime Planning Division in London, England. Captain Chandran was appointed Starfleet Liaison to the Federation Commission for Diplomatic Affairs. Their collective mindset, forged in a year spent in the bowels of the Presidio would have major influences on the way Starfleet thought of itself for the 2260s, if not longer.
The changes to operations could be felt down the chain of command. Officers like Jim Kirk and Ron Tracey were brought together to form the new Command Training School at Starfleet Academy, while engineers like Marvick and Daystrom were brought back into Starfleet after years in the cold to perfect and supplement new designs with their expertise. Peter Toussaint could feel the change in energy even out on patrol. “It was like we all had a new spring in our step. We’d been floating aimlessly since the ceasefire, trying to figure out exactly what we were meant to do now. Were we staying in this part of space, with the overstretched resources we had? Were we to withdraw, and leave the Klingons to take it? We knew what we were doing now. Starfleet was here to stay, and we were going to go toe to toe with the Klingons wherever they reared their heads.”
The momentum for change had been building in Starfleet for a long time, and with Uncle Shu in the top office, it was finally being let loose. “The Presidio finally had a spring in its step,” Ch’Shukar said of his first months as Commander, Starfleet. “They really wanted to get on with the job at hand. I’m glad they wanted to because the Klingons weren’t going to wait for us to be ready. They had their own plans going on and we need to be ready to react fast.” Starfleet Command may have wanted to spend 2259 finding its feet after a tumultuous year, but across the Disputed Area, the Klingon Empire had other ideas. The year after the war had been just as eventful on Qo’noS, but the Imperial Fleet had never stepped back from asserting itself. Now, however, Chancellor L’Rell’s authority had seen off all challenges at home, and she turned outwards towards the Empire’s greatest threat to existence: The United Federation of Planets.
[1] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli: The Life and Times of Byss Th'rhahlat (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2300)
[2] The Colonial Committee represented the non-voting representatives of Federation colony worlds that had yet to accede to full Council Membership. Before the passage of the Colonial Reform Act in 2263 it was heavily criticised for prioritising the interests of current members over that of the colonists.
[3] While weekends have no real legal or social importance on Earth or in parliamentary procedure, they are traditionally considered days where business is not scheduled if the council is in session.
[4] When the council is in session and the Ambassador is not present, one of their several juniors will act in their place
[5] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli
[6] It is almost certain that Th’Rhahlat, a consummate Anglophile, was directly quoting Old British Parliamentarian Leo Amery in the 1940 debate on war with Hitlerite Germany.
[7] The two abstentions were Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan and Ambassador Wenra Karash of Orodanga.
[8] The shorter Campaigning season of elections before the 2288 Electoral Reform act were down to the fact that colony worlds did not vote directly for presidential candidates.
[9] Nick O. York, "The 'Redshirt Election' of 2258" (Paris: Federation Political History No.34/1, 2303)
[10] The history of the USS Discovery and the mycelial project has only recently been declassified, and even then not in its entirety. Much of the project will most likely remain seal for several decades, if not centuries to come under the terms of the Temporal Security Act of 2273. For more, please see George Daystrom, “A Lost Visionary: Paul Stamets and the quest for the Mycelial Network.” (San Francisco: Engineering Historical Review, No.4, 2288.)
[11] A.G. Conte, The Furious Folly of Erick Barreuco
[12] The Plans for new Constitution Class ships were delayed by the need for a redesign after flaws in the USS Enterprise’s design were found to be linked to the class-wide refit all vessels undertook across 2254-2255.
[13] The Utility Cruiser is a short-lived designation that emerged in the 2230s. They were characterised by their large support facilities and reliability, which came at the expense of weaponry and range. Most would be made obsolete by the introduction of the Miranda class in the late 2260s.
[14] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[15] Stanley Wilkinson, Learning to Fly
[16] Peraa Zh'tyvohr, ‘Blue Jackie’ The Biography of Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar, 2188-2296 (Andoria: Laikan Historical Press, 2300)
[17] In his memoirs, Ch’Shukar admits he knew exactly who Jackie Fisher was.
[18] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[19] There is a well-known story that for the President’s 61st Birthday in 2260, Admiral Ch’Shukar was invited to attend a performance of Ch’Sellack Symphony in the President’s honour. As he could not openly refuse an invitation from the palais to attend the 9-hour long concert, the Admiral avoided the ordeal by arranging a fleet review in Axanar for the same date.
“In the Name of God, Go!”
The silence of Th’Rhahlat in March 2258 has been discussed time and again. It is known that from at least early December, he had concluded that he would not back Barreuco for re-election at the very least. At the time, it was assumed that he was not opposed to the president continuing until his scheduled term ended in November. Others (such as Wescott) thought that his silence was a sign he was leaving room for Xaall to lead the charge as the primary candidate for the President’s office. His official biographer, Seb Cousins, argues ruefully that he was merely waiting for the anger in the chamber to exhaust itself before putting the knife in Barreuco’s back himself.[1] Th’Rhahlat’s own diaries give little away on the subject, but it is clear from other sources that he was up to something in the last days of March.
Notably, he met with several non-council officials who were gathering on Earth for First Contact Day, including Earth Prime Minister Franz Morris, Martian First Minister Tia Masters and several members of the Colonial Committee.[2] His focus on the Colonial Committee – with whom he had an unsteady relationship due to his vocal opposition to their “cronyism for Federation Central” tells us much about how his opinions were changing. Barreuco may have been aware of this – she may have been an arrogant, self-assured leader, but she was not an incompetent one. But compared to the other brushfires she was dealing with the first week of April, the prospect of the Andorian Ambassador forming a coalition against him was probably not something he thought much of. “[The President] thought the main attack would come from Councillor Xaall, of all people. He spent a lot of time holed up with Sarek trying to sound out where he and the Vulcan Caucus would land if there was a confidence vote. I considered it a waste of time, to be honest.”
Wescott’s judgement was right here – as important as it was to keep Sarek and his bloc in line, especially with the declining support from the Terran group, the more important votes were being lost in the lower halls of the Palais as Xaall’s group of malcontents grew larger and larger. Xaall never denied his plans to run for President, so it is not surprising that the Tellarite Councillor became the focus of Barreuco’s plan to quash the revolt.
The President, with typical bravado, decided to head the plotters off before they could set their plans in motion. “[Barreuco] got wind that Admiral Ch’Shukar was visiting the Palais on Sunday, April 4th for a short meeting. She didn’t know to see who, or even if he was meeting anyone, but she decided something was afoot. So, she called an emergency meeting of the Council instead.” Calling an emergency meeting – on a Sunday, furthermore – was an obvious sign that the President had decided to have the fight here and now, instead of waiting for the inevitable.[3] Calling the meeting the day before First Contact Day guaranteed she would be speaking to a full house of Councillors, and not their junior representatives.[4] It would not be an easy day in Paris, for sure.
“The first sign of trouble should have been the muted silence when the President entered the Chamber”, Wescott wrote of the session that began at 2:30 pm on that warm April day. “We’d expected to have to shout through calls for resignation before she could be heard, but instead we got quiet murmuring and whispers from the benches. It was an unsettling start to the proceedings; I’ll say that much.” Watching from the viewing gallery, Wescott could tell something was up simply from the murmuring of the Tellarite bloc, who sat around Councillor Xaall passing hurried notes as the Barreuco prepared himself.
Undeterred by the clear scheming, the President opened by thanking the assembled Councillors, before moving on to address the criticisms raised against her in the recent weeks. The President, sensibly, started off by defending what she had achieved. It was difficult to argue that the improvements to subspace communications were a failure or a poor choice of action, or that limiting Orion ‘commerce’ in Federation space was a foreign policy failure. Little attempt was made to criticise the president at this stage, beyond a heckle of “get on with it” from New Parisian Councillor Simon McNeil. Th’Rhahlat sat in silence, “lounging in his chair with what could best be described as a bored look on his face.”[5] The President’s tone soon changed as she went on the offensive, accusing her opponents of “an opportunistic attack on the core of our political society at a time of crisis.” She continued as the murmurs rose to more vocal complaints, painting the “Xaalites” (as she dubbed them) as “a collection of parochial individualists more determined to protect their planetary rights than to contribute to this great interstellar project of ours.” The yells reached a peak as the president turned to challenge those who accused him of betraying the same colonial voters who she had pledged to support.
“You say that I have abandoned Federation colonies. You say that I turned a blind eye to their concerns. That I left them undefended. That this office of mine was more interested in vanity projects than in the defence of our citizens. You cannot accuse me of something I had no hand in. Starfleet Command has the duty of protecting this Union. This office acted under the guidance of those we were told were better informed; those who were better judges of the situation; and in the times when we believed that those ‘better informed’ persons were wrong, we stood our ground and made our case, and were told not to interfere in the business of the Federation Starfleet. Well, my dear colleagues, what has that brought us? It brought us a fleet that cannot protect us. It brings us convoys that cannot reach their destination. At best it brings us indecision; at worst, it veers from passivity to hyper aggression.”
The chamber’s indignation rose to a new level at this point. Wescott had never seen them like this before. “It was like being in the Congress Hall on Tellar Prime. They were angry enough as they were, and the President just wasn’t helping.” Despite the increasing calls of “coward!” and “resign!”, Barreuco pushed on. “You tell me I have failed as a leader. Perhaps I have, in failing to hold Starfleet accountable for its failure. But to attack this office at this time of national crisis is to do the work of our enemies for us. What we need at present is unity: unity in a common cause; in our common beliefs and ideals. If Starfleet is to be reformed, if confidence is to be restored in this Union, a steady hand at the helm is needed. Do we really need a change in government – a change in leadership – when the Klingon Empire is waiting in the wings for a chance to pounce? Do you want to do their job for them?” As the chamber began to reach a fever pitch, Barreuco turned to stare down at Ambassador Xaall, who glowered back from his seat. “I only ask that this house remember that we are in this together. This is not a time for discord. This is a time to maintain the course that has kept this Federation – this unprecedented galactic experiment of ours - together for nearly a century.”
It was an incredible gauntlet to throw down. The Federation President had always led by consent, working to build coalitions of supporters from across the chamber. Barreuco’s choice – to confront the crisis in an adversarial fashion, instead of as a peacemaker – was an unprecedented step from a President. Even President Qasar, whose administration had fallen apart at the seams over the colonial crises of Tarsus IV, Wellingborough and Archanis IV, had never resorted to such a challenge. Accusing Xaall and his followers of having no faith in the Union – or even of unwittingly aiding the Klingons – was a dangerous step to take – and one the Tellarite was inevitably going to follow up on.
“Xaall said what we expected him to say, to be honest. He decried the failures of central government. He blamed us for depriving the member worlds of their right to autonomy at a time they needed that right the most.” Wescott was not impressed, to say the least. “Xaall’s attack lines may have been somewhat on the mark, but his reasoning, as always, was heading the wrong direction to where it should have been going.” There was much credit to be had for punishing the President for failing to conduct Burnham’s War adequately – much less so for saying the solution was less central power. The fact was that while Xaall was willing to strike back as adversarially, he was never going to challenge the president properly. It wasn’t his style. Xaall liked his ideological principles – perhaps too much to be an effective politician. He could not compromise – even when making a political attack. But his points still landed, especially when it came to the president’s incoherence as a leader in a time of crisis.
That line of attack was hammered home by the Benecian Ambassador, who was then followed by the militant Makusian Ambassador, who spoke next in fiery support of the President. While he refrained from an outright demand to censure Xaall, his speech did nothing to ease the tension, and his comment that “the Councillor for Tellar Prime talks to us as if the Romulan War was merely a children’s story” did nothing but stir Xaallite outrage. This bickering exchange continued for almost 20 minutes, as the two sides tore each other (politely and eloquently) apart. “It was the most adversarial I have ever seen the Chamber,” Sarek wrote in the 2261 edition of his memoirs. “The President had generated an upswell in emotion that was unbecoming of a statesperson and seemed unable to stop it.” Soon it became clear that were only two voices left unheard that needed to be heard – Sarek himself, and Th’Rhahlat. Once the Loktaran Ambassador had finished their diatribe against “the evils of mismanagement”, the President turned to choose the next speaker. Both Sarek and Th’Rhahlat stood to catch his attention at the exact same moment. The president’s next move was fateful – instead, as many expected, of granting the floor to Sarek (always the safest move), she turned to her left and gave the floor to Th’Rhahlat. The roars from the Xaallites began to hush as all eyes turned to the Andorian Ambassador. Would he speak out now on the president’s behalf? Would he call for harmony? Or would he turn his ire on the Xaall at the last moment?
Th’Rhahlat waited for the chamber to calm down before he spoke, and when he did, he began with a low, quiet voice. “I think we are all aware, Madam President, that there is a need for unity. There is a need for leadership. There is a need to ask questions of ourselves, and our institutions, that we may have avoided in the past. These are things that we can all agree on. No one, especially not I, could ever say that this Federation of ours is perfect. It has its flaws – we all do – and the best we can do as individuals and statespersons is to acknowledge our weaknesses and grow from them. Learn from them. Strive for better things – to improve our Union as much as we improve ourselves. The last 18 months have shown us that not only is there room for improvement, but a moral and strategic imperative to do so. I would agree with the President when he says that we need a steady hand at the helm. I think we can all agree that we need leadership that can be trusted to keep this union together. Do I think President Barreuco is the person to do that?” The Andorian paused and turned to finally look down at the centre podium. “I do not.”
“A lot has been demanded of this Council. You demand we accept your setbacks as something any leader would face. You demand we think of your triumphs when your failures have set this union back decades if not more. You demand our trust when you have betrayed that of the voters and this council. You wish us to hold Starfleet accountable for its failures when it has been your duty to do so on our behalf. To act as if members of this council have not, time and again, expressed misgivings about the conduct of the Starfleet Command and been met with deflection and obstinacy from your office is insulting to the intelligence of this chamber.”
“I will not stand here and say that what you say is a falsehood. The institutions of the Federation do need to be reformed for the galaxy we live in. Perhaps you are right to demand we rethink the role of the Federation Starfleet. Perhaps you are right that we cannot afford to suffer any more setbacks. I most certainly agree that we cannot afford at this point to let things continue as they have. But it is patently absurd to me, and to many others that this president – who considered our recent hostilities to be nothing more than a brush war – who refused to grant Starfleet the powers they demanded to operate properly – who in a moment of crisis would choose to blame others instead of shouldering the burdens of her high office – should be allowed to even consider himself the right person to lead us in this time.”
“Madam President, four years ago I supported your campaign for office because I believed you could see a path for the Federation that would take us truly into the twenty-third century. I thought that you could forge a government that would bring the core of our society together with its fledging siblings on the frontier. Instead, you have led us into the biggest disaster since the Romulan War. You have left our colonies, our allies and our friends isolated in a hostile galaxy. I do not doubt that there is a way out of this state of affairs, but we must plot that course with fresh leadership and fresh ideas, not with broken promises and flawed plans.”
“You want us to judge you on your achievements, Madam President. You want us to judge you on what you have done in office. Well, let me tell you what you have done, sir. You have failed to protect your constituents. You have failed to ensure their security, their safety, and their prosperity. You have failed to protect this Union from its enemies and yet you continue to demand we put our trust in you. You insist to us that you are the only person who can fix problems of your own creation and expect this council to take your word for it. Who do you think you are to demand trust from us after the last eighteen months? You have asked us to come together behind a united cause: behind a common belief. I think I know what that common belief is: that you have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, Madam President, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”[6]
As the chamber roared into life, Barreuco sat stunned, staring at Th’Rhahlat, who held her gaze firmly. Eventually, the President came back to her senses enough to begin calling for order, attempting to bring some control back to the body. It is difficult to know what Barreuco intended to do next; whether she was going to offer a rebuttal to an attack by one of her longest supporters or look to aid from the rest of her bloc. Whatever her plan was, she would never get to see it through, for the moment the chamber began to quiet down Council Xaall leapt to his feet.
“Xaall didn’t wait to be called. Instead, he just stared down at the President and demanded that the council be allowed to hold a vote of No Confidence in its’ chair.” There was a moment of shocked silence before the chamber immediately exploded again, as several councillors jumped up to second his motion while others attempted to shout them down. Motions of No Confidence are incredibly rare in Federation political procedure: since the foundation of the Council in 2161, they have only been called six times, with only two successful motions in that time. They are considered somewhat of an archaic procedure, dating from a time when the Federation Council served as closer to an overarching supernational body than the pseudo-central government it was in the 2250s. The last use of a motion had been in November 2245 and had toppled the Qasar administration in a landslide vote. That had been a completely different set of circumstances, however.
This motion had not been a planned move by Xaall (at least not for the 4th of April), but the energy in the chamber made it unavoidable. Despite everyone’s expectation of a much longer, vicious session, Th’Rhahlat had struck right to the core of the grievances in one swift blow. If the final attack on Barreuco was going to happen, it was going to happen now. Calling it so close to an election seemed also to hammer home Barreuco’s failings – her term only had a mere 6 months left at this point. “It was an insult. Xaall knew that. But he did it anyway.” Wescott’s view of the vote was very much resigned to its inevitability. “Once we were in a position where the Federation Council had to decide whether they wanted to line up behind the President, we were screwed. He’d never bothered to convert popular support into political support – she didn’t think she needed to.”
The vote did not take long; there is no cycling into separate lobbies or queuing up to vote like in older, more archaic bodies. The vote was called at 3:50 pm Paris time; by 4 pm, Barreuco had returned to her seat at the front of the chamber floor, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. Through their traditional role as the “Speaker” of the Federation Council, the results of a division are read out by the President. Thus, when the president stood up from her seat with an unreadable expression on her face, the entire chamber dropped to a hush instantly.
“The Ayes to the left, 38.” There was a pause for a second, as the president looked down at the screen in front of her. She swallowed, then looked back up. “The Noes to the right, 35.”[7] The president’s next words were not picked up on the speakers over the roar from the council, which cheered and booed with equal gusto. Once their immediate reactions had ceased, the president continued her duties in a quiet, sombre tone. “Under the terms of Article 21b of the Articles of the Federation , this council has found it has no confidence in the President of the United Federation of Planets. A special election will be held 80 days from now.”[8]
As Barreuco stepped away from the podium and walked into the council lobby floor, she could not help but twitch as the councillors behind her began congratulating Xaall. Wescott was waiting for her outside. “The President looked at me for a long, hard moment, sighed and then said. “I’ll be honest, Ken, I deserved that.”
No one doubted that the President would fight the election: she had more than enough votes in the chamber to pass the nomination process. The real question across all of First Contact week on everyone’s lips was “Xaall or Th’Rhahlat?” It was a moot point, in hindsight. The Tellarite Ambassador, despite his bellicosity, was deeply uninterested in the premiership. In fact, it was he who initiated the fateful meeting between himself and the Andorian Ambassador on First Contact Day that launched Th’Rhahlat’s campaign. “Xaall did not like central authority, or much of anything Archerism believed in. However, he despised Barreuco more, and that was enough for him.” Xaall was also distinctly aware that most of his opposition group would not follow him into an election – better, he believed, to bide his time and cement his support base for the next electoral cycle.
When Th’Rhahlat announced his intention to run on April 12th from the Shran Centre on Andoria, the Barreuco campaign accepted the challenge with apprehension. “We believed we knew how Th’Rhahlat worked,” Wescott wrote of the mood in the president’s office. “But then again, we also thought we would win a motion of no confidence.” The Andorian Ambassador sailed through the nomination process on the 17th, clearing the minimum number of supporting ballots before the president did. The election of 2258 had begun.
Barreuco vs. Ch’Shukar
It was clear by mid-May that the election was not going very well for President Barreuco. Gauging public opinion and mood across the Federation is a difficult task – our current pollsters barely manage it with 80 years of communications improvement on their predecessors in 2258 – but even the murmurs and hunches that reached the Barreuco campaign were enough to make it clear that unless there was a serious course correction on her part, she would most likely be looking for a new job at the end of July. The coalition that had carried her into office in 2254 had never been as stable as they had imagined – what relationships had survived in the Palais de Concorde had fundamentally not translated to political loyalty amongst the Federation electorate, for a myriad of reasons. It is worth remembering that “electioneering” on an interstellar scale was still arguably in its infancy, even a century after the election of President Haroun Al-Rashid. What experts there were, however, did not predict a good result for the President.
The election had quickly become fixated on the conduct of the Klingon conflict, as the public turned out to be deeply uninterested in infrastructure reforms when they were weighed against the war dead.[9] While there had been some significant rallies on Earth, Mars and Terra Nova, a few whistle-stop events on more distant planets had received much a more muted reception. Most elections in the UFP had not involved widespread campaigns across the Federation. Some had, especially in the first 40 years, but the rapid growth of membership and territory from the 2200s onwards made it impossible. Presidents’ speeches and rallies tended to be recorded and passed on to outer worlds, where electioneering was handled by local agents, politicians, and other interested individuals. 2258 was different; even with the limitations on deep space travel caused by the war, Th’Rhahlat was able to make it out far beyond the core worlds on a limited tour, making it as far as Benecia, the Rigel Colonies, and New Paris. It was an unprecedented step and one that directly undercut Barreuco’s winning strategy four years earlier.
It worked incredibly well; it was one thing to hear that a distant candidate had your interests at heart, and another thing entirely to see them in the flesh or shake their hand. By late May, Th’rhahalat’s campaign was steadily chipping away at the president’s base of support. His simple message of “A United Front, A United Federation” was cutting through to a polity that had long felt left behind by a government that had done little to expand its powers as the Federation grew. Barreuco’s own choice of slogan – “a strong and stable society” was proving to be more ironic commentary than an inspirational rallying cry in an election that saw him appear weaker and weaker by the day. While Presidents themselves are rarely ever affiliated with political parties, they are often endorsed by them, and Barreuco’s support amongst the organised planetary political parties was dramatically smaller than it had been in the 2254 election.
Events had also not helped her case. The loss of Admiral Cornwell and the USS Discovery near Xahea in a failed warp drive test hammered home the worrying situation in Starfleet. [10] The explosion had also crippled the USS Enterprise, which was forced to withdraw to Earth for four months at a time when the Klingon fleet was stepping up aggressive patrolling. The overworked 2nd Fleet was hard-pressed to maintain any resemblance of security on its’ patrol routes, an issue underlined by the rapid growth of piracy across most of 2258 as once-secure systems became bases for raiders. Confidence in the Federation was ebbing away rapidly, and to many, the cause seemed to be right at the top.
The President’s fate wasn’t sealed, however. As May turned to June, some wondered whether she might be able to weather the crisis, as her push for a stronger Federation core helped solidify her support base. What was curious, however, was how little her campaign had focused on Starfleet. It wasn’t as if her opponent had centred them in his campaign – it was just intriguing to most observers that she had chosen to ignore Starfleet reform when it was guaranteed to be a central issue in her prospective second term.
A significant amount of historiography has been devoted to understanding why Barreuco attended the Inquiry meeting on June 8th. Some, like Rel bavv Wren, have said that she was going to directly challenge Starfleet to prove her worth against them; others, like her official biographer Carlos Tzu have argued she felt obliged to go, considering how much the election campaign had become about Starfleet. A.G. Conte, however, is probably closer to the mark when they concluded the President decided to attend “because people told her not to, and when she was on edge, she didn’t like being told what to do.”[11] Perhaps she thought, with the knowledge that Th’Rhahlat was off world, she could seize the opportunity to steal a march on the “Starfleet Question” by controlling the narrative. Whatever her reasons were, against the advice of her staffers Barrueco announced her attention to attend Admiral Ch’Shukar’s deposition to the Starfleet Committee.
A permanent committee meeting did not legally require the president’s presence: merely that of the five councilmembers who were on said committee. There was some precedent to President’s attending said meetings – especially when the issue was politically contentious – but not during an election campaign. So, when she strolled into the meeting five minutes before it began, there were more than a few surprised looks from the attendees, especially the Starfleet officers preparing to deliver their findings.
Matt Decker was finishing his adjustments to Admiral Ch’Shukar’s notes when Barreuco arrived. “I looked up from my notes to see [the President] conversing with Ambassador Tilly. Honestly, that was the last thing I’d been expecting. I turned to Ishita and said, ‘what the hell is she doing here?’ she looked up and groaned, which about summed up our feelings on the matter.” The Inquiry’s staff had spent the last two months frantically working to turn their 300-page report into something that could lead to tangible change in the way Starfleet operated. They’d pulled support and ideas from countless more sources than they had originally envisioned – even going as far as to liaison with the UESPA and Andorian Imperial Guard and even discuss ideas with the Federation Marine Corps. It was a tight sell, but also a complicated, technical one, designed to appeal directly to the well-informed members of the Starfleet Committee. It was not one designed for soundbites in news roundups.
“Uncle Shu” had painstakingly worked to keep himself and his juniors out of politics since the election had begun. This was not because he thought it was irrelevant – more that he didn’t want politicians to use the review for their own means. “[Ch’Shukar] had a game plan. We didn’t know what it was yet, but he had one, and he made sure we stuck to it even if we didn’t know what we were doing.” Files were kept in sealed drives on a need-to-know basis, and despite various attempts by councillors, journalists, and other Starfleet Admirals to get a look at what would be said on the 8th, no one had succeeded. When Admiral Ch’Shukar stepped up to the podium at 1:30 pm, the assembled Ambassadors, press and visitors were watching with bated breath.
Ch’Shukar did not pull any punches. He made clear the structural failings of Starfleet Command: their inefficient decision-making process; the unproductive imbalance between Exploratory and Tactical Command; the poor state of Starfleet logistics; the collapse of confidence in the ability of the fleet to protect colony worlds and space lanes. He detailed in full the structural failures of the Starfleet Command, ignoring the uncomfortable looks he was getting from Admiral Luteth as he did so. His briefing on the technological and design failures of Federation Starships was grim news to many who had wondered why Starfleet losses had been so widespread. “It was very business-like stuff, to give him his credit. We didn’t know much about Uncle Shu at this point, but in that first half an hour we learnt a lot. Primarily, that he only ever says something if he feels he needs to, and if he does you better listen.”
The most chilling part of the presentation was the conclusions on Federation Security. The collapse of the 2nd and 4th Fleets, along with the losses faced on other fronts to compensate, would have serious effects on all of Starfleet’s missions in the region. Beyond the knock-on effect on Scientific and Exploratory missions, the lack of ships would mean a significant reduction in planetary aid missions, convoy escorts and more critically, the ability of Starfleet to counter aggression from any enemy. “Federation Starships,” he warned, “are not just warships, and they not just science vessels. They are the physical embodiment of Federation values: compassion; security; friendship; a desire to know more and a will to improve. And for the millions of our fellow citizens who live out on the frontier, they are the only link between their new homes and their old. Unless drastic action is taken the improvements in connectivity, in space lane safety and in internal security made in the south-eastern quarter of Federation space will be reversed within the next five years, with all the ramifications to governance that entails.”
Ambassador Tilly spoke up at this point. “Are you saying that unless we devote ourselves to reforming and refitting Starfleet, we could face another Tarsus IV?”
“If by that, Ambassador, you mean we could see a collapse in the ability of the Federation to sustain its colony worlds, then yes I do.” The implications here were immense – Tarsus IV still haunted Federation politics as an example of what happens if expansion outstripped the ability of Federation central to support it.
“Do you have a solution?” Tilly asked, not really expecting one. The affirmative response from the Admiral should not have been a surprise, but the raised eyebrow from the Earth Ambassador (and from the President) betrayed their shock.
To make up for the fleet losses, Ch’Shukar proposed a complete reassessment of the design standards and provisions for new Federation Starships. Instead of focusing on large, high-power vessels, the current priority was smaller ships – frigates, destroyers and most critically light cruisers – that could perform the day-to-day patrol work of Starfleet adequately. Several of these designs – such as the Avenger, Diana and Laikan Class – had been stuck in development hell for most of the 2250. These would prioritise over the high-cost plan to build four new Constitution Class vessels.[12] There would also be an expansion in the construction of Pioneer and Capella class ships, which had proved themselves capable as all-round utility cruisers despite their limited size and range.[13]
Alongside plans for new light cruisers, the Admiral suggested that Starfleet could alleviate the losses of the Klingon War within 50 months, if not earlier. While on paper most of the ships on the drawing board were not as technologically advanced, the new ships (unlike almost all of the pre-war fleet) would be built from the bottom up around the duotronic systems of Richard Daystrom, putting them miles ahead of their replacements in raw computing power. What was more controversial was his additional suggestion that Starfleet Command should invest in a fleet of short-range, high-power “Fast Starships” to be used on the Klingon and Romulan front.
This design brief had existed for several years – the first Kirov class ships had been launched as early as 2254, as had the initial prototype Ranger class – but had been rejected after trials had found them to be unsuitable for long-term patrols. Ch’Shukar proposed turning this flaw into an advantage: their spaceframes would allow them to carry heavier weapons for shorter operations instead of focusing on sustainability. Matt Decker (who had helped put the suggestion together) put the proposal more bluntly. “We were proposing they build a bunch of battlecruisers and organise them into permanent combat squadrons. No one said that out loud, but we all knew that’s what they were. We wanted to build D7 killers.”
The administrative reforms were the biggest challenge. Ch’Shukar proposed the abolition of the Admiral’s Council as a key decision-making organisation, to be replaced by a single body that would sit above both the Tactical Command and the Exploratory Command. The position of “Commanding Officer, Starfleet Operational Command” would have authority over the planning and nature of day to Starfleet operations, as well as directly over the fleet organisation and strategic directives. Tactical Command would be given direct authority over Exploratory Command based on the discretion of the new ‘Commander, Starfleet’ to prevent any dispute over authority in time-sensitive situations. “Commander, Starfleet” would sit on the new “Admiral’s Council” – now renamed the “Joint Board of Starfleet Admirals”. This body would, however, be an administrative and grand strategic one – it would not be tasked with making day-to-day operational decisions for Starfleet’s operating forces.
The operating structure of fleets would be reformed around potential fronts, as opposed to focusing on the old “compass” point system, with a specific “Klingon Border Operations Command” to cover the length of the Klingon border along with other new commands to cover the Romulan and Tholian Border. This, combined with a clear chain of command from the top to the bottom, was patently designed to turn Starfleet into a force that could fight a military campaign seriously. Ch’Shukar’s plan would represent the biggest restructuring of Starfleet since its’ foundation in 2161. While he was not asking for the end to the scientific mission, he was asking for the powers to be put in place to side-line said mission when the time was deemed necessary. It was a significant change in Starfleet’s role – one that had been discussed for a long time but dismissed by an Admiralty that did not see it as necessary and politicians who considered it to be too contentious an issue to talk about. But now it could not be avoided. What was presented here was a clear path to a stronger Starfleet that could protect Federation Interests without (arguably) sacrificing its Humanitarian and Scientific role.
Then Barreuco made his fatal mistake. “[Barreuco] had listened in silence so far,” Wescott noted. “She’d made a few notes, nodded politely, the usual stuff. However, when the Admiral began discussing permanent fleet patterns and new ship classes, she perked up. When Ch’Shukar paused for any comments, the president leaned forward, meeting the Admiral’s eye line. ‘Are you asking, Admiral, to turn the Federation Starfleet into a military organisation?’ She asked the million-credit question. Someone had to. We just wish she hadn’t been the one to do it.”[14]
The question the President had asked had plagued Starfleet since its parent organisation had been founded in 2141: was it military service or not? As far as the constitution was concerned, it wasn’t the defence of the United Federation of Planets, at least legally, handled by the individual defence forces of the member worlds, acting in conjunction and coordination with the Federation Starfleet. As far as the founders were concerned, Earth Starfleet’s role as the primary defence force of Earth over the UESPA was an exception to the rule.[15] Starfleet was meant to be a scientific and exploratory agency that could, in emergencies, act as a defensive arm. Thankfully, Federation political culture had no intention of repeating the “founder worship” that had doomed many a constitutional democracy to stagnation and decline. When it needed to change how it worked, it did.
By the 2180s and 90s (arguably even the mid-2160s) it was clear that Starfleet’s role in exploration and expansion meant that it could not avoid its role as military service. The simple fact was that the rate of expansion was rapidly outstripping the capabilities of the member-world defence forces. Starfleet had more resources than all of them combined. Her ships were faster and increasingly better armed, and more importantly, their ships were the ones that had to fight off Nausicaan and Orion Pirates or protect colonies from Klingon raids. So, Starfleet, whether it liked it or not, took on many less obvious but more important elements that define a military fleet. It set up patrol routes; designed and launched ships to serve as border pickets and convoy protection vessels; held fleet exercises and wargames; expanded the Academy in San Francisco; drew officers from the great military academies, and built its own at Portsmouth, England and Laikian on Andoria. T’Kuvmas War, along with the campaigns against the Tholians, Kzinti and Orion merely confirmed that Starfleet was taking on the role of a military organisation. That didn’t mean it was any good at that role, however, or more importantly that it wanted it. By asking the question out loud, Barreuco wasn't just accusing Ch'Shukar of jingoism; she was accusing Starfleet of abandoning her mission: in a sense, she was blaming Starfleet for taking the role it had no choice but to take.
It is quite clear, in retrospect, that Ch’Shukar had been waiting for that question. He didn’t make it so clear in his own writings on interviews, attesting that he hadn’t prepared for the question, but frankly, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made Rear Admiral.[16] He was ready, and he needed to be.
He looked up at the President's podium for a second, in thought, then shook his head. "No Madam President. I am saying that unless we change how Starfleet operates, it will have no choice but to become one. The Federation is a large and expanding union, and as such, it has a multitude of interests that must be defended. Eighteen months of hostilities have confirmed that even against a disorganised military campaign, we are incapable of engaging in any military action with a power that has any parity with us. I think we can agree that is an unacceptable situation."
"But Admiral," she countered. "You are asking me – and this council - to authorize a programme of expansion not seen since the Romulan War. You are suggesting that Starfleet centralise authority in military hierarchies. You are proposing that Starfleet go against nearly 100 years of operating procedure and create standing fleets. As I understand it, Admiral, you would have us create a fleet of dreadnoughts to lie in harbour so they can sally forth to fight the Klingons." Barreuco, never missing the opportunity to make an overzealous, convoluted, and esoteric jab, leant forward in her chair to glare down into the chamber. "I'm not sure Starfleet needs a new Jackie Fisher, Admiral Ch'Shukar, does it?" Barreuco was tapping into a century’s worth of unease about the military aspects of Starfleet Command. Many feared the concept of Starfleet (and thus the authority of Federation Central) having its hands on a fleet of all-powerful warships mustered and ready to enforce authority on member worlds when they did not bend the knee to the powers that be. Militarisation had only ever come in reaction to over-the-horizon threats like the Kzinti, Orion and Klingons, but even the Federation political class remained incredible sceptical of an exploratory force armed that was better armed than most other nations’ armed forces. The universal presence of Starfleet within the UFP – as an aid agency, scientific body, colonising arm and in some cases judicial body – made the prospect of militarisation even more concerning. Appealing to the Archerite principle of limiting Starfleet’s military aspects was a natural path for Barreuco to choose, and probably more of an instinctive reaction than a calculated one.
Uncle Shu was very much aware of this line of attack and wasn’t about to roll over in front of it. “I do not know who Jackie Fisher is, Mr President, so I cannot tell you whether Starfleet needs him or not. However, I can tell you what it does need. It needs new ships. It needs new bases. It needs a new operational structure. It needs decisive leadership from the smallest ship to the highest admiral, and it needs it now.”[17]
“Why now, Admiral?” the President asked. “Surely, we can wait to see how the situation. If we expect aggression from the Klingon Empire, then aren’t we are almost asking for it?”
Ch’Shukar visibly bristled at this accusation. “This reform is not about fighting the Klingon Empire, Mr President. It is about making sure our space lanes are safe. About protecting our colony worlds from piracy and slave-raiding. This is about bringing Starfleet into the 23rd century. This is not the galaxy of Shran and Archer sir. While the Federation is larger, the galaxy we live in is much busier. It is full of those who at best view our ideals with scorn, and at worst wish destruction on us all.”
Barreuco retorted, “Admiral, Starfleet’s primary mission is to seek out new life; to explore strange new worlds; not to practice gunboat diplomacy and build fleets of warships.”
Ch’Shukar’s answer was immediate. “There is no point, ma’am, in seeking out new life and new worlds if we cannot defend them. We discovered that in the Romulan War a century ago and have had a harsh reminder in the recent Klingon conflict. We must show strength to our adversaries if we are to continue our primary mission.”
Barreuco seemed to be taking every reply from the Admiral personally at this point. “And giving Starfleet more powers is the way to do that? Has this council not, countless times in the last decades, decided otherwise without significant ramifications to our security?”
“There have been consequences sir. The Tholian Incursions. The Four Years’ War. Our recent war with the Empire. Those conflicts would not have been so serious, or our losses so great, if Starfleet had been given the adequate resources to prepare for them by the Federation Council.”
“Federation Central cannot be held responsible for tactical failures.”
“But, as I have detailed, it has some responsibility in the internal failures of Starfleet. We cannot deny that. Change needs to come, sir, otherwise we will not be able to face our enemies with confidence. That is what our job as Starfleet officers is, Madam President. But we cannot do that without the right resources, or political support.”
“At this point,” Wescott notes, “we decided to get him the hell out of there. The President was taking this whole thing far too personally. She had, however, decided not to look at the messages we were sending to her console, which was an extremely bad habit of hers.”
Wescott was considering sending an aide to the Council floor to intercede when Ambassador Sarek cut in. “I think, Madam President, we should let the Admiral finish his presentation before deliberating the merits of his proposals. Or, I might add, his ideological standpoint.”
Barreuco, caught out by this intervention (and by the naked condescension in Sarek’s voice), faltered at this point, before sitting back down. It was hard not to miss the sheepish look on her face, or the look of disapproval on Ambassador Tilly’s. She had made a fool of herself by challenging Ch’Shukar on something that was (quite rightly) deemed a necessary step to make Starfleet a functional force going forward. Her deeply defensive nature meant she took much of it personally – even if it had never been aimed at him in the first place. Uncle Shu had aimed his ire at Federation Central’s ambivalence towards Starfleet and the President had deliberately stepped into the firing line.
Building an Arsenal of Freedom
Would Barreuco have still lost if he’d hadn’t staked her political career on beating Ch’Shukar? For a very long time, that was the consensus. It was what she believed; what Th’Rhahlat believed, and Broadhurst and Wescott after him. “Political consensus still says that people care about Starfleet,” Wescott would comment on the matter. “Whether they say it or not, you don’t come after Starfleet unless you’ve got a damn good reason to.”[18] What Wescott ignores here is that the opposition groups that eventually brought Barreuco down were not related to her struggle with the Starfleet reforms. Barreuco was the last of an old school of hands-off Federation leaders, whose approach to governance had been harshly punished by the colonial disasters of the 2240s. Her approach to foreign policy and inter-member relations was always going to be a wild disappointment on the frontier, especially when compared with Th’Rhahlat’s concise and clear promises for electoral reform. Barreuco could not compete with an opponent who promised an end to the dominance of the core worlds so succinctly, especially when such reform was tied so strongly to promises of stronger security arrangements on the edge of Federation space.
The President’s electoral coalition was never as strong as either she or her closest supporters imagined it to be. When the results came on July 13th, the scale of the swing against the president was clear. Almost all the votes that had brought him into power in 2254 had turned out for Th’Rhahlat, who was able to gather a comfortable majority of 52 councillors within a few weeks of polling day. Wescott remembered running into Barreuco a few days later as they began packing their offices to leave. “I’d like to say she took it on the chin. She really hadn’t. She spent ten minutes telling me how Uncle Shu and Th’Rhahlat had conspired to ‘do him in’. Honestly, I think She needed a break from work anyway.”
What effect did the confrontation in the committee have? What can be agreed on, is that by casting Starfleet Reform as a necessity caused by political failures, Ch’Shukar all but guaranteed that most of his reforms would be passed: if not by this Federation Council and the next president, then by their successors. He had tied the failure of the war to the failure of Barreuco’s political generation, and their ambivalence towards the defence of the Federation. Success for Starfleet, and survival for the Galaxy’s largest democracy, could only come if she was defended well. Uncle Shu had laid out a plan to do so (and successfully presented it as the only plan), and Barreuco’s refusal to accept it only made sure that said plan would be adopted as soon as possible.
July and August were bittersweet months for Starfleet. Th’Rhahlat’s victory was seen by many as a sign for cautious optimism. However, they remained thinly stretched across much of the Klingon Disputed Area, which was rapidly becoming an extremely lawless part of Federation Space. Freebooters, prospectors, pirates and others were filling the void, and the few ships on patrol were hard pressed to try and maintain any semblance of law and order. More worryingly, Klingon warships were turning up in places further and further away from the ceasefire line, threatening convoys, and challenging Federation vessels in greater numbers than before.
President Th’Rhahlat’s inauguration speech on September 7th, delivered from the steps of the Palais de Concorde had made it very clear that whatever else happened in his presidency, he was not about to step away from the question of Starfleet or Foreign Policy. “If we are to maintain this Federation of as a bastion of democracy – a beacon of hope amongst the stars, then we must – no, I say we need to act as more than a refuge for the masses. We must become an arsenal of freedom that can protect those who cannot be protected. We must become a warehouse of salvation for those who cry out for aid in times of desperation. We must become a library of liberty, where those who yearn for freedom can discover its roots and become their better selves. We must discover new ways to say ‘friend’ and ‘ally’. We have a duty to protect what we have as a Union, yes: but we have a further, higher duty: to extend that union, and that protection, to all who ask for it. We must present a united front to the galaxy, but not a hostile one.”
Admiral Ch’Shukar would meet the new President four days after the Inauguration on September 11th. They had spoken briefly at the Federation Day Parade a month earlier, but only now did they meet to discuss policy. It is often forgotten that the two men did not like each other. Ch’Shukar thought that the incoming President was far too parochial, a micromanager who preferred tinkering with small problems to the grand problems of leadership; that he had a bad taste in political allies and a worse taste in romantic partners. Th’Rhahlat thought that “Uncle Shu” was far too happy to speak back to superiors even when he knew he was wrong; that he had no respect for elected officials, and none for the exploratory aim of Starfleet either, and more importantly (to Th’Rhahlat at least), that the Admiral had no time for Andorian Synthetic Classical.[19] The two men, however, had mutual respect for each other, based almost entirely on the only thing they had in common: they meant what they said.
It is unclear why exactly the meeting had been called in the first place. The President’s diary says that he had invited the Admiral to discuss the implementation of the review’s suggestions, which had been dubbed the ‘Ch’Shukar Plan’ by the Federation Media. The Admiral’s memoirs, however, attest that the president had invited him in to “put [him] in his place.” Whether or not Th’Rhahlat’s aim had been to make his authority clear, Ch’shukar had no intention of being cast aside. “I made it very clear to the president that the scale of this plan meant that it could not simply be handed over to the Admiral’s council, who would then be expected to disband themselves and form a strict chain of command. They would never do that. Starfleet needed direct leadership - firm leadership. I laid out the extent to which my plans needed clear guidance from start to finish. They couldn’t be handed over to a committee. One person would have to do it. I would have to do it.” Whether the Admiral was that brazen in the meeting is unknown, but whatever Th’Rhahlat thought of him, he agreed that Starfleet needed clear leadership if this plan was to succeed.
The President gave Ch’Shukar an unreadable look, then simply said “You want the job, then.” He didn’t need to say which job. The Admiral said he did, and supposedly, that was the end of the argument. The rest of the two-hour meeting was spent doing what both liked doing most: agreeing with each other about what vital work needed to be done. The Shukar Plan was approved on the 14th of September by the Federation Council, with the changes to the command structure of Starfleet authorised to begin on the 17th. The position of Commanding Officer, Starfleet Operational Command would be created on that day, with Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar as its first official holder.
Starfleet had spent most of the year waiting to see what would come of the Ch’Shukar report, and the collective sigh of relief on the 14th was almost unanimous. “We were damn worried we’d done all that work for nothing,” Matt Decker wrote to his wife when he heard the news. “Now Uncle Shu was in the central chair. We’d have been happier if he’d ended up in that chair a year ago, but we take what we get at the end of the day.” The next two months would see drastic changes at the top of Starfleet as the reforms were implemented. Six new ship classes were approved for mass production in eight weeks of furious committee meetings and sent to the construction lines as quickly as possible. The new reorganisation of fleet commands, while drastic and somewhat confusing, was merely the codification of what already existed on the frontier. Agatha Drake, C-in-C Second Fleet, was promoted to the much-deserved position of Vice Admiral and made CO of the newly formed Klingon Command, with the 2nd & 4th fleets under her along with the smaller Triangle Squadron. More critically, Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter was rewritten to reprioritise the role of Starfleet Intelligence over that of other security services on the advice of Commander Ash Tyler.
New names were also brought into the ranks of the high command. Heihachiro Nogura was promoted to full Admiral and made Chief of Starfleet Operations, where he would oversee the review and overhaul of much of the recruitment and training procedure of Starfleet personnel, shaping the careers of many of Starfleet’s greatest captains. The members of the review board received their marching orders with a spring in their step. Mendez, Decker, and Gupta returned to the centre chair of their new commands (the Excalibur, Constellation and Ish-v’kar respectively). Captain Stone would become head of the new (and already controversial) Starfleet Wartime Planning Division in London, England. Captain Chandran was appointed Starfleet Liaison to the Federation Commission for Diplomatic Affairs. Their collective mindset, forged in a year spent in the bowels of the Presidio would have major influences on the way Starfleet thought of itself for the 2260s, if not longer.
The changes to operations could be felt down the chain of command. Officers like Jim Kirk and Ron Tracey were brought together to form the new Command Training School at Starfleet Academy, while engineers like Marvick and Daystrom were brought back into Starfleet after years in the cold to perfect and supplement new designs with their expertise. Peter Toussaint could feel the change in energy even out on patrol. “It was like we all had a new spring in our step. We’d been floating aimlessly since the ceasefire, trying to figure out exactly what we were meant to do now. Were we staying in this part of space, with the overstretched resources we had? Were we to withdraw, and leave the Klingons to take it? We knew what we were doing now. Starfleet was here to stay, and we were going to go toe to toe with the Klingons wherever they reared their heads.”
The momentum for change had been building in Starfleet for a long time, and with Uncle Shu in the top office, it was finally being let loose. “The Presidio finally had a spring in its step,” Ch’Shukar said of his first months as Commander, Starfleet. “They really wanted to get on with the job at hand. I’m glad they wanted to because the Klingons weren’t going to wait for us to be ready. They had their own plans going on and we need to be ready to react fast.” Starfleet Command may have wanted to spend 2259 finding its feet after a tumultuous year, but across the Disputed Area, the Klingon Empire had other ideas. The year after the war had been just as eventful on Qo’noS, but the Imperial Fleet had never stepped back from asserting itself. Now, however, Chancellor L’Rell’s authority had seen off all challenges at home, and she turned outwards towards the Empire’s greatest threat to existence: The United Federation of Planets.
[1] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli: The Life and Times of Byss Th'rhahlat (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2300)
[2] The Colonial Committee represented the non-voting representatives of Federation colony worlds that had yet to accede to full Council Membership. Before the passage of the Colonial Reform Act in 2263 it was heavily criticised for prioritising the interests of current members over that of the colonists.
[3] While weekends have no real legal or social importance on Earth or in parliamentary procedure, they are traditionally considered days where business is not scheduled if the council is in session.
[4] When the council is in session and the Ambassador is not present, one of their several juniors will act in their place
[5] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli
[6] It is almost certain that Th’Rhahlat, a consummate Anglophile, was directly quoting Old British Parliamentarian Leo Amery in the 1940 debate on war with Hitlerite Germany.
[7] The two abstentions were Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan and Ambassador Wenra Karash of Orodanga.
[8] The shorter Campaigning season of elections before the 2288 Electoral Reform act were down to the fact that colony worlds did not vote directly for presidential candidates.
[9] Nick O. York, "The 'Redshirt Election' of 2258" (Paris: Federation Political History No.34/1, 2303)
[10] The history of the USS Discovery and the mycelial project has only recently been declassified, and even then not in its entirety. Much of the project will most likely remain seal for several decades, if not centuries to come under the terms of the Temporal Security Act of 2273. For more, please see George Daystrom, “A Lost Visionary: Paul Stamets and the quest for the Mycelial Network.” (San Francisco: Engineering Historical Review, No.4, 2288.)
[11] A.G. Conte, The Furious Folly of Erick Barreuco
[12] The Plans for new Constitution Class ships were delayed by the need for a redesign after flaws in the USS Enterprise’s design were found to be linked to the class-wide refit all vessels undertook across 2254-2255.
[13] The Utility Cruiser is a short-lived designation that emerged in the 2230s. They were characterised by their large support facilities and reliability, which came at the expense of weaponry and range. Most would be made obsolete by the introduction of the Miranda class in the late 2260s.
[14] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[15] Stanley Wilkinson, Learning to Fly
[16] Peraa Zh'tyvohr, ‘Blue Jackie’ The Biography of Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar, 2188-2296 (Andoria: Laikan Historical Press, 2300)
[17] In his memoirs, Ch’Shukar admits he knew exactly who Jackie Fisher was.
[18] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[19] There is a well-known story that for the President’s 61st Birthday in 2260, Admiral Ch’Shukar was invited to attend a performance of Ch’Sellack Symphony in the President’s honour. As he could not openly refuse an invitation from the palais to attend the 9-hour long concert, the Admiral avoided the ordeal by arranging a fleet review in Axanar for the same date.