1: The Ploughshare Navy
Starfleet and Burnham’s War
"Until we have enough ships to Match the D7 whenever it appears, we will never regain anything close to the security we once had in the Klingon Border Area.” - Admiral Agatha Drake, C-in-C 2nd Fleet, 2258
"This isn’t over. Armistice or not, the Klingons are coming for us." - Captain Matthew Decker, 2257.
After the Battle
The first time Peter Toussaint saw a D7 Battlecruiser was in December 2257, when it tried to kill him. At the time, the future Captain of the USS Hood was the tactical officer of the USS Mikasa (NCC-988), a Magee Class light science cruiser that patrolled the Disputed Area between Federation and Klingon space. The Magee had been a state-of-the-art ship when it had been first designed and launched from the Andoria Fleet Yards. 18 years had passed since then, and the class was clearly on the way out. Squat, underpowered vessels, the hard limit on the possible spaceframe size in the dockyards over Andor meant that their warp nacelles were embedded into the main body of the ship in a haphazard fashion that resulted in cramped quarters, complicated power systems and the permanent risk of radiation leaks. "Her phasers barely worked, her shield grid was on the fritz and she could barely hold warp six for more than three hours at a time," Toussaint commented, “But Starfleet needed the ships.”[1] The border with the Klingon Empire – already an area fraught with danger before the 2256 war – was now a lawless place, and the few Starfleet ships left to keep the peace were struggling to keep up.
Toussaint had gained a lot of experience in the Klingon Border Area during his time with Starfleet, even if travelling the stars had never been something he’d dreamed of as a child. Born in New Berlin in 2226, the son of a lecturer at the University of Armstrong and a minor bureaucrat, Toussaint had always thought himself destined for a more earthbound career. “Starfleet wanted scientists, and as much as I loved the idea of being an explorer, I was never any good in science class.” Instead of enrolling in the Academy, he’d taken a history degree at the University of Utopia Planitia, where he enrolled as a reservist with the UESPA. “It was for a girl,” he commented dryly in his memoirs,” and even though she ignored me, I did have a good time there.” One day, an instructor called him in for a meeting. “They told me that they’d submitted my tactical scores to Starfleet and that I’d been offered a place for junior officer training. I could finish my degree at the same time and graduate straight into the fleet.” Unexpectedly (to both him and his fathers), he accepted. In 2247, he was commissioned as a Lt. Junior Grade in Starfleet and was posted to the USS Liberty (NCC-865), part of the Second Fleet.[2]
As assignments went, the Liberty was not exactly interesting - as an older Bonaventure class Exploration Cruiser, her duties were mainly limited to convoy escort, outpost resupply and routine patrol. Those duties did allow Toussaint to build a strong working knowledge of the colonies, mining outposts and independent worlds that lay in Federation patrolled space between the Klingon border and the core worlds of the UFP. “Beyond Beta Rigel lay a section of the galaxy for whom the Federation and Starfleet were merely one of half a dozen powers manoeuvring for control. We were the top dogs, but to say that it was Federation Territory would be ridiculous.”
The astrographic scale of the United Federation of Planets is well understood in the early 24th century. It is also, more importantly, legally defined and recognized by all the main powers in the quadrant. This has not been the case and was especially not so in the first two-thirds of the century beforehand. The Federation Charter defines the territorial boundaries of the UFP as a) a 23 LY region surrounding Earth, and then a 5 LY boundary around any member world outside that zone. This region – late enhanced to a 50 LY diameter bubble with a centre point on Wolf 424 – is “Federation Sovereign Territory” in a legal sense, but only contains around 45% of the UFP’s inhabited worlds, Starbases, and Outposts.[3] Beyond the ’sovereignty line’ is the immense, ill-defined, and poorly understood region known as the Federation Treaty Zone, which stretches far beyond the core worlds and even the colonial hubs of Beta Rigel, Regulus, and Antares. Federation Space is, so to speak, the wide expanse of the ‘final frontier’, where member world colonies and Starfleet bases intermingle with friendly, neutral, and opposing powers. The 5 LY exclusion zone still exists, but beyond that, space is governed by three things; Interstellar Treaty (which is not accepted by all) mutual respect, and trust (which is definitely not found in all spacefaring peoples), and Starfleet. It is the Federation Star Fleet – part exploration force, part peacekeeping armada – that allows the Treaty Zone to be more than just a political fiction.
Starfleet was not imagined as an enforcer of treaty; it was birthed by United Earth as an alternative to a military space force, based on principles of scientific endeavour. Even at the height of the Romulan War, military leadership lay in the hands of the United Earth Space Navy, even though over half of all combat vessels were Starfleet ships. The Federation Charter made provisions for peacekeeping to be handled by the joint defence forces of each member, but it was Starfleet – now a combined service of Humans, Andorians, Vulcans and Tellarites – that went out into the treaty zone, ostensibly to seek out new life and new civilizations, but often to perform the dull if vital work of power projection. The fleet – which in September 2161 consisted of only 46 vessels – would, by 2246 consist of nearly 800 ships of all shapes and sizes, from the smallest cutter to the massive Constitution Class Starship, all performing vital scientific, survey, and patrol tasks across the Treaty Zone and even beyond.[4] While the scientific discoveries of the fleet are prolific and clearly to be lauded, it is the effect that the fleet had on the Astro-political environment that left the strongest legacy.
The Stellar Service has always defined itself as a ‘peace-keeping force’, as opposed to a military one. Most critics lampoon this as a euphemism used to justify the ‘imperialist’ ambitions of the Federation. Those words should be taken seriously, however. Starfleet is not a non-interventionist force – no matter how General Order One is interpreted – but a force designed to ensure the preservation of sentient life and society at all costs. Jonathan Archer – the “Starfleet President” had set the precedents for Humanitarian intervention before the Federation had even been founded, and many of his principles were built into the new fleet that was formed after 2161. It was Admiral Shran, however, who oversaw the creation of the organisation that would turn the UFP from a small democratic confederation into a quadrant-sized power, through massive ship construction programs and the audacious Starbase Ring.[5] Shran had no qualms about what Starfleet was about. “The humans have a saying about beating swords into ploughshares. Well, the Stellar Navy does well enough with the ploughs. I don’t think we’ll need the swords that much.”
Starfleet’s priority was always to create, rather than destroy – to create a freer quadrant than the one it had been born into. It was Starfleet that challenged the dominance of the Orion Syndicate and reduced slavery from a norm to a fringe barbarity. Starfleet ships would be the ones that confronted Enolian cruisers as they attempted to extort independent worlds for trading rights. Starfleet escorts would protect legitimate trade into the borderland, and project nascent colony worlds from Klingon raiders. It was Starfleet – with the backing of the UFP and over 35 other independent governments – that introduced and enforced the first Stellar Travel Accepted Rights (STAR) Treaty, creating the first unified body of Interstellar Law in nearly 500 years.[6] Without Starfleet, the immense, uncontrolled, and rapid exodus of colony vessels from all species that occurred between 2170 and 2220 would have been virtually impossible. The incalculable number of planets and stars charted, anomalies discovered, hazards marked, and alien species identified by Starfleet’s vessels were key to turning the galaxy into a viable home for millions of prospectors and colonists.
It was not without its flaws – no organization ever is. Starfleet was a very ‘gung-ho’ force early on, with few of its own rules to prevent captains from interfering far beyond the necessary (or even moral) level. The case of Sigma-Iota II and the ‘Gangster Planet’ is commonly cited, but it was only one of the dozens of mishaps, overstretches, and wrong calls that occurred before a coherent set of regulations was enforced to ‘guide’ captains.[7] Certain damage could not be undone – not just to pre-warp planets, but to the Federation’s new neighbours too. With the leaps and bounds in Starship technology in the first 25 years of the 23rd century, Federation vessels were now decades ahead of their foes in almost every sense. It was a massive boost to both colonisation and commerce, but more critically it meant that the fleet could project power in a way it had never been capable of before. Overzealous Starship Captains, acting in defence of far-flung colonies and outposts, repeatedly challenged the authority of the Klingons, Tholians, and Orions right on their doorstep, precipitating conflict while not overtly calling for it. Border skirmishes soon followed, as subspace relays and sensor outposts were assaulted by foreign powers defending their claimed space. But Starfleet always rose to the challenge, never needing to draw its swords to truly defend itself. The Federation way of life – Democracy, Freedom, and Autonomy – would be protected, preserved, and expanded to all those who wished to enjoy it, and those who did not want it would be allowed to continue on their way. Those who challenged that way of life – and the “Union of Autonomy” through piracy, extortion, and Imperialism – would not be tolerated. Starfleet would beat their swords into ploughshares, no matter the cost.
‘The Ploughshare Navy’ held its own against Orion pirates, Klingon raiders, internal pirates, and half a dozen other enemies without even breaking a sweat. Even the Four Years’ War – a pivotal moment in Klingon and Orion history – barely saw a change in Starfleet’s operational tempo. Starfleet could challenge those foes and win (thus gaining immense support from smaller powers) without even breaking a sweat.[8] For the first 50 years, Starfleet had been forced to hold close to the Federation’s Sovereign Territory or work close patrol route to and from Starbases. But from the 2220s onwards, there was no such hesitancy to strike boldly into the dark. Starfleet vessels went further than anyone had gone before, and to plenty of places that others had gone, all carrying the Blue starred flag of the United Federation of Planets with them. There were stronger powers – everyone understood what could happen if the Romulans ever recovered from the last war, or if the Klingons ever reunited – but there was a feeling that this was never going to happen. Starfleet was the ’peace-keeping armada’ that had made the quadrant safe, and it would keep doing so. It was a complacent view, held on to tightly even as the pirates and raiders caught up technologically, or as new, threatening foes like the Tholian Assembly or the mysterious Gorn emerged on the edge of the Treaty Zone. But nothing changed. The ploughshares remained ploughshares, even as the enemies of the Federation began to sharpen their knives.
Peter Toussaint’s first assignment on the Liberty – escorting the Dilithium convoys out of Starbase K-4 – was a testament to this blasé attitude. The convoy carried much, if not all, of the Government mined Dilithium production from the Corvan arc (sometimes referred to as the ‘Dilithium Belt’ or the ‘Penthe Deposit’). The Dilithium trade out of the Belt was one of the most lucrative and vital in the Federation, and with good reason. Without Dilithium, the backbone of Federation society – the Warp Reactor – could not function at all.[9] Demand had only increased across the quadrant as Matter-Antimatter annihilation replaced nuclear fusion as the main energy production system.[10]
“Starfleet planners seemed to think that the Dilithium convoy was a postal route,” Toussaint commented with scorn. “Postal routes don’t require phaser crews on standby 24 hours a day to keep the raiders off your back.” As a Lieutenant in charge of a phaser room, he and his juniors spent three days on post or waiting for action, catching minutes and hours of sleep at a time. “I asked the Second Officer, a Tellarite called Zonn, if this was a bad attack. He merely laughed at me and said, ‘My boy, this is routine.’ If this is routine at peacetime, what’s going to happen when we’re at war?”
Toussaint’s fear of Interspace war was not unfounded. Klingon intrusions into Federation ``space” had become near-constant since 2250, and the Second and Fourth Fleets who patrolled the border were simply overworked. On top of their convoy orders and anti-piracy duties , they were still receiving new exploration and survey directives at a time when they simply could not be directed to those tasks. Many Captains such as Kelvar Garth or Laurence FitzPatrick were already referring to the conflict as a war in their correspondence and attempting to organise as such, with serious pushback from the Presidio.[11] Attempts to restrain further expansion of duties, let alone suggestions that space be ceded to the Klingons, fell on deaf ears. The Admiral did not believe it was necessary at all to restrain the ‘Empire of Autonomy’ by ordering settlers not the rile up the Klingons, or to admit that a backward feudal monarchy had any legitimate claims over the planets that free citizens had stuck their roots into.
It all came to a head at the Battle of Binary Stars. A subspace relay connected two sensor outposts was disabled by a member of a Klingon Fringe group. The USS Shenzhou – commanded by one of Starfleet’s best, Phillipa Georgiou – went to investigate, only to find itself ambushed by Klingon radicals under the command of the radical religious leader, T’Kuvma, who had raised a fleet of reactionary zealots even the rump High Council disproved of.[12] What they did not disprove of, however, was his rallying cry against ‘Federation expansionism’ and the ‘destruction of Klingon culture’ by the humans and their thralls. It was a longstanding Klingon argument, dating back to the first period of cultural contact, and one that was well-received by a political elite losing strength amongst the masses.[13] All twenty-four houses came to T’Kuvma’s side at the Binary Stars, and together they smashed the Starfleet task force into shards in just under five hours. The crippling of the core of the 2nd Fleet at the battle of the Binary Stars (along with the death of Admiral Anderson) put Starfleet on the backfoot immediately, and even the disorganized Klingon offensive was enough to knock them off balance. Klingon raiding turned into a full-blown offensive along the entire line of contact, from the Triangle to the Taurus Reach.[14] Starfleet’s recovery was shaky, restricted by an unhelpful government and unwilling admiralty, the shaky stalemate within the disputed area held together by miracles from all parties.[15] The disappearance of the USS Discovery in late 2256 ended the lucky streak, and defeats at Kelfour II, Iridin, Starbase 19 and a dozen other sites broke the back of Starfleet’s defensive front. Klingon fleets poured into the core of the Federation, laying waste to planets and bases as they continued their ‘quest to rid the galaxy of the human menace’.[16]
The Liberty had not been present at the Binary Stars, but her assignment to convoy duty was soon replaced by a constant barrage of demands to protect colony worlds and Federation allies, for whom the pretence of Starfleet protection was suddenly worth very little. “It was a complete disaster,” Toussaint wrote of these dark days when the Liberty had warped from system to system, trying to protect outposts and stations while hiding from the massive Klingon raiding pirates. “Frankly, we were saved more by the Klingons fighting each other than by the actions of the Presidio.” The Liberty’s luck ran out in February 2257 three parsecs from the Rigel system, when she was jumped by a squadron of Klingon vessels. “The Birds of Prey jumped us while we were trying to repair our torpedo tubes and hammered us until our shields collapsed one by one. We would have been slaughtered by her boarding parties if the Farragut hadn’t shown up to save our bacon.”[17] The Liberty, however, had to be abandoned. Her surviving crew was ferried to Rigel VII, where they were immediately pressed onto recrewing the vessels of Captain Matthew Decker’s “Seabee Squadron”, the ragtag fleet of mothball ships, Corps of Engineer craft, and support vessels that now served as the Rigel Colonies’ only line of defence. “I’d just finished bringing the Mikasa’s Phasers back online when word came through. The Klingons were withdrawing. It was over. Just like that, they’d given up. They’d smashed Starbase 1 - hell, they were halfway to Earth by the time they turned around. It seemed impossible to us.”
Like the rest of Starfleet, Toussaint was shocked by the Klingon’s sudden withdrawal. However, as news of L’Rell’s extraordinary coup d’etat filed through diplomatic channels (mainly through the mutual embassies on Acamar and, surprisingly, Orion), the nature of the Klingon withdrawal became apparent. L’Rell had managed what no other Klingon had done for nearly a century (except, briefly for T’Kuvma) - unite the Great Houses behind a Chancellor with power and authority, guided by the one thing Klingons understood above all: force and honour.[18]
“We were grateful for her intervention,” Toussaint noted, “but it was clear that she’d done us no favours. We looked weak. We were weak. And the Klingons weren’t going to do anything to disprove that.” As one of the few larger vessels left in the Second Fleet, she was assigned as part of the ‘fire brigade’, sent out to fly the flag and continue much of the patrol duties that had brought Starfleet ships to neutral systems in this area of space regularly in the past. “We were acting as if the last Eighteen months hadn’t happened, and no one was buying it - especially when the Klingons appeared.”
This was how the USS Mikasa, under the command of Captain Angella Fukuhara found itself in orbit over the colony of New Richmond[19], staring down a D-7 Battlecruiser above the Federation Colony. Richmond’s administrator, Bernard Marner had requested Federation aid after receiving a transmission from a Klingon commander demanding an immediate tribute of Pergium under threat of planetary bombardment. Sensibly, he’d asked for time to gather the materials and transmitted a distress signal, which the USS Mikasa picked up. Unfortunately, so did the Klingons.
“The Klingon ship waited in the far shadow of the second moon until we’d moved into close orbit and sacrificed all of our maneuverability,” Toussaint noted. “On our sensors, she barely showed up as anything larger than a Bird-of-Prey. We could have handled a Bird of Prey. Not her.”
The D-7 had dropped on top of the Mikasa, pinning her between the planet and the L-1 Lagrange point. “She had our range at 250,000 kilometers and we could barely scratch her at 100,000. Her pass took our shields down to 40 per cent, and knocked out our main phasers. We didn’t even leave our dent.” Captain Fukuhara attempted to contact the Klingon ship to no avail. “The Captain didn’t want to leave. It was a Federation Colony below us: our citizens - the people we had sworn to protect. But we couldn’t protect them if we were in small pieces burning up in orbit.” On her third pass, the Mikasa managed to get a clean hit on the Battlecruiser, knocking out the Klingon’s impulse engines for a short while, and Fukuhara took the opportunity to withdraw. Two hours later, New Richmond began beaming its tribute to the Klingon ship.
“It was humiliating,” Toussaint wrote, reflecting the dejected and bitter feeling the crew felt. “We couldn’t even match them in our own space now - if this even was our space now.” What made the shock worse was the lack of knowledge around the D-7. “I thought it was a new ship, but when I was going over the Tactical analysis with Lieutenant Grayson, she matched to ship profiles that were as much as a decade old. How had this been overlooked? Had the Klingons been roaming around with a Battlecruiser since the 2240s and we just haven't noticed? No wonder we’d nearly lost the war to them. The Klingons are the real deal now, and we had pretended that they weren’t because it made life easier for us. It was fruitless to pretend otherwise.” The Ploughshare Navy had never forged its swords, and it had paid for that dearly.
Starfleet’s Crisis of Inaction
The 2256-57 escalation of Klingon warfare shocked Starfleet Command to the core. While the border between the two states had always been difficult to delineate, the extent to which Federation Authority had been swept back as far as Axanar and Rigel had shocked many at Starfleet Command, though not as much as the attack on Starbase One and the averted raid on earth had. The focus and determination of the T’Kuvmaite forces threw the Federation into a crisis that it had not faced since the Earth-Romulan War.
Starfleet’s grasp on the war, distant at best, slipped entirely after the disappearance of the USS Discovery after the battle of Pahvo. The use of early cloaking technology (which would be rendered obsolete almost immediately by the end of the war) shattered the ability of the overstretched Second and Fourth Fleet’s to hold the line, and soon Federation colonies, transports and hospital ships were regular prey for Klingon raiding parties.[20] The destruction of Starbases 22, 12 and 19 saw the 4th Fleet reduced to such a negligible strength that it was almost disbanded.[21] Some small victories were to be found: Gabriel Lorca’s stunning victory at Pahvo is still taught in Academy classes to this date, but beyond that, Starfleet Command had little to show for nearly 88,000 dead and over 200 ships lost.
Once the last raiding parties withdrew beyond the Klingon armistice line, the scale of Starfleet’s debacle was made plain to see. The gap between what could comfortably be claimed to be Federation Space and Klingon Space had widened from a few uncharted star systems to hundreds, with dozens of vital neutral states, protectorates, colonies and Starbases now becoming isolated within an area of space that Starfleet had little to no presence in. “Over fifty years of trade route-mapping, patrolling, sensor buoy construction and Starfleet goodwill evaporated in eighteen months,” wrote Admiral Drake in disgust. “We will have to practically start again. New Starbases, new ships, new treaties, new everything. Nothing that we relied on two years ago will work now.”[22] Officially, the area was covered by the 2nd and 4th Fleets, but as of Stardate 1524 (May 11th, 2257), the 2nd Fleet only had eighteen ships, while the 4th Fleet’s largest craft were three Bonaventure class Starships that had been hauled out of the Mothball yards over Axanar – the rest of the fleet being made up of scouts and patrol cutters that dated back to before the turn of the century.[23] These ships were all that there were to cover over 30 square Parsecs of space that included the largest deposits of Dilithium and Pergium in the galaxy discovered to date. Beyond this, there were dozens of vital treaty ports, colonies, and trade lanes that were now incredibly vulnerable to not just Klingons, but Orion raiders and half a dozen other criminal groups that had taken advantage of the complete and utter collapse of Starfleet Authority in the area.
In his most recent memoir, Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan described Starfleet’s response as “a rapid reappraisal of its’ role as both an exploratory agency and a defence force”[24]. Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (And future Premier himself) Kenneth Wescott’s own memoirs put it more succinctly: “Starfleet panicked, because for the first time since 2160 they’d had their asses handed to them. And more importantly, they deserved it. I told them so, several times.”[25] He was right: in the decades before the war, Starfleet policymaking had spent far too much time thinking about its role as scientists and explorers, and very little about its role as a defence force beyond keeping the peace. When questioned, The Presidio had pointed to the Orion Police Actions of the 2220s and 30s as a vindication of their view that, as Admiral Parsons (C-in-C 2nd Fleet Group 2235-2240) put it, “Starfleet doesn’t need Andorian Phasers to discover Protostars.”[26]
Development had edged away from advancements in Phaser control and Warp Drives towards faster computers and better scientific equipment, and civilian technology such as holographic screens and communications (with all their security and power usage issues) were incorporated into new ship designs. Even the Constitution Class, designed by Laurence Marvick and Robert April as a “long term, modular design for the 2240s” had succumbed to an organisation that viewed many of its’ defence focused elements with disdain.[27] Starfleet’s fixation on using the Starship Class vessels for long exploration meant that it failed to really digest the lessons on ship design and weaponry that Marvick and April had learnt in their laborious R&D process. Almost all of April and Marvick’s plans for a redesign of much of the fleet’s rosters were shelved, and Marvick himself was put out to pasture at the “Red Elephant '' Utopia Planitia Project. The Tactical Fleet, despite protestations, saw many of its (admittedly outdated) Bonaventure and Paris class cruisers replaced by ships like the Magee, Cardenas and Nimitz classes. While technologically advanced compared to the ships they replaced (which dated back to the Archer Presidency), they were not combat ships.
Even when celebrated explorers such as Captain Christopher Pike raised the alarm in the early 2250s about Starfleet falling behind in defense technology, they were ignored even in the face of mounting evidence in their favour, with the 2252 Pike Memorandum being suppressed for fear that it would “cause unnecessary concern amongst the Federation Council and member worlds.”[28] Pike’s warning would predict much of the disaster that would take place six years later, including the near destruction of Starfleet’s dated order of battle, and that Starfleet strategy (based on the police actions against the Orions and the brutal, if brief border wars with the Tholians) would leave their forces too distantly spread to meet the Klingons.[29] The defeat in detail of the 4th Fleet was a testament to this, and in the months following the end of the war, Pike's final point - that only ships built to the same standard as the Constitution Class would be able to go toe to toe with the Klingons - would be proved correct. Between May 2257 and June 2258, of the 10 ships that were patrolling the Disputed Area, four were Constitution Class.[30]
The war and its aftermath had also taken a toll on the Admiralty, with much of the senior staff having been killed in action or retiring in the aftermath. The Senior Command Council, the most senior level of Starfleet decision-making since 2194, was reduced to only five members by the Armistice: Admiral Katrina Cornwell (Chief of Starfleet Operations), Admiral Agatha Drake (C-in-C Second Fleet), Admiral Huserg Gorch (C-in-C Third Fleet), Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar (C-in-C Reserve Fleet) and Admiral Milton Lonsdale (C-in-C First Fleet). Admiral Cornwell would perish during the destruction of the USS Discovery (NCC-1031) during its ill-fated advanced drive test over Xahea, leaving the remaining four Admirals to face the heat of an angry and fearful Federation Council in 2258.[31] In the meantime, Starfleet had to tread water in an area of the galaxy that demanded many of the obligations it had met before the war, but without anywhere near the number of ships or political goodwill to do so. Admiral Gorch was convinced by Ambassador Sarek to postpone his retirement until the end of 2258, and took over as temporary Chief of Starfleet Operations, while Drake remained in Charge of the 2nd Fleet, folding in what remained of the 4th Fleet, as well as whatever ship she could find and crew up. It was an unsatisfactory solution to the problem of command, but neither Starfleet nor the Palais de Concorde wished to rock the boat so soon after the Armistice, with many (including President Erick Barrueco) desiring a moment of calm and reflection before taking the next step. They wouldn’t get it.
[1] Peter Toussaint, Starship Captain: Diaries from the Frontier, 2254-2288 (San Francisco: Starfleet Academy Press, 2298)
[2] Until UESPA was absorbed into Starfleet in the Nogura-Ch’Shukar reforms, personnel transferring to Starfleet from the agency would have their ranks transferred with them.
[3] The Unified Treaty on the Boundaries of Legally Recognised Federation Space. 16th March 2210.
[4] Jane’s Active Ships, 2245-46 Issue. San Francisco, Starfleet Archives.
[5] The Starbase Initiative had actually begun during the mid-2150s, under the United Earth Starfleet
[6] STAR I would be ratified in October 2225. It would be followed by the Unified Code of Interstellar Justice in Early 2230, and the 2234 Accords on Sentient Rights.
[7] Sigma Iota is now a Federation Associate Member World, though technological exchange remains limited by Treaty.
[8] The Four Years’ War (2241-45).
[9] Experiments with various Lithium Ions and alloys across the mid to late 2260s never yielded successful results. The largest experiment – conducted across several vessels in Starfleet, including USS Enterprise herself – concluded that it was more difficult to keep the Lithium crystals in a viable state than it was to continue to rely on Dilithium as a fuel source and regulator.
[10] While many species, most notably the Vulcans and Klingons, have used Matter-Antimatter for most of their Spacefaring existence, Fusion reactors are a far more common sight amongst early warp-capable species and vessels. Zefram Cochrane’s Phoniex and the NX-Alpha through Deltas would all carry Fusion cores as their main power plant. NX-Iota (USS Franklin) would be the first ship to carry a Matter-Antimatter reactor. Starfleet would phase their last Fusion-powered ship out in the late 2180s, but they could still be found among the Merchant Navy and in civilian hands well into the 2280s.
[11] See by Kor Ch'irannes and Sarah Baptiste, “The Second Four Year’s War from the Captain’s Chair..” Federation Historical Review: Issue 80, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2310) Further Note. The Presidio is a nickname for Starfleet Command, which operated out of the Presidio Complex in San Francisco Bay
[12] Much of our information on T’Kuvma comes from the detailed diaries and records of the House of Kor, whose head at the period, Kol, was a rival of the radical leader.
[13] The Klingon insistence (to this date) that Starfleet waged ‘political warfare’ by sending Klingon colonies and ships copies of radical texts such as The Communist Manifesto, The Bell Jar, and The Death of the Stock Exchange has been refuted consistently by both authorities and historians. The closest anyone has gotten – Ellen Quiberon’s study of early mercantile contact with the empire – seems to suggest that the blame seems to lie with the Captain of the E.C.S. Cutty Sark, who gave the complete works of Shakespeare and P.G. Wodehouse to a Klingon General as a gift in 2171. While Shakespeare would become popular with the Klingon Elite, the General (if Quiberon is to be believed) preferred Wodehouse.
[14] The Triangle refers to the area of space between the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire and the Federation that none of the three powers have claimed or occupied.
[15] The work of the USS Discovery under Captain Lorca as the ‘cornerstone of Starfleet’s war effort’ has been largely refuted in recent years.
[16] The potency and seriousness of Klingon radicalism remains contentious. While some Klingons certainly believed in their religious cause, the limited war waged by most of the invaders – targeting freighters and other lucrative targets for seizure – seems to suggest that the war was more clearly motivated by economic and social desires for wealth and glory. The lack of any serious territorial seizures also points to this factor.
[17] The Bird of Prey in the 2250s is not to be confused with either Klingon design, or the Romulan Vas Hatham Class. Most were centuries- old vessels retained by the House Fleets.
[18] Starfleet Command officially denies any involvement in the Coup-D’etat.
[19] Known as Jouret to the Klingons.
[20] The comparison between the Kol-Kor cloaking device and the more infamous Romulan cloaking devices is incorrect; while the early Klingon devices, much like Suliban designs, use a form of particle radiation to hide themselves, the Romulan Device is believed to bend light itself, instead of merely refracting it.
[21] Fleet Rosters, Starfleet Command 2256-57. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco).
[22] Agatha Drake,letter to Katrina Cornwell, 22nd Marsh 2258 (Starfleet Library, San Francisco).
[23] Fleet Rosters, Starfleet Command 2257-58. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco) These figures do not include Captain Decker’s Squadron, which was officially an independent formation until it was folded into the Fourth Fleet in March 2258.
[24] Sarek, “Memoirs, 2240-2260”. (Shi-kar: Vulcan Historical Institute, 2261).
[25] Kenneth Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais: My Journey to the Concorde. (New York: Penguin Books, 2275)
[26] Admiral Annabeth Parsons, deposition to the Starfleet Oversight Committee, 22nd June 2238. (Paris: Memory Alpha Archive).
[27] Montgomery Scott, Constitution Class: The battle to build the Federation’s First Starship (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 2285)
[28] Admiral Cornwell, Official memorandum Stardate 1103.46 (May 25th 2252)
[29] Captain Christopher Pike: On a Future Conflict with the Klingon Empire, 2252. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco)
[30] It is worth bearing in mind two things; firstly, the Fourth Fleet in 2256 had a strength of 65 ships of all types. Secondly, in 2257 there were only Eight Constitution Class Starships in service, not including the USS Farragut, which was crippled on Stardate 1402.7 by a dikironium cloud creature.
[31] Starfleet Denies that any military engagement took place near Xahea at this time.
"This isn’t over. Armistice or not, the Klingons are coming for us." - Captain Matthew Decker, 2257.
After the Battle
The first time Peter Toussaint saw a D7 Battlecruiser was in December 2257, when it tried to kill him. At the time, the future Captain of the USS Hood was the tactical officer of the USS Mikasa (NCC-988), a Magee Class light science cruiser that patrolled the Disputed Area between Federation and Klingon space. The Magee had been a state-of-the-art ship when it had been first designed and launched from the Andoria Fleet Yards. 18 years had passed since then, and the class was clearly on the way out. Squat, underpowered vessels, the hard limit on the possible spaceframe size in the dockyards over Andor meant that their warp nacelles were embedded into the main body of the ship in a haphazard fashion that resulted in cramped quarters, complicated power systems and the permanent risk of radiation leaks. "Her phasers barely worked, her shield grid was on the fritz and she could barely hold warp six for more than three hours at a time," Toussaint commented, “But Starfleet needed the ships.”[1] The border with the Klingon Empire – already an area fraught with danger before the 2256 war – was now a lawless place, and the few Starfleet ships left to keep the peace were struggling to keep up.
Toussaint had gained a lot of experience in the Klingon Border Area during his time with Starfleet, even if travelling the stars had never been something he’d dreamed of as a child. Born in New Berlin in 2226, the son of a lecturer at the University of Armstrong and a minor bureaucrat, Toussaint had always thought himself destined for a more earthbound career. “Starfleet wanted scientists, and as much as I loved the idea of being an explorer, I was never any good in science class.” Instead of enrolling in the Academy, he’d taken a history degree at the University of Utopia Planitia, where he enrolled as a reservist with the UESPA. “It was for a girl,” he commented dryly in his memoirs,” and even though she ignored me, I did have a good time there.” One day, an instructor called him in for a meeting. “They told me that they’d submitted my tactical scores to Starfleet and that I’d been offered a place for junior officer training. I could finish my degree at the same time and graduate straight into the fleet.” Unexpectedly (to both him and his fathers), he accepted. In 2247, he was commissioned as a Lt. Junior Grade in Starfleet and was posted to the USS Liberty (NCC-865), part of the Second Fleet.[2]
As assignments went, the Liberty was not exactly interesting - as an older Bonaventure class Exploration Cruiser, her duties were mainly limited to convoy escort, outpost resupply and routine patrol. Those duties did allow Toussaint to build a strong working knowledge of the colonies, mining outposts and independent worlds that lay in Federation patrolled space between the Klingon border and the core worlds of the UFP. “Beyond Beta Rigel lay a section of the galaxy for whom the Federation and Starfleet were merely one of half a dozen powers manoeuvring for control. We were the top dogs, but to say that it was Federation Territory would be ridiculous.”
The astrographic scale of the United Federation of Planets is well understood in the early 24th century. It is also, more importantly, legally defined and recognized by all the main powers in the quadrant. This has not been the case and was especially not so in the first two-thirds of the century beforehand. The Federation Charter defines the territorial boundaries of the UFP as a) a 23 LY region surrounding Earth, and then a 5 LY boundary around any member world outside that zone. This region – late enhanced to a 50 LY diameter bubble with a centre point on Wolf 424 – is “Federation Sovereign Territory” in a legal sense, but only contains around 45% of the UFP’s inhabited worlds, Starbases, and Outposts.[3] Beyond the ’sovereignty line’ is the immense, ill-defined, and poorly understood region known as the Federation Treaty Zone, which stretches far beyond the core worlds and even the colonial hubs of Beta Rigel, Regulus, and Antares. Federation Space is, so to speak, the wide expanse of the ‘final frontier’, where member world colonies and Starfleet bases intermingle with friendly, neutral, and opposing powers. The 5 LY exclusion zone still exists, but beyond that, space is governed by three things; Interstellar Treaty (which is not accepted by all) mutual respect, and trust (which is definitely not found in all spacefaring peoples), and Starfleet. It is the Federation Star Fleet – part exploration force, part peacekeeping armada – that allows the Treaty Zone to be more than just a political fiction.
Starfleet was not imagined as an enforcer of treaty; it was birthed by United Earth as an alternative to a military space force, based on principles of scientific endeavour. Even at the height of the Romulan War, military leadership lay in the hands of the United Earth Space Navy, even though over half of all combat vessels were Starfleet ships. The Federation Charter made provisions for peacekeeping to be handled by the joint defence forces of each member, but it was Starfleet – now a combined service of Humans, Andorians, Vulcans and Tellarites – that went out into the treaty zone, ostensibly to seek out new life and new civilizations, but often to perform the dull if vital work of power projection. The fleet – which in September 2161 consisted of only 46 vessels – would, by 2246 consist of nearly 800 ships of all shapes and sizes, from the smallest cutter to the massive Constitution Class Starship, all performing vital scientific, survey, and patrol tasks across the Treaty Zone and even beyond.[4] While the scientific discoveries of the fleet are prolific and clearly to be lauded, it is the effect that the fleet had on the Astro-political environment that left the strongest legacy.
The Stellar Service has always defined itself as a ‘peace-keeping force’, as opposed to a military one. Most critics lampoon this as a euphemism used to justify the ‘imperialist’ ambitions of the Federation. Those words should be taken seriously, however. Starfleet is not a non-interventionist force – no matter how General Order One is interpreted – but a force designed to ensure the preservation of sentient life and society at all costs. Jonathan Archer – the “Starfleet President” had set the precedents for Humanitarian intervention before the Federation had even been founded, and many of his principles were built into the new fleet that was formed after 2161. It was Admiral Shran, however, who oversaw the creation of the organisation that would turn the UFP from a small democratic confederation into a quadrant-sized power, through massive ship construction programs and the audacious Starbase Ring.[5] Shran had no qualms about what Starfleet was about. “The humans have a saying about beating swords into ploughshares. Well, the Stellar Navy does well enough with the ploughs. I don’t think we’ll need the swords that much.”
Starfleet’s priority was always to create, rather than destroy – to create a freer quadrant than the one it had been born into. It was Starfleet that challenged the dominance of the Orion Syndicate and reduced slavery from a norm to a fringe barbarity. Starfleet ships would be the ones that confronted Enolian cruisers as they attempted to extort independent worlds for trading rights. Starfleet escorts would protect legitimate trade into the borderland, and project nascent colony worlds from Klingon raiders. It was Starfleet – with the backing of the UFP and over 35 other independent governments – that introduced and enforced the first Stellar Travel Accepted Rights (STAR) Treaty, creating the first unified body of Interstellar Law in nearly 500 years.[6] Without Starfleet, the immense, uncontrolled, and rapid exodus of colony vessels from all species that occurred between 2170 and 2220 would have been virtually impossible. The incalculable number of planets and stars charted, anomalies discovered, hazards marked, and alien species identified by Starfleet’s vessels were key to turning the galaxy into a viable home for millions of prospectors and colonists.
It was not without its flaws – no organization ever is. Starfleet was a very ‘gung-ho’ force early on, with few of its own rules to prevent captains from interfering far beyond the necessary (or even moral) level. The case of Sigma-Iota II and the ‘Gangster Planet’ is commonly cited, but it was only one of the dozens of mishaps, overstretches, and wrong calls that occurred before a coherent set of regulations was enforced to ‘guide’ captains.[7] Certain damage could not be undone – not just to pre-warp planets, but to the Federation’s new neighbours too. With the leaps and bounds in Starship technology in the first 25 years of the 23rd century, Federation vessels were now decades ahead of their foes in almost every sense. It was a massive boost to both colonisation and commerce, but more critically it meant that the fleet could project power in a way it had never been capable of before. Overzealous Starship Captains, acting in defence of far-flung colonies and outposts, repeatedly challenged the authority of the Klingons, Tholians, and Orions right on their doorstep, precipitating conflict while not overtly calling for it. Border skirmishes soon followed, as subspace relays and sensor outposts were assaulted by foreign powers defending their claimed space. But Starfleet always rose to the challenge, never needing to draw its swords to truly defend itself. The Federation way of life – Democracy, Freedom, and Autonomy – would be protected, preserved, and expanded to all those who wished to enjoy it, and those who did not want it would be allowed to continue on their way. Those who challenged that way of life – and the “Union of Autonomy” through piracy, extortion, and Imperialism – would not be tolerated. Starfleet would beat their swords into ploughshares, no matter the cost.
‘The Ploughshare Navy’ held its own against Orion pirates, Klingon raiders, internal pirates, and half a dozen other enemies without even breaking a sweat. Even the Four Years’ War – a pivotal moment in Klingon and Orion history – barely saw a change in Starfleet’s operational tempo. Starfleet could challenge those foes and win (thus gaining immense support from smaller powers) without even breaking a sweat.[8] For the first 50 years, Starfleet had been forced to hold close to the Federation’s Sovereign Territory or work close patrol route to and from Starbases. But from the 2220s onwards, there was no such hesitancy to strike boldly into the dark. Starfleet vessels went further than anyone had gone before, and to plenty of places that others had gone, all carrying the Blue starred flag of the United Federation of Planets with them. There were stronger powers – everyone understood what could happen if the Romulans ever recovered from the last war, or if the Klingons ever reunited – but there was a feeling that this was never going to happen. Starfleet was the ’peace-keeping armada’ that had made the quadrant safe, and it would keep doing so. It was a complacent view, held on to tightly even as the pirates and raiders caught up technologically, or as new, threatening foes like the Tholian Assembly or the mysterious Gorn emerged on the edge of the Treaty Zone. But nothing changed. The ploughshares remained ploughshares, even as the enemies of the Federation began to sharpen their knives.
Peter Toussaint’s first assignment on the Liberty – escorting the Dilithium convoys out of Starbase K-4 – was a testament to this blasé attitude. The convoy carried much, if not all, of the Government mined Dilithium production from the Corvan arc (sometimes referred to as the ‘Dilithium Belt’ or the ‘Penthe Deposit’). The Dilithium trade out of the Belt was one of the most lucrative and vital in the Federation, and with good reason. Without Dilithium, the backbone of Federation society – the Warp Reactor – could not function at all.[9] Demand had only increased across the quadrant as Matter-Antimatter annihilation replaced nuclear fusion as the main energy production system.[10]
“Starfleet planners seemed to think that the Dilithium convoy was a postal route,” Toussaint commented with scorn. “Postal routes don’t require phaser crews on standby 24 hours a day to keep the raiders off your back.” As a Lieutenant in charge of a phaser room, he and his juniors spent three days on post or waiting for action, catching minutes and hours of sleep at a time. “I asked the Second Officer, a Tellarite called Zonn, if this was a bad attack. He merely laughed at me and said, ‘My boy, this is routine.’ If this is routine at peacetime, what’s going to happen when we’re at war?”
Toussaint’s fear of Interspace war was not unfounded. Klingon intrusions into Federation ``space” had become near-constant since 2250, and the Second and Fourth Fleets who patrolled the border were simply overworked. On top of their convoy orders and anti-piracy duties , they were still receiving new exploration and survey directives at a time when they simply could not be directed to those tasks. Many Captains such as Kelvar Garth or Laurence FitzPatrick were already referring to the conflict as a war in their correspondence and attempting to organise as such, with serious pushback from the Presidio.[11] Attempts to restrain further expansion of duties, let alone suggestions that space be ceded to the Klingons, fell on deaf ears. The Admiral did not believe it was necessary at all to restrain the ‘Empire of Autonomy’ by ordering settlers not the rile up the Klingons, or to admit that a backward feudal monarchy had any legitimate claims over the planets that free citizens had stuck their roots into.
It all came to a head at the Battle of Binary Stars. A subspace relay connected two sensor outposts was disabled by a member of a Klingon Fringe group. The USS Shenzhou – commanded by one of Starfleet’s best, Phillipa Georgiou – went to investigate, only to find itself ambushed by Klingon radicals under the command of the radical religious leader, T’Kuvma, who had raised a fleet of reactionary zealots even the rump High Council disproved of.[12] What they did not disprove of, however, was his rallying cry against ‘Federation expansionism’ and the ‘destruction of Klingon culture’ by the humans and their thralls. It was a longstanding Klingon argument, dating back to the first period of cultural contact, and one that was well-received by a political elite losing strength amongst the masses.[13] All twenty-four houses came to T’Kuvma’s side at the Binary Stars, and together they smashed the Starfleet task force into shards in just under five hours. The crippling of the core of the 2nd Fleet at the battle of the Binary Stars (along with the death of Admiral Anderson) put Starfleet on the backfoot immediately, and even the disorganized Klingon offensive was enough to knock them off balance. Klingon raiding turned into a full-blown offensive along the entire line of contact, from the Triangle to the Taurus Reach.[14] Starfleet’s recovery was shaky, restricted by an unhelpful government and unwilling admiralty, the shaky stalemate within the disputed area held together by miracles from all parties.[15] The disappearance of the USS Discovery in late 2256 ended the lucky streak, and defeats at Kelfour II, Iridin, Starbase 19 and a dozen other sites broke the back of Starfleet’s defensive front. Klingon fleets poured into the core of the Federation, laying waste to planets and bases as they continued their ‘quest to rid the galaxy of the human menace’.[16]
The Liberty had not been present at the Binary Stars, but her assignment to convoy duty was soon replaced by a constant barrage of demands to protect colony worlds and Federation allies, for whom the pretence of Starfleet protection was suddenly worth very little. “It was a complete disaster,” Toussaint wrote of these dark days when the Liberty had warped from system to system, trying to protect outposts and stations while hiding from the massive Klingon raiding pirates. “Frankly, we were saved more by the Klingons fighting each other than by the actions of the Presidio.” The Liberty’s luck ran out in February 2257 three parsecs from the Rigel system, when she was jumped by a squadron of Klingon vessels. “The Birds of Prey jumped us while we were trying to repair our torpedo tubes and hammered us until our shields collapsed one by one. We would have been slaughtered by her boarding parties if the Farragut hadn’t shown up to save our bacon.”[17] The Liberty, however, had to be abandoned. Her surviving crew was ferried to Rigel VII, where they were immediately pressed onto recrewing the vessels of Captain Matthew Decker’s “Seabee Squadron”, the ragtag fleet of mothball ships, Corps of Engineer craft, and support vessels that now served as the Rigel Colonies’ only line of defence. “I’d just finished bringing the Mikasa’s Phasers back online when word came through. The Klingons were withdrawing. It was over. Just like that, they’d given up. They’d smashed Starbase 1 - hell, they were halfway to Earth by the time they turned around. It seemed impossible to us.”
Like the rest of Starfleet, Toussaint was shocked by the Klingon’s sudden withdrawal. However, as news of L’Rell’s extraordinary coup d’etat filed through diplomatic channels (mainly through the mutual embassies on Acamar and, surprisingly, Orion), the nature of the Klingon withdrawal became apparent. L’Rell had managed what no other Klingon had done for nearly a century (except, briefly for T’Kuvma) - unite the Great Houses behind a Chancellor with power and authority, guided by the one thing Klingons understood above all: force and honour.[18]
“We were grateful for her intervention,” Toussaint noted, “but it was clear that she’d done us no favours. We looked weak. We were weak. And the Klingons weren’t going to do anything to disprove that.” As one of the few larger vessels left in the Second Fleet, she was assigned as part of the ‘fire brigade’, sent out to fly the flag and continue much of the patrol duties that had brought Starfleet ships to neutral systems in this area of space regularly in the past. “We were acting as if the last Eighteen months hadn’t happened, and no one was buying it - especially when the Klingons appeared.”
This was how the USS Mikasa, under the command of Captain Angella Fukuhara found itself in orbit over the colony of New Richmond[19], staring down a D-7 Battlecruiser above the Federation Colony. Richmond’s administrator, Bernard Marner had requested Federation aid after receiving a transmission from a Klingon commander demanding an immediate tribute of Pergium under threat of planetary bombardment. Sensibly, he’d asked for time to gather the materials and transmitted a distress signal, which the USS Mikasa picked up. Unfortunately, so did the Klingons.
“The Klingon ship waited in the far shadow of the second moon until we’d moved into close orbit and sacrificed all of our maneuverability,” Toussaint noted. “On our sensors, she barely showed up as anything larger than a Bird-of-Prey. We could have handled a Bird of Prey. Not her.”
The D-7 had dropped on top of the Mikasa, pinning her between the planet and the L-1 Lagrange point. “She had our range at 250,000 kilometers and we could barely scratch her at 100,000. Her pass took our shields down to 40 per cent, and knocked out our main phasers. We didn’t even leave our dent.” Captain Fukuhara attempted to contact the Klingon ship to no avail. “The Captain didn’t want to leave. It was a Federation Colony below us: our citizens - the people we had sworn to protect. But we couldn’t protect them if we were in small pieces burning up in orbit.” On her third pass, the Mikasa managed to get a clean hit on the Battlecruiser, knocking out the Klingon’s impulse engines for a short while, and Fukuhara took the opportunity to withdraw. Two hours later, New Richmond began beaming its tribute to the Klingon ship.
“It was humiliating,” Toussaint wrote, reflecting the dejected and bitter feeling the crew felt. “We couldn’t even match them in our own space now - if this even was our space now.” What made the shock worse was the lack of knowledge around the D-7. “I thought it was a new ship, but when I was going over the Tactical analysis with Lieutenant Grayson, she matched to ship profiles that were as much as a decade old. How had this been overlooked? Had the Klingons been roaming around with a Battlecruiser since the 2240s and we just haven't noticed? No wonder we’d nearly lost the war to them. The Klingons are the real deal now, and we had pretended that they weren’t because it made life easier for us. It was fruitless to pretend otherwise.” The Ploughshare Navy had never forged its swords, and it had paid for that dearly.
Starfleet’s Crisis of Inaction
The 2256-57 escalation of Klingon warfare shocked Starfleet Command to the core. While the border between the two states had always been difficult to delineate, the extent to which Federation Authority had been swept back as far as Axanar and Rigel had shocked many at Starfleet Command, though not as much as the attack on Starbase One and the averted raid on earth had. The focus and determination of the T’Kuvmaite forces threw the Federation into a crisis that it had not faced since the Earth-Romulan War.
Starfleet’s grasp on the war, distant at best, slipped entirely after the disappearance of the USS Discovery after the battle of Pahvo. The use of early cloaking technology (which would be rendered obsolete almost immediately by the end of the war) shattered the ability of the overstretched Second and Fourth Fleet’s to hold the line, and soon Federation colonies, transports and hospital ships were regular prey for Klingon raiding parties.[20] The destruction of Starbases 22, 12 and 19 saw the 4th Fleet reduced to such a negligible strength that it was almost disbanded.[21] Some small victories were to be found: Gabriel Lorca’s stunning victory at Pahvo is still taught in Academy classes to this date, but beyond that, Starfleet Command had little to show for nearly 88,000 dead and over 200 ships lost.
Once the last raiding parties withdrew beyond the Klingon armistice line, the scale of Starfleet’s debacle was made plain to see. The gap between what could comfortably be claimed to be Federation Space and Klingon Space had widened from a few uncharted star systems to hundreds, with dozens of vital neutral states, protectorates, colonies and Starbases now becoming isolated within an area of space that Starfleet had little to no presence in. “Over fifty years of trade route-mapping, patrolling, sensor buoy construction and Starfleet goodwill evaporated in eighteen months,” wrote Admiral Drake in disgust. “We will have to practically start again. New Starbases, new ships, new treaties, new everything. Nothing that we relied on two years ago will work now.”[22] Officially, the area was covered by the 2nd and 4th Fleets, but as of Stardate 1524 (May 11th, 2257), the 2nd Fleet only had eighteen ships, while the 4th Fleet’s largest craft were three Bonaventure class Starships that had been hauled out of the Mothball yards over Axanar – the rest of the fleet being made up of scouts and patrol cutters that dated back to before the turn of the century.[23] These ships were all that there were to cover over 30 square Parsecs of space that included the largest deposits of Dilithium and Pergium in the galaxy discovered to date. Beyond this, there were dozens of vital treaty ports, colonies, and trade lanes that were now incredibly vulnerable to not just Klingons, but Orion raiders and half a dozen other criminal groups that had taken advantage of the complete and utter collapse of Starfleet Authority in the area.
In his most recent memoir, Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan described Starfleet’s response as “a rapid reappraisal of its’ role as both an exploratory agency and a defence force”[24]. Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (And future Premier himself) Kenneth Wescott’s own memoirs put it more succinctly: “Starfleet panicked, because for the first time since 2160 they’d had their asses handed to them. And more importantly, they deserved it. I told them so, several times.”[25] He was right: in the decades before the war, Starfleet policymaking had spent far too much time thinking about its role as scientists and explorers, and very little about its role as a defence force beyond keeping the peace. When questioned, The Presidio had pointed to the Orion Police Actions of the 2220s and 30s as a vindication of their view that, as Admiral Parsons (C-in-C 2nd Fleet Group 2235-2240) put it, “Starfleet doesn’t need Andorian Phasers to discover Protostars.”[26]
Development had edged away from advancements in Phaser control and Warp Drives towards faster computers and better scientific equipment, and civilian technology such as holographic screens and communications (with all their security and power usage issues) were incorporated into new ship designs. Even the Constitution Class, designed by Laurence Marvick and Robert April as a “long term, modular design for the 2240s” had succumbed to an organisation that viewed many of its’ defence focused elements with disdain.[27] Starfleet’s fixation on using the Starship Class vessels for long exploration meant that it failed to really digest the lessons on ship design and weaponry that Marvick and April had learnt in their laborious R&D process. Almost all of April and Marvick’s plans for a redesign of much of the fleet’s rosters were shelved, and Marvick himself was put out to pasture at the “Red Elephant '' Utopia Planitia Project. The Tactical Fleet, despite protestations, saw many of its (admittedly outdated) Bonaventure and Paris class cruisers replaced by ships like the Magee, Cardenas and Nimitz classes. While technologically advanced compared to the ships they replaced (which dated back to the Archer Presidency), they were not combat ships.
Even when celebrated explorers such as Captain Christopher Pike raised the alarm in the early 2250s about Starfleet falling behind in defense technology, they were ignored even in the face of mounting evidence in their favour, with the 2252 Pike Memorandum being suppressed for fear that it would “cause unnecessary concern amongst the Federation Council and member worlds.”[28] Pike’s warning would predict much of the disaster that would take place six years later, including the near destruction of Starfleet’s dated order of battle, and that Starfleet strategy (based on the police actions against the Orions and the brutal, if brief border wars with the Tholians) would leave their forces too distantly spread to meet the Klingons.[29] The defeat in detail of the 4th Fleet was a testament to this, and in the months following the end of the war, Pike's final point - that only ships built to the same standard as the Constitution Class would be able to go toe to toe with the Klingons - would be proved correct. Between May 2257 and June 2258, of the 10 ships that were patrolling the Disputed Area, four were Constitution Class.[30]
The war and its aftermath had also taken a toll on the Admiralty, with much of the senior staff having been killed in action or retiring in the aftermath. The Senior Command Council, the most senior level of Starfleet decision-making since 2194, was reduced to only five members by the Armistice: Admiral Katrina Cornwell (Chief of Starfleet Operations), Admiral Agatha Drake (C-in-C Second Fleet), Admiral Huserg Gorch (C-in-C Third Fleet), Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar (C-in-C Reserve Fleet) and Admiral Milton Lonsdale (C-in-C First Fleet). Admiral Cornwell would perish during the destruction of the USS Discovery (NCC-1031) during its ill-fated advanced drive test over Xahea, leaving the remaining four Admirals to face the heat of an angry and fearful Federation Council in 2258.[31] In the meantime, Starfleet had to tread water in an area of the galaxy that demanded many of the obligations it had met before the war, but without anywhere near the number of ships or political goodwill to do so. Admiral Gorch was convinced by Ambassador Sarek to postpone his retirement until the end of 2258, and took over as temporary Chief of Starfleet Operations, while Drake remained in Charge of the 2nd Fleet, folding in what remained of the 4th Fleet, as well as whatever ship she could find and crew up. It was an unsatisfactory solution to the problem of command, but neither Starfleet nor the Palais de Concorde wished to rock the boat so soon after the Armistice, with many (including President Erick Barrueco) desiring a moment of calm and reflection before taking the next step. They wouldn’t get it.
[1] Peter Toussaint, Starship Captain: Diaries from the Frontier, 2254-2288 (San Francisco: Starfleet Academy Press, 2298)
[2] Until UESPA was absorbed into Starfleet in the Nogura-Ch’Shukar reforms, personnel transferring to Starfleet from the agency would have their ranks transferred with them.
[3] The Unified Treaty on the Boundaries of Legally Recognised Federation Space. 16th March 2210.
[4] Jane’s Active Ships, 2245-46 Issue. San Francisco, Starfleet Archives.
[5] The Starbase Initiative had actually begun during the mid-2150s, under the United Earth Starfleet
[6] STAR I would be ratified in October 2225. It would be followed by the Unified Code of Interstellar Justice in Early 2230, and the 2234 Accords on Sentient Rights.
[7] Sigma Iota is now a Federation Associate Member World, though technological exchange remains limited by Treaty.
[8] The Four Years’ War (2241-45).
[9] Experiments with various Lithium Ions and alloys across the mid to late 2260s never yielded successful results. The largest experiment – conducted across several vessels in Starfleet, including USS Enterprise herself – concluded that it was more difficult to keep the Lithium crystals in a viable state than it was to continue to rely on Dilithium as a fuel source and regulator.
[10] While many species, most notably the Vulcans and Klingons, have used Matter-Antimatter for most of their Spacefaring existence, Fusion reactors are a far more common sight amongst early warp-capable species and vessels. Zefram Cochrane’s Phoniex and the NX-Alpha through Deltas would all carry Fusion cores as their main power plant. NX-Iota (USS Franklin) would be the first ship to carry a Matter-Antimatter reactor. Starfleet would phase their last Fusion-powered ship out in the late 2180s, but they could still be found among the Merchant Navy and in civilian hands well into the 2280s.
[11] See by Kor Ch'irannes and Sarah Baptiste, “The Second Four Year’s War from the Captain’s Chair..” Federation Historical Review: Issue 80, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2310) Further Note. The Presidio is a nickname for Starfleet Command, which operated out of the Presidio Complex in San Francisco Bay
[12] Much of our information on T’Kuvma comes from the detailed diaries and records of the House of Kor, whose head at the period, Kol, was a rival of the radical leader.
[13] The Klingon insistence (to this date) that Starfleet waged ‘political warfare’ by sending Klingon colonies and ships copies of radical texts such as The Communist Manifesto, The Bell Jar, and The Death of the Stock Exchange has been refuted consistently by both authorities and historians. The closest anyone has gotten – Ellen Quiberon’s study of early mercantile contact with the empire – seems to suggest that the blame seems to lie with the Captain of the E.C.S. Cutty Sark, who gave the complete works of Shakespeare and P.G. Wodehouse to a Klingon General as a gift in 2171. While Shakespeare would become popular with the Klingon Elite, the General (if Quiberon is to be believed) preferred Wodehouse.
[14] The Triangle refers to the area of space between the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire and the Federation that none of the three powers have claimed or occupied.
[15] The work of the USS Discovery under Captain Lorca as the ‘cornerstone of Starfleet’s war effort’ has been largely refuted in recent years.
[16] The potency and seriousness of Klingon radicalism remains contentious. While some Klingons certainly believed in their religious cause, the limited war waged by most of the invaders – targeting freighters and other lucrative targets for seizure – seems to suggest that the war was more clearly motivated by economic and social desires for wealth and glory. The lack of any serious territorial seizures also points to this factor.
[17] The Bird of Prey in the 2250s is not to be confused with either Klingon design, or the Romulan Vas Hatham Class. Most were centuries- old vessels retained by the House Fleets.
[18] Starfleet Command officially denies any involvement in the Coup-D’etat.
[19] Known as Jouret to the Klingons.
[20] The comparison between the Kol-Kor cloaking device and the more infamous Romulan cloaking devices is incorrect; while the early Klingon devices, much like Suliban designs, use a form of particle radiation to hide themselves, the Romulan Device is believed to bend light itself, instead of merely refracting it.
[21] Fleet Rosters, Starfleet Command 2256-57. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco).
[22] Agatha Drake,letter to Katrina Cornwell, 22nd Marsh 2258 (Starfleet Library, San Francisco).
[23] Fleet Rosters, Starfleet Command 2257-58. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco) These figures do not include Captain Decker’s Squadron, which was officially an independent formation until it was folded into the Fourth Fleet in March 2258.
[24] Sarek, “Memoirs, 2240-2260”. (Shi-kar: Vulcan Historical Institute, 2261).
[25] Kenneth Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais: My Journey to the Concorde. (New York: Penguin Books, 2275)
[26] Admiral Annabeth Parsons, deposition to the Starfleet Oversight Committee, 22nd June 2238. (Paris: Memory Alpha Archive).
[27] Montgomery Scott, Constitution Class: The battle to build the Federation’s First Starship (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 2285)
[28] Admiral Cornwell, Official memorandum Stardate 1103.46 (May 25th 2252)
[29] Captain Christopher Pike: On a Future Conflict with the Klingon Empire, 2252. (Starfleet Library, San Francisco)
[30] It is worth bearing in mind two things; firstly, the Fourth Fleet in 2256 had a strength of 65 ships of all types. Secondly, in 2257 there were only Eight Constitution Class Starships in service, not including the USS Farragut, which was crippled on Stardate 1402.7 by a dikironium cloud creature.
[31] Starfleet Denies that any military engagement took place near Xahea at this time.