7: The Suliban Crisis
The Road to Caleb IV
“All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance, a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.” – Robert Dylan, Old Earth Poet and Musician, circa 1967 CE
“I’m starting to realize that ‘we come in peace’ only means something if they’re clear on the fact we can also kick their ass.” - Matthew Decker, apocryphal.
Crisis in the Federation Phalanx
The Federation Border Patrol was not a large fleet, or a powerful one. It had been created in the early 2170s to guard the long frontier south of Beta Rigel, but after the Larson reforms in the 2220s, the prominence of the Patrol as a defensive force declined. By the 2250s, it mainly existed to maintain order and support the hundreds of mining outposts and independent colonies that filled the Federation Phalanx and Triangle, where population centres were thin on the ground and the timely presence of a Federation vessel could be the line between safety and a horrifying repeat of Tarsus IV.[1] It was a low priority force, and it was mainly equipped with a myriad of pre-marvick drive vessels – redoubtable, sturdy and reliable types like the Kestrel and Al-Rashid class, with some faster ships like the newer single nacelle Saladin class and the incredibly reliable Pioneer class. It was a close-knit collection of captains, used to acting independently and in unison to conduct short-range anti-piracy operations, using their limited firepower, range and speed to the best of their abilities. It was not glamourous work, but it was, as the Border Patrol’s one-time commander Robert Wesley noted, it was “what our ships are for” – exploration, support, and defence on a day-to-day basis.
The Malcolm Reed was an archetypal Border Patrol vessel. One of the fourth run of Larson class destroyers, it was well-liked by her crew. “We liked the Larson Class a lot,” noted Patrick Ch’O’Leary. ” People called them ‘Jeeps’ or ‘Billy Goats’, but we preferred to call them SUF– Starfleet's Ugly Flyers.” Ch’O’Leary was a born and bred space farer; he’d grown up on board the merchant marine vessel SS R’vellar, where four of the six bridge crew were his parents.[2] Half-Human, half Andorian, he was an archetypal child of the “Great Awakening”, when millions of federation citizens had departed their home worlds to stake out new lives within the Federation Treaty Zone, where they could as one aggrandising politician put it, “build their own utopias as they saw fit.” While for some, this meant building Earth’s away for Earth, for others it meant the pursuit of the agrarian idyll, or the idealism of a noble republic, for many like Ch’O’Leary’s parents it was the chance to stake out a life of self-fulfilment on their terms. “My parents loved the stars, and so did I, in my different ways.” They hadn’t been upset when, at age 17, he’d said he wanted to join Starfleet, but they had insisted he enlist in the ranks, which he had done, signing up at Starbase 17 in April 2244. He didn’t remain a ranker for long. Starfleet was always short of experienced NCOs, and within a year of service he had been promoted to Petty Officer 2nd Class. By 2253 he was a Chief Petty Officer aboard the USS Saladin, and with his promotion to Master Chief Petty Officer in 2256, he was one of a small but vital cadre of senior Non-coms within Starfleet. “Command prided itself on the quality of its officers, but at the end of the day, it takes a lot to turn a ‘Mickey Reed’ into a proper officer. That was our job, really – along with running the ship for them.”[3] With crew shortages as they were, Ch’O’Leary had been offered a position as Chief Engineer aboard the Malcolm Reed – a not-uncommon move for non-coms, often accompanied by promotion from the ranks. “I thought about taking the stripes but turned it down. I didn’t want to bother with eight months out the line doing a command school course with a bunch of kids back at Federation Central.” Ch’O’Leary’s experience had paid off during the Klingon War, where he’d earned the Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry.
After the end of hostilities, the Malcolm Reed’s Captain had been reassigned, and their replacement – a quiet but hyper-competent Lieutenant Commander named Lance Cartwright – asked him to stay on. Ch’O’Leary agreed, aware that right now the Phalanx needed experienced personnel, as a large number of senior officers from the border patrol had been transferred to help bring 2nd and 4th fleet back up to strength, their numbers replaced by raw replacements. “Captain Cartwright was a good lad, but he had other places to be.” It was hard to ignore the ambition of Malcolm Reed’s CO. “He was never going be content with commanding a LUF or a Destroyer. He wanted to be a Starship Captain, but he wasn’t about to climb the greasy pole to get there. He was doing it properly, and we respected that.” Cartwright wasn’t a popular man by any use of the word, but he was good at his job – exceptional so, and his instant judgement of a situation was unparalleled. He had his flaws; his grudges never seemed to fade away. “[Cartwright] less had a chip on his shoulder, and more of a large log,” Captain Kirk would note. “It only got worse as time went on.” Despite this, his CO – Admiral Monroe Templeton of Starbase 10 - placed significant trust in him, which is how the Malcolm Reed found itself out on a limb near the Apopka cluster.
At the far end of the Triangle from Federation Space, the Apopka star cluster was of little note beyond the presence of five inhabited colony worlds: one Barolian, one Human and three mixed Suliban-Efrosian. They were linked to the Federation sphere by the “Narendra Express”, a duo of Giant-Class super transports that operated out of Baker’s World. One of them – the SS Ely Cathedral – had, on April 5th, been prevented from entering the cluster by three K23 class destroyers. The Klingon vessels had cited a “social quarantine” as the reason to prevent access and ordered the Ely Cathedral to warn other Federation and neutral vessels that any ship entering the cluster would be fired upon. The Malcolm Reed was sent to investigate but was five light-years from the cluster when it encountered a convoy of eight damaged vessels limping towards Federation space. Stopping to assist, they discovered to their shock that each ship was crammed with Suliban – hundreds filling cargo holds with standing room only, children and babies being held by exhausted parents. Cartwright asked the Captain of the Phileas Fogg - an ancient Bison class vessel, first launched in 2155 as the UES Apis – what had happened. “The Klingons are rounding up the Suliban,” was the reply. “All of them. No one knows where they’re going.” The convoy of ships carried about 18,000 people; all that remained of a community of colonies that numbered around 800,000. They had managed to flee while the Klingon Destroyers had been refuelling, but they were in hot pursuit, and the Fogg’s engines had been damaged trying to hold Warp 4 for as long as possible.
Ch’O’Leary led the away team to the Fogg. Taking his engineering teams and descending through the dozens of decks, he’d been disturbed by the pleas of the refugees who filled the corridors, begging for food, water and medicine. “I knew that the medical teams were just behind us, but it still upset me that I couldn’t offer them anything.” Reaching the engineering deck, he found the ship’s skipper and engineer alongside three of the refugees, who had been engineers before their exodus. “They had been fusion engineers back on their colony and knew a lot more about the equipment than I did. If it hadn’t been for them, it might’ve taken days to get it running again.” The Malcolm Reed didn’t have days – the three Klingon Destroyers were closing on the convoy, clearly following its warp trail. Cartwright had signalled a nearby vessel – the Saladin Class USS Black Prince for aid, but unless they could get the Phileas Fogg to make Warp four, the convoy would never make the rendezvous. “We’d transferred as many as possible to the Malcolm Reed, but that didn’t matter if the Klingons arrived.” With repairs dragging on and the Klingons closing, Cartwright ordered the convoy to jump to Warp 3, with the ailing Fogg liming along at 2.7, Ch’O’Leary working as fast as he could to restore the warp reactor to full capacity.
At 4:04 am on the 14th of June, the USS Black Prince rendezvoused with the convoy. At 4:10, the three Klingon Destroyers entered torpedo range of the convoy. Cartwright didn’t wait for the Klingons to fire warning shots, immediately bringing the Reed about to face them while the Black Prince herded the convoy onwards. “It was toe to fecking toe,” Ch’O’Leary said. “We had six disruptor barrels ranged on us to our mere two. But the Klingons didn’t want to fight. They turned back, content to have enslaved 700,000-odd.” They did, however, give Cartwright one message: As of the fourth day of nay’Poq of the Year 885 (27th Feburary 2259), all Suliban colonies and Suliban persons were now the property of the Klingon Empire.
“It was a horrifying thing to hear,” Ch’O’Leary said. “We all sat on the bridge, thinking about the implications. A whole species, marked for bondage by Imperial decree. It was almost beyond belief. I thought about all the Suliban I’d known back when I was growing up: the traders, the customers, the navvies and the itinerant labourers we’d carried from one place to another, the meals we’d shared, the games I’d played with children and the stories I’d been told. The weight of that all being subsumed was crushing. Eventually, Captain Cartwright muttered quietly to himself. ‘Not on our watch,’ he said. ‘Not on our watch.’” The Malcolm Reed arrived at Starbase 10 on the 1st of July 2259, with the convoy in tow. It was not the only one now. The entire orbital space of SB10 was full of civilian vessels and auxiliaries, all carrying Suliban from across the Phalanx and Triangle, fleeing the Klingon fleet. Starbase 10, once a semi-important trade hub, was now the busiest Starbase in the Beta Quadrant, and the small Starfleet staff on the ground had been thrust into the frontline of the largest Sentientarian Crisis since the Xindi Incident.
“Cleaning Up the Quadrant”
Why the Suliban? Some have argued that the Klingons had a specific hatred for the exile race, or that they were “servile workers” or “good slaves”, but there is little to the racism of these arguments. The simple fact is that in the mid-23rd century, no one cared about the Suliban. Their home world had become uninhabitable in the mid-1850s. For 400 years after that, they drifted through the Beta Quadrant, in their small settlements and within other powers. While some Suliban worked to preserve and protect what culture they had saved, many assimilated into the cultures they lived in, becoming respected members of society on many worlds. The galactic opinion of them, however, was forever marred by the actions of the Cabal, who from their foundation in the early 2130s through to their collapse in the late 2160s were responsible for several significant acts of terrorism across much of the Beta Quadrant, especially within the Klingon empire. Even after their destruction, the ideas of evolutionary supremacy and violent radicalism were influential amongst many marginalised groups. More long-lasting was a suspicion of the Suliban amongst other species and governments, who regarded then as a mysterious threat to the social and political orders of the day. Diplomatically, there was no real direct representation of a Suliban government. Their longstanding exile had never led to a reassertion of a Suliban political identity on any formal level. There was a Suliban Cabinet on Ellec’vell, a small but pleasant moon near the Federation outpost of Gibraltar in the Triangle, but they did not have anything close to any legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Suliban diaspora. They were at best met with polite indifference and worst ignored or vilified. They were not quite the ‘galactic trash’ the Klingons would describe them as, but, as one Klingon bureaucrat put it, “no one notice if they suddenly disappeared, would they?”.[4]
It is unknown how much overall support there was for full annexation and deportation. The Houses who had territory along the Triangle had been in active contact with Suliban groups for over two centuries at this point, and while relations were frosty there had been little need for any form of aggressive action. There was not even a serious demand for labour, forced or otherwise –Klingon colonies and industrial centres close to the Triangle were one of the few in the empire outside of the home system who were able to easily match production quotas.[5] It is more likely that the demand for labour came from those houses and industrial areas in more distant areas of the Empire, where an external, subject people’s source of labour remained thin on the ground. The demand for rapid industrialisation within the territory of house Duras, for example, was never going to be managed with its indigenous labouring population. The real deciding impetus came from Sturka and the Imperial Bureaucracy. To them, it was the least difficult solution, the result of cold calculation within the Imperial Chancellery. As much as many would like to paint Sturka’s decision to turn the docile Suliban into a servile class as a sign of his dishonourable cruelty and vindictiveness, it is perhaps more likely that he also saw it as a chance to advance his political position. It is no coincidence that the families which benefitted most from enslaved Suliban labour would be Sturka’s key supporters across the 2260s.[6]
And what of L’Rell? As much as many would like to believe that ‘mother’ would not condone such a heinous act as the enslavement of an entire species for the sake of production quotas, it is functionally impossible that such a plan could have been proposed, with all the transportation allocated and relocation camps established, without the Imperial Chancellery knowing. L’Rell’s reforms were designed to bring more information to Qo’noS, not leave it in the dark – even her tutelage and support of Sturka was part of a campaign to place the Chancellor at the centre of decision making. While it is perhaps too far to say that she was an avid supporter of industrial ethnic cleansing, more than tacit approval for what would happen had been given by the Chancellor. While the official sign-off of the operation remains unclear, Imperial Navy forces, divided into three Battlegroups under now ‘General’ Sturka, were massing on the border by mid-March 2259. Starfleet was aware of this build-up, thanks to the intelligence gathered by N’garriez and his associates, but their target remained unclear right up until the operation began. Even the move on Ellec-vell was seen more as a move to cut off the R’ongovian Protectorate from the UFP just as talks for associate membership entered their final stages. The reality would elude Federation Central for a great deal longer.
The “annexation” of the Suliban was tragic, quiet and swift. The disparate and decentralised nature of the community meant that their population centres were unable to support each other, and where they existed in large numbers they were at the whim of other planetary authorities. Very little of the exile population was organised and united – since the height of the cabal, most Suliban were wary of anyone trying to push for anything more than mutual co-operation, and many preferred to push for assimilation to try and protect themselves from further persecution. It was easy enough for Imperial forces to seize their settlements before transporting the populations to processing centres and labour camps without much in the way of a fight. The “exile government” on Ellec-vell was no more than an archaic committee of elders, who despite supposed legal power over the whole Suliban “Union” had been ignored for centuries. They did, however, provide a legal basis for Klingon annexation. No Suliban forces stood in the way of the three Imperial Guard regiments that stormed the capital city on July 10th, and no one on the Council of Governance objected as the Klingon Commander made them sign a treaty that made them subjects of the Klingon Empire. They were spared the traditional execution of the entire ruling class that usually came with a Klingon annexation thanks to a direct decree from L’Rell; other Suliban communities would not be so lucky.[7] The Empire now had the legal basis to round up Suliban across the Quadrant as they pleased, under the pretext of “returning them to the mother country”. What ships were available were no match for the Imperial Navy, and even when many took to flight, they were no match for the Battlecruisers of Fleet Group Korok that prowled the spaceplanes. Travelling mainly in vessels barely capable of speeds above Warp 2.5, most of the refugee ships were reliant on either picking up a subspace stream (notoriously few of which existed in the Triangle and Penthe Belt) or by eluding the Klingon warships that scoured the sectors for them.
Conditions for the Suliban upon capture were beyond insentient. Transported in cargo bays and holds with barely any light, food or water, the captured would know little of their journey or destination beyond what they could discern from the rumbling of deck plates and engines. The first they would know of their arrival at a destination would be the transporter beam that took them from the cargo bay straight to slave quarters or the markets. Most were destined for industrial foundries, raw material processing centres and open cast mines, where Klingon technology (or lack thereof) demanded immense amounts of manpower to sustain the production quotas necessary. In the calculation, insentient terms of economics, the Suliban would solve the manpower crisis; by the end of 2259, about 68% of the Imperial foundries were reaching their full production quotas, as were 70% of the shipyards and 46% of the civilian fabrication centres. The Great Houses were even further ahead, with over 70% of facilities hitting their quotas across the board; the Duras family Shipyard at Qu’Shara was out-producing Praxis, producing 11 I-2 Destroyers and 8 D6-D Cruisers in six months when the Imperial facility only built 7 and 3 respectively. It is unknown how many Suliban were worked to death within the Qu’Shara construction yards and ore processing to out-produce the Imperial yard, but it cannot be denied that in terms of the raw economics, Sturka’s operation had worked – at least in the short term – in removing a pinch point within the production lines of the Empire. It had come at the expense of thousands of lives and the freedom of millions, but to many Klingons at the time, it was self-justified by the ‘honourable duty’ they had done. “We told ourselves that we were doing the Galaxy a favour,” Kor, son of Rynar would say of the Suliban annexation. “We were cleaning up the Quadrant; putting the idle to work for the good of the many. There was no honour in what we did, but we found it in ourselves to say there was.”
Unlike much of the propaganda churned out at the time, the Suliban population was most likely not worked to death in a deliberate act of genocide. The bureaucracy generated around living quarters, food and medical supplies and the designation of Suliban as overseers tend to lean towards a cold, calculated move to convert the Suliban into a long-term solution to the manpower problem. This was probably not a move from the top. Klingon honour – as twisted as it was within the boundaries of slavery – did not believe in working people to death deliberately. It was, obviously, an occupational hazard of being dishonourable to die in the service of the Klingon Empire down an open cast mine or in an orbital shipyard, but to deliberately work someone to exhaustion was not just the act of a rogue: there was no economic honour to do so. If the Empire was to centralise its society and organise its fleet, its new manpower reserve would have to last more than a year; and it would have to be continuously expanding. The inclusion of the Efrosians within the round-up was not deliberate, but a sign that the Empire’s demand for forced labour was insatiable. “We wondered how long it would be before the Klingons made a run on the Baker’s Dozen or Turnstile to snap their Suliban population up,” Ch’O’Leary noted. “Going for Tandar was the obvious move, though.”
The Tandaran Polity, a union of half a dozen inhabited worlds near the Triangle, contained the largest number of Suliban outside of the Klingon Empire itself. The Tandarans had their own history with the Cabal, and while their animosity with the Suliban dated back to events over a century beforehand many within their government still viewed them as disposable second-class citizens. It is unclear as to whether any official approval was given by Tandar Prime to the removal of nearly 2,200,000 Suliban from their space between 2259 and 2262, but evidence found by Wald Bav Mar'Gott tends towards the conclusion that a significant number of officials on Tandar Prime aided the Klingon removal of the “second class” population of the planet.[8] Either way, the Tandaran military did very little to prevent the removal of the Suliban from their space, with some officials aiding and abetting the mass transportation of communities directly into the hands of the Klingons.[9] Whether or not the Tandarans assumed full Quisling status at this point depends on your opinion of the sources. However, from this point onwards, Tandaran foreign policy was no longer independent. The Klingon Battlegroup that arrived in the system on the 18th of June would leave a regiment of Marines and an Imperial ‘advisor’ in the capital. The number of advisors would continue to rise rapidly, as would the number of Klingon soldiers across the early 2260s, aided and abetted by the short-term gains made by the ruling class of Tandar, who lived well off Klingon subsidies and Suliban labour while their populations’ rights were withdrawn by the Klingon “advisory council” bit by bit. They would learn to regret their choices, their palaces, and mistresses when the Klingon disruptors were finally pressed into their backs in 2262.
It had been apparent even by June that civilian traffic within the Triangle was moving away from Klingon space, and that even the illicit traffic was avoiding the Klingon regions. By mid-July, however, the situation was dire, with entire colonies evacuating themselves to avoid the First fleet group and fleeing towards Federation Space. Rear Admiral Templeton was a competent officer – perhaps past their best, if you were being unfair – but they were an unparalleled master of the drudging, complicated and unglamorous world of logistics, and as the trickle of ramshackle refugee ships became a flood, Starbase 10 transformed itself as best it could into a relief port, turning hangars and cargo bays into medical centres, food halls and dormitories for thousands who seemed to be arriving every day. Not all the ships decanted their passengers at SB10; many headed for the Association of Outer Free Worlds or the R’ongovian Protectorate, but most sought the safety and security of the Federation. The UFP’s position as a haven for refugees was much more than the myth the Klingons said it was. By the 2250s, an entire bureaucracy and system of autonomous resettlement existed to allow refugees to rebuild their lives within the Treaty Zone. It was a lengthy process, but it worked – if it wasn’t overwhelmed, which it was by July. It was not an organisation designed to resettle millions at once – it simply did not have the manpower to do so without further aid from the government.
Federation Central was doing its’ best to manage the crisis – Th’rhahlat had hoped to use 2259 to push through his Colonial Reform Act, which would rebalance the electoral system to give the colonies of member worlds more power within the Council Chambers. Controversial to most within the core, it had barely survived the Committee stage and had spent most of May and June as was being viscerally ripped apart by the opposition. The news of the Suliban crisis broke during the council session on June 28th as an amendment on tariff regulation was being attacked by the councillor for New Tellar. The chamber immediately suspended the session to allow the President to attend Cabinet, which he hurried to along with Ambassadors Tilly and Sarek. The reports from the Diplomatic Corps, Starfleet and FEDAC were dire. Action was needed immediately if a serious sentientarian disaster was to be avoided, and direct action from the government meant passing it through the council, no easy task at present. Despite the large majority he (hypothetically) had, challenging the power of the core worlds with a colonial reform programme was rapidly chipping away at the president’s political capital. The ire he was getting from centre core worlds (including the Andorian bloc) only increased once the suggestion came that Federation funds should be allocated to help the Suliban setting en masse on new worlds within the Treaty Zone. The President was faced with a choice he shouldn’t have had to make; pass his bill and leave the Suliban out to dry or sink his own bill to get the resources needed.
Ken Wescott was at that time working as an advisor to the Federal Department of Aid and Allocation Control (FEDAC), drawing up a shortlist of prospective colonies and resources necessary for resettling the nearly 2.3 million Suliban who were now within the treaty zone. “It was tiring work, made only harder by the long communication times with the hundreds of representatives of the refugee community. They were desperate for help, and we were determined to give it to them.” On June 20th, the President came to visit. Wescott watched him walk slowly, but deliberated around the halls, saying nothing, listening attentively to all and especially to a representative of a Suliban refugee camp on Rigel Ho! . When the call was over, the President stepped back, sighing. “He turned to Secretary Batarian and said, ‘damn the bill.’” The next day, the President introduced the emergency resolution on the Suliban refugee crisis personally. The Colonial Bill was pushed to secondary business and would be killed by a roll-call vote within a week. It didn’t matter to Th’rhahlat now. Instead, the business of the legislature was turned to a more important business: helping the helpless.
It would take time for Paris to decide what exactly it would, however. Even though the resolution has passed by the end of the third week of July, it would be weeks, if not months before the various agencies of government would be useful. Templeton couldn’t wait for Federation Central, not while the number of ships being lost in the triangle rose to dangerous levels. Using his authority, he began actively seeking out and rescuing refugee ships within his sector of operation. Using a collection of Marine Corps troop carriers, fleet tenders and even a collection of old Giant-class transports that dated back to the 2200s, Templeton’s new “Task Force Dynamo” (named after an evacuation from Old Earth’s Second World War) was activated on the 11th of July. It immediately went into action, rescuing increasing numbers of Suliban and, concerningly, Efrosian refugees who were swarming the hard-to-navigate systems of the Penthe Belt in ships not fit for long-range interstellar travel. The Efrosian home planet, Efros, had been annexed into the Empire in the early-mid 2220s, with the Klingons mainly leaving their diaspora alone until the 2260s, where communities were deported to mining worlds as punishment for “harbouring Interstellar terrorists” – the usual charge for the crime of living in harmony with the Suliban. Among those who were rescued in August was a young Efrosian teacher called Ra-ghoratreii, who was picked up by the Merchant Marine Cruiser S.S. Emden 1.4 parsecs from Khitomer.
July was no better than June – even with more assets available, and FEDAC now playing an active role in directing the flow of Suliban refugees into the Federation Interior, the Triangle and Phalanx were still in dire straits. The flow of trade, barely recovered after the Klingon War, had collapsed entirely in some places, and Klingon Captains were happily engaging in acts of piracy against Federation and neutral shipping with almost no repercussions. Even as reinforcements arrived from other sectors to bolster the Border Patrol, Starfleet simply couldn’t keep up with the numbers available. ‘Hawkeye’ Rogers was doing their best to keep Templeton abreast of his intelligence, but the delay between information being discovered at it reaching Starbase 10 was far too long for it to be of any use. The Klingons were inside Templeton’s decision loop now – and that of the whole Klingon Command, really. “It was intolerable”, Captain Angela Fukuhara of the USS Marco Polo complained in her memoirs. “We tried our best – we really, really did – but the Klingons were everywhere. They appeared in ones and twos to harass our convoys while the big battlecruisers pinned us down.”
On July 29th, 2259, Rogers received a message informing him that “a supply convoy for Ohniaka III would be delayed due to a Warp Coil failure 43 AUs out of Regulus”. The code confirmed Starfleet Intelligence’s own conclusions: Klingon Forces were now operating from bases outside of their borders. N’garriez’s sources were backed by SI exploring officer Lans Renshaw, who confirmed that military bases had been established on four different planets within the Triangle and the Phalanx; two of which had previously been Suliban colonies. More critically, one lay within one Parsec of the main trade route from Bakers’ World to Starbase 10; the perfect hunting ground for attacking both Suliban refugee columns and Federation Trade. It was a provocation that couldn’t be left unchallenged.
“We've got the ships, we’ve got the men, We've got the money too” Operation Singapore
There had been some discussion for a while of a more long-term solution to the Suliban exodus. It was clear that unless the Klingons were dissuaded from a long-term campaign, their vessels would soon swarm space across most of the Triangle. While some were content to save as many Suliban as possible, others concluded that the quickest way to stop the Klingons would be to warn them off in a language they understood: force. Matt Decker was a proponent of this view, and his plan, titled Operation Perry, underlined his aggressive thinking. “I wanted to give them a good kick in the ass,” he said in a letter to his wife. “We have the ships for it– not a lot, but enough to let them know we’re not out for the count yet.”
Perry called for a cruising task force of Constitution, Kirov, and other Class I Starships to enter the disputed area and aim for a confrontation with a Klingon Battlegroup. It was an audacious scheme, designed to draw maximum strength of the Imperial Navy away from Refugee columns and civilian targets while also proving to the Empire that Starfleet wasn’t out of the picture. It wasn’t without risks, however. Klingon Command would be asked to put its key assets – the few available Class I Starships available – on the line for an operation that could easily see them all destroyed or taken out of the line for months. Furthermore, many pointed out that similar attempts by individual captains to try and tackle Klingon ships within the Triangle had an unfortunate regularity of happening in the presence of civilian vessels. After the loss of the Pan-America liner SS. Argelian Star and all 2000 souls aboard during a duel between the USS Rousseau and the IKS Kitumba in late June 2259, Starfleet baulked at any confrontation that would put more lives at risk.[10] Perry was also criticised because it called for a confrontation outside of the Triangle: Decker favoured staging within the Alshanai Rift, or even within the Organia System. Most within the Presidio didn’t believe that the Klingons would pull out of the Triangle unless confronted there – something Decker was personally opposed to on logistical grounds. “We can’t operate the way we need to operate in the Triangle right now,” he told Captain Stone. “Our Starships will be out on a limb right up to the Klingon Starbase chain, and a long way from our own.” Decker, however, was unable to convince Drake or Ch’Shukar. Planning on Perry was very limited after the Argelian Star incident, with Starfleet Command unwilling to draw the Klingons into any sort of situation that might escalate.
Decker’s plan may have been shelved, but the concept of some form of “organised confrontation” still lingered in the minds of Drake and her peers. Already, a group was beginning to form of Captains, Staff Officers and others for whom counter-insurgent action and reactive tactics were not enough. Going far beyond Decker’s “confrontational approach”, a small but increasing group of officers were pushing “offence is the best defence” as more than a maxim, but an entire operational strategy. It was not much, but even as early as Late July 2259, a note in Captain Stone’s diary mentions a “dispassionate meeting with several ranking officers about aggressive actions in K-B-S (Klingon Border Sector). Vice Ad. Rittenhouse and others were noticeably determined to make a strike on Mastocal. Will speak to Adm. Shukar.” Even if Stone – and most of the Presidio establishment, for that matter – weren’t keen on an aggressive action at this time, drawing a line against the Klingons wasn’t out of the question either. For many, the lack of *any* decisive engagement during T’Kuvma’s war remained frustrating. Previous military experience from the Battle of Cheron to the confrontation over Donatu V implied that most interspace wars could be ended by a successful “decisive battle” of some sort. The recent war had seen no such engagements; no crippling, game-changing event. Even with its strength decimated and defensive strategy in peril, many within Starfleet Command and the civilian community believed that the stellar service could still deliver such a victory. For some, the war would not really be over until such an event happened. For hawks like Commissioner Peter Broadhurst or Admiral Rittenhouse, the possibility of giving the Klingons a bloody nose and sending them back across the border was tantalising. For Admiral Drake, it was simply a solution to the immediate problem of raiding and piracy, and a diplomatic play instead of a military one. In her mind, any plan that involved a fleet-level confrontation with the Imperial Navy was a bad one.
After receiving word of the four Klingon bases, Drake immediately began putting together a new plan to re-establish authority. The plan – first mentioned in Klingon Command documents on August 3rd – was what she called “a pinning operation.” Instead of going out as a fleet to draw the Klingons into battle, Klingon Command would use a Starbase as a focal point to strike at pirates and defend Suliban refugee ships deep within the Triangle. It was an innovative solution to the logistical problem. A Starbase – and the tenders and secondary craft that it could support – would solve the problem of supply within the Triangle. It was also a target that couldn’t be avoided by any Klingon Commander, especially if it was in a well-located position that directly threatened their supply lines.
Unvidae-Caleb was chosen as the target for Drake’s “pinning” operation. The twin systems, located at the far end of the dilithium belt from Orion, had first been mapped in 2218 by the Asia-Class USS America on its fateful last mission to Khitomer. There was little of note about either of them on face value. They contained no M-class planets or K-class worlds suitable for habitat construction; the 4 gas giants had no notable supplies of deuterium or other resources: compared to many other systems within its sector, the twin stars were notably mineral poor, and were passed over by the flurry of mining co-operatives and corporations that flooded the area in the 2230s, 40s and 50s.
The system remained on Starfleet’s sensors, however, thanks to the Gas Giant Caleb IV and its moons. With two rocky satellites and a readily available supply of hydrogen isotopes, it was an ideal location for a Starbase – at least in theory. Far away from the main space lanes of even the Triangle, its closeness to the Klingon Border (within 6 lightyears of Khitomer) meant that it would have been incredibly provocative to establish a base there even in 2219. Even the advantages of a nucleonic fuelling station and resupply base were negated by the sharp decline in usage of fusion-powered Warp Cores from the 2220s onwards. There were several proposals by both Starfleet Command and the Merchant Marine for a base across the 20s,30s and 40s, with the last plan in 2242 involving a scheme to construct a ‘Space-Island’ class Starbase out of three Ocean Class transports. This had been shelved after Donatu V, and with the peaceful situation on the border in the decade afterwards, the question remained untouched until after the ceasefire in 2257.
Admiral Templeton had raised the Caleb Starbase as a possibility in late 2258, only to be told that it was unlikely to be prioritised while Starfleet focused on the new generation of Light and Utility Cruisers. Templeton would have to make do with his bases at SB10,234 and T-1 and the several smaller, less well-equipped star ports on various outposts. With the overwhelming of The Federation Border Patrol across 2259, it was clear that action needed to be taken. The confirmation that Klingon raiding forces were operating out of the region made it certain that Caleb IV would be back on Starfleet’s priority list. Drake’s notes first highlight Caleb IV on August 6th (alongside several other locations in the region of Khitomer). By the 9th, the other locations had been disregarded. Univdae-Caleb would be the location of Klingon Command’s confrontation with the 1st Fleet Group.
Drake’s plan to tackle the 1st Fleet Group was built upon many of the same lines as Operation Perry. A Task Force of fast, hard-hitting ships, including the Constitution Class USS Excalibur, 3 Kirov Strike Cruisers, 2 Marco Polo SWACs vessels and a dozen destroyers of all sizes. By basing these ships deep within the Triangle, Klingon Command could begin proper search and destroy operations against pirate bases, with the bonus of countering the new Klingon bases effectively. While the more longer-range ships being collected, such as the Loknar and Saladin-Class Destroyers, could operate that far from a Starbase, many of the hard-hitting vessels Drake needed to match the D-6 and D-7s were short-ranged vessels, unable to operate more than 10-25 lightyears from a base without a tender, a class of ship Starfleet was desperately short of in 2259.[11] With a secure supply station in their zone of operations, the Task Force would be able to operate from a safe harbour far closer to the Klingons than previously, and most importantly, on the far side of the main space lanes out of the Triangle.
The plan, now titled Operation Minorca, was originally scheduled for early December 2259, to coincide with the deployment of 3 new Ranger Class Battlecruisers. These ships, specifically designed in the early 2250s to act as a direct counter to the D7, were finishing their trials when the Suliban Crisis began. Despite several attempts by Drake to have the Andoria Yards release them from trials, Ch’Shukar refused to let the new ships be sent on such an operation.[12] As the Klingon fleet presence in the Triangle and core ward sectors of the disputed area grew, it was clear that an operation to try and hold the Klingons at bay was necessary. As much as Ch’Shukar wanted to wait for more resources (and Starships) to build up, pressure from the Department of Commerce, the Merchant Marine and the Department of Interstellar Affairs made it clear to him that immediate action was not just preferred, it was necessary. Klingon Warships were now threatening internal convoys as well as neutral ones. High Commissioner Peter Broadhurst made the position of the civilian government very clear. “Threats to the freedom of the stars are threats to the Federation as an Institution and the stability and sanctity of its member worlds. Starfleet must maintain those freedoms in all places possible with all the means it has available.” Already, Klingon aggression and sabre-rattling had undermined diplomatic efforts across the disputed area; As recently as April, the Association of Outer Free Worlds had backed out of treaty negotiations, citing the need to maintain neutrality as a core justification. Trade negotiations with the Asparax Confederation had also fallen through when it became clear that Starfleet couldn’t guarantee the Asparaxian merchant fleet safe passage at the present time. Whether the Admiralty liked it or not, they needed to confront the Klingons now.
Drake’s plan (which was still very much in the early stages) was quickly approved. Matt Decker’s Operation Perry (and its strike force) was soon combined with Minorca to form a combined operation that Starfleet Command dubbed Operation Singapore. It called for a much larger force, consisting of four bodies: A “Strike Force” consisting of the Constitution, Kirov and Loknar class ships, 2 “escort” groups of destroyers and the “Support Group” of Starfleet Engineering craft, including a new Sviagod class rapid response Starbase. This combined group, eventually named Task Force Remagen, would be the largest operational force Starfleet had assembled since the end of Burnham’s War, and the most powerful, including at least 2 Constitution Class vessels, 3 Perseus Class Escorts and several first-rate light cruisers, including several of the Bolivar Class (soon to be renamed the Miranda class). It was a provocative move but considered necessary. “Self-defence does not mean passivity,” Th’rhahlat had written in Frontier Democracy. “It means a willingness to act with force to protect what you have.” Starfleet had (in theory, at least) the means to do so: As Broadhurst noted to a colleague after a Cabinet meeting in August 2259, “We've got the ships, we’ve got the men, we've got the money too.”
Operation Singapore was approved and authorised in record time, with the “GO” order being issued by Klingon Command within 48 hours of the operation being authorised on Earth. Within 25 minutes of the orders being received at Starbase 12, Construction work of the USS Kyber Pass (named so by the work crew who built it at breakneck speed) began. The Sviagod Class had been first proposed in late 2256 to counter Klingon raids by converting older Starships directly into a defensive Starbase, using their combined Warp Core to power a much more extensive weapons array. The modified Sviagod would include a refuelling station and dual deuterium refinery, allowing it to convert the gases from Caleb IV directly into Matter and Antimatter for Starfleet Vessels in the area. It was an ingenious idea, and the conversion of two Cayuga cruisers and a Magee-Ramsay class Fleet Auxiliary into a Starbase was completed in record time. The USS Kyber Pass was commissioned on August 22nd and towed from Starbase 12 to 10, where she arrived on the August 30th to rendezvous was Escort Task Force 108 under Commodore Zell. It was designed to serve as the cornerstone of the whole operation – part weapons platform, part Deuterium refining facility, part Anti-matter resupply hub, it would allow Task Force Remagen to operate as if it was still within the Treaty Zone proper – if it could be assembled in the first place.
Despite the aspirations of both Perry and Singapore (as well as the incredible production rates at the Axanar and Terran Fleet Yards), Klingon Command remained worryingly short of vessels – especially the hard-hitting Heavy Cruisers that were desperately needed to counter the D6 and D7 battlecruisers. Analysis by the Combat Planning department of Starfleet Tactical did not paint the Eaves-Beyer Class I Starships like the Hoover or Europa class in a good light, with little evidence that they were any sort of match for their Klingon opponents. The Perseus and Constitutions were simply not available in enough numbers, and most of the former were detached to the 3rd “Blue” Fleet along the Kzinti-Tholian border region: even the Larson and Saladin Class Destroyers weren’t available in the numbers that Drake had hoped.
Templeton, for obvious reasons, refused to release a single ship to Drake for the operation, citing their necessity for Space Lane patrol and sentientarian needs. It wasn’t like the Border Patrol and Triangle Squadrons were formed from state-of-the-art vessels either – the most advanced ships Templeton had available were Saladin and Hermes class, whose Single-nacelle designs were incredibly unstable at the high war speeds necessary for Singapore. Undeterred, Drake and her staff began rapidly scouring the region for available ships. Suggestions that older capital ships like the Bellau Wood and Horizon class could be reactivated from mothball yards in the inner core were rapidly shot down by Starfleet Operations, who couldn’t guarantee that any of these vessels could sustain above warp four or take modern weaponry without compromising their engines. Ch’Shukar also still refused to release the Ranger Class for action. Drake’s junior commanders – Captains Vr-Melloc, Bavv-Mellen and Palmquist – suggested she delay the operation until Anti-Piracy operations near the Azure Nebula finished, which would allow 11 vessels (including A Marco Polo class Sensor ship and 3 Burke Class Frigates) to join the operation. Drake refused, and ordered them to “find what they could”
The resulting patchwork of ships included several prototype vessels (including three Miranda Class conversions still undergoing tests) as well as several aged craft such as Anton and Valley-Forge Class ships that had been lying in Mothballs. Most of the fleet, however, was composed of the 2230s-40s built Eaves-Beyer types that had been relegated to light duties since the armistice. While some had undergone limited duotronic upgrades and weapons refitting, most remained in their pre-war outfitting and were realistically no match for any of the modern Klingon vessels. Some of these vessels were not as suspect – the Avenger, Detroyat and Loknar classes had never been deemed fit for Trinary conversion and had strong service records from Burnham’s war, but they were still underpowered and lacked significant deuterium storage for long-range service with modern weaponry. They were what Drake had to deal with, and they were quickly hauled from their convoy duties and marshalled together, often with Giant and Derf tenders having to run Warp-One refuelling manoeuvres along the Argelius-SB10 route – a move that could not be conducted with the Eaves-Beyer ships, who were forced to crowd around tenders at Starbase 10 “like milk cows” as one engineer put it. If they had to face combat without a refuelling stop – or worse, were caught refuelling – it would be a disaster.
In the end, Task Force Remagen entered the Ophelia Star cluster with 34 ships – five more than Drake asked for, but with six fewer Class One Starships than the plan had deemed necessary, and only one Constitution Class. The fleet was split into four groups; the 15 – ship strike force, led by the Excalibur, which Drake had transferred her flag to; 2 seven-ship escort groups, led by Captains Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc, and a support group of tenders, tugs and Starfleet Corps of Engineers ships Under Captain Qi. Following the plan, the groups assembled at separate rendezvous before proceeding into the Triangle, the Strike Force from Starbase 12, the escort groups from SB10 and a point near Acamar respectively. Escort Group one picked up the Support Group 3 days out of SB10 and maintained escort, the two Ptolemy Class tugs working their best to maintain Warp 5 with the Kyber Pass in tow. EG one and two reached Caleb IV on September 2nd, a day after the rendezvous. Bavv-Mellen, aboard the USS Duluth, was surprised to find an empty star system instead of the Strike Force. Escort Group 2 arrived hours later, both groups assembling around Caleb IV while the two captains conversed. Only one question was on their lips: Where was Drake?
Lost In Space
The success of Operation Singapore relied on the strength of the strike group as a deterrent from the start. The Klingons would recognise 24 Starfleet vessels right on their border as an obvious threat to their communications routes into the Triangle and Phalanx area. Any attempt to establish the base would not work if a strong Klingon force attacked it before it came online. Without the strike force to defend them from heavier Klingon ships, Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc were at an impasse. Bavv-Mellen, with his experience with both the Corps of Engineers and herding his fleet of deuterium-hungry ships this deep into the triangle, was hesitant to stay here without either the Strike force or more fleet tenders. Vr-Melloc agreed; however, they both knew that by now, the Klingons had to know they were here. If they attempted to leave, they could be picked off one-by-one as they tried to make their way back to Federation Space. Safety in numbers was seen as the priority – furthermore, by remaining at Caleb, Starfleet would hopefully get to pick the ground to fight on. The only saving grace they had was Captain Fukuhara and the USS Marco Polo. The ASR Cruiser had been refitting at Starbase 10 when the operation had been activated. Unable to reach SB 12 for the rendezvous, the Marco Polo had tagged along with the support groups. Now, it gave Bavv-Mellen (overall commander thanks to the fact that he had a full Starfleet Commission, as opposed to a Federalised Andorian Imperial Guard Commission) an ace up his sleeve: even with superior Klingon scanners, the Marco Polo’s sensor redoubt was guaranteed to pick the Klingons up at least 4 light-years away.[13]
The decision was made to stay and wait out the strike group. Both Captains believed that Drake couldn’t be more than 30 hours away at this point and were confident that the Excalibur and the rest of the Starship force would be on station before Kyber Pass went online. In the meantime, the Marco Polo would give them enough warning to organise an adequate delaying action with the ships they had. They assumed they wouldn’t be waiting long, and even if they did, they were confident that they could fight a delaying action within the system for long enough.
Unfortunately, however, the Strike force was a lot more than 30 hours away – closer to 5 days, in fact. The idea of approaching Caleb IV from different directions had seemed sensible when one was looking at a star map on the Command deck of the Andrew Cunningham, but the stellar geography of the area made it a nightmare. The Escort and support groups, despite their difficulties with subspace eddies and navigational anomalies, had taken the ‘easy route’, travelling partially down the subspace trade current that runs from Starbase 10 to Baker’s World and then also the parallel route towards Narendra before cutting rim ward. The Strike force, departing from Starbase 12 was cutting across the direction of subspace currents, dramatically reducing the abilities of their warp drives to reach maximum speeds. It didn’t help either that Drake’s route took the force worryingly close to the Klingon outpost on Khitomer. While this had not been perceived as a problem during the planning stage, Klingon Command’s staff had not anticipated the sudden importance of Khitomer as a staging post and resupply station for Klingon vessels within the Phalanx and Triangle areas. While the force was able to detect the presence of seven Klingon vessels before they were spotting themselves, the delay while they manoeuvred around Klingon scanners at a slower warp speed added two whole days to their journey that could not be spared. There was no way for Drake to
For most of the 10th and 11th of September, the Marco Polo had been monitoring growing subspace radio communications from the direction of Khitomer. In this time, its communications department had managed to decode and confirm what several uncoded transmissions had already alluded to; that there were not one, but two Klingon Fleet-size formations operating within the Triangle at present, and both within striking distance of Caleb. The composition, deployment, and posture of these fleets, however, was completely unknown. One of them (5th Fleet, “Battlegroup Morev”) was not even known to Starfleet until Marco Polo picked up their transmissions. It was a revelation of dramatic levels, and one only underlined by the reply from Bavv-Mellen to the Marco Polo’s message, asking for Captain Fukuhara to inform him of what exactly Starfleet Intelligence’s estimation of the size of a Klingon battlegroup was. “They didn’t have one,” Fukuhara noted in her memoir. “Starfleet Intelligence was barely aware that the Klingons had an order of battle, let alone what was on it.”
What the Marco Polo had detected were the transmissions of the latest part of L’Rell and Sturka’s major reforms to the Empire: an organised Imperial Fleet. For most of its history, the Imperial navy had consisted of fleets, but these were little more than “banners”, which designated which Admiral (and thus which house) a ship was loyal to within the fleet. There was little in the way of a chain of command, subdivisions, or logistical systems to support said fleets. During the war, they devolved so dramatically they were of little use anyway, with combat formations tending to form based on friendships, family or patronage. It was, quite obviously, an incredibly inefficient system, especially for an Empire that was trying to conquer and remain in control of territory.
Sturka’s fleet changes came slowly after his promotion to the position of Grand Admiral, given by the Chancellor in early 2259. Ships of similar size, shape and range were organised into a ghob (combat flight) of 3 or 4 ships, with up to six of these flights being assigned to a fleet-sized formation called a ghom (Battlegroup) under a flag officer of either Admiral or General’s rank. Larger vessels like the D7s or the planned B10 Battleship would operate in 2 ship groups unless on independent detachment. These groups would serve as the nexus of a new logistical system based on Klingon bases which would allow for fuel, weapons, and crew resupply to take place without the need for ships to leave their station. The Combat flight system also allowed for Klingon ships to operate fleet manoeuvres properly, and while there were no book-learnt tactics yet, senior captains could now teach their juniors the way of war outside of the combat zone. More significantly, for the first time in their history, Klingon Admirals would be able to accurately assess what assets they had to use, where they were and what their status was through a system of subspace relays that piggybacked on already existing civilian networks.
It was a major change, and while many of the major reforms would not be in place until 2261 at least, by mid-2259 the first five combat groups had been created, along with the first “Fleet Group” , which manned the border zone with the Federation. There had, surprisingly, been little opposition from the Imperial Navy itself; most came from the house fleets and the Great houses, who lamented further losses to their authority as ships were placed into a chain of command that led directly to the Chancellor. They were, however, begrudgingly accepted, especially when the contracts for supplying and supporting the fleets were floated. As per usual, Sturka’s stick was neutered with the smallest of carrots, and the cash-poor Great Houses were happy to take what they could get. The new battlegroups allowed Sturka to concentrate his best forces where he needed them and respond to crises much quicker than beforehand, while also leaving them in command of respected leaders who were both effective warriors and loyal servants of the Empire. Battlegroup Kesh – a 31-ship fleet, made up mainly of older D5 and D6 models along with Raptor types and older Bird-of-prey ships had been performing much of the raiding and seizure of Suliban vessels. It was also joined in 5th Fleet Group by new force, Battlegroup Korev, which had been refit with some of the newest vessels, including the sleek, refined D7-K ‘Klodode’ as well as the fast D6-D Attack cruiser.
Starfleet intelligence was completely unaware of this massive change in any way. It could just about tell where there were concentrations of Klingon warships, but beyond that, there was nothing else it could say. “It was a useless organisation,” Ch’Shukar wrote of this failure. “God knows, it tried, but it genuinely never had anything useful to say, and it hadn’t for over half a century.” Starfleet’s relationship with an organised system of military intelligence has always been limited. Upon its founding in 2141, the concept of a manned exploratory agency with an intelligence organisation had been laughable. Starfleet Intelligence had only been created when Starfleet had agreed to absorb the United Earth Stellar Navy in 2151, both at the behest of the authoritarian-minded Vulcan High Command and with the less paranoid purpose of providing information on piracy. It was not taken seriously by Starfleet Command or even its own officers. An extremely poor performance during the Earth-Romulan War had convinced most that it would not improve. Unable to predict the attacks on Starbase 1 or Hell’s Gate, most information gathering had been conducted by Starfleet Communications or gathered by blind luck. Its only coup – correctly assessing when the Romulan attack on Mars would come – had been thanks to a tip-off from Vulcan Intelligence, who did most of the legwork of tracking the Romulan assault force.
The folding of SI into the Federation Star Fleet upon its formation had been an afterthought. At the time, The Andorian and Vulcan navies were still much better equipped to protect Federation assets, and their much more effective intelligence organisations were better equipped to do the legwork. This situation, as we know, did not last for long. By the end of the 2170s Starfleet was the principal stellar navy of the Federation; the member worlds’ defence forces rapidly receding into system patrol and rescues services. In this time, however, no major reforms of any kind were made to Starfleet Intelligence, which still operated in the same haphazard, poorly thought through cell structure it had done since the 2150s.
This was not for lack of trying. Between 2161 and 2259 there were no less than eleven attempts to reform Starfleet Intelligence along the lines of a modern Intelligence agency. Six were approved by Starfleet Command; four by the Federation Security Council; three reached the Council floor; only one, however, came within any chance of being enacted in 2246, only to be defeated over an amendment on the right of SI to man its own vessels on the Starfleet roster. The reasons why are not particularly surprising. Most, if not all the Federations’ core members had poor historical experiences with powerful intelligence organisations without any checks. Earth’s 20th and 21st centuries were mired by the depravations of the KGB and CIA. Most Vulcans still remembered the High Command’s pursuit of “logical conformity”, which had also consumed a dozen satellite worlds in its’ controlling reach and nearly destroyed the katra of Surak in the process. Many of the powers that joined the federation in its first 100 years had similar brushes, either within their own societal development or at the hands of an external oppressor. As such, the concept of empowering Federation Central with a powerful, organisation security agency was anathema, even if such an agency would, hypothetically at least, be controlled entirely by the Council. “Checks and Balances never stopped the CIA,” Siobhan Tilly would remind the Security Council in 2256. Even attempts to create a Unified Intelligence Committee, to allow member world organisations to work together and share information, was rejected out of fear it’d be used for political ends. The Federation did not do military intelligence, and never would. It was a telling sign of the institutional intransigency of the Federation that even a century after it had been concluded as not up to the task, policymakers still refused to alter or reform its functions to fit with their means.
This was of little concern to Starfleet. Most Captains Starbase Commanders and Admirals gathered intelligence in the traditional manner: with long-range patrols, reports from civilian traffic and extensive Over the Horizon (OTH) sensor buoys, which were considered more than enough to deliver necessary tactical information when required. A closer examination, if it had been made at the time, would have shown that in almost all major cases of escalated conflict, these systems had never been enough to provide anything but barebones details of opposition forces. Most information about the Kzinti, Cha’kuun, Klingons and Nausicaans had to be learnt in combat, and even then, SI lacked the resources to adequately break down what was learnt. It was of no, concern, however: Starfleet didn’t need a proper military intelligence agency and wouldn’t get one.
Without any form of reorganisation and a bureaucracy that was older than the Federation Charter, Starfleet Intelligence increasingly resembled a chaotic spiderweb of contacts, informants, military attaches, and moles, providing a completely uneven spread of information that helped no one. There were no sub-departments of intelligence; no sectors; no signals network or covert agent group. “Sectors” did exist, based either on location or polity, often with overlapping and wasting valuable time and energy investigating the same targets, without any clear chain of authority. While each embassy, High Commission and Outpost had their own Starfleet Intelligence officer, it was entirely unclear what their job was exactly, or who they reported to. TK Robson, for example, was considered “Head of Starfleet Intelligence, Orion Sector” simply because she started signing her reports as such and no one complained. If an officer put themselves to work, and had support from local Starbases, diplomats and Captains, they could achieve much, but in most cases, they stumbled around in the dark, drawing intel reports from local news reports, rumours and in the case of one officer on Regulus, an Areglian with the “gift of premonition.”[14]
By the 2250s, it was a farcical mess: Axanar Command, for example, could accurately trace and locate almost every possible smuggler, privateer, or trafficker within its space, while the Klingon Sector remained unsure of whether or not there was a living Emperor on the throne. Romulan Command could not pinpoint the location of Romulus itself and incorrectly assumed the planet Remus was a secondary system known as Romii. Burnham’s war had merely made things worse: what assets had existed, either individuals or listening drones were wiped out entirely across the entire war, along with a great deal of the Intelligence staff themselves. What information they had learned by 2259 was not of any real use. As per briefings given to Admiral Ch’Shukar in early May, they still believed that the Banner system of fleet organisation was in place – information that had last been confirmed in 2245.
Drake had known that they were essentially operating in the task on the intelligence front – to an extent, this was how many captains preferred to operate. Centralised information gathering could often be wrong, and it was always better to look at something with your own eyes than listen to what a bureaucrat thought. In this case, though, the lack of a central agency was crippling: an organised intelligence system might have passed on Ngarriez’s knowledge of Klingon Fleet organisation or tracked the movement of the 2nd Fleet Group as it pivoted from the Orion front to the Triangle. At the very least, it would have passed on Captain Mendez’s memorandums on Klingon sensors that concluded (with significant evidence) that the high-power sensors of D7-K were not just equal to that of a Marco Polo class cruiser, but even more powerful in some cases.
By September 12th, the Klingons knew that there were 20 Starfleet vessels at Caleb IV. Two D-5s had spotted the support group on the 7th and tailed them, Admiral Morev correctly assessing Caleb as their objective and moving his forces to cut them off their line of retreat. The Strike Force had also been detected by the sensors at Khitomer, whose range was almost a light-year longer than Drake had thought. Morev and Korok had already decided on a plan of action by the time that Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc met aboard the Duluth, and one that met with cold approval from Sturka. “The Boss liked a good victory,” Kor noted. “Especially when it was a total one.” Those 20 Starships – second line, out of date and dozens of light-years from Federation vessels – were about to face 45 of the best vessels the Klingon Empire had to offer.
[1] The Federation Phalanx is the name for the cluster of approximated 900 stars that lie below the 0 degrees plane across the border region, and acts as a “secondary border area” below the disputed zone.
[2] The biology of human-Andorian biological transference and procreation takes too long to be explained within the confines of this work.
[3] A ‘Mickey Reed’ is Starfleet ratings slang for a fresh, overeager academy graduating officer, named after Malcolm Reed, armory officer of the S.S. Enterprise (NX-01) and one of the least popular commandants of Starfleet Academy during the late 22nd century.
[4] TK Robson, To Prevent Hell: A Diplomatic History of the 2260s (ShiKahr, Oxford University Press,Vulcan, 2290)
[5] There is a significant argument that the productivity of these colonies was down to their interactions with Federation and Federation-adjacent economies throughout the 2230s and 40s. Influences from both Post-Scarcity Social-Conservationist and Baker-Liberationist political economies can be found in the policies of House Mo’Kai and K’tal across most of the pre-Sturka period. For more, see Edward Knowles, The Non-Aggression Principle: Libertarianism on the Fringe of a Post-Economic Society, 2200-2260 (San Francisco: Memory Alpha, 2300) and W.M. Nguyen, "'What is to be Done?' Post-Class Politics in the Disputed Area, 2230-2275" (San Francisco: Starfleet Historical Press, 2312)
[6] Terry M. Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar. (London: Memory Alpha, 2305)
[7] Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar.
[8]Wald Bav Mar'Gott, Savage Klingon Peace in the Beta Quadrant (Starfleet: Starfleet Press, 2316)
[9] Only one Tandaran would ever come to trial for their crimes: most were killed or went missing in the Polity’s eventually annexation in 2262.
[10] The Argelian Star, a Boeing-Shi’kar Model B-3777-200ER Starliner was carrying a crew of civilians, refugees and finished goods from Baker’s World to Argelius when it was stopped by the Klingon D7 Cruiser Kitumba and forcibly boarded. When the USS Rousseau arrived on the scene, the standoff escalated when the Kitumba refused to withdraw. During the 40-minute duel, a Torpedo from the Kitumba struck the Argelian Star amidships, killing all aboard.
[11] Starfleet Command lost all but 4 of its Large Fleet Tenders during Burnham’s War. While 2 were allocated to Klingon Command (and needed for other purposes), the remainder were tied down for most of the year as part of the 3rd Fleet’s Kzinti Police Action.
[12] This proved to be a prudent move on Shukar’s account – in the summer trials near Wolf 359, USS Ranger, Coral Sea and Colorado all suffered major failures within the EPS systems that nearly saw the entire ship class scrapped.
[13] Federalised Commissions were common for Officers who had entered the service through UESPA, The Andorian Imperial Guard and other member world military services. While Article 49a of the Federation Charter Guaranteed them equal rank and status to Starfleet personnel, they were always considered junior to those with Direct Commissions. Member world personnel would only be given equal rank and status after the 2275 Nogura Reforms.
[14] Said officer was dishonourably discharged from the service when an investigation discovered that he had been using Starfleet funds to pay for his ‘contact’s’ lavish lifestyle: an offence that serious enough before one even considers that the two men had been married for 6 years.
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance, a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.” – Robert Dylan, Old Earth Poet and Musician, circa 1967 CE
“I’m starting to realize that ‘we come in peace’ only means something if they’re clear on the fact we can also kick their ass.” - Matthew Decker, apocryphal.
Crisis in the Federation Phalanx
The Federation Border Patrol was not a large fleet, or a powerful one. It had been created in the early 2170s to guard the long frontier south of Beta Rigel, but after the Larson reforms in the 2220s, the prominence of the Patrol as a defensive force declined. By the 2250s, it mainly existed to maintain order and support the hundreds of mining outposts and independent colonies that filled the Federation Phalanx and Triangle, where population centres were thin on the ground and the timely presence of a Federation vessel could be the line between safety and a horrifying repeat of Tarsus IV.[1] It was a low priority force, and it was mainly equipped with a myriad of pre-marvick drive vessels – redoubtable, sturdy and reliable types like the Kestrel and Al-Rashid class, with some faster ships like the newer single nacelle Saladin class and the incredibly reliable Pioneer class. It was a close-knit collection of captains, used to acting independently and in unison to conduct short-range anti-piracy operations, using their limited firepower, range and speed to the best of their abilities. It was not glamourous work, but it was, as the Border Patrol’s one-time commander Robert Wesley noted, it was “what our ships are for” – exploration, support, and defence on a day-to-day basis.
The Malcolm Reed was an archetypal Border Patrol vessel. One of the fourth run of Larson class destroyers, it was well-liked by her crew. “We liked the Larson Class a lot,” noted Patrick Ch’O’Leary. ” People called them ‘Jeeps’ or ‘Billy Goats’, but we preferred to call them SUF– Starfleet's Ugly Flyers.” Ch’O’Leary was a born and bred space farer; he’d grown up on board the merchant marine vessel SS R’vellar, where four of the six bridge crew were his parents.[2] Half-Human, half Andorian, he was an archetypal child of the “Great Awakening”, when millions of federation citizens had departed their home worlds to stake out new lives within the Federation Treaty Zone, where they could as one aggrandising politician put it, “build their own utopias as they saw fit.” While for some, this meant building Earth’s away for Earth, for others it meant the pursuit of the agrarian idyll, or the idealism of a noble republic, for many like Ch’O’Leary’s parents it was the chance to stake out a life of self-fulfilment on their terms. “My parents loved the stars, and so did I, in my different ways.” They hadn’t been upset when, at age 17, he’d said he wanted to join Starfleet, but they had insisted he enlist in the ranks, which he had done, signing up at Starbase 17 in April 2244. He didn’t remain a ranker for long. Starfleet was always short of experienced NCOs, and within a year of service he had been promoted to Petty Officer 2nd Class. By 2253 he was a Chief Petty Officer aboard the USS Saladin, and with his promotion to Master Chief Petty Officer in 2256, he was one of a small but vital cadre of senior Non-coms within Starfleet. “Command prided itself on the quality of its officers, but at the end of the day, it takes a lot to turn a ‘Mickey Reed’ into a proper officer. That was our job, really – along with running the ship for them.”[3] With crew shortages as they were, Ch’O’Leary had been offered a position as Chief Engineer aboard the Malcolm Reed – a not-uncommon move for non-coms, often accompanied by promotion from the ranks. “I thought about taking the stripes but turned it down. I didn’t want to bother with eight months out the line doing a command school course with a bunch of kids back at Federation Central.” Ch’O’Leary’s experience had paid off during the Klingon War, where he’d earned the Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry.
After the end of hostilities, the Malcolm Reed’s Captain had been reassigned, and their replacement – a quiet but hyper-competent Lieutenant Commander named Lance Cartwright – asked him to stay on. Ch’O’Leary agreed, aware that right now the Phalanx needed experienced personnel, as a large number of senior officers from the border patrol had been transferred to help bring 2nd and 4th fleet back up to strength, their numbers replaced by raw replacements. “Captain Cartwright was a good lad, but he had other places to be.” It was hard to ignore the ambition of Malcolm Reed’s CO. “He was never going be content with commanding a LUF or a Destroyer. He wanted to be a Starship Captain, but he wasn’t about to climb the greasy pole to get there. He was doing it properly, and we respected that.” Cartwright wasn’t a popular man by any use of the word, but he was good at his job – exceptional so, and his instant judgement of a situation was unparalleled. He had his flaws; his grudges never seemed to fade away. “[Cartwright] less had a chip on his shoulder, and more of a large log,” Captain Kirk would note. “It only got worse as time went on.” Despite this, his CO – Admiral Monroe Templeton of Starbase 10 - placed significant trust in him, which is how the Malcolm Reed found itself out on a limb near the Apopka cluster.
At the far end of the Triangle from Federation Space, the Apopka star cluster was of little note beyond the presence of five inhabited colony worlds: one Barolian, one Human and three mixed Suliban-Efrosian. They were linked to the Federation sphere by the “Narendra Express”, a duo of Giant-Class super transports that operated out of Baker’s World. One of them – the SS Ely Cathedral – had, on April 5th, been prevented from entering the cluster by three K23 class destroyers. The Klingon vessels had cited a “social quarantine” as the reason to prevent access and ordered the Ely Cathedral to warn other Federation and neutral vessels that any ship entering the cluster would be fired upon. The Malcolm Reed was sent to investigate but was five light-years from the cluster when it encountered a convoy of eight damaged vessels limping towards Federation space. Stopping to assist, they discovered to their shock that each ship was crammed with Suliban – hundreds filling cargo holds with standing room only, children and babies being held by exhausted parents. Cartwright asked the Captain of the Phileas Fogg - an ancient Bison class vessel, first launched in 2155 as the UES Apis – what had happened. “The Klingons are rounding up the Suliban,” was the reply. “All of them. No one knows where they’re going.” The convoy of ships carried about 18,000 people; all that remained of a community of colonies that numbered around 800,000. They had managed to flee while the Klingon Destroyers had been refuelling, but they were in hot pursuit, and the Fogg’s engines had been damaged trying to hold Warp 4 for as long as possible.
Ch’O’Leary led the away team to the Fogg. Taking his engineering teams and descending through the dozens of decks, he’d been disturbed by the pleas of the refugees who filled the corridors, begging for food, water and medicine. “I knew that the medical teams were just behind us, but it still upset me that I couldn’t offer them anything.” Reaching the engineering deck, he found the ship’s skipper and engineer alongside three of the refugees, who had been engineers before their exodus. “They had been fusion engineers back on their colony and knew a lot more about the equipment than I did. If it hadn’t been for them, it might’ve taken days to get it running again.” The Malcolm Reed didn’t have days – the three Klingon Destroyers were closing on the convoy, clearly following its warp trail. Cartwright had signalled a nearby vessel – the Saladin Class USS Black Prince for aid, but unless they could get the Phileas Fogg to make Warp four, the convoy would never make the rendezvous. “We’d transferred as many as possible to the Malcolm Reed, but that didn’t matter if the Klingons arrived.” With repairs dragging on and the Klingons closing, Cartwright ordered the convoy to jump to Warp 3, with the ailing Fogg liming along at 2.7, Ch’O’Leary working as fast as he could to restore the warp reactor to full capacity.
At 4:04 am on the 14th of June, the USS Black Prince rendezvoused with the convoy. At 4:10, the three Klingon Destroyers entered torpedo range of the convoy. Cartwright didn’t wait for the Klingons to fire warning shots, immediately bringing the Reed about to face them while the Black Prince herded the convoy onwards. “It was toe to fecking toe,” Ch’O’Leary said. “We had six disruptor barrels ranged on us to our mere two. But the Klingons didn’t want to fight. They turned back, content to have enslaved 700,000-odd.” They did, however, give Cartwright one message: As of the fourth day of nay’Poq of the Year 885 (27th Feburary 2259), all Suliban colonies and Suliban persons were now the property of the Klingon Empire.
“It was a horrifying thing to hear,” Ch’O’Leary said. “We all sat on the bridge, thinking about the implications. A whole species, marked for bondage by Imperial decree. It was almost beyond belief. I thought about all the Suliban I’d known back when I was growing up: the traders, the customers, the navvies and the itinerant labourers we’d carried from one place to another, the meals we’d shared, the games I’d played with children and the stories I’d been told. The weight of that all being subsumed was crushing. Eventually, Captain Cartwright muttered quietly to himself. ‘Not on our watch,’ he said. ‘Not on our watch.’” The Malcolm Reed arrived at Starbase 10 on the 1st of July 2259, with the convoy in tow. It was not the only one now. The entire orbital space of SB10 was full of civilian vessels and auxiliaries, all carrying Suliban from across the Phalanx and Triangle, fleeing the Klingon fleet. Starbase 10, once a semi-important trade hub, was now the busiest Starbase in the Beta Quadrant, and the small Starfleet staff on the ground had been thrust into the frontline of the largest Sentientarian Crisis since the Xindi Incident.
“Cleaning Up the Quadrant”
Why the Suliban? Some have argued that the Klingons had a specific hatred for the exile race, or that they were “servile workers” or “good slaves”, but there is little to the racism of these arguments. The simple fact is that in the mid-23rd century, no one cared about the Suliban. Their home world had become uninhabitable in the mid-1850s. For 400 years after that, they drifted through the Beta Quadrant, in their small settlements and within other powers. While some Suliban worked to preserve and protect what culture they had saved, many assimilated into the cultures they lived in, becoming respected members of society on many worlds. The galactic opinion of them, however, was forever marred by the actions of the Cabal, who from their foundation in the early 2130s through to their collapse in the late 2160s were responsible for several significant acts of terrorism across much of the Beta Quadrant, especially within the Klingon empire. Even after their destruction, the ideas of evolutionary supremacy and violent radicalism were influential amongst many marginalised groups. More long-lasting was a suspicion of the Suliban amongst other species and governments, who regarded then as a mysterious threat to the social and political orders of the day. Diplomatically, there was no real direct representation of a Suliban government. Their longstanding exile had never led to a reassertion of a Suliban political identity on any formal level. There was a Suliban Cabinet on Ellec’vell, a small but pleasant moon near the Federation outpost of Gibraltar in the Triangle, but they did not have anything close to any legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Suliban diaspora. They were at best met with polite indifference and worst ignored or vilified. They were not quite the ‘galactic trash’ the Klingons would describe them as, but, as one Klingon bureaucrat put it, “no one notice if they suddenly disappeared, would they?”.[4]
It is unknown how much overall support there was for full annexation and deportation. The Houses who had territory along the Triangle had been in active contact with Suliban groups for over two centuries at this point, and while relations were frosty there had been little need for any form of aggressive action. There was not even a serious demand for labour, forced or otherwise –Klingon colonies and industrial centres close to the Triangle were one of the few in the empire outside of the home system who were able to easily match production quotas.[5] It is more likely that the demand for labour came from those houses and industrial areas in more distant areas of the Empire, where an external, subject people’s source of labour remained thin on the ground. The demand for rapid industrialisation within the territory of house Duras, for example, was never going to be managed with its indigenous labouring population. The real deciding impetus came from Sturka and the Imperial Bureaucracy. To them, it was the least difficult solution, the result of cold calculation within the Imperial Chancellery. As much as many would like to paint Sturka’s decision to turn the docile Suliban into a servile class as a sign of his dishonourable cruelty and vindictiveness, it is perhaps more likely that he also saw it as a chance to advance his political position. It is no coincidence that the families which benefitted most from enslaved Suliban labour would be Sturka’s key supporters across the 2260s.[6]
And what of L’Rell? As much as many would like to believe that ‘mother’ would not condone such a heinous act as the enslavement of an entire species for the sake of production quotas, it is functionally impossible that such a plan could have been proposed, with all the transportation allocated and relocation camps established, without the Imperial Chancellery knowing. L’Rell’s reforms were designed to bring more information to Qo’noS, not leave it in the dark – even her tutelage and support of Sturka was part of a campaign to place the Chancellor at the centre of decision making. While it is perhaps too far to say that she was an avid supporter of industrial ethnic cleansing, more than tacit approval for what would happen had been given by the Chancellor. While the official sign-off of the operation remains unclear, Imperial Navy forces, divided into three Battlegroups under now ‘General’ Sturka, were massing on the border by mid-March 2259. Starfleet was aware of this build-up, thanks to the intelligence gathered by N’garriez and his associates, but their target remained unclear right up until the operation began. Even the move on Ellec-vell was seen more as a move to cut off the R’ongovian Protectorate from the UFP just as talks for associate membership entered their final stages. The reality would elude Federation Central for a great deal longer.
The “annexation” of the Suliban was tragic, quiet and swift. The disparate and decentralised nature of the community meant that their population centres were unable to support each other, and where they existed in large numbers they were at the whim of other planetary authorities. Very little of the exile population was organised and united – since the height of the cabal, most Suliban were wary of anyone trying to push for anything more than mutual co-operation, and many preferred to push for assimilation to try and protect themselves from further persecution. It was easy enough for Imperial forces to seize their settlements before transporting the populations to processing centres and labour camps without much in the way of a fight. The “exile government” on Ellec-vell was no more than an archaic committee of elders, who despite supposed legal power over the whole Suliban “Union” had been ignored for centuries. They did, however, provide a legal basis for Klingon annexation. No Suliban forces stood in the way of the three Imperial Guard regiments that stormed the capital city on July 10th, and no one on the Council of Governance objected as the Klingon Commander made them sign a treaty that made them subjects of the Klingon Empire. They were spared the traditional execution of the entire ruling class that usually came with a Klingon annexation thanks to a direct decree from L’Rell; other Suliban communities would not be so lucky.[7] The Empire now had the legal basis to round up Suliban across the Quadrant as they pleased, under the pretext of “returning them to the mother country”. What ships were available were no match for the Imperial Navy, and even when many took to flight, they were no match for the Battlecruisers of Fleet Group Korok that prowled the spaceplanes. Travelling mainly in vessels barely capable of speeds above Warp 2.5, most of the refugee ships were reliant on either picking up a subspace stream (notoriously few of which existed in the Triangle and Penthe Belt) or by eluding the Klingon warships that scoured the sectors for them.
Conditions for the Suliban upon capture were beyond insentient. Transported in cargo bays and holds with barely any light, food or water, the captured would know little of their journey or destination beyond what they could discern from the rumbling of deck plates and engines. The first they would know of their arrival at a destination would be the transporter beam that took them from the cargo bay straight to slave quarters or the markets. Most were destined for industrial foundries, raw material processing centres and open cast mines, where Klingon technology (or lack thereof) demanded immense amounts of manpower to sustain the production quotas necessary. In the calculation, insentient terms of economics, the Suliban would solve the manpower crisis; by the end of 2259, about 68% of the Imperial foundries were reaching their full production quotas, as were 70% of the shipyards and 46% of the civilian fabrication centres. The Great Houses were even further ahead, with over 70% of facilities hitting their quotas across the board; the Duras family Shipyard at Qu’Shara was out-producing Praxis, producing 11 I-2 Destroyers and 8 D6-D Cruisers in six months when the Imperial facility only built 7 and 3 respectively. It is unknown how many Suliban were worked to death within the Qu’Shara construction yards and ore processing to out-produce the Imperial yard, but it cannot be denied that in terms of the raw economics, Sturka’s operation had worked – at least in the short term – in removing a pinch point within the production lines of the Empire. It had come at the expense of thousands of lives and the freedom of millions, but to many Klingons at the time, it was self-justified by the ‘honourable duty’ they had done. “We told ourselves that we were doing the Galaxy a favour,” Kor, son of Rynar would say of the Suliban annexation. “We were cleaning up the Quadrant; putting the idle to work for the good of the many. There was no honour in what we did, but we found it in ourselves to say there was.”
Unlike much of the propaganda churned out at the time, the Suliban population was most likely not worked to death in a deliberate act of genocide. The bureaucracy generated around living quarters, food and medical supplies and the designation of Suliban as overseers tend to lean towards a cold, calculated move to convert the Suliban into a long-term solution to the manpower problem. This was probably not a move from the top. Klingon honour – as twisted as it was within the boundaries of slavery – did not believe in working people to death deliberately. It was, obviously, an occupational hazard of being dishonourable to die in the service of the Klingon Empire down an open cast mine or in an orbital shipyard, but to deliberately work someone to exhaustion was not just the act of a rogue: there was no economic honour to do so. If the Empire was to centralise its society and organise its fleet, its new manpower reserve would have to last more than a year; and it would have to be continuously expanding. The inclusion of the Efrosians within the round-up was not deliberate, but a sign that the Empire’s demand for forced labour was insatiable. “We wondered how long it would be before the Klingons made a run on the Baker’s Dozen or Turnstile to snap their Suliban population up,” Ch’O’Leary noted. “Going for Tandar was the obvious move, though.”
The Tandaran Polity, a union of half a dozen inhabited worlds near the Triangle, contained the largest number of Suliban outside of the Klingon Empire itself. The Tandarans had their own history with the Cabal, and while their animosity with the Suliban dated back to events over a century beforehand many within their government still viewed them as disposable second-class citizens. It is unclear as to whether any official approval was given by Tandar Prime to the removal of nearly 2,200,000 Suliban from their space between 2259 and 2262, but evidence found by Wald Bav Mar'Gott tends towards the conclusion that a significant number of officials on Tandar Prime aided the Klingon removal of the “second class” population of the planet.[8] Either way, the Tandaran military did very little to prevent the removal of the Suliban from their space, with some officials aiding and abetting the mass transportation of communities directly into the hands of the Klingons.[9] Whether or not the Tandarans assumed full Quisling status at this point depends on your opinion of the sources. However, from this point onwards, Tandaran foreign policy was no longer independent. The Klingon Battlegroup that arrived in the system on the 18th of June would leave a regiment of Marines and an Imperial ‘advisor’ in the capital. The number of advisors would continue to rise rapidly, as would the number of Klingon soldiers across the early 2260s, aided and abetted by the short-term gains made by the ruling class of Tandar, who lived well off Klingon subsidies and Suliban labour while their populations’ rights were withdrawn by the Klingon “advisory council” bit by bit. They would learn to regret their choices, their palaces, and mistresses when the Klingon disruptors were finally pressed into their backs in 2262.
It had been apparent even by June that civilian traffic within the Triangle was moving away from Klingon space, and that even the illicit traffic was avoiding the Klingon regions. By mid-July, however, the situation was dire, with entire colonies evacuating themselves to avoid the First fleet group and fleeing towards Federation Space. Rear Admiral Templeton was a competent officer – perhaps past their best, if you were being unfair – but they were an unparalleled master of the drudging, complicated and unglamorous world of logistics, and as the trickle of ramshackle refugee ships became a flood, Starbase 10 transformed itself as best it could into a relief port, turning hangars and cargo bays into medical centres, food halls and dormitories for thousands who seemed to be arriving every day. Not all the ships decanted their passengers at SB10; many headed for the Association of Outer Free Worlds or the R’ongovian Protectorate, but most sought the safety and security of the Federation. The UFP’s position as a haven for refugees was much more than the myth the Klingons said it was. By the 2250s, an entire bureaucracy and system of autonomous resettlement existed to allow refugees to rebuild their lives within the Treaty Zone. It was a lengthy process, but it worked – if it wasn’t overwhelmed, which it was by July. It was not an organisation designed to resettle millions at once – it simply did not have the manpower to do so without further aid from the government.
Federation Central was doing its’ best to manage the crisis – Th’rhahlat had hoped to use 2259 to push through his Colonial Reform Act, which would rebalance the electoral system to give the colonies of member worlds more power within the Council Chambers. Controversial to most within the core, it had barely survived the Committee stage and had spent most of May and June as was being viscerally ripped apart by the opposition. The news of the Suliban crisis broke during the council session on June 28th as an amendment on tariff regulation was being attacked by the councillor for New Tellar. The chamber immediately suspended the session to allow the President to attend Cabinet, which he hurried to along with Ambassadors Tilly and Sarek. The reports from the Diplomatic Corps, Starfleet and FEDAC were dire. Action was needed immediately if a serious sentientarian disaster was to be avoided, and direct action from the government meant passing it through the council, no easy task at present. Despite the large majority he (hypothetically) had, challenging the power of the core worlds with a colonial reform programme was rapidly chipping away at the president’s political capital. The ire he was getting from centre core worlds (including the Andorian bloc) only increased once the suggestion came that Federation funds should be allocated to help the Suliban setting en masse on new worlds within the Treaty Zone. The President was faced with a choice he shouldn’t have had to make; pass his bill and leave the Suliban out to dry or sink his own bill to get the resources needed.
Ken Wescott was at that time working as an advisor to the Federal Department of Aid and Allocation Control (FEDAC), drawing up a shortlist of prospective colonies and resources necessary for resettling the nearly 2.3 million Suliban who were now within the treaty zone. “It was tiring work, made only harder by the long communication times with the hundreds of representatives of the refugee community. They were desperate for help, and we were determined to give it to them.” On June 20th, the President came to visit. Wescott watched him walk slowly, but deliberated around the halls, saying nothing, listening attentively to all and especially to a representative of a Suliban refugee camp on Rigel Ho! . When the call was over, the President stepped back, sighing. “He turned to Secretary Batarian and said, ‘damn the bill.’” The next day, the President introduced the emergency resolution on the Suliban refugee crisis personally. The Colonial Bill was pushed to secondary business and would be killed by a roll-call vote within a week. It didn’t matter to Th’rhahlat now. Instead, the business of the legislature was turned to a more important business: helping the helpless.
It would take time for Paris to decide what exactly it would, however. Even though the resolution has passed by the end of the third week of July, it would be weeks, if not months before the various agencies of government would be useful. Templeton couldn’t wait for Federation Central, not while the number of ships being lost in the triangle rose to dangerous levels. Using his authority, he began actively seeking out and rescuing refugee ships within his sector of operation. Using a collection of Marine Corps troop carriers, fleet tenders and even a collection of old Giant-class transports that dated back to the 2200s, Templeton’s new “Task Force Dynamo” (named after an evacuation from Old Earth’s Second World War) was activated on the 11th of July. It immediately went into action, rescuing increasing numbers of Suliban and, concerningly, Efrosian refugees who were swarming the hard-to-navigate systems of the Penthe Belt in ships not fit for long-range interstellar travel. The Efrosian home planet, Efros, had been annexed into the Empire in the early-mid 2220s, with the Klingons mainly leaving their diaspora alone until the 2260s, where communities were deported to mining worlds as punishment for “harbouring Interstellar terrorists” – the usual charge for the crime of living in harmony with the Suliban. Among those who were rescued in August was a young Efrosian teacher called Ra-ghoratreii, who was picked up by the Merchant Marine Cruiser S.S. Emden 1.4 parsecs from Khitomer.
July was no better than June – even with more assets available, and FEDAC now playing an active role in directing the flow of Suliban refugees into the Federation Interior, the Triangle and Phalanx were still in dire straits. The flow of trade, barely recovered after the Klingon War, had collapsed entirely in some places, and Klingon Captains were happily engaging in acts of piracy against Federation and neutral shipping with almost no repercussions. Even as reinforcements arrived from other sectors to bolster the Border Patrol, Starfleet simply couldn’t keep up with the numbers available. ‘Hawkeye’ Rogers was doing their best to keep Templeton abreast of his intelligence, but the delay between information being discovered at it reaching Starbase 10 was far too long for it to be of any use. The Klingons were inside Templeton’s decision loop now – and that of the whole Klingon Command, really. “It was intolerable”, Captain Angela Fukuhara of the USS Marco Polo complained in her memoirs. “We tried our best – we really, really did – but the Klingons were everywhere. They appeared in ones and twos to harass our convoys while the big battlecruisers pinned us down.”
On July 29th, 2259, Rogers received a message informing him that “a supply convoy for Ohniaka III would be delayed due to a Warp Coil failure 43 AUs out of Regulus”. The code confirmed Starfleet Intelligence’s own conclusions: Klingon Forces were now operating from bases outside of their borders. N’garriez’s sources were backed by SI exploring officer Lans Renshaw, who confirmed that military bases had been established on four different planets within the Triangle and the Phalanx; two of which had previously been Suliban colonies. More critically, one lay within one Parsec of the main trade route from Bakers’ World to Starbase 10; the perfect hunting ground for attacking both Suliban refugee columns and Federation Trade. It was a provocation that couldn’t be left unchallenged.
“We've got the ships, we’ve got the men, We've got the money too” Operation Singapore
There had been some discussion for a while of a more long-term solution to the Suliban exodus. It was clear that unless the Klingons were dissuaded from a long-term campaign, their vessels would soon swarm space across most of the Triangle. While some were content to save as many Suliban as possible, others concluded that the quickest way to stop the Klingons would be to warn them off in a language they understood: force. Matt Decker was a proponent of this view, and his plan, titled Operation Perry, underlined his aggressive thinking. “I wanted to give them a good kick in the ass,” he said in a letter to his wife. “We have the ships for it– not a lot, but enough to let them know we’re not out for the count yet.”
Perry called for a cruising task force of Constitution, Kirov, and other Class I Starships to enter the disputed area and aim for a confrontation with a Klingon Battlegroup. It was an audacious scheme, designed to draw maximum strength of the Imperial Navy away from Refugee columns and civilian targets while also proving to the Empire that Starfleet wasn’t out of the picture. It wasn’t without risks, however. Klingon Command would be asked to put its key assets – the few available Class I Starships available – on the line for an operation that could easily see them all destroyed or taken out of the line for months. Furthermore, many pointed out that similar attempts by individual captains to try and tackle Klingon ships within the Triangle had an unfortunate regularity of happening in the presence of civilian vessels. After the loss of the Pan-America liner SS. Argelian Star and all 2000 souls aboard during a duel between the USS Rousseau and the IKS Kitumba in late June 2259, Starfleet baulked at any confrontation that would put more lives at risk.[10] Perry was also criticised because it called for a confrontation outside of the Triangle: Decker favoured staging within the Alshanai Rift, or even within the Organia System. Most within the Presidio didn’t believe that the Klingons would pull out of the Triangle unless confronted there – something Decker was personally opposed to on logistical grounds. “We can’t operate the way we need to operate in the Triangle right now,” he told Captain Stone. “Our Starships will be out on a limb right up to the Klingon Starbase chain, and a long way from our own.” Decker, however, was unable to convince Drake or Ch’Shukar. Planning on Perry was very limited after the Argelian Star incident, with Starfleet Command unwilling to draw the Klingons into any sort of situation that might escalate.
Decker’s plan may have been shelved, but the concept of some form of “organised confrontation” still lingered in the minds of Drake and her peers. Already, a group was beginning to form of Captains, Staff Officers and others for whom counter-insurgent action and reactive tactics were not enough. Going far beyond Decker’s “confrontational approach”, a small but increasing group of officers were pushing “offence is the best defence” as more than a maxim, but an entire operational strategy. It was not much, but even as early as Late July 2259, a note in Captain Stone’s diary mentions a “dispassionate meeting with several ranking officers about aggressive actions in K-B-S (Klingon Border Sector). Vice Ad. Rittenhouse and others were noticeably determined to make a strike on Mastocal. Will speak to Adm. Shukar.” Even if Stone – and most of the Presidio establishment, for that matter – weren’t keen on an aggressive action at this time, drawing a line against the Klingons wasn’t out of the question either. For many, the lack of *any* decisive engagement during T’Kuvma’s war remained frustrating. Previous military experience from the Battle of Cheron to the confrontation over Donatu V implied that most interspace wars could be ended by a successful “decisive battle” of some sort. The recent war had seen no such engagements; no crippling, game-changing event. Even with its strength decimated and defensive strategy in peril, many within Starfleet Command and the civilian community believed that the stellar service could still deliver such a victory. For some, the war would not really be over until such an event happened. For hawks like Commissioner Peter Broadhurst or Admiral Rittenhouse, the possibility of giving the Klingons a bloody nose and sending them back across the border was tantalising. For Admiral Drake, it was simply a solution to the immediate problem of raiding and piracy, and a diplomatic play instead of a military one. In her mind, any plan that involved a fleet-level confrontation with the Imperial Navy was a bad one.
After receiving word of the four Klingon bases, Drake immediately began putting together a new plan to re-establish authority. The plan – first mentioned in Klingon Command documents on August 3rd – was what she called “a pinning operation.” Instead of going out as a fleet to draw the Klingons into battle, Klingon Command would use a Starbase as a focal point to strike at pirates and defend Suliban refugee ships deep within the Triangle. It was an innovative solution to the logistical problem. A Starbase – and the tenders and secondary craft that it could support – would solve the problem of supply within the Triangle. It was also a target that couldn’t be avoided by any Klingon Commander, especially if it was in a well-located position that directly threatened their supply lines.
Unvidae-Caleb was chosen as the target for Drake’s “pinning” operation. The twin systems, located at the far end of the dilithium belt from Orion, had first been mapped in 2218 by the Asia-Class USS America on its fateful last mission to Khitomer. There was little of note about either of them on face value. They contained no M-class planets or K-class worlds suitable for habitat construction; the 4 gas giants had no notable supplies of deuterium or other resources: compared to many other systems within its sector, the twin stars were notably mineral poor, and were passed over by the flurry of mining co-operatives and corporations that flooded the area in the 2230s, 40s and 50s.
The system remained on Starfleet’s sensors, however, thanks to the Gas Giant Caleb IV and its moons. With two rocky satellites and a readily available supply of hydrogen isotopes, it was an ideal location for a Starbase – at least in theory. Far away from the main space lanes of even the Triangle, its closeness to the Klingon Border (within 6 lightyears of Khitomer) meant that it would have been incredibly provocative to establish a base there even in 2219. Even the advantages of a nucleonic fuelling station and resupply base were negated by the sharp decline in usage of fusion-powered Warp Cores from the 2220s onwards. There were several proposals by both Starfleet Command and the Merchant Marine for a base across the 20s,30s and 40s, with the last plan in 2242 involving a scheme to construct a ‘Space-Island’ class Starbase out of three Ocean Class transports. This had been shelved after Donatu V, and with the peaceful situation on the border in the decade afterwards, the question remained untouched until after the ceasefire in 2257.
Admiral Templeton had raised the Caleb Starbase as a possibility in late 2258, only to be told that it was unlikely to be prioritised while Starfleet focused on the new generation of Light and Utility Cruisers. Templeton would have to make do with his bases at SB10,234 and T-1 and the several smaller, less well-equipped star ports on various outposts. With the overwhelming of The Federation Border Patrol across 2259, it was clear that action needed to be taken. The confirmation that Klingon raiding forces were operating out of the region made it certain that Caleb IV would be back on Starfleet’s priority list. Drake’s notes first highlight Caleb IV on August 6th (alongside several other locations in the region of Khitomer). By the 9th, the other locations had been disregarded. Univdae-Caleb would be the location of Klingon Command’s confrontation with the 1st Fleet Group.
Drake’s plan to tackle the 1st Fleet Group was built upon many of the same lines as Operation Perry. A Task Force of fast, hard-hitting ships, including the Constitution Class USS Excalibur, 3 Kirov Strike Cruisers, 2 Marco Polo SWACs vessels and a dozen destroyers of all sizes. By basing these ships deep within the Triangle, Klingon Command could begin proper search and destroy operations against pirate bases, with the bonus of countering the new Klingon bases effectively. While the more longer-range ships being collected, such as the Loknar and Saladin-Class Destroyers, could operate that far from a Starbase, many of the hard-hitting vessels Drake needed to match the D-6 and D-7s were short-ranged vessels, unable to operate more than 10-25 lightyears from a base without a tender, a class of ship Starfleet was desperately short of in 2259.[11] With a secure supply station in their zone of operations, the Task Force would be able to operate from a safe harbour far closer to the Klingons than previously, and most importantly, on the far side of the main space lanes out of the Triangle.
The plan, now titled Operation Minorca, was originally scheduled for early December 2259, to coincide with the deployment of 3 new Ranger Class Battlecruisers. These ships, specifically designed in the early 2250s to act as a direct counter to the D7, were finishing their trials when the Suliban Crisis began. Despite several attempts by Drake to have the Andoria Yards release them from trials, Ch’Shukar refused to let the new ships be sent on such an operation.[12] As the Klingon fleet presence in the Triangle and core ward sectors of the disputed area grew, it was clear that an operation to try and hold the Klingons at bay was necessary. As much as Ch’Shukar wanted to wait for more resources (and Starships) to build up, pressure from the Department of Commerce, the Merchant Marine and the Department of Interstellar Affairs made it clear to him that immediate action was not just preferred, it was necessary. Klingon Warships were now threatening internal convoys as well as neutral ones. High Commissioner Peter Broadhurst made the position of the civilian government very clear. “Threats to the freedom of the stars are threats to the Federation as an Institution and the stability and sanctity of its member worlds. Starfleet must maintain those freedoms in all places possible with all the means it has available.” Already, Klingon aggression and sabre-rattling had undermined diplomatic efforts across the disputed area; As recently as April, the Association of Outer Free Worlds had backed out of treaty negotiations, citing the need to maintain neutrality as a core justification. Trade negotiations with the Asparax Confederation had also fallen through when it became clear that Starfleet couldn’t guarantee the Asparaxian merchant fleet safe passage at the present time. Whether the Admiralty liked it or not, they needed to confront the Klingons now.
Drake’s plan (which was still very much in the early stages) was quickly approved. Matt Decker’s Operation Perry (and its strike force) was soon combined with Minorca to form a combined operation that Starfleet Command dubbed Operation Singapore. It called for a much larger force, consisting of four bodies: A “Strike Force” consisting of the Constitution, Kirov and Loknar class ships, 2 “escort” groups of destroyers and the “Support Group” of Starfleet Engineering craft, including a new Sviagod class rapid response Starbase. This combined group, eventually named Task Force Remagen, would be the largest operational force Starfleet had assembled since the end of Burnham’s War, and the most powerful, including at least 2 Constitution Class vessels, 3 Perseus Class Escorts and several first-rate light cruisers, including several of the Bolivar Class (soon to be renamed the Miranda class). It was a provocative move but considered necessary. “Self-defence does not mean passivity,” Th’rhahlat had written in Frontier Democracy. “It means a willingness to act with force to protect what you have.” Starfleet had (in theory, at least) the means to do so: As Broadhurst noted to a colleague after a Cabinet meeting in August 2259, “We've got the ships, we’ve got the men, we've got the money too.”
Operation Singapore was approved and authorised in record time, with the “GO” order being issued by Klingon Command within 48 hours of the operation being authorised on Earth. Within 25 minutes of the orders being received at Starbase 12, Construction work of the USS Kyber Pass (named so by the work crew who built it at breakneck speed) began. The Sviagod Class had been first proposed in late 2256 to counter Klingon raids by converting older Starships directly into a defensive Starbase, using their combined Warp Core to power a much more extensive weapons array. The modified Sviagod would include a refuelling station and dual deuterium refinery, allowing it to convert the gases from Caleb IV directly into Matter and Antimatter for Starfleet Vessels in the area. It was an ingenious idea, and the conversion of two Cayuga cruisers and a Magee-Ramsay class Fleet Auxiliary into a Starbase was completed in record time. The USS Kyber Pass was commissioned on August 22nd and towed from Starbase 12 to 10, where she arrived on the August 30th to rendezvous was Escort Task Force 108 under Commodore Zell. It was designed to serve as the cornerstone of the whole operation – part weapons platform, part Deuterium refining facility, part Anti-matter resupply hub, it would allow Task Force Remagen to operate as if it was still within the Treaty Zone proper – if it could be assembled in the first place.
Despite the aspirations of both Perry and Singapore (as well as the incredible production rates at the Axanar and Terran Fleet Yards), Klingon Command remained worryingly short of vessels – especially the hard-hitting Heavy Cruisers that were desperately needed to counter the D6 and D7 battlecruisers. Analysis by the Combat Planning department of Starfleet Tactical did not paint the Eaves-Beyer Class I Starships like the Hoover or Europa class in a good light, with little evidence that they were any sort of match for their Klingon opponents. The Perseus and Constitutions were simply not available in enough numbers, and most of the former were detached to the 3rd “Blue” Fleet along the Kzinti-Tholian border region: even the Larson and Saladin Class Destroyers weren’t available in the numbers that Drake had hoped.
Templeton, for obvious reasons, refused to release a single ship to Drake for the operation, citing their necessity for Space Lane patrol and sentientarian needs. It wasn’t like the Border Patrol and Triangle Squadrons were formed from state-of-the-art vessels either – the most advanced ships Templeton had available were Saladin and Hermes class, whose Single-nacelle designs were incredibly unstable at the high war speeds necessary for Singapore. Undeterred, Drake and her staff began rapidly scouring the region for available ships. Suggestions that older capital ships like the Bellau Wood and Horizon class could be reactivated from mothball yards in the inner core were rapidly shot down by Starfleet Operations, who couldn’t guarantee that any of these vessels could sustain above warp four or take modern weaponry without compromising their engines. Ch’Shukar also still refused to release the Ranger Class for action. Drake’s junior commanders – Captains Vr-Melloc, Bavv-Mellen and Palmquist – suggested she delay the operation until Anti-Piracy operations near the Azure Nebula finished, which would allow 11 vessels (including A Marco Polo class Sensor ship and 3 Burke Class Frigates) to join the operation. Drake refused, and ordered them to “find what they could”
The resulting patchwork of ships included several prototype vessels (including three Miranda Class conversions still undergoing tests) as well as several aged craft such as Anton and Valley-Forge Class ships that had been lying in Mothballs. Most of the fleet, however, was composed of the 2230s-40s built Eaves-Beyer types that had been relegated to light duties since the armistice. While some had undergone limited duotronic upgrades and weapons refitting, most remained in their pre-war outfitting and were realistically no match for any of the modern Klingon vessels. Some of these vessels were not as suspect – the Avenger, Detroyat and Loknar classes had never been deemed fit for Trinary conversion and had strong service records from Burnham’s war, but they were still underpowered and lacked significant deuterium storage for long-range service with modern weaponry. They were what Drake had to deal with, and they were quickly hauled from their convoy duties and marshalled together, often with Giant and Derf tenders having to run Warp-One refuelling manoeuvres along the Argelius-SB10 route – a move that could not be conducted with the Eaves-Beyer ships, who were forced to crowd around tenders at Starbase 10 “like milk cows” as one engineer put it. If they had to face combat without a refuelling stop – or worse, were caught refuelling – it would be a disaster.
In the end, Task Force Remagen entered the Ophelia Star cluster with 34 ships – five more than Drake asked for, but with six fewer Class One Starships than the plan had deemed necessary, and only one Constitution Class. The fleet was split into four groups; the 15 – ship strike force, led by the Excalibur, which Drake had transferred her flag to; 2 seven-ship escort groups, led by Captains Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc, and a support group of tenders, tugs and Starfleet Corps of Engineers ships Under Captain Qi. Following the plan, the groups assembled at separate rendezvous before proceeding into the Triangle, the Strike Force from Starbase 12, the escort groups from SB10 and a point near Acamar respectively. Escort Group one picked up the Support Group 3 days out of SB10 and maintained escort, the two Ptolemy Class tugs working their best to maintain Warp 5 with the Kyber Pass in tow. EG one and two reached Caleb IV on September 2nd, a day after the rendezvous. Bavv-Mellen, aboard the USS Duluth, was surprised to find an empty star system instead of the Strike Force. Escort Group 2 arrived hours later, both groups assembling around Caleb IV while the two captains conversed. Only one question was on their lips: Where was Drake?
Lost In Space
The success of Operation Singapore relied on the strength of the strike group as a deterrent from the start. The Klingons would recognise 24 Starfleet vessels right on their border as an obvious threat to their communications routes into the Triangle and Phalanx area. Any attempt to establish the base would not work if a strong Klingon force attacked it before it came online. Without the strike force to defend them from heavier Klingon ships, Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc were at an impasse. Bavv-Mellen, with his experience with both the Corps of Engineers and herding his fleet of deuterium-hungry ships this deep into the triangle, was hesitant to stay here without either the Strike force or more fleet tenders. Vr-Melloc agreed; however, they both knew that by now, the Klingons had to know they were here. If they attempted to leave, they could be picked off one-by-one as they tried to make their way back to Federation Space. Safety in numbers was seen as the priority – furthermore, by remaining at Caleb, Starfleet would hopefully get to pick the ground to fight on. The only saving grace they had was Captain Fukuhara and the USS Marco Polo. The ASR Cruiser had been refitting at Starbase 10 when the operation had been activated. Unable to reach SB 12 for the rendezvous, the Marco Polo had tagged along with the support groups. Now, it gave Bavv-Mellen (overall commander thanks to the fact that he had a full Starfleet Commission, as opposed to a Federalised Andorian Imperial Guard Commission) an ace up his sleeve: even with superior Klingon scanners, the Marco Polo’s sensor redoubt was guaranteed to pick the Klingons up at least 4 light-years away.[13]
The decision was made to stay and wait out the strike group. Both Captains believed that Drake couldn’t be more than 30 hours away at this point and were confident that the Excalibur and the rest of the Starship force would be on station before Kyber Pass went online. In the meantime, the Marco Polo would give them enough warning to organise an adequate delaying action with the ships they had. They assumed they wouldn’t be waiting long, and even if they did, they were confident that they could fight a delaying action within the system for long enough.
Unfortunately, however, the Strike force was a lot more than 30 hours away – closer to 5 days, in fact. The idea of approaching Caleb IV from different directions had seemed sensible when one was looking at a star map on the Command deck of the Andrew Cunningham, but the stellar geography of the area made it a nightmare. The Escort and support groups, despite their difficulties with subspace eddies and navigational anomalies, had taken the ‘easy route’, travelling partially down the subspace trade current that runs from Starbase 10 to Baker’s World and then also the parallel route towards Narendra before cutting rim ward. The Strike force, departing from Starbase 12 was cutting across the direction of subspace currents, dramatically reducing the abilities of their warp drives to reach maximum speeds. It didn’t help either that Drake’s route took the force worryingly close to the Klingon outpost on Khitomer. While this had not been perceived as a problem during the planning stage, Klingon Command’s staff had not anticipated the sudden importance of Khitomer as a staging post and resupply station for Klingon vessels within the Phalanx and Triangle areas. While the force was able to detect the presence of seven Klingon vessels before they were spotting themselves, the delay while they manoeuvred around Klingon scanners at a slower warp speed added two whole days to their journey that could not be spared. There was no way for Drake to
For most of the 10th and 11th of September, the Marco Polo had been monitoring growing subspace radio communications from the direction of Khitomer. In this time, its communications department had managed to decode and confirm what several uncoded transmissions had already alluded to; that there were not one, but two Klingon Fleet-size formations operating within the Triangle at present, and both within striking distance of Caleb. The composition, deployment, and posture of these fleets, however, was completely unknown. One of them (5th Fleet, “Battlegroup Morev”) was not even known to Starfleet until Marco Polo picked up their transmissions. It was a revelation of dramatic levels, and one only underlined by the reply from Bavv-Mellen to the Marco Polo’s message, asking for Captain Fukuhara to inform him of what exactly Starfleet Intelligence’s estimation of the size of a Klingon battlegroup was. “They didn’t have one,” Fukuhara noted in her memoir. “Starfleet Intelligence was barely aware that the Klingons had an order of battle, let alone what was on it.”
What the Marco Polo had detected were the transmissions of the latest part of L’Rell and Sturka’s major reforms to the Empire: an organised Imperial Fleet. For most of its history, the Imperial navy had consisted of fleets, but these were little more than “banners”, which designated which Admiral (and thus which house) a ship was loyal to within the fleet. There was little in the way of a chain of command, subdivisions, or logistical systems to support said fleets. During the war, they devolved so dramatically they were of little use anyway, with combat formations tending to form based on friendships, family or patronage. It was, quite obviously, an incredibly inefficient system, especially for an Empire that was trying to conquer and remain in control of territory.
Sturka’s fleet changes came slowly after his promotion to the position of Grand Admiral, given by the Chancellor in early 2259. Ships of similar size, shape and range were organised into a ghob (combat flight) of 3 or 4 ships, with up to six of these flights being assigned to a fleet-sized formation called a ghom (Battlegroup) under a flag officer of either Admiral or General’s rank. Larger vessels like the D7s or the planned B10 Battleship would operate in 2 ship groups unless on independent detachment. These groups would serve as the nexus of a new logistical system based on Klingon bases which would allow for fuel, weapons, and crew resupply to take place without the need for ships to leave their station. The Combat flight system also allowed for Klingon ships to operate fleet manoeuvres properly, and while there were no book-learnt tactics yet, senior captains could now teach their juniors the way of war outside of the combat zone. More significantly, for the first time in their history, Klingon Admirals would be able to accurately assess what assets they had to use, where they were and what their status was through a system of subspace relays that piggybacked on already existing civilian networks.
It was a major change, and while many of the major reforms would not be in place until 2261 at least, by mid-2259 the first five combat groups had been created, along with the first “Fleet Group” , which manned the border zone with the Federation. There had, surprisingly, been little opposition from the Imperial Navy itself; most came from the house fleets and the Great houses, who lamented further losses to their authority as ships were placed into a chain of command that led directly to the Chancellor. They were, however, begrudgingly accepted, especially when the contracts for supplying and supporting the fleets were floated. As per usual, Sturka’s stick was neutered with the smallest of carrots, and the cash-poor Great Houses were happy to take what they could get. The new battlegroups allowed Sturka to concentrate his best forces where he needed them and respond to crises much quicker than beforehand, while also leaving them in command of respected leaders who were both effective warriors and loyal servants of the Empire. Battlegroup Kesh – a 31-ship fleet, made up mainly of older D5 and D6 models along with Raptor types and older Bird-of-prey ships had been performing much of the raiding and seizure of Suliban vessels. It was also joined in 5th Fleet Group by new force, Battlegroup Korev, which had been refit with some of the newest vessels, including the sleek, refined D7-K ‘Klodode’ as well as the fast D6-D Attack cruiser.
Starfleet intelligence was completely unaware of this massive change in any way. It could just about tell where there were concentrations of Klingon warships, but beyond that, there was nothing else it could say. “It was a useless organisation,” Ch’Shukar wrote of this failure. “God knows, it tried, but it genuinely never had anything useful to say, and it hadn’t for over half a century.” Starfleet’s relationship with an organised system of military intelligence has always been limited. Upon its founding in 2141, the concept of a manned exploratory agency with an intelligence organisation had been laughable. Starfleet Intelligence had only been created when Starfleet had agreed to absorb the United Earth Stellar Navy in 2151, both at the behest of the authoritarian-minded Vulcan High Command and with the less paranoid purpose of providing information on piracy. It was not taken seriously by Starfleet Command or even its own officers. An extremely poor performance during the Earth-Romulan War had convinced most that it would not improve. Unable to predict the attacks on Starbase 1 or Hell’s Gate, most information gathering had been conducted by Starfleet Communications or gathered by blind luck. Its only coup – correctly assessing when the Romulan attack on Mars would come – had been thanks to a tip-off from Vulcan Intelligence, who did most of the legwork of tracking the Romulan assault force.
The folding of SI into the Federation Star Fleet upon its formation had been an afterthought. At the time, The Andorian and Vulcan navies were still much better equipped to protect Federation assets, and their much more effective intelligence organisations were better equipped to do the legwork. This situation, as we know, did not last for long. By the end of the 2170s Starfleet was the principal stellar navy of the Federation; the member worlds’ defence forces rapidly receding into system patrol and rescues services. In this time, however, no major reforms of any kind were made to Starfleet Intelligence, which still operated in the same haphazard, poorly thought through cell structure it had done since the 2150s.
This was not for lack of trying. Between 2161 and 2259 there were no less than eleven attempts to reform Starfleet Intelligence along the lines of a modern Intelligence agency. Six were approved by Starfleet Command; four by the Federation Security Council; three reached the Council floor; only one, however, came within any chance of being enacted in 2246, only to be defeated over an amendment on the right of SI to man its own vessels on the Starfleet roster. The reasons why are not particularly surprising. Most, if not all the Federations’ core members had poor historical experiences with powerful intelligence organisations without any checks. Earth’s 20th and 21st centuries were mired by the depravations of the KGB and CIA. Most Vulcans still remembered the High Command’s pursuit of “logical conformity”, which had also consumed a dozen satellite worlds in its’ controlling reach and nearly destroyed the katra of Surak in the process. Many of the powers that joined the federation in its first 100 years had similar brushes, either within their own societal development or at the hands of an external oppressor. As such, the concept of empowering Federation Central with a powerful, organisation security agency was anathema, even if such an agency would, hypothetically at least, be controlled entirely by the Council. “Checks and Balances never stopped the CIA,” Siobhan Tilly would remind the Security Council in 2256. Even attempts to create a Unified Intelligence Committee, to allow member world organisations to work together and share information, was rejected out of fear it’d be used for political ends. The Federation did not do military intelligence, and never would. It was a telling sign of the institutional intransigency of the Federation that even a century after it had been concluded as not up to the task, policymakers still refused to alter or reform its functions to fit with their means.
This was of little concern to Starfleet. Most Captains Starbase Commanders and Admirals gathered intelligence in the traditional manner: with long-range patrols, reports from civilian traffic and extensive Over the Horizon (OTH) sensor buoys, which were considered more than enough to deliver necessary tactical information when required. A closer examination, if it had been made at the time, would have shown that in almost all major cases of escalated conflict, these systems had never been enough to provide anything but barebones details of opposition forces. Most information about the Kzinti, Cha’kuun, Klingons and Nausicaans had to be learnt in combat, and even then, SI lacked the resources to adequately break down what was learnt. It was of no, concern, however: Starfleet didn’t need a proper military intelligence agency and wouldn’t get one.
Without any form of reorganisation and a bureaucracy that was older than the Federation Charter, Starfleet Intelligence increasingly resembled a chaotic spiderweb of contacts, informants, military attaches, and moles, providing a completely uneven spread of information that helped no one. There were no sub-departments of intelligence; no sectors; no signals network or covert agent group. “Sectors” did exist, based either on location or polity, often with overlapping and wasting valuable time and energy investigating the same targets, without any clear chain of authority. While each embassy, High Commission and Outpost had their own Starfleet Intelligence officer, it was entirely unclear what their job was exactly, or who they reported to. TK Robson, for example, was considered “Head of Starfleet Intelligence, Orion Sector” simply because she started signing her reports as such and no one complained. If an officer put themselves to work, and had support from local Starbases, diplomats and Captains, they could achieve much, but in most cases, they stumbled around in the dark, drawing intel reports from local news reports, rumours and in the case of one officer on Regulus, an Areglian with the “gift of premonition.”[14]
By the 2250s, it was a farcical mess: Axanar Command, for example, could accurately trace and locate almost every possible smuggler, privateer, or trafficker within its space, while the Klingon Sector remained unsure of whether or not there was a living Emperor on the throne. Romulan Command could not pinpoint the location of Romulus itself and incorrectly assumed the planet Remus was a secondary system known as Romii. Burnham’s war had merely made things worse: what assets had existed, either individuals or listening drones were wiped out entirely across the entire war, along with a great deal of the Intelligence staff themselves. What information they had learned by 2259 was not of any real use. As per briefings given to Admiral Ch’Shukar in early May, they still believed that the Banner system of fleet organisation was in place – information that had last been confirmed in 2245.
Drake had known that they were essentially operating in the task on the intelligence front – to an extent, this was how many captains preferred to operate. Centralised information gathering could often be wrong, and it was always better to look at something with your own eyes than listen to what a bureaucrat thought. In this case, though, the lack of a central agency was crippling: an organised intelligence system might have passed on Ngarriez’s knowledge of Klingon Fleet organisation or tracked the movement of the 2nd Fleet Group as it pivoted from the Orion front to the Triangle. At the very least, it would have passed on Captain Mendez’s memorandums on Klingon sensors that concluded (with significant evidence) that the high-power sensors of D7-K were not just equal to that of a Marco Polo class cruiser, but even more powerful in some cases.
By September 12th, the Klingons knew that there were 20 Starfleet vessels at Caleb IV. Two D-5s had spotted the support group on the 7th and tailed them, Admiral Morev correctly assessing Caleb as their objective and moving his forces to cut them off their line of retreat. The Strike Force had also been detected by the sensors at Khitomer, whose range was almost a light-year longer than Drake had thought. Morev and Korok had already decided on a plan of action by the time that Bavv-Mellen and Vr-Melloc met aboard the Duluth, and one that met with cold approval from Sturka. “The Boss liked a good victory,” Kor noted. “Especially when it was a total one.” Those 20 Starships – second line, out of date and dozens of light-years from Federation vessels – were about to face 45 of the best vessels the Klingon Empire had to offer.
[1] The Federation Phalanx is the name for the cluster of approximated 900 stars that lie below the 0 degrees plane across the border region, and acts as a “secondary border area” below the disputed zone.
[2] The biology of human-Andorian biological transference and procreation takes too long to be explained within the confines of this work.
[3] A ‘Mickey Reed’ is Starfleet ratings slang for a fresh, overeager academy graduating officer, named after Malcolm Reed, armory officer of the S.S. Enterprise (NX-01) and one of the least popular commandants of Starfleet Academy during the late 22nd century.
[4] TK Robson, To Prevent Hell: A Diplomatic History of the 2260s (ShiKahr, Oxford University Press,Vulcan, 2290)
[5] There is a significant argument that the productivity of these colonies was down to their interactions with Federation and Federation-adjacent economies throughout the 2230s and 40s. Influences from both Post-Scarcity Social-Conservationist and Baker-Liberationist political economies can be found in the policies of House Mo’Kai and K’tal across most of the pre-Sturka period. For more, see Edward Knowles, The Non-Aggression Principle: Libertarianism on the Fringe of a Post-Economic Society, 2200-2260 (San Francisco: Memory Alpha, 2300) and W.M. Nguyen, "'What is to be Done?' Post-Class Politics in the Disputed Area, 2230-2275" (San Francisco: Starfleet Historical Press, 2312)
[6] Terry M. Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar. (London: Memory Alpha, 2305)
[7] Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar.
[8]Wald Bav Mar'Gott, Savage Klingon Peace in the Beta Quadrant (Starfleet: Starfleet Press, 2316)
[9] Only one Tandaran would ever come to trial for their crimes: most were killed or went missing in the Polity’s eventually annexation in 2262.
[10] The Argelian Star, a Boeing-Shi’kar Model B-3777-200ER Starliner was carrying a crew of civilians, refugees and finished goods from Baker’s World to Argelius when it was stopped by the Klingon D7 Cruiser Kitumba and forcibly boarded. When the USS Rousseau arrived on the scene, the standoff escalated when the Kitumba refused to withdraw. During the 40-minute duel, a Torpedo from the Kitumba struck the Argelian Star amidships, killing all aboard.
[11] Starfleet Command lost all but 4 of its Large Fleet Tenders during Burnham’s War. While 2 were allocated to Klingon Command (and needed for other purposes), the remainder were tied down for most of the year as part of the 3rd Fleet’s Kzinti Police Action.
[12] This proved to be a prudent move on Shukar’s account – in the summer trials near Wolf 359, USS Ranger, Coral Sea and Colorado all suffered major failures within the EPS systems that nearly saw the entire ship class scrapped.
[13] Federalised Commissions were common for Officers who had entered the service through UESPA, The Andorian Imperial Guard and other member world military services. While Article 49a of the Federation Charter Guaranteed them equal rank and status to Starfleet personnel, they were always considered junior to those with Direct Commissions. Member world personnel would only be given equal rank and status after the 2275 Nogura Reforms.
[14] Said officer was dishonourably discharged from the service when an investigation discovered that he had been using Starfleet funds to pay for his ‘contact’s’ lavish lifestyle: an offence that serious enough before one even considers that the two men had been married for 6 years.