12: Freedom of the Stars
The Strategic Resource Denial Act and the War of the Merchants
“An embargo if necessary, but not necessarily an embargo.” – Peter Broadhurst
“I am not entirely sure we understood how our own economy worked at the time.” – Kor, Son of Rynar
The Black Exchange
The Federation’s relationship with trade is somewhat paradoxical. It is a stated aim of the United Federation of Planets to “end the reliance on monetary exchange and eradicate economic disparity and inequality wherever and however it occurs”. Earth, her solar colonies, and almost all the internal Andorian, Tellarite and Vulcan worlds had eliminated money by the 2220s and 30s. But money still, much the annoyance of almost every post-economist, continued to exist on the frontier.
The Federation Credit, introduced as a completely control currency to mitigate and expedite the end of monetary exchange, rapidly (and somewhat inevitably) evolved to have a value of its own on the frontier, where colonies remained dependent on it for resource exchange and commerce.
There was no poverty, or inequality, or greed, but to the frustration of the post-monetarists, currency refused to die. This was not really an issue. Most Federation citizens can spend their entire lives with only a cursory relationship to money, in the same way, they might have a cursory relationship with their local football team or amateur blacksmithing. And yet, at the same time, that “black exchange”, as one post-economist put it, remained a critical part of the Federation’s appeal.
The existence of the Federation Treaty zone – and its proper enforcement from the 2180s onwards – completely altered the economic balance of the alpha and beta quadrants. Whereas once, trade had flowed around and through the Orion Colonies, constricted by Vulcan rules, Tellarite tariffs and Klingon “inspection payments”, there was not an immense area of space where trade was not only unmolested but protected. Starfleet, the planetary forces and Interpol all worked in tandem to ensure that trade remained free, easy and equitable.[1] There were conditions, though. The Stellar Travel Accepted Rights (S.T.A.R.) treaty ensured that all parties – both federation members and external governments – agreed to a universal base of legal rights for all merchants and travellers. Obvious bans were included, most notably on slavery, improper transport of dangerous goods and the movement of invasive species of flora and fauna, but there were no contentious stipulations. STAR created the foundations of a body of interstellar law that would extend to specific rules on inspections, rights for free civilian travel and limitations on the movements of arms, but it was not prejudiced.[2] Until now.
Despite the antagonistic relationship that had existed between Empire and Federation, Klingon trade – both public and private – had been grudging allowed within the treaty zone. It was a principled stance, justified on the usual utopian stance. “Free trade brings free contact, and free contact brings free principles,” argued President Karvouni, and that argument stood, even as Klingon merchants casually traded commerce for piracy on Federation space lanes. It was a tolerable nuisance, especially when Starfleet could easily handle the pirates. The trade was good too; the export of alloyed metals, mid-tier computing equipment and civilian goods to the Empire was a crucial part of the local economies of the Shepard, Regulus and Orion sectors. The human settlements of the Vota Star Cluster, the Asparax systems and other areas all the way down to the Eminiar Gap had recovered a great deal of their trade after the war, even if a lot of it was now being conducted by small-fry warp shuttles and blockade runners instead of larger corporations. The Ipolvite scandal shone a harsh light on the border trade, and pressure to clamp down on the “Black Exchange” grew exponentially across early spring and summer.
Starfleet itself was not particularly pleased with the continued exchange. “What’s the point of Commercial protection duty if the commerce we’re protecting is with the enemy?” Complained Robert Wesley, newly instated C-in-C of the Federation Border Patrol’s SB24 task force. “I understand the economic needs of the colonies – especially with their continued reliance on a currency exchange – but there must be a better way to maintain these peoples’ livelihoods without supporting the continued conquests of the Klingon Empire.”[3]
Others were less generous. “Those money-grubbing antiquity living miners need to learn that this is the 23rd century,” Rittenhouse told Nogura at a planning conference in early May. “Money doesn’t talk anymore. Money doesn’t even have a seat at the god-damn table!” Rittenhouse’s views were shared by a great deal of the Federation Council, especially by the increasingly coherent anti-reformist bloc in the opposition. Separate from Xaall’s particularists, the conservative faction (who, at this point, were calling themselves “Old-Style Federalists”) which had coalesced as a counterweight to the Colonial Reform Bill had been energised by the Ipolvite scandal. Pygos Sh’Belulos, who had replaced Th’rhahlat as Andorian councillor, led the counter charge, confronting the “inevitable exceptions” granted to the colonies.[4]
“But the president tells us to respect the differences in the colonies; and we do. We accept that they see the bulk of Starfleet expenditure. We accept that they get to waive and shelve their commitments to post-monetarism for the sake of their economies. We accept that they are allowed to pick and choose which our laws they enforce, but this is too far. We – the people of the UFP, the builders of the UFP – do not have to accept that they get to fill their pockets by arming the Klingon Empire with the materials and weapons it needs to keep hundreds of worlds in chains!”[5]
Sh’Belulos was nowhere near the most radical or her ilk; some on the fringes of the Old-Style Federalists went as far as to accuse some of the fringe colonists of turning a blind eye to piracy in their own sectors and systems; the councillor for Sandpinia was censured when they accused Ajilon and Tortuga of letting pirates seek safe harbour within their five light year exclusion zone.[6] More concerningly, many with the Federalists considered the attitudes of the colonists towards trade to be symbolic of a generally reactionary worldview on everything from currency to inter-species marriage.
While the more blatant exaggerations were generally dismissed, the Palais de Concorde could not ignore that the core worlds voter base – who had rapidly embraced colonial reform in 2258 – were far more energised by the threat of Klingon aggression and the concept of a “double standard on the Federation way” than they were by the unemotional rationality of electoral voting changes and contribution formulas. The hawks – especially those whose constituents had suffered raid and siege during T’Kuvma’s war - had never been particularly impressed by Th’rhahlat’s assertions that he would take on the Empire. If anything, his reluctance to take advantage of the Raktajino Revolution (caused more by deadlock over Starfleet Allocations and the first iteration of the Colonial Reform Bill) only confirmed their views that the “Burnham Rot” had spread to the Palais De Concorde.
Th’rhahlat’s best weapon against the Old-Style Federalists was Peter Broadhurst. Short – both in height and temperament - the Interstellar Affairs Commissioner’s combination of bullish charm, tactless attitude to negotiation and general decisiveness, he had easily transitioned from a civil service career with the Starfleet Secretariat towards an advisory staff position in the Christenson and Sariv administrations. Broadhurst’s general distaste for cabinet politics had, somehow, made him a vital asset to the Federal Secretariat and the flailing OSFP, who struggled had struggled to find a coherent external affairs policy in government. While much more conservative than much of the OSF-P, he broke with many of his ilk with his firebrand support for Constitutional Reform: a topic on which, in some cases, he proved more radical than Th’rhahlat.
He was an oddity in many ways, in the sort of way those who knew him either considered charming or horrifying. He took his testosterone with a needle, eschewing traditional HRT implants so he could inject himself in public (usually with trousers or other lower garments removed). He liked to take hyperloop and maglev systems as transport, making his staffers walk and talk along the length of the trains even though it made everyone (but him) violently sick.[7] His diet was notoriously atrocious: his favourite work lunch was a “Devil’s punch-dog”, a strange combination of sweet bread, cranberry sauce and beef soup lined into a bowl and consumed with a spork. The security staff at the Defence Secretariat in Shanghai learned to fear Broadhurst’s long work evenings, which usually involved him disappearing out the back exit to drive a hover-car dangerously fast so he could “clear his head”.[8] His paranoia was notorious, and sometimes silly, going as far as to bug his own working space just to make sure he knew what he’d said to other people.
Broadhurst’s own curious traits were topped by a nearly inhuman desperation to ensure that he came out on top of every negotiation: no matter the cost. He argued with anyone he thought he could beat, from waiters and staffers to his own private doctors, simply to ensure that he was the person making the choice. His decision to force the compromise on reform to get the allocations bill in December 2260 had been a clear sign of this: Broadhurst had sold his principles – and his party – down the river to get an extremely minor victory for the government. It destroyed his reputation with the party, but somehow vindicated his relationship with Th’rhahlat, who seemed unable to digest how callous Broadhurst was – or, at the very least, beyond caring. Broadhurst got results: which, when reform legislation had essentially ground to deadlock in the colonial committee and the economic council, was something the administration desperately needed.
With the OSF-P split on the embargo on regional lines, Broadhurst had a lot of room to dictate policy directly: often with the overt consent of the Palais de Concorde. It was he who turned the embargo from a conservative talking point into a political programme, built on and formalised over a series of long dinners in a dingy Andorian-style diner in Montmartre with Vaughan Rittenhouse over the first week of May. Rittenhouse and Broadhurst got along famously: both were equal terrors to junior staff (and waiters), and the admiral’s disgusting pipe habit was a good match for Broadhurst’s taste in food: Rittenhouse is supposed to have introduced the Commissioner to his most infamous delicacy, deep fried jellied eels.
It was an immense proposition. The might of Federation law enforcement – from the local police stations on Benecia to the Joint Intelligence Committee in Cambridge Circus – would be directed to prevent any trade that “aided and abetted the military-industrial complex of the Klingon Empire.” Starfleet Command, if the council approved, would begin to enforce a mineral and technological embargo preventing the export of any “war-related goods” directly from Federation worlds to the Empire. Starfleet – more specifically, the Destroyers, Scouts and Frigates of the Border Patrol and the DESRONs – would enforce the law outside of the five-mile exclusion zones where applicable. Penalties for illicit smuggling or evasion through third parties were not as severe as the punishments for slave trading, but they were substantial: enough, hopefully, to put off any itinerant haulier who thought that running tritanium across the border was worth the credits.[9]
The proposal – titled the “Strategic Resource Denial Bill” – was introduced to the chamber on May 8th to muted but steady approval from the Federalists and the centrist end of the Charterites. Le Monde would politely call it “an audacious proposal”; the Laikan People’s Scroll called it “the first step to a safer quadrant”. The Regulan Unity Herald – considered the paper of record for much of the frontier – was much more scathing: The Embargo was immediately unpopular on the frontier. Despite the obvious political hostility, cross-border trade in raw and processed materials had grown since the war; even if direct trade between UFP colony worlds and the Klingons was limited by the Empire’s refusal to sign the S.T.A.R. treaty, marginal trade – the sort that Broadhurst sought to suppress entirely – was making up nearly 40% of export from mining colonies between 2259 and 61.[10]
The second reading of the bill was the real fight. Attempts over the interceding weekend by the President’s Office to keep the radical elements of the OSF-P had failed, and they led the counter charge against the “naked attack on colonial liberty.” The representative for Altair VI – one of the original founders of the party with Th’rhahlat – was the most aggressive attacker, decrying the “capture of our once noble and principled party by a cabal of jingoists in the sway of the Starfleet Junta.” Broadhurst leapt to the defence of his bill, quickly skipping all pretence of “economic patriotism” or “social responsibility” and going right for the realpolitik explanation.
“The Klingon Empire is more than willing to fight us. It has shown time and again that it has no regard for our diplomats, our principles and our laws. They wish to cow us with their weapons and their fleets. So, we must fight back. Not with arms, though arms we need –with the muscle and power of the Federation: with our laws, and our economic might. We aim not to destroy the Klingon way of life; just to remind them that there are consequences to warmongering and jingoism. And to remind our citizens that their freedom to trade cannot come at the expense of others’ freedom to live.”[11]
Wescott – still in his first month on the council – was suitably impressed by Broadhurst’s frank ability to cut through the bluster to the point, even if he disagreed with Commissioner on everything else. “I thought it was a complete overreaction. I could understand restrictions on corporate exports, especially of refined dilithium and of duotronic equipment - God knows, I had been calling for a ban on Ve’Lop’tu contracts since the G15 scandal – but a total restriction of raw materials? And on imports as well? It was dangerous. Very dangerous. But Broadhurst could sell it as the right move – as the only move, and one that was both good for our economy and a bold strike against the Klingons.”[12]
The OSF-P wasn’t convinced: in fact, the braying support Broadhurst received from the Federalists, Andorian Caucus and the nascent Originalists seemed to aggravate them further. By the time the second reading ended, the government was a critical eight votes down, with none of the progressive Archerites or OSF-P even considering flipping their position. Fearing a rout, Broadhurst began watering down the more drastic elements of the bill, including the operation of enforcement patrols within the 5-light-year limit without the consent of local governments as well as the ban on the resale of any Klingon goods within the UFP. The frontier radicals were not easily bought – some were even insulted by the fact that the adjustments were made entirely without their consultation or support.
By May 14th, the government had exhausted their compromise options: worse, the particularist position was radicalising against any embargo at all. With Starfleet breathing down his neck to put pressure on the Imperial war machine, Broadhurst changed his approach. At the height of the debate on the 15th, Pandrillan Ambassador Umos introduced a new piece of legislation, also based on a report written by Admiral Rittenhouse: one that would allow the security council to authorise spatial minelaying. It was met with shocked gasps, quiet argument, and then furore so raucous that Th’rhahlat had to call for order five times. “It was a difficult thing to hear out loud,” Wescott recalled. “In many ways, it was the moment that hammered home to me that the days of Barreuco and the ploughshare navy were completely over. We were in Shukar’s galaxy now, whether we liked it or not.”[13]
An Imperfect Solution
23rd-century mine warfare was very similar to that of 20th and 21st-century sea mining warfare, and just as controversial. The anti-ship mine is the most economic method of area denial available; so long as they are in the right place. Spatial minefields were incredibly common during the Promelian war nearly 900 years ago. It took until 2197 for all the remaining minefields of the Vulcan-Andorian conflict to be cleared, after a time-consuming and exhaustive effort by the Andorian Imperial Guard and Starfleet. S.S. Enterprise (NX-01) would make first contact with the Romulan Star Empire when it was disabled in one of its minefields. The key bases of the Klingon Imperial Navy were often surrounded by extensive minefields that required special navigational programmes (or sometimes actual port pilots) for entry and exit.[14]
Starfleet, however, had a very limited history of mine warfare. Some mines were used during the Romulan War, mainly as a desperate (but successful) way to deny Wolf 359 and 424 to the Star Empire. Newer models of proximity and timed munition were developed; a few were deployed during the Donatu V conflict, much to the outrage of the Asteroid Prospectors’ association. While minelaying technology and tactics lagged, Starfleet’s minesweeping ability excelled, encouraged by the increasing sophistication of “snare mines” used by Orion pirates and the prodigious use of antimatter mines by the Kzinti.[15] Vessels like the Larson and Malachowski class had been designed with both minelaying and minesweeping in mind but excelled as minesweepers where they were used. Other, smaller craft like the Archer and Capella class were often used as ah-hoc minesweepers, especially during T’Kuvma’s War where they had proved surprisingly effective.[16]
Active minelaying by Starfleet had first re-appeared during the latter stages of the war, using older proximity mines where they were available, but more commonly with jury-rigged photon torpedoes and other older explosives. Some new subspace proximity mines had been designed and constructed. These had been somewhat effective but were still highly controversial. Many in the Federation regarded general spatial mining as an unrefined, inefficient, and barbaric weapon, and a relic of a bygone age of atomic weapons, drugged soldiery, and despotism. The massive risk they posed to civilian traffic represented far too much collateral for the Federation to tolerate.
Even within Starfleet, general minelaying was never authorised by the Admiralty; Luteth and Cornwell considered it at best to be a prodigious waste of munitions in a desperate situation.[17] Captain Pike condemned them as an “attack on the vital principle of the Freedom of the Stars.” The three years since the armistice had changed some minds, but not many. Many still regarded minelaying as a waste of time; space was too big to mine effectively, and what targets could be denied could be guarded with Starships instead of dangerous, unwieldy mines.
Starfleet’s reticence towards mining continued to wane as the gaps in the tactical effort continued to widen. Rittenhouse’s DESRONs, while proving successful as flexible tactical groups, were still understrength, the numbers of incoming Block 2 and 3 Nelson and Saladin class ships still not keeping up with demand.[18] The use of Archer class scouts alongside the Burke as corvettes and light escorts was highly unpopular with exploratory command, who resented the use of their prised “super scouts” within Tactical Command. The lack of effective patrols and scouts had been felt intensely by Klingon Border Operations, who had been unable to deploy the vital CRURONs to places like the Briar Patch or the Wintrose Colonies.
CRURON 3’s attempt to close in on a pirate group operating a few systems over from Capella in March 2261 had been a farce, with nothing to show for five weeks stumbling around in the Eminiar Gap except for the recalling of the USS Bertram Ramsay to Axanar after it was crippled in an Ion Storm.[19] The deployment of a sizable Klingon destroyer force – including the new and deadly I-2 type – only added to the headache. Reinforcements for Mardikian II had been harassed and even turned back by groups of I-2s and K-23s operating out of Keto-Enol while a renewed Klingon offensive saw Federation Ground Forces cling by their fingertips onto the hard-fought ground. At the same time, a new attempt by the Orion Syndicate to assert control over the Vota Star Cluster put even more pressure on the 2nd Fleet.
April and May brought more pressure: The Imperial Navy, unable to operate freely in the Azure Sector thanks to the continued operation of Outpost Inchon, lashed out against other fronts. The raid on Mack-14-Beta was followed by more attacks on shipping on the edges of the Alshanai Rift, as well as a planetary attack on the sensor outpost on Thatto Heath. Despite the best efforts of the Andorian Rangers Battalion defending the station, the outpost would have to be abandoned after 29 days of fighting, with all equipment vaporised to prevent capture.[20] The defeat on Thatto Heath left another massive hole in the “Chain Regulus” system of sensor relay stations and allowed more Klingon raiding groups to move into the space between Argelius and Mastocal. While outpost Inchon still prevented the movement of major Klingon assets deeper into the neutral zone, it was increasingly isolated in a sea of Klingon-occupied systems and disputed regions of space.
Minelaying the approaches to Mardikian II had been proposed immediately after the first Klingon incursion, but by the middle of the year, the scope of minelaying plans had expanded massively. The leading operation – dubbed Kadis-Khot after the Vulcan board game– involved the mining of over 16 different locations, including the Argelian Approaches, The Vota Star Cluster, The Thor’s Twins Pulsars and the Sengkang nebula.[21] These locations represented vital choke points, where anomalies, gas clouds, subspace shoals and other hazards allowed vessels to pass through or hide without detection. By denying these areas – and the approaches to them, Operation Kadis-Khot aimed to force the Imperial Navy out into the open, where the tactics laid out in OSO doctrine would give Starfleet an advantage in both numbers and firepower.
Kadis-Khot was favoured by Rittenhouse as an immediate solution because it allowed him to use the assets he had available, especially when it came to scouts and destroyed.The Mark IV and XI subspace spatial mines were too large to be launched from most vessels’ torpedo tubes, and as such, they had to be deployed from special mountings in rear-facing cargo and shuttle bays. Experimentation showed that the Larson, Capella and Derf class ships were best suited to this task, but that even lighter vessels like the Minuteman and the Engle.[22] The distance from their shuttle bays to their nacelles (or, in the Capella’s case, small size of engines) massively reduced interference from the minelaying ship’s own warp shell, allowing for the laying of mass minefields without risking premature detonation. Experiments at the Wolf 359 proving ground showed that reasonably large minefields could be sowed by one vessel in about 40 hours: two or three could mine a whole asteroid belt in around eight days, so long as drone-operated steering systems held out.[23]
The issue was not really one of technological or logistical capability. Even if stocks of spatial mines did not exist alongside a capacity for their deployment, Starfleet tactical and engineering would have found viable solutions and equipment very quickly. The main barrier to Operation Kadis-Khot was political – and it was an immense one. Minelaying could easily be conducted in the treaty zone with the easy approval of the Security Council, but mining within the 5-LY limits would require complete approval from the council and the colonial committee. That factor – crucial to mining areas like the Argelian Approaches and the Vota Star Cluster – was a political nightmare, likely to raise the hackles of the particularists and the OSF-P.
Ambassador Umos, a member of the Federalists, had introduced the clause at the behest of Broadhurst without prior confirmation from the President: needless to say, it was not approved of, but once the idea was on the floor it was too late to put it back in the box. It was electrifying, and even more frightening, tantalising: it closed the remaining question of enforcement while also acting as a further deterrent to piracy and privateering. It was also, however, a military solution: and one that stank of ancient immoralities and strategies like the press gang or chemically controlling soldiers.
Many of the frontier party were not particularly opposed to the idea of minelaying in itself – they had much more experience with the practice during the Klingon war – but they were appalled that the Th’rhahlat ministry was considering dictating the place of those fields from up high. For much of the OSF-P – which was, much to the consternation of Th’rhahlat, increasingly leaning on the radical elements of “frontier philosophy” – it was yet more proof that the “rootless polyglots” of the core worlds were going to foist another crisis on the colonies so they could continue to live in luxury. The idea that an “orgy of replicator-fed sexpots” was driving policy, while still the butt of the satirist’s joke in 2261, was becoming more articulate – and dangerous.
The mercantile groups who were backed by the particularists (and some elements of the nascent Charterites) were even more opposed. The core world free traders might think the OSF-P was a party of colonial luddites who still thought Colonel Green had some sensible ideas, but they were not going to let that stand in the way of good politics. Beyond the obvious restrictions on their profits, the principle of spatial mining seemed to undermine the base principles of Free movement of trade. “If you mark off space as impassable, you are controlling movement,” remarked Ambassador Ifogg of Idara. “And once you do that, you are controlling trade. You are restricting trade. You are only one step away from the tyranny of the tariff and the protectionist.” [24].
Matti’Gens, the Zakdorn advisor who had drawn the plan up, was brought into the chamber to testify to the probable effectiveness of the Kadis-Khot but was unable to even begin his deposition before he was drowned out by the boos and jeers of the OSFP, particularists and Vulcan caucus. He would try several times to bring the chamber to order before storming off in disgust, leaving Umos alone to defend the policy based on her shaky grasp of the operational plan. It was not a pretty sight, mainly because Umos was not a particularly confident speaker, and struggled to keep control of her audience throughout the explanation. Broadhurst, watching with disdain from the viewing gallery, had to be restrained from taking over from the debate from the upper balcony.
A better case for Kadis-Khot would be made indirectly the next day, when Ron Tracey, decorated veteran of the Klingon War and CO of the Exeter, was called into the testify on the need for tightened export rules. Tracey – generally considered a conservative within Starfleet, but an extremely competent officer nonetheless – was already a bit of a darling with the Federalists for his tough stance on the Klingons, as well as his private reservations on the Suliban Relief Operations. When it came to the embargo, however, he proved a brief but valuable asset to Broadhurst. “We don’t have the ships to patrol every AU all the time, but we can absolutely make our lives easier. Using minefields to channel ship traffic is no different to using cleared space lanes to ensure its safety.”
Tracey’s words – especially his warnings about the ongoing “Scout gap” created by the I2 Destroyer – seemed to be the clincher for many of the moderates. “I didn’t like it,” Wescott said of the Charterite decision to back the move. “I really didn’t like it. We were embracing a total military solution. But it bought us some concessions with the government: lighter terms for small-time traders, no embargo on luxury goods and foodstuffs – the sort of thing that would keep the colonial economies alive. It still felt wrong, though.”
Wescott’s reservations were not universal within the Charterites, though. As much as they were united by a commitment to radical and decisive constitutional reform, they were deeply split on Interstellar Affairs. Wescott – never one to call himself a hawk on anything – was deeply troubled by the divisions between the pro and anti-embargo factions within the nascent party. Desperate to avoid a split so early, he struck a deal with Councillor Niavos to ensure a free vote within the faction. “It was a cop-out. We all knew it. But we were still in a better state than the Frontier Party.”
With the Charterites free voting, and the OSFP and particularists lined up against the bill, initiative passed to the Federalists, who (with the inevitable ruthlessness of all conservatives) pushed hard and fast for the concessions and changes they wanted. Out went the tight focus on trade, and in came measures against privateers and pirates, stronger law enforcement regulations and powers of seizure for Starfleet. The Luna representative, Jonn Elledge, would lead a short revolt based around the effect the bill would have on trade infrastructure, but Broadhurst fended it off by promising further funding on the Mayweather-Lethbridge project. Somehow, despite the noise being made by the OSF-P, the generally distrustful opinion of the public and the outrage from business concern, the embargo had shifted from right wing talking point to political reality in about three months.
The final vote came on the 31st of May. It was a tense moment, but one that had been decided the day before when the government had finally agreed to give Loktra and New Paris an exemption to universal enforcement rules. The vote would pass 48 to 35: not a resounding majority, but a secure one. What exactly it secured was foreboding. The government would get Its embargo; Starfleet would get it’s minelaying authorisation; but the OSF-P had been shattered, it’s political allegiance to the President it had created ended in a matter of weeks. The Federalists had been galvanised by the militancy of Broadhurst, and the Charterites, stumbling through their first real challenge, had struggled to understand what their politics really meant in practice.
Th’rhahlat was not particularly pleased with how he’d gotten his victory, but he seemed able to live with it. “I’d rather past imperfect bills than no bill at all.” Wescott was less circumspect. “[The President] has handed the initiative to the Federalists, and they’re not going to give it up until we’re waist deep in a crisis of their own creation.” His words – worryingly prescient of the next 18 months – were generally ignored, even within the Charterites. But on the upper floors of the Palais de Concorde, Broadhurst celebrated his victory with the leading lights of the conversative factions: many of whom would form part of his cabinet only six months later.
The President would sign off the embargo on the 5th of June. On the 12th, the USS Kyoto would stop an Orion Freighter registered to Regulus III, boarding her and seizing her cargo of Duotronic parts under article VI of the Strategic Resources Denial Act. The same day, USS Suvek and Gar-vop would begin seeding the Argelian Approaches with Mark VI spatial mines. Five days later, as the two vessels left the system, a Klingon D5 cruiser attempting to escape a Starfleet patrol would strike one of the laid mines in the field codename Erie, going down with all hands. Two Bird of Prey’s would also go missing near Corvan - likely victims of the Victoria minefield laid by USS Johnson Beharry.
On the 24th of June 2261, the Imperial Klingon Navy would issue orders authorising “attacks on any Starfleet vessel conducting active or passive operations against the free movement of our trade.” The “War of the Merchant” – as the Klingon Empire would dub the near year of tit-for-tat incidents – had begun.
The Channel Battles
The Klingon Empire was not about to take the embargo lying down. It couldn’t. Despite constant bombastic declarations of self-reliance, the Empire was (and could never be) a true autarky. It lacked the high-tech industrial base or dilithium deposits to meet its goods and energy needs. Even worse, the inability of the Empire to export large amounts of Duranium, Tritanium and other bulk industrial goods had a catastrophic effect on the chancellery’s balance of trade.
The Empire’s state-backed currency – the darsek – was under intense strain in the post war period. Massive economic growth and job creation under L’Rell had not helped to maintain the value of the coin: instead, the darsek’s value had plummeted when compared to the Federation Credit and Gold Pressed Latinum. Inflation that had run rampant in the years before T’Kuvma remained unmanaged, and wages refused to rise with it. The increases that had come in the aftermath of the Raktajino revolution had been too little, too late; by early 2261 the darsek was essentially useless beyond the Empire’s borders. As such, the foreign reserves of the Empire – mainly Gold Pressed Latinum, but also colonial Talons, Orion Davams and even Federation Credits – became vital for the continued military build-up.[25] Critical resources were only purchasable with external currency, which was also needed for the purchase of luxury resources and amenities that formed a cornerstone of L’Rell’s new Empire.
The problem was that there wasn’t very much foreign currency entering the Empire. There was significant demand for the Empire’s raw materials – even from Federation buyers – but most of these business partners preferred to pay in kind than in the various currencies that the Empire needed. A lot of this was custom – the declining usage of money within the Federation cannot be ignored here – but a lot of it was down to financial distrust. The Imperial Bursar’s office was notoriously incompetent, run by a collection of officious, unreliable bureaucrats led by the most unqualified and uninterested nobles available. The surging rise of warrior culture since the 22nd century and ensuing political strife and collapses had removed any honour from state service, especially economic service.
Money was dirty; economic study was morally objectionable. Even though the middle classes were happy to send their studious children to work in the bureaucracy, their talents were squandered and wasted by the fail-sons of the great houses who were far, far more interesting in lining their pockets than building up the economic strength of the empire. In the century of decentralisation after the 2150s, this had not had many consequences, beyond the contrast weakness of the darsek and an immense trade deficit. In the new era of state power under L’Rell, the darsek had rallied a little. While bringing back the Latinum Standard – an economic measure where the value of currency was tied to the existing reserves of Gold-Pressed Latinum held by the Chancellory – did much to improve things, but the civil war and rebellions of 2260 had shaken the Klingon economy to the core, destroying significant economic regions and killing a large portion of the workforce.[26]
The Economy had rallied, however. Mineral exports and industrial productivity had recovered and grown, spurred on by slave imports and prisoner labour, finding eager buyers amongst Barolian middlemen and companies like Ipolvite or RovStock Industries. The Klingon Empire did not particularly care than their minerals were being used to fund the Utopian luxury of the UFP: some Klingon treasury advisers even argued that continued reliance on Klingon raw materials would eventually undermine the Federation’s “decadent social realm”. Very few were interested in shoring the economy up for any sudden shocks – the sort that would almost certainly come when the Klingon Empire interfered with the political balance of the disputed area and jeopardised free movement within the Treaty Zone.
The Embargo’s effects were apparent quickly. Imports dropped rapidly across June and July; worse, exports – vital for maintaining the foreign currency reserves of the Empire – dropped even quicker. Privateering took a hit too, cutting off another important but understanding entry point for Latinum into the Klingon Economy. It is safe to say that some elements of the government panicked; not understanding how markets balance themselves out (or, simply, how much time smugglers and industry would take to find the loopholes around the embargo), many assumed that the sudden spiralling costs of everything from raw duranium through to Saurian Brandy was terminal.[27] The Great Houses, still cowed after the humiliations of the Raktajino Revolution, were convinced that the centralised state was weeks from collapsing; with their fleets decimated and their feudal loyalties limited, some even wondered if this economic shock would doom the empire completely.
The absolute low point came on July 14th, when a convoy of 14 automated transports out of the Aucorla Cluster were seized by Starfleet, who impounded nearly 900 million darsek’s worth of computer equipment and bulk raw goods destined for the Imperial Shipyards. Upon hearing the news, Colonel L’Brynak – the state bursar, who had arranged the delivery through personal intermediaries – did the most logical thing he could think of to save his own skin: he fled the capital with nearly 70% of the Klingon government’s Latinum reserves.[28]
As much as the Chancellory tried to hide the knowledge that it’s foreign currency reserves were now virtually non-existent, it was no use. The value of the darsek plummeted, and anyone who had even a few bars of latinum on them found themselves to be very popular – both as a client and as a mark. Once again, L’Rell’s government was saved by the Imperial Navy and MIS, who with usual brutality and efficiency, managed to refill the state coffers through “Imperial Possession orders”. Mercantile assets and bank accounts were seized, the value of the forefitted latinum “reimbursed” to the owners in darseks – fixed, of course, at the much more stable values of the months before. The Navy’s bureaucrats would eventually re-stabilise the currency by tying it to a Deuterium Standard, which – while weaker than the Dilthium Standard used by most currency-bearing societies in the beta quadrant – was much less volatile. Confidence returned to the government: but another facet of the Imperial Government had been subsumed by the military bureaucracy.
Although the seizures and other control measures managed to bring the spiralling hyperinflation to a halt, the damage had been done. Trade was down; exports to the Federation were deflated by nearly 45%; imports of computer equipment were essentially impossible. The minelaying, scoffed at initially by the Imperial Navy, had proved worryingly effective: by the end of July, nearly 50 vessels had been destroyed or crippled by well-placed minefields from Turnstile to the Taurus Reach. Diplomatic protests through Orion – as violent and furious as they were – fell on deaf ears, especially when TK Rogers pointed out that the minefields were being placed in areas of space already marked by Starfleet as unsafe for trade convoys.[29]
The Imperial Navy had a collection of concrete if escalatory plans to counter the minelaying campaign, gauged from interdicting mining squadrons to a coup-de-main operation on Starbase 24 and 21.[30] The High Council certainly advocated a massive response, and quickly. Their own coffers were increasingly drying out, especially as the knock-on effects of the embargo hit the neutral entrepot’s that connected the Empire to far-off markets like Cardassia, Narbaria and Bolarus.[31] Starfleet’s change in tack – from reactionary patrols and piracy sweeps to semi-overt economic warfare – was unexpected, even within the increasingly sophisticated organs of Imperial Intelligence. The idea that the high-minded and decadent earthers would go as low as to attack the engines of industry – and at their own expense – had not occurred to the Klingons, mainly because planned economic warfare was not a concept that they understood. Piracy was commonplace, as was prize taking, protection rackets and corvée seizure: but organised and legislated attacks on trade simply did not occur to the Klingons.
Part of this comes down to what TK Robson (in their later career as a historian) dubbed “Reverse Clauswitzeanism”. To sum up Robson’s seminal text on Imperial diplomatic thinking, the Klingon Empire did not think that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”; instead, politics was a continuation of war by other means. Political actions – whether external or internal – were considered part of military action or preparations for military action. This made sense within the empire, whether political, social, and economic divides were almost always solved by combat or some sort. It also meant that the Empire struggled to understand the actions of those who did not act along the same principles as them. As such, the embargo simply didn’t make sense to the Empire – yet.
In time, as the long-term effects of being cut off from the Federation’s market took root, the loss of luxury goods markets and cheap computers would be superseded by concerns about declining duranium quality and brittle dilithium crystals. The effects of the devalued darsek, poorly understood in 2261, would infuriate Klingon merchants until the Khitomer treaty. But, as the sharp economic shock levelled out across the summer, the Klingon government struggled to understand what was happening – and why. The panic after the collapse of the darsek would have been the perfect opportunity to attack the Empire. Sowing the Argelian Approaches with mines was clearly the preluding to the Federation conquering the planet. But neither happened. The Klingon economy rallied, shakily, and the Empire was noticeably cash-poor – but it was still there. So, what was the point?
The embargo seemed secondary to the minelaying operations, which had immediate consequences. The Imperial Navy’s dependency on house fleets and their commanders was still bound by a carrot-and-stick relationship, even after the Raktajino Revolution. Minelaying cut off the most useful incentive to following orders from Imperial Command – the opportunity for prize-taking and privateering. For Sturka and the military bureaucracy, the combination of minelaying and improved anti-piracy operations would have more knock-on effects than protecting trade: they jeopardised the control the Naval bureaucracy had over the Great Houses. What should be done was far less clear. Unlike the push into the Triangle or the early warning outposts, the minelaying ops couldn’t be countered by one (semi)decisive blow. The Imperial Navy – as large as it was – simply could not intercept every Starfleet vessel as it laid mines or intercepted Orion slavers.
Sturka did receive authorisation from L’Rell to deploy more of the Imperial Fleet into the disputed zone, including the core battle lines of 2nd, 5th and 8th Fleet Groups: which, while impressive (and certainly concerning for Starfleet Intelligence) did not do much to alleviate the situation across the theatre.[32] The demonstration of Klingon might be powerful, and certainly cowed some tributaries back into submission, but it was unsustainable in the long run. The heavy cruisers and battleships – new designs built or retrofit after the end of hostilities – were not built for long service far from home bases and tenders, and the lighter Starfleet task forces they intended to intercept often outmanoeuvred and withdrew in the face of the bulky Klingon battlegroups.[33]
“D7 Diplomacy” might have impressed the Bosilians and the Asparax polities, but Starfleet seemed unmoved. The nadir of this came in in late August, when a force formed from DESRON 4 and CRURON 6 managed to draw a battlegroup from 5th Fleet Group onto part of the Masuria Field. The newly launched B1 Battleship IKS Qo’noS would end up striking a mine, forcing her withdrawal back to the Empire, where she was laid up for six months. Four other ships in the battlegroup would not be so lucky.[34]
More trouble would come with the launch of Operation En Passant, a combined Starfleet/Federation Ground Forces operation aimed at relieving Klingon pressure on Mardikan II and clearing the Acamarian trade lane. En Passant was the brainchild of Admiral Saoirse Fitzpatrick, sister to the older, contrarian and deeply disliked staff admiral. Saoirse – a scientist by training and the first Starfleet Captain to map the Taurus Reach – had been promoted to the admiralty during the Klingon war, against the recommendations of her brother, who considered her too brash and too uninterested in the bigger picture for fleet command. Fitzpatrick had led a Mendez Column with 4th Fleet during 2258 and 59, operating in conjunction with Commodore Moody’s group to protect the Vota Star Cluster from slave-raiding.[35] Moved across to 2nd Fleet during Rittenhouse’s house-clearance at the end of 2260, Fitzpatrick had managed to integrate well with her new command.
En Passant would be her first real moment in the limelight, however. Using the minefields as cover, Fitzpatrick marshalled limited cruiser forces to push Klingon raiders away from Mardikan and the Hriomi cluster, allowing the FGF to move heavy equipment (including the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment and three squadrons of aerospace fighter-bombers) to Mardikan II, as well as deploy the 2nd Marine Regiment to Markidan IV – now being used as a staging post by the Imperial Army. En Passant would end the months attack on Outpost Inchon and open a second front in that frozen conflict.[36] The operation would also see Fitzpatrick’s force board a D10 Heavy Cruiser for the first time. While the vessel – IKS Hu’yl – could not be recovered, vital technological readouts would be taken, as well as full schematics for the new class. Worse for the empire, En Passant would curtial Klingon access to Acamar, and make access to Barolia difficult, closing yet another vital entrepot for Klingon exports and imports.
So, the overt solution would not work: if anything, the decision to sweep the disputed area with heavier battlegroups had proved embarrassing to L’Rell and those who had pushed for a martial response. The loss of the Acamar trade lane would be felt more immediately than the embargo and would hammer home what the “war of the merchant” meant. High quality anti-deuterium – vital to the operations of the Imperial fleet – had been imported through Acamar through automated transports, which were now falling onto Starfleet minefields or seizure under the Strategic Resource Denial Act. Running ships on poor quality antimatter reduced their lifespan; but also slowed down internal trade and had a secondary impact on other industries.[37] Many of the official fuel imports had also carried less authorised goods: bulk technological parts, luxury materials and other desired goods. Losing access to them only compounded the growing effects of the Embargo, stretching the social contract of the post-2257 empire ever further.
The empire of L’Rell had been, in many ways, about having your gagh and eating it: a martial empire with a higher standing of living, but without forcing the Klingon people to change their ways – or make the Empire operate differently. Losing access to the markets that provided modern computers, luxury clothing and “the trinkets of modernity” (as Sturka would describe it) seemed to do more damage to social confidence in the Empire than the Raktajino Revolution had. It was a compound problem: even with the rapid expansion of chattel slavery to alleviate economic stagnation, the massive enlargement of the Klingon economy had not come without consequences for the standard of living.
While the suppression of the savan made it clear that unrest from below would not be tolerate, the concerns and anxieties of the middle and upper social stratas – who held serious levers of powers and influence – continued to simmer and grow. While the spiralling costs of Orion green slaves, Bolian foodstuffs and Cardassian weaponry was of little consequences to the farmer and the solider, it mattered to the professional classes who were increasingly critical to the running of the Imperial bureaucracy. Furthermore, the Great Houses – though weakened by war and failed revolution – were dependent on their privileged access to foreign markets to support their networks of patronage across the Empire. If the Imperial Chancellory could not guarantee that access, then there was yet another massive reason to withdraw their support for L’Rell for good.
Sturka was no fan of L’Rell. She was too grounded in tradition, too religious, too noble to disregard the pointless bickering of the Great Houses. But she believed in the importance of a powerful central government and strong, organised military – something that would be lost completely if power returned to houses like the Duras, Mo’Kai or Dupat. So, Sturka – “First Officer of Empire”, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Klingon Navy – would find the solution the Empire needed. “What is needed now,” he would tell the Imperial Admiralty at a meeting in September 2261, “is the subtlety of the poisoner, not the violent surge of the warrior; the quiet hiss in the night of the assassin – the death by a hundred attacks, not one blow.”[38]
The Imperial Navy would strike back. Not with incredible violence, but with the subtle deviousness that would define the Sturka era – exemplified by the deadliest weapon of the cold war.
The gravitic mine.
[1] Interpol (The Interstellar Combined Police Association) that facilitates federation-wide police cooperation and crime control.
[2] The Klingon Empire refused to sign STAR, arguing that it’s stipulations around tariff universalisation attacked the core of the Imperial economy.
[3]Robert Wesley to Peter Toussaint, 14th March 2261, in Starship Captain.
[4]Henri Vectern, The Watchword of Freedom: The Birth of Federal Unionism, 2250-2313 (Paris: D’Orsay-Tellar Press Office, 2345)
[5] Hansard, FC Deb 10 April 2261 vol.155
[6] A later investigation would prove that the accusation was correct – but for Tesnia, not the mentioned colonies.
[7] E’yk, The Broadhurst Conundrum (New Berlin; Tranquilty Press, 2352)
[8] The Defence Secretariat would be issued with nearly 90 speeding tickets in 2261 alone.
[9] Richard Ch’Rella, The End of Indecision: Federation Politics from Richard Morville to Lorna McClaren (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2290)
[10] T. A. Agathon, So Say We All: A Cultural History of the Klingon Fringe (Brasilia: Federation Cultural Press, 2298)
[11] Hansard, FC Deb 15 May 2261 vol.157
[12] The Ve’Lop’tu Consortium was the State Shipyard of the Klingon Empire from the 2220s onwards. Specialising in civilian transports and hauliers, Ve’Lop’tu designs were also notorious for their cacophony of issues, from faulty airlock seals and misaligned baffle plates all the way through to navigational deflectors that simply did not work. Most foreign visitors to the empire were advised not to travel with Tu’Qa, the state carrier, because all their vessels were made by Ve’Lop’tu. Notoriously, Ve’Lop’tu had resolved an issue with misaligned matter-antimatter regulators by purchasing G15 reactor schematics off of Opesh-Hyberabad in 2250: schematics that were then given to the Imperial Navy and used to rectify issues with the D7’s dual reactors.
[13] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[14] Jarel bavv Moffek’s The New Warriors of Kahless provides a much more detailed look at the operational practices of the Klingon Imperial Navy from 2181 until 2293.
[15] The Lion’s Roar: Starfleet and the Kzinti, 2161-2290. Evukka Bavv Roph; Tranquility Press, Armstrong City, 2320.
[16] “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory? Mine Warfare and the Klingon War, 2256-2262” Toki Huan, Starfleet Journal of Military History, vol 85.3, (2330)
[17] Toki Huan, “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory?”
[18] The slow delivery of the nelsons and Saladin’s would lead to the development of the Lynch light destroyer, which would prove a highly successful design from it’s launch in 2262 until it’s retirement in 2320.
[19] William Maguire, The Eminiar Gap, San Francisco: Tranquility Press, 2301.
[20] Brigadier Nicholas Beck, The Outpost War: The Federal Ground Force on Campaign, 2260-2272. (London: Padd and Phaser, 2285)
[21] The Argelian Approaches – sometimes known as the Argelian Roads – is a collection of asteroids that orbits around two planetoids within the Argelius system’s Kuiper Belt. Despite being a major travel hazard, the gravity interactions of the two bodies within the field allow vessels to easily enter and exit the system without needing to push against the strong gravitational pull of the system’s star. The approaches had been used by Klingon forces during the 2256-57 war as a staging post for attacks deeper into the Federation.
[22] The S-4 Minuteman class scout – sometimes called the Ranger(a) class or the “Strider” class – was an advanced scout craft used between 2250 and the late 2280s. With a tonnage between the Archer and the Nelson, the Minuteman was a favourite of the Federation Border Patrol and the Anti-Kzin tactical units.
[23] V’Loss, Anti-Piracy warfare between 2245 and 2280. (San Francisco; Starfleet Press, 2340)
[24] Hansard, FC Deb 19 May 2261 vol.178
[25] The continued monetary trade with the Klingon Empire was criticised by many post-economists across the later 23rd century, who considered the Empire’s monetary economy to be a “cancer on the post-capitalist body politic”. M. Saadia, one of the most notorious of the post-monetary philosophers, would notoriously make these views clear when used 250,000 credits worth of Latinum as paint for the walls of cattle ranch on Cestus III.
[26] The tying of the Federation credit to the Dilithium Standard was often lampooned for weakening the currency against its foreign competitors, though the fact the credit was rarely used within the federation – simply due to the phasing out of currency in the core worlds – did much to maintain its strength through scarcity.
[27] Vu’lek, The Economics of The Era of L’Rell and Sturka, (Paris; Klingon-Federation Publishing, 2350)
[28] L’Brynak was never heard of again, though there is a decent case to be made that Colonel Mosk – a Klingon socialite whose murder was the focal point of a diplomatic crisis on Barolia in 2273 – was probably L’Brynak, with a changed identity and reconstructed face.
[29] This was not necessarily true; the Boslian minefields (codenamed Mausria II and III) were located along a well-established Klingon trade lane, but one that Starfleet had marked as unsafe due to Klingon merchants penchant for piracy.
[30] The plan for SB24 would later be implemented as a spoiling operation in the run up to the Four Day’s War.
[31] The political allegiance of Bolarus in the mid-23rd century is complicated. The Bolian government was generally aligned with the UFP’s principles and ideals, but the rapid and combative state of internal politics in the period – let alone the tumultuous 14 years of the Qyib’a Dictatorship – meant that associate membership, let alone full accession in the UFP, was near impossible. As such, it remained neutral ground for diplomacy, espionage, and trade well into the late 2270s.
[32] While the Fleet Groups were deploying their forward elements – mainly formed from Birds of Prey, D5s and a small number of D7 cruisers – their heavier elements were kept at home bases to save on fuel and manpower, only being fully manned when they are “at sea”.
[33] The operations intended to use lighter Klingon units as screening forces; most of the Bird of Prey captains assigned would disappear once the battlegroups crossed the border, seeking more lucrative – and interesting – targets.
[34] Officially, the Klingon government would say that the Qo’noS was being refitted with new engines.
[35] Cara Prendegast, The Fighting Scientist, (London: Macmillian-Grov, 2323)
[36] Thyl Vr.Balvac, The Army of the Free: The Federation Ground Force, 2250-2315.2nd Marine Regiment would be forced to evacuate Mardikan IV in late 2264, when the Imperial Army would deploy five regiments to remove the marines from their forward base.
[37] Klingon antimatter was notorious for it’s poor quality, so much so that it could not even be used on most Federation Starships: while the D7 and D10 could work with domestic antideuterium, it shortened the lifespans of their engines by nearly 30%.
[38] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections, (Kling, 2276, republished Khartoum, Interstellar Annals,2299)
“I am not entirely sure we understood how our own economy worked at the time.” – Kor, Son of Rynar
The Black Exchange
The Federation’s relationship with trade is somewhat paradoxical. It is a stated aim of the United Federation of Planets to “end the reliance on monetary exchange and eradicate economic disparity and inequality wherever and however it occurs”. Earth, her solar colonies, and almost all the internal Andorian, Tellarite and Vulcan worlds had eliminated money by the 2220s and 30s. But money still, much the annoyance of almost every post-economist, continued to exist on the frontier.
The Federation Credit, introduced as a completely control currency to mitigate and expedite the end of monetary exchange, rapidly (and somewhat inevitably) evolved to have a value of its own on the frontier, where colonies remained dependent on it for resource exchange and commerce.
There was no poverty, or inequality, or greed, but to the frustration of the post-monetarists, currency refused to die. This was not really an issue. Most Federation citizens can spend their entire lives with only a cursory relationship to money, in the same way, they might have a cursory relationship with their local football team or amateur blacksmithing. And yet, at the same time, that “black exchange”, as one post-economist put it, remained a critical part of the Federation’s appeal.
The existence of the Federation Treaty zone – and its proper enforcement from the 2180s onwards – completely altered the economic balance of the alpha and beta quadrants. Whereas once, trade had flowed around and through the Orion Colonies, constricted by Vulcan rules, Tellarite tariffs and Klingon “inspection payments”, there was not an immense area of space where trade was not only unmolested but protected. Starfleet, the planetary forces and Interpol all worked in tandem to ensure that trade remained free, easy and equitable.[1] There were conditions, though. The Stellar Travel Accepted Rights (S.T.A.R.) treaty ensured that all parties – both federation members and external governments – agreed to a universal base of legal rights for all merchants and travellers. Obvious bans were included, most notably on slavery, improper transport of dangerous goods and the movement of invasive species of flora and fauna, but there were no contentious stipulations. STAR created the foundations of a body of interstellar law that would extend to specific rules on inspections, rights for free civilian travel and limitations on the movements of arms, but it was not prejudiced.[2] Until now.
Despite the antagonistic relationship that had existed between Empire and Federation, Klingon trade – both public and private – had been grudging allowed within the treaty zone. It was a principled stance, justified on the usual utopian stance. “Free trade brings free contact, and free contact brings free principles,” argued President Karvouni, and that argument stood, even as Klingon merchants casually traded commerce for piracy on Federation space lanes. It was a tolerable nuisance, especially when Starfleet could easily handle the pirates. The trade was good too; the export of alloyed metals, mid-tier computing equipment and civilian goods to the Empire was a crucial part of the local economies of the Shepard, Regulus and Orion sectors. The human settlements of the Vota Star Cluster, the Asparax systems and other areas all the way down to the Eminiar Gap had recovered a great deal of their trade after the war, even if a lot of it was now being conducted by small-fry warp shuttles and blockade runners instead of larger corporations. The Ipolvite scandal shone a harsh light on the border trade, and pressure to clamp down on the “Black Exchange” grew exponentially across early spring and summer.
Starfleet itself was not particularly pleased with the continued exchange. “What’s the point of Commercial protection duty if the commerce we’re protecting is with the enemy?” Complained Robert Wesley, newly instated C-in-C of the Federation Border Patrol’s SB24 task force. “I understand the economic needs of the colonies – especially with their continued reliance on a currency exchange – but there must be a better way to maintain these peoples’ livelihoods without supporting the continued conquests of the Klingon Empire.”[3]
Others were less generous. “Those money-grubbing antiquity living miners need to learn that this is the 23rd century,” Rittenhouse told Nogura at a planning conference in early May. “Money doesn’t talk anymore. Money doesn’t even have a seat at the god-damn table!” Rittenhouse’s views were shared by a great deal of the Federation Council, especially by the increasingly coherent anti-reformist bloc in the opposition. Separate from Xaall’s particularists, the conservative faction (who, at this point, were calling themselves “Old-Style Federalists”) which had coalesced as a counterweight to the Colonial Reform Bill had been energised by the Ipolvite scandal. Pygos Sh’Belulos, who had replaced Th’rhahlat as Andorian councillor, led the counter charge, confronting the “inevitable exceptions” granted to the colonies.[4]
“But the president tells us to respect the differences in the colonies; and we do. We accept that they see the bulk of Starfleet expenditure. We accept that they get to waive and shelve their commitments to post-monetarism for the sake of their economies. We accept that they are allowed to pick and choose which our laws they enforce, but this is too far. We – the people of the UFP, the builders of the UFP – do not have to accept that they get to fill their pockets by arming the Klingon Empire with the materials and weapons it needs to keep hundreds of worlds in chains!”[5]
Sh’Belulos was nowhere near the most radical or her ilk; some on the fringes of the Old-Style Federalists went as far as to accuse some of the fringe colonists of turning a blind eye to piracy in their own sectors and systems; the councillor for Sandpinia was censured when they accused Ajilon and Tortuga of letting pirates seek safe harbour within their five light year exclusion zone.[6] More concerningly, many with the Federalists considered the attitudes of the colonists towards trade to be symbolic of a generally reactionary worldview on everything from currency to inter-species marriage.
While the more blatant exaggerations were generally dismissed, the Palais de Concorde could not ignore that the core worlds voter base – who had rapidly embraced colonial reform in 2258 – were far more energised by the threat of Klingon aggression and the concept of a “double standard on the Federation way” than they were by the unemotional rationality of electoral voting changes and contribution formulas. The hawks – especially those whose constituents had suffered raid and siege during T’Kuvma’s war - had never been particularly impressed by Th’rhahlat’s assertions that he would take on the Empire. If anything, his reluctance to take advantage of the Raktajino Revolution (caused more by deadlock over Starfleet Allocations and the first iteration of the Colonial Reform Bill) only confirmed their views that the “Burnham Rot” had spread to the Palais De Concorde.
Th’rhahlat’s best weapon against the Old-Style Federalists was Peter Broadhurst. Short – both in height and temperament - the Interstellar Affairs Commissioner’s combination of bullish charm, tactless attitude to negotiation and general decisiveness, he had easily transitioned from a civil service career with the Starfleet Secretariat towards an advisory staff position in the Christenson and Sariv administrations. Broadhurst’s general distaste for cabinet politics had, somehow, made him a vital asset to the Federal Secretariat and the flailing OSFP, who struggled had struggled to find a coherent external affairs policy in government. While much more conservative than much of the OSF-P, he broke with many of his ilk with his firebrand support for Constitutional Reform: a topic on which, in some cases, he proved more radical than Th’rhahlat.
He was an oddity in many ways, in the sort of way those who knew him either considered charming or horrifying. He took his testosterone with a needle, eschewing traditional HRT implants so he could inject himself in public (usually with trousers or other lower garments removed). He liked to take hyperloop and maglev systems as transport, making his staffers walk and talk along the length of the trains even though it made everyone (but him) violently sick.[7] His diet was notoriously atrocious: his favourite work lunch was a “Devil’s punch-dog”, a strange combination of sweet bread, cranberry sauce and beef soup lined into a bowl and consumed with a spork. The security staff at the Defence Secretariat in Shanghai learned to fear Broadhurst’s long work evenings, which usually involved him disappearing out the back exit to drive a hover-car dangerously fast so he could “clear his head”.[8] His paranoia was notorious, and sometimes silly, going as far as to bug his own working space just to make sure he knew what he’d said to other people.
Broadhurst’s own curious traits were topped by a nearly inhuman desperation to ensure that he came out on top of every negotiation: no matter the cost. He argued with anyone he thought he could beat, from waiters and staffers to his own private doctors, simply to ensure that he was the person making the choice. His decision to force the compromise on reform to get the allocations bill in December 2260 had been a clear sign of this: Broadhurst had sold his principles – and his party – down the river to get an extremely minor victory for the government. It destroyed his reputation with the party, but somehow vindicated his relationship with Th’rhahlat, who seemed unable to digest how callous Broadhurst was – or, at the very least, beyond caring. Broadhurst got results: which, when reform legislation had essentially ground to deadlock in the colonial committee and the economic council, was something the administration desperately needed.
With the OSF-P split on the embargo on regional lines, Broadhurst had a lot of room to dictate policy directly: often with the overt consent of the Palais de Concorde. It was he who turned the embargo from a conservative talking point into a political programme, built on and formalised over a series of long dinners in a dingy Andorian-style diner in Montmartre with Vaughan Rittenhouse over the first week of May. Rittenhouse and Broadhurst got along famously: both were equal terrors to junior staff (and waiters), and the admiral’s disgusting pipe habit was a good match for Broadhurst’s taste in food: Rittenhouse is supposed to have introduced the Commissioner to his most infamous delicacy, deep fried jellied eels.
It was an immense proposition. The might of Federation law enforcement – from the local police stations on Benecia to the Joint Intelligence Committee in Cambridge Circus – would be directed to prevent any trade that “aided and abetted the military-industrial complex of the Klingon Empire.” Starfleet Command, if the council approved, would begin to enforce a mineral and technological embargo preventing the export of any “war-related goods” directly from Federation worlds to the Empire. Starfleet – more specifically, the Destroyers, Scouts and Frigates of the Border Patrol and the DESRONs – would enforce the law outside of the five-mile exclusion zones where applicable. Penalties for illicit smuggling or evasion through third parties were not as severe as the punishments for slave trading, but they were substantial: enough, hopefully, to put off any itinerant haulier who thought that running tritanium across the border was worth the credits.[9]
The proposal – titled the “Strategic Resource Denial Bill” – was introduced to the chamber on May 8th to muted but steady approval from the Federalists and the centrist end of the Charterites. Le Monde would politely call it “an audacious proposal”; the Laikan People’s Scroll called it “the first step to a safer quadrant”. The Regulan Unity Herald – considered the paper of record for much of the frontier – was much more scathing: The Embargo was immediately unpopular on the frontier. Despite the obvious political hostility, cross-border trade in raw and processed materials had grown since the war; even if direct trade between UFP colony worlds and the Klingons was limited by the Empire’s refusal to sign the S.T.A.R. treaty, marginal trade – the sort that Broadhurst sought to suppress entirely – was making up nearly 40% of export from mining colonies between 2259 and 61.[10]
The second reading of the bill was the real fight. Attempts over the interceding weekend by the President’s Office to keep the radical elements of the OSF-P had failed, and they led the counter charge against the “naked attack on colonial liberty.” The representative for Altair VI – one of the original founders of the party with Th’rhahlat – was the most aggressive attacker, decrying the “capture of our once noble and principled party by a cabal of jingoists in the sway of the Starfleet Junta.” Broadhurst leapt to the defence of his bill, quickly skipping all pretence of “economic patriotism” or “social responsibility” and going right for the realpolitik explanation.
“The Klingon Empire is more than willing to fight us. It has shown time and again that it has no regard for our diplomats, our principles and our laws. They wish to cow us with their weapons and their fleets. So, we must fight back. Not with arms, though arms we need –with the muscle and power of the Federation: with our laws, and our economic might. We aim not to destroy the Klingon way of life; just to remind them that there are consequences to warmongering and jingoism. And to remind our citizens that their freedom to trade cannot come at the expense of others’ freedom to live.”[11]
Wescott – still in his first month on the council – was suitably impressed by Broadhurst’s frank ability to cut through the bluster to the point, even if he disagreed with Commissioner on everything else. “I thought it was a complete overreaction. I could understand restrictions on corporate exports, especially of refined dilithium and of duotronic equipment - God knows, I had been calling for a ban on Ve’Lop’tu contracts since the G15 scandal – but a total restriction of raw materials? And on imports as well? It was dangerous. Very dangerous. But Broadhurst could sell it as the right move – as the only move, and one that was both good for our economy and a bold strike against the Klingons.”[12]
The OSF-P wasn’t convinced: in fact, the braying support Broadhurst received from the Federalists, Andorian Caucus and the nascent Originalists seemed to aggravate them further. By the time the second reading ended, the government was a critical eight votes down, with none of the progressive Archerites or OSF-P even considering flipping their position. Fearing a rout, Broadhurst began watering down the more drastic elements of the bill, including the operation of enforcement patrols within the 5-light-year limit without the consent of local governments as well as the ban on the resale of any Klingon goods within the UFP. The frontier radicals were not easily bought – some were even insulted by the fact that the adjustments were made entirely without their consultation or support.
By May 14th, the government had exhausted their compromise options: worse, the particularist position was radicalising against any embargo at all. With Starfleet breathing down his neck to put pressure on the Imperial war machine, Broadhurst changed his approach. At the height of the debate on the 15th, Pandrillan Ambassador Umos introduced a new piece of legislation, also based on a report written by Admiral Rittenhouse: one that would allow the security council to authorise spatial minelaying. It was met with shocked gasps, quiet argument, and then furore so raucous that Th’rhahlat had to call for order five times. “It was a difficult thing to hear out loud,” Wescott recalled. “In many ways, it was the moment that hammered home to me that the days of Barreuco and the ploughshare navy were completely over. We were in Shukar’s galaxy now, whether we liked it or not.”[13]
An Imperfect Solution
23rd-century mine warfare was very similar to that of 20th and 21st-century sea mining warfare, and just as controversial. The anti-ship mine is the most economic method of area denial available; so long as they are in the right place. Spatial minefields were incredibly common during the Promelian war nearly 900 years ago. It took until 2197 for all the remaining minefields of the Vulcan-Andorian conflict to be cleared, after a time-consuming and exhaustive effort by the Andorian Imperial Guard and Starfleet. S.S. Enterprise (NX-01) would make first contact with the Romulan Star Empire when it was disabled in one of its minefields. The key bases of the Klingon Imperial Navy were often surrounded by extensive minefields that required special navigational programmes (or sometimes actual port pilots) for entry and exit.[14]
Starfleet, however, had a very limited history of mine warfare. Some mines were used during the Romulan War, mainly as a desperate (but successful) way to deny Wolf 359 and 424 to the Star Empire. Newer models of proximity and timed munition were developed; a few were deployed during the Donatu V conflict, much to the outrage of the Asteroid Prospectors’ association. While minelaying technology and tactics lagged, Starfleet’s minesweeping ability excelled, encouraged by the increasing sophistication of “snare mines” used by Orion pirates and the prodigious use of antimatter mines by the Kzinti.[15] Vessels like the Larson and Malachowski class had been designed with both minelaying and minesweeping in mind but excelled as minesweepers where they were used. Other, smaller craft like the Archer and Capella class were often used as ah-hoc minesweepers, especially during T’Kuvma’s War where they had proved surprisingly effective.[16]
Active minelaying by Starfleet had first re-appeared during the latter stages of the war, using older proximity mines where they were available, but more commonly with jury-rigged photon torpedoes and other older explosives. Some new subspace proximity mines had been designed and constructed. These had been somewhat effective but were still highly controversial. Many in the Federation regarded general spatial mining as an unrefined, inefficient, and barbaric weapon, and a relic of a bygone age of atomic weapons, drugged soldiery, and despotism. The massive risk they posed to civilian traffic represented far too much collateral for the Federation to tolerate.
Even within Starfleet, general minelaying was never authorised by the Admiralty; Luteth and Cornwell considered it at best to be a prodigious waste of munitions in a desperate situation.[17] Captain Pike condemned them as an “attack on the vital principle of the Freedom of the Stars.” The three years since the armistice had changed some minds, but not many. Many still regarded minelaying as a waste of time; space was too big to mine effectively, and what targets could be denied could be guarded with Starships instead of dangerous, unwieldy mines.
Starfleet’s reticence towards mining continued to wane as the gaps in the tactical effort continued to widen. Rittenhouse’s DESRONs, while proving successful as flexible tactical groups, were still understrength, the numbers of incoming Block 2 and 3 Nelson and Saladin class ships still not keeping up with demand.[18] The use of Archer class scouts alongside the Burke as corvettes and light escorts was highly unpopular with exploratory command, who resented the use of their prised “super scouts” within Tactical Command. The lack of effective patrols and scouts had been felt intensely by Klingon Border Operations, who had been unable to deploy the vital CRURONs to places like the Briar Patch or the Wintrose Colonies.
CRURON 3’s attempt to close in on a pirate group operating a few systems over from Capella in March 2261 had been a farce, with nothing to show for five weeks stumbling around in the Eminiar Gap except for the recalling of the USS Bertram Ramsay to Axanar after it was crippled in an Ion Storm.[19] The deployment of a sizable Klingon destroyer force – including the new and deadly I-2 type – only added to the headache. Reinforcements for Mardikian II had been harassed and even turned back by groups of I-2s and K-23s operating out of Keto-Enol while a renewed Klingon offensive saw Federation Ground Forces cling by their fingertips onto the hard-fought ground. At the same time, a new attempt by the Orion Syndicate to assert control over the Vota Star Cluster put even more pressure on the 2nd Fleet.
April and May brought more pressure: The Imperial Navy, unable to operate freely in the Azure Sector thanks to the continued operation of Outpost Inchon, lashed out against other fronts. The raid on Mack-14-Beta was followed by more attacks on shipping on the edges of the Alshanai Rift, as well as a planetary attack on the sensor outpost on Thatto Heath. Despite the best efforts of the Andorian Rangers Battalion defending the station, the outpost would have to be abandoned after 29 days of fighting, with all equipment vaporised to prevent capture.[20] The defeat on Thatto Heath left another massive hole in the “Chain Regulus” system of sensor relay stations and allowed more Klingon raiding groups to move into the space between Argelius and Mastocal. While outpost Inchon still prevented the movement of major Klingon assets deeper into the neutral zone, it was increasingly isolated in a sea of Klingon-occupied systems and disputed regions of space.
Minelaying the approaches to Mardikian II had been proposed immediately after the first Klingon incursion, but by the middle of the year, the scope of minelaying plans had expanded massively. The leading operation – dubbed Kadis-Khot after the Vulcan board game– involved the mining of over 16 different locations, including the Argelian Approaches, The Vota Star Cluster, The Thor’s Twins Pulsars and the Sengkang nebula.[21] These locations represented vital choke points, where anomalies, gas clouds, subspace shoals and other hazards allowed vessels to pass through or hide without detection. By denying these areas – and the approaches to them, Operation Kadis-Khot aimed to force the Imperial Navy out into the open, where the tactics laid out in OSO doctrine would give Starfleet an advantage in both numbers and firepower.
Kadis-Khot was favoured by Rittenhouse as an immediate solution because it allowed him to use the assets he had available, especially when it came to scouts and destroyed.The Mark IV and XI subspace spatial mines were too large to be launched from most vessels’ torpedo tubes, and as such, they had to be deployed from special mountings in rear-facing cargo and shuttle bays. Experimentation showed that the Larson, Capella and Derf class ships were best suited to this task, but that even lighter vessels like the Minuteman and the Engle.[22] The distance from their shuttle bays to their nacelles (or, in the Capella’s case, small size of engines) massively reduced interference from the minelaying ship’s own warp shell, allowing for the laying of mass minefields without risking premature detonation. Experiments at the Wolf 359 proving ground showed that reasonably large minefields could be sowed by one vessel in about 40 hours: two or three could mine a whole asteroid belt in around eight days, so long as drone-operated steering systems held out.[23]
The issue was not really one of technological or logistical capability. Even if stocks of spatial mines did not exist alongside a capacity for their deployment, Starfleet tactical and engineering would have found viable solutions and equipment very quickly. The main barrier to Operation Kadis-Khot was political – and it was an immense one. Minelaying could easily be conducted in the treaty zone with the easy approval of the Security Council, but mining within the 5-LY limits would require complete approval from the council and the colonial committee. That factor – crucial to mining areas like the Argelian Approaches and the Vota Star Cluster – was a political nightmare, likely to raise the hackles of the particularists and the OSF-P.
Ambassador Umos, a member of the Federalists, had introduced the clause at the behest of Broadhurst without prior confirmation from the President: needless to say, it was not approved of, but once the idea was on the floor it was too late to put it back in the box. It was electrifying, and even more frightening, tantalising: it closed the remaining question of enforcement while also acting as a further deterrent to piracy and privateering. It was also, however, a military solution: and one that stank of ancient immoralities and strategies like the press gang or chemically controlling soldiers.
Many of the frontier party were not particularly opposed to the idea of minelaying in itself – they had much more experience with the practice during the Klingon war – but they were appalled that the Th’rhahlat ministry was considering dictating the place of those fields from up high. For much of the OSF-P – which was, much to the consternation of Th’rhahlat, increasingly leaning on the radical elements of “frontier philosophy” – it was yet more proof that the “rootless polyglots” of the core worlds were going to foist another crisis on the colonies so they could continue to live in luxury. The idea that an “orgy of replicator-fed sexpots” was driving policy, while still the butt of the satirist’s joke in 2261, was becoming more articulate – and dangerous.
The mercantile groups who were backed by the particularists (and some elements of the nascent Charterites) were even more opposed. The core world free traders might think the OSF-P was a party of colonial luddites who still thought Colonel Green had some sensible ideas, but they were not going to let that stand in the way of good politics. Beyond the obvious restrictions on their profits, the principle of spatial mining seemed to undermine the base principles of Free movement of trade. “If you mark off space as impassable, you are controlling movement,” remarked Ambassador Ifogg of Idara. “And once you do that, you are controlling trade. You are restricting trade. You are only one step away from the tyranny of the tariff and the protectionist.” [24].
Matti’Gens, the Zakdorn advisor who had drawn the plan up, was brought into the chamber to testify to the probable effectiveness of the Kadis-Khot but was unable to even begin his deposition before he was drowned out by the boos and jeers of the OSFP, particularists and Vulcan caucus. He would try several times to bring the chamber to order before storming off in disgust, leaving Umos alone to defend the policy based on her shaky grasp of the operational plan. It was not a pretty sight, mainly because Umos was not a particularly confident speaker, and struggled to keep control of her audience throughout the explanation. Broadhurst, watching with disdain from the viewing gallery, had to be restrained from taking over from the debate from the upper balcony.
A better case for Kadis-Khot would be made indirectly the next day, when Ron Tracey, decorated veteran of the Klingon War and CO of the Exeter, was called into the testify on the need for tightened export rules. Tracey – generally considered a conservative within Starfleet, but an extremely competent officer nonetheless – was already a bit of a darling with the Federalists for his tough stance on the Klingons, as well as his private reservations on the Suliban Relief Operations. When it came to the embargo, however, he proved a brief but valuable asset to Broadhurst. “We don’t have the ships to patrol every AU all the time, but we can absolutely make our lives easier. Using minefields to channel ship traffic is no different to using cleared space lanes to ensure its safety.”
Tracey’s words – especially his warnings about the ongoing “Scout gap” created by the I2 Destroyer – seemed to be the clincher for many of the moderates. “I didn’t like it,” Wescott said of the Charterite decision to back the move. “I really didn’t like it. We were embracing a total military solution. But it bought us some concessions with the government: lighter terms for small-time traders, no embargo on luxury goods and foodstuffs – the sort of thing that would keep the colonial economies alive. It still felt wrong, though.”
Wescott’s reservations were not universal within the Charterites, though. As much as they were united by a commitment to radical and decisive constitutional reform, they were deeply split on Interstellar Affairs. Wescott – never one to call himself a hawk on anything – was deeply troubled by the divisions between the pro and anti-embargo factions within the nascent party. Desperate to avoid a split so early, he struck a deal with Councillor Niavos to ensure a free vote within the faction. “It was a cop-out. We all knew it. But we were still in a better state than the Frontier Party.”
With the Charterites free voting, and the OSFP and particularists lined up against the bill, initiative passed to the Federalists, who (with the inevitable ruthlessness of all conservatives) pushed hard and fast for the concessions and changes they wanted. Out went the tight focus on trade, and in came measures against privateers and pirates, stronger law enforcement regulations and powers of seizure for Starfleet. The Luna representative, Jonn Elledge, would lead a short revolt based around the effect the bill would have on trade infrastructure, but Broadhurst fended it off by promising further funding on the Mayweather-Lethbridge project. Somehow, despite the noise being made by the OSF-P, the generally distrustful opinion of the public and the outrage from business concern, the embargo had shifted from right wing talking point to political reality in about three months.
The final vote came on the 31st of May. It was a tense moment, but one that had been decided the day before when the government had finally agreed to give Loktra and New Paris an exemption to universal enforcement rules. The vote would pass 48 to 35: not a resounding majority, but a secure one. What exactly it secured was foreboding. The government would get Its embargo; Starfleet would get it’s minelaying authorisation; but the OSF-P had been shattered, it’s political allegiance to the President it had created ended in a matter of weeks. The Federalists had been galvanised by the militancy of Broadhurst, and the Charterites, stumbling through their first real challenge, had struggled to understand what their politics really meant in practice.
Th’rhahlat was not particularly pleased with how he’d gotten his victory, but he seemed able to live with it. “I’d rather past imperfect bills than no bill at all.” Wescott was less circumspect. “[The President] has handed the initiative to the Federalists, and they’re not going to give it up until we’re waist deep in a crisis of their own creation.” His words – worryingly prescient of the next 18 months – were generally ignored, even within the Charterites. But on the upper floors of the Palais de Concorde, Broadhurst celebrated his victory with the leading lights of the conversative factions: many of whom would form part of his cabinet only six months later.
The President would sign off the embargo on the 5th of June. On the 12th, the USS Kyoto would stop an Orion Freighter registered to Regulus III, boarding her and seizing her cargo of Duotronic parts under article VI of the Strategic Resources Denial Act. The same day, USS Suvek and Gar-vop would begin seeding the Argelian Approaches with Mark VI spatial mines. Five days later, as the two vessels left the system, a Klingon D5 cruiser attempting to escape a Starfleet patrol would strike one of the laid mines in the field codename Erie, going down with all hands. Two Bird of Prey’s would also go missing near Corvan - likely victims of the Victoria minefield laid by USS Johnson Beharry.
On the 24th of June 2261, the Imperial Klingon Navy would issue orders authorising “attacks on any Starfleet vessel conducting active or passive operations against the free movement of our trade.” The “War of the Merchant” – as the Klingon Empire would dub the near year of tit-for-tat incidents – had begun.
The Channel Battles
The Klingon Empire was not about to take the embargo lying down. It couldn’t. Despite constant bombastic declarations of self-reliance, the Empire was (and could never be) a true autarky. It lacked the high-tech industrial base or dilithium deposits to meet its goods and energy needs. Even worse, the inability of the Empire to export large amounts of Duranium, Tritanium and other bulk industrial goods had a catastrophic effect on the chancellery’s balance of trade.
The Empire’s state-backed currency – the darsek – was under intense strain in the post war period. Massive economic growth and job creation under L’Rell had not helped to maintain the value of the coin: instead, the darsek’s value had plummeted when compared to the Federation Credit and Gold Pressed Latinum. Inflation that had run rampant in the years before T’Kuvma remained unmanaged, and wages refused to rise with it. The increases that had come in the aftermath of the Raktajino revolution had been too little, too late; by early 2261 the darsek was essentially useless beyond the Empire’s borders. As such, the foreign reserves of the Empire – mainly Gold Pressed Latinum, but also colonial Talons, Orion Davams and even Federation Credits – became vital for the continued military build-up.[25] Critical resources were only purchasable with external currency, which was also needed for the purchase of luxury resources and amenities that formed a cornerstone of L’Rell’s new Empire.
The problem was that there wasn’t very much foreign currency entering the Empire. There was significant demand for the Empire’s raw materials – even from Federation buyers – but most of these business partners preferred to pay in kind than in the various currencies that the Empire needed. A lot of this was custom – the declining usage of money within the Federation cannot be ignored here – but a lot of it was down to financial distrust. The Imperial Bursar’s office was notoriously incompetent, run by a collection of officious, unreliable bureaucrats led by the most unqualified and uninterested nobles available. The surging rise of warrior culture since the 22nd century and ensuing political strife and collapses had removed any honour from state service, especially economic service.
Money was dirty; economic study was morally objectionable. Even though the middle classes were happy to send their studious children to work in the bureaucracy, their talents were squandered and wasted by the fail-sons of the great houses who were far, far more interesting in lining their pockets than building up the economic strength of the empire. In the century of decentralisation after the 2150s, this had not had many consequences, beyond the contrast weakness of the darsek and an immense trade deficit. In the new era of state power under L’Rell, the darsek had rallied a little. While bringing back the Latinum Standard – an economic measure where the value of currency was tied to the existing reserves of Gold-Pressed Latinum held by the Chancellory – did much to improve things, but the civil war and rebellions of 2260 had shaken the Klingon economy to the core, destroying significant economic regions and killing a large portion of the workforce.[26]
The Economy had rallied, however. Mineral exports and industrial productivity had recovered and grown, spurred on by slave imports and prisoner labour, finding eager buyers amongst Barolian middlemen and companies like Ipolvite or RovStock Industries. The Klingon Empire did not particularly care than their minerals were being used to fund the Utopian luxury of the UFP: some Klingon treasury advisers even argued that continued reliance on Klingon raw materials would eventually undermine the Federation’s “decadent social realm”. Very few were interested in shoring the economy up for any sudden shocks – the sort that would almost certainly come when the Klingon Empire interfered with the political balance of the disputed area and jeopardised free movement within the Treaty Zone.
The Embargo’s effects were apparent quickly. Imports dropped rapidly across June and July; worse, exports – vital for maintaining the foreign currency reserves of the Empire – dropped even quicker. Privateering took a hit too, cutting off another important but understanding entry point for Latinum into the Klingon Economy. It is safe to say that some elements of the government panicked; not understanding how markets balance themselves out (or, simply, how much time smugglers and industry would take to find the loopholes around the embargo), many assumed that the sudden spiralling costs of everything from raw duranium through to Saurian Brandy was terminal.[27] The Great Houses, still cowed after the humiliations of the Raktajino Revolution, were convinced that the centralised state was weeks from collapsing; with their fleets decimated and their feudal loyalties limited, some even wondered if this economic shock would doom the empire completely.
The absolute low point came on July 14th, when a convoy of 14 automated transports out of the Aucorla Cluster were seized by Starfleet, who impounded nearly 900 million darsek’s worth of computer equipment and bulk raw goods destined for the Imperial Shipyards. Upon hearing the news, Colonel L’Brynak – the state bursar, who had arranged the delivery through personal intermediaries – did the most logical thing he could think of to save his own skin: he fled the capital with nearly 70% of the Klingon government’s Latinum reserves.[28]
As much as the Chancellory tried to hide the knowledge that it’s foreign currency reserves were now virtually non-existent, it was no use. The value of the darsek plummeted, and anyone who had even a few bars of latinum on them found themselves to be very popular – both as a client and as a mark. Once again, L’Rell’s government was saved by the Imperial Navy and MIS, who with usual brutality and efficiency, managed to refill the state coffers through “Imperial Possession orders”. Mercantile assets and bank accounts were seized, the value of the forefitted latinum “reimbursed” to the owners in darseks – fixed, of course, at the much more stable values of the months before. The Navy’s bureaucrats would eventually re-stabilise the currency by tying it to a Deuterium Standard, which – while weaker than the Dilthium Standard used by most currency-bearing societies in the beta quadrant – was much less volatile. Confidence returned to the government: but another facet of the Imperial Government had been subsumed by the military bureaucracy.
Although the seizures and other control measures managed to bring the spiralling hyperinflation to a halt, the damage had been done. Trade was down; exports to the Federation were deflated by nearly 45%; imports of computer equipment were essentially impossible. The minelaying, scoffed at initially by the Imperial Navy, had proved worryingly effective: by the end of July, nearly 50 vessels had been destroyed or crippled by well-placed minefields from Turnstile to the Taurus Reach. Diplomatic protests through Orion – as violent and furious as they were – fell on deaf ears, especially when TK Rogers pointed out that the minefields were being placed in areas of space already marked by Starfleet as unsafe for trade convoys.[29]
The Imperial Navy had a collection of concrete if escalatory plans to counter the minelaying campaign, gauged from interdicting mining squadrons to a coup-de-main operation on Starbase 24 and 21.[30] The High Council certainly advocated a massive response, and quickly. Their own coffers were increasingly drying out, especially as the knock-on effects of the embargo hit the neutral entrepot’s that connected the Empire to far-off markets like Cardassia, Narbaria and Bolarus.[31] Starfleet’s change in tack – from reactionary patrols and piracy sweeps to semi-overt economic warfare – was unexpected, even within the increasingly sophisticated organs of Imperial Intelligence. The idea that the high-minded and decadent earthers would go as low as to attack the engines of industry – and at their own expense – had not occurred to the Klingons, mainly because planned economic warfare was not a concept that they understood. Piracy was commonplace, as was prize taking, protection rackets and corvée seizure: but organised and legislated attacks on trade simply did not occur to the Klingons.
Part of this comes down to what TK Robson (in their later career as a historian) dubbed “Reverse Clauswitzeanism”. To sum up Robson’s seminal text on Imperial diplomatic thinking, the Klingon Empire did not think that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”; instead, politics was a continuation of war by other means. Political actions – whether external or internal – were considered part of military action or preparations for military action. This made sense within the empire, whether political, social, and economic divides were almost always solved by combat or some sort. It also meant that the Empire struggled to understand the actions of those who did not act along the same principles as them. As such, the embargo simply didn’t make sense to the Empire – yet.
In time, as the long-term effects of being cut off from the Federation’s market took root, the loss of luxury goods markets and cheap computers would be superseded by concerns about declining duranium quality and brittle dilithium crystals. The effects of the devalued darsek, poorly understood in 2261, would infuriate Klingon merchants until the Khitomer treaty. But, as the sharp economic shock levelled out across the summer, the Klingon government struggled to understand what was happening – and why. The panic after the collapse of the darsek would have been the perfect opportunity to attack the Empire. Sowing the Argelian Approaches with mines was clearly the preluding to the Federation conquering the planet. But neither happened. The Klingon economy rallied, shakily, and the Empire was noticeably cash-poor – but it was still there. So, what was the point?
The embargo seemed secondary to the minelaying operations, which had immediate consequences. The Imperial Navy’s dependency on house fleets and their commanders was still bound by a carrot-and-stick relationship, even after the Raktajino Revolution. Minelaying cut off the most useful incentive to following orders from Imperial Command – the opportunity for prize-taking and privateering. For Sturka and the military bureaucracy, the combination of minelaying and improved anti-piracy operations would have more knock-on effects than protecting trade: they jeopardised the control the Naval bureaucracy had over the Great Houses. What should be done was far less clear. Unlike the push into the Triangle or the early warning outposts, the minelaying ops couldn’t be countered by one (semi)decisive blow. The Imperial Navy – as large as it was – simply could not intercept every Starfleet vessel as it laid mines or intercepted Orion slavers.
Sturka did receive authorisation from L’Rell to deploy more of the Imperial Fleet into the disputed zone, including the core battle lines of 2nd, 5th and 8th Fleet Groups: which, while impressive (and certainly concerning for Starfleet Intelligence) did not do much to alleviate the situation across the theatre.[32] The demonstration of Klingon might be powerful, and certainly cowed some tributaries back into submission, but it was unsustainable in the long run. The heavy cruisers and battleships – new designs built or retrofit after the end of hostilities – were not built for long service far from home bases and tenders, and the lighter Starfleet task forces they intended to intercept often outmanoeuvred and withdrew in the face of the bulky Klingon battlegroups.[33]
“D7 Diplomacy” might have impressed the Bosilians and the Asparax polities, but Starfleet seemed unmoved. The nadir of this came in in late August, when a force formed from DESRON 4 and CRURON 6 managed to draw a battlegroup from 5th Fleet Group onto part of the Masuria Field. The newly launched B1 Battleship IKS Qo’noS would end up striking a mine, forcing her withdrawal back to the Empire, where she was laid up for six months. Four other ships in the battlegroup would not be so lucky.[34]
More trouble would come with the launch of Operation En Passant, a combined Starfleet/Federation Ground Forces operation aimed at relieving Klingon pressure on Mardikan II and clearing the Acamarian trade lane. En Passant was the brainchild of Admiral Saoirse Fitzpatrick, sister to the older, contrarian and deeply disliked staff admiral. Saoirse – a scientist by training and the first Starfleet Captain to map the Taurus Reach – had been promoted to the admiralty during the Klingon war, against the recommendations of her brother, who considered her too brash and too uninterested in the bigger picture for fleet command. Fitzpatrick had led a Mendez Column with 4th Fleet during 2258 and 59, operating in conjunction with Commodore Moody’s group to protect the Vota Star Cluster from slave-raiding.[35] Moved across to 2nd Fleet during Rittenhouse’s house-clearance at the end of 2260, Fitzpatrick had managed to integrate well with her new command.
En Passant would be her first real moment in the limelight, however. Using the minefields as cover, Fitzpatrick marshalled limited cruiser forces to push Klingon raiders away from Mardikan and the Hriomi cluster, allowing the FGF to move heavy equipment (including the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment and three squadrons of aerospace fighter-bombers) to Mardikan II, as well as deploy the 2nd Marine Regiment to Markidan IV – now being used as a staging post by the Imperial Army. En Passant would end the months attack on Outpost Inchon and open a second front in that frozen conflict.[36] The operation would also see Fitzpatrick’s force board a D10 Heavy Cruiser for the first time. While the vessel – IKS Hu’yl – could not be recovered, vital technological readouts would be taken, as well as full schematics for the new class. Worse for the empire, En Passant would curtial Klingon access to Acamar, and make access to Barolia difficult, closing yet another vital entrepot for Klingon exports and imports.
So, the overt solution would not work: if anything, the decision to sweep the disputed area with heavier battlegroups had proved embarrassing to L’Rell and those who had pushed for a martial response. The loss of the Acamar trade lane would be felt more immediately than the embargo and would hammer home what the “war of the merchant” meant. High quality anti-deuterium – vital to the operations of the Imperial fleet – had been imported through Acamar through automated transports, which were now falling onto Starfleet minefields or seizure under the Strategic Resource Denial Act. Running ships on poor quality antimatter reduced their lifespan; but also slowed down internal trade and had a secondary impact on other industries.[37] Many of the official fuel imports had also carried less authorised goods: bulk technological parts, luxury materials and other desired goods. Losing access to them only compounded the growing effects of the Embargo, stretching the social contract of the post-2257 empire ever further.
The empire of L’Rell had been, in many ways, about having your gagh and eating it: a martial empire with a higher standing of living, but without forcing the Klingon people to change their ways – or make the Empire operate differently. Losing access to the markets that provided modern computers, luxury clothing and “the trinkets of modernity” (as Sturka would describe it) seemed to do more damage to social confidence in the Empire than the Raktajino Revolution had. It was a compound problem: even with the rapid expansion of chattel slavery to alleviate economic stagnation, the massive enlargement of the Klingon economy had not come without consequences for the standard of living.
While the suppression of the savan made it clear that unrest from below would not be tolerate, the concerns and anxieties of the middle and upper social stratas – who held serious levers of powers and influence – continued to simmer and grow. While the spiralling costs of Orion green slaves, Bolian foodstuffs and Cardassian weaponry was of little consequences to the farmer and the solider, it mattered to the professional classes who were increasingly critical to the running of the Imperial bureaucracy. Furthermore, the Great Houses – though weakened by war and failed revolution – were dependent on their privileged access to foreign markets to support their networks of patronage across the Empire. If the Imperial Chancellory could not guarantee that access, then there was yet another massive reason to withdraw their support for L’Rell for good.
Sturka was no fan of L’Rell. She was too grounded in tradition, too religious, too noble to disregard the pointless bickering of the Great Houses. But she believed in the importance of a powerful central government and strong, organised military – something that would be lost completely if power returned to houses like the Duras, Mo’Kai or Dupat. So, Sturka – “First Officer of Empire”, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Klingon Navy – would find the solution the Empire needed. “What is needed now,” he would tell the Imperial Admiralty at a meeting in September 2261, “is the subtlety of the poisoner, not the violent surge of the warrior; the quiet hiss in the night of the assassin – the death by a hundred attacks, not one blow.”[38]
The Imperial Navy would strike back. Not with incredible violence, but with the subtle deviousness that would define the Sturka era – exemplified by the deadliest weapon of the cold war.
The gravitic mine.
[1] Interpol (The Interstellar Combined Police Association) that facilitates federation-wide police cooperation and crime control.
[2] The Klingon Empire refused to sign STAR, arguing that it’s stipulations around tariff universalisation attacked the core of the Imperial economy.
[3]Robert Wesley to Peter Toussaint, 14th March 2261, in Starship Captain.
[4]Henri Vectern, The Watchword of Freedom: The Birth of Federal Unionism, 2250-2313 (Paris: D’Orsay-Tellar Press Office, 2345)
[5] Hansard, FC Deb 10 April 2261 vol.155
[6] A later investigation would prove that the accusation was correct – but for Tesnia, not the mentioned colonies.
[7] E’yk, The Broadhurst Conundrum (New Berlin; Tranquilty Press, 2352)
[8] The Defence Secretariat would be issued with nearly 90 speeding tickets in 2261 alone.
[9] Richard Ch’Rella, The End of Indecision: Federation Politics from Richard Morville to Lorna McClaren (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2290)
[10] T. A. Agathon, So Say We All: A Cultural History of the Klingon Fringe (Brasilia: Federation Cultural Press, 2298)
[11] Hansard, FC Deb 15 May 2261 vol.157
[12] The Ve’Lop’tu Consortium was the State Shipyard of the Klingon Empire from the 2220s onwards. Specialising in civilian transports and hauliers, Ve’Lop’tu designs were also notorious for their cacophony of issues, from faulty airlock seals and misaligned baffle plates all the way through to navigational deflectors that simply did not work. Most foreign visitors to the empire were advised not to travel with Tu’Qa, the state carrier, because all their vessels were made by Ve’Lop’tu. Notoriously, Ve’Lop’tu had resolved an issue with misaligned matter-antimatter regulators by purchasing G15 reactor schematics off of Opesh-Hyberabad in 2250: schematics that were then given to the Imperial Navy and used to rectify issues with the D7’s dual reactors.
[13] Wescott, From Pittsburgh to the Palais
[14] Jarel bavv Moffek’s The New Warriors of Kahless provides a much more detailed look at the operational practices of the Klingon Imperial Navy from 2181 until 2293.
[15] The Lion’s Roar: Starfleet and the Kzinti, 2161-2290. Evukka Bavv Roph; Tranquility Press, Armstrong City, 2320.
[16] “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory? Mine Warfare and the Klingon War, 2256-2262” Toki Huan, Starfleet Journal of Military History, vol 85.3, (2330)
[17] Toki Huan, “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory?”
[18] The slow delivery of the nelsons and Saladin’s would lead to the development of the Lynch light destroyer, which would prove a highly successful design from it’s launch in 2262 until it’s retirement in 2320.
[19] William Maguire, The Eminiar Gap, San Francisco: Tranquility Press, 2301.
[20] Brigadier Nicholas Beck, The Outpost War: The Federal Ground Force on Campaign, 2260-2272. (London: Padd and Phaser, 2285)
[21] The Argelian Approaches – sometimes known as the Argelian Roads – is a collection of asteroids that orbits around two planetoids within the Argelius system’s Kuiper Belt. Despite being a major travel hazard, the gravity interactions of the two bodies within the field allow vessels to easily enter and exit the system without needing to push against the strong gravitational pull of the system’s star. The approaches had been used by Klingon forces during the 2256-57 war as a staging post for attacks deeper into the Federation.
[22] The S-4 Minuteman class scout – sometimes called the Ranger(a) class or the “Strider” class – was an advanced scout craft used between 2250 and the late 2280s. With a tonnage between the Archer and the Nelson, the Minuteman was a favourite of the Federation Border Patrol and the Anti-Kzin tactical units.
[23] V’Loss, Anti-Piracy warfare between 2245 and 2280. (San Francisco; Starfleet Press, 2340)
[24] Hansard, FC Deb 19 May 2261 vol.178
[25] The continued monetary trade with the Klingon Empire was criticised by many post-economists across the later 23rd century, who considered the Empire’s monetary economy to be a “cancer on the post-capitalist body politic”. M. Saadia, one of the most notorious of the post-monetary philosophers, would notoriously make these views clear when used 250,000 credits worth of Latinum as paint for the walls of cattle ranch on Cestus III.
[26] The tying of the Federation credit to the Dilithium Standard was often lampooned for weakening the currency against its foreign competitors, though the fact the credit was rarely used within the federation – simply due to the phasing out of currency in the core worlds – did much to maintain its strength through scarcity.
[27] Vu’lek, The Economics of The Era of L’Rell and Sturka, (Paris; Klingon-Federation Publishing, 2350)
[28] L’Brynak was never heard of again, though there is a decent case to be made that Colonel Mosk – a Klingon socialite whose murder was the focal point of a diplomatic crisis on Barolia in 2273 – was probably L’Brynak, with a changed identity and reconstructed face.
[29] This was not necessarily true; the Boslian minefields (codenamed Mausria II and III) were located along a well-established Klingon trade lane, but one that Starfleet had marked as unsafe due to Klingon merchants penchant for piracy.
[30] The plan for SB24 would later be implemented as a spoiling operation in the run up to the Four Day’s War.
[31] The political allegiance of Bolarus in the mid-23rd century is complicated. The Bolian government was generally aligned with the UFP’s principles and ideals, but the rapid and combative state of internal politics in the period – let alone the tumultuous 14 years of the Qyib’a Dictatorship – meant that associate membership, let alone full accession in the UFP, was near impossible. As such, it remained neutral ground for diplomacy, espionage, and trade well into the late 2270s.
[32] While the Fleet Groups were deploying their forward elements – mainly formed from Birds of Prey, D5s and a small number of D7 cruisers – their heavier elements were kept at home bases to save on fuel and manpower, only being fully manned when they are “at sea”.
[33] The operations intended to use lighter Klingon units as screening forces; most of the Bird of Prey captains assigned would disappear once the battlegroups crossed the border, seeking more lucrative – and interesting – targets.
[34] Officially, the Klingon government would say that the Qo’noS was being refitted with new engines.
[35] Cara Prendegast, The Fighting Scientist, (London: Macmillian-Grov, 2323)
[36] Thyl Vr.Balvac, The Army of the Free: The Federation Ground Force, 2250-2315.2nd Marine Regiment would be forced to evacuate Mardikan IV in late 2264, when the Imperial Army would deploy five regiments to remove the marines from their forward base.
[37] Klingon antimatter was notorious for it’s poor quality, so much so that it could not even be used on most Federation Starships: while the D7 and D10 could work with domestic antideuterium, it shortened the lifespans of their engines by nearly 30%.
[38] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections, (Kling, 2276, republished Khartoum, Interstellar Annals,2299)