To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

We are implementing a minor overhaul the ship deployment system to account for Task Forces and the constant fiddly bits of deployment voting.

First, instead of constant deployment votes every time anything happens to any ship we have a single annual Starfleet Operations vote. Only if some major crisis or war happens will we have an off year vote.

This annual operations vote will mainly involve sorting ships into three categories: Sector Squadrons, Theater Fleets, And Task Forces.

Sector squadrons are the current system: meet minimum D, assign ships. However. Once a ship is assigned to a sector patrol group it is assumed to stay there until the next year and even then changing up sector deployments is an active vote with status quo being preference.

A sector squadron will continue to operate as they have in the past. Events happen and ships respond. Simple.

The second group is Theater Fleets which have been made possible due to Decisive Battle doctrine. Any ship not in a Task Force or Sector group is divided equally into the Theater Fleets. New build ships are moved to theater fleets. Ships from disbanded Task Forces are moved to theater fleets.

Now what does a Theater Fleet do? Well, due to a new ability added to mutual support a Theater Fleet ship can attempt to respond to a missed event in any theater sector at a penalty (do not rely on Reserve ships to respond to every single missed event. A Theater Fleet ship will respond fine to some events, but will not be effective in responding to distress calls or sudden, surprising events. Rely on sector ships and regular mutual support for surprises. Filling the D requirements on a sector ensures that someone will probably at least be in range).

Individual ships from the reserve also slide into a gap left by a Sector ship that is damaged, destroyed, in refit, or otherwise indisposed. No need for a vote; an equivalent class or type ships just slides in temporarily to fill the gap until the sector ship returns. No need to pause the entire quest for a day to run a vote for replacing a couple of ships.

And, a major point, the Theater Fleet reserve serves as, well, a reserve. All TFs are drawn from Theater Fleet ship pools. All Theater Fleet ships are assumed available to form or add to a TF. When making a vote just look at the ships in a sector fleet and select ships from there, no need to mix and max sector garrisons. And in the event of an emergency like Nash's GBZ campaign, instead of scraping together sector ships with difficulty, an entire reserve can be deployed at a single easy vote without complicated and confusing deployment votes being needed, or time delays getting orders sent out.

As a final thing: due to United Starfleet, member fleet ships (Only up to 25% of a member fleet can be called up this way) can be attached to theater fleets. Member fleet ships are called up in packages, of 8, 16, or 24 'points' of ships, for 40, 80, or 140 pp respectively, and half that pp cost must be paid each succeeding year to keep the member fleet ships in the theater fleets. (NOTE: THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO SECTOR SQUADRONS. MEMBER UNITS ONLY FILL OUT THEATER FLEETS AND TASK FORCES. MEMBER UNITS DO NOT RESPOND TO EVENTS.) If we wanted member fleet ships on patrol we'd leave them where they are) During war time this cost is discounted by war support. So an all-in high war support member will freely move their ships into the Theater Fleets.

As for TFs? Every year a TF can be created or disbanded or modified in a single vote. (Again. The status quo is assumed to be the default) As the ships possibly able to join a TF are all in Theater Fleets and do not require a deployment vote to fill the gap creating a TF should become much easier than in the test run vote. Theater Fleet Member Fleet ships can be put in a TF, but that TF must be commanded by a Starfleet Cruiser or explorer.

Task Force Missions will all have defined end goals. No mission is an endless mounting cost into infinity. They do their jobs and then are disbanded when they are finished, this will be mention in their final Task Force Update when it happens.

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Sector Squadron distributions:
[ ] [SQUAD] Submit a Fleet Distribution Plan starting 2320.Q1 just for Sector Squadrons. All ships not specifically attached to a Sector will be divided between Theater Fleets.

Add Member fleet units to Theater Fleets:
[ ] [FLEET] 0 points of ships
[ ] [FLEET] 8 points of ships (40 pp, call up one cargo ship)
[ ] [FLEET] 16 points of ships (80 pp, call up two cargo ships)
[ ] [FLEET] 24 points of ships (140 pp, call up three cargo ships)
Cost: 0.5 points per frigate, 1 point per cruiser, 2 points per capital. Please designate ships that you would like added to Theater Fleets (Otherwise we will)

May not call up more than 25% Of a Member's fleet total.

Task Force Formation. Mutually incompatible plans, (ie share unique elements) will result in only the most voted on Task Force being formed.
[ ] [TASK] Form No Task Forces
[ ] [TASK] Form Task Force:

MISSIONS:

[Deny the Empress allies and secure your own]
[Run Defensive against the Eternal Empire]
[Hunt Down Eternal Empire Forces]
[Race the Empress to her Fleet]
(MANY MANY MORE MISSIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE NEXT YEAR ONCE THE CRISIS HAS PASSED)
[POSSIBLE TASK FORCE ATTACHMENTS]
[AVAILABLE COMMODORES]

Simon_Jester said:

"The river leads through the foothills, to better places. I can sense that much. Let's make our way overland, to a place beyond the falls."

"I've never heard of the dead making a vessel of their own, and sailing the river of blood. I do not think the thing can be done."

"Leave that to me."

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

No Place
No Time
Overlooking the River of Blood

Recommended Listening

Torg and his band prepared, then, for a journey that might be blasphemy, salvation, or both. They had to try; if you could conceivably escape from the grip of Hell, how could you not? The Klingons did their best to arm themselves, though in this desolate wilderness that meant only stones and crude bludgeons that lacked truly satisfying heft.

They made their way along the ridgelines of this blasted moorland, just below the crest. Torg did not know if the demons of Gre'thor patrolled this side of the river, but would prefer not to find out- or at least to see them coming, in the worst case. And so, his band did indeed see the worst of all fears coming.

The thing had the shape of a Klingon, but taller and broader, dressed in dull greys. Young K'mrek was first to see. He pointed. Eyes grim, the warriors moved quickly to climb across the ridge to the other side, accompanied by the woman in yellow. Perhaps they could cross to the next valley before it looked up and spotted them. He hoped so.

For he recognized that being, instinctively. The thing which sought them was not mere horror or destruction. It was dishonor, shame, humiliation, defeat personified. The worst nightmare possible, formed on two feet to walk like a man.

They moved quickly. For a moment Torg dared hope they had succeeded, and would buy time to put distance between themselves and the fiend. He turned to the dark-eyed alien, questioning without words. She frowned, squinted, then pointed to a spot at the crest of the ridge. Black pits widened once again.

"Look out, boys!" she shouted, as the ridgeline erupted in a sudden holocaust of evil fire. From out of the flames strode... Disgrace.

The blade slung across his back was black, black. Not the darkness of the night sky, but of being entombed alive far below the reach of the sun. Of being imprisoned to wither into nothingness, scorned and forgotten. Torg wrenched his eyes away from the weapon.

Crossing his arms, Disgrace grinned wildly, mockingly. "The damned and lowly wretches seek to avoid their punishment! Your honor is lost, and with it your freedom. Come, acknowledge your fate and end this stupidity!"

Targek spat. "Our honor remains, demon! You will not take us with just a touch of harsh language!"

The evil spirit laughed scornfully. "Fools! Call me a demon, when this anathema walks in your midst?" He twitched his chin at the woman in the Starfleet dress, whose dark, dark eyes narrowed.

Targek raged, screamed, roared. It seemed that he shimmered with a light that was not light, that both did and did not reach forward from his charging body towards the dreadful spectre. Wreathed in red pseudo-flames, Disgrace bared his jagged teeth, showing pain. Then, fast as thought, he stepped forward, sinking his heavy dagger into Targek's belly and twisting it viciously.

The rashly courageous warrior slumped, blood pouring, gritting his teeth not to cry out in agony. As he fell, he began to fade into transparency, evaporating a little at a time. And though the foul shade smoldered slightly, his cruel, domineering smile was undimmed. "He dies the final death, that of oblivion. Nothing remains. No one living will remember him, or care."

They shuddered, knowing somehow that the words were true. Torg let out an angry, despairing howl. A few of his men tightened their grips on clubs and rocks, hesitating whether to make one last charge, here where they knew it could never end gloriously. The Earthling shade closed her eyes for a heartbeat, balled her fists, tensed her muscles.

---

Recommended Listening

Disgrace unslung his great, two-handed blade, and sneered at the Klingon dead. "Now stand aside. I will dispose of this alien wraith, and carry you to your fate."

"Alien wraith, you call me? And what does that make you?" The not-human seemed darkly amused, opening her eyes. A mad, wild look crossed her face. A look that rather Klingonized her, in truth.

The spirit of shame replied, his low echoing voice taking the tone of one speaking by rote. "I am the challenge not given. The insult accepted without reply. The death of the inner fury, that falls into darkness and is forgotten. I am Disgrace."

The human rolled her shoulders and flexed her jaw. "The horror of an inglorious life?"

"That is so. And now you will face me, and fall, unremembered."

"After how I've lived?" She shook her head, braid flicking from side to side. "Good luck." She stepped closer. The horror from out of the depths of the soul bellowed. He swung his black blade in the style of the second forearm stroke, slashing down from over his right shoulder. She reached up with her left arm as though to block the chopping blow-

And with a clang like a drop-forge, the demon weapon stopped. Halting against the back of her hand, leaving the bare flesh unmarked. His eyes narrowed.

"Where are your doubts?" the shadow of Disgrace asked, suddenly looking worried and stepping back a few paces. Hope surged in Torg's heart, though the sound of the Earthling's voice was baleful- low, quiet, and terrible.

"Burned away. Doubts are a human thing- added to my being by life and time. I was born to live gloriously, or die in flames. I've done both. There is no timber or steel left to me, no song of the turbines, no heartbeats, no waves, no fires. Just the memories. Everything I was ever made of is gone- except my battle stars." The Earthling's teeth skinned back from her lips, and for a moment her dark, hollow eyes flamed bright blue. "Find someone who knows your race's heroes, as you never can- ask them what I've been doing these past forty years! You can hurt the shadows of my last crew, because they fear you, Disgrace. But you can't hurt me. I don't. Not anymore. Never again. Not after him."

Her eyes flashed again, brighter still and lingering for half a heartbeat this time, and this time her smile was a true one. "The cutting bite of Disgrace is powerless against me. They should have sent Treachery." She began walking forward, and the demon swung his terrible, jagged weapon again. Again. The great barbed arcs of un-steel clashed off the Earthling as though off a mountainside, leaving no mark on her tunic of gold or her snowy skin. His howls became bestial, his form changing to take on a terrible aspect, a monster beyond imagination, the ultimate dread any Klingon could ever know.

She closed the distance. Her hand sank into the chest of that figure out of nightmare. The demon, no longer bearing much resemblance to anything Klingon, faded to an inky outline, wavered like a mirage- and burst into a rolling cloud of dark smoke that seemed to sink into the ground at their feet.

Torg found himself speaking slowly, reverently. "...You killed him..."

She shook her head. "I only killed him a little. He'll be a fraction weaker, for a while. Maybe somewhere out there, there will be a few more Klingons who find it in themselves not to be fools, instead of cowering from the fear of Disgrace. But he isn't dead."

Young K'mrek barked harsh laughter at the woman's words. "Dead or alive, he won't be back for more!" She merely nodded slowly, bent down, and touched the demon's blade. Torg felt a superstitious flash, but no disaster came about, at least not immediately.

For long moments, Torg looked at her. At last, he voiced the question that the dark-eyed woman's aura of strangeness had kept him from asking before.

"What, exactly, are you?"

She laughed quietly. "An old, grey ghost, doing the last duty of a lifetime. That's all." Her smile showed small, level Earthling teeth. Torg knew she had spoken truthfully.

---

They made their way on, through the country of things that did not exist, and could never exist, and yet existed anyway. The Earthwoman in yellow took the bat'leth of Disgrace as a trophy, though it sat ill in her hand. When next they stopped to rest, as deep, obscuring mists swept over the land, she began beating the black steel with a stone in her fist.

The task seemed futile. But the ringing clangs of her strikes came with an undertone of eldritch hissing. Blue sparks flew. Torg saw the metal begin to soften and lose its shadowy color under the blows, pieces snapping loose or flowing like soft clay. When the mists cleared, she held a one-handed blade of trim, purposeful, alien lines. One with a solid edge and a slight curve along its silvery metal. Some Earthling sword, in style, if not of any Earthly substance.

They set off once again.

There was combat, of course, as they pushed further and further off the beaten paths of the otherworld. Beasts out of legend assailed them, to be battled with fire-hardened spears. With war-clubs, and a rain of heavy stones. And with burning Klingon wrath, which Torg had come to realize might not be a metaphor after all. Not here.

She aided them in the battles, with her super-Klingon gift for throwing- perhaps a human trait, perhaps an inhuman one. Seldom did the woman in yellow resort to the sword. Most often, the blade hung from her hip on cords of braided bark. But never did she stand by when he and his were in any real danger. And when she did draw the steel, it cleaved bone and carapace, pierced the vitals of the greatest monsters- and sang in the doing.

In this way they traveled for what must have been a day, though the ebb and flow of light and shadow in this realm was chaos. No true sun shone here, and this world was not a spinning orb hanging in the void. But there was a rest, and another rest, and they provisioned themselves poorly from the fare of the otherworld.

They passed the roaring, reeking flood of the Falls of Madness. Torg could hear it from at least ten kellicams away, as they picked their way down the cliff that the terrible waterfall poured across. They found their way down, in a steep defile that ended in a talus slope. The vegetation was thicker at the bottom of the cliff, the trees less scrubby and stunted.

Then they cut to the left, angling through the foothills below the great cliff, making their way back to the shores of the river of blood. As they crested the last small rise of ground between themselves and the river, the straw-haired alien looked around and stretched. "There's enough of a forest here. We can make ropes and fell trees. You'll have to help with that; we're short on the kind of tools that would help here."

Torg frowned, uncomfortable at the thought of abusing a blade, even an unnatural one. "True enough. I doubt you could chop down a tree with a sword."

"Oh, one or two. Not enough of the ones we need, not while they're rooted."

The Klingon officer scowled. "And would you have us uproot the trees, then, with our bare hands?"

"Try it. You're stronger than you believe, here." She gestured at a modest-sized broadleaf tree he recognized from Qo'noS. "What have we to lose?"

Experimentally, he pressed his shoulder against the trunk. It did not move. He felt something sweep over him. How dare it defy him? He grew angry, and shoved again- the tree rocked, and he saw wisps of red not-flame dance across his vision. Dizziness swept over him, and he stepped back.

"You'll be able to bring them down, once we finish the ropes."

Their little company set to work with a will. The un-Earthly woman proved phenomenally deft in selecting trees to fell, in carpentry, and in the braiding of ropes from plant fiber, as though she'd spent the full span of a Klingon life, let alone a human one, practicing the art. Torg and his warriors aided as best they could, learning as they went. She helped them make crude adzes and other tools, as well, to build the raft.

Once they had enough rope, the five remaining Klingons began to harvest the timber they needed. The woman trimmed the roots and branches from the fallen trees, using deft strokes of the weapon she spoke to and called by name, when she thought no one was listening. Though the wood had a springy toughness about it, the blade remained ever-sharp, for all that she said it could not have cut the living wood so readily.

They bound up the trunks with vines and ropes of bark. The pale Earth-spirit selected a long, straight branch to use as a barge pole.

And after a timeless time in this space beyond spaces, their vessel was ready. They shoved it out into the river, tethered to the bank by a single rope, and made ready to climb onto it.

"Just a moment!" The woman in gold called out, then waded into the knee-deep water.

With the tip of her sword she etched alien runes into the timbers- a zig-zag slash, two semicircles, a short horizontal line. An acute angle and a circle, bracketed by a pair of vertical strokes. Then she smiled and climbed onto the raft, balancing carefully and closing her deep, dark eyes. Her toes flexed hard enough to be noticeable even through Starfleet-issue boots.

"There. All aboard!"