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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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So assuming we jump right on the Border World Focus slide in Forward Defense, we're about 3 years away from completing the initial leg of the technology where we shift Defense requirements to border zones and the Council counts combat less. We're also about 3 years away from quite a different fleet. Assuming the Gabriel cabinet war is settled in three years, what might our fleet distribution look like in 2317?

2317.Q1 Fleet (assuming we don't lose any, big assume) based on my current projections...
15 Miranda-A (1 more still in refit)
9 Centaur-A
5 Oberths
5 Constellation (2 in refit)
4 Renaissance
1 Constitution-A
9 Constitution-B
14 Excelsiors, 9 standard and 5 of them EC (2 more in refit, 1 EC and 1 standard)
2 Excelsior-As (both EC)

Sol - 2 Centaur-A, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-B
Vulcan - 1 Centaur-A, Renaissance, 1 Constellation
Andor - 1 Centaur-A, 1 Renaissance, 1 Constellation
Tellar - 1 Centaur-A, 1 Renaissance, 1 Constellations
Amarkia - 1 Centaur-A, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-B
Ferasa - 1 Centaur-A, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-A
Rigel - 1 Centaur-A, 1 Constellation, Excelsior
Apiata - 1 Centaur-A, 1 Constellation, Renaissance
KBZ - 3 Miranda-A, 1 Oberth, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-B
RBZ - 3 Miranda-A, 1 Oberth, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-B
CBZ - 3 Miranda-A, 1 Oberth, Excelsior, 1 Constitution-B
SBZ - 3 Miranda-A, 1 Oberth, Excelsior, 2 Constitution-B
GBZ - 3 Miranda-A, 1 Oberth, Excelsior, 2 Constitution-B

Every sector with a minimum of 3 responders, border zones with 6 or 7 ships.
 
[x][PRIORITY] Change nothing [Weighted 1.5x]
[x][ANDOR] Swap 55br for 30sr
[x][AUX] Start 1 Hospital Ship, 1 Engineering Ship, 2 Cargo Ships
[x][INDORIA] Accept - Indorians will be able to produce Renaissances, but 25% chance of a 2Qtr delay
[x][BETA1] Go for it
[x][BETA2] Agree - 20% discount on Starbase purchase for Betazed
[x][CATS] Back the Excelsior build (-10pp, Hawks pleased, Development displeased)
 
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Omake - With Quicksilver Stride - Simon_Jester
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    • With Quicksilver Stride

    ​

    USS Renaissance
    On Commissioning Trials
    Andor/Vulcan Sector Boundary
    Stardate 25411.7

    Eddie Leslie waved his arm expansively, breadstick in hand. "...Of course, Commander Lee didn't have too much trouble with the Klingon away team after all, because riiight then was when my darling wife beamed the tribbles into the Klingons' pants."

    Most of the senior officers around the dinner table started laughing immediately, then laughed harder as the... special, situational humor of it caught up with them. The woman at the head of the table took just a fraction longer to catch it. She was sharp and no mistake- but armed with even less personal experience of Klingons than usual these days, he supposed.

    Then, though, her lips curved into a humorous smile, that soon turned wicked, drawing her powder-blue face into lines obviously familiar for her. "Why, sir, I didn't know you'd gotten married aboard the Enterprise too!"

    Leslie snorted. He should have expected the captain to joke about that. "What, me? And on the Enterprise? No, no! Susie and I didn't meet until the seventies, when I'd already left the Corps and started life as a puppy-sized yard dog. This was before that, back when Susie was on the Vokau. I never said it was an Enterprise story!"

    Starfleet's latest cruiser commander looked thoughtful. "So you've been married for-"

    "Mmm. Twenty-three wonderful years and counting-" Leslie chuckled. "And hell, the first sixteen weren't too bad either."

    "Congratulations, sir." Leaniss Larai looked very thoughtful.

    "Thanks." Eddie Leslie thought about it for a moment, and decided not to do a blessed thing to warn the sister officer he suspected was on her targeting scope.


    Recommended Listening: That New Car Smell

    USS Renaissance
    Engineering Hull
    Stardate 25412.3

    Renaissance was plainly, plainly a ship of the next generation. He was pretty sure that hadn't been an accident on the design team's part; they'd wanted their brainchild to look like something special. The deeper grey of tritanium carbide hull plating, the rounded-box nacelles, the wide-mouth deflector and broad, heavy saucer, all shouted "welcome to the twenty-fourth century!"

    He couldn't shake the feeling, though, that all the progress in technology had gone with a big step backward in interior design. The furniture was comfy, and he could swear the interiors felt half again as spacious as they did on a Connie the same size. But there was far, far too much beige padding and rounded corners. It felt wrong.

    If this was what the future looked like from the inside, Leslie mused darkly, maybe he should be trying to plot a slingshot trajectory.

    Eh, well. You couldn't have everything.

    Renaissance was already keeping up a brisk cruising pace at what would, once, have been the maximum never-exceed speed of Starfleet's top of the line explorers. He should have thanked his luck he was able to come aboard for the shakedown voyage of the brand-new cruiser and her brand-new warp core. Should have, except he'd timed his visits to facilities on Vulcan and Andor on purpose. His last inspection tour, before they sent him to Ana Font.

    Leslie took turns trying not to think about running a base full of Tellarites, and trying to remember the rules of traditional Tellarite insult swordfighting. Most Tellarites didn't know it anymore themselves, so it made a good form of social judo, even without the swords. He liked judo. It reminded him of the good old days.

    You couldn't have everything. But you could have something, the commodore mused as he made his limping, old man's way back down the corridors towards the main reactor chamber.

    ...

    Leslie's first sight as he entered Main Engineering was Lieutenant Jones poring over a diagnostic panel. His eyes flicked right and he nodded to Commander Vinon, late of the Kearsarge. The chief engineer dipped his head, a flicker of odd-tinged deference in the Vulcan's eyes.

    Good old Eddie wasn't a threatening fellow to have on your ship, commodore's insignia or not. But Chief of Warp Core Fabrication Leslie plus team was another matter. He'd had to come with at least a few experts along- like Jones. And Dizzy for staff, of course- she was practically a three-woman team all by herself. It didn't add up to too many.

    Even so, he'd brought enough people that he could easily have given a ship's chief engineer the wrong impression. Something like 'hello, we don't trust you, we're from central office and we're here to help.'

    Leslie was here as a guest and a senior observer, not a commanding officer. He took some care not to throw his weight around.

    Taking a seat by an auxiliary console, he began fiddling with the configuration settings, getting a few status updates from his own people and crossloading a couple of last-minute recommendation files the kids back in San Francisco had come up with to Vinon for later reference.

    The speed trials would be starting in half an hour or so; Renaissance had nearly made its rendezvous with the Docana.



    USS Renaissance at speed​

    Cherenkov-blue shimmered through the warp core housing, strobing in rhythm, a high-pitched whine coming from the containment systems as they locked tight to control the ravening antimatter furnace's power. Rising note, rising note... And with a cessation of sound that was almost a thump in its own right, the noise quieted.

    Leslie's wrinkled smile came back; he and his crew had watched the assembly and installation like hawks, and seeing the ship handle her first real field test of power output and stability was- a hell of a thing. "Do you see anything out of the unusual, commander? I'm reading warp eleven point zero three, and the core's hardly ticking over."

    Vinon shook his head curtly with a simple "No, sir." But you could read even a Vulcan if you put your mind to it. This one obviously thought of Warp Eleven as small potatoes; he was looking forward to the real speed run. That was good. Leslie could tell Old Father Time had picked the right man for this job. Even if he did have pointy ears.

    The old man nodded a little; 'hardly ticking over' was an exaggeration, but not much of a one. Hmp point nothing was always more efficient than just a hair under the line. If it wasn't for that potential barrier, the old girls would have been able to hit Warp Nine back in the fifties... instead of it taking a mad robot willing to nearly shake the ship apart to try.

    The intercom chimed again. "Captain to main engineering, maximum power to the warp drive. We're going to warp twelve, then to maximum warp; hold the ship there until further orders."

    "Acknowledged, ma'am. Stepping warp core power to one hundred percent."

    Leslie watched with quiet approval as Vinon's redshirts made a calm, rehearsed dance of lighting a fire under their million-ton charge. Secondary systems and backups were checked, doublechecked, and switched in; software models confirmed against the core's performance of the moment, and found good. The Vulcan engineer spun a finger gently on his display, the core containment fields let out that old familiar yowl...

    And USS Renaissance surged ahead through the deep, silent void.

    The sawtooth buzz of breaking past warp twelve passed almost faster than Leslie could realize what had happened, and the engines sang in his ears. "Reading twelve point three!" called Jones, her voice sounding almost entranced.

    Leslie's jaw flexed as he glanced over at the Vulcan. "Commander, we're starting to lose our tail."

    For the occasion, Leslie's display had been tweaked to track a few extra running totals. One corner tracked the chase ship- and Docana was dropping behind by the better part of a light-minute every second. Dipping a finger to the screen, he opened a feed from the aft sensors.

    The Constellations really were fast ships. Faster in a short dash than an Excelsior, on a good day, though with the new Block IV power plant it was close to a tie. Almost as fast at emergency cruise too, though they'd fall behind as the hours dragged by. The big explorers had stronger deflectors and a lot more depth of systems redundancy to fall back on; no way around that. Still. This was a straight-up, space-blistering high-warp sprint, pure and simple. And nothing had outsprinted one of the plucky, sadly undergunned four-stackers in all Eddie's years.

    Until today. Mars's newest debutante was running the legs off one of them.

    The bigger cruiser's opening lead wasn't growing quite so fast, now; either Docana had one hell of a gutsy engineer, or the subtle magic of a ship's stubborn pride had wrung another twentieth of a point out of the warp field.

    In what would have been a run for the history books in its own right, the little Constellation was going flat-out, hammering through the depth of the night of nights on four sets of warp coils, probably as fast as she'd ever gone before. Tiny flutters of curled space whipped past the reciprocating fields of Docana's paired over-under nacelles hard enough that Leslie felt a lump in his throat. Silently he prayed for nothing to go wrong...

    And still, and still, Renaissance was drawing ahead, at twenty times the speed of light. Start of a new age, he supposed.

    "Twelve point four three... four... leveling off at Warp 12.46, sir."

    Reflexively, the commodore checked coolant and safeties. He knew that there must be half a dozen pairs of eyes among the ship's regular crew doing the same, maybe more. But some habits died hard after watches spent keeping an eye on an old Scotsman's "puir bairns." Leslie liked what he saw from field stability, and coolant- mm, no complaints.

    Leaniss's voice rapped out over the intercom again, preceded by a warning chime."Captain to engineering. My compliments to the engineering team; we've just broken the Polaris's speed record for the measured light-day."

    Leslie thought he could see just a hint of a crack in Commander Vinon's Vulcan mask as the rest of main engineering erupted into cheers around him. "Thank you, ma'am. Be advised, antimatter feed line temperatures are in the yellow zone. Coolant flow to the containment magnets is at maximum rate. I can hold the core at this output for a- considerable- time, but no higher. And I recommend we reduce power."

    "Acknowledged. Prepare to reduce speed to Warp Nine; we'll be making for the next rendezvous shortly." Under those crisp, formal tones, behind that faint accent raised to womanhood under skies that had never heard of the Federation, Captain Leaniss sounded positively eager to play tag with Docana 'round the moons of Nibia at high impulse.






    A/N: There! That's been a long time in the making. Thanks to @Gravitas Hunt for the excellent renders of USS Renaissance, and to @AKuz for the character of our illustrious captain, Leaniss Larai. :)
     
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    • Simon_Jester said:
    The Constellations really were fast ships. Faster in a short dash than an Excelsior, on a good day, though with the new Block IV power plant it was close to a tie. Almost as fast at emergency cruise too, though they'd fall behind as the hours dragged by. The big explorers had stronger deflectors and a lot more depth of systems redundancy to fall back on; no way around that. Still. This was a straight-up, space-blistering high-warp sprint, pure and simple. And nothing had outsprinted one of the plucky, sadly undergunned four-stackers in all Eddie's years.
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    I do like the description of Constellation as sprinters. A product of an era when Federation ships had to patrol the border and race to reinforce others when an cloaked enemy is found (or worse, the enemy uncloaks at its target). Everything for the sake of speed, screw endurance.

    I wonder if the Constellation-A refit that bumps up the D stat by 1, is going to upgrade the warp engines to achieve even faster speeds, conceivably recovering the fastest ship title. Or alternatively, stabilize the nacelles and vessel for longer duration sprints. Or leave the nacelles as-is and instead just upgrade reaction-related parts (impulse engines, nav sensors & deflectors, computers, food & fuel stores).

    And still, and still, Renaissance was gaining on her, at twenty times the speed of light. Start of a new age, he supposed.

    "Twelve point four three... four... leveling off at Warp 12.46, sir."
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    This was a bit confusing - makes it sound like the Renaissance was chasing the Docana when it was the other way around.

    Also, the 20c must be the speed delta between the two ships, because if we're sticking with the pre-TNG warp factor formula (speed in multiples of c = warp factor ^ 3), warp 12.46 is 1934c. So Docana achieved max warp 12.42. An Excelsior can handily reach warp 12 or 1728c, and in the case of the extremely well-tuned Excelsiors like Enterprise, stay at that speed for a week, albeit requiring a maintenance refit afterwards.

    Furthermore, this implies that the Renaissance is faster than the Constitution-B, which makes a lot of sense narratively. Technically, however, they have the same D stats, and I doubt that the Connie-B has better non-warp-engine reaction parts than the Renaissance. But I figure this could boil down to the Connie-B being "barely 5" and the Renaissance being "high 5", allowing a Renaissance refit to reach 6 economically with a decade or so of further research.
     
    lbmaian said:
    I do like the description of Constellation as sprinters. A product of an era when Federation ships had to patrol the border and race to reinforce others when an cloaked enemy is found (or worse, the enemy uncloaks at its target). Everything for the sake of speed, screw endurance.
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    Thankee! As I recall, there is at least one canon reference to a Constellation making Warp 9 on the TNG scale, or about 11.5 on our scale. I figured that high speed was one of the few things a four-engine starship would almost certainly excel at... and needed a reason why this didn't give them amazing Defense values. Thus, sprinters.

    It also gave me an excuse to have cute little Docana running like mad trying to keep up with Rennie, and to give Polaris something nice to her name (posthumously): namely, holding the Federation's short-distance speed record for a quarter century. :)

    I wonder if the Constellation-A refit that bumps up the D stat by 1, is going to upgrade the warp engines to achieve even faster speeds, conceivably recovering the fastest ship title. Or alternatively, stabilize the nacelles and vessel for longer duration sprints. Or leave the nacelles as-is and instead just upgrade reaction-related parts (impulse engines, nav sensors & deflectors, computers, food & fuel stores).
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    Almost certainly a combination of the latter two. My headcanon is as follows:

    The Constellations' reactors can't manage the level of sustained power output required to keep up their top speed for long, nor can the deflectors, and the challenge of balancing four nacelles probably doesn't help with either task. Due to having bigger warp cores, heavier, more robust deflector dishes, and backup systems they can switch in to service certain key primaries, Excelsiors can outrun Constellations quite easily over long distances, as noted:

    " The Constellations really were fast ships. Faster in a short dash than an Excelsior, on a good day, though with the new Block IV power plant it was close to a tie. Almost as fast at emergency cruise too, though they'd fall behind as the hours dragged by. The big explorers had stronger deflectors and a lot more depth of systems redundancy to fall back on; no way around that."

    This was a bit confusing - makes it sound like the Renaissance was chasing the Docana when it was the other way around.
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    I revised the wording to 'drawing ahead' instead of 'gaining on.' The latter choice, while technically accurate, was no doubt confusing. My apologies.

    Also, the 20c must be the speed delta between the two ships, because if we're sticking with the pre-TNG warp factor formula (speed in multiples of c = warp factor ^ 3), warp 12.46 is 1934c. So Docana achieved max warp 12.42. An Excelsior can handily reach warp 12 or 1728c, and in the case of the extremely well-tuned Excelsiors like Enterprise, stay at that speed for a week, albeit requiring a maintenance refit afterwards.

    Furthermore, this implies that the Renaissance is faster than the Constitution-B, which makes a lot of sense narratively. Technically, however, they have the same D stats, and I doubt that the Connie-B has better non-warp-engine reaction parts than the Renaissance. But I figure this could boil down to the Connie-B being "barely 5" and the Renaissance being "high 5", allowing a Renaissance refit to reach 6 economically with a decade or so of further research.
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    The headcanon I've been using is that Warp Twelve is "dangerous speed" for Starfleet vessels in general, and only the fastest ships can reach it- Mirandas and Centaurs can't do it, and the Constitution-B can only manage it in short bursts. Going fractionally above Warp Twelve is the real acid test of a ship's sprinting performance, but it isn't sustainable even for an Excelsior.

    In Old Voices, New Vigor, I have Lexington try to make a high-speed cruise from Sol to Orion space, and Leslie described her performance to Uhura as:

    "She can't sprint like a four-engine ship, but she can- almost- marathon like an Excelsior. We tried on the way over. The warp field and the hull held up fine, but the power wasn't there to stay at Warp Eleven the whole way."

    Allowing for Leslie's tendency to make a few too many allowances for Connies, this illustrates the issue- Lexington can't surge as fast as she 'jogs,' and her 'jogging' pace can't be kept at Warp Eleven indefinitely. A Renaissance presumably could, but couldn't sustain Warp Twelve for nearly as long as an Excelsior, although she'd keep up marginally longer than a ConnieBee and much longer than a Constellation.

    Although it must be noted that when we needed to get Councilors from Sol to Celos at ludicrous speed... we put them on USS Selaya, a Constellation, which made the passage in record time and barely made it to a starbase under her own power afterwards, her engines were that fried.
     
    lbmaian said:
    I wonder if the Constellation-A refit that bumps up the D stat by 1, is going to upgrade the warp engines to achieve even faster speeds, conceivably recovering the fastest ship title. Or alternatively, stabilize the nacelles and vessel for longer duration sprints. Or leave the nacelles as-is and instead just upgrade reaction-related parts (impulse engines, nav sensors & deflectors, computers, food & fuel stores).
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    Since both the refit options we have increase D, I feel like it's depend on which route we take. The Escort refit would probably stabilize the nacelles to ensure more consistent running speed to help respond to distress signals, but has less need for fuel stores as they're sticking around local territory where supplies are plentiful. The Cruiser refit seems like it is trying to give one last gasp of combat effectiveness, so the more grab-bag approach of increasing endurance, better impulse, and better computers seems to fit that use case better.
     
    I figure that making the Constellations better warships requires you to improve basically everything BUT speed. Speed, they've got. It's stamina, firepower, durability, durability, and durability that they lack.

    UbeOne said:
    *is now imagining drag racing competitions between starships*
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    That is... basically what just happened. Leaniss just broke the Federation drag-racing record, formerly held by the Polaris, while Docana scrambled madly to almost keep up. :D

    To be fair, there was actually a purpose here- to have the ship run flat out at top speed over a measured course, so that the designers (and the crew, and so on) know what the ship's top speed really is. Docana's presence was important because if something had gone wrong aboard Renaissance, Docana would have been in position to either assist or at least keep logs of what happened so that we'd know about the flaw in our super prototype. The idea was inspired for me by the use of chase planes in real life rocket and aircraft test flights.
     
    It does help stress-test the components new ship too.
     
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    Yes, although most stress testing is stuff you actually want to do in a carefully controlled test stand in a lab (or remote base on the back side of an expendable moon, for warp cores). This is for making sure the overall, fully integrated system performs as advertised (or if better than advertised, how much better).

    Leaniss didn't order the Renaissance to really, truly redline the warp core or the drive. In theory, in principle, maybe she might have been able to scrape a few more percentage points of warp factor out of the engines. In theory, for a very little while. But she did push the hardware to the limits of what it's actually designed to do without gambling on margins of safety.

    Now, Docana pushed things a bit further- questionably so, even. But I think she can be forgiven for a game attempt to stand up for the honor of her class. ;)
     
    OneirosTheWriter said:
    Okay, vote is closed. Can I have the final tally, please?
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    Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 1376 | Sufficient Velocity
    ##### NetTally 1.7.4

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    [x][BETA1] Go for it
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    Task: BETA2

    [x][BETA2] Agree - 20% discount on Starbase purchase for Betazed
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    Task: CATS

    [x][CATS] Decline
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    [x][CATS] Back the Excelsior build (-10pp, Hawks pleased, Development displeased)
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    ——————————————————————————————————————————————
    Task: INDORIA

    [x][INDORIA] Accept - Indorians will be able to produce Renaissances, but 25% chance of a 2Qtr delay
    No. of Votes: 56
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    Jrin
    Kaze
    Kelenas
    kyuden
    Kyushiro
    lbmaian
    Leila Hann
    McLuvin
    Mr Tebbs
    MTB
    Muramasa
    Nervos Belli
    NHO
    Night
    Night_stalker
    Nix
    pbluekan
    pheonix89
    Random Member
    random_npc
    Shard
    shivers
    Simon_Jester
    Steven Kodaly
    SynchronizedWritersBlock
    Theunderbolt
    tryrar
    UberJJK
    Vehrec
    Void Stalker
    Yeangst

    ——————————————————————————————————————————————
    Task: PRIORITY

    [X][PRIORITY] PRIORITY] Vulcan should change their Mid-Term priority to increasing their BR and SR income.
    No. of Votes: 16
    Briefvoice
    aeqnai
    AKuz
    aledeth
    AlphaDelta
    anon_user
    Chaos Blade
    chriswriter90
    Forgothrax
    Jrin
    Kaze
    kyuden
    lbmaian
    Mr Tebbs
    pbluekan
    UberJJK

    [x][PRIORITY] Change nothing [Weighted 1.5x]
    No. of Votes: 15
    UbeOne
    Aeondrac
    Captain Hunt
    cokerpilot
    DarknessSmiles
    Gingganz
    Japanime
    Nervos Belli
    Nix
    pheonix89
    Steven Kodaly
    SynchronizedWritersBlock
    tryrar
    Vehrec
    Void Stalker

    [X][PRIORITY] Indoria should join GBZ
    No. of Votes: 5
    Leila Hann
    Goat
    JesseJ
    MTB
    Theunderbolt

    [X][PRIORITY] Add "Build Cargo Ships" to Caitian Priorities, IN ORDER TO aid in Economic Recovery
    No. of Votes: 3
    Simon_Jester
    HearthBorn
    Joshrand1982

    [X][PRIORITY] Betazed - Short Term - Freighter Expansion
    No. of Votes: 1
    Deathbybunnies

    [X][PRIORITY] United Earth should join the wild west of the GBZ.
    No. of Votes: 1
    shivers

    Total No. of Voters: 56



    For reference "Do Nothing" wins the Priority vote thanks to it's 1.5x weighting bringing it's effective vote count up to 22.5 votes.
     
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    Omake - Oaths Fulfilled - AKuz
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    • Oaths Fulfilled



    Alukk, 2283

    Three hundred and eighty five women crowd into the ground floor level of a disused theater; barred by Executive order from entering the meeting hall they'd attempted to enter earlier.

    Some of the milling women curse the incompetent Executive council for bad planning.

    Others mutter darkly about this being the preparation for a corporate coup against the growing power of the Congress of Professionals. To prevent the Congress from overseeing the transfer of executive power from the Commercial Council of Executives to an elected President of Orion.

    Some Professionals fear that this means a proper constitution with a declaration rights and freedoms will never be settled. Others fear that the experiment with mild democracy will finally die due to Hypercorp paranoia and capriciousness.

    Some of the women wonder if they were going too far anyway, that the powerful Corporations shouldn't be distracted from the Slave revolt that's overrun Srinpal and spreading to other worlds, and that they should be backing the Executives all the way instead of using the opportunity to fight for reform. They wonder if the current bill to rename the Congress of Professionals to the Congress of Orion Representatives was a step too far. And that the push for a proper legal Constitution was too much in and of itself.

    In the middle of the stage the famed Physicist, and current Chief Legislative Officer of the Congress of Professionals, Doctor Volanya Balee, clambers up onto a table. She is surrounded by several of the most important members of the Congress; Miranou the larger than life traitor to the Executive class, the popular Journalist Sieya, and the Lawyer Aryey all surround the Congressional leader. All have helped her in the task she is currently undertaking.

    Several dislodged pieces of paper waft to the floor in spiraling arcs as the Physicist Balee waves her arms and shouts to get the crowd's attention. Slowly the hubub ends, discussion of politics, morality, and civil rights tapering off, "Friends! Friends!" Volanya waves a datapad in the air, "If you will check your official inboxes we have a finished draft of a declaration to the Executive Council from their Congress!"

    The earlier undirected chatter is replaced by a focused silence as women pour over the actually fairly short text of the declaration. It is in the form of an oath by all the Congressional members in the room.

    There is a surprisingly small amount of back and forth before Balee feels comfortable raising her tablet in the air to begin administering the oath, "The Congression of Professionals, recognizing that it has a responsibility to create just and profitable laws for the public, and to affect the restoration of the Orion people to greatness, and in the best traditions of freedom of the individual…"

    Mixed into the crowd of women is the, radical, but relatively unknown and far too young lawyer Maxeme Sierre. She raises her hand with the others and raises her voice, shaking with emotion at the importance of moment, to join the other Professionals, "the Congress of Professionals shall make a contract to not rest until a free and fair constitution has been declared for all Orions…"

    --------Thirty Years later------

    She repeats after President Ventil Oyana, "...I swear to uphold the Constitution of the Orion Union." With tears in the corners of her eyes the famous, or infamous, Maxime Sierre of the Congressional Alliance Party lowers her hand.

    There is a brief moment of quiet from the cast of hundreds in the legislature of Alukk. A moment of surprise that this Convention has not only avoided being attacked by it's many enemies, but that it accomplished all that it set out to do. That a truly revolutionary mandate has been fulfilled.

    Then the vast room erupts into what can only be described as "joyous cacophony"

    Maxime Sierre stumbles slightly forward, knees buckling, onto the back of the chair in front of her. She sucks in deep breaths of air as she begins to sob. Thirty years of personal Revolution, riots, rants, and resolutions. All finally, finally, coming to victory.

    Deep down inside, in a private part of her, Sierra had considered that Victory would never come. That all the violence, all the hope, all of the immense effort of the revolution would come to nothing. That the last weakened President of the Orion Union would be gunned down by Corporate thugs on the steps of the Legislature. That her beloved Congressional Alliance party would give into corruption and hopelessness. That she herself would die a despised monster betraying her ideals out of grief and madness. When people asked her when the Revolution would at last be victorious her heart answered with a quiet and depressed "Never."

    And yet, here she is at last, vindicated by history. She sobs.

    Sierre's friend and protege, the young legislator, Sania Jannus, has a hand extended to help Sierre back to her feet when she suffers a jolly backblow and cheerful "huzzah" from an excited Galira Darras.

    Jannus has literally never known a time when the Orion Union wasn't in Revolution. She was born and had expected to die in an imperfect nation beset by Corporate privilege from above and Syndicate corruption from below and hemmed in by poverty and apathy everywhere else. Even then she still hadn't lost hope that someday the good in all people would win out. This victory is accepted not as impossibility made real but the inevitability of history coming to pass. Another thirty years might have weakened her resolve.But ofrtuanantly victory has come, now, in her youth.

    At thirty years old Sania Jannus doesn't personally remember the oath that triggered the Second Revolution on Alukk. But Galira Darras does.

    Darras remembers standing side by side with her fellow law students, getting her nose dislocated for the first time, in street fighting against Hypercorp mercenaries and Syndicate thugs hours later in the confused and radical night that followed the oath. She remembers fighting against crazed slave emancipationists as well as Corporate thugs before the Congressional Radicals and the Abolitionists realized that they could make common cause together. Darras was too stubborn to admit defeat even at the nadir of the Union's fortunes a mere few years ago. She feels vindicated.

    Darras and Sierre also remember others who didn't make it to this glorious day of vindication. Most of the women that swore that old oath dead in intervening decades, Miranou dying in disgrace for taking corporate money in secret, Balee mysteriously killed in a shuttle crash weeks after the Oath, others killed in the street fighting or from Syndicate bombs and blades. Even those that came later and died more recently like the Vulcan Sorkan or the thousands of uniformed law enforcement personnel that carried them to this point.

    Others have died too, people from outside the Union, represented by the crimson clad observers in the galleries. Observers like Lieutenant Commander Wolfe of Starfleet Intelligence who is shaking hands with Federation Ambassador Geneau and the other representatives of the Federation Diplomatic Service. He finds something very moving about a people deciding to cast off the the chains of oppression and embrace a new more fair and equal way forward. Wolfe turns and waves at the president's dias, wondering if Shar Ordey or even the President herself would recognize him from this distance.

    Neither do but they have the excuse of being at the center of history.

    Ordey doesn't remember the other, far earlier, oath taken by Orion Legislators, but she had the same excuse then, as she does now, of being at the centre of history. Of having just killed her mistress in the bath. Of being part of the first wave of Slave Revolution that would see Srinpal transform from a Corporate hellscape into free Broken Chains.

    President Oyana is on autopilot as she receives congratulations after congratulations from her fellow politicians. She's still not entirely sure how she went from a Celos-born child of the Executive class to becoming the woman administering an oath to to a new constitution that overturns everything she was raised to believe. She feels reinvigorated with energy she hasn't felt since she realised she could do something to end the fighting and dying that happened everyday in the streets outside the insulated and climate controlled HyperCorp offices of her family.

    The streets outside are filled with energy too. Not the violent riot and counter rioting of decades ago but a spontaneous and infectious sense of celebration and accomplishment.

    The party atmosphere may be fanned by the carefully targeted money and organizational skills of the Congressional Alliance's Outreach Committee. But that spark of celebration would exist regardless.

    For the first time in a generation Alukk has actual, real, concrete hope that life will get better.
     
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    • OneirosTheWriter said:
    Two FYMs, only three Captains, that doesn't quite cut it... hmm.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Maybe we should reach over, tap the member fleets on the shoulders and ask if they have anyone who has the right combination of crazy, competent and driven to command a Explorer.

    Also, I'm sorry to report to Commedore Lesslie that because of slight variations in the cones and rods of our new members eyes, finding a color palette that doesn't look like absolute *mud* or eye-searing neon is pretty tricky. Some of the new members can see a bit into the near-UV and infrared, so the search for something bland but inoffensive landed us in the land of beige. I hear an old crewmate of yours is working on the problem sometimes, though I also hear that he's going scuba-diving with whales and taking in the sights at Gombe Stream Park in old Tanzania. Something about comparative studies?
     
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