Guide:2200-2240 - Way of the Warrior

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2200-2240 - Way of the Warrior

The beginning of the 23rd century signified an end to the organizing phase of the UFP. The political system was stabilized, diplomats had pacified the member states into cooperation, and Star Fleet had provided protection against both internal and external threats ranging from piracy to small local political upheavals to interstellar plagues to planetary catastrophes. Federation citizens considered Star Fleet a benevolent and efficient organization and supported further expansion.

But a deep space mission gone sour in 2209 changed the future of the UFP. The first tentative dealings between the Klingon and Human empires had been amicable enough, yet a fatal gap in cultural understanding still remained. What looked like a simple little refugee crisis to the crew of USS Sentry, not unlike the first human contacts with the Klingons half a century before, turned out to be a matter of utmost religious importance to the followers of Kahless. The incident at Gamma Demetrius resulted in a display of brutality unseen even in the Romulan War. False confidence evaporated overnight when the Federation was pitted against its first true interstellar adversary. Panic spread like a wildfire across the UFP—heavily armored Star Fleet ships had fallen to the alien disruptor beams of the enemies as if they had been completely unshielded, and lasers and phase weapons alike had glanced off the enemy shields, or so claimed the rumors. Klingon vessels warped around and through Star Fleet formations with speed and audacity the technologically cautious Romulans had never demonstrated.

The reformed Klingon Empire, dedicated to the warrior mythos that its leaders had built to stabilize the Emperor-less reign, was utterly unreceptive towards diplomatic overtures. Twenty-seven years later, it was time for the Klingons to take the proactive role. Archanis, Cursa and Donatu fell to the expansionist rampage; after Amar had been annexed to the Empire, it seemed that Aldebaran would be the next Klingon target. Star Fleet was faced with two options: fall back to defending small isolated systems, each wanting to secede for a better bargaining position with the invincible conquerors, or increase defensive strength to heed off the brutal adversaries. The politics of Star Fleet and the whole Federation now centered on the handling of the Klingon threat and the internal difficulties caused by it.

All the skill and strength of UFP diplomacy had to be summoned to keep the interstellar alliance from collapsing. Yet even more crucial in the crisis was the role of new technology. This transcended mere technical advances and became a factor in interstellar politics, as phasers provided Star Fleet with a weapon as powerful as the fearsome disruptors of the Klingons, and solid-state warp coils powered with dilithium-energized plasma propelled the ships to warp six and beyond.

A naming convention change prompted by the rapid developments resulted in the birth of a legend: with the launching of the groundbreaking USS Bonaventure, all interstellar spaceships in Star Fleet service now officially became starships. The emotion-charged word had for some time been suggested as the general designation for Star Fleet interstellar vessels. With the winds of change now sweeping through the organization, the time was deemed right for the transition.

Yet the Starship Project was in its time a controversial political issue, not only in terms of fund allocation, but also in terms of military balance. Some Federation members felt that the introduction of the Baton Rouge and 'Icarus classes and associated destroyer forces had already repelled the Klingon threat for good, and that further escalation would be unwise. Others said that even the brand-new starships would be impotent against the current and future threats, and that new ship classes would only whet the appetite of the battle-hungry Klingons. Prior to the Babel conference of 2238, several core worlds and close allies of the Federation, including Altair, Izar and Melev, as well as numerous fringe worlds, had expressed interest in forming separate "defense zones" inside the Federation. Even though this separatist movement received a cold shower when Klingons in the ‘38 Babel expressed no interest in separate peace with factions within the Federation, some worlds were so overtaken by this "dissolution campaign" that they continued to pursue their goal for independence frantically – and sometimes even violently—for the next decade.

The dissidents stiffly boycotted two of the following Babels (none of which was to be held on Earth again). Melev briefly denounced the separatist movement and managed to qualify for Federation military aid; Izar never wavered, and exerted political pressure on Rigelians as well. The Council received conflicting communiqués from the Altairan system, teetering between dissolutionary and unionist factions. Finally, three months prior to the Babel of ‘41, Star Fleet Intelligence decided to intervene, asking for the Fleet to be placed on yellow alert and preparing for disciplinary action.

Due to the approaching Babel, Star Fleet was already heavily engaged in diplomatic courier and escort duty. Any attempt at bringing the dissidents to their senses would have to be performed on minimal starship resources, preferably in one limited-scale action. SF Intelligence analyzed recent reports on Klingon activity, and asked Star Fleet forces near systems of questionable loyalty to discreetly report back on the local political situation. Among these forces was USS Gulliver, a Sawyer class scout visiting Axanar for a cultural study under the command of LT Sharrir Th’saal. Although not the most vulnerably positioned of the dissident systems, Axanar was precariously close to the Klingons in terms of political views. The aggressive policy of expansion practiced by this individualist member system had already caused conflict within the Council. SFI expected a pacifying maneuver directed against Axanar to cause repercussions throughout the dissolutionary movement.

On June 5th, the elderly destroyer Bonhomme Richard was returning from Babel escort duty under the command of CMDR Michael Walsh when she spotted a Star Fleet recorder marker in deep space. Quick examination of the buoy log revealed that USS Gulliver had met a violent end, but no clues remained of the identity of the attacker. Being short on supplies, and scheduled for retirement in just two months, the Bonhomme Richard headed back towards Starbase 12. On July 9th, a follow-on mission was to be sent under the command of CAPT Kelvar Garth, but his destroyer was badly damaged in a dockside explosion. Not believing in coincidences, SF Intelligence demanded a stepping up of Star Fleet response, and on July 12th, Garth of Izar was given command of starship Constitution, at the time idle after extensive trial runs. The starship was deployed from Starbase 12 with orders to assess the overall situation in the Axanar system. Cruisers Connecticut and Saint Louis were ordered to stand by.

As the Constitution tried to approach Axanar on August 22nd, the local government hailed the ship, claiming full independence from the UFP and declaring confiscated all Federation or Star Fleet equipment in the system. Three Klingon destroyers within the system assumed an intercept course towards the starship. The Constitution immediately sent a Code One call for help, and a task force was scrambled to protect Federation sovereignty and integrity.

Had Star Fleet counted on conventionally powered ships like the Mann and Horizon classes in 2241, reinforcements against the dissolutionary forces might have arrived at Axanar too late to prevent a total catastrophe. Although there were only relatively light covert Klingon forces in the system, the Klingon government was quick to recognize the Axanarian independence and to send a fleet of its own to assist. Conveniently, this fleet happened to be within less than a week’s cruise of the system... But scouts and destroyers from nearby space were quickly organized to blockade the system by Captain Garth. Commanding the small fleet from his starship, and using ingenious hit-and-run tactics to prevent the numerically superior Klingons from concentrating their fire or penetrating the thin blockade line, he managed to delay the Klingon forces until the Federation task force would arrive. And the timely arrival of the two Baton Rouge cruisers and four Saladin destroyers from SB 12 tilted the balance in what proved to be a crucial battle in preserving a united Federation.

As the main Klingon forces warped into the system, the full blockade was already in place. Federation torpedo armament from the destroyers and the heavy starship forced the Klingons to sublight battle, after which the balance of projected-energy weaponry decided the outcome. Rather than lose a major portion of the fleet, Klingons chose to retreat en masse. This surprising decision was hastened by the destruction of their command ship of new D6 type, IKC Enforcer, in a vicious and near-suicidal attack by the Saint Louis. Admiral Kkorhetza, commander of the Axanar expedition, was now isolated on the planet.

Although the victory is rightly attributed to the military genius of Captain Garth, it was made possible only by the availability of warp 6 ships. In fact, the antiquated Marklin class destroyer USS Xenophon to which Captain Garth was originally assigned could probably never have seriously threatened the Klingon forces—thus, the dockyard explosion that crippled the destroyer and forced Garth’s transfer to the skeleton-crewed starship can actually be thanked for the victory at First Axanar! The reasons for the explosion from which Captain Garth was saved by the narrowest of margins have never been truly uncovered, but the most popular theory suggests a Klingon time-tampering mission gone wrong.

Due to the humiliating defeat, the Klingon master plan of conquest appeared to lose its chances of success. Yet Klingon archives reveal a different truth: the aim of Kkorhetza all along appears to have been to use Axanar as a base for extensive raiding of UFP space, not as a stepping-stone for expansion of Klingon territories. That ambition was relegated to different leaders after Kkorhetza’s defeat and suicide in Second Axanar. A coup attempt by Admiral Kamato, a fierce rival of Kkorhetza, paved way for General Kharn to step in, but his position, too, was far from secure. Despite Kharn’s tactical brilliance, Klingon military movements soon lost coherence as Wars of Internal Dissension ravaged the border sectors. Massive concentration of forces against targets like Inverness and Archanis still only amounted to raiding; Klingons only gained territory by virtue of Star Fleet withdrawing from already destroyed colonial holdings, and made wholly insufficient effort at fortifying against recapture.

Out of the chaos, the Klingon propaganda machine created a curious mixture of fact and fiction, a saga of a "Four Years War" against the Federation. From the UFP point of view, however, the "war" was a series of brutal skirmishes, ranging from the ambush at Lea that left the Constitution unable to fight for the rest of the conflict to the Star Fleet landings on Rudgur III that were defeated by the first major use of theragen. Between Kharn’s breathtaking audacity and the efforts of the factions undermining him, Klingon strategy was impossible to decipher, and Star Fleet was unable to devise a logical counter-strategy. The only way to prevent defeat by attrition was to create a trap no Klingon could resist. And by moving the "battered" Constitution and three of her "half-finished" sisters to the forward repair base at Axanar, Star Fleet closed the circle on the four years of senseless fighting.

The active part of the conflict with the Klingons ended in early September 2244 when the attack against the Thranstor yards was repelled and the last Klingon cruiser was driven out of Axanar space. Mop-up actions at Grank and the Argelian Approaches are not normally included in the history of the Four Years War, although the Marines still commemorate the taking of Kolm-an and the end of their bitter struggles over the former fleet base.

The dissident movement gradually calmed down so that Axanar was ready to rejoin the Federation in 2250, and Izar, Melev and finally the war-torn Altair followed suit in the 2260s. Hatred against the Klingons lingered on, however, and many veterans kept referring to the ongoing antagonism as the Klingon War, making no distinction between the events preceding and following Final Axanar. In terms of numbers of incidents and tonnage and personnel losses, they certainly had the right to their opinion.

The spectrum of ships created in the last decades of the 22nd century was now replaced in its entirety with modern designs utilizing the circumferential solid-state warp coil and the new flat saucer hull made out of trititanium. New understanding of warp physics dictated the shape of the ships and established the "Star Fleet look" for centuries to come. The development culminated in Project Starship, a hyper-ambitious effort to create a star cruiser that would mark the beginning of a truly new era in Star Fleet history. Such was the success of this project that the very first vessels laid down dictated the course of the Four Years War, from start to end, even before being finished and commissioned. Yet their greatest contribution to Star Fleet and the Federation would come after and outside the conflict.

The flux of technology, combined with the expansion of major political entities, made the early 23rd century one of the most hectic in the history of the Federation and its Star Fleet. Klingon offensives were repelled, a major war only barely averted, and the new prime directive of non-interference put to a test of fire in many occasions. The integrity of the Federation was at stake, as a major dissolutional movement threatened to sever border worlds from the core of the UFP. More than ever before, Star Fleet was the key to the future of the humanity—but would it be able to face that challenge without becoming a corrupted oppressor in the process?

Notes

  • The latest version (March 2016) of Timo's Guide heavily suggests the annexation of Archanis, Cursa and Donatu occurred in 2218. However, as the Four Years War occurred -according to the rest of the Way of the Warrior page here- in the 2240s, it would seem the 'independence panic' would be unfavorably delayed if no more invasions occurred over the twenty years following the 2218 ones. Therefore, I am changing the year of the loss of those three planets to the Klingons to 2236, instead. The date can be further modified, as new information is provided, but this gets it much closer to the development of shipboard phasers and other technological advancements. I've also suggested that the Constitution and her sister ships were not damaged or incomplete, but made up to be so, as a lure to the Klingons.

2200-2240 - The Ships

Updated to January 2017 version

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