New World Man: Stalemate

After the disastrous year of 2157, Starfleet Command was nearly panic stricken by the progress of the war effort. After the initial attack on Deep Space One in which both the station and the USS Columbia were lost, the Romulans demonstrated they could attack the outer colonies and transport lanes at will, although the Romulans had not attacked any ships or outposts near Earth. Starfleet was helpless to respond. They were outnumbered and the Romulans used ambush tactics that baffled understanding.

Starfleet’s position improved considerably in the five months from December 2157 to April 2158. The Intrepid-class received engine and weapons upgrades and became far more effective at escorting freighters in the transport lanes. In addition, three new NX class ships, USS Atlantis, USS Challenger and USS Discovery, had been commissioned to provide longer range defenses. However, none of these improvements allowed Starfleet to mount any sort of offensive and the years 2158 and 2159 were marked by stalemate and mounting loss of life on both sides.

The years were also marked by the emergence of the NC class with its prototype the USS Daedalus. Built in a secret ship yard orbiting the Vulcan system before relocating to another secret base located on Proteus, it contained a unique mixture of Human, Andorian and Vulcan technology. The secrecy of the project was such that neither the Andorians nor the Vulcans knew of the other’s contribution until decades after the United Federation of Planets formed. The Andorian gift of deflector shield technology allowed Starfleet to slow the losses and the Vulcan gift of a Warp 7 engine allowed Starfleet to then go on the offensive.

Just as the USS Daedalus emerged at the beginning of the stalemate, its destruction led to the end of the stalemate and ultimately, an end to the war itself. Although it had originally been intended only as a testing and training platform for the fleet of ships to follow, Starfleet Intelligence gathered information that indicated the Romulans were launching their ambush attacks from a base in the Cheron system. The ship was sent to investigate and confirmed that was indeed the case. What’s more, the crew learned the Romulan fleet assigned to the war effort was smaller than earlier believed.

Most of the Romulans forces were committed to defending a fluid border with the Klingon Empire and stationed around Romulus itself. They had fewer than twenty ships capable of mounting attacks on Starfleet with three packs of four ships engaged in offensive operations and never more than five fully operational ships defending the base. The Romulans held no ships in reserve for a counterattack. Although Daedalus and 121 of its 140 crew were lost during its final mission (119 during the attack and two succumbing to radiation poisoning in the following days), the information gathered proved vital to driving the Romulans from their base in the Cheron system early in 2160 and thereby ending the war.

Even now, nearly one hundred years after the end of the war, the Romulan strategy and war aim remain a complete mystery. Based on their early victories in 2157, they could have captured and held territory to further move their base of operation closer to Earth. But they did not. They only attacked areas within a couple days journey from the Cheron system. One theory is their goal was nothing more than to contain Starfleet’s expansion and humanity’s growing influence among the Andorians, Tellurites and Vulcans. If that was their goal, it failed miserably as the Romulan War directly led to the United Federation of Planets. Another theory is their early cloaking technology limited the range of their ships and extending past the Cheron system stretched their supply lines too thin.

We may never know the answer. The Romulan Empire has returned to its isolation and refuses all contact beyond automated warnings not to cross the Neutral Zone border.

Deciphering the reasons behind the war and its long ranging impact are topics for later volumes in this series. This book restricts itself only to the stalemate years: Earth politics, Andorian/Human relations, Vulcan/Human relations and the events that led directly to the formation of the United Federation of Planets. It is primarily a story of the USS Daedalus but ultimately it is also a story of an enigmatic couple who together did more than any other, save Ambassador Jonathan Archer, to bring about the United Federation of Planets. This book restricts itself only to what is known of their lives during stalemate years though, and does not cover the post–Federation years when, ironically, the two became the most vocal, and often the harshest, critics of Starfleet’s role in the Federation before their untimely death two decades ago.

The End

Return to Aftermath.

Return to New World Man MENU page.

Back to Fan Fiction Main Menu

Have a comment to make about this story? Do so in the Trip Fan Fiction forum at the HoTBBS!

Half a dozen of you have made comments

Wow, that's a quite interesting story you've spun out there. Like all the other New World Man stories, I really liked this Kevin. Great job.

Fascinating. I'm not sure I liked the "untimely deaths" line but I am really interested in seeing what you meant by TnT becoming vocal critics of Starfleet.

More please! :D

This backstory has tremendous potential. The fact that I went rather cross-eyed while reading this has almost nothing to do with your writing and MUCH more to do with the fact that I have always found academic historical writing DEADLY boring. Guess that's why I still don't know my Pelleponesian from my Hundred-Years War, LOL!

I love concise explanations like yours of the sweeping events that were happening. I have been called on the carpet for putting too much background as opposed to action in my fics, but truth is, I like to read background as well as write it. Guess I am an historian at heart. And you do it so well. I find background info exciting, the way you write it. I can see your words moving up the screen at a slant like the Star Wars intro! Keep writing like this!

Loosing Columbia, that hurts! Nice touch using the other space shuttle names. Makes it feel closer to us in our time, somehow.

I don't think I have read much of your writing before. I tend to put off reading multi-part stories until I can gather them together in a folder of printouts to make notes on and comment on all at once. This intro has sucked me in though. I will be targeting stories with your nom de plume, like I do Distracted's and HopefulRomantic's.

Veeeeeddy eentersteenk... I can't wait to see where this is going! :)

That really works out nicely, Linda - I've been doing that with Kevin's fics and have the whole thing in a massive RTF that I add to each time he puts out a new one. It really works out nicely...