Personnel Diary, Jessica Stanford, Federation President
Twelve years ago today was the day we lost. The Federation as we knew it was being over-run by the Borg, and Starfleet couldn’t stop them, they were less than an hour away from Earth when a Miracle happened. A Certain Single-lettered entity which shall not be named, intervened, it appeared that the federation had at last managed to impress him, perhaps because we passed up the opportunity to utterly defeat the Borg, but something that would have cost countless billions of innocent lives. Regardless of his reasons, he transported Earth, and its entire solar system, and the many billions of sentient beings currently in-system, across space. But as it turned out, it wasn’t just across space; it was into a completely different universe, far removed from that which we knew.
In this changed reality, we changed who and what we are, we have remained in this one system for twelve years, renaming it not earth, but Four Heaton, although exactly why that name was chosen remains unclear. What is clear however, that in that time, Starfleet and the rest of the Citizens of the Federation had no time for exploration, or any other matters that so concerned us. We were struggling to survive. Now however, we’ve managed, at long last, to construct sufficient Orbital Habitats, that are now spread across the system, and to terraform, albeit basically, planets such as Venus, to enable us to return what little remains of the United Federation of Planets, to what it used to be; Free from War, Poverty disease. And now at long last, Starfleet can return to its three-fold mission; Exploration, Defence and Diplomacy. And in this brand-new universe, they truly can go where no one has gone before.
U.S.S Pathfinder
Four Heaton III Orbit
Alex Munro, a twenty year veteran of Starfleet, and widely considered one of the Best Starship Captains in the fleet. Tall, with dark brown hair, sharp blue eyes, Alex gave off a reassuring commanding presence to his crew, and appeared somewhat intimidating when angry.
Standing on the Bridge of the newly commissioned USS Pathfinder Captain Alexander Munro couldn’t help but reflect on how fitting the name of his ship was. The Pathfinder, and her class-mates, were the ships that were going to commence Starfleet’s efforts to explore this strange new universe that they had found themselves in. And it was certainly the ship to do it. Like the rest of the Fleet, over the past twelve years, Starfleet had re-built it’s diminished numbers back up to a respectable size, 115 Starships now made up the Federation Starfleet. In the last dozern years, Starfleet had moved away from Dedicated Explorers with limited weaponry, to a more pragmatic approach.
Although today’s starships were still more than capable of Exploration missions, they found themselves being labelled ‘Tactical Explorers’ and other similar names to show their new roles. It may not be the Starfleet that Alex grew up with, but it was a much more effective Starfleet. The Pathfinder was the epitome of this new philosophy. Yes, she held the most advanced sensors ever to be fitted onto a Federation Starship, and yes she was perhaps the most capable explorer that Starfleet had ever fielded. But the critical difference from Starfleet designs of the last two hundred years is her ability to defend herself, with her also having the most advanced tactical systems that Starfleet had ever designed, both in Computers and the weapons themselves, Pathfinder was a new breed of Starship, one that was now the Majority of Starfleet.
Looking out the large viewports on either side of the large view screen, Alex could see the flotilla of Vesta-Class starships, the back-bone of the new Starfleet that was providing honour-guard for the new Federation Flagship. The Vesta-Class, whilst smaller than the Pathfinder, is only slightly less capable, making a ideal design for the Workhorse of the fleet. The six Vesta’s peeled off as the Pathfinder left Four Heaton III’s Orbit and headed back into their positions in varying places of orbit. Alex turned and settled into the Command chair as the ship headed further out into the system, on a course that would take them past each of the planets before jumping to warp on a random heading.
Alex settled into his command chair as the Pathfinder picked its way through the asteroid belt, he decided quickly that it was the most comfortable chair that he had sat in, he noted the computer in the armrests of the chair and checked the ships status on the consoles before looking up at the viewscreen as it showed the area that Pathfinder was passing through. For the next twenty minutes or so he merely sat there as reports poured into the bridge of the ships status. Once he was satisfied, he gave the order.
“Helm, Random Vector, Maximum Warp, Engage”
