Star Trek: Deliverance (Story thread)

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Executive officer's Personal Log: Stardate 60701.2. Commander Amanda Cavendish recording.
   Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!
   I'm trying too hard, I'm sure of it. But I worry that the damage is already done. Behaviour like this, the rigid, inflexible chain of command... It worked on the Potemkin. But that was years ago, and a different situation. This isn't a warship. This is Starfleet doing what Starfleet does. And I'm taking out my anger on someone just 'cause she happens to have fiddled DNA. It's not like it's her fault. The experiments were generations ago.
   But each time I see Chief Orlova, I just remember the ravages done to my species during the Eugenics wars, when it was believed our... weaponry... was the key to defeating the western world. A built in biological agent. And Khan's forces almost wiped us out trying to work out how to replicate it.
   The historical parallels are too close, even though the program was a peaceful one. Almost an issue of civil liberties- it was their right to change their bodies as they chose- but... agh.
   Who's to stop their ancestors from making the same choices Khan did four hundred years ago?
   I'm going to try to like Chief Orlova, I really am. But... I'm not perfect. Nobody is. Even Kirk got demoted. The Augments just get a little too close for my liking. When your parents, your parents' parents, your ancestors deliberately choose to remove these imperfections, these flaws from your genes it seems like an easy ride. And I don't believe in easy rides. I've not had one.<
***
   Why was it that you'd always get woken up the moment you'd just drifted off to sleep? Amanda swore at the comm alarm, groggily rising from the bed and checking the time. 1645. Two hours' nap. Bloody diurnals and their 'sensible' waking hours. She tapped at the comm panel, knowing she'd have a better chance of advanced calculus than finding her comm-badge in this state. And she was rubbish at advanced calculus.
   "Cavendish. What's the problem?"
   "Sorry to interrupt your rest, ma'am," came the reply, a Terran, certainly. Indian, from the sounds of the accent. He'd probably picked up on the fact Amanda'd been sleeping from her tone of voice. "We just received communications from the Bainbridge which warped in-system an hour ago. Admiral Tarav wants to come aboard. He says he needs to talk to the ship's commanding officer."
   "Well why don't you talk to the ship's... Oh. Hell."
   "The captain's not due to arrive for a few days, ma'am. And since you're the assigned exec-"
   "I know, I know, chain of command. Thank you, mister..."
   "Chandra, ma'am. Ensign Mahanamaraputhani Tharamaisalan Chandra."
   Amanda groaned under her breath. "Thank you, mister Chandra. Tell the Admiral I won't be more than fifteen minutes. I'll meet him in Transporter Room Two. Assemble what senior staff we have so far."
   "I'll do that. Chandra out."
   That was all she needed. A notoriously officious, belligerent Tellarite admiral turning up to fiddle with the ship's workings. If she ever made Captain, Amanda would make sure she stayed as far away from inspection tours as possible. Time to engage in the gentle art of brown-muzzling.
***
The USS Bainbridge, NCC-82164, slowly, gracefully drew up alongside 11586's smaller, more utilitarian hull. A large, sleek, Excalibur-class battleship built and deployed with the intent of being a one-on-one match for the Jem'Hadar capital ships, her one thousand and eighty-six metre length glistened with portholes and viewports, RCS clusters dotted around the dreadnought's extremities venting occasionally as it righted itself into parallel relative alignment with the Excelsior-class medium cruiser. It was a sheer clash of ideologies between the two ships, and a sign of changing times in the history of the Federation.
   11586, a eighty-year-old cruiser, designed and built in the optimistic days of the post-Khitomer peace, a science vessel first and foremost, replete with sensor packages and diplomatic facilities, designed with Starfleet's Primary Mission- to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations, as Jim Kirk had so succinctly summarised the original forty-page document- clearly in mind. And in appearance she represented the old days too. Lacking the sheer classic elegance of its contemporary Constitution-class heavy cruisers (The Excelsiors had been designated Dreadnought too upon their creation, and subsequently downgraded as newer, bigger classes were constructed), it was a well-proportioned but spartan design, designed to handle intense hull stresses that had been predicted during the initial transwarp computer tests as far back as the 2250s, with the oversized nacelles and 'pregnant' engineering hull characteristic of its class.
   Bainbridge was new, impressive, and according to some of the 'old guard' admiralty, an abomination, unworthy of the fleet for one simple reason: the Excaliburs were built to fight. Like the Akira, Defiant or Reagan classes, science and exploration were very much secondary. The Federation had needed, critically, ships dedicated to its defence when the 2360s turned into the 2370s. Wolf 359 had shown that sticking to your tricorders when there were races and cultures out there that couldn't- or, more terrifyingly, that wouldn't- respond to the Federation's diplomatic preferences would result in massive losses of vessels and life.
   39 ships were eliminated in six minutes on New Year's Eve, 2366. Two hundred and eighty-six the next time the Borg arrived, in 2373. And then, the war broke out. Although a few ships were built for fighting by then, they were mostly a curiosity. Defiant was almost unique, her class consisting of a mere four vessels at the outbreak of the war.
   The Akiras were regarded as more specialist evacuation and survey ships, their large shuttlebay with its complement of thirty-six shuttles, runabouts and other small craft filling a survey-and-mapping niche originally filled by the Roykirk-class in the 2320s and 30s. When war broke out, it was easy to set them up as a truly fearsome carrier group flagship. Three squadrons of Peregrines, Valkyries or Thunderbolts, a specialist probe-launching pod that needed absolutely no conversion at all to fire photon torpedoes instead, and a long-range sensor array that was perfectly good at finding ships anyway. By war's end in '81, they were the two most numerous classes in Starfleet after the ubiquitous, popular and hardy little Sabre-class frigate.
   Which was all very well and good, but the war was now over. Meaning Starfleet had suffered the condition organisations such as itself were prone to after protracted combat periods. It had over-armed. There were simply too many warships in the fleet.
   Some of this was easy to rectify; two thirds of the Akira class simply reverted to their original mission, cutting their torpedo tubes down from the wartime fifteen to a more reasonable six, and reducing to only a single fighter squadron. The remaining third, a hundred and nineteen vessels, would keep their armament, and be officially reclassified as some sort of 'hazardous sector patrol/survey through-deck ballistic cruiser'. Which was a record for the longest official ship classification Starfleet had ever used.
   The Defiants were harder to fix. Some went into policing duties, some convoy escorts, most into specific system defense, a few redesignated as flagship escorts (After the high-profile 'sniping' of several famous and decorated admirals who'd simply gone from one place to another taking only their personal command- resulting in the loss of twenty-two admirals or commodores, fourteen thousand lives and nineteen Galaxy, Sovereign or Norway class vessels- all designated flagships were now required to have a small destroyer or frigate screen for defensive duties) and a small few including the second Defiant were actually used in scientific missions.
   Which still left a big gap in Starfleet's science and exploration resources. With the Gamma Quadrant effectively under occupation since the collapse of the Dominion, the Federation had a lot of ground to cover, and, more importantly, an entire quadrant of the galaxy to map, catalogue and check for potential allies, threats or curiosities. It was as much a public relations exercise- a 'let's get back to exploration!' vibe on the back of seven years of fighting and death- as a scientific crusade, but having a good nose around needed no excuse.

[Edit- Removed references to Vares. Unless Nadenka had gone to a non-Federation world and joined one of the bodymodding communities, she has nothing to do with Vares. She may have some tweaked genes being the decendant of a specialty breed that may have participated in the Eugenics wars, if her ancestors didn't do anything outside the range of Terran genetics. If they had they'd either have been sterilized or back engineered to remove all traces depending of the severity. I also fixed a misspelling or two. -Aspera
******
Executive officer's Personal Log: Stardate 60701.2. Commander Amanda Cavendish recording.
   Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!
   I'm trying too hard, I'm sure of it. But I worry that the damage is already done. Behaviour like this, the rigid, inflexible chain of command... It worked on the Potemkin. But that was years ago, and a different situation. This isn't a warship. This is Starfleet doing what Starfleet does. And I'm taking out my anger on someone just 'cause she happens to have fiddled DNA. It's not like it's her fault. The experiments were generations ago.
   But each time I see Chief Orlova, I just remember the ravages done to my species during the Eugenics wars, when it was believed our... weaponry... was the key to defeating the western world. A built in biological agent. And Khan's forces almost wiped us out trying to work out how to replicate it.
   The historical parallels are too close, even though the program was a peaceful one. Almost an issue of civil liberties- it was their right to change their bodies as they chose- but... agh.
   Who's to stop their ancestors from making the same choices Khan did four hundred years ago?
   I'm going to try to like Chief Orlova, I really am. But... I'm not perfect. Nobody is. Even Kirk got demoted. The Augments just get a little too close for my liking. When your parents, your parents' parents, your ancestors deliberately choose to remove these imperfections, these flaws from your genes it seems like an easy ride. And I don't believe in easy rides. I've not had one.<
***
   Why was it that you'd always get woken up the moment you'd just drifted off to sleep? Amanda swore at the comm alarm, groggily rising from the bed and checking the time. 1645. Two hours' nap. Bloody diurnals and their 'sensible' waking hours. She tapped at the comm panel, knowing she'd have a better chance of advanced calculus than finding her comm-badge in this state. And she was rubbish at advanced calculus.
   "Cavendish. What's the problem?"
   "Sorry to interrupt your rest, ma'am," came the reply, a Terran, certainly. Indian, from the sounds of the accent. He'd probably picked up on the fact Amanda'd been sleeping from her tone of voice. "We just received communications from the Bainbridge which warped in-system an hour ago. Admiral Tarav wants to come aboard. He says he needs to talk to the ship's commanding officer."
   "Well why don't you talk to the ship's... Oh. Hell."
   "The captain's not due to arrive for a few days, ma'am. And since you're the assigned exec-"
   "I know, I know, chain of command. Thank you, mister..."
   "Chandra, ma'am. Ensign Mahanamaraputhani Tharamaisalan Chandra."
   Amanda groaned under her breath. "Thank you, mister Chandra. Tell the Admiral I won't be more than fifteen minutes. I'll meet him in Transporter Room Two. Assemble what senior staff we have so far."
   "I'll do that. Chandra out."
   That was all she needed. A notoriously officious, belligerent Tellarite admiral turning up to fiddle with the ship's workings. If she ever made Captain, Amanda would make sure she stayed as far away from inspection tours as possible. Time to engage in the gentle art of brown-muzzling.
***
The USS Bainbridge, NCC-82164, slowly, gracefully drew up alongside 11586's smaller, more utilitarian hull. A large, sleek, Excalibur-class battleship built and deployed with the intent of being a one-on-one match for the Jem'Hadar capital ships, her one thousand and eighty-six metre length glistened with portholes and viewports, RCS clusters dotted around the dreadnought's extremities venting occasionally as it righted itself into parallel relative alignment with the Excelsior-class medium cruiser. It was a sheer clash of ideologies between the two ships, and a sign of changing times in the history of the Federation.
   11586, a eighty-year-old cruiser, designed and built in the optimistic days of the post-Khitomer peace, a science vessel first and foremost, replete with sensor packages and diplomatic facilities, designed with Starfleet's Primary Mission- to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations, as Jim Kirk had so succinctly summarised the original forty-page document- clearly in mind. And in appearance she represented the old days too. Lacking the sheer classic elegance of its contemporary Constitution-class heavy cruisers (The Excelsiors had been designated Dreadnought too upon their creation, and subsequently downgraded as newer, bigger classes were constructed), it was a well-proportioned but spartan design, designed to handle intense hull stresses that had been predicted during the initial transwarp computer tests as far back as the 2250s, with the oversized nacelles and 'pregnant' engineering hull characteristic of its class.
   Bainbridge was new, impressive, and according to some of the 'old guard' admiralty, an abomination, unworthy of the fleet for one simple reason: the Excaliburs were built to fight. Like the Akira, Defiant or Reagan classes, science and exploration were very much secondary. The Federation had needed, critically, ships dedicated to its defence when the 2360s turned into the 2370s. Wolf 359 had shown that sticking to your tricorders when there were races and cultures out there that couldn't- or, more terrifyingly, that wouldn't- respond to the Federation's diplomatic preferences would result in massive losses of vessels and life.
   39 ships were eliminated in six minutes on New Year's Eve, 2366. Two hundred and eighty-six the next time the Borg arrived, in 2373. And then, the war broke out. Although a few ships were built for fighting by then, they were mostly a curiosity. Defiant was almost unique, her class consisting of a mere four vessels at the outbreak of the war.
   The Akiras were regarded as more specialist evacuation and survey ships, their large shuttlebay with its complement of thirty-six shuttles, runabouts and other small craft filling a survey-and-mapping niche originally filled by the Roykirk-class in the 2320s and 30s. When war broke out, it was easy to set them up as a truly fearsome carrier group flagship. Three squadrons of Peregrines, Valkyries or Thunderbolts, a specialist probe-launching pod that needed absolutely no conversion at all to fire photon torpedoes instead, and a long-range sensor array that was perfectly good at finding ships anyway. By war's end in '81, they were the two most numerous classes in Starfleet after the ubiquitous, popular and hardy little Sabre-class frigate.
   Which was all very well and good, but the war was now over. Meaning Starfleet had suffered the condition organisations such as itself were prone to after protracted combat periods. It had over-armed. There were simply too many warships in the fleet.
   Some of this was easy to rectify; two thirds of the Akira class simply reverted to their original mission, cutting their torpedo tubes down from the wartime fifteen to a more reasonable six, and reducing to only a single fighter squadron. The remaining third, a hundred and nineteen vessels, would keep their armament, and be officially reclassified as some sort of 'hazardous sector patrol/survey through-deck ballistic cruiser'. Which was a record for the longest official ship classification Starfleet had ever used.
   The Defiants were harder to fix. Some went into policing duties, some convoy escorts, most into specific system defense, a few redesignated as flagship escorts (After the high-profile 'sniping' of several famous and decorated admirals who'd simply gone from one place to another taking only their personal command- resulting in the loss of twenty-two admirals or commodores, fourteen thousand lives and nineteen Galaxy, Sovereign or Norway class vessels- all designated flagships were now required to have a small destroyer or frigate screen for defensive duties) and a small few including the second Defiant were actually used in scientific missions.
   Which still left a big gap in Starfleet's science and exploration resources. With the Gamma Quadrant effectively under occupation since the collapse of the Dominion, the Federation had a lot of ground to cover, and, more importantly, an entire quadrant of the galaxy to map, catalogue and check for potential allies, threats or curiosities. It was as much a public relations exercise- a 'let's get back to exploration!' vibe on the back of seven years of fighting and death- as a scientific crusade, but having a good nose around needed no excuse.

[Edit- Removed references to Vares. Unless Nadenka had gone to a non-Federation world and joined one of the bodymodding communities, she has nothing to do with Vares. She may have some tweaked genes being the decendant of a specialty breed that may have participated in the Eugenics wars, if her ancestors didn't do anything outside the range of Terran genetics. If they had they'd either have been sterilized or back engineered to remove all traces depending of the severity. I also fixed a misspelling or two. -Aspera]