Author's note: this is the first installment of my new series Star Trek: Trifecta, which is set in what used to be the Delphic Expanse 20 Years ago, this series will be closely related to Star Trek: Enterprise, and any people, characters or things that sound out of character, weird, or off, are 30% bad writing on my part, 30% plot holes I missed and 40% me inserting little plot devices to be explained later in the series.
Like the passengers of the cargo trawlers lagging them almost all of the complement of 103 crewmembers crowded at the windows of the starship Excelsior.
A NX-refit class ship, it had a saucer shaped front section that was connected by a stem to the cone shaped secondary engine section under it, which in turn was connected to two long conic nacelles that provide the craft with faster than light travel capabilities. It had a hybrid look of a craft that smoothly transitioned from old to new, but even the odd mix of technologies divert from the fact that it's smooth transition from old to new it was pleasing to the eye.
This craft was built hastily in a war where everything else had been destroyed, and the creators of this ship put all of their efforts into this class of ships, mixing several different alien technologies to form an odd looking, but tough craft. But that was twenty years ago, and times had changed. This warhorse was now one of the oldest in the fleet of starships, the last of those hybrid protectors, and its final stop was menial guard duty at a base in deep space, where it would eventually be decommissioned and broken down for scrap. But no one pondered this as they stared out the side the spacecraft, this history of this fine ship was on the mind of only one man, the captain, a grizzled 36 year old man who had aged early, giving the air of wisdom of a 40 or even 50 year old, and much of those 36 years had been spent on this ship. He was not a nostalgic man, but nobody, not even a robot, can deny 20 years of your own history. He was going to miss his ship, and all of its quirks, but he knew that she, and him, were getting into their years and they needed to move on, the new Federation had just finished rebuilding, and didn't need the two of them anymore, though for different reasons.
The NX-20 Excelsior was getting old, but Captain Michael Nelson was getting outdated. He was a warrior, but there hadn't been a war in twenty years, and although he was thankful for that, God knows they didn't need one, the Federation was fragile in those 20 years, but that also meant the hierarchy at Starfleet command was putting the great war heroes to safer jobs out of the public's eye, they didn't want soldiers, they wanted explorers and as much as that would be nice, it just wasn't him. So instead of waiting to be put out to pasture in some PADD-pushing desk job, he decided to sign up for a new job at Deep Space One, the first deep space station sponsored by the Federation. Guaranteed to have its fair share of thugs and pirates, he wouldn't have a full scale war on his hands, but he sure as hell wasn't going to become bored.
As he and Excelsior came up on the station, he finally decided to stop reminiscing and have a look at the station he was being given command of. It was an unusual station, with a mix of alien technologies that put Excelsior to shame, with at least 9 different owners possessing it for some period of time. Each of those owners put a new segment onto the station, with a few alien merchants pitching in here and there, causing the station to look like a patchwork job. Captain Nelson took a liking to it, not because its old look showed it had a history, but because he could clearly see weapons ports and scar marks that were evident of a brutal history and tough armor. He was going to like this job.
Author's Postscript: I am obsessive when it comes to plot holes, bad writing, bad grammar, and badly written characters, if there is something wrong in this story, please tell me, so that I can fix it in future stories or chapters