Chapter 71:

Vulcan called for a Federation Alliance meeting. As usual for important meetings they sent their leader of the Vulcan High Council, Shanak, their equivalent to head of state, instead of the usual representative. "Federation Alliance members. The current trends are a significant increase in the technology and resources of the Federation Alliance versus the Orions, Klingons, and Xindi. Furthermore we can anticipate a sharp increase in ability in approximately 20 Earth years assuming that the technology to bring about magical ability works.

Therefore it would be illogical to seek out confrontations at this time. We maintain that their societal organizations will be less efficient in research than the Federation Alliance, and that at some point in the future they can be met with an overwhelming level of potential force, so as to preclude actual violence. This is the stated goal of this alliance, and this is therefore, logically, how we should proceed.

Even if there were motivations of revenge for an attack, we maintain that by most revenge culture's standards, that has been achieved. The capture of an Orion ship more than answers their attempted capture of crew members aboard a Starfleet ship.

Furthermore, we would point out that attempting to capture a more advanced Orion ship would be a risky endeavor at this point. The previous ship had subspace radio transmission ability during the early stages of the attack upon it, enough to provide clues for how to counter similar raids. More advanced Orion ships would also have better defenses than the one captured.

In pursuant to these goals, we propose that Lorillia be the limit to Federation expansion in that direction for now. Even the trading agreements with the Enolians and the Tamaalian should not result in any Federation ships traveling past Lorillia, due the possibility of capture by arbitrary Enolian law enforcement or by piracy, which would then call for a violent Federation response. We should instead invite Enolian and also Tamaalian traders to visit Lorillia and trade there. The Federation Alliance should protect against piracy and raids within Federation space, but not beyond it, in that direction for now."

There was debate, but Vulcan had a lot of votes due to its defense allocation to Starfleet being high, and the Denobulans also had a surprisingly high defense allocation due to its large population and relatively high technology level. The vote was in favor of the Vulcan proposal, which was for a limited time until it was determined that the Federation could expand in the Orion region with a level of superiority that would preclude the likelihood of violence. Actually when it was apparent that the proposal would get a majority vote it was acclaimed as a consensus with no votes against it.

The Federation would now build exploration fleets in directions other than towards Orion influenced areas, or recognized Klingon influenced areas. Vulcan scientists would now fully cooperate in the next ship revisions. Vulcan also started building their own Enterprise-B type ships as well as the new small ship design. They were only partially completing them so as the next design is complete they can have the components that would be part of that design.

A diplomatic mission was sent to Xyrillia. The Xyrillians had some very advanced technologies, and were peaceful, but somewhat reckless about the effects they had on others. They were seen in the Enterprise episode "Unexpected". Based on canon, all visits to Xyriliians were in full environment suits. Only those with good occlumency would be in their presence, which would include most Vulcans.

Starfleet met with a ship near Xyrillia and tried different languages. It turned out that they could speak Orion. Starfleet had the Orion designed language translators that provide translated sound to ones ears and intercept nerves to vocal muscles to speak in the translated language. What it could not do is instantly pick up a new language, an ability seen in canon.

The Xyrillians invited us to visit their ship. When we showed up in environment suits they invited us to remove the suits saying that they can help us adapt to their environment. One human witch lowered her occlumency shields and projected a recollection of the episode "Unexpected" to them, after explaining that this was in the year 2151 in a different timeline, not the future of this timeline. They analyzed the episode and promised that they could and would prevent the side effects of visiting them from happening if our species were to visit them without environmental suits. The same human agreed and also was invited to visit their homeworld. One of the Xyrillia women couldn't help but add "Unless they want those side effects." and looked disappointed that the human wizard in the group was not going to be there also, "There is a lot I can show you on Xyrillia."

They agreed to a limited exchange of technology. They had the holodeck technology seen in the episode and shared it with us. They did not yet invent the ship stealth technology, but from seeing the episode the path towards inventing it was thought to have at its basis the holodeck technology. That stealth technology was not better than our magical hiding of ships. They also shared their ability to have edible plants grow on the walls of ships. Starfleet shared the shield technology and hull plating of the Orions with them.

The Starfleet visitor to their planet determined that they had magical abilities above that of the Vulcans, and below the level of the Aenar. That meant that probably many of them could be fully trained in magic. We offered them a complete sharing of technology, including developing their magic, if they joined the Federation. They said they would consider that in the future.

A fleet of advanced starships was sent to Lyssaria, Neublia, Pyrithia, and finally Vissia which would be the limit to Federation expansion in that direction until Starfleet could be advanced enough in technology to meet the Xindis without needing to fight. These were the systems of interest from the Vulcan star charts. The fleet would also look at other nearby systems.

Seven Enterprise B class ships were sent, four originally from Humans, one from Andorians, and two from Tellarites. In addition, the Vulcans sent three of their design of starships. The fleet assembled at the Starbase at Terra Nova. Renée was assigned to a starship in this fleet.

The fleet reached Lyssaria and the delegation met with the Lyssarian Prime Conclave. There was a unique life-form on their planet called the Lyssarian Desert Larvae which could produce a short lived clone of anyone, including their memories. Its use was strictly forbidden by their government, but smugglers sometimes got a hold of the larvae.

We negotiated a trade agreement. We carefully agreed to not allow the Federation to trade in any Lyssarian Desert Larvae removed from the planet after the enactment of the agreement. The Denoblians already possessed many of the larvae, so we didn't want to make any existing stock contraband. They agreed to be a Federation Protectorate. They would not trade with the Orions or Klingons or any declared off limits by the Federation. They would be given some useful technologies.

The next stop was a challenging one, Neubilia Prime. The Vulcan star chart indicated that the inhabitants were prone to arbitrarily challenge visitors to duels. Only magicals, who could magically enhance their non-magical fighting ability, were sent to visit them. They welcomed a trade agreement, but refused to stop trading with the Orions. They also said they knew at some point we'd want to ban trading with the Xindi, and they weren't going to stop trading with them either. There were a couple of challenges towards our delegation, but unarmed combat was agreed to, which our delegation was well practiced in.

We accepted the lack of a security agreement with the Neubilians, but it had left a way for enemy warships to get close to our star system. It was decided to address this again at the time that we were ready to handle the Orions and the Xindi.

The mission to Pyrithia was more successful. They were fairly close to the Xindi and wanted protection. They joined the Federation Alliance, and were considering at some point joining the United Federation. We agreed to permanently station one starship there, and help them improve their defense network. We actually intended to station two starships there and built a large space station, that was not a Starbase, but could support the two starships. The rapid reaction fleet on Terra Nova could reach much of this region fairly quickly. We could travel at warp 6.15, which is 232 times the speed of light. Earth was 46 light years from Pyrithia.

The final destination outbound was Vissia. On the way back, stars without civilizations would be visited. The Vissians had a rare mineral called trinesium. It could be used in the outer hull of a starship, which could withstand 18,000 degrees Celsius, and could fly within most stars. We setup a trade agreement with them. They had other advanced materials, including a polymer with 200 elements, some sensor and warp core parts superior to our own.

It was a little far away for the Federation to offer protection at the present time. There was another complication, which would might prevent them from ever joining the United Federation or the Federation Alliance, which was sentient rights, since they had slavery of a part of their own species. Trade agreements, or even making a system a protectorate did not have any sentient rights requirements.

While Earth could be criticized on how they handled house elves, that relationship was excluded from the definition of slavery, by Federation standards. Some even brought up human relationships with dogs, but again, even if dogs were considered sentient, it was not considered slavery. However, the Vissian cogenitors did fall under that definition.

Trade agreements were made, and they wanted goods, not technology in exchange. Even though they were not a protectorate, our trading ships would be starships, and never traveling alone. The frequent travel of starships to and from Vissia would help our defense of Pryrithria and Lyssaria.

We learned from the Vissians and the Lyssarians that while the Xindi were a powerful aggressive group of species, there were no Sphere-Builders nor a Delphic Expanse. Apparently Q's restriction on time traveling interference in this timeline removed these, which were in canon, from our timeline.

At the end of 2025, the research to combine Vulcan technology with all of the other Federation technology was underway. R&D now had schedules, and whatever could be done by the end of 2026 would be in the next design cycle. Then in 2027, existing starships would be overhauled. In the case of Vulcan, the new designs were too different from their existing ones, so they have been building Enterprise-B hulls, in preparation for completing them in 2027.

Since there were no other competing time systems, Starfleet made use of a stardate system of time measurement. The units were years and seconds from Earth. There was no allowance for leap years, so the start of the stardate year could be up to a day different than the actual Greenwich start of the year. Each year was exactly 31,556,952 seconds. Stardate 2022.0 was synchronized to Earth Time New Years 2022. There were all sort of corrections for relativistic effects, but the basic goal was to mirror the time on Earth.

While the calculations were in seconds, the display of stardates were in fractions of a year. So stardate 2022.1 would be one tenth into the year 2022. A thousandths of a year would be about 8 hours 46 minutes. A hundred thousandth of a year would be 5.26 minutes.

Since the Earth year was the unit of measurement, light-year was the measurement of distance. Parsec, while considered more scientific on Earth, had no real useful meaning. It was derived from viewing angles from Earth, so had no interstellar significance.