Editor's Note: Welcome back friends, partners, and strangers alike! It's been a hot minute since your favourite blue-alien-obsessed girl has been online, but please know it's just because I'm cooking up something good. In the meantime, enjoy this next chapter in the Patrol Fleet trilogy of stories. Also, hurrah for goofy dramatic titles, ala TOS!
Editor's Note II: You don't have to know anything about the Patrol Fleet to understand this, but basically think of it as the civilian-version of Starfleet founded in pacifism and security. Enjoy!
Stardate Unknown (2258)
Captain Dash Reinarr and the humble crew of the newly commissioned U.S.S. Meridian, NCC-1639, drifted slowly and gracefully away from the Judicial Shipyards that orbited high above the ice-world of Andoria. The freshly constructed Soyuz-Class border cutter drifted through the frozen asteroid field with the grace and poise of a well-trained dancer. Like the dozens of explorers who had sailed the heavens or climbed the mountains before her, the Meridian's eyes were ever forward towards the next movement, the next pass, and her intentions were placed solely towards the future.
Her hull, gleaming silver with still unscathed armour, twinkled as the ice crystals began to drift away from their home of many weeks and move off to join their fellows in the void of the Big Isn't. The massive phaser cannons to either side of her circular body protruded outwards with all the same thinly veiled threats that could be found in the teeth of a growling Rottweiler, daring any interlopers to take another step forward into their range. The rectangular nacelles that cut through the space below her like the rudders of an ancient wooden battleship hummed with power but betrayed no other hints of life. The orange glow of the Bussard collectors and electric blues of energy from the sides had been covered by extra armour, allowing her to strike at any instant, from any time or place, without warning like the Andorian Atlirith hawk that she had almost been named after.
The elongated narrow-beam sensors that stuck out from the underside of her hull and the elevated sensor station on her rear allowed her to pierce through almost any nebula and gleam readings from dozens of sectors away. Armed with this vast capacity and ability for knowledge, the Meridian was one of the most well-equipped vessels in the entire fleet since the advent of the Constitution-Class ships. She could seek out cries for help, or danger, from practically anywhere in her assigned system and be there in almost half the time that most of the Patrol Fleet ships could even dream of making.
However, for now, there would be of no need to push these systems to their limits or to test them on anything more than training targets.
With the merciful and miraculous end of the Klingon-Federation War that had decimated the United Federation of Planets for the majority of the past three years, the Patrol Fleet had been reinstated as a separate, albeit still closely tied, entity of Starfleet. Most of the men, women, and aliens who had staffed the previous generation of the Patrol Fleet were long gone in all but memory or had been promoted to other assignments. The Soyuz-Class Meridian would be the first of her kind, the beginning of a new generation of Patrol Fleet ships that could easily protect and see to the internal affairs that went on far away from the Romulan Neutral Zone or the Klingon-Federation border. She was designed, intentionally, to be a distinct breakaway from her Starfleet counterparts and her predecessors. The Soyuz-Class was to be the border cutter of the 23rd Century, and could, with the right modifications, stand in any role from a dogfighter to a medical ship. For the Meridian, however, her duty would be simple and straightforward: Patrol Federation spacelanes, watch for suspicious activity, and provide aid and hope to those who required it.
In command of the sleek new vessel was the poster boy of the Patrol Fleet, Captain Dash Reinarr. He had the charm, the look, and the experience to rival many of his contemporaries, and made no secret of his exploits to render aid and defense to those, be they Federation or otherwise, who needed it. Dash Reinarr had even escaped the worst of the Klingon War, sent out instead to the outlying sectors on a recruitment drive to enlist and engage more hands for the endless machine of carnage that was the ever shambling Starfleet defense. With a record that, at a glance, was as clean and exemplary as his, Captain Reinarr had been Starfleet's first, and only, choice to run the inaugural shakedown cruise that would usher in the return of the Patrol Fleet after it had been merged with Starfleet during the war.
His mission was simple: Warp to a few home planets and colonies for the next week, show the flag, and remind everyone that the Federation, and Starfleet, were still standing and that peace could, would, be preserved.
For a man who many viewed as simply divine, the task may have seemed insultingly low.
For Captain Dash Reinarr, hero of countless women and idol of countless more children, who had signed everything from comic books to napkins, the job was better than he could have hoped for. His last of only three encounters with the Klingons during the war had gone so horribly wrong that he was lucky to be in the captain's chair now and not just another name on the Wall of Justice that stood impassively in the center of Andoria's capital city. He was not a soldier, he had never wanted or claimed to be, even in his recruitment drives. Despite what his parents wished for him, Dash Reinarr was an explorer, someone fascinated by the mere idea that, just past the next nebula, just around the next star, there might be a planet or an asteroid to be charted, studied, catalogued, and perhaps revisited if fate would be so kind. He'd fought long and hard past all the demands of those surrounding him to make it here, and once he'd climbed to the captaincy he was determined to stay there.
A quick jaunt around the local systems was only too perfect for him, and he was lucky he would have the best bridge crew in the galaxy along with him for this next journey.
There was a galaxy out there that demanded exploration, and planets with citizens who desired not simply protection, but the same pillars of kindness and goodwill that the Federation of Planets had been founded upon. He may never be an admiral, his brush with death at the hands of the Klingons had all too well reminded him how fickle the life he led could be, but he could aspire to hold onto the same great ideals that Admiral Archer and all the rest had set out before him almost a century prior. Dash Reinarr was determined to do his best to continue carrying the torch that captains like Monika Paige had held before and now passed on down to him through the ages.
Back in the saddle of his first home, Captain Reinarr was ready to once again meet the variety of challenges that came with the lofty and strict standards that being a member of the Patrol Fleet required of him.
Even two centuries past it, neither he nor his superiors had yet to forget the lessons that Earth had only begun to learn about when it came to the corruption of the law. The Fleet had laxed, somewhat, on their restrictions since the first generation of Patrol Fleet captains had been in service, but the penalties for breaking the rules, or bending them too far, were still just as high. For Dash Reinarr, those penalties seemed a lifetime away, and he intended to keep it as such.
Now free of the rings of Andoria, the U.S.S. Meridian slid into position ever so gently, her minute movements carefully calculated and edged to perfection, and prepared for her first voyage into the great unknown, that final frontier that, even now, explorers, spacers, and scientists still clung to and devoured like there was no tomorrow.
All lights, figuratively speaking, shone green for the little ship- Green for glory.
With a wink, stretching the stars around itself like a blanket, the Meridian and her crew vanished into the night.