Continuation of Policy.
The meet was set a week later. John picked Charon V, world way out of the way, as the site. Cheron V has something of a sad history in the Federation. In the 2160s, it was the home port of the Rei Karansu during the Earth-Romulan War. A then massive fleet of 250 Romulan ships based at the planet came closer than anyone ever has to conquering my home. It took five years of brutal, unrelenting warfare in space until the combined forces of United Earth, Vulcan, Andoria and Tellarite were able to defeat 81 Romulan ships above this ruined world, and the victory they won cost almost as much as defeat.
"You ever read about the Battle of Charon?" Dan Beckenridge asked me during the shuttle ride. I shook my head.
"Our cousins were there, the MACOs. Not at Charon, but at the Vela Gap."
I asked him to explain what he meant.
"In that war, the MACOs didn't have a lot to do. With the way starships were built then, and the kind of weapons they used, like Thunderflash missiles and Mothra bombs, boarding action wasn't ever a possibility. The old UE-Starfleet didn't want 'military' aboard their ships, so the MACOs made like the Royal Marines and manned the guns and turrets of the United Earth Stellar Navy, something like a cousin to the modern-day Starfleet."
Dan continues his story. Clearly, this important not only to him, but the FMC. "Commodore Archer's Task Force Eagle was 24 ships strong. The four remaining NX's, Enterprise, Atlantis, Challenger, Avenger, and a few Warp Deltas, a couple Daedalus, old beaters like that. It was the largest single force the UE-Starfleet had ever committed to a single operation. And they had to take on sixty-five Romulan ships at Charon alone, and anywhere from 40-80 an hour or so away at warp. Suicide, right?"
I nodded. Even if I don't know anything about space battles, 24 vs 65 is bad odds for anything.
"Our MACO cousins and the UESN thought so too. So, they sent everything they had left to take the heat off Archer. Task Force Raven. Fifty ships in all, the largest fleet Earth had ever put together, Starfleet or Stellar Navy. All under the command of Captain Tara Shields, the only woman to win the Star Cluster."
I can hear the pride in Dan's voice, but the look on his face goes cold when I asked how many of Raven's ships made it home for the victory lap.
"Three. UES Stephen Harper, UES John Diefenbaker, and UES Vengeance, Shields' ship. And the poor girl had to be towed home by Enterprise, as if that wasn't humiliating enough. There were no tractor beams back then, so it was three little titanium grappler cables about ten inches thick dragging 300 000 tons of duranium and tritanium at warp 5. Damn miracle the Vengeance didn't break up on the way home."
I've seen the Vengeance. She's got a berth at the Starfleet Museum on Luna, right beside Big Iron herself, NX-01 Enterprise.
She's ugly as sin compared anything Starfleet built, basically a long cylindrical tube stuck between a pair of old-style warp nacelles, looking almost like a dagger if you were to look at the ship from the top-down perspective. And because she was a ship built for war, not peace, she had no windows on her silver and black hull, three dual-barrel laser turrets that like the guns of old battleships on the sea, a long rifle tube for her thunderflash missiles, and you can't mistake her for being built for anything other than war.
I ask Dan if he thinks this meeting we're heading into on Charon V is a war. I'll never forget how he answered, with another oft-maligned proverb.
"Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, 1832, Kingdom of Prussia, Earth. War is the continuation of policy by other means."
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