Miranda Class

Posted on Fri 9th Jun, 2017 @ 2:29pm by Colonel Horatio Drake & Commander Zachary Hunt

1,754 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: For The Uniform
Location: Deck 12: CO's Ready Room
Timeline: MD-01: 1400 Hours

Out of Character (Jamie): Guys, a bit of history here... I think it makes up some of the backstory to the ship itself!

Drake sat in his Ready Room, hunched over his computer like a child reading their first adventure book, hanging on every word. Starship design history had been one of his minors at the Academy - a subject scarcely taken by anyone. A case in point was that he was the second student in five years to undertake such a module. It bored many, even instructors, but Drake found it fascinating. To study, in detail, how developments of starship design and building came about. Most through necessity or experience - 'Necessity is the mother of invention', a quote that had stuck with him since those days.

He was refreshing himself on the history of the Miranda class, but not Starfleet's official history of the ship - he found these stale and impassionate. Instead, he preferred reading from people who loved design history. During his Academy days he had come across a civilian engineer who worked for Starfleet at Utopia Planetia for a number of years - Ernest Rubecker. He wrote entire books about starship development and design history. It was he whom Drake had turned to for his latest interest. He had just brought up a paper he had written as an introduction to book on the Miranda-Class roll bar classifications and variants. The paper was entitled, Miranda Class: A Brief History


In 2278, Starfleet decided that it needed to replace her ageing Poseidon class starships with a brand new Destroyer vessel, one which would have a similarly long life span within Starfleet and also serve as both a major tactical vessel and also to be a strong explorer vessel with major Multi-role capability. The design brief was then handed out across the Federation and over the next year, initial proposals began to arrive for what Starfleet had termed her “Future Multi-role Starship” Programme and by the deadline, Starfleet had fourteen separate options on her table. In the end however, the Advanced Starship Design Bureau elected to use a concept from the design company responsible for the original Poseidon class, Yoyodyne Starship systems and the clear design lineage was obvious to most who saw the new Miranda class, as she was termed. Indeed the design lineage was so clear, that the Klingon and Romulan Intelligence Services initially thought that Starfleet had merely refitted her older Poseidon class vessels.

Therefore in 2279, the design progressed to the next phase, where Starfleet’s Advanced Starship Design Bureau sat down with Yoyodyne and planned out intensively the Starships systems, spaceframe and internal arrangement and once the process was complete, the keel was laid at Starfleet’s Sherliosh Fleet Yards in orbit of Tellar Prime. The ship was finally ready for Fleet Trials after fifteen months of production and the USS Miranda was launched into some very extensive Trials, which fortunately for the designers, went very well.

The Miranda class was initially tabled for a production run of 32 vessels, over the course of 4 years and the design would continue to serve in Starfleet, being produced at a steady rate without refit until the early 2300’s, whereupon in 2311, when in the aftermath of the Tomed Incident, Starfleet elected that the Miranda class should undergo a major refit, improving her tactical systems and installing a new pair of warp drives and boosting her warp speed. Her sensors and interiors also got a major refit. This then enabled the Miranda class to continue into production for another fifteen years, by which time there were over 200 Miranda class vessels in production.

It was then that Starfleet realised the versatility of the Miranda class chasis and the readiness with which it could be produced by Federation Fleet Yards, which had been churning them out at a steady rate for over 40 years. This led to a large number of Miranda class variants coming into service, with them being converted to serve as anything from civilian and Starfleet operated Cargo ships (Anton class), to Medical ships (Phlox class) an enhanced Tactical variant (Reliant type) was even created to serve with Federation forces.

The Miranda class and her variants therefore came over the intervening years to be a common sight across the Federation and were a major target of foreign espionage, due to the fact that many Miranda class hulls which had never been completed were used as testbeds for specialist systems and prototypes. It was again as a result of rising hostilities with both the Cardassian Union and subsequently the Talarian Patriarchy lead to a number of small refits of Miranda class vessels, giving her a lot of new tactical systems, sensors, defensive systems and propulsion systems. This led to the existing Miranda class variants being continued in service well past the 2360’s, much longer than her designers had realistically hoped possible, despite her tabled shelf life of 120 years.

The 2nd Federation Klingon War and then the subsequent Dominion War lead to the loss of a large number of Miranda class and Miranda variant vessels, taking the total Miranda type vessels in service from nearly 400 to just 120. Many within Starfleet felt that the time had come to begin retiring the Miranda class, however, given the cost of replacing her with comparable vessels in the aftermath of such a long and sustained conflict, Starfleet elected instead to maintain the Miranda class in service. The Fleet Review of 2386 again caused into question the life of the Miranda class, most of the hulls of which were now coming up on their end of life expectancies. However instead of again retiring the Miranda class, Starfleet fitted her out with the latest power and data transfer systems, updated sensor and communications arrays, upgraded phaser arrays, new shield generators and a thicker layer of ablative armour. Her internals were also totally reworked as a result of the power transfer and computer upgrades needed to support the new systems, which enabled Starfleet Engineers to bring Miranda class vessels up to standard internally. Undoubtedly the upgrade programme begun in 2386 was the most ambitious ever embarked upon and some analysts predict that the comprehensive nature of the upgrades may enable the Miranda class to serve beyond her predicted shelf life, perhaps even for another thirty or forty years.


Drake rose and collected another coffee from the replicator, sitting back down he sighed a deep sigh. Despite the extensive refit programme of the Miranda class, there was only so much you could do with older ships - simply put, they were built for the technology of the time. You could throw in as much new technology and refits as you like, but in the end there was an inescapable fact... they would never work as well as ships designed for current technology. For that reason, and that reason alone, they would eventually be retired and that time was approaching faster than Starfleet cared the admit. The refit programme, despite what Rubecker says, was plagued with problems.

He tapped on the terminal to bring up the service history of the USS Bretagne. She was commissioned in 2312, meaning she was one of the first refit ships - improving tactical systems, warp speed and sensors. She would have been the envy of a lot of Captain's, Drake mused to himself.

Her Service Record has been fairly uneventful - a few skirmishes with some Klingon battlecruisers, one of which badly damaged her only a year after her commissioning, which put her back in spacedock for another six months. Her first Captain, T'Var, was with her from her commissioning to this date in 2313. It appears he left Starfleet shortly after this... was he the reason she was so badly damaged?
Her next Captain was Samantha Trisler, a human. She commanded her for the next one a half years... up until his disappearance in 2315.

She was on a routine patrol mission along the 'Klingon neutral zone' and simply disappeared. The neutral zone being officially abolished in 2293 by Chancellor Gorkon who needed a new peace between the two powers after the destruction of the Klingon Moon, Praxis, putting the Klingon homeworld in some degree of danger. Despite this abolishment, both Federation and Klingon ships regularly patrolled the area.

No distress call was ever received. An extensive search of the area, which last for four months, produced absolutely no results. There had been no abnormal readings to indicate some sort of spatial anomaly, no signs of a battle that could have led to her destruction... nothing. Eventually the Federation concluded that the Klingons or Romulans must have had something to do with it. Many decades later, when peace was cemented, Starfleet had asked the Klingon Empire about the Bretagne, as well as other missing historical ships - they confessed to having a hand in some, but had maintained that they had nothing to do with the disappearance of the Bretagne. After that the file was closed. The ships was still officially listed as 'missing'... that was, until now.

The chime sounded on the door, he had asked Hunt to report to him at 1400. "Come in".

Hunt was a couple of minutes early as he normally was. He never arrived late to anything, and always preferred to be early. That way he never missed anything. He walked into Drake's Ready room and raised a smile towards Drake.

"Ah Commander" He raised his mug and took a large gulp of the, now cold, coffee. "I want you to come with us to the Bretagne. It'll be a unique opportunity to study a piece of history. Besides, I think Winchester and Graves can handle Vanguard for a day or so?"

"I'm sure they'll manage as well, Sir. But do you think it's a good idea we both go?" Hunt questioned.

"I don't see why not - I doubt anything is going to come up that would require us both here. Besides... what could go wrong?" He almost grinned.

Drake launched into explaining the history of the ship, interjecting bits of the history of the class in between. He tried to keep his excitement at bay but hadn't felt this way in years. More importantly, his thoughts at Patrick had remained at bay for the past day - which was a miracle in itself.

"So, what do you think?"

Hunt smiled, seeing very little point in objecting... what's the worst that could happen?

 

RSS Feed

Comments (1)