The Watchtower-class space station Starbase Twenty-Five in orbit of Dengella II
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The Watchtower-class space station Starbase Twenty-Five in orbit of Dengella II |
| Classification: | Class 1-A Spaceborne Starbase | ||
| Name: | Starbase Twenty-Five – Temperance | ||
| Registry Number: | NCC-6057 | ||
| Class: | Watchtower | ||
| Type: | Free-floating/orbital sector command starbase with Class 2 docking facilities. | ||
| Commissioned: | 13th September 2220, Stardate 2220.7 | ||
| Builders: | Starfleet Corps of Engineers |
| Overall Diameter: | 849.0 Meters | ||
| Overall Height: | 921.0 Meters | ||
| Mass: | 20,000,000 Metric Tons | ||
| Decks: | 250 | ||
| Crew Capacity: | 2,400 | ||
| Max. Evacuation Capacity: |
61,500 |
| Officers: | 425 | ||
| Enlisted Personnel: | 1,975 | ||
| Marines (During war-time): | 1,200 |
| Mark 7 Travel Pod: | 15 | ||
| Mark 1 Workbee: | 35 |
| Mark 12B Shuttlecraft: | Twelve |
| Mark 17B Shuttlecraft: | Six | ||
| Zodiac-class Warp Shuttle: | Three | ||
| Type S-10 Travel Pod: | Twenty-four | ||
| Type S-2 Work Bee: | Fifty |
| Manasu-class Standard Shuttle (Dockport): | Twelve | ||
| Chisu-class Light Shuttle (Dockport): | Eight |
| Type-4/S-19 Shuttle: | Twelve |
| Atai-class Warp-Sled Shuttle (Dockport): | Eight |
| Aquatic Encasement: | Zero | ||
| Cargo Pod: | Four | ||
| Cargo Pod (Light): | Four | ||
| Communications Module: | Four | ||
| Fuel Module: | Four Hundred | ||
| Impulse Module: | Eight | ||
| Manipulaton Module: | Eight | ||
| Medical Pod: | Four | ||
| Micro-Warp Nacelles: | Eight | ||
| Passenger Pod: | Four | ||
| Phaser Module: | Eight | ||
| Photon Torpedo Module: | Four | ||
| Research Module: | Four | ||
| Sensor Array Module: | Eight | ||
| Survey Module: | Eight | ||
| Tow-Hitch Module: | Four | ||
| Tractor Beam Module: | Four | ||
| Warp Sled (Tai-class): | Eight, as part of Atai-class |
| Main Power: | One Mark IX Matter/Antimatter Reactor rated in total to 729 Cochranes | ||
| Auxiliary Power: | 10 Deuterium/Tritium Fusion Reactors | ||
| Batteries: | 12 Cold Fusion storage cells |
| Sensors: | OC1042C short range, very high resolution sensor suite mounted in a sensor pod located at the top of the administration/operations center of the station. OC1311L very long range, medium resolution sensor suite mounted on a retractable, swivel-jointed sensor dish located below the lower hull bulge at the bottom of the station. Capable of utilising eight independently-operated high-frequency sensor channels simultaneously. |
| Twelve Venusian Agusta Ansadado, Inc. model Zeus-D Class-4 phaser units mounted in twelve banks of one each, with six (6) located equidistantly around the dorsal surface of the upper disc and six (6) located equidistantly around the lower hull bulge at the bottom of the station, giving a 720° firing arc (360° xy + 360° z). | |
| Twelve Terran Asakaze Ordnance Systems Ltd. model JAKA-9 Type VI defensive phaser units mounted in twelve banks of one each, with six (6) located equidistantly around the dorsal surface of the upper disc and six (6) located equidistantly around the lower hull bulge at the bottom of the station, giving a 720° firing arc (360° xy + 360° z). |
| Twelve Andorian Skat-Rar Weapons Systems Mk 9 Mod 2 torpedo tubes mounted in twelve banks of one each, with six (6) located equidistantly around the dorsal surface of the upper disc and six (6) located equidistantly around the lower hull bulge at the bottom of the station, giving a 720° firing arc (360° xy + 360° z). |
| Personnel (6-person): | 16 | ||
| Evacuation (22-person): | 10 | ||
| Cargo (non-sentient traffic only): | 20 |
| 12 emitters mounted on the lower hull docking ring, one for each docking arm (both fixed and extendable). 4 emitters mounted within the enclosed docking bays to pull ships inside the station. |
| Main Computer Core: | Duotronic DII unit mounted on Deck 10, Central | ||
| Backup Computer Core: | Duotronic DII unit mounted on Deck 100, Central | ||
| Interface System (Standard): | Library Banks Information Retrieval System (LBIRS) v10.9 | ||
| Interface System (Technical): | Dynamic Access Memory Interface Technique (DAMIT) v12.4 | ||
| Data Transfer Rate: | 250 kiloquads/second |
| High Resolution: | 2.0 light year | ||
| Medium to Low Resolution: | 9.0 light years |
Starbase 25 1 was built adjacent to Ferasan 2 space in a sector that had seen no less than four attempts through the 2170s 3 to conquer or destroy Earth by the extremely warlike felinoid species.
The Earth-Ferasan Wars 4 were finally ended by the Treaty of Sirius 1 in 2179 3 under which terms of surrender the Ferasans were allowed to keep possession of their twelve original colony worlds in exchange for the total disarmament of their navy with the sole exception of armed police ships 1.
The Federation subsequently expanded around and past the Ferasan Patriarchy 4, leaving a swath of territory around its limits as “buffer space”, but still did in effect totally envelop the now smaller interstellar nation. Unarmed Ferasan ships were freely allowed to come and go through Federation space and their police ships were permitted to escort their own ships to their destinations for local defence against pirates. However, since the police ships were so little threat a swarm of them were needed to offer sufficient deterrent. The Ferasans thus evolved swarm tactics and their space was full of the only type of warship they were still allowed to possess. The Federation’s Starfleet was itself charged with maintaining the defence of the Patriarchy from bigger threats.
Far from becoming friends with the U.F.P. the Ferasan species collectively began to carry a massive chip on their shoulders and caused as much trouble for the Federation and its Starfleet “enforcers” as possible. Their police ships began hassling Federation merchant ships and member species’ planets, and even other species’ vessels transiting Federation space. Often, the Ferasans pushed this hassling to the point of causing an incident with protector vessels that Starfleet would then be forced to rescue them from under the terms of the surrender treaty.
This situation was further exacerbated by the few Ferasan warships that managed to escape the Star Fleet and refused to accept their government’s unwilling surrender. These ships caused so much chaos in the sector that a K-series space station was constructed in the Dengella star system from which to base anti-raider forces. These succeeded in bringing the last warships of the Ferasans to heel, but did not in any way contribute to changing the course of Federation-Ferasan relations. In fact, it came to be seen by the Ferasans as a symbol of Federation "oppression" – that of denying the Ferasans their rightful place as masters of the galaxy and everyone else as their prey.
So hated did this station become that in 2215 a swam of “disaffected” Ferasan police ships supported by various pirate and mercenary vessels attacked and succeeded in wrecking Station K-3. Their actions were grudgingly repudiated by the Ferasan government, but it was obviously a diaphanously thin gesture of mollification for the Federation which none in the Patriarchy believed to be sincere, not least those uttering the repudiations. This led to a hardening of Federation resolve, and the construction of a far more capable and protected starbase in the same location.
In this way the Patriarchy and its surrounding sectors has remained a hotbed of tension and simmering grudges, and is a diplomatic nightmare for the U.F.P. whose requests for good behaviour are given lip-service by the Ferasan government before being promptly ignored.
Apart from its own internal and self-created strife, this sector has been largely left out of galactic politics and recent climactic events such as the General War 5, the Metar Crisis 6, the Federation-Klingon Front, and the I.S.C. War of Pacification 5. However, current events have a resurgent Klingon Empire attempting to reassert itself by creating client states around the Federation’s periphery for its own advantage and a general return to the glory days of the 2260s.
To this end, both the Gorn and Ferasans have been approached with overtures of alliance and military co-operation 7. Federation citizens of particularly those worlds within the Patriarchy’s sphere of influence have welcomed the potential shift in the burden of protection to the Klingons, with whom the Federation is pursuing a long-term goal of lasting peace. However, more conservative observers are seeing history repeat itself with a slide in Klingo-Federation relations to the Bad Old Days of the 2260s, and are alarmed that the Klingons could create a legitimate ally within Federation territory. This would allow Klingon and Klingon-allied shipping right of passage through heavily-populated Federation space, to say nothing of negating the Treaty of Sirius and re-establishing the Ferasan Patriarchy as an interstellar military power in its own right.
The prospect of a rearmed and grudge-bearing Patriarchy allied with a once-again increasingly belligerent Klingon Empire is causing a great many sleepless nights in the Federation halls of power, and efforts are being made to extend whatever olive branches of friendship and trade to both the Ferasans and Klingons that may be accepted.
The year 2215 T.C.E. (Terran Common Era) saw the wrecking of Deep Space Station K-3 by “disaffected” Ferasan police ship captains and the mixed bag of pirates, renegades, and mercenaries of other species they’d gathered to their cause. However, far from forcing the “hairless apes” and their allies into backing off from Ferasan space and out of Ferasan affairs – and thus opening the sector to unrestricted pirating and raiding – this act of slaughter and destruction on top of decades of raiding and harassment only brought renewed determination on the part of the Federation to bring their purportedly defeated foes to heel.
Primary among the efforts to be brought to bear was the construction of a new, more powerfully armed and better protected starbase in place of the wrecked border outpost and trading station, and a larger and more capable sub-fleet to be attached to it to defend the station and police the region. The volatile nature of the region of space it was to be constructed in despite it being the Federation “interior” meant that the base’s clientele both civilian and Starfleet was more prone to being attacked and damaged, and the self-sustaining ability to protect and repair them was high on the list of requirements for the new base. This is why the new Watchtower-class 8 design was chosen: its self-reliant nature and ability to internally house the ships that visit it fit the bill perfectly.
Starbase 25 was one of the first Watchtower-class space stations built. Constructed in under five years 9 and being declared operational in 2220, Starbase 25 itself orbits the to-that-point uninhabited world of Dengella II 10. Initial surveys had revealed the world to be rich in minerals and teeming with wildlife and a dizzying array of predators that fed on it. Several Starfleet colonial bases were set up on promising mining sites and the starbase itself was built out of materials mined from Dengella II. These mining colonies then supported the colonisation of various small areas of the planet’s surface and over the next fifty years several fair-sized towns grew up. The planet is now called home by some two million inhabitants in seventeen large towns and cities spread over its ten continents, but at the time of Starbase 25’s construction only several thousand Starfleet personnel lived there on a permanent basis.
Once completed, the primary mission of the new Starbase 25 and its contingent of Starfleet vessels was to restore and then maintain law and order in the Ferasan sector. To this end fully a half-dozen Sho'kath 11-class fast attack craft, four brand new Mikasa 12-class frigates, two Kovaris 13-class destroyers, and a Shan'Kahr-class light cruiser were home-ported at Starbase 25 to flood the region with their stabilising presence.
The Kusanagi-class frigate U.S.S. Sprite approaches the Watchtower-class Starbase Twenty-Five in orbit of Dengella II |
It took the better part of three years to achieve, but Starbase 25 and its ships were able to state “Mission accomplished” after a 98% drop in successful pirate heists of civilian shipping and raiding of colonies and homeworlds. The citizens of Delta, Aaamazara, Arbazan, Zaran, Rhandar, and even Sauria slept more soundly, and the colonists on worlds dotting the starscape between them could put their lasers back in their armouries and away from under their pillows.
At times seen as heavy-handed, this was an unfortunately necessary reaction to the Ferasan proclivity for testing Starfleet’s peacekeeping resolve, which the Ferasan government then used to further inflame their populace against their Federation “jailers”. Starbase 25 and its ships are fully up to the task, however, and a relatively peaceful stalemate ensued over the next fifty years.
Further to this, Starbase 25's subFleet was expanded past its Interdiction role and imbued with a Logistical element to give it a Monitor role. The initially-assigned four Sherman and four Independence-class small freighters served the colonies in the area diligently and well while being escorted by a Mikasa class frigate. As the colonies grew in both scale and number, a Ptolemy-class fleet transport/tug was assigned to the base in 2260, specifically to serve the long-established and now industrialised worlds like Izar.
During that half century Starbase 25 has been used as a major supply stop for exploratory efforts to the galactic coreward. It has supported the further colonisation of several planets in the region such as Izar, Beta VI, Berengaria VII, and Tyberia. It has been the final port of call of starships exploring the unclaimed space around and past the First Federation and Metron Consortium, and space between the extent of claimed Federation, Gorn, and Romulan territory. However, as the Federation's frontier is pushed ever outwards and new bases are completed further out, Starbase 25 is having these responsibilities shifted from it and her role is increasingly tied to the security, support, and development of long-extant and recently-established colony worlds. Her primary role however, as always, remains to keep an eye on and hold in check the rambunctious and deadly Ferasan Patriarchy.
With the threat from the Patriarchy permanently kept in check by being limited to police ships, Starbase 25's 2220s-vintage sub-fleet was only been minorly upgraded in the interim even while the base's computers, shielding, defensive weaponry, and sensor systems were steadily upgraded to keep up with the times. With the fleet-wide upgrade to New Technology between the late-2260s to early-2280s, however, new ship classes and their crews came to call Starbase 25 home.
Over the course of thre 2270s the smaller vessels of Starbase 25's garrison were replaced one-for-one by New Technology Class Two space craft. One Lewis & Clarke-class courier, and five Asmodeus and four Black Swan-class corvettes were assigned in place of the fast attack craft and frigates. The Class One destroyers and light cruiser were replaced by three new Class One Okinawa-class frigates. No heavier vessels were deemed necessary to keep the Ferasans in line, but should they be needed they could be called upon. Instead it was envisaged that more small patrol craft may be required and finally, they were becoming more available.
Additionally, a Fisher-class light transport/tug was assigned to Starbase 25 in the late 2270s as the Ptolemy-class home-ported there was pulled in for refitting to Phase II standards, with increased protection and greater speed. When the Ptolemy returned to service however, the Fisher-class stayed.
All this changed however when the Ferasans attacked Starbase 25. Coming after nearly sixty years of relative peace, complacency had settled in and the attack came as a complete surprise 14. In the aftermath Starbase 25's interdiction role was firmly re-established, and now included active patrols of Ferasan space itself to ensure no illegal shipyards had been constructed to allow the Ferasans the re-generated ability to build larger warships.
To this end the base's subFleet was boosted defensively, replacing losses amongst the smaller vessels and assigning more Class One ships of a heavier nature. Starbase 25 now hosted a scout, a superscout, several destroyers, and a strike cruiser as the flagship of subFleet 25.
As expected, both the Ferasans and the Federation Council's own Pacifist Bloc cried foul, but with the evidence of the past 100 years before them those cries fell on deaf ears. Until the Ferasans themselves negotiated in good faith for a genuine end to hostilities and commited to reigning in their own rhetoric and recalcitrant captains, this was the whirlwind they had reaped.
Predictably, tensions in the sector once again rose, and as a direct result of this incidents began occurring almost daily. They were mainly of a minor nature, with most never coming to an exchange of fire, but incredibly frustrating for the Federation side as a new wave of raiding and harrassment of shipping and nearby worlds began. Intercepting Ferasan ships before they made a nuisance of themselves necessitated the inspection of every ship encountered, with inspections carried out via high-powered scanning and even boarding and physically checking cargo holds against manifests. As expected this did not endear Starfleet or the Federation to a whole new generation of Ferasans, but Starfleet had never stopped regarding the Ferasans with anything but wariness and frustration.
These activities did not stop with the crises that came thick and fast elsewhere in and around the Federation from the 2280s onwards; were Starfleet to let up at all, the Ferasans would take great advantage of such preoccupation. The Ferasans did not cross the line and attack Starfleet ships, installations, or Federation worlds, but within that boundary Starfleet and the Federation had no influence on Ferasan activities. Nothing short of declaring war on the Ferasans again and demolishing their entire military to force another, even more restrictive surrender treaty on them would make an impression.
And so to this day the crews of Starbase 25 and her ships enforce the peace, fortunately more like police than soldiers, but every day there is something that requires an "arrest". The Ferasans show no signs of obeying the spirit of the Treaty of Sirius, only its letter, and with the new contact with the Klingons, Starbase 25's ships now have to contend with Imperial Nacy warships making courtesy calls to their prospective ally – through some of the most densely populated colonial space the Federation has.
There is unfortunately no end in sight to this situation as the only viable solution is too final and unpaletable to those involved. As such, all that can be done is to hope that the Ferasans change their viewpoint, but with them refusing to talk to Federation diplomats except having been forced there at the end of phaser, the outlook for reconciliation and a lasting peace is bleak.
This article uses many entities from many sources, all included in my corner of the Star Trek universe because I like them enough to include them in it. However, I think it is past time these entities were credited to the people who created them in whatever form they take.
If you come down here from a note link from the article above, please click on the underlined note titles below to take you back to the section you came from.
1. Starbase 25
Star Trek: The Animated Series episode 'The Slaver Weapon'.
2. Ferasan
'Star Trek Online' species designed to take the place of Larry Niven’s Kzinti species as referenced in the TAS episode mentioned in 1. above.
3. Earth-Kzin Wars occurring in the 2170s
Sulu’s line that the Kzinti were disarmed “200 years ago” places the last of four Earth-Kzin wars as ending about 4 years after Zephram Cochrane’s first Warp Flight. Earth doesn’t even have space fleets at this point in canon Trek. Thus I am altering Sulu’s line to “100 years ago” and placing the Earth-Kzin Wars in the 2170s, after Earth establishes a significant space presence.
4. Earth-Ferasan Wars
Retconned as per 2. & 3. above to switch the Kzinti to the Fearans.
5. General War & I.S.C. War of Pacification
© Armarillo Design Bureau (A.D.B.), Star Fleet Battles, Basic Set §, & Module C2 – New Worlds II § R13.0 – The Interstellar Concordium, with timeframe & events modified for my own universe.
6. Metar Crisis
© 2000 14° East & Interplay, 'Star Trek: New Worlds'.
7. Klingon overtures to Gorn & Ferasans
Precursors to the Gorn and Ferasans becoming part of the Klingon Empire as per Star Trek Online.
8. Watchtower-class space station
© 2005 Masao Okazaki, The Starfleet Museum, for TOS Novel ‘Vanguard: Harbinger’, as a modificaton of his original J-class station.
9. Watchtower-class construction timeframe
© 2005 TOS Novel ‘Vanguard: Harbinger’ by David Mack.
10. Dengella II as the location of Starbase 25
© 2013 TOS Novel ‘Allegiance in Exile’ by David R. George III.
12. Sho'kath-class fast attack craft
Scottish Andy modification (minor mesh reworking, rescaling and minor texture modification) of a model by [Moonraker with textures by Rick Knox a.k.a pneumonic81 a.k.a p81, Ganymad, & DuctTapeWonder]? from original Texas-class old light cruiser (F-CL) design by Armarillo Design Bureau for their tabletop game Star Fleet Battles.
12. Mikasa-class frigate
Scottish Andy modification (major mesh reworking and moderate texture modification) of a model by [Moonraker with textures by Rick Knox a.k.a pneumonic81 a.k.a p81, Ganymad, & DuctTapeWonder]? from original Burke-class design by Armarillo Design Bureau for their tabletop game Star Fleet Battles.
13. Kovaris-class destroyer
© 1988, 1991 Guenther & Sofia, 'Ships of the Star Fleet – Volume One (2290-91)', pp9, § State of the Fleet, sub-§ Destroyers.
14. Ferasan attack on Starbase 25
Courtesy of my good friend Adrian Jones at U.S.S. Sheffield NCC-1976 / Star Trek: The Interim Years.