USS Sovereign
The USS Sovereign is the first of her class and has been instrumental both to the success of the Sovereign class line of starships and and to Starfleet and the Federation as a whole.
The Sovereign began development in 2365, intended to be the successor of the (still-recent) Galaxy class as the next great exploratory flagship design of the Federation with the latest and most advanced technologies and features available to Starfleet. However following first contact between the Federation and the Borg in late 2365 between the USS Enterprise-D and a Borg cube in deep uncharted space and the calamitous Battle of Wolf 359 that followed the next year, Starfleet would shift it's entire policy of starship design towards defense and the Sovereign-class design was subsequently altered to reflect this, being design with more powerful shields, phasers, photon torpedos, bio-neural gel packs and life support systems, whilst also becoming a testbed for experimental systems such as a regenerative shield system, quantum torpedos and even phased plasma torpedos later on. The legendary emgineer Montgomery Scott would be the lead in designing this new class and has been credited with much of the class's success.
By June 2370 the Sovereign was launched. Unfortunately, initial testing of the Sovereign's new additions to its defensive and offensive systems proved disappointing. Design flaws in the regenerative shields caused phase synchronization instabilities in the graviton polarity generators powering the upgraded shields while the enhanced deflector system, which was upgraded with a new gravimetric distortion package, required extensive amounts of power that caused a drain on other essential systems. Compared to Starfleet standards, this was deemed too inefficent and the Sovereign was sent back to the Mars shipyards for storage and design reference. Despite the failure of the regenerative shields however, two anti-Borg design technologies would bceome the baseline to which others were compared: the regenerative shields on the Prometheus-class and the Defiant-class ablative armor. By 2372 however, many of the Sovereign's issues would be fixed thanks Montgomery Scott and his team, who returned to iron out these issues. Furthermore, Scott would remain aboard the Sovereign and serve as her chief engineer.
In 2373, the Dominion War would erupt, throwing the known Galaxy into chaos. The Sovereign would be hastily pulled out of mothballs to bollster the fleet and was assigned Captain George Sanders as her commanding officer. Scott would remain as cheif engineer throughout the war as well, only leaving the position after the war's conclusion. Throughout the war, the Sovereign and her crew would serve with distinction, proving the Sovereign class's worth time and time again, especially in it's more combat oriented roles compared to previous ship class, often turning the tide against Dominion forces where older ships struggled.
Despite the war, the Sovereign would still perform several research missions for Starfleet, including recording data of the black hole designated 024 Gamma and would be assigned to the Maelstrom in 2374 for extensive research of the area. This experience in the region would prove useful to the ship later on.
After the end of the Dominion War, the Sovereign would return to mothballs, with Captain Scott once again leading his team into invetigating how to implement the regerative shield system. While incremental progress was made, Scott and his team were eventually assigned to other projects and forced to leave the Sovereign's issues on the backburner.
In 2378, the Sovereign would undergo it's most pivitol and defining mission. Within the area known as the Maelstrom, a star known as Vesuvi, in a forboding preulude to Hobus years later, was destroyed, wiping out it's entire system and all of the Federation colonists there whilst spreading damage and danger across the entire region. In response, Starfleet sent the Sovereign under temporary command of Jonathan Soto, with an escort of two Klingon Bird-of-Preys to it's headquarter in the region Starbase 12 where she was slated for a massive refit, after which she would be assigned a new command crew and tasked with investigating the star's destruction alongside the USS Enterprise-E. On the final stretch of the voyage however, she was attacked by Romulan Warbirds who mistakenly believed that the destruction of the Vesuvi Star was the test-firing of a Federation weapon and that the two Sovereign-class ships were part of a Starfleet effort to claim the Maelstrom. During the attack, the Sovereign suffered minor damage but was saved by the USS Dauntless. She was later escorted to Starbase 12 by the USS Zhukov.
With the refit completed, the crew of the Dauntless was transferred to the Sovereign, begining with a shakedown cruise aimed to finally solve the ship's regenerative shield issue and then to further the investigation into the Vesuvi incident by entering and investigating the dust cloud left behind by the incident that no other ship was capable of moving through without serious damage. The shakedown proved a success and the Sovereign would proceed with its mission with the aid of lieutenant commander Data who was assigned aboard as a special advisor. However they would soon find that the Vesuvi incident was not a natural event.
As the Sovereign continued its investigation, rogue Cardassian forces under the command of the zealous Legate Matan who did not accept the outcome of the Domion War instigated numorous escalating attacks across the region against almost all non-Cardassians, utilising a mothballed war-era fleet that had not been utilsed for that conflict. Worse, the Sovereign would discover Matan had allied with the then unkown Kessok, manipulating them into aiding their cause by building powerful hybrid Kessok-Cardassian ships. As the Sovereign closed in on finding the answers to the cause of the Vesuvi incident on a desolate world in the Alioth system where it discovered a device thought of Kessok origin, Matan declared war against the Federation, forcing the Sovereign to retreat to Starbase 12 and leave commander Data behind.
The Sovereign would fight across all major battles of this conflict, now known as "Matan's Rebellion", destroying numerous Cardassian starships and stations, including the fabled Litvok Nor, as well rescuing numorous Federation ships, stations and facilities, the most notable being the crew of the USS Dauntless, the former posting for the Sovereign's bridge crew and many others onboard, just before it's destruction and the defense of Starbase 12 from explosive filled remote controlled freighters.
Eventually, after successfully brokering an alliance between the Klingons and Romulans with the help of Ambassador Salek of Vulcan, the Sovereign would return to the Alioth system, defeat the Cardassian prescense there and rescue commander Data, who then revealed that the device found on the planet was indeed Kessok and is used to regulate the fusion in a star, but tampering and misuse resulted in an accident, causing the Vesuvi star to go nova.
With this critical new information, the commander of Starfleet forces in the Malstrom Admiral Alice Liu ordered the Sovereign along with the USS Geronimo and USS San Francisco to hunt down and destroy any other of these probe devices that could be out there. After destroying two other probes, the Sovereign soon faced a turning point in the conflict when it encountered an unshielded Kessok heavy cruiser at Belaruz I whose captain was willing to speak with Starfleet. Despite initial difficulties with the universal translator, the crew of the Sovereign, using commander Data as an intermediary, were able to finally form a dialogue with the Kessok and establish peaceful first contact. The Kessok captain, Neb-lus, revealed to the crew of the Sovereign that the probes were actually solar-forming platforms designed to reform suns to make a star system more hospitable for colonization and that the Cardassians under Matan had convinced the Kessok that the Federation and it's allies were hostile invaders. Horrified to learn that the Cardassian's had lied and betrayed them, captain Neb-lus promised to help stop Matan and convince his people of the truth.
This act set the stage for the conflict's endgame. Intelligence provided by the Klingons and Romulans indiated that the final solarformer was orbiting the sun of the Omega Draconis system which was the site of a new Kessok colony. The Cardassians however had activated large tachyon emitters, preventing communications and warp travel in the system. The Sovereign would join in a final assault as part of a joint Federation-Klingon-Romulan-Kessok task force, including the USS Enterprise, against the last of the Cardassian forces that controlled the system Omega Draconis. During the battle, the Sovereign was able to establish communications with the Kessok colony at Omega Draconis III and, with help from Captain Neb-lus, informed them of the Matan's betrayal. The Kessok forces defending the colony promptly joined with the allies in defeating the Cardassians left in the system, all but guaranteeing victory against them and ending Matan's war.
Despite this however, the vengeful Matan, in fury over his loss announced that he would destroy the Omega Draconis star and unleashed the last of his hybrid ships to keep the allied forces at bay while he attempted to do so. Sovereign was able slip out of battle and pursed Matan to the system's star, finding the last solarformer in orbit and under Matan's control. Sovereign battled Matan in his Keldon class flagship, modified with a stolen Romulan cloacking device, all whilst having to handle the strain of the star's heat and radiation.
Ultimately, the Sovereign disabled Matan's ship and was able to wrest control of the solarformer away before it could destroy the star., disabling both it and Matan's ship. With his ship's engines disabled, the crew of the Sovereign was unable to rescue Matan due to interference from the star and his disabled ship drifted into the star's Corona and burned up. With the battle won and the conflict over, the victorious Sovereign joined with the Enterprise and a Kessok cruiser in orbit of the Kessok colony where Captain Picard had been able to open proper negotiations with the Kessok goverment. Picard personally congratulated the Sovereign's captain on the pivitol role they played in resolving the crisis, awarding them with a commendation for their service, as well as informing them that diplomatic relations with the Kessok would be opening soon and noting his belief that the Sovereign would now be heard of prominently in the future.
With the crisis over and Commander Data returned to the Enterprise, the Sovereign would remain in the Malestrom for several months, aiding in relief and cleanup operations as well as continuing diplomatic work with the Kessok, to which it became the key decisive factor, thanks to the crew's leading expereince with the Kessok people, in ensuring the permanent establishment of a lasting peace treaty that remained in effect for decades until 2412, when the Kessok formally joined the Federation.
The Sovereign would leave the Malestrom in 2379, playing a role in defeating rogue Tal Shiar forces under the command of Admiral Arai during the Unity Starbase crisis and would then embark on a five year exploratory mission across the Alpha and Beta Quadrents. In 2382 The USS Sovereign would discover the long lost world of Alphard IV using a mysterious alien device known as the "Dvantia" Artifact. Previously obscured by a massive energy cloud, Alphard IV was impassable for millennia but with help from the artifiact, the Sovereign was able to dissipate the anomaly and investigate the lost world, revealing the ruins of a massive ecumenopolis. The planet remains a literal treasure trove to archaeologists to this day.
In 2384, the Sovereign's five mission ended and it returned to Earth for crew rotations and an overhaul as part of Admiral Picard's efforts to use Federation fleets to evacuate Romulus and Remus of their peoples due to to increasing danger of the Hobus star threatening to go supernova. Before this overhaul was completed however, the Sovereign was called to an automated distress call sent by a Federation fleet gathered in the Gamma Serpentis star system by Admiral Jelico that were facing a supposedly hijacked prototype ship, the USS Protostar. Upon arriving however, the Sovereign immediately fell into a trap, as did other responding Starfleet ships. The Protostar had been booby-trapped with an artifical construct by inividuals from a species known as the Vau'Nukat. This device was able infiltrate Starfleet computer systems and take control of them. Through this, the device had gained control of the fleet and had them fire on each others with the intent to have them destroyed whilst trying to attract more Starfleet ships to infect. Sovereign was infected by the virus and was forced to contribute to the chaos.
Sovereign thankfully survived due to the actions of the Protostar's motley young crew of escaped scavengers who had originally found and recovered the ship afrer it and it's Starfleet crew had disappeared, sacrificing the Protostar itself and the construct onboard while they escaped in a shuttle. However, Sovereign had been severely damaged along with most of the fleet in what was one of the most devastating incidents to Starfleet since the Dominion War. It and most of the fleet was towed to shipyards above Andoria, as the Utoia Plantia facility was almost entirely geared towards creating or retrofitting ships for the Romulan evacuation. This would take the Sovereign and many other damaged hips off the project while they were repaired and, inadvertently, allowed them to escape the destruction when the tragedy of attack on Mars occurred a year after, instigated by a rogue of the Tal Shiar that had, similarly to the construct, hijacked the synthetic workforce and Martian defense grids. The Sovereign would return to full service within half a year, and was assigned with aiding displaced Romulans and Remans on worlds along the Federation-Romulan border before and after Romulus was destroyed.
Sovereign would aid in this mission for two years before returning to an exploratory mission lasting eight years. In particular, Sovereign would map out much of former Imperial Romulan worlds that had remained unknown to the Federation for years, as well as Deep Space exploration of the outer Alpha Quadrent, taking Sovereign across the whole length of explored territory. In this time, the Sovereign would make several new first contacts. However, with tensions with the Klingon Empire rising due the increasing infiltration by Undine infiltrators, Sovereign would be called back to the Federation and assigned to patrol along the Klingon border.
The Sovereign would fight against Klingon forces in the war of 2405 to 2410, assigned to the 2nd fleet. In 2406, it and the fleet defended Deep Space K-7 and Sherman's planet against multiple attacks, ensuring that the system remained in Federation hands. Following the Undine attack on the Sol system in early 2410, the Sovereign was assigned as part of a permanent picket guarding Earth Spacedock. As a result, the Sovereign was present at the climatic "Battle of Midnight", at Earth at the end of the Iconian War. The Sovereign defended Earth Space Dock while Alliance forces were able to enact a plan that brought about a ceasefire by the Iconians and their withdrawal.
The Sovereign continued to protect Earth Space Dock for several years, before being rotated out by the USS Justice. The Sovereign is currently on an exploratory tour of the Gamma Quadrent.
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