|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The USS Knight was a special built Sovereign class ship, intended from her initial design for a single mission -- to seek out the origins of the Borg, and to communicate that source back to the UFP, or if possible, to eliminate the threat of the Borg to all other sentient species. The major modifications to the Knight for this mission included:
The Knights' construction was overseen by the enigmatic Captain Guise, who himself was a repatriated Borged Terran. Guise was nonmaniacal about the initial mission -- in appearances, anyway. In fact, the mission was an elaborate cover for a mission to a rumored to possess the secrets of the hyperdrive used by the Borg, in the Gamma quadrant. Only Guise himself knew the nature of this original mission.
When the Knight passed through to the Gamma quadrant from the Bajoran Wormhole, she was secretly followed by Lt(jg) Howell Bridger, in the USS Mischievous, a prototype small spycraft under a specialized cloaking device. The presence of Bridger enabled the ship to survive the attack of multiple JemHedar ships, and to proceed to a prison planet where 800 Starfleet prisoners from five other previously captured ships were found and saved.
The Knight limped back to Federation space for six months of repairs at Starbase 515. However, Guise was relieved of command by his former protege, newly promoted Captain Sonali Bendre, and was forcibly removed to another Starship for transport back to Earth.
Bendre oversaw the initial refit of the Knight, and returned to Terra for special assignment while the ship was rebuilt. Every effort was made to rebuild the ship for maximum utility as a multimission craft. During the refit, the ship gained superior engineering spaces, improved combat auxiliary and special auxiliary craft carriage capacities, and a new Ten Forward, known now as the "best Starfleet entertainment and lounge facilities ever" by crew and others. With the deaths of many of her crew, others joined, especially survivors of the USS Independence, which had been destroyed less than six months before, when the Borg invaded Terra.
During this period, elements of the crew started a protest movement regarding the practices that had sent six Starships to doom or near-doom for 'reasons unfathomed', that culminated in the purge of Starfleet Command called the Borg-Gate.
Bendre returned to the ship, but was nearly killed by a progressive illness, and was transported back to Earth. She was replaced by Captain Benjamin Braxton, a veteran of several starship commands and an experience explorer, intelligence and military operations man. Braxton relaunched the Knight for several missions before the deadly encounter with the Lasfanta, a race which nearly destroyed the ship, and a UFP colony, before they agreed to a ceasefire and peace talks.
With the Knight badly beaten, Braxton returned her to Earth McKinley Station for the second refit in only a Terran year! At Earth, he left the ship in command of LCmdr. Howell Bridger, first as Chief Engineer, and later as Executive Officer. During the long stay at Earth, the Knight became embroiled in mysteries involving the strange chemical substance called kironide, a group of powerful telekinetic madmen later called the Psions, the Combine, a mysterious and deadly criminal cartel, and conspiracy within major branches of the the Starfleet and of a number of Starfleet materials and equipment providers. Events came to a head on The Blackest KNight, a day in which the Knight was threatened by multiple saboteurs and assassins, the city of Gur'Lev, Ukraine, became a terrifying battleground, and the Knight, JAG, and Intelligence invaded Starbase One itself!
In addition to events at Terra, half of the crew operated the USS Oriental, a ship which had been partially altered by the Borg, but repatriated, and then used as a testbed for a fusion of Borg and UFP technologies. The ship ran a test of concept voyage, and encountered enemies, not of the UFP, but of members of her crew.
With the death of the agent known as the Black Knight, and the arrest of former Knight XO Kel Temmin, and a new JAG Delta Grey level conspiracy investigation underway, the Knight was free to leave Terra on her new mission, as principal patrol ship of the critically important Venn Sector.
Her refit included the following:
The Venn Sector mission started with a whimper -- the relocation of key technologists and medical people to planets in the Sector, at the cost of the integrity of many of the ships systems. This done, things got worse, as several waves of mental maladies seemed to infect the Knight. One was caused by the manifestion of three noncorporeal beings who were eventually flushed into the ships power core. The second was the result of a vile test of something called the Mindwave Device, which was captured, but at the cost of the nearly the entire "White Mice" Marine force of the Knight.
Finally, the mission called Operation: Freewheel was started, by the resident Admiral M'Botha B. M'Benga. M as he is called, Chief of Psychological Warfare of Starfleet Intelligence, was officially teaching the many psis aboard the ship how to use their abilities. In fact, he was coordinating the multi-ship, multi-squadron effort to choke off illegal Combine/Psion trade activity throughout the core sectors of the UFP. This mission revealed the deadly and massive degree to which the UFP, as well as the Klingon and Romulan, merchant ship trade systems had been infested with enemy activities.
The Knight, carried embassys from Romulan and Klingon Empires, was thrust into combat with the ancient First Federation, over her "piracy" of FF ships carrying illegal trade goods. This battle resulted in the surrender of the Knight, and the the death of Captain Braxton and most of the Bridge crew! Acting Captain Bridger was found guilty of piracy by the First Federation envoy, but he and his ship were released, to continue her mission.
However, both FF and UFP ships were attacked by the fake merchant SS Fisher King, whose massive Neutron Cannon threatened to destroy all resistance. The Knight sent her entire security force onto the Fisher King, but they were still nearly destroyed. They were saved by the last minute appearance of a squadron of Romulan warships, summoned by Ambassador Yanek, a Romulan of ill repute, who was the ambassador aboard the Knight.
At the time of this writing, three great powers, all with wounded ships, are searching the wreckage of the Fisher King...and watching each other, carefully.
And... the Knight has been found to be infested with an apparently hidden race of sentient ratlike engineers, who cannot communicate in language, at all.
The ship is repairing extensive damage, and ongoing repairs will result in: