Back in the days when Romulans were reclusive, Uniforms came in only one color, and the Ambassador-class ruled the final frontier, the ASDB set out to design a new class of Explorer that would lead the Federation into the 25th century. Two main schools of design inside the ASDB proposed somewhat differing visions of what this ship should be; =Bureau A= had already submitted the New Orleans and Nebula classes and hoped to build upon their current success with the Galaxy-class Explorer. Galaxy would utilize much of the technologies that =Bureau A= had already developed for their previous designs, such as nacelle & navigational deflector design and saucer section warp field dynamics, enabling the relatively straightforward development of Starfleet�s new top ship.
The other frontrunning concept came from =Bureau B=, which decades before had designed the Excelsior-class, and currently was contributing on the development of the Akira. Their Explorer design, dubbed the Sovereign-class, would be a groundbreaking ship in almost every way, featuring an all-new nacelle system, the largest M/ARA ever conceived, and a return to the sleek profile that had so romanticized the starships at the turn of the century.
In the end, TPTB ruled for design work on both to continue, though it was clear that the Galaxy was the favorite. By the 2350s, design work on both classes had been finalized. Galaxy was a vessel of enormous (some said oversized) volume whose systems, designed two decades earlier, were already proving themselves on the New Orleans-class frigates serving in the Cardassian War and the first Nebula-class starships off the line. Sovereign, on the other hand, was a much more compact ship with slightly less internal volume than her Ambassador-class elders, a smaller crew, and sadly, technologies that still existed only on paper. Galaxy was given the nod, and Sovereign put on an indefinite hiatus pending the testing of her technologies on the forthcoming smaller designs with a lower resource risk attached to them, such as the newly announced Nova and Intrepid-classes.
Sovereign nearly died entirely in the months that followed. Much of her design team, longtime lobbyists for her production, was transferred to participate in the classified Starfleet project that would later come to be known as Project Prometheus. Cease-fire with the Cardassians had unfortunately led to a cutback on the Federation�s shipyard network, and thus following some rather persuasive pleas from shipyard stationmasters throughout the Federation, it was decided that the four Sovereign-class spaceframes already planned for be constructed as a make-work project to ease the coming reassignments and closures on the engineers there. Only the first two hulls, APQ71550 and APQ71551 were fully completed by the time the project was killed prematurely in 2359, with APQ71552 nearly finished and APQ71553 still in infancy. They were towed intact to the Starfleet materiel depot in the outer Betelgeuse system, where two months later a wayward depot patrol drone suffered a malfunction and crashed into the secondary hull of APQ71551, punching a large hole in the weblike frame and severely damaging the ship.
It is here that the tale of the Sovereign-class takes a somewhat nefarious turn. As the Delors Commission on Starfleet Secrecy is now uncovering, Starfleet�s knowledge of the Borg before first contact with the collective in 2365 was far from as incomplete as it was previously thought. Based upon reports from refugee races believed to have originated in the Delta and Beta Quadrants, Starfleet had already opened a portfolio on the race so highly classified that most Admirals did not know of it. Led by several high-ranking Starfleet officers, most notably the late Vice Admiral J.P. Hanson, a top secret committee had already embarked upon an intelligence operation to determine the nature of the collective in the 2350s and possibly earlier. A special dispensation was granted to at least one non-Starfleet vessel, the USS (previously SS) Raven, to conduct studies in the name of Starfleet on this apparently deadly race, and the portfolio swelled in the years leading up to the Borg strike on Romulan and Federation colonies near the Neutral Zone in 2364. It was after this incident that the committee unanimously agreed to begin military preparation for the Borg without the knowledge of the Federation government. The still-defunct Sovereign-class was decided upon as a suitable testbed, as its enormous powerplant enabled it to support far more experimental weaponry than any other ships the committee had easy access to. Mysteriously, it was logged by the Betelgeuse depot controller that the damaged hull APQ71551 had been broken up with the approval of Admiral Hanson for usage in the refit of half a dozen Wambundu-class vessels. Actually, the ship was quietly slipped to the top secret Starfleet Skunkworks where work began immediately on first repairing the spaceframe damage and then completing construction.
With a hundred of the fleet�s best engineering minds working on APQ71551, work progressed quickly and efficiently. By May of 2365, the hull was nearing completion and the warp core was installed. The first practical Quantum torpedo was also finished that month, and engineers elected to install a magazine and launcher for these new weapons above the captain�s yacht. The USS Enterprise�s contact with the Borg in System J-25 that summer only redoubled the efforts to build the ship. Starfleet began an �official� plan for a military response to the Borg shortly thereafter, but even the engineers working on the Defiant-class development project had no idea several parsecs away another Borg-buster was taking shape.
The following winter saw a rebirth for the three remaining Sovereign-class starships. Successes in the Sovereign-style warp engines used in the quietly restarted Prometheus development project and the Bio-neural computers of the Intrepid-class coupled with increasingly hostile surroundings led to the restarting of the Sovereign-class development project. It was hoped the class could, in the words of the Federation Council�s attach� to Starfleet, �supplement our existing frontline Galaxy and Nebula-class explorers with a new buddy with some more teeth, some more advances and some more attitude.� The three spaceframes were transferred from Betelgeuse to the San Francisco Fleet Yards where construction resumed. Seven more Sovereign-class keels would be lain in the aftermath of Wolf 359. The Quantum Torpedo was unveiled and its technologies partly-declassified shortly thereafter, and were soon integrated into the Defiant project and various refits of existing torpedo launchers that were on the books.
Six years later, things were not so rosy for the starships Sovereign, Churchill and Avalon (formerly APQ71550, APQ71552 and APQ71553). Supply problems had set the project back, and in order to meet the September 1st deadline that the Federation Council had demanded, work halted on the Avalon and Churchill entirely in order to concentrate on the USS Sovereign. But tragedy struck that spring, when a Work Bee laced with trilithium resin exploded in the Yards, destroying the starships Solkar and Dar-es-Salaam, severely damaging the Sovereign, Janerin Falls, Cortez and Thovus, and killing 85 yard engineers, including noted starship designer Adam Laurie. Dominion sabotage was suspected. A quick survey revealed that work on the Sovereign had been delayed at least eight months, and although the Federation Council rescinded the deadline in light of the events, a intense feeling of disappointment swept through command, whether grounded on a sense of personal failure with the class or the compromise to the Federation�s security, for with every Dominion encounter, the UFP moved ever closer to a horrible war. Suffice to say, it came as a surprise when on the morning of July 17th, an unmanned Sovereign-class ship entered orbit of Earth. Quickly identified as APQ71551, the ship was outfitted with an insanely disproportionate amount of weaponry, including half a dozen torpedo launchers and Type XII phasers ripped straight from a retired starbase. Engineering crews jumped headfirst into refitting the rather bizarre vessel to standards closer to her stablemates while sheepish admirals began to help unravel her backstory. Much of the weaponry was stripped and replaced by handovers from another partially completed Sovereign, although some ship-specific weapon enhancements remained and would serve this particular vessel well later on. Other items quickly stuffed in were science and diplomatic facilities APQ71551 notably lacked. After a three-month makeover, the champagne was broken over the bow of a ship not named Laurie, as expected, but the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-E.
Under the command of noted Starfleet captain Jean Luc Picard, the Enterprise left spacedock on the eight anniversary of the launch of his previous command, the Enterprise-D. Her first mission: what was to be the 18-month class shakedown usually undertaken by the prototype ship. Though the bar in Eleven-forward was still only partly completed and Enterprise carried a reduced crew of only 400 that hardly befitted a new flagship, the return of an Enterprise to Federation space was met with an optimism alien to this period of Federation uncertainty. The Sovereign launched six months later, followed by the Avalon and Churchill in the new year.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Yep. Eleven Forward is clearly marked on the semi-official cutaway poster drawn by Rick Sternbach around the time of First Contact. (I've got a copy hanging in my room.) Doesn't have quite the same ring, I know...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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