The Captain at Work

[Cptn Corizon 0]

It had been a long night; a night filled with swirling details and overtly complicated calculations and planning. The man doing all of this work looked over to the half empty glass of lime-flavored water and the empty container of snack foods on his desk amid the pile of PADDs and datasheets.

 

Running his hands through his silvery hair he let out a long sigh; it had been nearly five years since he’d processed this much data and made calls that would effect entire worlds. And once again, this responsibility had been brought to his doorstep by the Dominion—some things it seemed never changed.

 

Ah-Windu Corizon looked over the finalized version of the plan he’d developed. After painstakingly combing over every detail Semil had given them, Corizon had developed a comprehensive plan to accomplish the goal of security in the region while maintain enough forces at Camelot to protect the Allied resources there against incursion by whomever decided to attack. It was a balancing act, one he’d done numerous times through the Dominion War.

 

The difference, however, was who the mission objective would benefit, at least in the short term. The objective itself was fairly easy: provide proxy security and stability across four sectors of the Dominion. At his disposal, Corizon had almost two-hundred Romulan vessels and another hundred Starfleet ships—the Klingons, and a handful of Federation vessels would stay behind at Camelot along with four Dominion attack cruisers to provide security for Camelot.

 

Three hundred vessels, Corizon reasoned, should be more than enough to secure five sectors of space. Of course, that would be if the ships were overly familiar with the area of space itself…which they weren’t. Granted, that was a positive of the mission—the Allies had a chance to explore a region of Dominion territory that they’d previously been disallowed to survey.

 

Sectors Alpha, Gamma, and Delta, as Corizon had labeled them, had been given to the Romulans to patrol and he’d left the micro-management of that to Admiral tr’Shaelon. That left sectors Beta, Omicron, and Epsilon to the Federation.

 

After some consideration, and several pots of coffee later, Corizon had opted to split the Federation fleet into what would essentially be four fleets, each led by one of the four Sovereign-class starships that were part of the Gamma Fleet. Patrol Group 1 would be led, naturally, by the Excalibur and would be dispatched to Beta Sector. Patrol Group 2 would be led by the Yorktown and would be dispatched to the Omicron sector. Patrol Group 3, fronted by the Lexington, would have the sparsely populated Epsilon sector. The fourth group, the Home Fleet, would be commanded by the Phoenix and would be charged with protecting Camelot Station.

 

Mostly, Corizon had left specific assignments to each of the Group commanders and had focused mostly the assignments of PG1. Consisting of just over thrity starships, Corizon had selected a mix of starships to comprise his group. The individual assignments of those ships had been the most tedious task; he had to balance the various factors and situations needed to secure the region against the various component factors.

 

For example, Captain Tain of the Jackson had more experience than any one perhaps in all of Starfleet with Classification R-1 lifeforms, which made his ship a natural choice for patrolling the area around Kobal Minor. But on the other hand, Captain Xx’in of the Nagara had a rather spotty record with amphibian species, such as those native to the Jaelio Cluster; but he was one of the few commanders Corizon had at his disposal who’d had any experience with unstable proto-stars like the one in the Jaelio Cluster, leading him to select the Nagara for that assignment.

 

The Excalibur’s assignment had come last. Corizon had at first given them a fairly easy assignment, but had changed his mind—he knew they could handle any thing that the galaxy threw at them, while other crews left doubt in his mind.

 

When Excalibur had finally worked its way onto his assignment docket, Corizon actually felt fairly optimistic about the lot they’d drawn. The Excalibur would patrol an area of space known as the Dauni Belt, which meant along with Prometheus-class Atlas they would be protecting roughly 15 inhabited star systems.

 

The initial plan was for a twelve-week deployment, at which time rotations would be made in the patrol route as needed. For the first few weeks, the Excalibur would be visiting the Newal system and the Kohabi Nebula.

 

Twelve weeks of patrol. Corizon took a deep breath and wondered if there was a vaccination for cabin fever. Probably not.