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Description
Recommended BGM: "One Last Message" by Andrew Lockington - www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-_13Z…

1. Introduction
As with my previous submission, what you see here is not my own work. The design of this starship was done by based on parts created and made available by and is a reworking of one of ’s earlier works, the U.S.S. Archer (NCC-2755), which can be seen here: fav.me/d1xa27b as well as her counterpart from the alternate reality of the J.J. Abrams-directed movie franchise, which can be seen here: fav.me/d28zfug Also, an upgraded version of the ship that’s been refitted with a Miranda-class “roll bar” mounting twin mega-Phaser emitters and a Photon Torpedo pod can be seen here: fav.me/d5ok7ab

Of course, “Star Trek” itself is the creation of Gene Roddenberry and the many talented men and women who worked with him. The vast majority of my ideas are based on the board game “Star Fleet Battles” by the Amarillo Design Bureau and its computer-game incarnations, “Starfleet Command”/“Starfleet Command II: Empires at War” published by Interplay, with some mechanics borrowed from “Star Trek: Legacy” published by Bethesda Softworks. The design of the Archer-class is directly inspired by that of the Enterprise NX-01 from “Star Trek: Enterprise,” which was done by Doug Drexler and was ultimately based on the Akira-class warship designed for “Star Trek: First Contact” by Alex Jaeger of Industrial Light and Magic. Some of the Resilient’s technical specifications are based on numbers from the “U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701A Deck Plans: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition” published in 1992 by David Schmidt.

(This is why the ship’s speed ratings, which are meant to be largely identical to those of a late-2280’s refitted Constitution-Class Heavy Cruiser, are expressed in “Transwarp Factor” units and given in numbers matching the old, pre-TNG warp factor system, before the upper limit of Faster-Than-Light travel was firmly established as Warp Factor 10 and before the word “transwarp” got its modern association with the Borg transwarp conduits and slipstream travel. The “Transwarp” referred to here, as in “Transwarp Factor 8.9,” has more to do with the pseudo-“transwarp” that Starfleet tried to achieve in the U.S.S. Excelsior (NX-2000) trials of the late 2280s as shown in the 3rd feature film.)

The characters of Captain M. Lucius Sun, his counterparts M. Demetrius and M. Tobias, his adopted gynoid sister Lt. Cmdr. Sakura Sun, the concept of the Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta alternate realities, my WW2 Germany-influenced version of the Terran Empire, the Starfleet Resistance and the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) herself all belong to me and are part of a metaseries of “Star Trek” fan fiction ideas that I had been plotting out since I was in high school (but sadly never found the opportunity to write down). Many of these ideas are still in flux even now; in fact, I had barely decided on the Resilient’s final name and ship class until about two weeks ago in mid-December.

2. The Terran Empire's Multiverse Classification System
Before going into detail about the U.S.S. Resilient, I’ll need to introduce the four different alternate realities involved in my ideas so to avoid confusion. My plot lines ultimately involved a multiversal conflict between four alternate versions of the “Star Trek” universe. Three of them have Federations and can be thought of as “good” universes, but one of them can be thought of as “evil” – a Mirror Universe where the noble United Federation of Planets didn’t exist but was instead replaced by the ruthless Terran Empire and the entire moral center of “our” universe has been reversed. Here are their descriptions in a nutshell:

Alpha-Universe: This universe is only mentioned in passing and we’ll never see many of the events that happen there; it mostly exists for background exposition. The second “good” universe attacked by the Terran Empire, several characters and a ship or two from this universe fall into the Delta-Universe through an accident, setting up the events of the Delta-Universe story arc. It is based on the Prime Reality, and therefore has the smaller ships and “lower” technology of the classic “Star Trek” films.

Beta-Universe: This universe is the home of the villainous Terran Empire. It is based on a J.J. Abrams version of the TOS-era Mirror Universe, but boasts a more stable, more ambitious and far more powerful Terran Empire that traces its roots to a victorious Nazi Germany in a twisted parallel timeline where the Axis won WW2 – and then Germany turned on its erstwhile “allies,” uniting the Earth under one ruler. Because this is a J.J.-Mirror Universe, the ships are significantly larger and technology is far more advanced, allowing this Terran Empire to invade multiple alternate universes at once with the goal of conquering its heroic Federation counterparts.

Gamma-Universe: This post-apocalyptic universe, like the Alpha-Universe, was based on the Prime Reality, boasting weaker ST:TMP era ships and technology. The first universe to be subjected to the full force of a Beta-Universe assault, it was overrun and conquered by the Terran Empire. The Federation is gone, Earth is under occupation and Starfleet has been reduced to a shattered remnant as the handful of ships that escaped the Terran onslaught fled to the borders to form a resistance movement. The Terrans are currently stationing a large bastion of forces in the Gamma-Universe and using it as a “marshaling yard” to organize attacks against other universes. If their ambitions are to be stopped, the Gamma-Universe *must* be freed. The U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) and her crew come from this universe.

Delta-Universe: The second-most technologically advanced of my four alternate universes after the Beta-Universe, this parallel reality is based on the universe of the J.J. Abrams reboot movies including “Star Trek (2009),” “Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013),” and the IDW comic series “Star Trek: Countdown,” “Star Trek: Nero,” and “Star Trek: Ongoing” but possibly excluding the upcoming video game (as I disagree with its portrayal of the Gorn and would have to find a way to explain it), combined with elements from the “Star Fleet Battles” board games and the “Starfleet Command/Empires at War” computer games. It is the third alternate universe to be attacked by the Terran Empire, but because of an incident that caused ships from the Alpha-Universe and the wreckage of a Terran Empire starship from the Beta-Universe to appear in the Delta-Universe, the Starfleet of this reality was better prepared to resist. The Delta-Universe is the main universe where my fan fiction ideas take place. The main cast and ship come from this reality.

In the fiction, the terms “Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta” are explained as being part of a universe-classification system developed by the Terran Empire in the Beta-Universe when they began studying alternate universes to develop their plans for multiversal conquest. The Greek letters are actually the first part of a multi-character code designation that’s designed to compare universes to each other according to how similar they are. For example, in the Terran system, any “Mirror Universe” that has a Terran Empire instead of a United Federation of Planets would be marked as a “Beta” universe. But the Terrans refer to their own reality as “Beta-A0001” while a slightly different universe might be termed “Beta-A0002” or “Beta-A0012” depending on how different they are. Likewise, the Prime Reality (the “Star Trek” franchise minus the J.J. Abrams productions) would have been marked as an “Alpha” universe, as my Alpha-Universe is very similar to it.

3. A Brief History of the Gamma-Universe
For the most part, the history of the Gamma-Universe was fairly similar to what we see in the Prime Reality from “Star Trek: Enterprise” through “Star Trek: The Original Series,” “Star Trek: The Animated Series” all the way through to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” However, it is in the Movie Era that things will begin to diverge. Captain M. Lucius Sun, like his extradimensional counterparts, is born on October 17th, 2253 (making him a Libra in the Western Zodiac) and enters Starfleet Academy in 2269 at 18 years old, joining the active fleet in 2273 with a posting to the U.S.S. Concordia ( fav.me/d4y7yed ), eventually transferring to the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) as helm officer after completing his first five-year tour of duty in 2278.

However, things would not stay quiet for long. Unbeknownst to the Gamma-Universe Starfleet, their reality had already been targeted by the Terran Empire of the Beta-Universe for invasion. Even in the 2270s, the Terrans had been able to exploit regions of space that had become dimensionally unstable through unknown means, opening rifts into the Gamma-Universe and slowly beginning an insidious plan to capture starships from the Gamma-Universe and replace them with their counterparts from the Beta-Universe. These infiltrators then began to surreptitiously destabilize political relationships between the Federation and its neighbors by committing a string of war crimes, eventually resulting in the outbreak of a quadrant-wide General War by 2283. After allowing the war to flare for nearly seven years, the Terrans finally struck in 2290, sending a Leviathan-class mothership and a whole armada through rift-space en masse. The resulting invasion was fast and devastating. Starfleet, already weakened through over half a decade of war on multiple fronts, was quickly overrun; resistance was all but futile, as the Terran ships were so large and technologically advanced that even the smallest Terran vessel was easily powerful enough to simultaneously engage three Federation ships of the same hull class.

The Federation quickly began to collapse under the Terran assault as system after system fell to the ruthless extradimensional invaders. Within a year and a half, the vast majority of Starfleet had been wiped from existence as the Terrans systematically destroyed major starbases and hunted down any ship larger than a heavy cruiser – the only ships in the fleet they determined to pose a real threat to any of their vessels. The brutality and swiftness of the invasion was appalling; no prisoners were taken, no lives were spared. Under the leadership of Admiral James Tiberius Kirk from the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701), the remaining squadrons of the First, Third, and Fifth fleets amassed near Alpha Centauri for one final stand against the Terran war machine in a desperate hope that Earth – the last of the Federation homeworlds – might have time to prepare an evacuation. The Battle of Alpha Centauri, an engagement that Starfleet survivors would henceforth only refer to as “The Slaughter” or “Doomsday,” happened on April 15th, 2292 and resulted in the systematic elimination of the Starfleet remnants – including, tragically, Admiral Kirk and the Enterprise, which was lost with all hands.

However, Kirk’s death would not entirely be in vain. Alpha Centauri had been chosen as the site of the battle because the Terrans’ newest Rift Station had been built there. The Enterprise went down in a kamikaze run against the station, crippling the facility and causing its equipment to go haywire, further destabilizing the local region of space and causing the Terran attackers to be temporarily pulled out of the Gamma-Universe and trapped in Interphase. Kirk’s heroic sacrifice had exposed a crucial weakness to the Terran Empire’s military technology and – more importantly – opened a pathway to escape for the handful of Starfleet ships that survived the battle. With more Terran ships closing in from other nearby Imperial garrisons and an assault fleet already on its way to Earth, the Starfleet remnant had no choice but to abandon their beloved homeworld, split up to avoid easy detection and flee for the treacherous regions in the Badlands and along the former neutral zones. There, the surviving stragglers slowly began to find one another and band together, recouping their losses and seizing whatever assets they could find. By 2293, these small flotillas, scattered all over what were once the Federation border regions, had eventually coalesced under the charismatic, strong-willed captains of their strongest ships – the few remaining Light and Heavy Cruisers – and formed the nuclei of the defeated Federation’s one last hope: the cells of the Starfleet Resistance.

One of these cells – the Resilient Cell – was formed and led by none other than M. Lucius Sun. The intrepid helsman had taken command of U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) when his captain was killed in her chair and along with one other cruiser, three destroyers, two frigates and a corvette, made a desperate dash for the Badlands. They ultimately found a safe haven in an asteroid field near this treacherous region, discovered and refurbished a long-deactivated asteroid Starbase, and prepared to fight back.

4. What is a "Heavy Cruiser?"
The Starship Resilient is classified as a “heavy cruiser,” like her larger stablemate, the refit Constitution Class starships (with whom she shares many of her components). But what is a “heavy cruiser?” It should be noted that the 23rd century Starfleet is organized largely along the lines of terrestrial navies of Earth’s World War 2 and takes particular influence from the U.S. Navy, the British Royal Navy, and the German Kriegsmarine of the time. It also uses the U.S. Navy’s old system of ship designations and class names such as “CL/Light Cruiser,” “CA/Heavy Cruiser” or “BB/Battleship.” (In reality, these designators are taken from the “Star Fleet Battles” board game and “Starfleet Command” computer game, which WERE based on WW2 U.S. Navy policies.)

The “heavy cruiser” ultimately traces its roots to the seafaring Sixth-Rate Frigates (using the old British rating system) of the Great Age of Fighting Sail that reached the height of their development between the 17th and 19th centuries. These vessels, which could carry up to 38 or even 44 cannons (in some specially reinforced designs), were considered too small to sail in the main “line astern” battle formations with the massive Ships of the Line carrying 74 to 100+ guns that formed the greatest hitting power of the sailing fleets. However, they served a myriad of other purposes. Swift, maneuverable, long-ranging and independent yet still large and heavily armed compared to anything that wasn’t a ship-of-the-line, the Frigate became known as a “cruising warship” as it was frequently sent out to sea on missions including raiding enemy commerce, exploration, power projection and maintaining a presence in foreign ports, interdicting smugglers and reconnaissance for the large ships-of-the-line; during fleet battles, the frigates acted as dispatch and rescue vessels, sailing along the line of battle relaying messages from commanding admirals, towing damaged ships-of-the-line out of harm’s way and rescuing wounded sailors. Occasionally, they would even engage in battle themselves.

The sixth-rate frigate eventually gave way to a new class of “cruising warship” – the light and heavy cruisers. Classified by their armament – light cruisers carried “lighter” guns while the larger, more reinforced heavy cruisers could carry “heavier” 8- to 10-inch guns – and, by WW2, generally built to a legal upper limit of 10,000 tons’ displacement by restrictions set during the Washington and London Naval Disarmament Treaties, they increasingly formed the backbone of the naval fleets of the great nations as they could achieve most of the aims of a warship under deployment, but were far less costly to man or crew than the massive dreadnought battleships. In wartime, they were prized for their considerable armament, impressive speed and long range, as they could outfight what they couldn’t outrace and outrun what they couldn’t outfight, and their roles were as varied as ever. They escorted carrier battle groups and convoys, performed reconnaissance by stalking enemy capital ships, fought submarines to protect friendly trade, interdicted enemy trade, transported vital cargoes, blockaded enemy positions and supported troop landings. Some particularly famous heavy cruisers – the three sisters of the German Deutschland/Lutzow-class – were designed to be the ultimate high-speed, high-power commerce raiders. Built with massive battleship-grade 11-inch guns in two triple-turrets, they were feared by the British Navy and earned the nickname “pocket battleships.”

In the Starfleet era, the term “cruiser” was brought back with the advent of the NX-class in the 2150s beginning with the first Warp Five starship, “Enterprise (NX-01)” under Captain Jonathan Archer, to describe a new generation of medium-sized, long-ranged vessels. Smaller, easier to mass-produce and less expensive to man and supply than the enormous battleship-type designs that formed the upper end of Starfleet ship construction, yet still powerful enough to provide effective force projection and spacious enough to accommodate facilities and systems to perform almost any job Starfleet could require of them from diplomacy to exploration to border protection and military deterrence, they quickly gained a reputation for being the “ideal” starship. The cruisers of the modern Starfleet still bear the CL/Light and CA/Heavy designations of their WW2 forebears and still have many of their same characteristics, while pushing the definition and capabilities of this legendary class into the final frontier.

(To be continued in Part 2, where we'll discuss the legendary career of Captain Sun and the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) and the role they play in the tale of the Starfleet Resistance's fight to overthrow the Terran Empire.)

Description
Recommended BGM: "One Last Message" by Andrew Lockington - www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-_13Z…

1. Introduction
As with my previous submission, what you see here is not my own work. The design of this starship was done by based on parts created and made available by and is a reworking of one of ’s earlier works, the U.S.S. Archer (NCC-2755), which can be seen here: fav.me/d1xa27b as well as her counterpart from the alternate reality of the J.J. Abrams-directed movie franchise, which can be seen here: fav.me/d28zfug Also, an upgraded version of the ship that’s been refitted with a Miranda-class “roll bar” mounting twin mega-Phaser emitters and a Photon Torpedo pod can be seen here: fav.me/d5ok7ab

Of course, “Star Trek” itself is the creation of Gene Roddenberry and the many talented men and women who worked with him. The vast majority of my ideas are based on the board game “Star Fleet Battles” by the Amarillo Design Bureau and its computer-game incarnations, “Starfleet Command”/“Starfleet Command II: Empires at War” published by Interplay, with some mechanics borrowed from “Star Trek: Legacy” published by Bethesda Softworks. The design of the Archer-class is directly inspired by that of the Enterprise NX-01 from “Star Trek: Enterprise,” which was done by Doug Drexler and was ultimately based on the Akira-class warship designed for “Star Trek: First Contact” by Alex Jaeger of Industrial Light and Magic. Some of the Resilient’s technical specifications are based on numbers from the “U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701A Deck Plans: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition” published in 1992 by David Schmidt.

(This is why the ship’s speed ratings, which are meant to be largely identical to those of a late-2280’s refitted Constitution-Class Heavy Cruiser, are expressed in “Transwarp Factor” units and given in numbers matching the old, pre-TNG warp factor system, before the upper limit of Faster-Than-Light travel was firmly established as Warp Factor 10 and before the word “transwarp” got its modern association with the Borg transwarp conduits and slipstream travel. The “Transwarp” referred to here, as in “Transwarp Factor 8.9,” has more to do with the pseudo-“transwarp” that Starfleet tried to achieve in the U.S.S. Excelsior (NX-2000) trials of the late 2280s as shown in the 3rd feature film.)

The characters of Captain M. Lucius Sun, his counterparts M. Demetrius and M. Tobias, his adopted gynoid sister Lt. Cmdr. Sakura Sun, the concept of the Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta alternate realities, my WW2 Germany-influenced version of the Terran Empire, the Starfleet Resistance and the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) herself all belong to me and are part of a metaseries of “Star Trek” fan fiction ideas that I had been plotting out since I was in high school (but sadly never found the opportunity to write down). Many of these ideas are still in flux even now; in fact, I had barely decided on the Resilient’s final name and ship class until about two weeks ago in mid-December.

2. The Terran Empire's Multiverse Classification System
Before going into detail about the U.S.S. Resilient, I’ll need to introduce the four different alternate realities involved in my ideas so to avoid confusion. My plot lines ultimately involved a multiversal conflict between four alternate versions of the “Star Trek” universe. Three of them have Federations and can be thought of as “good” universes, but one of them can be thought of as “evil” – a Mirror Universe where the noble United Federation of Planets didn’t exist but was instead replaced by the ruthless Terran Empire and the entire moral center of “our” universe has been reversed. Here are their descriptions in a nutshell:

Alpha-Universe: This universe is only mentioned in passing and we’ll never see many of the events that happen there; it mostly exists for background exposition. The second “good” universe attacked by the Terran Empire, several characters and a ship or two from this universe fall into the Delta-Universe through an accident, setting up the events of the Delta-Universe story arc. It is based on the Prime Reality, and therefore has the smaller ships and “lower” technology of the classic “Star Trek” films.

Beta-Universe: This universe is the home of the villainous Terran Empire. It is based on a J.J. Abrams version of the TOS-era Mirror Universe, but boasts a more stable, more ambitious and far more powerful Terran Empire that traces its roots to a victorious Nazi Germany in a twisted parallel timeline where the Axis won WW2 – and then Germany turned on its erstwhile “allies,” uniting the Earth under one ruler. Because this is a J.J.-Mirror Universe, the ships are significantly larger and technology is far more advanced, allowing this Terran Empire to invade multiple alternate universes at once with the goal of conquering its heroic Federation counterparts.

Gamma-Universe: This post-apocalyptic universe, like the Alpha-Universe, was based on the Prime Reality, boasting weaker ST:TMP era ships and technology. The first universe to be subjected to the full force of a Beta-Universe assault, it was overrun and conquered by the Terran Empire. The Federation is gone, Earth is under occupation and Starfleet has been reduced to a shattered remnant as the handful of ships that escaped the Terran onslaught fled to the borders to form a resistance movement. The Terrans are currently stationing a large bastion of forces in the Gamma-Universe and using it as a “marshaling yard” to organize attacks against other universes. If their ambitions are to be stopped, the Gamma-Universe *must* be freed. The U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) and her crew come from this universe.

Delta-Universe: The second-most technologically advanced of my four alternate universes after the Beta-Universe, this parallel reality is based on the universe of the J.J. Abrams reboot movies including “Star Trek (2009),” “Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013),” and the IDW comic series “Star Trek: Countdown,” “Star Trek: Nero,” and “Star Trek: Ongoing” but possibly excluding the upcoming video game (as I disagree with its portrayal of the Gorn and would have to find a way to explain it), combined with elements from the “Star Fleet Battles” board games and the “Starfleet Command/Empires at War” computer games. It is the third alternate universe to be attacked by the Terran Empire, but because of an incident that caused ships from the Alpha-Universe and the wreckage of a Terran Empire starship from the Beta-Universe to appear in the Delta-Universe, the Starfleet of this reality was better prepared to resist. The Delta-Universe is the main universe where my fan fiction ideas take place. The main cast and ship come from this reality.

In the fiction, the terms “Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta” are explained as being part of a universe-classification system developed by the Terran Empire in the Beta-Universe when they began studying alternate universes to develop their plans for multiversal conquest. The Greek letters are actually the first part of a multi-character code designation that’s designed to compare universes to each other according to how similar they are. For example, in the Terran system, any “Mirror Universe” that has a Terran Empire instead of a United Federation of Planets would be marked as a “Beta” universe. But the Terrans refer to their own reality as “Beta-A0001” while a slightly different universe might be termed “Beta-A0002” or “Beta-A0012” depending on how different they are. Likewise, the Prime Reality (the “Star Trek” franchise minus the J.J. Abrams productions) would have been marked as an “Alpha” universe, as my Alpha-Universe is very similar to it.

3. A Brief History of the Gamma-Universe
For the most part, the history of the Gamma-Universe was fairly similar to what we see in the Prime Reality from “Star Trek: Enterprise” through “Star Trek: The Original Series,” “Star Trek: The Animated Series” all the way through to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” However, it is in the Movie Era that things will begin to diverge. Captain M. Lucius Sun, like his extradimensional counterparts, is born on October 17th, 2253 (making him a Libra in the Western Zodiac) and enters Starfleet Academy in 2269 at 18 years old, joining the active fleet in 2273 with a posting to the U.S.S. Concordia ( fav.me/d4y7yed ), eventually transferring to the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) as helm officer after completing his first five-year tour of duty in 2278.

However, things would not stay quiet for long. Unbeknownst to the Gamma-Universe Starfleet, their reality had already been targeted by the Terran Empire of the Beta-Universe for invasion. Even in the 2270s, the Terrans had been able to exploit regions of space that had become dimensionally unstable through unknown means, opening rifts into the Gamma-Universe and slowly beginning an insidious plan to capture starships from the Gamma-Universe and replace them with their counterparts from the Beta-Universe. These infiltrators then began to surreptitiously destabilize political relationships between the Federation and its neighbors by committing a string of war crimes, eventually resulting in the outbreak of a quadrant-wide General War by 2283. After allowing the war to flare for nearly seven years, the Terrans finally struck in 2290, sending a Leviathan-class mothership and a whole armada through rift-space en masse. The resulting invasion was fast and devastating. Starfleet, already weakened through over half a decade of war on multiple fronts, was quickly overrun; resistance was all but futile, as the Terran ships were so large and technologically advanced that even the smallest Terran vessel was easily powerful enough to simultaneously engage three Federation ships of the same hull class.

The Federation quickly began to collapse under the Terran assault as system after system fell to the ruthless extradimensional invaders. Within a year and a half, the vast majority of Starfleet had been wiped from existence as the Terrans systematically destroyed major starbases and hunted down any ship larger than a heavy cruiser – the only ships in the fleet they determined to pose a real threat to any of their vessels. The brutality and swiftness of the invasion was appalling; no prisoners were taken, no lives were spared. Under the leadership of Admiral James Tiberius Kirk from the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701), the remaining squadrons of the First, Third, and Fifth fleets amassed near Alpha Centauri for one final stand against the Terran war machine in a desperate hope that Earth – the last of the Federation homeworlds – might have time to prepare an evacuation. The Battle of Alpha Centauri, an engagement that Starfleet survivors would henceforth only refer to as “The Slaughter” or “Doomsday,” happened on April 15th, 2292 and resulted in the systematic elimination of the Starfleet remnants – including, tragically, Admiral Kirk and the Enterprise, which was lost with all hands.

However, Kirk’s death would not entirely be in vain. Alpha Centauri had been chosen as the site of the battle because the Terrans’ newest Rift Station had been built there. The Enterprise went down in a kamikaze run against the station, crippling the facility and causing its equipment to go haywire, further destabilizing the local region of space and causing the Terran attackers to be temporarily pulled out of the Gamma-Universe and trapped in Interphase. Kirk’s heroic sacrifice had exposed a crucial weakness to the Terran Empire’s military technology and – more importantly – opened a pathway to escape for the handful of Starfleet ships that survived the battle. With more Terran ships closing in from other nearby Imperial garrisons and an assault fleet already on its way to Earth, the Starfleet remnant had no choice but to abandon their beloved homeworld, split up to avoid easy detection and flee for the treacherous regions in the Badlands and along the former neutral zones. There, the surviving stragglers slowly began to find one another and band together, recouping their losses and seizing whatever assets they could find. By 2293, these small flotillas, scattered all over what were once the Federation border regions, had eventually coalesced under the charismatic, strong-willed captains of their strongest ships – the few remaining Light and Heavy Cruisers – and formed the nuclei of the defeated Federation’s one last hope: the cells of the Starfleet Resistance.

One of these cells – the Resilient Cell – was formed and led by none other than M. Lucius Sun. The intrepid helsman had taken command of U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) when his captain was killed in her chair and along with one other cruiser, three destroyers, two frigates and a corvette, made a desperate dash for the Badlands. They ultimately found a safe haven in an asteroid field near this treacherous region, discovered and refurbished a long-deactivated asteroid Starbase, and prepared to fight back.

4. What is a "Heavy Cruiser?"
The Starship Resilient is classified as a “heavy cruiser,” like her larger stablemate, the refit Constitution Class starships (with whom she shares many of her components). But what is a “heavy cruiser?” It should be noted that the 23rd century Starfleet is organized largely along the lines of terrestrial navies of Earth’s World War 2 and takes particular influence from the U.S. Navy, the British Royal Navy, and the German Kriegsmarine of the time. It also uses the U.S. Navy’s old system of ship designations and class names such as “CL/Light Cruiser,” “CA/Heavy Cruiser” or “BB/Battleship.” (In reality, these designators are taken from the “Star Fleet Battles” board game and “Starfleet Command” computer game, which WERE based on WW2 U.S. Navy policies.)

The “heavy cruiser” ultimately traces its roots to the seafaring Sixth-Rate Frigates (using the old British rating system) of the Great Age of Fighting Sail that reached the height of their development between the 17th and 19th centuries. These vessels, which could carry up to 38 or even 44 cannons (in some specially reinforced designs), were considered too small to sail in the main “line astern” battle formations with the massive Ships of the Line carrying 74 to 100+ guns that formed the greatest hitting power of the sailing fleets. However, they served a myriad of other purposes. Swift, maneuverable, long-ranging and independent yet still large and heavily armed compared to anything that wasn’t a ship-of-the-line, the Frigate became known as a “cruising warship” as it was frequently sent out to sea on missions including raiding enemy commerce, exploration, power projection and maintaining a presence in foreign ports, interdicting smugglers and reconnaissance for the large ships-of-the-line; during fleet battles, the frigates acted as dispatch and rescue vessels, sailing along the line of battle relaying messages from commanding admirals, towing damaged ships-of-the-line out of harm’s way and rescuing wounded sailors. Occasionally, they would even engage in battle themselves.

The sixth-rate frigate eventually gave way to a new class of “cruising warship” – the light and heavy cruisers. Classified by their armament – light cruisers carried “lighter” guns while the larger, more reinforced heavy cruisers could carry “heavier” 8- to 10-inch guns – and, by WW2, generally built to a legal upper limit of 10,000 tons’ displacement by restrictions set during the Washington and London Naval Disarmament Treaties, they increasingly formed the backbone of the naval fleets of the great nations as they could achieve most of the aims of a warship under deployment, but were far less costly to man or crew than the massive dreadnought battleships. In wartime, they were prized for their considerable armament, impressive speed and long range, as they could outfight what they couldn’t outrace and outrun what they couldn’t outfight, and their roles were as varied as ever. They escorted carrier battle groups and convoys, performed reconnaissance by stalking enemy capital ships, fought submarines to protect friendly trade, interdicted enemy trade, transported vital cargoes, blockaded enemy positions and supported troop landings. Some particularly famous heavy cruisers – the three sisters of the German Deutschland/Lutzow-class – were designed to be the ultimate high-speed, high-power commerce raiders. Built with massive battleship-grade 11-inch guns in two triple-turrets, they were feared by the British Navy and earned the nickname “pocket battleships.”

In the Starfleet era, the term “cruiser” was brought back with the advent of the NX-class in the 2150s beginning with the first Warp Five starship, “Enterprise (NX-01)” under Captain Jonathan Archer, to describe a new generation of medium-sized, long-ranged vessels. Smaller, easier to mass-produce and less expensive to man and supply than the enormous battleship-type designs that formed the upper end of Starfleet ship construction, yet still powerful enough to provide effective force projection and spacious enough to accommodate facilities and systems to perform almost any job Starfleet could require of them from diplomacy to exploration to border protection and military deterrence, they quickly gained a reputation for being the “ideal” starship. The cruisers of the modern Starfleet still bear the CL/Light and CA/Heavy designations of their WW2 forebears and still have many of their same characteristics, while pushing the definition and capabilities of this legendary class into the final frontier.

(To be continued in Part 2, where we'll discuss the legendary career of Captain Sun and the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) and the role they play in the tale of the Starfleet Resistance's fight to overthrow the Terran Empire.)