Bird of Prey Class

Design by Phil Sherman

Affiliation: Romulan/Schrike
Type: Medium battleship
First commissioned: 2399
Length: 206m
Width: 138m
Height: 38m
Decks: 7
Displacement: 195,000t
Complement: 20 officers + 100 crew, evacuation limit: 275
Speed: Warp 8 (cruise), Warp 8.6 (max.), Warp 9 (max. emergency)
Sublight speed: 0.9c (max.)
Armament: 2 Romulan disruptors, 2 enhanced long range Romulan disruptors, 3 Type XII phaser arrays or equivalent technologies (added during the Schrike refit), 1 enhanced prototype Romulan plasma torpedo launcher and 2 Federation photon torpedo launchers, added during the Schrike refit (quantum torpedo capable)
Defense: New experimental cloaking system (this system uses so little power that the BoP can remain cloaked while firing all weapons but the plasma torpedo.), Metaphasic Shielding System (added in the Schrike refit, replacing the standard shields) and 20 mm Romulan experimental enhanced ablative armor. Properties of the armor seem to dissipate energy at an astounding, and as of yet, undeterminable rate. Elemental structure of the armor is complex and multi layered. The armor is being studied by Federation research and development scientists.
Embarked craft: 2 Romulan shuttle pods, (4 crewmembers max/ea), two full size type six federation shuttles and one work bee.

On Stardate 2399 a distress call was received by the USS Crazy Horse on patrol at the edge of the Neutral Zone. A Romulan D'deridex-class Warbird was under attack by an unknown starship. Badly disabled, and losing containment, the Warbird was desperately calling for help. The Crazy Horse immediately hailed the attacking ship, but got no response. The Crazy Horse arrived too late to help the Warbird, and the alien vessel had already vanished, a thorough investigation was carried out until the Romulans arrived, at which time the Crazy Horse returned to Federation space. Amounts of non-Romulan debris were minute, indicating some sort of Cloaking Technologies must have been used to cover the escape of the craft. The USS Crazy Horse conducted continued hails and scans of the surrounding space until it arrived on the scene, shortly after the Romulan Warbird had been destroyed. The Federation was contacted by the Vulcan High Counsel two days later, bringing more information to light.

The Schrike, a large group of Romulan revolutionists had owned up to responsibility for the incident, but stressed the Romulans attacked first. The Schrike wanted to start talks with the Federation in order to establish themselves as more than a rogue rebellion. The Schrike consider themselves patriots, and want Romulus free from its current oppressive political structure. They are tired of trying to do this from within, so they basically formed their own government, and are going to try the more direct approach of a Civil War. They needed the Federation to recognise them in order to promote alliances with sympathetic races. The Schrike have a small fleet of Romulan Birds of Prey. They have re-fitted the ships with Federation technology, as Romulan support is getting harder and harder to procure. The Birds of Prey fell into Schrike hands when they learned of a secret operation, where the Romulans were trying to build a fleet of new, very powerful, smaller ships. Infiltrating this secret shipyard was not hard, but coordinating the attacks on other systems, to try to remove all record of the ship, science facility, and shipyard, as well as the assassination of key figures, was very difficult and took 6 months to carry out. It appears they succeeded. The Schrike decided to change the ships color scheme as well, so they would not be mistaken by allies, and to promote unity in their cause. In 2400, the Federation ushered in the new century with the Tulache Accord. A Federation/Schrike treaty, which established full trade and technology sharing between the Schrike and all Federation outposts and territories. Relations between Romulus and the Federation have been strained since, but as long as the Federation doesn't stand against Romulus with the Schrike in their 'war', Romulus will keep peaceful negotiations with the Federation. After the treaty was signed, the Federation received a complete download of the tech that went into creating the Bird of Prey, and found out the reason why it was so devastating. The main weapon of the Bird of Prey turns out to be its cloaking emitter. The technology of the cloaking device itself, and the emitter, allows the Bird of Prey to fire while cloaked. When firing, the BoP appears to de cloak for 5 seconds, then re cloak, but the truth is that the cloak is engaged the whole time, but the weapons interfere with the cloak, with energy transference, when they fire, dissipating over a few seconds, thus allowing the cloak to re stealth the ship. This compiled with the newly installed metaphasic shields and experimental Romulan ablative armor, make the ship extremely durable.

After receiving the information, they immediately amended the treaty, making the Schrike equip all of their ships with new transponders, designed to be connected directly to the BoP’s quantum singularity warp core, and thereby not easily able to be turned off. The Schrike agreed, but wanted assurance that the Romulan Empire would not be able to track the signal. A new type of carrier wave was used for the transponders, that emulates normal radiation in space, and can only be determined as a carrier signal for the transponder by using the correct 250 alpha numeric key sequence code in the transponder encryption software. The Vulcans graciously donated a small portion of their space near the Neutral Zone for the Schrike to settle in. The Schrike have chosen a small planet in the middle of a dense nebula within that space to call home. The name of the Schrike planet has been designated Schrican, a combination of Schrike and Vulcan, in honor of their Vulcan benefactors. In Honor of the Tulache Accord, the Schrike took one of their last BoPs, and completely retrofitted it with Federation tech, LCARS panels and computers, a Federation warp drive, Federation Colors, everything. The only thing Romulan left on the ship was the cloaking system, even the disruptors were switched out for phaser pulse cannons. It was a monumental task, and took nearly 8 months to complete. Once finished, the Schrike donated the ship, christened the "Achilles", to Starfleet. The Federation was not allowed to develop or build cloaking systems for close to 300 years, but they now find themselves with a fully functional cloaking vessel, without a treaty violation.

Borg Energy Spire

Design by Robert Heckadon

Affiliation: Borg
Type: Power Station
Length: 9,500m
Width: 9,967m
Height: 1,003,020m
Armament: 5 Borg tactical cubes
Defense: Regenerative ablative armour

"I am the beginning. The end. The one who is many." - The Borg Queen

Pulsars, the remnants of dead stars. Spinning many times per second with an unbelievably dense magnetic field emitting electromagnetic radiation from its poles in the form of radio waves. Megatron, a pulsar deep within the heart of the delta quadrant. And orbiting Megatron, feeding off the pulsar like piranha in the ocean of space, the Borg energy spire.

The Borg energy spire uses a 1000km long segmented spire to collect the electromagnetic energy from the pulsar Megatron. As Megatron spins at 33 times a second, its intense magnetic field “cuts” through the spire converting an extremely small amount of the pulsar’s kinetic energy into virtually unimaginable amounts of isolytic energy. At the centre of the spire is a 20km high, 10km across energy matrix where the isolitic energy is refined and transmitted to the Borg fleet and worlds. The isolytic energy is transmitted using 6 interplexing beacons, subspace transmitters whose principles parallels those of the Borg’s transwarp conduits, and broadcasts the energy to Borg ships all throughout the galaxy without the need for line of sight transmission.

The basic principle of the energy spire is similar to an old style solar drive known as an electrodynamic tether drive that was used during the time when star cruisers use to burn fuel in bulk. These included such ships as the Ares 4, the Botany Bay, and the ESS Charybdis. When an electric current, provided by solar energy, was conducted through the tether, it generated a magnetic field that caused Earth’s magnetic field to propel the ship away from the planet. But when un-powered, the tether “cuts” through the Earth’s magnetic field generating electrical current.

The spire and tether drive differ is when the tether generates electrical energy, the energy source comes from the kinetic energy or the speed of the orbiting ship. This then causes the ship to lose speed when generating power by this method. However with the Borg spire, the kinetic energy source comes from Megatron itself. Since its revolutionary rate is substantially greater than the orbital rate of the spire, then there is no worry about the spire’s orbit decaying.

Many theorist believe that the Borg had assimilated the spire from an ancient alien species now extinct. It is also believed that the Borg’s transwarp hub in the Delta quadrant, a collapsed star whose unique gravitational forces are “imploded” with regenerative exotic matter to create wormholes, was a key factor in transmitting the isolytic energy from the spire to the ships. And when it was collapsed by the U.S.S. Voyager, the Borg‘s primary energy source was cut off. Only time will tell if this is so.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether 
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/space_tether.html 
http://www.tethers.com/EDTethers.html
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html 
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html 

Ko'vock Class

Design by Richard Martin

Affiliation: Klingon Empire
Type: Interplanetary fighter
First commissioned: 2374
Length: 5m
Width: 20m
Height: 10m
Decks: 1
Displacement: 91t
Complement: 1 officer + 1 crew, evacuation limit: 9
Speed: Warp 1 (cruise), Warp 2 (max.), Warp 3 (max. emergency)
Sublight speed: 0.100c (max.)
Armament: Two type 3 disruptors
Defense: Shields

The Ko'vock class interplanetary fighter was designed and built after the Dominion War, as a way of helping the Empire's ground forces in future wars. The primary goal of the fighter is to make the advance of the planetary forces as easy as possible by destroying heavily armed enemy fortifications ahead of the force. Normally 6 or more are used in such events.

Thanks to P. Robert and the designer of the Bird-of-Prey on "Enterprise".

Wraith-Sparrow Class

Design by Sadewo Yakti (Woz)

Affiliation: Romulan
Type: Corvette
First commissioned: 2383
Length: 285m
Width: 178m
Height: 39m
Decks: 10
Displacement: 217,000t
Complement: 28 officers + 78 crew
Speed: Warp 7 (cruise), Warp 9.9 (max.), Warp 9.92 (max. emergency)
Sublight speed: 0.25c (max.)
Armament: 4 disruptors, 2 plasma torpedo tubes
Defense: Shield deflectors, ablative armor, and clocking device
Embarked craft: 5 shuttles

Designed for the Romulan Tal Shi’ar secret police, the Wraith-Sparrow class was introduced in 2383 for reconnaissance purpose. It was believed that Wraith-Sparrow construction began in the 2370s, while the Remans were constructing their Scimitar-class vessel.