USS Chesapeake

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The USS Chesapeake was a Miranda-Class Federation starship in service to Starfleet in the late 23rd Century, named after the Terran bay of Chesapeake and the Chesapeake Native Indian people.

Service History

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The Darvash Crisis

In 2298, the CONN of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, Lieutenant Tessa Niles, turned a simple diplomatic mission into a temporal crisis of the highest order and precipitated the formation of the Department of Temporal Investigations. The Darvash, the race assumed to be the only native sapient species of the Theta Eridani system had achieved warp technology and petitioned the Federation for membership; Captain Derek Fisk and his crew were at Theta Eridani V to begin those negotiations, Fisk and an away team beamed directly into a tense stand-off between the Darvash and another species native to Theta Eridani V, the Talokar Hunters. Neither Starfleet Command nor the crew of the Chesapeake had had any clue that there were other sentients in the Theta Eridani system, and Fisk's team was startled to find the Darvash suppressing a Talokar insurrection. Neither of the Eridani races had transporter technology, and both sides were stunned when Fisk's team beamed in. Driven to frenzy, they attacked the away team with their relatively primitive weapons. Captain Fisk and seven others in the away team were killed, while the four survivors beamed back to the Chesapeake in bad shape, reporting that several of the attackers were killed during the confrontation.

Overwhelmed by these events, Lieutenant Niles took command--and the worst possible course of action. Having read Starfleet logs of Kirk's voyages back in time, she directed her crew to plunge the Chesapeake into a near death-dive at Theta Eridani at maximum attainable warp. Niles and the Chesapeake returned to Theta Eridani V a few weeks before the confrontation that had led to Captain Fisk's death. Records get spotty at this point, but it appears that Niles was able to divert the Chesapeake's original course for a few days by sending a falsified distress call out, masquerading as a disabled freighter in Theta Eridani's Oort cloud. Once the Chesapeake had left her original route, Niles was satisfied that Captain Fisk would not be killed and that Federation personnel could approach the crisis between the Talokar Hunters and the Darvash sensibly. She jumped forward in time, incorrectly expecting to be swept into the revised future. Of course, Niles' starship returned to orbit around Theta Eridani V with a duplicate-the diverted Chesapeake-just making its way toward the planet. The conflict between the locals hadn't killed Fisk, since he wasn't there, but it did seem to be intensifying into threats of Nuclear violence. Convinced she had to stop the conflict before the natives destroyed each other, Niles took a small away team to the planet's surface in a shuttle, roughly ten hours before the "real" Chesapeake was due to arrive. She intended to meet with both sides of the war in an attempt to convince them to put down their arms and meet peacefully with Fisk and his crew.

When the shuttle put down near a large Talokar Hunter encampment, a group of the Hunters, armed only with primitive assault rifles and crude electronics, ambushed and killed Niles and her away team and were able to return the shuttle to Chesapeak and trick their way aboard. With the starship's command structure in shambles and the crew's morale at an all-time low, the Talokar Hunters used the Chesapeake to attack several key Darvash locations from orbit. This led to the nuclear holocaust Niles had feared and, when the "real" Chesapeake arrived at Theta Eridani V, it was forced to engage and destroy its time-traveling duplicate.

The aftermath of this destruction included several things, not the least of which was a decade of therapy for the innocent "past" Lieutenant Tessa Niles on the diverted Chesapeake. Far more important, however, was the creation of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations, a civilian bureau charged with maintaining the consistency of the temporal continuum. DTI was would have the authority to investigate time-travel events and, where necessary, bring charges against civilians or Starfleet personnel who violated Regulation 157, the Temporal Prime Directive. [Last Unicorn RPG]

Personnel

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Crew Members

• Commanding officer: Captain Derek Fisk
• Helmsman: Lieutenant Tessa Niles
• Science Officer: Lieutenant Sollek

Attached non-Starfleet personnel

• Navigational Specialist: Larrant