NationStates Jolt Archive

The Cardassian War had been contained to space at the current moment. IDF's planets were yet to be touched, but despite this, the effects among the populous were greatly felt.

The tiny starfleet of IDF started at 550 warships. That number was now down to only 510. Over 7% of all warships were lost and at least a hundred had suffered severe damage. The fact that hundreds of Cardassian ships were destroyed provided little comfort.

What was even worse was the mission behind the war was seeming as if it would be lost anyways. The goal was to provent the Dominion from using the Cardassians as a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant.

Recent Dominion fleet moves through the wormhole made it appear that the Dominion and Cardassians were going to ally regardless. Starfleet had tried to negotiate a peace with the Dominion last June when Captain Sisko and his crew aboard the new ISS Defiant traveled to find the homeworld of the Dominion.

It was there that they met the Founders. It was quickly discovered that peace with the Dominion held a very high price. One which was even higher than total war. Starfleet Diplomats had correctly concluded that peace with the Dominion would be nothing more than a delaying tactic for the Dominion to decide how to conquer the Alpha Quadrant. If they resisted as allies, they would be infected with the Teplan Blight.

The loss of Starfleet personnel and ships was bad enough, but the thought that the Dominion would use this opportunity for an attack put fear in the population.

IDF government leaders had increased the mining of materials to support a larger war machine than anyone had imagined for IDF, The peaceful IDF would be forced to build a fleet that would far exceed thousands of warships if they wanted to beat the Dominion.

Almost all orbital drydocks including McKinley Station were being utilized for repair work. McKinley Station was being used to repair the heavily damaged ISS Yamato, one of the new Galaxy class battleships. Perhaps a larger blow to morale came when the living legend of the fleet, Kirk's NCC-22, was towed to San Francisco Shipyards with severe damage to much of the ship.

Starfleet needed those drydocks for new construction, but that wasn't going to happen so long as the war went on. It was with this in mind that the large Planitia Utopia Shipyards over Primus IV were tripled in size. Admiral Ross toured the shipyards the previous day and reported that progress was being made.

Starfleet's Corp of Engineers had really done a great job. The Shipbuilding Bureau had also come up with designs for new classes of ships they called Sovereign, Intrepid, and Promethius.

For now, the Akira's would have to serve as the backbone of the fleet. They were introduced towards the beginning of the war and had quickly began racking up kills. Unlike the larger Galaxy class, they were built for battle alone and didn't waste space for scientific exploration.

While Deep Space Exploration was an important mission of starfleet, it would have to be put on hold for a while. Perhaps there was some good that came out of the slaughter of Oberth class vessels in this war. Admirals Ross and Leyton pushed for them to be removed from combat duty and placed on Deep Space Exploration missions. They would perform an important scientific mission and suffer fewer losses in that role.

The Miranda class DDs suffered heavy losses, but they were still useful against Cardassian vessels. Starfleet had tried numerous refits with the shield generators, but they still couldn't figure out how to get the ships to withstand the power of a Phased Polaron Beam.

There were many decisions that lay ahead for IDF in the next few months. They would determine the fate of the Alpha Quadrant.

President Lewis Zimmerman was pleased when he was finally given the chance to see the upgraded shipyards. The trip from Primus III to Primus IV was a quick one. His personal shuttlecraft was an upgraded "Captain's Yacht." The vessel lifted off from the IDF Homeworld and traveled past Primus Station and the drydocks full of warships with chunks of saucer sections missing or large black hull scorches from engagements with the Cardassians or Dominion.

The shipyard was a more pleasiing sight. He got there in time to see a new Galaxy class battleship leave drydock for the first time upon completion. There were various vessels nearing completion. He noted that the ships that had been laid down more recently tended to be Akira or Defiant class vessels. This pleased Zimmerman as they were the classes of warships needed if they wanted to beat the Dominion.

President Zimmerman had seen the war now last through 3 months. IDF had done severe damage to Cardassia and the Dominion was moving closer and closer to signing an alliance with Cardassia. It became clear that despite posting a kill ratio of 8:1 in combat, IDF would have to end the war with a cease-fire as soon as possible.

Admirals Ross and Leyton had met with Zimmerman the previous day. They dicsussed the situation Starfleet was in. The war was wasting resources that were better spent preparing the fleet for the Dominion. Valuable drydock space and shipyard space was now occupied by 150 vessels (about 25% of the IDF fleet) that were heavily damaged and undergoing major repair. This had diverted resources and space required for shipbuilding. The simple economic decision alone was enough to convince Zimmerman to seek out an end to the conflict. The opportunity cost of continuing was too great and would just make IDF an easy prey for the Jem'Hadar and their Vorta overseers.

It was with this in mind that a message was sent to the Detapa Council asking for the agreement of an immediate cease-fire between the IDF Federation and the Cardassian Union.

The cease-fire was to be negotiated directly with the Cardassians. President Zimmerman had decided he needed to take a trip to Deep Space Nine to talk to Captain Benjamin Sisko for he said that there was important news regarding any talks.

President Zimmerman's trip was to be low profile so he traveled aboard an Excelsior (Lakota sub-class) that was making a routine visit to the station. He was taken to a VIP suite aboard the station where Sisko was waiting.

"What do you have for me Ben?" asked the President.

"Some very bad news," responded Sisko. "I have a tailor aboard my station named Elim Garak."

"The spy?" interrupted Zimmerman.

"Yes, he still have friends in the Obsidian Order," responded Sisko. "Garak has done some well lets just call it 'special jobs' for us in the past. He is often our eyes and ears into Cardassian affairs since we have little in terms of diplomatic relations with them. He has informed me that the civilian government run by the Detapa Council has been overthrown by a group within the Cardassian military."

"Can we honestly trust the word of this Cardassian?" asked the President.

"We can, Mr. Garak is in exile and has no benefit from working with the Cardassians," responded Sisko. "He has actually helped us in this war by giving us intelligence he has gathered from friends of his who were in support of the Detapa Council. It seems that the entire Dominion-Cardassian Alliance proposal was pushed by the military and opposed by the Council. The military has used its strength to overthrow the civilian government and take over the Cardassian government."

"Who is in charge of the overthrow," asked Zimmerman.

"I was just getting to that," responded Sisko. "I was far from surprised when I learned this, but the overthrow was engineered by Gul S. G. Dukat and some supporters of his such as Legate Damar. With Dukat in command and Damar as his number 2, we see it very likely that there will be an alliance signed between the Dominion and the Cardassian Alliance."

"And there is nothing we can do to stop this?" asked Zimmerman.

"There aren't any options I see at the moment," responded Sisko. "We can try to use Garak and others to try and sway the civilians, but the Cardassians may be in support of such an alliance. They are looking at the short term. They were embarassed by the Bajoran Occupation and being defeated by the resistance. They see an alliance with the Dominion as a path to victory and greatness."

"They don't realize it's a path to slavery and oppression," remarked the President.

"Unfortunately," responded Sisko. "The Cardassian culture is a proud one. That pride got hurt at Bajor."

"They will want it back," stated Zimmerman.

"I know," said Sisko. "We won't let them have Bajor."

"Is there any chance we can get a cease-fire or armistice to this current war?" asked the President. "We need to preserve and strengthen our fleet because in a few years we will have a quadrant wide war on our hands."

"I'll do my best," responded Sisko.