Christmas Message

The following address by the President of the United Federation of Planets was transmitted at 15:00 Earth time, on the 25 th of December 2386 on all sub-space frequencies.

To the loyal citizens of the Federation and its allies, I speak to you not as the President of UFP, but as a concerned citizen of the Federation.

For many years now the Federation and its allies have been pulled into conflicts not of our making, from the wars with the Cardassians, the Borg and the Dominion. In more recent times we’ve seen the return of the Borg and fought wars with the Bariens and Mullurans.

And for the most part we have prevailed, but at what cost ?. How many lives were lost in the Dominion war ?. I’ll tell you, three billion lives.

Over the past twenty five years over five billion Federation citizens have lost their lives to conflict, be it at the hands of the Cardassians, Dominion, Borg, Bariens or Mullurans. In those same twenty five years, the Federation has grown in size, partly through new worlds joining the UFP, but also through the spoils of war.

Now we face a new threat, a threat not of attack by a mass army or fleet of ships, but by pirates. For many years the activities of these pirates has been tolerated, mainly because they were disorganised and small. But the destruction of the research base, G109 in the Gamma quadrant changed all that. Over six thousand Federation lives were lost when the pirates destroyed that station, not to mention a valuable Federation asset.

The Federation parliament enacted emergency powers given to us as part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Dominion war. These powers allowed us to create a regional assembly, under one authority to tackle the difficult problems of the pirates.

And these powers have worked, attacks on shipping have dropped significantly and many former haunts of pirates have been uncovered and eliminated. The Gamma quadrant is a safer place for it.

I now inform you that the Federation parliament has authorised similar measures to be put into place in all Federation territory. Whilst most of the pirate activity has centred on the Gamma quadrant in the past few years, it is likely that these pirates will come back to the Alpha quadrant, either to continue their activities or strike back at those who seek to destroy them.

The measures that have been put into place are not as severe as those imposed on the Gamma quadrant. Every major potential trouble-spot will be assigned a regional governor, whose task will be to co-ordinate the activities of both the civilian and military authorities within their area. They will have full authority for their assigned area and answer only to the Federation parliament. Many of these governors will have experience gained through the Federation parliament.

The Federation has grown too large to be governed by a single, centralised government, we must de-centralise our way of maintaining law and order, ensuring that all Federation citizens are safe in their homes, so that local issues are dealt with locally.

Commodore Hunter switched off the message, he’d seen it three times now. He’d received the recorded message via a diplomatic courier with orders to view the message and then transmit it through the sub-space network in the New Canada system at the assigned time.

The full message had gone into much more detail and had included a list of the governor assignments. Serenity had been at the top of that list, being on the very edge of Federation space and a new governor would be arriving on Serenity within days.

There had been a second message delivered by the diplomatic courier vessel, which gave Hunter the details of the new governor along with orders from both the Federation president and the head of Starfleet Central that he was to co-operate fully with the new governor. The bigger shock was the name that had popped up when he’d accessed the message, William James Adama.

Hunter knew Adama well, up to a point. They had passed through the Academy together and served on several Starfleet vessels. But Adama had earned himself a reputation as a hard officer to please. So hard in fact that he had several black marks against his name for extreme behaviour.

The Admiral’s at his final court-martial had all but seen through his argument that discipline was the key to a well run ship, but Adama had always had strong backing somewhere up high within Starfleet. Instead of a prison sentence for the attempted murder of a junior officer, he was discharged from Starfleet, his disciplinary records sealed.

Adama had then gone into the political arena, working his way up to become a member of the Federation parliament. His views on Earth’s interest coming first were well known, but he always hid that fact from both the non-human parliamentarians and the general population.

Hunter had realised after his first viewing of the President’s message and then the assignment of Adama to Serenity as a sign, a sign that to quote a phrase from an old Earth play, “Something was rotted in the state of Denmark.

Hunter knew that in effect Adama would be in control of Serenity, the New Canada system and all its assets, with the authority to use them as he pleased. Meanwhile Hunter would merely be a figurehead for the Starfleet presence, carrying out the orders of a non-military government. So Hunter had but one option, resign.

He picked up the Padd from his desk and walked out of his office for the last time. Normally his assistant Jamie Piper would be sat at her desk, but as it was Christmas day the seat was empty.

Hunter accessed the Starfleet Central sub-space comms channel and downloaded his resignation letter off the Padd into the transceiver ready for transmission on the next cycle.

Placing the Padd and his comm. badge on Jamie’s desk, he looked around the office one last time before walking out of the Starfleet offices for the last time as Commodore Rick Hunter and stepped back into his home as just plain old Rick Hunter.

“Well Dee, it’s done.” He announced. “I’ve officially resigned from Starfleet.”