HOME | DD

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

2. U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931)
The U.S.S. (United Space Ship) Resilient, Naval Construction Contract #2931, was launched from the Starfleet’s Antares Shipyards on August 8th, 2277 and assigned a position in Starfleet’s Fifth Fleet. She is depicted here as she would have appeared during the Battle of Alpha Centauri in the late spring of 2292.

This starship was christened in the grand British tradition of using strong adjectives as ship names, and her title suited her well as her service life would ultimately be dominated by battle. At the time of her commissioning, she was built to the specifications of a Flight 2 Archer-Class Heavy Cruiser, but in 2280, she was recalled to drydock and refitted to new plans as a Fire Support Cruiser with a Rear-Firing Phaser Refit and reclassified from an F-CA to a F-CFS(R). She would maintain this configuration until the Doomsday Battle at Alpha Centauri on April 15th, 2292, after which she fled for the Badlands and assumed a new role as the flagship of the Resilient Cell, one of the nascent branches of the Starfleet Resistance. She was initially put under the command of Captain Annette Darter, but after Captain Darter was killed in her chair during the Battle of Alpha Centauri, her first officer and helmsman, Commander M. Lucius Sun, took control of the ship and declared himself Acting Captain.

The Resilient distinguished herself during the Battle of Alpha Centauri, intervening at a crucial moment to dispatch a marauding pair of Terran destroyers that had been harassing a fellow Starfleet cruiser, the U.S.S. Audacious (NCC-1891). In the next five hours, these two ships would come to the aid of several smaller Federation craft, amassing a flotilla that continued to fight for survival until the situation was deemed untenable. The sacrifice of Rear Admiral James T. Kirk with his entire crew aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) opened a fleeting pathway to escape, and the order was given for all ships to save themselves however possible. Resilient and Audacious then turned their makeshift squadron in the direction of the Badlands and never looked back. NCC-2931 and her “squadron” would spend the majority of the next three months under high warp, dashing from one system or stellar formation to another and braving everything from nebulae to ion storms until they finally discovered an asteroid field with a long-abandoned Federation outpost from the Kelvin Era (the mid-2230s) built into one of the larger asteroids.

With the victorious Mirror Universe fleet elements hot on their heels and nowhere else to go, the Federation survivors made the perilous journey inside the asteroid field, toward the hidden Starbase, which they claimed as their new headquarters. Unsatisfied with a life of hiding or the prospect of being hunted fugitives for the rest of their lives, the survivors - united under the overall leadership of Captain M. Lucius Sun of the Resilient and the strategic advice of Cailan Walsh, descendant of Sir Philip le Walys, 12th century Earl of Cornwall and Captain of the Audacious (NCC-1891) – vowed to do whatever it took to fight back. Although they had no idea if there were other bands of survivors out there, from July 2292 onward, these crews would call themselves the Resilient Cell of the Starfleet Resistance and their asteroid base, well-concealed from prying Terran sensors by the horrendous stellar weather conditions and electromagnetic interference of the neighboring Badlands, became the headquarters for daring raids launched against marauding Terran patrol ships and supply convoys; these bold attacks, as well as the seemingly near-superhuman ability of the Resistance starships to avoid apprehension and destruction by the Terran Empire, quickly began to earn the Resilient Cell a reputation akin to that of Robin Hood and the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest among the other Starfleet Resistance cells that were able to pick up any intelligence from the Terran forces.

3. The Death of Captain Sun/The Phoenix Rises
By February of the year 2296, the Resilient Cell had been conducting raids and assaults on the Terran Empire’s occupation forces for nearly four whole years and the guerrilla campaign launched by Captain Sun had been quite successful on the whole. Several more ships had joined the Resilient Cell, the rebels had amassed plenty of supplies and ship components and their Starbase was now fully operational and strongly defended. The new additions to the Cell’s forces had also brought an important piece of news: the confirmation that there were at least two or three other Starfleet Resistance cells in operation, each led by the captains and crews of Starfleet’s other surviving light and heavy cruisers.

This news was exactly what Captain Sun, aboard the U.S.S. Resilient, needed to hear. He had concluded that although his cell had indeed achieved much since they fled from the killing fields of Alpha Centauri in 2292, their actions simply had not had enough of an effect on the Terran occupation forces to make the dream of retaking their universe even remotely possible. After hearing the news of the other surviving Resistance cells, Captains Sun and Walsh secretly began to conceive an audacious plan of action: when their forces were strong enough, the Resilient Cell would go on the move. Captain Sun would leave command of the overall cell to Captain Walsh aboard the Audacious, break out through the Badlands with a detached flotilla of ships to avoid detection, and then circle back into open space in hopes of finding the other Resistance Cells and securing their cooperation. Their ultimate goal: to achieve the reunification of the scattered Resistance cells and rebuild Starfleet into a single fighting force capable of doing real damage to the Terran war effort.

This plan had barely been completed when an intriguing incident occurred that would change the future of the Resilient Cell forever. On February 20th, 2296, the Resilient Cell scrambled from their asteroid base to face what seemed to be a threatening event as a wormhole mysteriously opened near their territory. What emerged was a prototype starship unlike anything they had ever seen before – an enormous variant of the Excelsior class heavy battlecruiser stretching over 1,140 meters from stem to stern and outfitted with a technology (based on the Terrans’ own rift-space manipulation drives) that allowed her to tear through the fabric of space-time itself by creating temporary stable wormholes. After a brief but tense initial confrontation, it was determined that this new starship, the U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010), was not a Terran vessel at all but a Starfleet ship from yet another parallel reality, one much more advanced than the Resilient’s home universe, that was also being besieged by the Terran Empire. The Farrington had arrived in the Resilient’s reality by accident when using her wormhole drive to chase a Terran ship trying to make a getaway dash by cutting through an area of unstable rift-space. In an intriguing coincidence, the Farrington’s commander, Captain M. Tobias Sun, was none other than an extradimensional counterpart of the Resilient’s own captain, M. Lucius Sun.

To Captain M. Lucius Sun, the arrival of Captain M. Tobias Sun and the Farrington (NX-2010) was a godsend. The extradimensional battlecruiser’s massive size, onboard compliment of heavily armed Marines (one embarked rifle company with support equipment and specialized vehicles) and vastly superior firepower gave Farrington the ability to engage most Terran starships directly in one-on-one, ship-to-ship battles in a way that the outmanned, outgunned Resistance vessels never could. Furthermore, the Farrington’s ability to generate wormholes might be able to give the Resilient Cell unimaginably increased mobility – and, more importantly, offer the Resilient's crew the chance to bypass the “Badlands” phase of M. Lucius Sun’s daring breakout plan entirely. With this in mind, Captain M. Lucius Sun agreed to harbor his counterpart’s starship and begged him to stay and fight with the Resistance.

However, Captain M. Tobias Sun adamantly refused to join the Resilient Cell. While M. Tobias certainly sympathized with his counterpart’s plight, the Farrington was also, at that time, the only starship in his home universe’s (the Delta-Universe) entire Starfleet that was equipped with the dangerous and overly complicated wormhole drive assembly. She was, therefore, the key to Operation: Swordbreaker, the Delta-Universe Starfleet’s plan to destroy the Terrans’ ability to maintain their war effort by using the Farrington’s wormhole-generating capabilities to launch lightning raids on their rift stations and vital military infrastructure behind the Terrans’ front lines. She couldn’t be spared, and needed to go home as soon as possible. This was far easier said than done; since the Farrington arrived in the Resilient’s home dimension (the Gamma-Universe) by a freak accident, her crew needed access to Terran knowledge and equipment to successfully duplicate the conditions needed for controlled inter-universe travel.

Rather than allow M. Tobias Sun to risk almost certain death by assaulting the nearest Terran Rift Station with just one ship, M. Lucius Sun decided to send the Resilient and her flotilla to aid him in his quest. The resulting battle turned out to be a disastrous blow for the Resilient Cell that threatened to destroy the entire foundation of what M. Lucius Sun had built over the last four years. While the Farrington’s crew succeeded in breaching the Terran starbase and securing the technology, coordinates and know-how needed to return her to the Delta-Universe, one of the Resilient Cell’s starships was destroyed in the assault. Worse, Captain M. Lucius Sun had been present during the boarding action on the Terran Rift Station to better coordinate with his counterpart. During the ensuing battle, he was cornered and swiftly defeated by the Imperial Viceroy, the newly-transferred supreme commander of the Terran forces occupying the Gamma-Universe: his and M. Tobias’ diabolical Beta-Universe Counterpart, Fleet Captain M. Demetrius Sun. A vain, jealous, mentally-unstable psychopath, M. Demetrius was obsessed with killing all of his extra-dimensional counterparts so that he would be the only Captain Sun in existence; he mortally wounded M. Lucius Sun and left him to die. M. Tobias Sun rushed to the scene upon hearing that his counterpart was in trouble, but didn’t make it in time to save M. Lucius – he was barely able to catch enough of a glimpse of the retreating figure of M. Lucius’ murderer to realize that he had just watched one version of himself assassinate another.

As M. Lucius Sun lay dying in the arms of his counterpart, M. Tobias Sun, he weakly passed his sword to his counterpart’s hand, begging him to take up the fight and lead the Resilient Cell in his stead. M. Lucius had been the central rallying figure and iconic figurehead of the Resilient Cell since its beginnings in 2292; his death would affect the Cell’s members the way the death of King Harold had affected the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, and having another version of himself pick up the reins might be the best way to calm the rebels’ fears. Reeling with guilt and blaming himself for his counterpart’s tragic fall, M. Tobias Sun accepted M. Lucius Sun’s sword – and his offer – swearing to his dying "brother" that he would not rest until the Gamma-Universe was free, and that he would personally take M. Demetrius’ life in vengeance for M. Lucius’ murder. When the Farrington and the Resilient Cell finally retreated back to their Badlands outpost, Captain M. Tobias Sun, his chief science officer and adopted sister, Lt. Commander Sakura Sun, and one platoon from the U.S.S. Farrington’s embarked Starfleet Marine Corps Rifle Company chose to stay behind aboard the U.S.S. Resilient as the new leadership of the Resilient Cell while the Farrington, now under the command of Captain M. Tobias Sun’s executive officer and fiancee, Commander Madeleine Jeanne Carpentier, departed from the Resilient Cell’s asteroid base and headed for the nearest patch of dimensionally unstable space to generate a rift for her journey back to the Delta-Universe.

4. The Resilient Rises: The Campaigns of 2296-2299
Shortly after taking command of the Resilient Cell, the “new” Captain Sun, his sister Sakura, and their marines were attending a tactical briefing given by Captain Walsh aboard the Audacious (NCC-1891). During this meeting, Captain Walsh finally decided to reveal the late Captain M. Lucius Sun’s “grand plan” for achieving the reunification of Starfleet, which they had kept secret for so many years. Like his fallen counterpart M. Tobias Sun quickly realized the value of the plan. But unlike M. Lucius, who had been convinced that the Resistance wasn’t ready to divide its forces and therefore hesitated to act, M. Tobias and Sakura Sun agreed with Captain Walsh that the strategy was of little value to the Resistance on paper. Knowing from recently gathered intelligence that the Terran Empire was already beginning to reinforce its garrisons in the Gamma-Universe, Captain Sun, Commander Sun and Captain Walsh all agreed that the time to launch this ambitious plan, which they code-named Operation: Revere, was fast approaching. After taking several months to secure his command of the Resilient Cell, earn the respect of his new subordinates, build his forces and supplies and retrain his crews to be more effective guerrilla soldiers, Captains Sun and Walsh chose an upcoming period forecasted to see a dramatic upswing of electromagnetic activity and ion storms within the Badlands to launch Operation: Revere. On September 9th, 2296 at 0400 hours, the U.S.S. Resilient and four smaller Resistance starships slipped out of their asteroid bastion and made a bold dash for the Badlands under the cover of some of the most violent ion storms ever recorded in the region.

Over the next two years, the Resilient and her escorts would repeatedly beat the odds as Captain Walsh continued to direct the rest of the Resilient Cell in battle. Sun's small flotilla struggled through the Badlands, circumventing Imperial patrols and fighting their way back into open space. They established contact with the other major Starfleet Resistance cells and steadily earned their cooperation, one by one, before ultimately returning to their Badlands headquarters with a plan in place to mobilize the entire Resistance with all of its cells working together. As Captain Sun had been the one who was farsighted enough to see the need to unite the Resistance forces, bold enough to find his way to the other cells and charismatic enough to sway the other Resistance leaders to his cause, he was given oversight of the reunified Starfleet Resistance with the Resilient as his command ship, and allowed to advance himself to the rank and title of Fleet Captain. Now a true fighting armada, the Resistance almost entirely ceased to fight a solely guerrilla war of sabotage and raiding, and finally began to take back territory from the Terrans and hold it. 2299 would see the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) make one more dramatic breakout through the Terran blockade as Acting Fleet Captain Sun, in an amazing feat of sheer audacity, took the starship to the edges of the former Federation neutral zones and successfully negotiated for the support of the Klingon Star Empire, Romulan Star Empire and Gorn Confederation. As the foreign powers pressed in against the Terran Empire, forcing the Terran occupiers to split their forces on multiple fronts, Fleet Captain Sun took the Resilient back to the Resistance and prepared to bring the war into its endgame.

5. Operation: Trikeros
By mid-October of 2299, the Terran Empire found itself doing the unthinkable as it lost ground in the war with the foreign Star Empires pressing in from without and the Resistance, stronger than ever before, recapturing sector after sector from within. Fleet Captain Sun and the Resilient took their campaign to the next level by leading an assault to capture a thinly-guarded Terran Rift Station not too far from Sector 001 on the 18th of October. Remembering how the Farrington had learned to use Terran technology and protocols to control rift space and travel back to the Delta-Universe, Fleet Captain Sun and the Resistance forces used their new station to transmit a message back to the Delta-Universe Starfleet reporting their progress and offering an incredible new plan: the Delta-Universe Starfleet, now knowing that the Gamma-Universe was where the Terrans were staging their forces, would concentrate their war effort on driving the Terran fleets back into the Gamma-Universe. Then, the Delta-Universe Starfleet would send its entire expeditionary division under the command of Vice-Admiral Kelvar Garth of Izar – a full 65% of the fleet – through the rift to arrive at the station the Resistance had captured.

Fleet Captain Sun had been aware that the Delta-Universe had also sent operatives to infiltrate the Terran forces as part of the Trikeros plan and that said operatives had been placed in control of a key Terran starship. They were now waiting on orders to act; therefore, the Gamma-Universe Starfleet Resistance and the Delta-Universe Expeditionary Forces would launch a three-pronged attack on the remaining Terran forces surrounding Earth and Sector 001 as the Delta-Universe infiltrators would move to disable and destabilize the Terran forces from within. The plan would be called Operation: Trikeros and, when put into spectacular effect in mid-December 2299, would result in the conclusive defeat of the Terran Empire’s plans to build a multiversal reign of terror. Fleet Captain M. Tobias Sun and the Resilient had finally achieved the dream that Captain M. Lucius Sun refused to allow to die with him – the Gamma-Universe was free.

Prior to Operation: Trikeros, Fleet Captain Sun had relinquished command of the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) to return to the U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010) as his flagship. During this final operation, Resilient would be commanded by her second officer, Lt. Commander Jim Greene. Greene, advanced to Acting Captain on Captain Sun’s orders, would retain command of the Resilient into the dawn of the 24th century as the legendary cruiser adjusted to her new role in a Federation rising from its ashes.

(To be continued in Part 3, where we'll talk about the design of the Archer-class heavy cruiser and the particular modifications made to the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) throughout her service life in greater detail.)

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

2. U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931)
The U.S.S. (United Space Ship) Resilient, Naval Construction Contract #2931, was launched from the Starfleet’s Antares Shipyards on August 8th, 2277 and assigned a position in Starfleet’s Fifth Fleet. She is depicted here as she would have appeared during the Battle of Alpha Centauri in the late spring of 2292.

This starship was christened in the grand British tradition of using strong adjectives as ship names, and her title suited her well as her service life would ultimately be dominated by battle. At the time of her commissioning, she was built to the specifications of a Flight 2 Archer-Class Heavy Cruiser, but in 2280, she was recalled to drydock and refitted to new plans as a Fire Support Cruiser with a Rear-Firing Phaser Refit and reclassified from an F-CA to a F-CFS(R). She would maintain this configuration until the Doomsday Battle at Alpha Centauri on April 15th, 2292, after which she fled for the Badlands and assumed a new role as the flagship of the Resilient Cell, one of the nascent branches of the Starfleet Resistance. She was initially put under the command of Captain Annette Darter, but after Captain Darter was killed in her chair during the Battle of Alpha Centauri, her first officer and helmsman, Commander M. Lucius Sun, took control of the ship and declared himself Acting Captain.

The Resilient distinguished herself during the Battle of Alpha Centauri, intervening at a crucial moment to dispatch a marauding pair of Terran destroyers that had been harassing a fellow Starfleet cruiser, the U.S.S. Audacious (NCC-1891). In the next five hours, these two ships would come to the aid of several smaller Federation craft, amassing a flotilla that continued to fight for survival until the situation was deemed untenable. The sacrifice of Rear Admiral James T. Kirk with his entire crew aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) opened a fleeting pathway to escape, and the order was given for all ships to save themselves however possible. Resilient and Audacious then turned their makeshift squadron in the direction of the Badlands and never looked back. NCC-2931 and her “squadron” would spend the majority of the next three months under high warp, dashing from one system or stellar formation to another and braving everything from nebulae to ion storms until they finally discovered an asteroid field with a long-abandoned Federation outpost from the Kelvin Era (the mid-2230s) built into one of the larger asteroids.

With the victorious Mirror Universe fleet elements hot on their heels and nowhere else to go, the Federation survivors made the perilous journey inside the asteroid field, toward the hidden Starbase, which they claimed as their new headquarters. Unsatisfied with a life of hiding or the prospect of being hunted fugitives for the rest of their lives, the survivors - united under the overall leadership of Captain M. Lucius Sun of the Resilient and the strategic advice of Cailan Walsh, descendant of Sir Philip le Walys, 12th century Earl of Cornwall and Captain of the Audacious (NCC-1891) – vowed to do whatever it took to fight back. Although they had no idea if there were other bands of survivors out there, from July 2292 onward, these crews would call themselves the Resilient Cell of the Starfleet Resistance and their asteroid base, well-concealed from prying Terran sensors by the horrendous stellar weather conditions and electromagnetic interference of the neighboring Badlands, became the headquarters for daring raids launched against marauding Terran patrol ships and supply convoys; these bold attacks, as well as the seemingly near-superhuman ability of the Resistance starships to avoid apprehension and destruction by the Terran Empire, quickly began to earn the Resilient Cell a reputation akin to that of Robin Hood and the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest among the other Starfleet Resistance cells that were able to pick up any intelligence from the Terran forces.

3. The Death of Captain Sun/The Phoenix Rises
By February of the year 2296, the Resilient Cell had been conducting raids and assaults on the Terran Empire’s occupation forces for nearly four whole years and the guerrilla campaign launched by Captain Sun had been quite successful on the whole. Several more ships had joined the Resilient Cell, the rebels had amassed plenty of supplies and ship components and their Starbase was now fully operational and strongly defended. The new additions to the Cell’s forces had also brought an important piece of news: the confirmation that there were at least two or three other Starfleet Resistance cells in operation, each led by the captains and crews of Starfleet’s other surviving light and heavy cruisers.

This news was exactly what Captain Sun, aboard the U.S.S. Resilient, needed to hear. He had concluded that although his cell had indeed achieved much since they fled from the killing fields of Alpha Centauri in 2292, their actions simply had not had enough of an effect on the Terran occupation forces to make the dream of retaking their universe even remotely possible. After hearing the news of the other surviving Resistance cells, Captains Sun and Walsh secretly began to conceive an audacious plan of action: when their forces were strong enough, the Resilient Cell would go on the move. Captain Sun would leave command of the overall cell to Captain Walsh aboard the Audacious, break out through the Badlands with a detached flotilla of ships to avoid detection, and then circle back into open space in hopes of finding the other Resistance Cells and securing their cooperation. Their ultimate goal: to achieve the reunification of the scattered Resistance cells and rebuild Starfleet into a single fighting force capable of doing real damage to the Terran war effort.

This plan had barely been completed when an intriguing incident occurred that would change the future of the Resilient Cell forever. On February 20th, 2296, the Resilient Cell scrambled from their asteroid base to face what seemed to be a threatening event as a wormhole mysteriously opened near their territory. What emerged was a prototype starship unlike anything they had ever seen before – an enormous variant of the Excelsior class heavy battlecruiser stretching over 1,140 meters from stem to stern and outfitted with a technology (based on the Terrans’ own rift-space manipulation drives) that allowed her to tear through the fabric of space-time itself by creating temporary stable wormholes. After a brief but tense initial confrontation, it was determined that this new starship, the U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010), was not a Terran vessel at all but a Starfleet ship from yet another parallel reality, one much more advanced than the Resilient’s home universe, that was also being besieged by the Terran Empire. The Farrington had arrived in the Resilient’s reality by accident when using her wormhole drive to chase a Terran ship trying to make a getaway dash by cutting through an area of unstable rift-space. In an intriguing coincidence, the Farrington’s commander, Captain M. Tobias Sun, was none other than an extradimensional counterpart of the Resilient’s own captain, M. Lucius Sun.

To Captain M. Lucius Sun, the arrival of Captain M. Tobias Sun and the Farrington (NX-2010) was a godsend. The extradimensional battlecruiser’s massive size, onboard compliment of heavily armed Marines (one embarked rifle company with support equipment and specialized vehicles) and vastly superior firepower gave Farrington the ability to engage most Terran starships directly in one-on-one, ship-to-ship battles in a way that the outmanned, outgunned Resistance vessels never could. Furthermore, the Farrington’s ability to generate wormholes might be able to give the Resilient Cell unimaginably increased mobility – and, more importantly, offer the Resilient's crew the chance to bypass the “Badlands” phase of M. Lucius Sun’s daring breakout plan entirely. With this in mind, Captain M. Lucius Sun agreed to harbor his counterpart’s starship and begged him to stay and fight with the Resistance.

However, Captain M. Tobias Sun adamantly refused to join the Resilient Cell. While M. Tobias certainly sympathized with his counterpart’s plight, the Farrington was also, at that time, the only starship in his home universe’s (the Delta-Universe) entire Starfleet that was equipped with the dangerous and overly complicated wormhole drive assembly. She was, therefore, the key to Operation: Swordbreaker, the Delta-Universe Starfleet’s plan to destroy the Terrans’ ability to maintain their war effort by using the Farrington’s wormhole-generating capabilities to launch lightning raids on their rift stations and vital military infrastructure behind the Terrans’ front lines. She couldn’t be spared, and needed to go home as soon as possible. This was far easier said than done; since the Farrington arrived in the Resilient’s home dimension (the Gamma-Universe) by a freak accident, her crew needed access to Terran knowledge and equipment to successfully duplicate the conditions needed for controlled inter-universe travel.

Rather than allow M. Tobias Sun to risk almost certain death by assaulting the nearest Terran Rift Station with just one ship, M. Lucius Sun decided to send the Resilient and her flotilla to aid him in his quest. The resulting battle turned out to be a disastrous blow for the Resilient Cell that threatened to destroy the entire foundation of what M. Lucius Sun had built over the last four years. While the Farrington’s crew succeeded in breaching the Terran starbase and securing the technology, coordinates and know-how needed to return her to the Delta-Universe, one of the Resilient Cell’s starships was destroyed in the assault. Worse, Captain M. Lucius Sun had been present during the boarding action on the Terran Rift Station to better coordinate with his counterpart. During the ensuing battle, he was cornered and swiftly defeated by the Imperial Viceroy, the newly-transferred supreme commander of the Terran forces occupying the Gamma-Universe: his and M. Tobias’ diabolical Beta-Universe Counterpart, Fleet Captain M. Demetrius Sun. A vain, jealous, mentally-unstable psychopath, M. Demetrius was obsessed with killing all of his extra-dimensional counterparts so that he would be the only Captain Sun in existence; he mortally wounded M. Lucius Sun and left him to die. M. Tobias Sun rushed to the scene upon hearing that his counterpart was in trouble, but didn’t make it in time to save M. Lucius – he was barely able to catch enough of a glimpse of the retreating figure of M. Lucius’ murderer to realize that he had just watched one version of himself assassinate another.

As M. Lucius Sun lay dying in the arms of his counterpart, M. Tobias Sun, he weakly passed his sword to his counterpart’s hand, begging him to take up the fight and lead the Resilient Cell in his stead. M. Lucius had been the central rallying figure and iconic figurehead of the Resilient Cell since its beginnings in 2292; his death would affect the Cell’s members the way the death of King Harold had affected the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, and having another version of himself pick up the reins might be the best way to calm the rebels’ fears. Reeling with guilt and blaming himself for his counterpart’s tragic fall, M. Tobias Sun accepted M. Lucius Sun’s sword – and his offer – swearing to his dying "brother" that he would not rest until the Gamma-Universe was free, and that he would personally take M. Demetrius’ life in vengeance for M. Lucius’ murder. When the Farrington and the Resilient Cell finally retreated back to their Badlands outpost, Captain M. Tobias Sun, his chief science officer and adopted sister, Lt. Commander Sakura Sun, and one platoon from the U.S.S. Farrington’s embarked Starfleet Marine Corps Rifle Company chose to stay behind aboard the U.S.S. Resilient as the new leadership of the Resilient Cell while the Farrington, now under the command of Captain M. Tobias Sun’s executive officer and fiancee, Commander Madeleine Jeanne Carpentier, departed from the Resilient Cell’s asteroid base and headed for the nearest patch of dimensionally unstable space to generate a rift for her journey back to the Delta-Universe.

4. The Resilient Rises: The Campaigns of 2296-2299
Shortly after taking command of the Resilient Cell, the “new” Captain Sun, his sister Sakura, and their marines were attending a tactical briefing given by Captain Walsh aboard the Audacious (NCC-1891). During this meeting, Captain Walsh finally decided to reveal the late Captain M. Lucius Sun’s “grand plan” for achieving the reunification of Starfleet, which they had kept secret for so many years. Like his fallen counterpart M. Tobias Sun quickly realized the value of the plan. But unlike M. Lucius, who had been convinced that the Resistance wasn’t ready to divide its forces and therefore hesitated to act, M. Tobias and Sakura Sun agreed with Captain Walsh that the strategy was of little value to the Resistance on paper. Knowing from recently gathered intelligence that the Terran Empire was already beginning to reinforce its garrisons in the Gamma-Universe, Captain Sun, Commander Sun and Captain Walsh all agreed that the time to launch this ambitious plan, which they code-named Operation: Revere, was fast approaching. After taking several months to secure his command of the Resilient Cell, earn the respect of his new subordinates, build his forces and supplies and retrain his crews to be more effective guerrilla soldiers, Captains Sun and Walsh chose an upcoming period forecasted to see a dramatic upswing of electromagnetic activity and ion storms within the Badlands to launch Operation: Revere. On September 9th, 2296 at 0400 hours, the U.S.S. Resilient and four smaller Resistance starships slipped out of their asteroid bastion and made a bold dash for the Badlands under the cover of some of the most violent ion storms ever recorded in the region.

Over the next two years, the Resilient and her escorts would repeatedly beat the odds as Captain Walsh continued to direct the rest of the Resilient Cell in battle. Sun's small flotilla struggled through the Badlands, circumventing Imperial patrols and fighting their way back into open space. They established contact with the other major Starfleet Resistance cells and steadily earned their cooperation, one by one, before ultimately returning to their Badlands headquarters with a plan in place to mobilize the entire Resistance with all of its cells working together. As Captain Sun had been the one who was farsighted enough to see the need to unite the Resistance forces, bold enough to find his way to the other cells and charismatic enough to sway the other Resistance leaders to his cause, he was given oversight of the reunified Starfleet Resistance with the Resilient as his command ship, and allowed to advance himself to the rank and title of Fleet Captain. Now a true fighting armada, the Resistance almost entirely ceased to fight a solely guerrilla war of sabotage and raiding, and finally began to take back territory from the Terrans and hold it. 2299 would see the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) make one more dramatic breakout through the Terran blockade as Acting Fleet Captain Sun, in an amazing feat of sheer audacity, took the starship to the edges of the former Federation neutral zones and successfully negotiated for the support of the Klingon Star Empire, Romulan Star Empire and Gorn Confederation. As the foreign powers pressed in against the Terran Empire, forcing the Terran occupiers to split their forces on multiple fronts, Fleet Captain Sun took the Resilient back to the Resistance and prepared to bring the war into its endgame.

5. Operation: Trikeros
By mid-October of 2299, the Terran Empire found itself doing the unthinkable as it lost ground in the war with the foreign Star Empires pressing in from without and the Resistance, stronger than ever before, recapturing sector after sector from within. Fleet Captain Sun and the Resilient took their campaign to the next level by leading an assault to capture a thinly-guarded Terran Rift Station not too far from Sector 001 on the 18th of October. Remembering how the Farrington had learned to use Terran technology and protocols to control rift space and travel back to the Delta-Universe, Fleet Captain Sun and the Resistance forces used their new station to transmit a message back to the Delta-Universe Starfleet reporting their progress and offering an incredible new plan: the Delta-Universe Starfleet, now knowing that the Gamma-Universe was where the Terrans were staging their forces, would concentrate their war effort on driving the Terran fleets back into the Gamma-Universe. Then, the Delta-Universe Starfleet would send its entire expeditionary division under the command of Vice-Admiral Kelvar Garth of Izar – a full 65% of the fleet – through the rift to arrive at the station the Resistance had captured.

Fleet Captain Sun had been aware that the Delta-Universe had also sent operatives to infiltrate the Terran forces as part of the Trikeros plan and that said operatives had been placed in control of a key Terran starship. They were now waiting on orders to act; therefore, the Gamma-Universe Starfleet Resistance and the Delta-Universe Expeditionary Forces would launch a three-pronged attack on the remaining Terran forces surrounding Earth and Sector 001 as the Delta-Universe infiltrators would move to disable and destabilize the Terran forces from within. The plan would be called Operation: Trikeros and, when put into spectacular effect in mid-December 2299, would result in the conclusive defeat of the Terran Empire’s plans to build a multiversal reign of terror. Fleet Captain M. Tobias Sun and the Resilient had finally achieved the dream that Captain M. Lucius Sun refused to allow to die with him – the Gamma-Universe was free.

Prior to Operation: Trikeros, Fleet Captain Sun had relinquished command of the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) to return to the U.S.S. Farrington (NX-2010) as his flagship. During this final operation, Resilient would be commanded by her second officer, Lt. Commander Jim Greene. Greene, advanced to Acting Captain on Captain Sun’s orders, would retain command of the Resilient into the dawn of the 24th century as the legendary cruiser adjusted to her new role in a Federation rising from its ashes.

(To be continued in Part 3, where we'll talk about the design of the Archer-class heavy cruiser and the particular modifications made to the U.S.S. Resilient (NCC-2931) throughout her service life in greater detail.)