THE HISTORY OF SS FAWKES
SS Fawkes was commissioned 23 February 2317 on one of the moons of Bajor, while the Cardassian Union still worked with the Bajorans beneath the cloak of trade relations. The freighter was financed by the Union government and commissioned was used to ship goods from Bajor to Cardassia Prime. In 2327, during the Occupation, she was hijacked by the Bajoran Resistance and subsequently sold to a private buyer in exchange for funding meant to be applied to their effort to drive the Union from their planet. William Jackson registered it with the United Federation of Planets as SS Delta Queen.
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This name came from an old civilian paddle steamer used by Jackson in North America. Delta Queen would change owners and names several time over the years. It was legally registered with the UFP for the better part of its existence, and the administrative record aboard ship from this time is relatively complete.
In 2358, the title to CF-142AC was legally transferred to Frederick van der Huevel, a gambler and entrepreneur, and came under the command of his partner, David G. Kaidan, a professional merchant carrier captain. Van der Huevel changed his freighter's name to SS De Groene Draeck ('The Green Dragon' in his native tongue) and together with Kaidan started a scrap metal and ore shipping business in the Alpha Quadrant's Pi Ursae and Theta Ursae sectors, with occasional excursions as far as Vulcan or Coridan space.
Their business ran into trouble only two years later, when van der Huevel's personal debt problems finally expanded to include his livelihood. He owed so much that he was forced to offer Kaidan a half-share of the ship, and this fresh infusion of liquidity sustained their business for another ten years. By early '71, however, Kaidan and his partner were casting around for another way to hold off bank foreclosure; they began to take more and more dangerous jobs to make up the difference in their profit margins. Unbeknown to Frederick van der Heuvel, Kaidan arranged to transfer the title of deed to their young boatswain, David V. Kaidan (nephew to the older man), in the even that something happened to the owners.
Five months after this transfer of deed, in 2372, while transporting an order of deuterium oxide from Tesnia, SS De Groene Draeck was ambushed by piratical Orion Syndicate forces taking advantage of widespread political tensions leading up to the Dominion War. Suffering badly deteriorated weaponry, and running heavy with a load of deuterium containers, they didn't stand a chance. The crew that survived the initial assault, including both Kaidans, were never heard from again.
For nine years the freighter vanished from the Federation's radar, probably making milk runs for the syndicate.
Mayterial Droz, an ex-Starfleet and ex-Maquis adventurer, won the vessel from an Orion slave trader in a stacked poker game in 2381. She rechristened it SS Fawkes, after the historical figure. The vessel was still registered under the name of Peter Heywood, not Droz herself. Who Heywood was, and what became of him, was unknown to Droz at the time.
Fawkes has been repaired and refitted several times over her past seven decades of service. She has remained a working freighter, hauling cargo from system to system with few defenses and an outdated, rattle-trap engine. She has problems at warp factor 5 and sputters along at 5.5. By making personal modifications, Droz was able to attain warp 6 in cases of extreme emergency. This mod came in very handy, since Droz had to spend plenty of time over the years evading Orion Syndicate agents who believed that one bad poker hand didn't warrant a transfer of ownership.
Following a drug smuggling scandal in 2387, Droz lost all of her crew but Volok, the ship's physician. Both were acquitted of all charges, but the first mate and others were sentenced to five years imprisonment in different penal facilities across the Sol system. Rebuilding her complement, she embarked upon a year-long series of contracts that sometimes brought Fawkes into positions of terrible danger, and sometimes only skirted the borders of legality.
In early 2387, a group of interdiction vessels led by USS Mons Graupius stopped and boarded SS Fawkes while it departed from Starbase 494, a large mixed-use shipyard in orbit of Bardeezi VI. Eleven crew members, including Droz, Volok, Lera Cheyn, and passenger Richard Gornan were arrested for smuggling arms with intent to sell. According to the ship's course computers, their destination was somewhere between Trivas and Korma, just over the Cardassian Union line. In two of the cargo holds and also a forward storage bay, Marine assault teams discovered eighty crates containing various weapons, including: 155 hand phasers and hand disruptors of various makes, some off-brand; 756 rifles, mostly Type-IIIs and TR-114s with target scanners; 10 Varon-T disruptors; two tonnes of K-2 and Ambala-derivative shaped charges, complete with timers and detonation equipment; three cases of antitank mines, eighteen units total. The estimated black market price of the shipment was just under three million Federation Credits.
The Fawkes was impounded at Deep Space 9, the Seventh Fleet Command headquarters in the Bajor Sector, while the crew trials commenced in 707th Federal District Circuit court. Only seven members of the crew were charged, including Droz; the other five, including Richard Gornan, were released following questioning.
Two of the seven accused made plea deals, and were released on probation in exchange for witness testimony. Droz, Volok, Kristiana Petrova and Lera Cheyn were convicted and handed sentences of fifteen, twelve, six and three years, respectively. During the trial, Droz claimed that she had been contracted by agents of Starfleet Intelligence's Section 31 to transport the weapons to an anonymous buyer just outside the Korma system. Starfleet Security launched an investigation - as did the Bajoran Senate, who were alarmed by the allegation that SI might be attempting to rearm Cardassian reactionary elements without federal approval - to no avail.
In the course of the Starfleet Security investigation, it was discovered that the freighter's legal owner, Peter Heywood, had worked through Denobulan small business attorneys in 2376 to earn the ship cargo agent certification and Systems Services Agency documentation she needed to transport cargo legally. Heywood was allegedly a citizen of Farius Prime, owned several freighters following the Dominion War, and was apparently no longer subject to federal investigation or extradition for his possession of a stolen freighter. JAG investigators could determine little about his origins; he appeared to be a passenger on a mining supply vessel that disappeared in the Beta Quadrant in 2370, and would have been at least eighty years old when his lawyers finally registered the vessel.
Of course, CF-142AC was actually still the legal property of David G. Kaidan, the man who had disappeared with his entire crew back in 2372, when the freighter was still called SS De Groene Draeck.
Kaidan had been declared legally dead in 2384, after the Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA), which had contracted him to move a series of deuterium containers, requested a formal coroner's inquest into his whereabouts. Fawkes was shuffled through the 707th Federal District Court's probate system for six months until Kaidan's next of kin was laboriously identified by Starfleet Security and his Rules of Intestacy Beneficiary case was reopened. Starfleet Administration Legal Services contract law specialist Lt. Owen Sileis, GSJS, was assigned the job of tracking down this beneficiary, and transferring ownership to her.
As it turned out, that next of kin was traced to someone in Starfleet's own ranks: Máthénwy Eidelwel, Kaidan's only child from an old unmarried relationship. Eidelwel was winding up her contract as a second-class petty officer when Sileis finally tracked her down.
While CF-142AC was now her legal property, Eidelwel also stood to inherit her father's outstanding debt for the Ferengi deuterium cargo lost during the Orion Syndicate attack in '72, which amounted to approximately 12,824,800 Federation Credits (2,300,000 plus 28.6% interest per annum over sixteen years of non-payment). According to the original contract, she has only forty months to pay the outstanding balance. According to the Personnel Service Detachment, she has only twelve weeks to decide what to do with her career.
Eidelwel hired a handful of DS9 castoffs to help her get the ship back into order, but within days of her arrival she was alerted to an ongoing Starfleet Security investigation into whether or not SS Fawkes still bore a secret cache of black-market weapons left behind by Captain Droz. Afraid that her windfall will be impounded again before she has had the chance to sell it, and with the Ferengi Commerce Authority liquidator now aboard as a passenger, she set out for open space.
In 2358, the title to CF-142AC was legally transferred to Frederick van der Huevel, a gambler and entrepreneur, and came under the command of his partner, David G. Kaidan, a professional merchant carrier captain. Van der Huevel changed his freighter's name to SS De Groene Draeck ('The Green Dragon' in his native tongue) and together with Kaidan started a scrap metal and ore shipping business in the Alpha Quadrant's Pi Ursae and Theta Ursae sectors, with occasional excursions as far as Vulcan or Coridan space.
Their business ran into trouble only two years later, when van der Huevel's personal debt problems finally expanded to include his livelihood. He owed so much that he was forced to offer Kaidan a half-share of the ship, and this fresh infusion of liquidity sustained their business for another ten years. By early '71, however, Kaidan and his partner were casting around for another way to hold off bank foreclosure; they began to take more and more dangerous jobs to make up the difference in their profit margins. Unbeknown to Frederick van der Heuvel, Kaidan arranged to transfer the title of deed to their young boatswain, David V. Kaidan (nephew to the older man), in the even that something happened to the owners.
Five months after this transfer of deed, in 2372, while transporting an order of deuterium oxide from Tesnia, SS De Groene Draeck was ambushed by piratical Orion Syndicate forces taking advantage of widespread political tensions leading up to the Dominion War. Suffering badly deteriorated weaponry, and running heavy with a load of deuterium containers, they didn't stand a chance. The crew that survived the initial assault, including both Kaidans, were never heard from again.
For nine years the freighter vanished from the Federation's radar, probably making milk runs for the syndicate.
Mayterial Droz, an ex-Starfleet and ex-Maquis adventurer, won the vessel from an Orion slave trader in a stacked poker game in 2381. She rechristened it SS Fawkes, after the historical figure. The vessel was still registered under the name of Peter Heywood, not Droz herself. Who Heywood was, and what became of him, was unknown to Droz at the time.
Fawkes has been repaired and refitted several times over her past seven decades of service. She has remained a working freighter, hauling cargo from system to system with few defenses and an outdated, rattle-trap engine. She has problems at warp factor 5 and sputters along at 5.5. By making personal modifications, Droz was able to attain warp 6 in cases of extreme emergency. This mod came in very handy, since Droz had to spend plenty of time over the years evading Orion Syndicate agents who believed that one bad poker hand didn't warrant a transfer of ownership.
Following a drug smuggling scandal in 2387, Droz lost all of her crew but Volok, the ship's physician. Both were acquitted of all charges, but the first mate and others were sentenced to five years imprisonment in different penal facilities across the Sol system. Rebuilding her complement, she embarked upon a year-long series of contracts that sometimes brought Fawkes into positions of terrible danger, and sometimes only skirted the borders of legality.
In early 2387, a group of interdiction vessels led by USS Mons Graupius stopped and boarded SS Fawkes while it departed from Starbase 494, a large mixed-use shipyard in orbit of Bardeezi VI. Eleven crew members, including Droz, Volok, Lera Cheyn, and passenger Richard Gornan were arrested for smuggling arms with intent to sell. According to the ship's course computers, their destination was somewhere between Trivas and Korma, just over the Cardassian Union line. In two of the cargo holds and also a forward storage bay, Marine assault teams discovered eighty crates containing various weapons, including: 155 hand phasers and hand disruptors of various makes, some off-brand; 756 rifles, mostly Type-IIIs and TR-114s with target scanners; 10 Varon-T disruptors; two tonnes of K-2 and Ambala-derivative shaped charges, complete with timers and detonation equipment; three cases of antitank mines, eighteen units total. The estimated black market price of the shipment was just under three million Federation Credits.
The Fawkes was impounded at Deep Space 9, the Seventh Fleet Command headquarters in the Bajor Sector, while the crew trials commenced in 707th Federal District Circuit court. Only seven members of the crew were charged, including Droz; the other five, including Richard Gornan, were released following questioning.
Two of the seven accused made plea deals, and were released on probation in exchange for witness testimony. Droz, Volok, Kristiana Petrova and Lera Cheyn were convicted and handed sentences of fifteen, twelve, six and three years, respectively. During the trial, Droz claimed that she had been contracted by agents of Starfleet Intelligence's Section 31 to transport the weapons to an anonymous buyer just outside the Korma system. Starfleet Security launched an investigation - as did the Bajoran Senate, who were alarmed by the allegation that SI might be attempting to rearm Cardassian reactionary elements without federal approval - to no avail.
In the course of the Starfleet Security investigation, it was discovered that the freighter's legal owner, Peter Heywood, had worked through Denobulan small business attorneys in 2376 to earn the ship cargo agent certification and Systems Services Agency documentation she needed to transport cargo legally. Heywood was allegedly a citizen of Farius Prime, owned several freighters following the Dominion War, and was apparently no longer subject to federal investigation or extradition for his possession of a stolen freighter. JAG investigators could determine little about his origins; he appeared to be a passenger on a mining supply vessel that disappeared in the Beta Quadrant in 2370, and would have been at least eighty years old when his lawyers finally registered the vessel.
Of course, CF-142AC was actually still the legal property of David G. Kaidan, the man who had disappeared with his entire crew back in 2372, when the freighter was still called SS De Groene Draeck.
Kaidan had been declared legally dead in 2384, after the Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA), which had contracted him to move a series of deuterium containers, requested a formal coroner's inquest into his whereabouts. Fawkes was shuffled through the 707th Federal District Court's probate system for six months until Kaidan's next of kin was laboriously identified by Starfleet Security and his Rules of Intestacy Beneficiary case was reopened. Starfleet Administration Legal Services contract law specialist Lt. Owen Sileis, GSJS, was assigned the job of tracking down this beneficiary, and transferring ownership to her.
As it turned out, that next of kin was traced to someone in Starfleet's own ranks: Máthénwy Eidelwel, Kaidan's only child from an old unmarried relationship. Eidelwel was winding up her contract as a second-class petty officer when Sileis finally tracked her down.
While CF-142AC was now her legal property, Eidelwel also stood to inherit her father's outstanding debt for the Ferengi deuterium cargo lost during the Orion Syndicate attack in '72, which amounted to approximately 12,824,800 Federation Credits (2,300,000 plus 28.6% interest per annum over sixteen years of non-payment). According to the original contract, she has only forty months to pay the outstanding balance. According to the Personnel Service Detachment, she has only twelve weeks to decide what to do with her career.
Eidelwel hired a handful of DS9 castoffs to help her get the ship back into order, but within days of her arrival she was alerted to an ongoing Starfleet Security investigation into whether or not SS Fawkes still bore a secret cache of black-market weapons left behind by Captain Droz. Afraid that her windfall will be impounded again before she has had the chance to sell it, and with the Ferengi Commerce Authority liquidator now aboard as a passenger, she set out for open space.