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It's the year 2154 when the Vulcans relay some information to Starfleet about reports of another population of humans well away from earth to Starfleet. As such the NX-01 is sent to investigate, thinking that it might be a lost colony or something similar to North Star. By 2155 they enter the region of space in which humans have been sighted (well away from Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, the Klingons and Romulans) and find what they were looking for when they are confronted by three ships with human life-signs. Each of said ships has a spherical mail hull about 100 meters in diameter with a conical aft sporting four nacelles arranged radially, bringing it's total length up to about 140 meters, has polarized hull plating and carries several charged particle cannons and missile launchers. But more striking is the Insignia on their side...

When hailed they are met by the image of a well groomed man with a goatee in a grey uniform who, in the refined tones of an educated southern gentleman declares himself Rear Admiral Tobias Minor of CSS New Alabama and that they have entered the space claimed by the New Confederate States. He is somewhat cordial once he finds out that the crew of the Enterprise is human and offers if Captain Archer would come aboard for dinner and an exchange information on how things have gone in the last three centuries for their respective worlds. There is some awkwardness involving Lieutenant Tucker and Ensign Mayweather.

Basically what happened was that some time in 1862 in Southern Georgia a device was found in a cave that when activated opened a portal to another world (the Planet that has since been known as Davis), which was secured and explored by the Confederate Army along with a few civilians who sought to settle it. The world was Earthlike in general terms and was populated by some natives which had blue skin, lumpy foreheads, horns and were herbivorous and were at a bronze age level of development. When general Sherman marched to the sea, thousands of refugees were directed by the General through the gate as well as 3,000 CSA soldiers and 8,000 slaves and to prevent the gate from falling into US Army hands it was blasted, disabling the mechanism and caving in the cave. The 42,000 men, women and children that got through were left on Davis. As such they dug in, built new farms, plantations and towns, raised families, created a new government and soon moved to conquer this new world. Since they had rifles, revolvers and cannons while the natives had linen vests, hide shield, flint arrows and bronze swords and spears the locals were subdued and put into slavery going by the idea that they had Dominion over them as non humans. Gradually the New Confederate States expanded it's influence over the planet as new armies were raised and more natives were enslaved. Their area of influence grew steadily as did their population.

At the rate that they were going due to total population, levels of education, competition, natural resources in the heartland of the New Confederacy and social factors on the course they were on originally they would have achieved about an 1960s-1990s level of technology by the 2150s, but in 2042 they found a crashed Starship, which they excavated, studied and eventually managed to power up some of it's systems including a secondary reactor, a shuttle-craft and a couple of it's computers which contained enough historical and scientific information to accelerate their development by centuries. They launched their first warp capable spacecraft in 2101, which caused them to turn their eyes to the starts and eventually to colonize two planets (the first one being uninhabited, the second one containing another pre-industrial species that they enslaved) and they had enough trouble with pirates to build a fleet to defend themselves and bought, salvaged and stole new technology to upgrade their machinery.

The New Confederacy has a population of about 100,000,000 humans (they've used cloning to boost their population growth in the last 40 years) and 750,000,000 conquered aliens that exist in permanent slavery. They had something akin to Feminism happen stretched out over most of the 20th and early 21st century and after some considerable debate eventually abolished negro slavery in 2023, though there is still some tension over it. All men are required to serve for 2.6 earth years in their military and to drill twice a year until their fifty, leaving aside career military types. Women can serve voluntarily. Their army is on the whole professional and has armored infantry, ground vehicles, artillery and air support. The New Confederacy's society is oligarchical, every human citizen has a right to vote but in practice the economy and political sphere is dominated by a few hundred prominent families who run various large industrial enterprises. Most of the rest of the human population work for them and voting against your employer is a big no-no as outside of charity there is no form of welfare. Each of the big combines run by said families has a cloning operation in which favored employees are cloned, raised and educated by said company and are employed by them afterwards (usually having to work for 5-10 years to pay off debts incurred in their creation and education). The only people who have a hope in hell of winning an election at anything more than. Slaves are outfitted with tracking implants that can stimulate pain nerves or induce seizures to keep them in line while their owners have the power of life and death over them, with most of them living on large industrial facilities or plantations with others being employed in the service sector, as personal servants or workers for the government. A few million slaves have been raised by the government to be soldiers modeled on the Ottoman Janissaries (though under supervision by Human officers).

The New Confederate Navy has a total of thirteen starships (with a fourteenth under construction) of which the New Alabama class is the newest and largest, being able to reach Warp 3. All three of them have been sent to meet the Enterprise and a fight between said squadron and an NX-class ship could go either way. In addition there are hundreds of civilian transports, both for in system and interstellar. The New Confederacy does not have an ambition of retaking earth baring the fantasies of a few romantics, though they do feel that to secure the future of their nation they need to establish themselves as an interstellar power. At Warp 5 they are more than a month from earth.

What happens and how would you advise Captain Archer and Starfleet to handle this development?

Zor

Use time travel to resurrect Generals Grant and Sherman?

Okay, more seriously...

I think that the reaction on Earth is likely to be quite negative. The Confederacy will be viewed as a shameful, dark episode of the past, with such a discovery being only slightly less disconcerting than finding a Nazi civilization in space would be. The slavery will be a major issue.

Intervention... I don't know. There's no Prime Directive yet at this point, and I'm not sure what laws their might be regarding Earth jurisdiction over independent human colonies. Their population is small enough that they could probably be overwhelmed fairly easily if Starfleet could gain orbital superiority. How many ships does Starfleet have at this point? The NX is supposed to be the best they have in early Enterprise, right? But if three of the enemy's best ships can just match it, and they only have thirteen (soon to be fourteen) total (some of which may be unavailable at any time due to routine maintenance, etc.), then even a few NX-level ships could probably crush their fleet in an afternoon. Hell, with that many more slaves than humans, and existing social tensions among the humans over race, it ought to be pretty easy to provoke a successful slave revolt if they can simply disable the implants. Of course, if they can't, their is the risk of the slaves being tortured/killed during a conflict, and a slave revolt would likely kill a lot of innocent civilians too.

In any case, the Federation of any era doesn't tend to be very militarily aggressive, and they might be able to pressure some concessions out of the colony. A colony of this size likely won't fair too well on its own against the likes of the Klingons, Romulans, or Xinid without allies. So, offer them a mutual defense pact and trade in exchange for making certain concessions on social policy, with an eye towards an eventual abolition of slavery (which, let's face it, why do you need slaves when you have futuristic automation and, eventually, replicators)?

I'd probably suggest something like that.

Oh, here's an interesting thought: Some descendants of slaves filing suit against them, demanding reparations for the Confederacy's crimes.

Saw this on SB.com, and I'm of a mind with others, the Earth wasn't strong enough to crush societies based on slavery elsewhere, such as the Klingons or Orions, but they would be hostile.

Of course, the Neo-Confederacy's chances look really shitty later on, as the Federation is very, very strong in the Twenty Third Century and later, and the Confederacy's technological progress isn't based on discovery but limited reverse engineering will stall out absent outside assistance.

The Prime Directive will never apply to them, though.

Thread moved.

This strikes me very much as a "Kirk it up and do speeches about overthrowing your tyrannical oppressor and forming a society that can live in equality," situation.

Yeah, this does seem like a sort of TOS kind of premise.

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2017-08-28 02:53pm Yeah, this does seem like a sort of TOS kind of premise.

They basically did it (sort of) with the Nazi episode. TOS was all about finding human cultures in deep space with stylistic call-backs to historic Earth cultures, so yeah. Kirk and company might be a better fit for this than Archer, but perhaps it was too obvious.

1: Black emancipation would have happened a lot sooner..and would actually have been a smoother process, though rare some free black in the South were slave owners themselves, and given the situation the white population would adopt a "human enough" mentality....the aliens are now the slave stock and free hands are needed to train and wrangle them, especially with the white men needed to conquer the rest of the planet

2: Womens suffrage would also happen more expeditiously, with women having take on various managerial and political responsibilities as able bodied men are needed to subjugate the planet.

Zor wrote: ↑2017-08-26 01:30pm The New Confederate Navy has a total of thirteen starships (with a fourteenth under construction) of which the New Alabama class is the newest and largest, being able to reach Warp 3. All three of them have been sent to meet the Enterprise and a fight between said squadron and an NX-class ship could go either way. In addition there are hundreds of civilian transports, both for in system and interstellar. The New Confederacy does not have an ambition of retaking earth baring the fantasies of a few romantics, though they do feel that to secure the future of their nation they need to establish themselves as an interstellar power. At Warp 5 they are more than a month from earth.

What happens and how would you advise Captain Archer and Starfleet to handle this development?

Zor

That depends on United Earth's continuity and proper knowledge of the Confederacy's surrender.

Thing is...technically....the CSA government never surrendered. All surrenders were local military commanders and were solely confined to the regional armies they controlled.

And if the continuity is, United States of America = United Earth (given all the transitioned traditions and heraldry)....then technically they are in an active state of war.

Archer would have to tread carefully, be artfully diplomatic with regards to the slavery issue, reduce crew exposure as much as possible...just one crewman making an outburst of disgust could lead to open fighting.

Best case is formalized talks are mediated by the Vulcans, the "Vulcan Accords" would establish borders and buffers between United Earth and Confederate space, both parties agree to acknowledge that each other exists and that is all. The Confederacy officially renounces all claims to territory on Earth and pledges to place no interest nor designs on any world located within UE territory. United Earth will acknowledge that the Confederacy simply 'exists' as a nation state and will also pledge to place no interest nor designs on any world located within Confederate territory. United Earth will as a sole extension of good faith agree to a one time donation of historical and educational material to the Confederacy.

Worst case is war, Starfleet starts mobilizing, Section 31 works to start slave revolts, Archer has to convince the coalition to assist. Meanwhile on Earth, United Earth hits a touch of instability, international distaste of American primacy following First Contact comes to a head...with the wool pulled that United Earth and it's establishments (Starfleet, MACO, etc.) have been American fronts this whole time...and in less then 6 months the planet is plunged into another interstellar war.

They'd be technically at war, maybe (if we assume that the United Earth government is a direct successor of the United States, which is a big assumption), but only technically. I mean, technically the Korean War never ended, but most (rational) people aren't eager to resume full-scale fighting. The time and cultural gap will be even greater here, their will be no living memory of the original conflict, much less ongoing clashes, and both sides are separated by light years of spacing. United Earth is too strong (especially if backed by the Vulcans) for the Confederates to credibly overwhelm them (nor do they have the population and resources to plausibly occupy Earth), and while United Earth could probably win, at this early point in the technically still pre-Federation history, they could probably seriously bloody Starfleet. Nobody is going to want a war.

Edit: If anything, we'll probably see them allying against the Romulans and then Klingons, with the smaller Confederacy being gradually dominated culturally and economically by the United Federation of Planets, and being folded into the Federation sometime in the 23rd. or 24th. Century.

I'm not so sure about that; the Romulans would have no reason to dislike them, nor would the Klingons, unless they started something, or had something either imperial power wanted. I can see them being taken over by the Klingons during the 23rd Century, which would be interesting.

If they generally regard aliens as inferior to humans, fit only to be slaves, then good relations with the Klingons and Romulans become less likely.

The 23rd. Century, depending on where they're located, might see the Federation and Klingons jockeying for influence over their world though.

The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2017-08-29 05:40pm If they generally regard aliens as inferior to humans, fit only to be slaves, then good relations with the Klingons and Romulans become less likely.

The 23rd. Century, depending on where they're located, might see the Federation and Klingons jockeying for influence over their world though.

yeah if this "neo-CSA" considers aliens to be only fit to be slaves the only realistic way they anything resembling a semi-friendly relationship with either the Klingon Empire or the Romulan Star Empire was if said "neo-CSA" was powerful enough that not having semi-friendly relations with them would be major detriment to the Klingon Empire or the Romulan Star Empire.

As something that's been consistent thru out Trek (and will remain so if Discovery doesn't retcon it) is that both klingons and romulans are very prideful people and would not take the insult of being deemed worthy of only being slaves well at all (while the response to that might take different forms, there would be a response).

This Confederate Empire might be able to avoid being invaded if A)the klingons or romulans deem them not worth their time or b)if they're in a such vital system that it belonging to any of the big 3 would be such change in the balance of power that the other 2 would do anything they can to prevent that system from being taken.

Let's see:

The Confederacy, in 1863, was starting to circle the drain, so no resources to exploit this gate thingy.

Georgia would've kept this to themselves, and not sure with Richmond. They might have exploited the tech, but with a much-smaller expedition.

Sherman would've likely ordered some of his troops to pursue fleeing Confederates through the gate, and would've cabled Lincoln of this gateway.

It would've been more sensible to make the neoConfederates the descendants of a Lost Cause group who got a hold of a Botany Bay class ship and headed out to found a new Southern Paradise.

U.P. Cinnabar wrote: ↑2017-12-30 12:34pm Georgia would've kept this to themselves, and not sure with Richmond. They might have exploited the tech, but with a much-smaller expedition.

Sherman would've likely ordered some of his troops to pursue fleeing Confederates through the gate, and would've cabled Lincoln of this gateway.

As mentioned they blew up and buried the earth side to prevent that from happening.

Zor

How fragile was that gate? The Confederacy, when Sherman started his March to the Sea, was circling the drain in every way, and they couldn't have amassed that much in the way of explosive.

I realize it's a nitpick, but...

Zor wrote: ↑2017-08-26 01:30pmWhat happens?