Fleet

The Fleet Regular Seal is stars and planet on a Fleet Eagle, with starbases

The United Alliance Fleet is the space navy of the Pelted Alliance, a quasi-military operation with bigger guns than traditions; their activities are similar to the Coast Guard's throughout most of their initial history. Officers are trained at the various campuses of Fleet Academe; Fleet Headquarters is in orbit around the planet Selnor.

The army branch of the Alliance military is Ground Forces.

Mission and Scope of Activities

To Discover and Preserve

Fleet is charged with several activities, including:

Investigation of piracy and criminal activity that crosses borders
Investigation of illegal drug activity
Defense against external threats
Expansion of the boundaries of the Alliance

Procedures and Protocols

See Fleet Procedures.

Offshoot Agencies

Fleet Investigation Agency ("To Protect and Observe")
First Voice ("To Serve and Speak")
Ground Forces ("To Serve and Defend")
Special Forces ("We Can")
Terran Space Navy

Assets

One-fourth of the sales transaction tax levied by the Alliance is earmarked for the Fleet.^[1]

Ships

Fleet encompasses warships, warcruisers, and all smaller craft meant for battle and exploration, or support of those functions such as shiptenders. At the time of Alysha's career, there are about 15,000 capital ships in service in Fleet, and just under 700,000 ships in total (including survey ships, couriers, ambassadorial cutters, local coast guards, intelligence specials, etc).

Ship designs are created and overseen by the Fleet Design and Engineering Board (FBED), which is usually known as the "eff-bead."

Shakedown is defined as the run from the builder's dock to an assigned base and back. The first cruise after shakedown is known as the First Vigil.

See: Fleet Ship Classes

Bases, Stations and Beachheads

The Fleet also builds and maintains all the sector starbases.
Beachheads are Fleet's initial response to new territory. When a new sector is established, but isn't large enough to merit a starbase, Fleet builds a beachhead.^[2] Beachheads are collections of habitats and gantries for repair of ships; all of them are constructed in the same way, and never modified or expanded; if it needs expansion, this is taken as a sign that it's time for a starbase. Incremental expansions of a beachhead are considered a waste of time and resources.^[3]
Various observation outposts are also maintained by Fleet, particularly in areas of scientific or strategic interest. They are invariably named after the feature they're near, plus 'Station', and a number. (Thus, Cat's Eye Nebula Station 40, CENS-40, is the fortieth station in or around the Cat's Eye Nebula.) ^[4]

Shipyards

While all starbases can do maintenance (even major overhauls), only a few shipyards are capable of building Fleet ships from the keel out, both materially and legally. These are known as the major Fleet shipyards.

Selnor's Jothan Yard in Sector Alpha - the oldest
Tam-ley's Daya-ilben in Sector Veta - the largest
Starbase Gamma in Sector Gamma - the newest
The Crown Service Yard in Sector Zeta - serves the suburbs of the Alliance

The Selnor and Tam-ley yards were destroyed during the First Chatcaavan War.

Domi Remyfield Archives

Named for the woman who established Fleet; the facility is usually referred to, affectionately, as 'the Domi'. Located on Selnor's surface. Has an attached museum open to the public. Also has private:

Historical Items/Deposits
Historical Documents
Achievements Office - this is where the artists who do the heraldry work--commander level job; also has personnel who run high level events likely to be historical, or have historical roots.

Facility is overseen by a captain-ranked Fleet officer.

Awards

The Copper Sickle: awarded by Fleet to civilians who were substantial assists in a Fleet mission.^[5]

History

Founded in 2474 AD (3 BA), the year after the Well Drive's successful development.

Early History

After the Pelted fled Earth and established their new homeworlds, they thought it would be a good idea to have a military, but while the technology was easily within their reach, the cultural challenges were significant. Most Pelted are non-violent both by inclination and biology, and prior to the Exodus their few interactions with military personnel on Earth had been either as distant authority figures or in security functions. They knew nothing of military history; they weren’t aware of the division of labor or forces; they didn’t understand the military culture and, importantly, its purpose in keeping people under high stress functional and capable of executing their missions.
In short, they were pacifists who could build big guns, decided they should, and then weren’t sure what to do next.
It didn’t help that once they settled into their colonization period, the Pelted failed to find anyone to deploy their fledgling military against. The universe was mostly empty until the Pelted filled it with their own experiments in genetic engineering, and the few aliens the Pelted met were benevolent. The warships the Pelted built found themselves assigned to exploration, disaster relief, and ambassadorial duties. As the merchant fleet expanded, Fleet found extra work in anti-piracy duties… but pirates were few and poorly organized, and these few encounters never necessitated the development of even the most rudimentary of tactics.
Hundreds of years after the Exodus, the most modern and potent military in known space is manned mostly by scientists, engineers, and a small handful of people trained in executive decision-making. It completely lacks the distinction between officer and enlisted personnel, has all of six ranks, and offers little mobility between them save in the command track. Most of Fleet’s members are in the soft and hard sciences and remain ensigns all their careers. They are assigned to the departments of particular ships and never leave. This structure—more like a corporation or government—reflects the duties that have become typical for Fleet, which are primarily scientific, exploratory, and diplomatic.^[6]

Early in the history of Fleet, officers were called "the Accord's swords," though that kind of sobriquet is considered quaint in the modern Fleet.^[7] Though the old tradition of honor duels is not practiced anymore, officers still have swordplay as part of their standard training.^[8]

Post-Rapprochement

According to the Rapprochement treaty terms:

Humans were not initially allowed to join Fleet (or participate in any way with contracting or R&D) for a hundred years post-rapprochement ("the Hundred Years Proof")
When that hundred years elapsed in 241 BA, no one changed the ruling, and it defaulted to another hundred year proof period.
167 years later, in 308 BA, it was challenged by a teen boy who wanted to join, who'd been born on a Pelted world. This opened Fleet formally to humans.
Transfers from the human armed forces were instated in 388 BA. This was probably the time when the Fleet Manual was overhauled.

The program of borrowing humans from the Terran Space Navy is relatively recent, and went along with a series of amendments to the Fleet Manual, not all of which were popular.^[9]

When the Rapprochement reintroduced the Pelted to their makers, humanity was eager to join its defensive efforts with its far more powerful ally… which was when they discovered just how ill-equipped the Pelted Fleet was for anything more complex than escort duties. Earth wanted badly to overhaul the Pelted’s military, but the Pelted resisted. Their Fleet had grown to one of the most sizable employers in Alliance space, and one of its most productive governmental arms; they had no desire to change it to suit their more warlike progenitors’ demands.
...and then the Chatcaava, who had previously been a non-issue (and whom the Pelted had insisted to humanity was no threat), became abruptly expansionist. The unexpected change of policy made the Pelted uncomfortably aware of their own vulnerability, and the subsequent increase in piracy made it clear that at least some traditional military training would be necessary in the future. With this in mind, the Pelted began to accept the offer of personnel loans from the human militaries into theirs, and the culture clash began in earnest. As the Chatcaavan Empire has become more aggressive, humanity's demands that the Fleet find the wherewithal to transform into an actual fighting force have become more urgent.
This is the Alliance Fleet into which Alysha Forrest and her contemporaries have been inducted, and the tension between humanity and the Pelted, and the looming threat implied by the Empire’s saber-rattling, have cast a long shadow. No doubt Fleet will make the transition. The only question is whether they will do so in time to serve the purpose their makers never thought they would need to fulfill.^[6]

Insignia

Fleet has gone through several iterations of its insignia/sigil, which was initially a four-pointed star, and then an eight-pointed star, and then moved to the eagle; this is not a Terran eagle, as might be assumed, but a Selnor species known as the hook-nosed eagle, which is found only at very high altitudes. The head of the hook-nosed eagle resembles (superficially) the clawed toe of a digitigrade Pelted, which is one of the reasons it was selected. (The others being that it was a Selnor-native bird of prey, and its predilection for high aeries.)

Personnel

According to Baner, the most populous race in Fleet is Karaka'a, followed by Harat-Shar and then Hinichi.^[10]

Admirals

Thomas Newell, the White Admiral (human).
Matthew Brighthaven, former Commandant of the Fleet Academe (human).
Terrell Shirrelberry, logistics (Tam-illee).
Maegan Laphylinrii, Asanii.
Maegwin Highmountain, female Hinichi
Unknown, Hinichi. The Night Admiral.
Bruce Canby, Seersa, Personnel. Improbably pretty, impeccably groomed.
Jamais Beson, Office of Exploration. Human male, aggressive black hair with age lines scoring his caramel skin, dark and pebble bright eyes.