USS Selene
- "Shine forth, night-wandering, horned, and vigilant queen!"
- —J.A. Symonds - Ship's Dedication Quote
USS Selene NCC-82525 is a Lamarr-class Federation starship currently assigned to Fourth Fleet's Task Force 86.
It is commanded by newly promoted Captain Olivia Carrillo and follows on from the crew's continuing adventures from service aboard the USS Luna. The USS Selene supports Task Force 86’s aims of defending the Federation's borders by exploring the unknown, using its advanced sensors to uncover potential new dangers, and reaching out to new life and new civilizations that may become either allies or part of the Federation.
Design and Layout
As with other ships of the Lamarr-class the USS Selene is a variant of the Sovereign-class exploratory cruiser, specifically designed for scientific exploration beyond the boarders of the Federation. The Lamarr-class uses the explorer-sized spaceframe to a more specific scientific mission profile than its cousins the Sovereign-class and the Obena-class which is also a variant of the Sovereign.
Less well armed than the military minded Sovereign the USS Selene (like others in its class) retains the large Type-XII phaser arrays on the saucer and spread over other areas of the hull. It also has the Sovereign's signature forward-firing torpedo turret. Secondary armaments such as the various single-fire torpedo launchers were eliminated, in favor of a single aft burst-fire torpedo launcher.
Like its fellow Lamarr-class ships the USS Selene was built based off many of the learnings from the Intrepid-class USS Voyager's time spent stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Like contemporary vessels, she retains ship-wide holographic projectors and was built with bioneural circuitry, but this has since been updated to isolinear-bioneural hybrid circuitry.
The Selene has a large cetacean operations department, with room for multiple crew members. This department can host beings as large as megaptera novaeangliae (Humpback whale) who are employed as navigational and linguistic specialists.
The nature of Lamarr ships, as well as Admiral Janeway's involvement with developing the class, including the USS Voyager-A means that these ships are often used to testing new technologies. The USS Selene is a testbed for a new holographic system, building on from Voyager and Voyager-A's Emergency Medical Hologram being a full crew member, to having ten holographic crew members in various departments. Due to the history with various attempts at AI, such as the Texas-class these holographic crew members are not allowed to operate certain systems onboard such as life support or to pilot the ship.
Small Craft Operations
As with all Lamarr-class ships the USS Selene has two shuttle bays. It has embarked the standard compliment of 12 shuttlecraft, and four runabouts. These break down as follows.
Shuttles
- 2 x Type-12
- Hyperion
- Theia
- 2 x Type-10
- Helios
- Eos
- 8 x Type-8
- Narcissus
- Pandia
- Ersa
- Horae
- Musaeus
- Eirene
- Eunomia
- Dike
Runabouts
- 2 x Atlantic class
- Zeus
- Themis
The Lamarr-class also includes a Sovereign-class Captain's Yacht that has been named USS Moon, after the Earthly moon that Selene was a goddess of in Greek myth.
Naming Convention
This naming convention, whereby all of the support craft are named after Greek deities is continued throughout the ship. For example the forward Senior Officer's Lounge is called Delphi with the main cafeteria called Athens. The main gymnasium is called Rhodes. The firing range is called Argos. The classes rooms for the academy students are called Syracuse and Corinth. Due to the scientific nature of the USS Selene operations crew have added these informal names for various locations in paint on the doorways in Ancient Greek. Non-human crew often initially find this confusing, but adapt quickly.
As a bonus hidden trick a member of the crew has coded in a translation of all ship's systems in the dead language of Ancient Greek. Though this is almost impossible to access if you don't know about it, operations has been tasked with fixing personal terminals that accidentally get stuck in Ancient Greek.
Mission Operations
Primarily the USS Selene is assigned to Starbase 86, the headquarters of Task Force 86. From there it is dispatched on missions to investigate and explorer new regions of space, usually in the neutral zones shared with other major powers. It is also continuing the USS Luna's exploration of Romulan space a new and sometime unexplored segment of the cosmos that has been opened up to the Federation in recent years.
An important secondary task of the Selene is to act as a flying branch of Starfleet Academy, giving 100 students experience on the frontiers of the Federation. The makeup of the academy students is fourth years looking for hands on experience. The Selene's complement of students is roughly divided up as 50% science (and medicine), and 50% command, engineering, and security focused students. This is a semester, or perhaps more, that will be applied towards final grades and assignments post-graduation.
As a third, task the USS Selene at times serves as a ship sent to perform quick strike operations against pirates and other similar non-scientific duties. Though many more capable ships are preferred the speed of the Lamarr-class coupled with its powerful torpedo turret allow it to take on some limited deep-space strike missions when needed.
Currently the USS Selene does not take on families, though in the future this may change.
History
The USS Selene was built in 2385, the last year of construction for the Lamarr-class. It was one of the last ships sent to Romulan space to assist with the relocation of civilians before the attack by synthetic workers at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. The destruction of the fleet yards resulted in further missions to Romulan space being scrapped, and a general drawing back of Starfleet's exploration efforts.
Because it was fast, and did not yet have a regular crew, the USS Selene was made into a transport ship for taking VIPs from one planet within the Federation to the next. In fact until 2401 it did not have a scientific crew capable of making the most of the ship, and was tasked with ferrying passengers. In 2401 it was reassigned to Task Force 86 and placed in the hands of then Commander (and now Captain) Olivia Carrillo to replace the USS Luna which was to be reassigned.