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 Davisland), which was secured and explored by the Confederate Army. Soon after a few civilians who sought to settle it and to provision the forts. The world was Earthlike in general terms and was populated by some natives which had blue skin, lumpy foreheads, horns and were herbivorous. Technologically they were at a bronze age level of development with small villages. 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. 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 Davisland. 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 padded cloth vests, hide shield, flint arrows and bronze swords and spearheads 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 as they pushed out of the Australia sized continent and beyond. 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. The fact that Davisland was rich in dilithium was also a boon. 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 ships, industrial infrastructure and so forth. 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 1933 due to the demands on military manpower. 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 the county level are either member of the great families or individuals in the pockets of the great families. 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
Are they just on another side on the AQ or in some sort of parallel universe? If the former I'd say Archer and the Federation needs to approach them cautiously and respectfully but also make it clear they don't support the confederacy's policies. If the latter-well I'd say just keep them at a wide berth and condemn them all the same.
I remember this thread when it first appeared over on Stardestroyer.net. Figured it was time for round two ehh?
Given what we know of Starfleet policy they'd be obligated not to interfere. Unless they land on the planet and get into trouble before they know of the danger in which case they'd reform the entire way their civilization operates overnight.
If it's Archer handling the situation then diplomacy will fail on the first cordial face-to-face meeting between the NX crew and the Confederacy leadership (when he tries, and fails, to make some sort of impassioned speech to get them to change their ways, which may or may not involve gazelles), after which all-out war will erupt.
Essentially this is what they are. Initially treat them like what they are, a sovereign foreign power with warp drive. Their social construct is none of United Earth's business. Certainly United Earth would have no political claim to the Confederate planet simply owing to it being inhabited by Humans. Nor would the Earth bound Confederacy having surrendered subsequent to the colonist departure have any baring upon the Confederate planet's sovereignty. After consideration, Starfleet's official policy could be to support the rights of the planet's indigenous people as the true "owners" of the planet. Arms and advisors could be secretly landed on the planet and a army of rebellion raised. With no-where to go, the colonists would fight back with everything they had. Personally I think this would be a poor idea, but it would be possible. United Earth and other interstellar alien powers would likely just have to accept the Confederacy. That doesn't mean that United Earth couldn't do their best to prevent the Confederacy from expanding. However, would there be popular and political support on Earth for such territorial suppression? And would Vulcans, Andorians and others be willing to help. Assuming the Confederacy didn't attack them directly? It would be easy to see the answer to that to be no. In the end, United Earth's best course of action would be to have cordial diplomatic relations with the Confederacy. Perhaps in time there would be trade. Bureaucratically turning a blind eye to the slavery, while publicly condemning it. The Confederacy would see this for what it was, a political requirement, and quietly smile behind their hands. I might have missed it, but were any Human slaves brought through the "stargate?" The existence of their descendants could add a additional factor.