USS Sovereign (NCC-75000) (SFI)

The USS Sovereign (NCC-75000) was the prototype for the starships used by Starfleet in the late 24th century. At the time of her launch, the Sovereign was one of the most advanced starships in the Federation. (Starfleet International)

The USS Sovereign, when it launched from Earth orbit in 2372 with a Caitian fleet captain named Siandierra Anjulee Beautelier holding the "center seat," and a Vulcan scientist named Selek serving as its Chief Science Officer. Its first Chief Security Officer was an Andorian lieutenant named FrioDraca, Duke Of Draca, and its first Executive Officer, or "Number One," was a female "were-bat," or hybridization of human and bat, named Sybil Sixteen. (A graduate of the Academy Medicine College as well as a product of experiments at the Mendel Institute, she later served a tour of duty as the Sovereign's Chief Surgeon and Chief Medical Officer.)

One of Fleet Captain Siandierra's earliest missions in command of the Sovereign was the rescue of a human named Christopher Thomas Robinson, then a licensed ensign by rank and an astrophysicist's mate by original billet, from eighty-three years in suspended animation; not long after his rescue, he became her very first and, to date, her only Intelligence officer as well as her very first and, to date, her only Information Officer, moving up in the ranks to full commander as he did. He also joined the Starfleet Marine Corps, and was sworn into the roster of Marine Strike Group No. 791 as a second lieutenant. As his career progressed, however, Robinson moved up in the ranks to lieutenant colonel.

The Sovereign, in the course of its tour of duty under Siandierra's command, had only minimal involvement in the Dominion War. FrioDraca was killed during one of its missions on behalf of the Starfleet Seventh Fleet, but he was wise enough to have had a clone of himself grown, aged to maturity, and infused with his complete brain patterns. That clone, who came to be known by the code name Magnus Draco, subsequently accepted an undercover assignment for Star Fleet Intelligence whose details are still classified information. Telsek K'Mar also accepted reassignment, whose details also remain classified, at the same approximate time.

Commander Robinson did not have a spotless career after being freed from suspension. In the course of a first-contact mission to the planet Bolgor, he had to bypass chain of command because FrioDraca, then his immediate superior, had given him illegal orders. The mission proved to be a disaster, as an anti-terrrestrial Andorian viceroy whose grandfather Robinson had been forced to kill before entering suspension, and whose entire family had sworn revenge, sabotaged the mission and set Robinson up to be blamed for the failure. Court-martialed, Robinson was acquitted of culpable negligence, violation of the Prime Directive, and conduct prejudicial to the good of Star Fleet, but found guilty of failure to follow chain of command. In the same proceedings, held concurrent with Robinson's, FrioDraca was found guilty of dereliction of duty and conduct prejudicial to the good of Star Fleet for having given Robinson illegal orders, and he was involuntarily relieved as Robinson's immediate superior.

The Sovereign, unlike many other ships in Star Fleet, was equipped with a cloaking device, not for tactical purposes (which usage would have been illegal under the Second Treaty Of Algeron) but instead to avoid violations of the Prime Directive, since it often had to travel to non-Federation planets where it might have been visible to the local tracking devices.

Ship's personnel
Other personnel to have served on the Sovereign included:
 * All Of One, a de-assimilated Borg drone, who barely survived his de-assimilation and later succeeded Sybil Sixteen as Siandierra's Number One.
 * Kesla T'Lija Estrazhi, a Betazoid whose mental stability had been weakened when she had had to administer grueling telepathic therapy to a Vulcan who had been careless enough to look directly at a Medusan without eye protection, and who became ship's counselor as a result.
 * Gorg, a sapient Berengarian dragon owing his intelligence to Mendel Institute experiments, who became Robinson's immediate deputy.
 * Gulana, the eventual Chief Surgeon and Chief Medical Officer, a mercenary physician and assassin with a blood disease that gave her artificial vampiric powers, who had been recruited as a soldier of fortune and whose motive to serve aboard was financial self-enrichment.
 * Bemjamin Reid, Officer-In-Charge of a "hazard team" that Telsek assembled before accepting reassignment elsewhere in Star Fleet Region Seven.
 * ShadowRunner, of the Tribe of Ahroun, recruited into the Sovereign's Engineering complement not long after the ship's launch, whose people possessed artificial lycanthropic powers and who himself eventually became Chief Security Officer.
 * Telsek K'Mar, a Vulcan-Romulan hybrid and son of a Romulan Tal Shiar official and himself a former Star Fleet Ranger, who preceded ShadowRunner as Chief Security Officer before he was assigned elsewhere.
 * Trex, a sapient Berengarian dragon, who, like all her fellow sapient Berengarians, owed the evolution of her intelligence to Mendel Institute experiments conducted on Berengaria VII.