RIS Bouteina (ship)

The RIS Bouteina was a Norexan-class ship. She was the second ship of the Norexan and also the ship that the Romulan Senate sent out on the first exploratory, scientific five-year mission ever launched by the Romulan Star Empire. She was built at the Tareus IV shipyards. (RIS Bouteina: "Marianela")

She was likened to be the Romulan counterpart to the USS Titan since it had a wide variety of species onboard and, as such, they were explorer flying zoos. However, unlike the Titan, the dominant species still had a majority of crew positions (55% of Romulans on the Bouteina as compared to 15% of Humans on the Titan) (RIS Bouteina: "What about some D'oh!")

Background[]

The Romulan Senate decided that the sister ship to the RIS Bouteina, the RIS Norexan, was to become the flagship of the Tal Prai'ex and, as such, was the ship on which the Praetor and/or the Emperor could fly off-world. For this reason, it was not suitable to be used on a scientific/exploration mission, much less one that lasted five years.

Like the series, the ship was named after Bouteina Majd, a student at the Edouard Montpetit College and the University of Montreal at the time of the series' production.

History[]

That ship was chosen in 2383 to be the Romulan testbed of the multi-adaptive shielding technology. The ship was launched without a formal commanding officer or crew onboard, and its shakedown cruise in 2384 revealed several bugs to be worked out.

Using schematics stolen from the USS Raven, the multi-adaptive shield generators were reverse-engineered during the past twenty years and finally made into actual technology by the Tal Shiar under the guise of being Romulan Star Navy engineers. The ship was carefully built with a mode that allowed to switch between standard shields and multi-adaptive shields.

While charting the Scovion Nebula, the Bouteina suffered its single largest redshirt loss when faced by zombies that boarded the ship after their mothership somehow managed to bring a shield down. After losing 155 redshirts in an attempt to fight back the zombies, they were forced to return to Starbase 26 to get some more redshirts even if these redshirts indirectly helped in the discovery of a new cure against zombification. ("Eidolon")

In 2385, it was involved in the first contact the Lyrans had with the Borg, at the Battle at the Grave of Thoughts and other actions during the war against the Kzinti Patriarchy. It played an instrumental role in capturing Malachor V in early 2386.

In 2387, it helped assist in the Evacuation of Romulus even if it attempted to beam in more than 10 times its rated maximum evacuation capacity in a single run. ("Gogmagog")

Also, when her commanding officer was appointed High Priestess of the God of Evacuation, this ship became Her Eminence's personal ship. In this capacity, she assisted in the search for the HMS Emperor as well as the quest for infinite maximum evacuation capacity on Krant. ("Night of the Were-Hawks", "Forlorn Hope", "Resolution on Krant")

It was the only Tal Prai'ex ship that wasn't Klingon-built to have a gagh farm. ("Hystelic Kingdom")