Star Trek Deckplan Federation

Despite the Klingon-sounding class name, the Karekh class is a Federation starship. Under no circumstances should it be confused with the Klingon qareQ class Bird of Prey.

Karekh was a famous Vulcan commander who lived before his race made first contact with Earth. His name was later used as the basis of the Karekh class explorer starships. This class is a Vulcan-designed and -built small Exploration Scout, with a crew of five and space for four passengers, usually members of Starfleet Exploration Command. It was originally presented in the FASA Star Trek, the Role Playing Game's Federation Starship Recognition Manual (1^st edition) and appeared in the FASA adventure module "Old Soldiers Never Die". The stats state that it entered service on "Reference Stardate 2/0408", which works out to be some time in 2262, three years before the events of season one of Star Trek. Given that the design has nacelles similar to the Constitution refit, this is obviously incorrect, given that they also state that they are only now considering a Mk II version of the class. I conclude the class could not have entered service before Star Trek the Motion Picture in 2273. I have therefore adopted a commissioning date of 2374 for the Karekh class. This allows the ship in the adventure, the USS Sparon to be about six years old at the time of the adventure, where the characters (particularly Commander Hikaru Sulu, who is shown in the cover art) are depicted wearing uniforms fron The Wrath of Khan. This date is confirmed by the "Reference Stardate" of 2/2201, which works out to 2280-ish.

No deck plans were ever produced, but true to form the adventure stated that it has two decks and is laid out similarly to the Mission class Courier, a much larger ship with a totally different exterior layout. Needless to say, this description is pure bunk, and I have ignored it in favour of depicting the ship as designed by Mitch O'Connell. I gave it one ASRV lifeboat with nine seats and a cramped galley with a counter and space for nine seats for when the CO needs to address the entire crew over a meal. Most meals are eaten at duty stations or in the cabins. Each cabin holds two persons, with a single cabin/office for the CO. The ship has one multidisipliany laboratory, and a simple MIR (Medical Inspection Room) in place of a true Sickbay.

The CO is usually a Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander, depending on the requirements of the mission.

Although it is never stated, I envision the ship as being capable of planetfall, with landing skids built into the bottoms of the nacelle housings. An aft airlock allows access and egress while on the ground via an extendable ramp, as shown in the Longitudinal Section and Deck Plan below.

The Karekh class Explorer is an unarmed exploratory vessel. It is normally assigned to Exploration Command, but is also used by Colonisation Command and Terraforming Command, as well being used as an escort Scout by the Merchant Service. Being unarmed, it is popular with Vulcans, less so with other species, and Andorians will not serve on one as a matter of honour.

A running joke among the non-Vulcans assigned as crew on Karekhs is that when the ship was being designed by S'Lek Varien Shipworks on Vulcan in the early 2270's, the young propulsion engineer in charge of engine design wanted to mount traditional Vulcan toroidal nacelles, but was told by the ASDB thay they wanted a scaled-down version of their latest nacelle design. The Vulcan engineer, being as literal as only a stereotype in a joke can be, took this directive as an exact specification, leading to the look of the nacelles. Of course, both the ASDB and S'Lek Varien vigorously deny the rumours.