USS Aventine (NCC-82602)



The USS Aventine (NCC-82602) is a Vesta-class Federation starship in Starfleet service in the late 24th century. As of the year 2381, Aventine was under the command of Captain Ezri Dax, with a crew of about 750.

2381
The Aventine saw her first combat action against the Borg during the invasion of Acamar. During the battle, the commanding officer and the executive officer were both killed, leaving Ezri Dax in command of the ship. One week after the battle, Starfleet officially promoted Dax to captain and gave her command of the Aventine. The Aventine was then sent to the Gamma Quadrant to investigate and salvage the remains of the Columbia. This was, however, cut short when the ship was reassigned to defend Trill from the Borg. During the operation, two of the Aventine's engineering personnel, who were part of the salvage team, were found dead. An investigation revealed the cause of the death to be a Caeliar, who also managed to board the Aventine, where he caused additional deaths. After stealing a shuttlecraft and attempting to locate his former home, Erigol, Arithon confessed to Captain Dax that he had not caused the deaths on purpose, but had known only the need to feed. Once in the Azure Nebula, the Aventine received a distress call from the USS Enterprise-E and rescued it from a Borg cube. After dealing with the immediate threat, the two vessels enacted repairs while awaiting further orders. Captain Dax wanted to utilize the tunnels as exploratory devices, but Captain Picard insisted on determining how to collapse them to prevent further Borg incursions. However, after sensor readings indicated that collapsing the tunnels could have disastrous results, the two ships worked to open and survey the far sides of the tunnels, hoping to take the front line of the Borg invasion to the Collective. The Aventine made contact with an unusual cosmozoan species in the Delta Quadrant who had repelled a fleet of Borg vessels and only allowed the ship to survive because they were not Borg. Another tunnel took the Aventine to the intergalactic void, almost a million light years distant of NGC 5078, and the last tunnel that the Aventine went through, jointly with the Enterprise, deposited them in a plasma stream between a binary star on the outer rim of the Carina Arm near the meridian of the Delta and Gamma Quadrants, where they faced a Hirogen assault. Although the two vessels were boarded, they were able to repel the assault. The journey back was rushed due to the collapse of the tunnel system, and when they arrived back at the Azure Nebula, they found a ship graveyard—the remnants of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant expeditionary force which had been destroyed by a massive Borg armada of over seven thousand cubes. The Aventine set course for Earth to attempt a defense, and the Enterprise chased them. Against immeasurable odds Captain Dax of the Aventine initially planned to bring the ship's experimental slipstream drive online ahead of the test schedule to allow the ship to get to Earth ahead of the Borg and mount a desperate last defense. Dax was eventually dissuaded from this plan by Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise. Dax later did use the Aventine's slipstream drive in an ambitious plan to ambush a Borg vessel and plant a fake Borg Queen to take control of the Borg armada. The slipstream drive allowed the ambush to go ahead successfully, and the plan prevented the annihilation of several Federation worlds. The Aventine, along with the Enterprise and Titan, was later present in the Azure Nebula to witness the end of the Borg invasion, and the entire Borg Collective, at the hands of the Caeliar. After being repaired and refitted, the Aventine began relief operations. It occasionally used its slipstream drive to expedite travel times between destinations. In April 2381, it transported Sonek Pran to Achernar Prime in order to convince Donatra to help in providing aid to the Romulan Star Empire.

2382
In August of that year Julian Bashir and Sarina Douglas were dispatched on an under-cover mission into Breen space to track down the prototype and destroy it. The Aventine provided support for the mission; ready to make a slipstream jump into Breen space and extract them once the prototype was destroyed. Ultimately the Aventine was called in slightly before the destruction of the prototype, and had to help finish the mission by using her shields to force the Breen ship back into the shipyard, where it was destroyed by a reactor core breach in the base.