Falco Tauvits

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Template:Command Division Character

Falco Robert Tauvits is a half-human, half-Andorian Starfleet officer, the Head of Starfleet Intelligence and one of the foremost starship commanders and task force leaders of the late twenty-fourth century. Decorated repeatedly during the Borg War, Vice-Admiral Tauvits went missing for five years after the conflict on a deep-space exploration mission, only to return to great acclaim, and with a great knowledge of uncharted Alpha Quadrant space. This experience is what led to his being specially picked by Vice-Admiral Jean Murdoch, the former Head of Starfleet Intelligence, to be her successor upon her retirement in March 2306.

Career

2360-2369

Tauvits served as a science officer on the USS Voyeur for the first three years of his career. Although merely holding the label of 'Cultural Sciences Officer', and thus primarily doing political, historical, and sociological research, his duties ultimately brought him far outside the usual boundaries of 'blue shirts'. The Voyeur was assigned to routine duties around the Sol System, and Tauvits' keen mind was often called upon by Starfleet Security when it came to dealing with criminal activity, for he had analytical skills that often led to the rapid prediction of patterns and tactics by pirates and other criminal elements.

When Tauvits was transferred to the USS Churchill, venturing further away from Sol, his duties continued. As Deputy Chief Science Officer, he was regularly called upon by Security for assistance, with his speciality in a field that most of his department - physicists, biologists, chemists - tended to ignore, but which away missions and such would often find more useful than they expected.

The Churchill was also one of the casualties of Wolf 359. Tauvits survived with only brief contact with the Borg, though in a fight to rescue the Chief Science Officer was injured by a falling bulkhead. His superior officer was assimilated by the Borg, and Tauvits fled. Decorated for his efforts and his injury, Tauvits was promoted after his recovery period and assigned to the USS Trojan as Science Chief. He was decorated in 2368 when he saved the life of his XO on a First Contact mission, where he anticipated the outbreak of rioting that the authorities of the world had not foreseen, after a mere 48 hours of analysing the species.

It was in 2369 that Tauvits finally accepted a position teaching at Starfleet Academy, having requested a chance to be closer to Earth and his daughter.

2369-2376

Tauvits only taught at Starfleet Academy for two years before finally, he claimed, growing restless. He requested and was granted a transfer to the USS Atlantis, assigned as the Executive Officer. He displayed command abilities which far surpassed his expertise in the science department, decorated for bravery again in the Klingon War during the repelling of a boarding mission. His three years as the Atlantis's XO were well-served, so much that he later transferred to the rather more high-profile assignment on the Ambassador-class USS Chimaera as her executive officer, considered a post which would catapult him to his own command in several years.

The Dominion War changed this; the Chimaera was in one of the earliest conflicts of the war, during which her commanding officer was killed. Tauvits assumed temporary command of the ship, which would become a more permanent assignment several weeks later. Promoted to Captain and becoming the first of the new batch of young, rapidly-accellerated wartime commanders, Tauvits took on the big chair far sooner than anyone had anticipated.

The Chimaera, battered and worn and ancient as the Ambassador-class was, won quite a reputation during the Dominion War under Tauvits' command. She was ultimately almost destroyed at the Battle of Cardassia, so deeply damaged that salvaging and repairing her was more effort than it was worth, and the ship was scrapped. Tauvits, riding high on his new reputation, was transferred to his new command, the Akira-class USS Thunderchild.

2376-2384

The Thunderchild was where Tauvits' career truly took off. Within a year he had been made a Task Group commander of Task Force 58, and promoted to the rank of Commodore. The Thunderchild's mission of exploration was often intermixed with regular encounters with criminal elements, Tauvits' experience with pirates often causing his ship to be assigned to deal with them. The crew were responsible for despatching many fringe groups of the Orion Syndicate, combatting the Syndicate itself briefly before the Borg War broke out.

The Thunderchild was one of the ships fighting at the Battle of Raeya, Tauvits leading his task group against the Borg. The ship was battered almost to the point of destruction before the Chief Medical Officer assumed command with the incapacitation and death of many of the senior staff. The Thunderchild finally had to be crash-landed onto one of the Raeyan moons, hidden from Borg sensors, and without the ability to leave or re-establish contact with Starfleet.

The crew remained settled there for two years, establishing a makeshift colony, until finally they were found. A group of Klingon pirates, mostly looking to see what they could salvage from the battlefield of Raeya, stumbled across the Thunderchild crew, and had the intention of taking them prisoner for slavery. The Thunderchild survivors managed to fight them off, destroying most of their ships. Tauvits himself managed to board and successfully take over a bIrel class, which he and a select few of the Thunderchild crew took with them back to Starfleet, to send the message for the retrieval of the rest of the survivors.

2384-2398

Upon returning to Starfleet, Tauvits was promptly returned to active duty. Due to the limits on ships available, he managed to negotiate a deal to hang on to 'his' bIrel class ship, putting her 'on loan' to Starfleet, so to speak. Naming her the SS Redemption, Tauvits remained in command of the ship, and was transferred to the Third Fleet's Task Force 31 as its executive officer under Rear Admiral T'Varel, where he served for the next four years, continuing fighting in the Borg War.

In 2388, T'Varel was elevated to a post in Starfleet Command, and Tauvits was promoted to Rear Admiral and made her replacement as Task Force CO. Tauvits served as the CO of TF31 for the next ten years of the Borg War, regularly on assignments of high importance with heavy casualties. It was considered that Tauvits and the Redemption were an odd mixture of cursed and blessed; to serve on the ship gave you a high survival rating, but to serve alongside her was often a path to death. It was said that only the brave and the suicidal captains volunteered for missions that the Redemption had been sent on.

The Redemption barely survived the Battle of Sol, doing somewhat better than the rest of Tauvits' Task Force, which was utterly destroyed. The curse was 'complete', and it took a lot of Tauvits' personal funds to repair his ship, which he left ground-bound on his own property on Earth instead of keeping her as his command in Starfleet.

2398-2401

In the aftermath of the War, Tauvits was offered an assignment working in Starfleet Tactical, but he refused and took a simple job working behind a desk for the Earth Defence Force on the rebuilt Jupiter Station for the next three years. In 2401, with the Federation finally looking outwards at the galaxy again, Tauvits was briefly given command of the Vor'cha class bortaS, and sent on a 'long patrol' beyond the Sol system for short-range investigation.

Tauvits and the bortaS never gave in their first report, and were declared Missing in Action within a few months.

2406

The ultimate fate of the bortaS has been declared classified, though Tauvits himself returned in mysterious circumstances to Federation space in early 2406. Apparently heavily debriefed, Tauvits was deemed to have an unparalleled knowledge of the unknown space not yet rediscovered by Starfleet. This led to the decision, backed primarily by Vice-Admiral Jean Murdoch, for his assignment as the commander of the Second Fleet, which is responsible for foreign affairs. This assignment came with a promotion to Vice-Admiral.

He worked for several months on the Fleet, turning it from a rag-tag mix of ships with resources from Command but very little direction or long-term planning. The project had not expected to be fully launched until early 2407, but under Tauvits' management, within a few months they were ready to go operational. It was on the eve of the launch of the Second Fleet proper that a bombshell was dropped on Tauvits' desk - Murdoch retired from Starfleet. The two had worked closely together in the months following his return to the Federation, and developed a strong mutual respect, so it came as a shock to nobody but Tauvits himself when it was revealed she had specially requested him to be appointed as her successor, reportedly respecting his integrity and determination and believing the Federation would need it in the upcoming years.

Leaving the rather well-groomed Matthew Royce as his successor in the Second Fleet, Vice Admiral Falco Tauvits thus left the chance of the posting in the stars once again, and headed to London, Earth, to set up office in the Headquarters of Starfleet Intelligence.