FANSHIP DESIGN & STATS: Brad R. Torgersen, 1989 - 2007
"Tsunami" class XII-XIII Heavy Cruiser
 NOTES:  The D-33, whose Klingonese designation literally translates as "crushing wave", was one of several large cruiser designs to challenge for the battleship contract that eventually resulted in the commissioning of the L-24 'Ever Victorious' class.  At that time, the Klingon High Command was not yet aware of the existence of the Federation's USS Excelsior prototype, thus it was believed that the super-heavy L-24 would more than match Starfleet's existing top capital ship, the Constitution Refit.  A new Klingon supercruiser, to complement to the L-24, had not yet been deemed a priority, and thus the design consortium responsible for the Crushing Wave was left with only two partially-finished spaceframes, and no contract.
     Some hope was revived during the turmoil surrounding Starfleet and its involvement in Project Genesis, when the Klingon High Command realized its error, but here again the Crushing Wave consortium was left out in the cold, failing to secure even a modest contract because, by that time, the Crushing Wave was deemed "diminutive" in comparison to the impressive Excelsior, lacking in innovative technologies and otherwise past its shelf date before even a single ship reached the point of trials.
     Despondent, and wanting to recover both their reputations and their investments, the Crushing Wave consortium disbanded, each party pursuing work on other matters, until the explosion of the moon Praxis forever altered the affairs of the Klingon Empire.
     With the Klingons suddenly thrust into an alliance with the formerly-hated United Federation of Planets, the necessity of investing in an 'answer' to Excelsior was quickly called into question.  The Imperial economy of the post-Praxis era was enormously strained, and both the High Command and High Council had to balance the demands of the recovery effort with the demands of the military, which continued to consume a disproportionately large percentage of the annual Imperial budget.
     To complicate matters further, the Klingon Empire now found itself on poor terms with a former partner: the Romulan Star Empire.
     From the time of the Khitomer Conference until 2299 A.D., Imperial relations with the Romulans decayed to the point that the Romulans recalled virtually all their envoys within Klingon space, and established a stance of unannounced hostility towards the Klingon Empire.  By 2300 A.D. the Klingon High Command was not only having to manage severe budget problems, but Romulan hubris as well.  Those L-24 and D-39 units previously built for patrolling the Federation Neutral Zone, were diverted to the Klingon/Romulan frontier, where ship-to-ship encounters between the two imperial space powers were becoming alarmingly frequent.  It was feared on the High Council that the Romulans, unable to play the UFP and Klingons against one another in a full-scale war, would still try to take advantage of the weakened Klingon Empire, through gradual "pinprick" actions meant to perforate Klingon border integrity and bring many systems then under Klingon influence into the Romulan sphere.
     With heavy capitol units still in short supply, the High Command believed itself to be in the midst of an advanced battle-cruiser gap with the Romulan Star Navy.  Unwilling to humiliate themselves with calls for Starfleet ships to help secure Klingon space against the Romulans, the High Command sent a call up to the High Council for a special discretionary budget with which to develop and produce a new large cruiser design which could reinforce the Imperial flank along Romulan territory—without requiring the full time/money investment of the L-24 or D-39.
     The High Council initially balked at such a request.  How could they possibly come up with the funds necessary for an entirely new cutting-edge class?  Especially when they had committed to the D-39??
     Fortunately for the former members of the Crushing Wave consortium, one of the consortium member Houses had a functionary within the High Council's substantial bureaucratic chain; a connected man who was able to alert the separate members of the consortium to their new opportunity.
     A special hearing for the Crushing Wave design was arranged, and thus a regrouped consortium went to plead their case before the High Council and Chancellor Azetbur herself.
     The Crushing Wave argument was simple: why expend funds on oversized and overly-complex warship construction, when the key to swift production and reliable operation lay in using off-the-shelf components and equipment commonality with existing ships?  As originally designed, the Crushing Wave was to have had 75% hardware overlap with several ubiquitous capitol designs, including the older-model D-7 units as well as the formidable D-10 and even the L-9 frigate.  And though the two existing Crushing Wave spaceframes had not seen a single plasma torch nor fitting wrench in almost twenty Imperial years, it was believed that at least one could be made 100% operational, for proof-of-concept—including all the latest in standard Klingon engines, weapons, and computer technology—within 90 days of being given the green light by the budget overseers of the Empire.
     Debate on the High Council was heated.  Not just a few members thought the Crushing Wave consortium to be unfairly taking advantage of the Empire's various crises, and accusations of profiteering began to fly.  The entire project was in jeopardy of perishing in committee, until an unlikely ally stepped into the fray.
     As a primary project booster for the troubled D-39, General Korrd felt a measure of personal responsibility for the High Command's new Romulan crisis.  Had the D-39's unconventional design—made so by Korrd's own suggestions—not limited production and delayed fielding, perhaps the Empire would have been better prepared to deter the Romulans.  Thus it was that Korrd quietly made it known that he approved of the Crushing Wave concept, even going so far as to have several cases of vintage blood wine delivered to the Crushing Wave's consortium headquarters, with Korrd's compliments.
     So, the High Council and High Command reached a co-decision.  The Crushing Wave contract would proceed, but on one condition: the consortium had to produce a fully-operational prototype within 90 days, as promised, or the entire project would be rescinded.
     Forced to walk their talk, the Crushing Wave consortium rapidly marshaled their resources.
     In early 2301 A.D. both of the previously-produced Crushing Wave spaceframes were pulled from mothballs, totally gutted of old equipment, and reinforced to take the latest in Imperial warp and impulse technology.  When it was revealed that there was not enough room in the main hull for both a modern warp assembly and a powerful impulse system, the design team opted to employ a total of four, smaller impulse decks, with two of the decks being grafted onto structural hardpoints midway along each wing.  Computer testing indicated that this minor unconventionality would not be so great as to defeat the Crushing Wave's promised commonality and operational convenience, and might in fact result in superior control and maneuver characteristics, provided that the wings themselves could stand the added strain of impulse thrust applied along their lengths.
     Also unusual was the decision to abandon a traditional rear-dorsal shuttle hangar deck, in favor of a forward-ventral hangar which would partner with the smaller, forward cargo access hatches.  A similar hangar configuration had already proven workable on the older L-20 fast battleship, and it was believed that the ordinarily vulnerable hangar doors could enjoy a greater degree of protection if sequestered beneath the command pod boom where it mated with the main hull.  This, combined with the conformal ovoid main body elements and their forward weapons hardpoints, served to give the Crushing Wave a decidedly different forward aspect—in comparison to classical Klingon aesthetic—so much so that detractors began to quietly circulate jokes to the effect that the new economy cruiser had breasts.
     Nobody was laughing or making boob jokes by the second Imperial quarter, though, when—a tidy seventeen days ahead of schedule—the Crushing Wave consortium delivered not just one, but two trial-ready warships, each outfitted with the latest in conventional Imperial technology and boasting a toothy weapons array that would equal or best the Romulans' top front-line cruisers, such as the V-27 and V-30.  Trials took another 90 days—for general wringing-out of the onboard systems and crew familiarity—at which time the Crushing Wave consortium was declared to have officially fulfilled its end of the bargain.
     Both the Crushing Wave and its sister, the Bor'jof Trench, entered Imperial service in the fourth quarter of that same Imperial year, approximately March of 2302 A.D.
     In spite of them technically being a more recent design than ships like the D-39, the Crushing Wave class retained its original, older alphanumeric designation in the Starfleet Janes catalog: D-33.  Like many Klingon ships, it was also given a more Federation-standard title, in keeping with the literal meaning of the Klingon name.
     The new class would not have to wait long to prove its mettle.
     In mid-2302 A.D. the Bor'jof Trench was patrolling the Klingon/Romulan frontier with a trio of D-18C destroyers when they received an emergency distress signal from a nearby colony world.  Proceeding at high warp, the Bor'jof battle group arrived just in time to see six Romulan V-11 class cruisers obliterate the colony's single, older defense outpost.
     Sensing the arrival of the Klingon battle group, three of the V-11s broke off and intercepted the Klingon D-33 and its D-18s while the remaining three V-11s began hailing photon and disruptors strikes on the L-class planet's colonial ground fortifications.
     Scattering his D-18Cs, the fleet captain of the Bor'jof Trench went to battlestations and took on the lead V-11.  Using his ship's formidable triple-tube torpedo armament in the forward arc, the fleet captain obliterated the lead V-11 before its two companions were able to batter down the D-33's shields, and disable Bor'jof Trench's port impulse assembly.
     With D-18s engaging the V-11s in attack orbit around the L-class colony world, the fleet captain ordered his remaining impulse decks to overdrive capacity, wheeled his vessel, and attacked again, this time with simultaneous port and starboard disruptor and torpedo strikes, badly damaging a second V-11 and forcing the third to break off and seek safety in the company of its three remaining compatriots, who had ceased planetary assault and were instead chewing through the valiant but overmatched D-19Cs.
     One D-19C was destroyed and another terribly damaged before the Klingon fleet captain ordered his remaining D-19 to proceed at warp out of the system in order to alert the High Command that a possible invasion of the frontier was underway.  Two of the four functional V-11 units split off to pursue the D-19, and were in turn pursued by the D-33, which lanced repeatedly at the Romulan aggressors with concentrated photon and disruptor attacks, which wholly obliterated a second V-11 and split the third nearly in half.
     With the D-19 safely away, the D-33 was dropped from warp by a series of hammer blows from the two V-11s in its wake.  Forced to engage his enemy within the darkened Oort region of that colony system, the Klingon fleet captain was quite vexed to find the Romulan ships engaging their cloaking devices.
     Unable to determine the Romulans' next move, the fleet captain followed procedure and headed back for the inner system, whereupon the lurking Romulans de-cloaked and fired again, this time disabling all but one of the Bor'jof Trench's impulse decks, and mauling the starboard warp nacelle.
     His command deck littered with dead and injured, and facing a ship on the brink of structural and warp core failure, the fleet captain made a desperate gamble.  He ordered his engineers to perform a total warp core evacuation while simultaneously dropping his remaining shields.
     Reading the D-33's desperate straits, the Romulans took the bait and, instead of destroying the Klingon heavy cruiser, initiated boarding.
     At which point the fleet captain diverted all remaining power to his troop and emergency transporters, beaming his entire compliment of Klingon troops onto the V-11s at the same time Romulan troops began arriving onboard the D-33.
     Fighting was horrific, but Klingons being Klingons, they made up for their low numbers with naked savagery.
     Within the hour, the attack on the D-33 had been repulsed, one of the two V-11s was within Klingon hands, and the remaining V-11 self-destructed, its Romulan commander preferring to take as many Klingons with her as she could before the end.
     Himself bloodied and injured, the fleet captain placed his junior officers aboard the captured V-11, which in turn used its tractor beam to tow the crippled D-33 back towards the inner system, where the remaining, disabled V-11 was located.  Forces were marshaled for yet another boarding, but the disabled V-11 also self destructed, rather than suffer a Klingon victory.
     The D-33 and Klingon-controlled V-11 settled into protective orbit around the damaged colony, and two weeks passed before a task force of K'tingas could arrive with support ships and a MRF to effect operational repairs on the D-33 and its captured V-11.
     The Bor'jof Trench was eventually returned to minimal warp capability, whereupon it returned with the V-11 to the Imperial interior for drydock and an after-action examination of its combat characteristics under real-time fire.  The fleet captain and several of his officers were promoted, and the captured V-11 was deemed salvageable, receiving an extensive refit and a return to Imperial Klingon service as a D-7T.
     After-action examination revealed that the quadruple-redundancy of impulse engines on the D-33 had been the key, enabling the Bor'jof Trench's commander to keep fighting long after a single or double-decked cruiser of similar mass would have been disabled.  More importantly, the injured D-33 was rapidly returned to operational status, thanks to its commonality with conventional equipment stores.
     Pleased with the results of this first trial by fire, the High Command and High Council ordered that thirty four additional hulls be constructed and deployed to the Klingon/Romulan frontier, with a projected completion of the initial purchase run slated for late in 2305 A.D.  Based on the analysis of the first combat trial, structural and component improvements were made to the impulse system, further enhancing what was already a valuable design feature.
     The first operational D-33B left dock in early 2303 A.D., and both the Crushing Wave and Bor'Jof Trench were returned to dock by 2304 for conversion to the B-model standard.
     By 2306 A.D. all thirty six D-33s were operational and performing patrol duties or, as rebellion within the Empire against the Klingon-UFP alliance increased, working internal security routes.
     It was on just such a route that the D-33 would experience another testing, when in late 2307 A.D. a D-33B under the command of Captain Chaxi (pronounced CHAW-ZEE) was brought face to face with an L-13D under the command of renegade General Qorm, formerly of the High Command, and a despiser of the Khitomer peace treaties.  Qorm had once exercised significant influence prior to the assassination of Gorkon and the expulsion or elimination of the High Command officers who killed him, and it was only through technical maneuvering that Qorm himself was able to evade dishonor.
     Even so, a tiger cannot change its stripes, and Qorm could not bring himself to embrace the new era under Azetbur.  Seizing an elderly L-13 for his flagship in late 2306 A.D., General Qorm went on a deadly rampage through the supply chain connecting the Federation to the beleaguered Klingon homeworld of Quo'nos.  Half a dozen Starfleet ships fell prey to Qorm's eager guns, and the General was able to attract a small coterie of like-minded commanders, bringing with them their ships.  The Empire quickly made him one of their most sought-after criminals, and it was by dumb luck that Captain Chaxi stumbled across Qorm during yet another renegade attack on a Federation convoy.
     Responding to a distress signal from three merchantmen freighters and their Starfleet escort of Griffons, the Blood Tide dropped from warp to find Qorm's L-13, another D-7M, and two D-14 destroyers pounding the Federation convoy with disruptor fire.  One freighter was destroyed and another crippled before Captain Chaxi was able to place her ship between the renegade Klingons and the Starfleet vessels.  Through ship-to-ship comm link, Chaxi ordered Qorm to surrender; an order which Qorm openly laughed at, not only because he no longer recognized Imperial authority, but also because Chaxi was that rarity in the Empire: a female officer given command of a capitol vessel.
     Insulted by Qorm's arrogant and chauvinistic rebukes, Chaxi closed the comm link and opened fire, disabling one of the D-14s and shattering the shields of the L-13D.
     Because they had assumed a protective formation around the two intact freighters, the captains of the Griffon class escorts could only watch as Qorm tore into the the Blood Tide with a full fusillade from his ship's considerable weapons compliment.  The Blood Tide was rocked, losing all forward and starboard shielding, as well as most of the starboard wing, including the starboard wing's impulse deck.
     With her bridge in flames, Chaxi screamed for discipline, ordering those bridge crew still able to man their stations to prepare for a counter-strike.  With damage control teams sealing off the shredded intermix lead to the now-missing warp nacelle, Chaxi was able to re-orient her damaged warship for a second full barrage from both her forward torpedo and disruptor stations.
     The L-13 withstood the blows, but just barely.
     Qorm's own bridge now lay shattered, and the renegade General sensed that perhaps his L-13 was not up to the task of combating the advanced D-33, so he chose a somewhat evasive tactic and ordered his engineers to engage the L-13's cloaking device.
     Both the D-7M and the mobile D-14 followed suit, and the entire renegade squadron might have escaped had Chaxi not leapt into the chair of her own ship's weapons station and manually begun a series of "buckshot" disruptor bursts intended to impact and expose the cloaked Klingon vessels before they could flee under warp power.
     Due to the L-13's unfortunate bulk, two of Chaxi's manually-directed shots found Qorm's flanks, and very quickly Qorm found himself without cloak.
     Even worse for the General, neither the D-7 nor the D-14 chose to remain and continue the fight.
     Alone, Qorm was forced to direct torpedo and disruptor fire from his aft quarter while the Blood Tide, closing on impulse, poured two successive volleys of torpedoes into the L-13's belly.  The older battleship was crippled, and Chaxi herself lead the first detachment of troops to beam aboard the L-13, near the command module.  Using disruptor rifles and pistols, along with the time-honored bat'leth, Chaxi lead a platoon of her loyal Klingons up three decks before, bloodied and howling, they stormed the L-13's bridge and confronted Qorm.
     Still sneering at his female counterpart, Qorm challenged Chaxi to hand-to-hand combat, which she accepted, and the two dueled with sword and bat'leth before Chaxi, her left arm nearly severed at the elbow, parried one of Qorm's blows with her good arm and back-slashed violently, her curved bat'leth blade leaving pink Klingon blood fountaining from the severed ends of Qorm's carotid arteries.
     Using her belt to tie off her arm, Chaxi shoved the bleeding and nearly-dead Qorm from his command dais, seating herself at the con of the L-13 and called over the L-13's in-ship speakers for the rest of the battleship's crew to stand down and disarm, lest they face a similar punishment as their former commander had received.
     Chaxi's actions would eventually earn her some of the highest commendations in the Empire, and put the lie to the idea that female Klingons could not command with honor..
     No good deed goes unpunished, however, as Chaxi's next assignment from the High Command was that of a peaceful, joint exploration mission with a Starfleet Excelsior class into the unknown reaches of Beta Quadrant.  Grumbling about the inherent biases of Klingon society, Chaxi nevertheless threw herself and her ship into the role assigned them, determined to prove that joint Klingon-Starfleet exploration missions could be mutually beneficial for both the Empire and the Federation.
     For two Imperial years, the Blood Tide and its Excelsior companion penetrated deep into the Beta Quadrant, returning hundreds of reports on new and potentially valuable star systems, as well as making first contact with several intelligent species.  More importantly, the crew and officers of the Blood Tide began to develop a working relationship with their Starfleet counterparts, as crew and officer exchange between the two ships was an important part of the unorthodox mission directive given by both Starfleet Command and the Klingon High Command.
     Returning to the Imperial interior, Chaxi's success actually helped ensure the future of the D-33, as the science and exploration office of the Klingon High Command began eyeing the D-33 for potential use as an advanced deep space explorer, given its success alongside the UFP's Excelsior.  The Crushing Wave consortium was brought in to discuss a potential order for 24 more spaceframes, each featuring an enhanced and expanded set of laboratories, research computers, sensor arrays, along with improved shielding.  The Crushing Wave engineers returned to their drawing boards, and by 2310 A.D. had developed plans for a C model which would meet all the requirements of the typically underfunded science and exploration office.
     From 2310 A.D. through 2316 A.D., the D-33C was produced at two separate facilities at a rate of two ships per facility per year, until the total number of D-33's in service swelled to 60, and the science and exploration branch had numerous D-33C models probing the Empire's less explored frontiers.
     Ironically, the first D-33 loss would not come on the Imperial fringes, nor in combat, but in dock at an interior fleet facility.
     In 2311 A.D. the Water Demon was moored at Imperial yard 377 for routine re-supply when the ship's two inboard impulse decks began to build towards an unexplainable overload.  With most of the ship's crew departed for a few days of R&R, the Water Demon's third officer and second engineering officer worked frantically to counteract the problem, to no avail.  Normal computerized cutoffs appeared to be ignoring all commands from both the bridge and the engineering control consoles, and the third officer ultimately had to order a full evacuation of the ship before he personally piloted the craft away from its moorings and into open space, where he and the second engineer attempted a physical evacuation of the impulse reactors.  Again, to no avail.
     The impulse decks reached critical mass and detonated with a combined force of over three hundred megatons, fully obliterating the Water Demon and costing the lives of the third officer, second engineer, and several engineering mates who chose to remain aboard and assist their commander.
     All were decorated posthumously for having spared the lives of their crewmates, in addition to protecting yard 377.
     An investigation eventually revealed that the Water Demon had been the victim of a very subtle computer virus, purposely designed to seek out and attack the safeguards of the impulse engines.  On the same day the Water Demon met its end, no less than three dozen other Imperial warships experienced similar impulse overloads, resulting in the critical damaging of eight of those ships, and the total destruction of six others.  Final analysis rested on the theory that the virus was Romulan in origin, as over a hundred different ships were eventually found to be infected, all of which had patrolled the Klingon/Romulan border some time between the first Imperial quarter in 2308 A.D. and the third Imperial quarter in 2310 A.D.  How the virus was introduced was never discovered, suffice to say that additional computer security became a top concern for years afterward, with the Klingons going to great lengths to install additional safeties in their engine room computers.
     By 2320 A.D. the D-33 was considered a seasoned and reliable design.  Never produced in quantity because of the financially troubled times in which it arose, the D-33 had nevertheless proven itself valuable to the Empire in its various assigned roles.  Seeking to continue that success, and wanting to extend the overall life of a valued heavy cruiser, the High Command ordered that a D model be worked up, using the latest in Imperial weaponry, shields, and for the first time ever, a cloaking device.
     Because of political and engineering concerns during the D-33's genesis, cloak capability was purposefully left off the D-33A, D-33B, and D-33C.
     However, with the Romulan threat being ever-present, and the alliance with the Federation having recently enjoyed a silver anniversary, the High Command believed the time was right to adapt one of the newer cloaking device types to the D-33 spaceframe, thus giving the ship a tactical tool its commanders had long sought.
     An open-ended contract was issued for D-33D production that yielded six ships a year—two ships annually from three different facilities—from 2322 A.D. through 2330 A.D.  During that time all remaining D-33B models were called in for refit to D-33D specifications, with the D-33C left as-is, given its scientific role and continued service alongside Federation science ships in the Beta Quadrant boondocks.
     Following the introduction of the D-33D, the class would remain essentially unchanged for another fifteen years, until 2337 A.D. when the High Command again drafted funds for an upgrade, this time to an E model which again had improvements across the board, from shields to superstructure, weapons to engines.  All D-33s still in service were recalled over the next ten years for refit to the E-type standard, including the D-33C, which was being replaced in its scientific role by newer classes of exploration vessels.
     The D-33E would stand as the state-of-the-art for the Crushing Wave class, keeping it as one of the Empire's more formidable heavy capitol ships until the prototypes for what would eventually become the fearsome Vor'cha battlecruisers began seeing trials—at which time the D-33 series (and others like it) began a period of quiet drawdown from front-line service; first to Reserve status, then to mothballs, and ultimately, for two thirds of the entire class, the scrap yard.
     Of the entire 98-unit production run of the D-33, only 18 remained in service by 2370 A.D., all of them E models and all operating as either training vessels or Reserve command ships for mid and senior level Reserve officers with various Houses in the Empire.  With the advent of war with the Dominion, which precipitated an eventual invasion of Cardassia and an unfortunate schism between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, it was thought that perhaps an F type could be designed, to bring those few D-33s left in the Imperial inventory up to modern specs, but no time or money was ever seriously devoted to this idea.  The 18 D-33s then in service went to war at mid-24th century benchmark, suffering combat casualties upwards of 65% during the years that followed.
     By the time war with the Dominion had ended and relations with the UFP were repaired—under Chancellor Martok—only six Crushing Wave cruisers remained.  One of them, the Blood Tide, captained during the Dominion conflict by a very elderly and semi-retired Brigadier Chaxi, entered the Imperial war museum yards near Quo'nos as an honored historic piece of several different Imperial eras.  Brigadier Chaxi herself presided at the decommissioning ceremony, and with the Blood Tide leaving service, all other D-33s were scrapped to feed the hungry maw of the post-war reconstruction and re-arming effort.