Star Trek: Paris

The Story of STAR TREK : PARIS begins in 2372, specifically just prior to the DS9 episode "Homefront", stardate 50423.7. Admiral Leyton began personally reassigning over 400 StarFleet officers to key positions on Earth and on ships in and around Sector 001. Many of these officers are people who seved under Leyton when he commanded the USS Okinawa, including the now USS PARIS Commander Vee Gelez. The transfers were part of Leyton's covert efforts to prepare StarFleet for a possible Dominion invasion.
The Admiral later acknowledged he had feared that President Jaresh-Inyo's leadership would be inadequate to face the Dominion threat, so he manufactured a crisis on Earth involving a planetwide power faliure in an effort to launch a coup d'etat. After being faced with the evidence, Leyton resigned his StarFleet commission.
Image by Andrew Hodges (see links)
Previously to these events however, in 2371Admiral Leyton had just finished another part of his Dominion evasion efforts. He and Admiral Brand along with the Chief in Command of StarFleet approved the Excalibur class project. This was the boldest design since the Galaxy class. At 42 decks, it equalled the height of the Galaxy class, but at nearly a third longer, it was to be the biggest Starship ever created. 4 were commissioned by StarFleet, with another 17 after.
The newly completed installation known as Danzia Fleetyards on Greater Danube, was given this project as it's first task. Admiral Leyton already knew what the prototype's mission was to be, he made it the Federaion 'on-call' ship. This meant it was to respond immediatly to any threat of the Federation, which became it's primary mission.

Then Leyton resigned for the reasons stated earlier. But in 2373, after the Sector 001 incident involving the Borg, and the Dominion taking Deep Space Nine briefly, StarFleet asked Admiral Leyton back into service on certain conditions and restrictions. He immediatly wen't back to the project he started, it had now been designated as the 'Paris', the first ship ever to bear the illustrious name of the city were the Federation Headquarters reside.

It was 2374, the crew were beginning to be assigned, but Leyton was not allowed into this part as one of the conditions of his re-entry into StarFleet. Instead, he used a loop-hole and created a new post aboard the Paris of 'Special Mission Officer', for which he could assign one of the officers who served under him on the Okinawa. He chose Lt.Cmdr Vee Gelez, serving as Chief of Security aboard the USS Cairo in Sector 001 from his last reassignment spree. Leyton promoted Gelez to Commander and made her joint first officer aboard the Paris. This was his safe guard against Dominion infiltraitors.

Now, in 2375, the Paris was launched, under newly promoted Captain Lev Rivers, and a hand picked crew. After a few months, the Paris was en-route to the Cardassian DMZ where a battle was taking place as the Dominion tried to invade. The Paris was kidnapped by the 'StarFleet Rebellion' from the 26th Century and upgraded and returned, nearly.
This now meant the Paris not only had transwarp drive, the first StarFleet vessel ever to suceed with this device, but it also had devistating new weaponary including hadron torpedoes, Delta phasers, interphase cloak and new shielding. As part of the Paris returning, all personnel were sworn to secrecy about the new technology so there was less chance of the technology falling into enemy hands 200 years earlier than it should.

This brings proceedings to the present day.