"I swear by Apollo the physician, by Aesculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea, and take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment the following oath:"
[ History | Overview | Weapons and Defensive Systems | Auxiliary Systems and Crew ]
[ Specifications | Internal Layout | Ships ]
"To consider dear to me as my parents him who taught me this art;"
Necessity is the mother of invention. That ancient mantra was proven yet again during the Dominion War when countless Federation citizens suffered without proper medical care. What was most shocking, however, was the revelation that Starfleet was not fully equipped to deal with the massive number of wounded that a drawn out full-scale war created. While there were ships dedicated to medical operations, there was a lack of a complete field hospital unit. The McCoy was intended to fill that gap. While designed as a battlefield support craft, it is also capable of civilian mercy operations.
The McCoy-class Medical Cruiser was designed by a team of Starfleet and civilian engineers working at the Arbuckle Ship Yards at Zeta Maxtor. The command team consisted of:
"To live in common with him and if necessary to share my goods with him, to look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art if they so desire without fees or written promise;"
Engineers looked back at both the Defiant-class and Titania-class ships in designing this specialized vessel. Like the Defiant, McCoy’s bridge is dropped into Deck One, making it easier to shield. The McCoy uses a Starfleet Mode II spaceframe and is a total of 10 decks high. McCoy also uses Titania’s variable geometry warp nacelles.
In sub-light mode, the nacelles hang down below Deck Ten at 90 degrees to the plane of the ship. During warp, the nacelles rise up to between 30 degrees and 60 degrees from their normal position, depending on the subspace conditions of the region. In sub-orbital flight, the nacelles are raised 90 degrees to be coplanar with the main body of the ship, allowing for the emergence of six specialized landing struts. The landing struts, three pairs fore, aft, and midship, extend beyond the hull.
The top rear of the vessel includes a weapons/sensor array, where the photon torpedo launchers are situated.
The primary goal of the McCoy was to provide a mobile medical facility for onsite treatment and for transport. As such, it includes three methods of loading wounded onto the ship. First is the trusty standby; the transporter. The McCoy's transporters are standard Starfleet personnel transporters. There are four transporter rooms, each with 8 transporter pads. Second is a pair of Medically Equipped Valhalla-class runabouts stored on Deck Ten. These support craft serve to ferry wounded between the field and the vessel, and to extend potential treatment range. The third is the ability of the McCoy to land, thus bringing the hospital directly to ground-based wounded. The McCoy is able to land and take-off from bodies up to 1.3g. Special atmospheric thrusters are distributed around the ship to allow for adequate sub-orbital flight. Combined, these three methods should allow the McCoy to successfully reach almost any potentially wounded personnel.
=/\= Weapons and Defensive Systems =/\=
"To impart to my sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone, the precepts and the instruction;"
Since its mission is to help, not harm, McCoy strikes a more defensive, than offensive, pose. Like the Titania, it relies more on speed and maneuverability, heavy shielding, and Quantoberilium plating over Deck One and other vital areas. If necessary, it does sport four Type X phaser arrays, two Type IX phaser arrays, and two photon torpedo launchers.
The Type X phaser arrays are spread evenly around the ship. One array extends around the dorsal port side of the main body, following the contour of the hull. It is mirrored by a second array on the dorsal starboard side. A third array extends around the entire ventral side of the main body, terminating at the same points sternward as the dorsal arrays. The last array stretches across the rear of the vessel to cover the instance when the ship is being pursued. The outer face of each nacelle is home to a Type IX phaser array, to serve as cover for side defense.
The torpedo launchers are situated in the weapons/sensor array, above the rear of the main body. They share a single loading and storage bay, but one is facing fore, the other aft. Together they provide 360 degree coverage using standard fire-and-forget targeting. The McCoy carries a standard load of 30 photon torpedoes.
The McCoy carries a standard complement of probes, which are stored in the weapons/sensor array and fired via the torpedo tubes.
The McCoy utilizes a high-capacity auto-modulating shielding system, similar to that found aboard the Defiant-class. It's output is rated at 89% that of the Defiant.
=/\= Auxiliary Systems and Crew =/\=
"I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never to do harm to anyone. To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug, nor give advice which may cause his death. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art. I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest. I will leave this operation for practitioners (specialists in the art);"
The McCoy-class Cruiser, as stated above, includes two Valhalla-class runabouts equipped with medical modules. These auxiliary craft can function as an "ambulance in space" to ferry wounded between the ship and the target site or the ship and a larger medical facility, or they can also function as small field hospitals when needed.
Extra medical modules are carried on Deck 10 of McCoy, including science modules designed to provide on-site laboratory testing in quarantined areas and self-sustaining field hospital kits. These pre-fab modular hospitals can be erected in minutes on planetary surfaces. Each comes with a self-contained generator and emergency replicator. Battery packs included with the generator enable the field hospitals to run for up to one week under normal conditions.
Computing facilities on board the McCoy are provided by a BJ-C3P0 bio-neural computer core. The interface is the standard Starfleet LCARS visiual system combined with the MAJEL auditory feedback interface, present on most starships. The standard interface is situated atop a custom computer system provided by Nyetscape Communications. Developed jointly by Nyetscape and Starfleet R&D, the computer system was designed in a similar fashion to the EWOK kernel developed for the Yub nub Destroyers. It is a non-AI highly specialized kernel, which uses Starfleet standard interface methods for an easier learning curve. To most, the computer is transparent and indistinguishable from standard Starfleet computer systems. The system is designed specifically with a medical ship in mind, and contains vast databases of medical knowledge for hundreds of species. The OS development project was headed by Starfleet officer Lt. Cmdr. Linnis, formerly of the USS Seraph. Lt. Cmdr. Linnis was forced to leave the project shortly before completion, however, and the rest of the development team chose to name the final project in her honor, hence the name: Linnux.
Deck Nine is preconfigured as a large, open area, with limited storage facilities for removable bulkheads. The "Triage Deck" can be reconfigured using removable and folding bulkheads into a triage center, guest quarters, surgical center, or additional sickbay, depending on the requirements of the mission. A full reconfiguration can be performed in approximately ten minutes. The aft section of the deck has transporter rooms three and four, so that wounded can be beamed directly into what can be used as a triage area. Two gangplanks extend through the rear of Deck Ten to load wounded directy onto the Triage Deck in case of a landing.
The McCoy does not carry an EMH. The McCoy does not carry a Tactical Officer or Intelligence Officer.
"In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction, and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves. All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or outside my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to have spread abroad, I will keep secret and never reveal;"
"If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate, may the reverse by my lot."
--Hypocrites, 460-370 B.C.
Father of Medicine
Included in the initial construction contract for the still experimental
McCoy were (Note: These ships are reserved for active RPG use):
Once the McCoy had demonstrated its ability in the field, Starfleet
Command authorized the construction of additional ships, among which would
be (Note: These ships are reserved for NPC use and may be recycled):
Designed by Larry Garfield
and Deanne Morgan.