Old Warriors Spying the Romulan

Following his graduation in June 23rd, 2346, Thomas was
 to join Star Fleet at a golden age when the Excelsior class
 ships where at peak strength, imposing the Federation's hegemony
 in the quadrant. Still, the newly graduated ensign would
 go aboard a very different ship in his first tour of duty:
 The USS Sovereign, NCC - 2505 (Ships of the Star Fleet, Volume one).

This old ship had been commissioned as a vessel of the Belknap
 Strike Cruiser class in 2278. During their prime, they were
 among the most versatile, warp dynamic ships in Star Fleet
 inventory, constituting its primary offensive force,
 backing up the Enterprise class. Still, now way past beyond
 their prime, most of the ships in the class had already
 been passed to the reserve and deactivated while others had
 been upgrated to intelligence and electronic warfare,
 such as the Sovereign. Hastily dispatched to the Romulan border,
 Thomas was essential in analyzing the Romulan strength
 at the time, and during a year, a lot of valuable data
 was gathered by the ship. Several enemy ships made power demonstrations,
 but refused to engage in combat until in one of the
 common skirmishes going on at the time, two Romulan Birds of Prey
 and a Rihannsu Warbird assaulted the federation spy ship
 in the neutral zone forcing it away after having destroyed
 one of the BoP and damaging the other. The following day,
 another Rihannsu Warbird penetrated the neutral zone,
 and vanquishing the Sovereign's electronic defenses,
 attacked it and damaged its impulse drive.

The old ship still had much stamina left after decades of
 loyal service and even moderately damaged, the Sovereign
 was successful in collecting a lot of information about the
 new Romulan Warbirds in these two encounters. Unfortunately,
 a week later, some more ships attacked the ship again,
 fearing that the Federation could use the intelligence
 data against the Romulan Star Empire. The aging Belknap
 Strike Cruiser fought furiously and drove the enemy away but
 was severely crippled and initiated a retreat towards the
 nearest starbase while sending out distress signals.
 On January 7th 2347, the crippled impulse column gave in
 and exploded violently, destroying all the areas surrounding
 the propulsion column and killing 67 men in the process.
 Thomas saved the ship by going to the engineering room
 and shutting down all systems before the energy stress would
 cause a core breach. Eventually, the beautiful and proud vessel
 was towed away and dry docked for extensive repairs
 to the saucer and neck sections.

Thomas, suffering plasma burns, was  given a purple heart
 and put back on duty, on March 12, this time aboard the USS Oberon,
 another armed electronic warfare ship, but this time
 a Endurance class frigate. These are ships that are quite
 similar to the Miranda class ships, but a Avatar Long Range Data
 Pod installed in the rollbar instead of the torpedo
 tubes of the previous which would allow it to research
 well within Federation territory. This time though, the spy
 vessel had always two Cyane type heavy frigates armed with mega
 phasers lurking at a safe distance, should the need arise.
 It did, when some Romulan ships invaded Federation territory but
 were quickly forced away or self-destructed. Other than that,
 the two years mission was uneventful except for a couple
 of episodes when some new Romuland ships made demonstrations
 at a safe distance... at the time, they knew the Romulans
 had a new type of ship, but the new vessels would remain
 classified until years later when they were named "D'Deridex Class".

Thomas's commission in that little ship ended in 2349, not
 before the Oberon had been sent to cover the Klingon/Romulan
 activity after the outbreak of full scale combats,
 time when several minor combats happened.