It... it's done?
Following Fleet Problem Three, naval exercises took on a more restrained tempo. The frantic, months or even years long fleetwide exercises were replaced with smaller individual or flotilla scale exercise arranged and planned by squadron commanders, and larger scale exercises were increasingly conducted using pure simulation. Large scale Fleet Problems were still carried out bi-annually, but the focus of such exercises was narrowed down to a single scenario played out over hours or a few days, where the act of simply relocating the necessary ships to the chosen exercise area might take longer than the actual exercise.
In the meanwhile, Washington would add a new duty to the long list already on her plate, Deep patrol. Whether the Bastion's government had acknowledged that they could not simply take the security of their isolation for granted or whether some of the Senate's more radical members were becoming frantic to prove that Kerensky and the SLDF were indeed still a threat is... subject to debate, but by 2795 the decision had been made to conduct deep range scouting, really exploration, missions of the surrounding space. This in itself presented a problem. The Admiralty wasn't about to send out defenseless jumpships on such potentially hazardous missions, however the modern WarShips the Bastion operated were designed exclusively in accordance with their "coast defense" doctrine and were actually incapable of the sort of long range operations required. Sending along supply tenders in the form of transports was one option to overcome this weakness, but once again the vulnerability of such vessels ruled it out. Even with escort, a single lucky enemy could leave an expedition stranded far from home without the supplies necessary to make the return trip. Using a ship from the black fleet was another option discussed. After all, these vessels had originally been chosen for their carrying capacity, but once again this ran into entirely foreseeable problems. These vessels were old, and none of them had received any particularly extensive refits. As the years passed, they were proving increasingly expensive to run and maintain, and were actually in the process of going into long term storage as new ships took their place in the fleet.
This left the Washington. Her virtual rebuild at the start of her career with the Bastion, and the infrastructure and manufacturing capability established to achieve it, meant there was no shortage of components or knowledge necessary to keep her in operation, and she certainly had both the cargo capacity to supply a small task force far from home territory and the ability to defend herself. While some in the civilian government balked at the idea of commiting the Flagship of the fleet to long term duty far away from that very fleet it was supposed to lead, the Admiralty rightly pointed out that the Washington's status as flagship was largely ceremonial. With faster than light communications, any ship, station, or shore installation with the proper facilities could, and did, just as effectively function as a "flagship", and the Bastion had many options available in that regard.
Washington would thus depart on the first of what would become many deep range patrols in 2796, in the company of four Hunt class destroyers which would serve both as escorts and the primary survey ships due to their superior sensor capacity. During the first four months of this expedition, this flotilla would conduct surveys of over a dozen potentially habitable star systems and identify three active colonies before reaching the borders of the Auxumite Providence, which they would passively observe for the next three months before beginning the trek home, managing to catalogue an additional eighteen stars on the way. Though this first survey failed to locate either Kerensky or any other significant threats to the Bastion, it did establish that the Bastion was not as alone as they might have hoped in this region of space. Thus, after completing her scheduled overhaul and participating in Fleet Problem Four, Washington would be sent out again at the end of 2798, ironically causing her to miss out completely on the Madsden incursion, when half a dozen ramshackle ships bearing SLDF and Rim Worlds markings actually managed to stumble into Bastion space and the entirely unwelcoming arms of the fleet, resulting in three ships captured and three destroyed trying to flee. Upon returning from her deep patrol, Washington would be immediately tasked with mounting a response to the incursion. Using the navigation data recovered from the Madsden fleet, Washington led a strike force composed of a picket flotilla, two brand new Imperator class cruisers, and a small ground contingent to the pirate's home base, some two hundred light years from the borders of the Free Worlds League. What little opposition there was, consisting of less than a hundred pirates with only a handful of mechs and aerofighters, was very quickly eliminated and the entire civilian population, numbering some fifteen hundred malnourished and badly mistreated souls who had lived functionally as slaves under pirate rule, were uprooted and loaded into temporary quarters installed in the Washington's hold, along with everything that could be recovered from the settlement. The settlement was then obliterated by orbital fire to cover their tracks and the task force returned to the Bastion. Though there was a degree of friction initially between those civilians rescued from the Madsden pirates and the Bastion's population, they would quickly acclimate to their new home, forming what is today seen as little more than a curious subculture and semi-distinct linguistic group.
The Washington would be joined in her deep patrol duties by the rebuilt and recommissioned frigates Talinin and Vilnius by 2800, allowing the flagship of the fleet to spend more of her time between refits fulfilling that title in a practical rather than ceremonial sense. Given her sentimental and practical value to the fleet and the Bastion as a whole, the Washington would avoid being retired during the cutbacks of 2825, though a planned reconstruction which would update her armor and weapon systems was cancelled, and like the rest of the remaining fleet she would only spend roughly a third of her time in active duty, spending the rest either in ordinary or undergoing refit. Through the rest of the twenty ninth century she would split her active duty time fairly evenly between deep patrol and the home fleet. These duties would involve some degree of actual live combat, as this period saw a brief spate of incursions into the Bastion's territory, almost always individual ships carrying pirates or treasure hunters chasing vague rumors of wealthy worlds hidden in the periphery. In response to these incursions, the Washington and her usual supporting force of light destroyers would be sent all the way to the anti-spinward periphery, "appropriating" ships flying the flags of the Marian Hegemony, Circinus Federation, and certain smaller groups identified as pirates in an attempt to more directly trace the sources of these rumors. These efforts, combined with less violent actions conducted by intelligence units either sent into the periphery or already present in the Inner Sphere, seemed to suggest the source of the rumors was the Star League Ministry of Communications, or, as they were now known in the Inner Sphere, Comstar. While action against Comstar was debated, ultimately it was determined that these rumors did not constitute an immediate threat, a decision vindicated as the incursions gradually tapered off, then stopped completely, with the last recorded incursion taking place in 2851.
Washington would go into drydock for an extensive refit in mid 2899, as part of a general modernization effort being undertaken throughout the fleet. This refit would see the majority of her naval lasers removed and replaced with a battery of forty eight of the same heavy naval PPCs used as the primary battery of the Impetuous class. This new gun battery resulted in an overall improvement to the ship's firepower and allowed the crew to be trimmed down by almost fifty personnel, but it tended to tax the Washington's existing power distribution system, and the heavy naval ppcs, though legitimately good weapons, were not quite as effective as dual purpose guns as the twelve barreled laser mounts that they had replaced. These minor quibbles were largely made up for by the installation of lamellor ferro carbide armor, which significantly improved the ship's protection, and the installation of the same active anti-missile system seen on the Impetuous class. The point defense system was something that multiple successive commanders had been begging for ever since Fleet Problem Seven, when it was demonstrated that ships which depended on escorts for missile defense were particularly vulnerable to close range strikes by fighters, which could simply launch their nuclear payloads too close to the target ship for their escorts to react.
Washington would re-enter service in 2900, alongside the first long range Adventurous class cruisers. Though originally intended to replace the Talinin and Vilnius, they would also take over for the Washington in deep range patrol operations, due to the lower crewing requirements of their smaller crews, and Washington would instead spend the entirety of her active duty with the home fleet. Despite her fairly recent upgrades, the decision to bring the fleet down to a total strength of three hundred ships (with only one hundred in active operation in peacetime), led to Washington being placed into "permanent ordinary" in 2925. This unique status dictated that the Washington be kept in a state of readiness, as opposed to mothballed or museum status, but separate from the rest of the main fleet, which was regularly rotated from active duty to refit, to ordinary (or active reserve) status. While in permanent Ordinary, Washington was officially inactive as a combat ship, but continued to serve as a training station and administrative hub until 3032. In this year she would be fully reactivated, largely for ceremonial purposes, to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of her commissioning. As a part of the festivities, which were expected to end with the Washington designated a museum ship, she was fitted out for one final deep patrol, which was expected to be a leisurely and uneventful operation taking the ship and her escorts to a patrol area roughly two hundred lightyears from Bastion space.
Instead, only ninety light years from Bastion territory, the Washington was discovered by the Comstar Explorer Service ship Ptolemy, and operating under standing orders, the Washington was forced to destroy the Ptolemy to prevent its escape. Data recovered from the wreckage and interviews with survivors seemed to indicate Comstar's interest in potentially locating the Bastion, and the extremely creative intractability of some of those same survivors seemed to indicate that allowing this to happen would be a very bad thing.
The argument over what to do with this information would rage through the senate and the admiralty well into 3036. Obviously it could not be assumed that Comstar would simply give up after having one of their ships disappear. Equally obvious was that the Bastion could not simply eliminate Comstar the way they might a precocious pirate group. Despite possessing and trading information with longtime allies in Sol's asteroid belt, the Bastion actually knew precious little beyond surface level information about what this current incarnation of the Ministry of Communications was like or was capable of, and simply requesting more information on Comstar from the belt and waiting for a reply would take years, even assuming that the Bastion's allies on Metis already had the deepest darkest secrets of Comstar on hand and didn't have to do any investigating.
So while desperate requests for information went out on the next ships bound for the Sol Belt, the debate in the highest circles of power raged on. Some in the senate demanded a massive and immediate buildup of the Bastion's defenses, claiming that this time the invasion was truly inevitable. Their opposition described this as another Kerensky panic, insisting that Comstar most likely lacked the will or the ability to pose a significant threat to the Bastion. Still others urged for the most difficult choice of all, patience. To wait and see and give the Bastion's agents and allies time to actually determine what they might be up against.
The debates in the senate saw much in the way of arguing and little actual action, however the immediate shock of the threat did lead the Admiralty to grant the Washington a reprieve, restoring her both to the active fleet and to her role as flagship. Though this was originally a temporary decision, Washington would retain this status for another two decades, seeing not only the debates over Comstar peter away to nothing, but also the outrage which gripped the senate when word of the Clan invasion reached the Bastion, the senate's barely averted reckless declaration of war, and the unrest and Blue Revolution which followed. The new, more egalitarian senate which took power in the aftermath would struggle to find its footing, however, and economic recession and corresponding budget cuts to the military would force the Admiralty to drastically cut back on the number of active ships. Unfortunately the Washington was not only the largest and most expensive to operate ship in the fleet, but the ancient battlewagon was for many a symbol of the very old guard that had just been swept out of power, a relic past her prime kept around for tradition. Calls to "Let her rest" flooded the Admiralty's offices, and whether bowing to public pressure or simply acknowledging that there wasn't money in the budget to maintain her, Washington was placed back into permanent ordinary in 3055, where despite the economic recovery of the Bastion and increases to naval funding, she remains to this day.
