Ross Flyter

Ross Goch Flyter (also known by the pen name Ross Red) was a 23rd century Human man who was accomplished as a writer of drama and comedy. Flyter was well-known in the Federation as the writer of the Macmain series of melodramas.

At some point prior to the 2260s, Flyter chose to leave life in the Federation behind, and became one of the principal settlers of the colony planet Direidi. With no allegiance on file, a few thousand Humans and representatives of other Federated races and cultures settled the world and made a colony that paid tribute to varied forms of arts and entertainment, including staged plays, cinema and serial broadcasts of history. The planet remained on the fringe of society, near the very end of most trade routes, until a Starfleet prospector ship, the USS Jefferson Randolph Smith, discovered a blanket of Hecht radiation around the world that identified it as a source of raw dilithium. Flyter later commented that the radiation had encouraged the choice of the world, since it guaranteed that technology-based society would avoid the planet for its great amount of communications interference, but his substandard sensors had failed to inform him that the Hecht field indicated the mineral richness of the world that would eventually attract outsiders.

Because of concern over eventual intervention by the galaxy's governmental superpowers, Flyter and partner Estervy devised an encompassing plan, called "Plan C". Plan C, where the "C" stood for "comedy", was written (and extensively rewritten) as a script for an expansive fiction where Federation and Klingon Empire representatives would be distracted and thrown off balance by wild situations while trying to open negotiations for the planet's dilithium reserves. The representatives of Direidi and the staff of the Direidi Hotel, as well as many other locals and shopkeepers, were all fed script pages of scenarios and musical numbers to be performed in a well-choreographed farce. The incident Flyter wrote involved coercing several Starfleet officers and Klingon warriors to dress as cat-burglars, and resulted in a large pie fight. In the end, Flyter announced that the mining of Direidi would be administrated by the Federation and performed by the Klingons, in order to preserve Direidi's neutrality. Each visiting captain was given a recording of the pie fight, with a notation that the other captain also had the same video.