FICTION SEGMENT
Location: Starbase 38 (Kartelan Station)
Time: 1030 Hours, Galactic Standard Time
Major General Christopher Mitchell sat back in his office chair, fuming over his recent hail from the Victory. Missing ships and missing Captains, it was all too much to handle. On top of that, based on the readiness reports he was receiving, less than half of his ships were at an acceptable maintenance state and couldn’t even deploy within 24 hours. Flipping through the reports on the PADD, he angrily poked and skipped through them, barely able to stomach the information he was receiving. He tossed the PADD aside with a hint of annoyance and stood up and walked over to his personal replicator.
“Colombian Dark Roast. Black.” he ordered. A moment later, the replicator glowed and dispensed a cup of what could be considered coffee. Picking up the metal cup, the acrid scent of what was once coffee assaulted his nose. Looking down, he swirled the thick sludge in the cup, watching it cling to the sides. Christopher gingerly sat the cup down and pressed the console to dispose of it. Making a note to make a work order for that repair, he walked over to the massive viewport and stared out of the window that overlooked the barren surface of Kartelan II. The darkness of space made the clouds of lunar sands glitter incandescently in the distance. It was truly something to behold
“I need a sign. Send me someone who can whip these people back into shape.” he said with a slight sigh.
A few moments later, he was pulled from his reverie by the ringing of the communications.
“General Mitchell, your presence is requested in the CIC” the voice of his watch officer, Lieutenant Commander Leopold ‘Leo’ Connolly announced. Walking out of his office and into the bustling Combat Information Center. Walking over to the ‘Pool Table’, a massive operational workstation, he saw a pulsing red Starfleet chevron. Connolly pointed to the chevron and brought it up on the screen.
“Sir, we’ve received a distress call- Priority Two Delta…” Leo paused for a moment as he stopped to listen through his headset. “Sir – It’s from the Hammersley.”
Christopher’s eyebrows furrowed. “Wasn’t the Hammersley lost on a mission with all hands over a year ago?”
Raines nodded. “Yes, sir. The distress signal broadcasted for six months but we deemed it too high risk due to nearby Borg presence and the high levels of background radiation. The signal stopped approximately 5 months ago – probably due to interference or power loss but it just reactivated itself.”
Christopher nodded and leaned against the table. “What’s our probability of a successful rescue, given current tactical conditions in that area?”
Raines tapped at his console like a man possessed. “Well sir, probability sits at 100:1 if my math is right. Based on our latest sensor scans, there are plenty of fried ships out including a Malon scavenging vessel, which prevented further readings.”
“Life signs?” Christopher asked.
Leo shook his head. “None at last scan, sir but we can’t confirm for sure unless we send someone in.”
Christopher sighed slightly. “I feel like we’re having this conversation too many times- what ships are available, Commander?”
Connolly responded almost immediately. “Well, sir. The Coulson is docked and is just finishing up a resupply but she’s only got a skeleton crew and no Commanding Officer. They can sail in less than 8 hour if you decide to go for it.”
Christopher thought for a moment. “Very well, bring in Captain Raines and brief him-”
Raising his hand for a moment, Leo spoke up. “Sir, with all due respect. Captain Raines is too valuable to be risked- ”
Christopher’s face reddened and he raised his hand in a knifelike motion. “Commander, you seem to be under the impression that I’m making a polite request and that I’m open to placing you into a command. Let me be outstandingly clear- I am definitely not. Now bring Captain Raines here now or so help me, I’ll have you cleaning the external plating of lunar dust for the rest of your career” he threatened. Christopher was extremely familiar with Commander Connolly- he had been on a meteoric rise through Starfleet prior to the Dominion War when he had been court-martialed for his participation in Admiral Leyton’s ill-fated coup. In his own defense, he had only been following orders. Since then, he had been bounced from menial assignment to menial assignment, never promoting above Lieutenant Commander and silently accepting his fate each time but it seemed he was finally bucking up to make something of himself again.
Leo squared his shoulders and his eyes narrowed. “Sir, I know that what I did aboard the Lakota isn’t easily forgiven but I’ll be damned if I allow you to keep me here. If I go, you lose nothing but a ship. If you send Raines and something happens to him, you lose far too much operational knowledge.” he said indignantly.
Christopher thought for what seemed like an eternity. As much as he hated to admit it, Connolly was right.
“Very well, Commander. You leave me no choice – I’m ordering you to take command of the Coulson and bring back the Hammersley. If not, prevent it from falling into non-Federation hands. Dismissed.”
:OFF
NEWS FROM TF38 GAMES
After passing through the Epatha Gateway into the Delta Quadrant, the Diligent receives a distress call from an unknown source near the remains of the transwarp gateway previously employed by Starfleet. There, they find two ships trapped within a temporal rift, frozen in time. Vidiians from the future, working with Starfleet years down the line to re-ignite the collapsed Mordred gateway.
UPDATES FROM BRAVO FLEET AND TASK FORCE 38
We have a few updates from Bravo Fleet :
FINAL THOUGHT
I’d like to congratulate Ansel AKA Commodore Elgor Rae on his appointment as the Task Force Executive Officer. In just a few short weeks, he has performed excellently.
As I write the final words of this report, I cannot express how proud I am of every single player and Commanding Officer in our Task Force. Through the trials and tribulations that we have experienced over the past two months, you have all performed admirably and I look forward to writing the next great adventure alongside each and every one of you.
To all the members of Bravo Fleet, past and present:
In early 2020, we will be receiving the first new official canon in the late twenty-fourth century of the Prime universe in nearly twenty years with the debut of Star Trek: Picard. This is an exciting time for Bravo Fleet, and we intend to take full advantage of it. This is something that Bravo Fleet, and in fact the simming community at large, desperately needs. Bravo Fleet will be going in both feet first! We want to make this announcement now so that everyone can get ahead of the game and be properly and fully prepared!
Within a month of the end of the first season of Picard, we will be changing the default setting of Bravo Fleet’s fiction to 2399 to line up with Picard. Through the run of the series we will be proceeding at a 1:1 time scale, with one year passing in-universe for each that passes outside. This will allow us to keep pace with Picard in time.
This is a necessary step in the long-term security and survival of Bravo Fleet. With the exception of the Hobus storyline, Bravo Fleet has largely languished in its own fanon (“fan canon”), far removed from any source material, since Nemesis premiered in 2002. And while we are all some of the most creative people on the planet, we can only do so much with so little over almost two decades without feeling stale. Another large reason for this change is because we don’t want to have to continually and constantly have to retcon our own ongoing writing as Picard is airing. It’s much more conducive for us to move to 2399 and adjust our “history” according to Picard. Rather than Picard outright changing what we’re doing in its history.
What does this mean for you? It means that our primary canon support will be focused on the new 2399 setting. Most current fleet stories will be wrapped up or see major changes as we prepare for the time skip, and new stories to tell in the new setting will be discussed. Some stories will endure a decade into our timeline’s future. In the end, the specific year doesn’t affect most individual sims, but it does affect fleet storylines which, in turn, trickles down to the sim level. For your sims, we will offer as much time as you need to tie off your current storylines and make ready for the time skip. For those who do not want to move to the 2399 setting, there will be options as well. If the number of sims staying in the 2389 setting is small, they will be moved to a new Task Group in Task Force 99; if it is large, we will open a new Task Force for the “classic” Bravo Fleet setting. Fictions outside Task Forces 99 and 64 will need to advance to the new setting – a part of the point of fictions is to help tell the fleet’s stories, and that means they need to run inside the main setting of the fleet. All non-alternate (TF99) or historical (TF64) sims opened once the time jump is made will be 2399.
This will also serve as a soft reboot of sorts for Bravo Fleet. We have two decades of our own canon, and we do not know how much of that will be contradicted by what happens in the new show. We will, as always, be following screen canon first, so this will be an opportunity to bring our stories and those being told by the creators of Star Trek more closely into line. But it will serve as a fresh start for many people and will allow us to tie nice ribbons on other storylines.
At the same time as the time skip, we will be restructuring our Task Forces! The current structure, while straightforward, has led to situations where areas of operations and breadth of storytelling, especially in 72 and 93, are overwhelming. While each task force is simply divided into the four quadrants, 38 and 9 don’t encompass the entire quadrants they represent. Asking the staff of 72 and 93 to manage the canon and sheer potential number of sims in those task forces is not fair. Additionally, we’re looking for stability in our task forces, and burnout is not the way there. We will be adding multiple Task Forces to Bravo Fleet between now and around the time skip, each with a smaller, more focused area of operations. We’re hoping this will help sims focus on the stories they want to tell a lot better, allow task force staff to have more individualized attention on specific stories and areas of operations, and help build a more cohesive story overall between the sims in a task force.
COs – look for surveys to be hitting your inboxes in the next few days so that we can get a tally count for those wanting to stay in the 2389 era and those going with Bravo Fleet to 2399. We will also be releasing more information on future task forces as we finalize what that will look like.
To all the members of Bravo Fleet:
As part of our fleet rebranding, the task force logos have also been at the top of our list. They have largely gone unchanged since their current inception which has been well over ten years. I will also explain some changelog thoughts with each one!
This one is pretty self-explanatory. 9 is keeping its iconic cyan-like blue color, but the logo in the center has changed to something more 9-centric: the Bajoran Wormhole!
Task Force 38 keeps its purple color! The Greek delta logo has changed, though. The lowercase Greek letter was simply too “fat” to fit into the new Bravo Fleet logo correctly. The solution was straight-forward: use the uppercase delta letter!
This one was probably the logo that saw the most change and was a bit tricky to work with. A few concepts were drawn up that changed the inside logo to laurels and other imagery. However, with a 64 “rebranding” of sorts coming soon (more on that once Domingo returns from STLV!) we wanted some imagery that really conveyed what 64 is all about. The logo color was also changed to red for the simple fact that the gold coloring did not work well with the gold accent of the new logo. It was very much a pain in the ole’ eyeballs.
Very little change here. 72 has barely changed in 20 years. Continue on with your sexy logo, 72!
This is the other logo that, along with 64, got quite a bit of change. The first was the color. With 9 and 72 occupying a lot of the blue spectrum, 93s “greyish blue” was hard to accommodate. To set it apart and on its own, it has been given a more emerald green. To mix with 72, you get some very Earthish colors. It’s also a reminder that those sneaky Romulans are right around 93s corner! The sextant that originally occupied the 93 logo was also changed for similar reasons to 38: it was too “fat” to sit in the current logo properly. 93 has instead been given the replacement of a compass, which is the most fitting logo 93 could have.
Just as with 72, 99s logo remains largely unchanged. Black, infinity, infinite possibilities. Go 99!