By January 2401, a year after the Century Storm ravaged the region, Starbase Bravo has been issued with new orders: maintain stability in the Paulson Nebula. Still threatened by stellar phenomena, difficult to navigate, and obscuring sensors, life and work in the nebula have become harder. Civilians hope to return to or rebuild ravaged colonies and industry, opportunities for new scientific study and exploration are rife, and minor criminal activity is on the rise.

SBB departments are taking on new projects to respond. Some of these will be responsive as situations develop, while other, more long-term operations must be undertaken. These responsibilities are planned by department leadership, but many are handed down to junior officers for execution.

While many missions require a range of skills and varied teams, operational planning and leadership falls within a specific division. Division responsibilities are as follow:

 

Command Division

The Command Division primarily oversees other operations, but many of its departments work directly with civilians. Priority missions include:

– Providing strategic leadership to operations drawing from multiple departments; individual missions may fall to one division, but it is Command officers who make decisions when those missions intersect.

– Liaising with civilian representatives to ascertain needs and plan cooperation, on and off the station;

– Providing pilots to other away missions.

 

Strategic Operations Division

The Strategic Operations Division is focused on the threat of pirates, raiders, and smugglers in the Paulson Nebula. This is the combination of immediate response and maintaining intelligence over the area. Priority missions include:

– Responding to emerging threats with smallcraft, such as raids on freighters or colonies;

– Monitoring and investigating security threats in the region through a mixture of sapient intelligence (building connections with locals), sensor intelligence (deploying and monitoring sensor beacons), and signals intelligence (monitoring regional communication in accordance with Federation law);

– Maintaining patrols of key or high-risk areas of the Paulson Nebula by starfighter, shuttle, and runabout.

 

Operations Division

The Operations Division aids local civilians through logistical support, taking the lead on rebuilding what the Century Storm destroyed. Priority missions include:

– Direct aid in rebuilding damaged and destroyed colonies;

– Distributing supplies to colonies in need of assistance;

– Continuing to allocate resources to support refugees and colonists still on the starbase.

 

Security Division

The Security Division primarily focuses on enforcing the law aboard Starbase Bravo, with some assistance given to local settlements. Priority missions include:

– Maintaining stability aboard Starbase Bravo, with increasing displaced populaces aboard;

– Monitoring incoming goods and freight for possible smuggled goods;

– Aiding in law enforcement on colonies and facilities. This is primarily through training new civilian staff, or short-term response to emerging situations.

 

Engineering Division

The Engineering Division primarily focuses on maintaining necessary equipment for or providing technical support to other operations. Priority missions include:

– Maintenance of starships and smallcraft entering the Paulson Nebula;

– Assistance in construction work in colony establishment/rebuilding;

– Construction of regional infrastructure, such as communication relays or monitoring stations within the nebula.

 

Science Division

The Science Division is focusing on the opportunities for exploration and study within the nebula, though often provides scientific expertise to other operations. Priority missions include:

– Dispatching missions into the nebula to study the region;

– Analysing reports and findings from multiple sources, including away missions and the station’s sensor readings;

– Developing means of overcoming the nebula’s disruption of sensors and navigational systems.

 

Medical Division

The division responds to the medical needs of staff and civilians involved. Many other missions will need medical staff. Priority missions include:

– Maintaining the health of the displaced populace aboard Starbase Bravo;

– Responding to medical emergencies in the Paulson Nebula;

– Monitoring living and working conditions to ensure medical infrastructure is adequate, and in case of long-term consequences of the Century Storm.

 

Cadet Squadron Bravo

While Cadet Squadron Bravo has no direct responsibilities here, there are many training opportunities for cadets. In most cases, they will accompany other missions to learn directly from working with qualified officers. There many be limited training missions into the Paulson Nebula to make use of its challenges, exclusively in areas deemed safe.

 

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Writing This Mission

For the duration of this mission, Starbase Bravo will focus on its new major responsibility: keeping the Paulson Nebula safe. The wiki page provides more detail on the dangers and challenges the region now offers in the aftermath of the Century Storm a year ago. It is essential to note that this is all well-contained – no ion storms are threatening the station, and the criminal activity is limited to the nebula and relies on staying hidden rather than being especially dangerous. Because the nebula is so difficult to scan, communicate across, and traverse now, individual situations may not be very dangerous in themselves, but they are isolated and need an away mission’s response, sometimes even to be noticed.

Members of Starbase Bravo are welcome to use the above prompt for their own stories and plotlines. You do not need staff permission to write about an emerging situation relevant to the Mission – these operations are normal and expected of crew aboard the station at this time. They may be away missions requiring the use of a shuttle or runabout, or they might be situations developing aboard. What is required, however, is that none of your plotlines are station-wide. A pirate threat might need a runabout – or even multiple! – to respond, but the station isn’t going to red alert and scrambling all ships. An ion storm in the nebula might even threaten a colony and need an immediate response, but it’s no danger to Starbase Bravo itself. And because this is an ongoing situation, nobody ‘fixes it’ without staff permission – you might make a breakthrough in improving the station’s sensor readings of the nebula, but this is a matter of (valuable!) increments only.

Member plotlines can involve as many or as few people as you want. No member is obligated to throw open their idea for everyone else to be involved with; likewise, they should not assume everyone else will join in. Gather some friends or drop a call in Discord to plan what you want and get to writing it! Also, don’t take the way missions are laid out by division above as carved in stone, or exclusive. Rebuilding colonies takes engineers, but it also takes security staff. Hunting down pirate needs tactical officers, but it also needs scientists to help find them. And everyone, everyone needs medical officers. Mix and match and decide who’s in charge IC based on what works for you.

These stories can be away missions or you can use the prompt to have something to do on the station. They also don’t have to be long – Starbase Bravo is still about Starbase Bravo and it’s perfectly fine to have a quick adventure away from the station, and then spend time dealing with the aftermath once you’re back (studying findings, dealing with logistical challenges, fixing ships, emotional and physical recovery, developing relationships, whatever).

This Starbase Bravo mission is expected to last up to five or six months (until May/June 2023).