Providence Fleet Yards

Providence Fleet Yards
General Information
Registry	Deep Space Station K-3
Class	K-class
Affiliation	United Federation of Planets Starfleet Fourth Fleet
Commissioned	2268
Location
System	Beta Geminorum system
Quadrant	Alpha Quadrant
Assignment
Role	Decommissioning station and surplus depot
Template:Starbase

Providence Fleet Yards, officially Providence Decommissioning Fleet Yards and Surplus Depot or Deep Space Station K-3, is a strategically unimportant and relatively forgotten afterthought within Federation territory. In orbit of Pollux IV, Providence now serves as a mothball and boneyard facility where ships that are long past their effective operational ability are brought to be stripped of anything useful.

Bold Beginnings

In 2267, the crew of the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk encountered a being known as Apollo on Pollux IV, which was at the time the frontier of Federation territory. This being claimed to be the last of the Olympian deities worshipped by the ancient Greek culture. At the end of what would be known as "The Apollo Incident", Apollo disappeared, leaving Pollux IV a beautifully pristine uninhabited world.

Several months after the incident construction began on Deep Space Station K-3. Originally designed as a civilian trading post, K-3 was built with many areas specifically designed for the comfort of its various residents. It was considered one of the finest starbases of its class during its heyday, despite being in a relatively volatile area of space. Only a few minor skirmishes were ever fought within the Pollux system, which gave Pollux IV the reputation of being a "paradise planet". K-3, similarly, earned the reputation of being a thrilling, but luxurious place to visit on the Klingon Frontier.

Decline

With the signing of the Khitomer Accords in 2293, K-3 slowly waned in importance as a trading outpost with the rise of other, more strategically placed points of commerce, to the point that it was all but abandoned by 2320. Only a few of the shadier traders were left living on or doing any type of business on K-3. Starfleet decided to step in, and acquire the base before it could become a thriving black market community in the Federation’s own backyard. In 2323, Starfleet moved in and evicted the remaining squatters and traders.

Starfleet Command intended to use the base as a repair and refit facility however they quickly learned that too much of the base had been abandoned for too long to have any functional use in that regard. Instead, engineers quickly sealed off the parts of the base that were too dilapidated to repair in quick order, and Providence was classed as a "Naval Reserve Storage Facility". Effectively, it would be a place to store older ships in mothballs (should the situation arise that they were needed to be reactivated), to make room for their newer, more advanced counterparts. A small caretaker group was assigned to Providence, consisting only of one officer and 9 enlisted crew, mostly engineers.

Providence, which was once a thriving center of trade, had been reduced to a backwater outpost, along the fringes of the Federation's unimportant border with the Klingons. Only a few decks of the central station core were habitable, and one pod was left functional for housing and the occasional visiting crew.

A Renewed Purpose

Conditions stayed this way until the 2380s, with news of the Romulan star leaving the galaxy in awe and shock. Like any and all repair, refit, and mothball facilities across the Federation, Providence was fully recrewed in an effort to revitalize and recommission her entire mothball fleet in order to mobilize and rescue as many Romulans as possible. It was also during this time that the crew assigned to Providence committed itself to the station's repair. However, just the same, rescue operations mostly ceased in April of 2385 in the aftermath of the Attack on Mars across all of these facilities, including Providence.

The Federation continued to send as many ships into Romulan space as possible to provide rescue, aid, and assistance to all affected but were unwilling to commit the resources to create another massive evacuation fleet. Once the supernova occurred, ships operating out of Providence assisted as much as possible but were still largely limited.

The Sovereignty of Kahless began to use the Romulans' weakened state to make incursions across their shared border, attacking several border worlds. The Federation, shocked and appalled by the behavior of the Sovereignty and the Klingon Empire's unwillingness to do anything about them, sided with the fractured Romulan people. Starfleet began looking into its assets along the shared border with the Klingon Empire. Unwilling to commit extensive resources to the problem, Providence was chosen for its proximity to Sovereignty incursions. For a short period of time in 2389, Providence served as the headquarters of Task Force 86.

While Providence no longer serves as a mothball yard, the Federation was loathe to simply dismiss their assets within the mothball fleet stationed there. In 2389, as more and more ships were needed to patrol the Klingon/Federation border, many of the ships that were formally deemed "unfit for service" were re-activated and deployed directly from the reserve fleet stationed at Providence as a stop-gap measure to keep an eye on the Sovereignty of Kahless.

As of 2399, Providence largely continues to fill that role along the Federation-Klingon border, attempting to maintain the peace between the two governments by handling rogue Klingon factions with what little resources Starfleet is willing to assign.