Brahms Station
Brahms Station (AFY-01-A) is a Probert-class spacedock and the headquarters of Avalon Fleet Yards. Located over Avalon II, this massive station is the central command and control facility for not only the yard itself but the entire Grazer Sector. This facility is the primary service point for starships that only need resupply or minor repairs, and new ships are often transferred here after their formal launch to receive their crews before departing, while ships are actually constructed or refit at the various dry docks in the vicinity.
Namesake
Brahms Station is named after Dr. Leah Brahms in recognition for her work designing the engine systems for the Galaxy-class explorer and Nebula-class exploratory cruiser. Her engine designs revolutionized shipbuilding and laid the foundations for the engines found aboard all subsequent Starfleet ship classes. Dr. Brahms is one of the few living individuals to receive recognition through the naming of a ship or station and was present when the station was commissioned in 2383.
History
Avalon Fleet Yards was founded in 2357 over Avalon II to take advantage of the wealth of dilithium and deuterium present in the Avalon System. Initially, an Anchorage-class facility was deployed there to manage several dry docks. Over the decades, more and more dry docks were brought online, up to several hundred in the 2370s, when it was an important facility for shipbuilding well behind the Federation's defensive lines. Starfleet added Presidium-class stations during the war to house supplementary construction crews, but by the end of the war, it was clear that the Anchorage-class facility was insufficient to provide routine maintenance support and overall command-and-control facilities for the system. In 2377, a new Probert-class station was ordered. When the facility was commissioned in 2383 as Brahms Station, it was one of the first Probert-class stations in the Federation.
Organization & Senior Staff
Brahms Station is itself a major command, and would be the centerpiece of any sector it found itself in alone, with its commanding officer also serving as the sector commander. In this case, the commanding officer of Brahms Station, a senior officer between the ranks of captain and rear admiral, reports to the Commander and Deputy Commander of Avalon Fleet Yards, and it is Avalon's commander that is also the Grazer Sector Commander. Department heads aboard Brahms Station run the gamut from lieutenant commanders to captains. While an independent Probert-class station would expect to have senior commanders and captains in department head roles, some of the departments on Brahms Station such as science and engineering are smaller than usual, because these functions are duplicated by roles carried out by the fleet yards staff and on other stations, which allows more junior officers to hold department head responsibilities.
As of April 2401, the role of Brahms Station Commanding Officer is held by the Commander of Avalon Fleet Yards, Admiral Aubrey Seagraves, until she selects a permanent station commander in the coming months.
| Position | Rank | Holder | Member |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commanding Officer |  Admiral
|
Aubrey Seagraves | Liam Dahlgren (ID: 669) |
| Executive Officer |  CMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Senior Officer of the Watch | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Operations Officer |  LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Security Officer | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Engineering Officer | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Tactical Officer | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Science Officer |  LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Communications Officer | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Medical Officer | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
| Chief Counselor | LTCMDR to CAPT
|
Vacant | AFY Tier II |
Layout and Facilities
As with all Probert-class spacedocks, Brahms Station is dominated by its five starship docks and has the overall mushroom shape common to most large Federation installations. These docks can handle dozens of starships each and much of the station's energy and crew resources are devoted to servicing visiting ships. Beyond this primary function, the station also has hospital-grade medical facilities, enormous subspace communications repeaters and active sensor arrays, and a potent defensive array capable of holding back an armada for days at a time.
Command and Control Facilities
The spires on the top of the station contain administrative offices for the station itself and Avalon Fleet Yards, as well as living quarters for those senior officers who do not live on the surface of Avalon II. To ensure redundancy, there are multiple facilities from which the entire station can be controlled, including a secure bunker deep within the superstructure of the station, but day-to-day operations are conducted from a two-story operations area at the base of the administrative level above the arboretum. It is from here that the commanding officer makes most command decisions. This facility has a dedicated conference area as well as an office for the duty officer.
Arboretum and Recreation Areas
The arboretum is located in the flattened dome structure between the administrative spires and the primary docking facility. With a diameter of 2.5 kilometers, this extremely large facility rises five hundred meters with sloping walls and then uses holography to project the illusion of a full dome. There are several different biomes represented here to allow members of all species to find somewhere that makes them feel at home. Unlike older stations, the promenade rings the arboretum directly, and the bottom five levels of the arboretum's walls have various shops, restaurants, bars, lounges, consulates, art galleries, and other facilities, making it the destination for visitors and residents alike. Beneath the dome and above the docking facility are hundreds of holosuites and holodecks. The travel core passes through the center of the arboretum, though it is disguised by "mountains" which also conceal large scale life support equipment.
Docking Facilities
In addition to the primary docking facility, there are four subsidiary docking facilities that ring the mid level of the station.
The primary docking facility is slightly larger than the one found aboard Spacedock II-class stations, with four massive space doors doors to handle Odyssey-class heavy explorers. As with older stations, this facility has a four-armed docking tower in the center, which can handle up to eight Odyssey-class ships or other large explorers at the level parallel with the bay doors, along with sixteen cruiser-sized vessels lower on those arms. There are a dozen shuttlebays in the primary docking facility, and mooring points for several dozen frigate-sized vessels in the lower portions of the vast open dome. Construction gantries can be extended out of the "floor" of the bay to handle major repairs, but these procedures are typically done at free-standing facilities elsewhere in the Avalon system. Between each of the space doors is a combination operations and shuttle bay facility. Each of these operations complexes handles flight control for one quarter of the station's zone of control, handing ships off to the secondary dock control facilities or the internal control facilities of the main dock, depending on the ship's intended berth. These facilities are identical to the primary station operations facility and can control the whole station if needed. The shuttle bays have a direct pass through into the bay.
The secondary docking facilities are each approximately the size of the bays found aboard Aurora-class spacedocks, with their doors reworked to handle ships as wide as the Inquiry-class exploratory cruiser. These bays can each service a dozen cruisers and twice that many smaller starships. Unlike the main bay, these facilities only have one space door. This is directly above the combination shuttlebay and operations facility, which handles local approach and internal flight control. The secondary docking facilities are connected to the main station with large transfer bridges that join to a ring around the central habitation area. The bridges each have large cargo trams that connect all the way through the station to the travel core to allow for the efficient movement of goods and equipment. The upper poles of each secondary facility have additional spires for administrative, engineering, and scientific offices, mostly devoted directly to the Avalon Group or Avalon Fleet Yards.
There are dozens of secondary shuttle bays all around the station, and runabout pads on the central ring connecting to the secondary docking facilities to ensure that small craft traffic does not interfere with larger vessels.
Sensor and Communications Facilities
Brahms Station has hundreds of communications repeaters, located amidst the towers above the five docking modules, beneath the "skirt" of the stations shield generators, and on the bottom of the station itself, which also contains a massive subspace transceiver array. This allows the station to maintain contact with the Subspace Relay Network even through profound interference, which ensures that it will always be able to stay in touch with ships, stations, and colonies in the Grazer Sector. There are large bands of active sensors that ring the station and provide extremely powerful sensor data for activities within the Avalon System and beyond.
Crew Accommodation and Medical Facilities
The majority of crew accommodations are in the bowl-shaped structure directly under the primary docking facility. Though there is a crew of 100,000, accommodation standards are very high, with only the lowest ranking crewmen sharing quarters. Many quarters are set up to handle families, as well. There is enough bed space here to handle the station's own crew, plus fifty thousand civilian residents, and a further fifty thousand shipyard and visiting starship crew members, for a total of 200,000. This area also includes extensive medical facilities, schools, and other necessary crew support facilities.
The primary hospital is located near station operations, beneath the administrative spires and above the arboretum. The central infirmary at the center of the hospital is the location from which the Chief Medical Officer oversees dozens of other facilities, which include ward space for up to four thousand patients. The station's medical facilities are supplemented for acute care cases by nearby Phlox Medical Station.
Engineering Facilities
Avalon Station is powered by eight large matter/antimatter reactors, similar in function to the warp cores that power starships, but configured to produce large amounts of plasma for the station's EPS grid rather than to power warp coils. These large reactors allow the station to withstand significant assaults and provide the power necessary to run large scale industrial replicators. Four reactors are located in large spires beneath each of the four secondary docking ports, while the other eight are located in the ring above the station's lowest module. Engineering control is also located in this ring, serving like Main Engineering aboard a starship.
The station's industrial replicators are housed just under the main docking facility, allowing whatever parts they replicate to be taken directly to a waiting starship or via tug to one of the drydocks. These facilities can produce almost anything up the size of entire nacelle casings but can't replicate certain sensitive components that require exacting quantum specifications.
Brahms Station In-Play
- Brahms Station is a sub-command of Avalon Fleet Yards, one of Bravo Fleet's sandboxes. This means that members can create characters on this station up to and including its commanding officer by advancing both in their fleet rank and in AFY's tier system, which is described in the AFY Guide. Members may also use Brahms Station freely in their own fiction as a setting to visit without needing to write directly on the AFY Command.
- Brahms Station is larger than Starbase Bravo, but otherwise has similar facilities and crew accommodation standards. That article is a good source of inspiration for things you might find on this station.
- If you're working your way up to a department head role, you can apply as a "Staff Officer - X Department," e.g. Staff Officer - Brahms Station Flight Control Department, until you have enough posts to become a department head.
- Even if your character doesn't work for Brahms Station, their workplace might be here if they are in an Avalon Group research group that uses the station. Your character might also live here and commute if they work on a dry dock or smaller research station.