TF86 Wildfire Scenario

Operation Firebreak

The situation along the Federation's border with the Gorn Hegemony is deteriorating.

Across the region, Gorn forces have begun making increasingly aggressive incursions into neighboring territory. Klingon forces are mobilizing in response, and Chancellor Toral faces growing pressure to answer these attacks with decisive force. The problem is that no one has a complete picture of what is happening.

Unusual stellar activity has degraded long-range sensors and disrupted communications. Reports arrive late, incomplete, or contradictory. Ships disappear from sensor networks. Distress calls may not reach anyone in time. A Gorn raid can look like the opening move of a larger offensive. A Klingon warship pursuing Gorn forces can suddenly find itself inside Federation territory, where its presence may be interpreted as an act of aggression. In this environment, a single confrontation could quickly become something much larger.

Fourth Fleet Command has ordered Task Force 86 to establish a firebreak along the frontier. The objective is simple:

Prevent local incidents from becoming a wider war.

Task Force 86 is a mixed force. Starfleet vessels operate alongside affiliated Klingon and Romulan Republic ships, each bringing different relationships, capabilities, and perspectives to a border where the usual rules are becoming unreliable. Ships will operate throughout the Cestus Sector Block and along the Federation, Klingon, and Gorn frontier. They are expected to maintain contact with isolated settlements and cooperative Klingon authorities, provide an independent picture of events where possible, and respond wherever the situation threatens to escalate.

This may mean intercepting Gorn raiders before they reach a Federation colony. It may mean extracting civilians from a system that has suddenly become a battlefield. It may mean responding to a Klingon warship that has crossed the border in pursuit of Gorn forces, or placing a vessel between two commanders preparing to open fire because neither possesses reliable information. Republic ships may prove particularly useful for reconnaissance and operations in degraded sensor environments. Klingon ships may be best placed to speak with Houses that would rather deal with a Klingon captain than a Starfleet officer.

Other threats will exploit the same chaos. Pirates, smugglers, and criminal organizations are taking advantage of disrupted communications and distracted authorities. Civilian and relief traffic still needs protection. Damaged communications infrastructure still needs restoration. Isolated ships and colonies still need to know that someone is coming when they call for help.

TF86 vessels should expect to operate independently and make difficult decisions with incomplete information. Higher command may not know what is happening until long after events have unfolded, and the situation may change before reinforcements can arrive.

There is no single battlefield and no single solution. Each crew will determine how best to use its capabilities to keep the situation from escalating.

Task Force 86 is the firebreak.

Do not let the next incident become the shooting war everyone is preparing for.

Encounters

These concepts below are story prompts any writer can use to tell their story. Some of the TF86 encounters are unique and are labelled as such, which means any member interested in writing one of these prompts should contact their TF staff first. It is perfectly acceptable to use these ideas as inspiration for a similar story using a different location or ship.

Those not labelled are non-unique, and any member could write them without consulting with TF staff.

• An aging subspace relay is one of the few remaining communication links for several isolated systems. It is failing under the stellar conditions and has already attracted the interest of at least one Gorn vessel. Keep it online, or the local systems will go dark.
• A Gorn breeding party has established itself on a remote Federation colony. Most of the population was able to evacuate, but several families were stranded behind. The lucky ones are in hiding as they are relentlessly pursued by the Gorn forces. Get the survivors out before the breeding party discovers them.
• The USS Bath has gone missing. Sent to investigate an affected star, its last transmission from Captain Ssismar reported something unexpected in the star’s corona, but the ship never completed its observation run. Find the Bath and recover the sensor data. (Unique)
• Taking advantage of local instability in the region, a group of pirates and smugglers have taken over a small Federation colony and are beginning to use it as a base of operations for their activities in the larger region.  Report to the colony world and liberate it from pirate occupation before their raids draw the attention of either the Klingons or the Gorn onto the innocent population.
• Two colony worlds in the Tavoth system are both heavily reliant on solar power to provide energy to their people.  When the system’s star begins behaving oddly, each colonial administration blames the other, accusing them of attempting to sabotage the other colony’s vitally-needed energy source.  With both threatening to hire mercenaries to act against the other if the situation is not resolved, investigate the Tavoth star and provide a resolution to the two colonies before conflict breaks out between them. (Unique)