J Station

Overview

J Station is a major Boluscan Fleet base, located 750 parsecs coreward of Bolusca.

System Characteristics

The J Station system primary is a class M7 red dwarf of 0.3 Standard Mass and a surface temperature of 2700 K. The system has three frigid, airless, rocky planets and a single ice giant of 18 Bolusca masses. The ice giant is in an eccentric retrograde orbit, and Boluscan astrophysicists have theorized that it is a failed brown dwarf that wandered into the system's gravitational influence several million years ago. It is currently at its perihelion of approximately 19 BU.

History

J Station was established during the first Krai war, initially as a Fleet refuelling station. After the war, the station was expanded to include a spacedock complex, and has since become the most important Fleet headquarters apart from Bolusca itself.

Infrastructure

J Station's main facilities are constructed in a stellar orbit with a radius of 0.75 BU, between the orbits of the system's second and third planets. The main complex is a toroidal space station with an outer diameter of 2000 metres, with internal and external docking facilities for numerous starships. The station includes barracks, training areas, and all the support facilities needed by a major Fleet command post.

A secondary complex trails the main station by 0.05 orbital degrees, or 97,000km. This complex is a shipyard with extensive repair facilities, including spacedocks for units up to cruiser size. Both stations are fully shielded against attack and are surrounded by weapons platforms, making J Station the best defended system outside Bolusca.

The system's third major complex is in stationary orbit around the ice giant. This is a small orbital station that controls the hydrogen mining activity on the ice giant. The facilties that perform the actual mining and refining into fusion fuel are located on the planet's surface.

At the extreme outer edge of the system, 60 BU from the primary, is a subspace sensor array, capable of detecting hyperspace activity over hundreds of parsecs. This is the main sensor system guarding the coreward approaches to Bolusca and the Emissariate Core Worlds. Such arrays are normally placed in interstellar space for maximum efficiency, as the presence of a nearby star severely compromises the range of subspace detection. However, the low mass and spectral emissions of the J Station system primary cause minimum degradation, and Fleet planners determined that the trade-off of the convenience of having the array in proximity to J Station is worth the compromised range.

At a given time, J Station may host dozens of Fleet units of various sizes. Twelve system gunboats are permanantly on patrol around the system.

The full personnel complement of J Sation varies, but distrubuted between the four station complexes there are a minimum of 10,000 Fleet personnel and several thousand civilian contractors.