Deep Space 13 is an old Masai space station on the RA- Federation border. The station was found 12 years ago, abandoned and derelict. The survey ship USS Pinnacle was sent out shortly after the station's discovery to see exactly why such a tactically excellent station had been abandoned. Once the crew of the Pinnacle had boarded the station, they found everything to be totally derelict. The computers across the entire ship had been disabled by a massive energy surge, and all of the Masai circuitry had been fused together. A team of forensic investigators took over to see what had caused the power surge, and although no exact evidence has ever been found, it is thought that the surge came from the warp core due to sabotage of some sort.
Slow progress has been made on the station, shipping people and materials in and out. As the crew of the Pinnacle found it, the station had minimal life support, and so one of the first priorities was to set up a life support generator. Once this had been done work begun on refitting the station. Obviously this station could not just be left in such an advantageous position for the Masai to reclaim, and so Federation technicians got to work at removing all of the Masai computer networking. When some of the circuit boards and relays got back to the labs at Star Base 214, it was found that the Masai had employed a system of bio-neural relays in their computer systems. This meant that once the power surge had ripped through the station the bio-neural relays had died and taken all information about the station with them.
The refit is now nearing completion. The main computer core has been totally removed and placed with a state of the art warp injection system. This is the newest technology of the Federation. It uses a minute warp field to carry impulses along relays. The warp field has also been given a phase variant of 0.28 so that it slightly moves out of phase with the matter it passes through. This has two main advantages. 1.) It improves security by having to be re-phased once it gets to a terminal, and so any person trying to hack will have to have a large re-phasing module to read the data. 2.) It improves the speed at which data is transmitted by generating a warp field, which prevents external forces from interfering with the data stream.
The station is also multipurpose. It acts as a strategically brilliant base for the war against the Masai. For this reason there is a small fighter squadron based at DS13, which consists of 3 fighters and 1 Nebula class ship, the USS Neptune-C. DS13 also acts as a stop off point for exploration vessels, and also can be an early warning system for an alien invasion of Federation space. If an invasion should occur, DS13 is well equipped to deal with it. Its armament includes 8 rapid-fire quantum torpedo launchers, 2 type X phaser arrays, and 2 launchers for special weapons created on the station. These special weapons are specifically made to help disable Masai ships, and were created using the data obtained from the Masai computer relays found on the station.
Deep Space 13 is now staffed by a crew of elite Federation officers. They have many years of experience and are all highly respected individuals. Along side the crew are a number of people who help with the day-to-day running of the station. There are also a number of people who work in the shops along the part of the station known as "The Pole". The Pole is the central structure of the station, and is basically a long rhombus shaped structure, which contains the warp and computer cores, and is also home to 5 stories of shops. These shops deal in import and export, and the trade coming through the station is quite varied due to its position. Currently the station is just warming up. The new crew has just arrived and completion of the refit will be in approximately 3 weeks. Currently the computer systems are up and running, as are the replicator, life support and communication systems. Still offline are the transporter and weapons systems, but they should be online soon. For now though, if you want to fire a quantum torpedo, you have to do it yourself!
The station is also capable of going into warp. It creates a subspace field around itself and pushes the warp field out through a small opening at the bottom of the subspace field. This means that structural integrity is saved whilst being able to go at only warp factor 1. To strengthen the structural integrity, massive amounts of energy are used to push "The Pole" up, and the habitat corridors are slid into the space in-between the arch pillars. This whole effect makes the whole station more streamlined and warp capable. However, this maneuver requires incredibly high amounts of energy, in fact it must draw energy out of the warp core, which is part of the reason why warp 1 is the maximum speed. Therefore warp should only be attempted in extreme circumstances when warp is the only option, or when the station needs to be moved to avoid astral debris.