From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/12/06)

[Starhawk]

2442.1 The Newest Breed of War:
Admiral William Ross, commander of the first fleet relaxed in his ready room aboard Superior and sighed contentedly, it had been a year of relative peace throughout the Icaran Empire, as the government paused and took stock of the new threats that the United Mantisoran Kingdom could bring against Icara. Though the 1st fleet was in Remorhaz space they were never in any real danger as the fading republic didn’t have enough warships left to threaten a single division of Super Dreadnought’s much less a full on battle fleet.
Word had reached the intelligence service a few weeks ago that the Delta Corporation had dispatched a privately funded fleet of mercenaries to one of the former Anderman worlds, and that hey had conducted horrible experiments on the civilian population. Ross remembered sourly that when he first read the reports containing details of the experiments his stomach heaved not only because of the experiments but because the Home Fleet was going to be assigned to destroying the renegades, fortunately that hadn’t been needed in the end as the Mantisorans tried to liberate the world.

Ross felt a strange sense of guilt as he remembered feeling remorse when he heard the news that two Mantisoran fleets had been destroyed on two separate attempts to rescue the inhabitants of Horod V killing nearly three hundred thousand of their spacers before a third fleet of some sixty warships finally overwhelmed and destroyed the DC fleet, however they too lost five ships with crews of around 6,500 each.

William re-read the report and frowned, though they had liberated the world of Hodor V it was a hollow victory as marine landing parties from the Mantisorans discovered that the population was so horribly deformed there was no point in saving them, in the end the Mantisoran commander, one Admiral Vincent DeLeno had glassed the world to end the agonies of those that were unlucky enough to survive the horrible experiments conducted upon them.

Ross knew that the Mantisorans were his enemy but he also knew that they were an enemy he could respect and that they like Icara dealt with prisoners with honor and compassion so the thought of hundreds of thousands of their naval personnel being killed by renegade pirates seemed wrong on the most basic of levels; navy personnel were soldiers, fighting for what they believed in, the mercenaries that had killed them were fighting for money and were doing horrible things to innocent men women and children for the sake of making a profit and though he would never tell anyone how he felt Ross could not help but feel sympathy for the families of those brave men and women who died trying to do what was right, they died trying to protect innocents.

Suddenly William was pulled from his thoughts as klaxons howled and a voice boomed over the ships speakers calling all hands to action stations, as he stood and tugged his jacket back on Ross couldn’t help but wonder if that enemy he just felt sympathy had decided to come and try to kill his young men and women.

As he reached the bridge Ross noticed the pale shocked faces of his sensor crew and flag Captain and felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, they were all veterans so whatever could make them look like that must be either very bad or worse.
“What is it Captain?” The Admiral managed to keep the concern out of his voice, though his worry grew when it donned on him that the marine sentry on the bridge forgot to announce his arrival.
“Uh, captain we’ve just had a warp point open and…..well sir.” The captain flinched at the screen again before finally looking directly at Admiral Ross “Sir according to our reports something the size of a small planetoid is coming towards our position and I’m reading energy signatures off the charts.” The flag captain shrugged and looked back at the screen.
“Small planetoid eh? How big exactly is it?” Ross said somewhat irritated by the fact that his crew was standing around like slack jawed back breeds, though he couldn’t entirely blame them.
“Sir unknown object has sixty kilometer diameter with a mass reading of twenty five megatons and an energy signature of several hundred terawatts I can’t get an exact reading from this range.” The Sensor tech looked as if she’d seen a ghost as she reported her sensor’s readings.

Five hours passed and nothing new came in, the 1st fleet assembled in battle formation with the vulnerable troop transports hidden away at the center of the fleet to protect them from whatever was coming.
“Um, Admiral I’m receiving a signal from that…..ship.” A young com tech tabbed a control and the primary screen on the bridge came to life, everyone on the deck visibly relaxed when a young looking woman wearing an Icaran Royal navy uniform appeared on screen, a mischievous smile on her face.
“Sorry if I startled you folks, I was ordered to keep radio silence until I was in position to join your fleet, I’m Commodore Rukia Fujita commander of the HMS Holy Crusade one of two battle moons that just launched from port, I also happen to be your new flag officer Admiral.” Her smile brightened as she snapped a salute in parade fashion.

Ross couldn’t help but smile, he had met Fujita only once before and that was back on Icara while she recovered from wounds she sustained during the campaign in Ulda Fraiv when the 1st fleet was still under command of Admiral Tyson Babcock before his reassignment to 3rd fleet.
Ross remembered that even while they grew limbs for the ones she lost, and even while she was undergoing agonizing physical therapy her spirit had barely lost any of it’s flair and toughness, she even refused to let the doctors remove a scar across her right cheek where a piece of shrapnel the size of a dinner plate barely grazed her. She told Ross that if she got rid of that scar it would be ignoring the only good bit of luck she had had that day.
“It’s good to see you again Rukia, come on in and take formation with the rest of the fleet.”

“Aye sir and I’d love to give you a tour of your new flagship sir.” Rukia bowed and saluted again before cutting the circuit.

(to be continued……)

[Hunpecked]

Nitpick: the phrase "it donned on him" should be "it dawned on him".

Re: Fujita. A veteran should definitely have a scar or two both as a reminder to self and as a warning to the newbies.

[Starhawk]

The Newest Breed of War pt2:
The Superior’s cutter number ten slipped into the massive docking bay; the bay was so large the cutter wouldn’t even be visible with the naked eye from the farthest end, hundreds of cutters and other small craft called this bay home and as Ross stared out of the view port of his cutter he suddenly felt like a child who had seen the sky for the first time.
The cutter’s hatch opened and a ramp slid down to the deck with a quiet clank that seemed to be swallowed up by the sheer size of the bay, as Ross stepped into view he paused for a moment, stunned yet again as he saw the honor guard that awaited him a full eight thousand crew and marines; at their head Commodore Rukia Fujita and a tall, olive complexioned man whom looked almost frail as he stood next to the shorter but much more muscularly built Spartan Commodore in her full dress mess uniform.

The traditional steel whistle called out an ancient whistle alerting all hands present to a flag officer’s arrival on deck; at the sound the entire company snapped to attention with a sound that would bring confidence to any commander; Ross proudly returned the salute and cleared his throat “As you were.”
A few seconds later Commodore Fujita and the frail looking man at her side stepped forward, Fujita smiled like a schoolgirl as she allowed herself to relish the look of absolute shock on her new Admiral’s face.
“Welcome aboard the Holy Crusade Admiral.” The young woman offered her hand to Ross, who took it and grinned sheepishly as he realized he had been gawking like a backwater mudfoot.
“Thank you Commodore, she’s certainly one of the most unique things I’ve ever seen.” His grin widened as he looked around the massive “boat bay” again, still staggered by its sheer size.
“Tell me commodore how do you keep the enemy from flying straight into this great big beast and blowing you all apart?” Ross smiled wickedly this time and suppressed a chuckle when he saw the look of shock on face of the Captain next to Fujita.

Being acquainted with Ross’ quirky sense of humor Fujita was totally unflustered as she smiled back and managed a velvet smooth voice “Well Admiral unlike that bucket of bolts that was your old flagship the Holy Crusade has the latest in void shield technology, oh and not to mention a fifteen meter thick blast door that seals off the entire launch bay in battle conditions.” Fujita turned to her aid and her smile turned once again into a grin as she noticed the man’s confusion.
“Oh Admiral may I present Flag Captain Elijah Jones of the New Bethlehem colony.” She nudged the younger man who stepped forward and saluted.

“It’s an honor to be meeting you Admiral.” Elijah’s voice was surprisingly deep for a man that looked so thin, his accent was also very unusual within the Icaran Empire and Ross had to remind himself that the New Bethlehem colony had not been part of the Icaran Empire until it was discovered by the Midwinter about ten Terran years ago, fortunately for both Icara and New Bethlehem the Colony’s leaders had decided to join the Empire voluntarily due to both political and religious reasons instead of trying to put up resistance.

“Good to meet you too Jones, how long have you been aboard Crusade?” Ross always liked to get to know his senior officers and he had realized long ago that a more casual approach often helped; obviously he could look up the man’s entire service record in about five minutes but he preferred hearing things straight from the “horses mouth”. He suppressed a grin at the thought of a big hairy mammal no Icaran had seen in a few centuries talking.

“Well sir she’s only about four months old and I’ve been with her since her latter stages of construction, so I’d say about one standard year.” Jones said crisply and smiled with pride as Ross nodded and looked around at the amazing “boat bay” again.
“It almost doesn’t fit to call this thing a ship does it?” Ross asked no one in particular as Rukia and Jones turned to lead him out of the massive boat bay.

A few minutes later Admiral William Ross and his new command staff, Commodore Rukia Fujita and Captain Elijah Jones stepped off the lift and onto the main bridge, William came up short as he stepped off the lift and saw the sprawling two tiered command center.
“My Lord I’ve seen planetary defense command centers smaller then this!” Ross said excitedly as he looked around the sleek dimly lit bridge.
“Well sir considering this warship is 60 kilometers in diameter and rates 25 megatons I’d say she deserves a good command center.” Rukia grinned and guided Ross to one of the many holographic displays on the bridge before she continued talking. “This particular station shows a display of the overall ship’s status, including our armaments and shield capabilities.”
“So what are the capabilities of this ship Commodore?” Ross felt more excited then he had since laid eyes on the first Yu Hing Pe super dreadnought to roll of the line, this ship was something that was generations beyond anything Ross had ever seen before in sheer size and power.
“We have eight spinal mount I-lasers capable of a 50 terawatt stream for five seconds, beyond that we have 89 massive mount I-lasers on top of that each capable of the standard 2 terawatt 3 second stream.” Rukia smiled as she noticed the shocked expression on Ross’ face, she tabbed a control on the panel and the hologram changed from a view of the exterior of the massive warship to a display of the internal layout.
“We have the latest generation energy focusing lenses so we lose less then five percent of energy per shot, making them about twenty percent more effective then the weapons on the current build SDs, though NavTech is working on that, we’ve made some other improvements too……” After an hour of briefings on the newest improvements made to the Holy Crusade William decided to take some of the tech manuals to his quarters and invited Rukia to come along, partly because he wanted to talk to her and private and partly because he had no clue how to get to his own quarters.

As the two officers stepped through the door to Ross’ quarters and the marine closed the hatch behind them William turned to Rukia and smiled humorlessly “So Rukia tell me what’s been going on back home, I hear some things are changing” he tried to keep his tone from becoming grim but it didn’t seem to help much and he realized that as Rukia’s face suddenly turned pale.
“Well sir some of the frontier worlds have begun rioting more and more and the Praetor has declared them rogue until such time as the FSD can get in there and stabilize the situation…..and sir I didn’t want to tell you this in front of the rest of the crew but Home Fleet got tarred pretty bad trying to take out a Mantisoran controlled colony.” She paused for a moment and her eyes darted about the room like she was trying to do anything but look at the shocked expression on Ross’ face.

“Is Lin….?” He felt the words stick in his throat and he couldn’t manage to force them free.
“She’s uninjured Sir but she’s under review by the Admiralty, they don’t think she did anything wrong per se but she lost all but one of her fleet’s SDs and one of her Flag Monitors took a beating.” Rukia stepped closer to Ross and resisted the urge to put her hand on his shoulder, an official review by the Admiralty would not likely end Lin’s career but it could easily be seen as a black mark on her permanent records, but more then that Ross knew how Lin would feel about losing so many of her own ships and crews taking over one planet.

“Well as long as she’s alright she’ll pull through this, how are things on the military front I hear there are some strange reforms in the works?” Ross managed to keep his voice more casual this time and he could barely contain the mix of Relief and worry knotting his belly.

“Actually yes sir, the fleets are all being pulled back to Norvor and many of our outlying worlds are being isolated via warp point closing ships. Our orders for now though don’t include falling back to Norvor at this time but it probably won’t be much longer.” Rukia sat in the chair Ross waved her too before continuing “Sir its only scuttlebutt but it makes sense since so far everyone except us has been recalled to Norvor and the fleets are being reorganized as the battlemoons come on line, we’ve also got word that all production of Super Dreadnoughts has temporarily ceased until the fleets get back home.”

William frowned thoughtfully and rubbed his forehead, in a way it made sense to recall the fleets if the frontier worlds were rioting and the United Mantis Kingdom was reorganizing into more effective defensive and offensive units, word had reached the Navy that most of the so called “new frontier” worlds had fallen to the Mantis navy months ago and even the Royal Navy couldn’t be everywhere so continuing to take worlds they couldn’t hold made no sense.
“So when does the new building program begin?” Ross was more curious then grim this time, he knew there was no way in hell Rodrick would let the navy sit on the defensive for long but the frontier worlds had to be reminded that no matter who they once belonged to they were now Icaran citizens, and Icaran citizens don’t riot.
“Well it’s supposed to start early next year once everything back home has been cleaned up and we get the fleet reorganized.” She managed a brief smile, she had been back on Icara for the past year and a half with a mix of recovering from her injuries and helping get the crew of the Holy Crusade up and ready for launch so she had actually looked forward to getting back out on the front lines, but Ross and most of First fleet hadn’t even seen Icara for almost three years and she knew they’d look forward to the recall for at least a little while.

“So tell me more about what’s been going on back home.”

[El_Phil]

Nice to see your still going and not a bad chapter.

Still it does seem odd 'word reaching then navy' I mean they of all people need to know what the enemy is doing.

Stil going with TWs I see, nice fudge on those technobabble focusing lense by the way . Still may I introduce you to the simple joy of KE weapons: Take one 6kg lump, accelerate up to 0.1c and it will do about the same damage as one of those spinal I-Lasers (in pure MT terms at least) as well as being far smaller. Something to think about perhaps?

[Starhawk]

El_Phil said:
Nice to see your still going and not a bad chapter.

Still it does seem odd 'word reaching then navy' I mean they of all people need to know what the enemy is doing.

Well remember they don't have FTL comms all the messages are sent via messenger ship or warp drone. And Warp drones are expensive so they are very rare except for absolute emergencies on a fleet wide scale.

So "Word reaching the navy" is because it would take time for he message to reach the intelligence branch and then time for that message to reach the Navy as a whole.

Stil going with TWs I see, nice fudge on those technobabble focusing lense by the way . Still may I introduce you to the simple joy of KE weapons: Take one 6kg lump, accelerate up to 0.1c and it will do about the same damage as one of those spinal I-Lasers (in pure MT terms at least) as well as being far smaller. Something to think about perhaps?

Yeah but solid shot wouldn't punch through the null space (void) shields so it wouldn't really be a good idea besides that energy weapons don't require a large magazine while solid weapons do.

And yeah Terawatt seems to work for now

[El_Phil]

Large magazine for a railgun or huge reactors, inductors, cooling systems for energy weapons. Hmmmm....

One point. If you want to do a tech manual, or just put in some tech background in the books, you are going to have to drop the cool sounding words.
For instance, I remember you saying the I-lasers weren't lasers but fusion beams. Well 'Fusion Beam' may sound nifty but it means nothing. Same for 'Null Space' shields. Unless you are actually using a shielding system based on mathematical solutions to matrix problems.

The other problem with the tech manual is you commit yourself and people ask difficult questions, like "Why rail guns can't pierce null space shields, but other things can?"

[Starhawk]

Well I don't know what you would call a beam that creates a fusion reaction with just about any solid object it comes in contact with? (basically turning hull plating into a micro fusion explosion)

As far as "null space" goes basically think about it like this the GFGs focus a "wavelength" of subspace around the ship to create a "void" around the ship. Basically it's kind of like putting a bubble of subspace around the ship to absorb impacts.

Now why would solid shots not work? Simple because the solid impact would simply break apart on the shield, it's a matter of kinetic force vs something that negates the kinetic force. NOW why does the energy weapon work? Becuase of the fact that when the two energies mingle you get a hell of a lot of force released eventually burning out the shield generators, however unfortunately due to the nature of the interactions there are shield "burn throughs" that take place every so often resulting in some of that energy striking the ship's hull directly causing damage and killing people.

Why then do ships have armor? Because ablative armor causes the fusion "bomb" to be shot off of the hull before it can actually cause the blastwave to go directly into the ship.

Why fight broadside? Simple because their shields are not "directional" like the shields on star trek where you can take a hit on the nose and just turn your side to the bad guy to releive that shield point until it regenerates a hit on the nose in the Icaranverse reduces the overall shield effectiveness, also due to the nature of shields weapons can not be fired "through" it either way which means that if a ship tried to fire through it's shields it would just be hurting it's own shields.

So the weapons are laid out mainly broadside so that when the ship opens "ports" in it's shields it's maximizing firepower while at the same time making sure it's getting more worth out of it's shield-to-fire ratio (basically why fire two weapons forward and lose the same amount of shield when they fire back when you can unleash 18 or more cannons?)

Now does this tech work with modern physics HELL NO but are the Icarans nearly two thousand years more advanced then us Yeppers and I am taking creative liscence given that 100 years ago no one thought powered flight would make sense, and given that only about 70 years ago some scientist said there was not enough fissionable material in the world to make a reactor or a bomb I figure who knows how far two thousand years worth of advancement will bring our knowledge of physics and technology.




(re: Magazine vs reactor)
The Icaran quantum reactors in the main turrets are rather small comparitavely speaking and you can get nearly unlimited fire out of them while the more rounds you wanted to fire with a solid shot weapon the bigger the magazine would need to be.

basically a reactor for an energy weapon could give you 1 shot or 1,000,000 for the same size while a magazine for a solid shot weapon would need to grow with every few rounds you add to the capacity of the ship.

[El_Phil]

Your right that doesn't work with physics, not even a little bit. It's the kind of stuff a star trek engineer would be proud to spout. Still that is the advantage of writing your own stuff, you can just make things up.

Tech will change and new things will be found out, but to paraphrase Scotty 'You canna change the laws of physics!" that reasoning on why solid shot wont work is so fundamentally wrong it's painful. So the work to counter KE doesn't stress the generators, but the energy release when a beam hits does stress them. To counter the KE of the sold shot you will need at least the same amount of energy, "Energy can neither be created or destroyed" and so on.

Take an 18" naval shell (say 1,500lb or ~700kg), accelerate to 0.1c. The shell now has a KE of 350PetaJoules. All that energy hits the shields and something has to happen to it, that is a fundamental law of the universe.


Or you just don't bother with explaining it and take the answer used about how Trek inertial dampers work, 'Perfectly well thank you.'

[Hunpecked]

El_Phil writes: "Large magazine for a railgun or huge reactors, inductors, cooling systems for energy weapons. Hmmmm...."

If you're putting comparable energies on the target--whether "energy beam" or kinetic energy projectile--don't you need to control comparable energies at the source? For example, doesn't the railgun require a substantial "reactor" to generate the current for something like 3 million G's on its projectile (assuming its velocity of 0.1c is attained in one second or less)? If it's less than 100% efficient, it will also require cooling. I'm no engineer, but I suspect it would also require massive conductors, inductors, transformers, etc.

[El_Phil]

True, but you aren't messing around with exotic particles. This vastly simplifies the entire process and reduces the losses in conversion (as there are less converions ).

Also although the total energy is the same, the peak would be lower. A 100TW beam would need a 100TW reactor to power it when it's firing. A magneic accelerated railgun slug builds up its KE over the course of its acceleration. So a 10TW reactor powers the magnets for 10 seconds and you've put the same amount of power into the final weapon, but with a reactor 10 times smaller. Or you use the same size reactor and get a 10 times more powerful weapon.