Chapter Two Forty-Three Developments and Progress (Patreon)

July 11th, 063 SDE:

Countryman set a report to the side and picked up another. He was in his temporary office just off the temporary command center. His new position as Supreme Protector didn’t eliminate paperwork, although he was thankful for his army of aides with which to delegate tasks. Much of his work lately had been related to the refit and industrial bay priorities. The Enterprise only had fifty industrial bays large enough for the construction of ship modules, and right now all of those bays were now here on the surface, running at full capacity. Thankfully, new bays were coming online soon. Only five today, but more would be coming online over the next few weeks at an increasing rate. Countryman had signed off on the investment into industrial modules which could later be mounted on the Enterprise, and her planned sistership the Avenger. Countryman had objected to the name, since she was planned as a cityship; Enterprise wasn’t ideal for a cityship name either, but he’d been outvoted. The argument? That with their low numbers they didn’t want to advertise that their cityships were cities, and not something else like say warships. So Avenger had been chosen.

Countryman hoped he could get that changed before the hull was actually laid down. The current plan was to lay down her ventral keel in January, by then they should have enough industrial bays to fit in the construction demands of a second ship without compromising the industrial expansion or the refit. In February, they’d be laying down the ventral keels of two more ships. The first of their Hammer class yardships, of which four had been planned and names chosen.

SFS Reliant and SFS Meiyo would be the ships in February and in March they’d begin construction on SFS Reiko and SFS Forgeheart. These would be massive vessels over five thousand meters long with a significant span of four thousand two hundred and thirty meters. Seven hundred decks of internal space, along with massive internal industrial bays and huge internal docking bays where frigates could dock. Destroyers and Cruisers however, would be far too large for any internal docking bay. For that, the ships had deployable ventral and dorsal docking arms. In theory they’d be able to work on four cruisers simultaneously and forty frigate-sized ships. 

The yardships would be heavily armored with some 84 meters of generation four armor, and outfitted with only a handful of weapon systems, four heavy flak batteries, a dozen pulsar turrets, eight light particle cannon batteries and two cutting beam arrays. Given the size of the ship, that armament was downright light, but her main role wasn’t to engage in battle. The heavy armor would keep them safe from most threats but in general they’d be protected by the escorts.

Speaking of escorts, they had several classes planned for escort ships but none of them were slated to begin construction for many months. In terms of escorts the backbone of their escort fleet would be the Sabre Class Destroyers. These would be a bit smaller than the old X-1212 class destroyers that had previously escorted the Enterprise, but they’d be no less capable.

The Sabre would be eight hundred meters long, with a span of six hundred meters and forty decks. The planned armament was eight banks of heavy particle flak cannons, sixteen XDPC-347-C Heavy Directed Particle Cannon batteries for ship-to-ship, 2 XPCB-114-E Cutting Beam Arrays, 40 forward torpedo launchers, fifty-two Super-heavy Dual Pulsar Turrets and two Electro-Lance Cannons in spinal mounts.

In addition, she had 40 meters of armor, Energy web projectors, triphasic radiation shields and four small hangars. She wasn’t intended to carry any fighters by default, but any Sabre could be fitted to carry a squadron in each hangar, alongside her standard complement of scoutships and combat shuttles. The ship was designed for a crew of three hundred and had the capacity to carry a full division of marines, their vehicles and equipment.

Naturally they couldn’t rely on destroyers alone, so they’d designed a general-purpose combat cruiser that could be outfitted for a variety of combat roles. The Battlehawk class cruisers would feature a main armor belt of sixty meters, and a secondary belt of thirty meters. Energy web projectors and radiation shields would also come standard on the ship.

For her planned armament she’d be fitted with five XPCB-238-C Cutting Beam Arrays. 12 banks of XDPC-347-D Heavy Directed Particle Cannons in quad turrets. Thirty banks of XDPC-128-C Dual-purpose Medium Directed Particle Cannons in dual turrets. Thirty banks of XDPC-78-C Light Particle turrets with secondary flak cannon mode in dual turrets. Two hundred and fifty Electro-Lance Emplacements, and twenty torpedo launchers. All of it split evenly fore and aft.

Finally she’d have four shuttlebays, two small and a pair of larger main hangars located port and starboard. Giving her a capacity for five hundred auxiliary vehicles. That included 120 SF-1204s, 60 SFB-1208 Sparrows, 240 X-1205 Combat Shuttles, 20 Vulcan Dropships, 20 corvette scoutships, and 40 Arctic class cargo shuttles.

Those two ships would be the backbone of their future fleet, but they also needed carriers and dedicated attackships. For the former they had designed the Kingdom Class Carrier, and for the latter the Firebird Class Bird of Prey.

For the Firebird, they’d designed a small ship measuring 160 meters long with a span of 240 meters and twenty decks. Her general profile was somewhat different from the standard mold as she had no secondary hull. Instead, her main body was a flat elongated saucer with a pronged forward section and aft section that widened out and flared into a set of wings that angled back and downward before sweeping forward to give the ship a very aggressive profile. Mounted to the end of each wing was a nacelle housing and a pair of linked superheavy cannons, specifically the XM8-60 Superheavy Directed Particle Cannons.

Those four cannons represented her main weaponry and required a fairly powerful powerplant to support, which is why the ship would carry a heavy duty antimatter reactor that ran the entire length of the engineering section, and there were direct power feeds from that reactor to the main capacitors in the wings, allowing the weapons to recharge rapidly. They were designed to fire supercharged high-density particle bolts in five-round bursts, and had the power to punch through heavy capital ship armor. After all, these were technically the kind of weapon one would mount on a battleship, just slower firing.

The Firebird would also carry two spinal-mounted Electro-Lance cannons, located in the prongs of the saucer. She’d also have two forward torpedo launchers, one aft. Mounted across her main body will be four banks of XDPC-347-C Heavy Directed Particle cannons in dual turrets, and five banks of XDPC-78-C light directed particle cannons in quad turrets.

One thing of real note in terms of armament was that her torpedo launchers were of a new type, capable of firing both physical torpedoes, such as photons, or energy torpedoes; specifically Pulsar torpedoes.

The Firebird would also be outfitted with their latest in stealth technology. Ruri had reverse-engineered Voskar stealth tech, or well partially. They’d determined that active cloaking fields were far too draining for prolonged use and adapted the tech to produce an active stealth system that, while not full cloaking, would render their ships invisible to all known forms of interstellar tracking. All ships would now be fitted with a stealth field generator by default, but the Firebird would also be fitted with a holographic cloaking device. Allowing her to remain undetected at closer ranges, but it was a power-intensive system. She couldn’t maintain the holographic cloak for extended periods, nor could she charge her main weapons while cloaked. She might be able to fire a torpedo but only in dark mode. The cloaking field was easily disrupted which made it impossible to fire energy weapons, and even physical torpedoes could disrupt the field.

They’d considered mounting it on larger ships but the cloaking field grew increasingly unstable with larger ships, meanwhile smaller ships couldn’t produce enough power to mount a holographic cloak. Oddly enough the Firebird was in the sweet spot for active cloaking. Anything smaller didn’t have the power generation, and anything bigger left the field too unstable to be viable.

Finally, for protection, the Firebird would be protected by twelve meters of armor, but she’d have no secondary belt. She would have energy web projectors and radiation shields.

Finally the Kingdom was planned to be a large ship, seven thousand five hundred and fifty meters long, with 440 decks and a span of some four thousand five hundred and fifty meters. Built around several massive hangars mounted port and starboard she had the capacity to carry thousands of fighters. With sixty shuttlebays, she could lose several hangars and still be able to deploy and rearm fighters in the field. They intended for her to carry four thousand five hundred SF-1204s and half that number in SFB-1208 Sparrows. In addition, she’d have the capacity for two thousand two hundred and fifty X-1205s, along with hundreds of Vulcan dropships and Arctic class heavy cargo shuttles and space for a large number of corvette-sized scoutships.

They planned on the Kingdom having a main armor belt of 55 meters with a secondary belt of fifteen. Energy web projectors, stealth fields and radiation shields offered further protection. Her armament on the other hand would be rather modest for a ship of her size. She’d have eight cutting beam arrays for ship-to-ship, and four banks of light flak cannons for space defense and that was it.

Countryman set another report aside on their progress and considered the schedule. The fleet they were putting together would be a good start. He’d recently approved the construction plans for one hundred and fifty-eight ships, not counting anything smaller than a frigate. Four Hammer-class yardships, 14 Battlehawk-class cruisers, 28 Sabre-class destroyers, four Kingdom-class carriers and a hundred and eight Firebird-class Birds of Prey, which when including the Avenger would give them a fleet of one hundred and sixty ships.

They expected this construction period to take several years to complete with a large chunk of the time being spent on industrial expansion. Countryman had found some time savings by starting module construction and operation now, before the keels of any industrial vessels had even been laid. How quickly they could finish building this fleet and supplying it with weapons and armor was partially based on industrial capacity. They also had to consider mining and supply lines. Thankfully, most of what they needed was right here on Salvation, but the shattered planet did lack water. There was enough in its shattered hulk to supply their needs for a few years. But sooner or later, they would have to harvest water from other sources.  By then however, they should be in a much better position to defend longer supply lines.

Reading the next item in his inbox, he quickly signed off. It was Ruri’s proposed timeline for the prototyping of her shuttle-class warp drive. She was requesting six modified X-1205 shuttle hulls to be produced and delivered to her lab in six months to be fitted with the Gen One prototype. They would be used for limited warp testing over the next six months so that she could refine her design. After that if the early testing looked promising, she wanted an additional thirty hulls to be delivered six months after the initial testing phase, with specs to be provided during that time frame. She expected to have her final design within five years. Given the import of this project, she’d have most of their scientific resources for quite some time. Once her drive was finalized, they’d get to work on the LPC Project, which was waiting for her smaller warp drive system.

That was another project that might give them headaches later, they’d reserved docking space in the designs of all future hangars for these dedicated ships that would take over a role they’d foisted onto their Vulcan-class Dropships/corvettes. The LPC was intended to be a modular, lightweight corvette hull that could serve basic patrol and scouting duties for the fleet. They did have some thoughts of building some heavier versions but no plans for that had been finalized. Still they did have a general idea of the size of the LPC. She’d be fairly small, around thirty to forty meters long, compared to the Vulcan’s 225-meter hull. The LPC’s smaller profile would make her cheaper, and more importantly easier to stow in a ship’s hangar. Afterall she wouldn’t be much larger than a 1205, but perhaps a bit more cramped. He’d seen a few proposals for internal layout but they couldn’t be finalized until they had the warp engine they needed for her to actually serve the intended role.

As for what they would be arming the ship with, they’d been working to miniaturize their beam weapons technology to fit on a smaller hull, like say the proposed LPC hull. They wanted to arm the LPC with micro-cutting beams, hybrid photon-pulsar launchers, spinal mount particle cannons, some turret mounted particle cannons and he’d even seen a proposal for a miniaturized spinal mounted Electro-Lance. The last one might be a bit much, but the LPC would basically be a heavily armed and warp-capable gunboat. One spec that was already pretty set in stone was that they wanted to put five meters of armor on the little ship. Maybe a bit much, but one role they had in mind for them was to scout potentially hostile sectors ahead of the main fleet. One thing you wanted out of a scoutship was making it back to report, five meters of armor would greatly improve their chances of that.

Countryman let out a breath, signed another document and then looked up when someone knocked on the door, “Yes?”

“The joining ceremony is about to begin, would you like to see it?”

Countryman hurried to join them and headed out to watch as the three sections of the Enterprise were maneuvered together, where teams of techs were standing by to bolt and seal the modified interlocks that would hold the three sections of her starframe skeleton together. It already looked different, as they’d gone to great lengths to reinforce it. New support struts had been added, and changes had been made where the hull sections would join. Changes that would make future refits of this nature quicker and easier. Countryman wasn’t sure they would enlarge the Enterprise again. But they were making refit plans for just such a scenario, where they decided it would be better to enlarge the Enterprise rather than build a new cityship. The planned Avenger would be built with being enlarged in mind as well. In her case, they figured they would do just such a thing when their population grew enough to justify it. Having been in space so long, they weren’t in a rush to claim a planet.

Still they weren’t going to give up on a new homeworld just yet. It just wasn' t a priority anymore, merely secondary to their goals. Building a fleet was their main goal, carving out a place in the universe for themselves came second, and finding a planet would be third.

As the last bolts were secured, Greyman turned to him with a new pad in hand, “I held this so you could watch the ceremony. It’s a request to build a livestock dome and to breakout our genetic library to begin cloning animals. I’m afraid the people grow tired of vegetables and fish, they want meat and milk and eggs. Not substitutes.”

“I assume that’s mostly older folk like us,” commented Countryman as he took the proposal.

“Afraid not, the kids have signed on too. It seemed some of their parents shared memories of it and now they want to try it.”

Countryman sighed then signed the proposal. He was kinda tired of it too. They’d figure out shipboard transport for it later. Well then again, the Enterprise would have all that extra space, or maybe it was time to consider designing a dedicated agricultural ship as well? Hmm, not a bad thought, but he didn’t want all the food grown on one ship. That’s why all the ships proposed so far would have either a hydroponics bay, or in the case of Destroyer hulls and larger, an aquaponics bay.

Xau stepped into her new lab and looked around. Her mind however was more on the recent meeting she’d had with the other scientists. They’d been debating the best platform to reach space. A plane had been the first thought, but they already knew air grew thinner with altitude. There were just too many issues with a plane. They relied on the lift provided by air, and their propellers worked by manipulating airflow.

Balloons had been used to reach much higher altitudes than any plane, but again actually reaching space with them didn’t seem likely. Same sort of issues, which had left them looking at rocketry. The Confederacy had developed long range rockets able to strike from a hundred kilometers away and the League had managed to acquire that technology. That same tech showed promise for reaching space, the trick would be to make one large enough and powerful enough to reach orbit.

Well outside her area of expertise, which is why the others had tasked her to work on developing a system of navigation. She wasn’t sure why they thought she’d be good at that, but since they’d tasked her, she’d at least try her hand at it. Walking over to the bookshelf she’d been given, she grabbed a few books, some paper and pens, then settled by the desk and set about studying rocketry. Maybe a little extra knowledge would help?