Chapter Two Forty-Nine Samples and Testbeds (Patreon)

April 1st, 065 SDE:

Countryman looked up from his report and addressed his fellow and right hand. “It’s not a bad proposal, and would fit into today's budgeting meeting.” he sighed, “Hell with our designs being untested, this will help us iron out issues before the main production run.”

Greyman replied, “Well that and I was thinking the Firebird with her cloaking systems would be able to safely scout the nearby systems. With the Enterprise tied up with her refit, we can’t exactly leave the system.”

That was something Countryman understood fairly well. The Enterprise had recently been fitted with her nacelles and the installation of her warp drive systems had been completed last week. The ship remained unarmed and without any defensive systems but she was well on her way towards being able to conduct a shakedown cruise. If things went to plan, they’d be ready for her shakedown in late August. By then her armor plating should be finished along with most of her kitting. They’d be able to install the remaining systems after the shakedown, along with conducting any alterations and corrections the shakedown revealed. After that the Enterprise would be able to conduct shipbuilding and mining operations as required anywhere in the system.

Speaking of those, she was already being kitted out with new full sized module fabricators and industrial bays. Unlike the original ship’s layout, she wasn’t going to have a mere fifty fullsized module fabricators. They were keeping the same standardized layout of a hundred and fifty meters a side for each fab, but the number was being increased from fifty to two hundred bays. A fraction of what they’d be putting on the yardships, but it would be enough for the Enterprise to construct ships and maintain fleet vessels as required. Even if she was a cityship, she still needed to be able to conduct some industrial activity.

Countryman interjected, “Not a bad thought, but before we go scouting other systems, I’d like to put the hull through its paces here.”

“Have anything in mind?”

“Actually yes,” said Countryman. He pressed a button on the desk, and the holographic display revealed a chart of the system. He focused on a spot beyond the sixth planet; there was an asteroid belt there. “This part of the asteroid belt will be ideal, a natural spot for a convoy ambush. We can conduct a live fire exercise here. The data gained will give us a good look at one of the main uses of the Firebird and let us make any adjustments to her key systems that might be required.

Greyman nodded, he knew full well why they’d designed the Firebird. Convoy ambushes were just one application to the Bird of Prey archetype of Frigate design. They were fundamentally similar to the submarines of old wetwater navies with similar applications. The advanced stealth systems gave them the ability to scout out hostile systems, locate weak points in an enemy defense, or slip past observation nets to strike at enemy supply lines. They had not forgotten the Valorian Conflict. While they’d largely avoided conflict in the storm, they’d still been drawn into the occasional faction war. 

The Firebird was envisioned to give them the deepstrike ability to sow chaos in the lines of potential adversaries and allow the fleet to slip away in the confusion. XM8-60 Directed particle cannons gave the little ship the firepower to give anyone a really bad day, but it also carried torpedoes. Missile weapons like torpedoes were quite valuable, however, which meant they didn’t want to waste them on low-value targets. In addition, the Electro-Lances and pulsar torpedoes would let them disable prey for later capture.  Its value escorting the main fleet would be rather diminished, but the Firebird wasn’t an escort vessel; it was, by all rights, an attack ship. The recon applications were useful but secondary to its main role. The LPC, when completed, would be their main scoutship and would also serve as a patrol cutter; smaller and cheaper, the LPC could be fielded in larger numbers.

Speaking of numbers, the Firebird was intended to operate in paired formations. Two ships working together, with a lead vessel and a trailing vessel. These formations can scale for larger wolfpacks. Regardless of the number, the lead ship or ships would attack first, targeting, say, a much larger vessel like a battleship with their Electro-Lances and Pulsar torpedoes. The goal of this first strike was to cripple the defenses so that the trailing ship or ships could destroy or cripple them with high-yield bursts from their XM8-60 cannons and photon torpedoes.

Such tactics were not new; they'd been using them with pulsar-equipped ships like the SFB-1208 Sparrow for decades. It had proven quite effective in the storm, but they’d had no chance to test these tactics in normal space. Yet Countryman and other tactical officers agreed that this wouldn’t change the value of this tactic much. If anything, they suspected its value would be increased, since there would be no storm to tax the defense shields of potential adversaries. “Not a bad thought. We can easily set up some drone ships to serve as targets. To vary things up, we can recycle the alien alloys we have sitting in storage.”

They’d considered breaking those down for their base components and using them elsewhere, but Countryman had them reserved instead for just this purpose. “Well that is what I had in mind for them.” Then Countryman pulled up a familiar blueprint, “Once we have a few spare bays for it, might we consider constructing a few destroyers for the test target.”

Greyman blinked, “Well they’d be a good target alright.”

Countryman knew they would; they’d been building these Destroyers for the Drifters. This blueprint was one that the Drifters had commissioned back in 43, Codenamed Manticore class, they were well shielded with robust layered armor and a durable main starframe. Propulsion was supplied by four main plasma drives, and armament included photon missile batteries and high-energy linked laser cannons. The main powerplant was a pair of plasma fusion generators. Back on Anchorage, they could build one of these in about two months; the Planned Sabre-class destroyers were expected to take around three months per hull. “I figured the Manticore wouldn’t be that hard to modify into a drone ship and her capabilities are well known to us.”

“Right, I remember. At least we managed to stay out of that one. Well, mostly,” commented Greyman, “How many do you think we will need?” Countryman sighed, “Far too many, we will be diverting materials from vital fleet construction, but if we are going to test the Firebird, we should also put the Sabre and Battlehawk classes through their paces. The Manticore can do that, but for now about thirty should do. Along with sixty of those multipurpose haulers we used to build.”

Greyman thought for a second, “Might just work.”

Countryman was just glad Greyman agreed; now they just had to convince the council. Of course the C-Type Haulers would be the easy one. They were cheap titanium hulls with oversized plasma engines, Being modular, they were easily converted from ore hauler to freighter to passenger liner, depending on the needs of the fleet. No strategic materials were used in their construction either. The only downside was the complete lack of warp capability; one of the reasons they didn’t just use the Drifter-designed Manticore-class Destroyers, those vessels were good, but lacked FTL capability. A similar story covered all but one of the old Earth destroyer designs in their library, the dated X-1212 Destroyer. Given all those ships had been designed over sixty years ago. They were in dire need of an update to accommodate new tech. This had led them to simply resume old design projects as a starting point and basically design entirely new ships.

Xau leaned over the table and peered at the recent analysis of the alien box. Getting it here hadn’t been easy, given the Confederates wanted it just as much as they did. “So you couldn’t figure out how it was made?”

“No, it has none of the usual markers from any known manufacturing process. Not a single weld, hammer mark or rivet.”

Xau frowned, “So what? They cast the entire box in a mold?”

“Couldn’t have,” replied the materials specialist, an older woman of some accomplishment. She turned the box in question and showed the internals, “See this here? That’s alien wiring and it's threaded right into the casing itself. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“And you can’t cast that?”

“Not even close, the wiring would just melt into everything else.”

“So they have some process for manufacturing that we don’t. Anything else of interest?”

The woman nodded, “Yes, the box is made of a titanium alloy we should look at.”

A man interjected, “Yes we should, but I think the alien thrusters are more interesting.” He turned the box, so they could see the assembly. “It’s remarkably elegant. Not sure how they did the nozzles, but the main assembly is quite compact, featuring two fuel storage cells, and seemingly powered by this battery,” he said pointing at a small object in the center.

“A battery?”

The older woman sighed, “A strange one to be sure. Completely different from standard batteries. Batteries of this size are usually unable to recharge, but since this one was found to do so, we compared it with ship batteries. It outperformed them all, able to store more energy and discharge it faster and more efficiently.”

The man nodded, “Yeah I heard about it, the Navy is pressing us to recreate it. Especially since that tiny battery can store more than twice the energy of a full battery array on our largest submarines.”

Xau blinked, “That’s a lot of kilowatt hours.”

“Tell me about it,” said the woman, “But I can see why the military wants it. I just don’t know what to say.”

Xau could too. A battery like that? They’d be able to cut a lot of weight, and she knew weight mattered with naval ships, just maybe not as much as it did to rocket ships. She kinda wanted it too, just imagine how much bigger of a payload they could manage if they could save weight on the batteries. Then a thought occurred to her, “How’d the aliens control this thing?”

The two analysts shared looks, “We.... don’t know.”

The man pointed at the wiring, “I did find that by adding a charge to certain wires I could trigger different thrusters to fire. So I traced that system and it all leads to a little... chip under the battery.”

“A chip?”

“A very small piece of wiring and strange components melded onto some kind of silicon board. No idea what it’s for, but all the controls seem to go there.”

Xau could only think of one thing, but that was silly. Still, she voiced it, “Could it be a computer?”

The two looked at her like she’d grown a third head, “Are you nuts!? A computer? This tiny? That’s....”

The two trailed off as they both realized it might not be as ludicrous as it sounded. Sure, computers were massive constructs the size of buildings, but who knows what alien tech was capable of. The strange battery was tiny and carried more energy than a large sub's entire battery array. If they could do that, why not computers?

“I guess maybe that isn’t crazy,” said the man. Then he sighed, “One thing I’m trying to figure out is why all the wiring is made of silver.”

Xau didn’t have an answer and then Xermon came in. “Did you finish studying that thing?”

Xau turned, “More or less, but now we have a bunch of projects to base on the tech. See where they lead. It will take a while.”

“Well just keep us apprised, I assume the military value will be high?”

Xau glanced at the tiny alien computer, “Um, you could say that. How do you feel about computers the size of my thumb?”

He blinked, his mouth opened and he just sat there.... Unmoving.