SYSTEMS ONLINE...WELCOME ABOARD THE USS CATFISH COMMODORE HOLLANDER... PLEASE INPUT YOUR CURRENT ORDERS...

"Full system diagnostic. Give me the specs of the vessel."

INPUT ACCEPTED... GRANTING ACCESS TO SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS...LOADING FULL SHIP MAP...LOADING FULL SYSTEMS LOADOUT...LOADING CREW AND AUXILLARY SHIP SPECS AND NUMBERS...

The "screen" within my mind spins for a few seconds as the ship, AI, and I all become one giant brain. I feel the piercing pain of a direct data transfer but soldier through. This new bit of hardware in my brain is taking some getting used to, but eventually, it'll stop hurting and I'll be good to go. I just have to get this shit done and over with. I found understanding where each system is at, speeds up the process of getting used to the ship and makes the pain go away sooner.

In my mind, and in front of my eyes a ghostly apparition of the great vessel appears, alongside it is a wall of text I can't read but know the contents of. I slowly work my way through the data to gain an understanding of the ship layout and what I'll have at my disposal moving forward.

The USS Catfish is a Viking Class large cruiser. This specific one has been modified from the baseline Viking, focusing more on working as a deep space patrol flagship. This means it wields less potent direct-fire capabilities, focusing on support through troop transport, material manufactories for space repairs, and absolutely massive reserves of nuclear and non-nuclear fuels and facilities to refine or produce these resources. While the fleet assumedly has support and logistic vessels, the Catfish is equipped to keep the fleet running in the event those support vessels cannot tag along or we are too far out for routine supply. I haven't read my orders fully yet, but if the loadout is anything to go by, I won't be in civilized human space very often or there is a chance I will be cut off from supply lines.

The Viking Class is standardly a gargantuan 400 meters in length, 73 meters wide, and 65.5 meters in height. Its displacement is around 200,000 tons but can be more or less depending on loadout and cargo. The armor is composed of a basal layer of steel and titanium forming the internal "shell" of the ship where crew and storage areas are located. This combination of metal with hexagonal bracing methods only capable of being done in zero-G allows for multiple void layers with impressive strength. This bottom layer makes up the external walls of the vessel and is the final layer of armor before the crew starts dying. The next outer shell where all ammo and the lower portion of weapons systems, such as the capacitor arrays for high energy weapons, are located is composed of a similar hexagonal bracing in the void areas but the bracing and walls are made of a combination of titanium-reinforced ceramics, nano-crystal steel, rubber, plastics, and graphite radiators. This offers greater protection than the first layer, but keeps the weapons operational, the hollow areas within are vacuum to avoid fires. The last layer is composed of the least painstakingly woven parts, not requiring the same hexagonal shape as this final layer is closer to add-on armor than the rest. It offers minimal structural support, instead meant to be decimated and replaced as needed so long as the structures underneath remain intact. The most modern armor used is composed of 4-inch tungsten hexes about 2 inches thick working like chainmail, a layer of osmium, rubber, textolite plastics, carbon fiber, and a few ablative outer layers composed of paper-thin sheets of a platinum alloy. Overall this ship is considered standard armored for a 300+ meter long vessel, but underamored for anything in the 500+ category.

The Viking class is loaded with a dual FTL system, one being an Alcubierre-style drive for standard use, generally used for shorter-ranged travel or on smaller vessels. Taking the least amount of power, relatively for moving faster than the speed of light, it compresses and expands space in front and behind the ship "speeding" up the route for the vessel, for ease of understanding it is described as increasing the constant speed of a vessel, or at least increasing the constant of the space around the vessel. An order for the activation of the Alcubierre drive would be to increase the vessel or spacial constant of speed to any speed anywhere from a few miles an hour to up to twenty times the speed of light. Despite it being FTL travel, in theory, the ship doesn't actually break the light barrier, its just space around the vessel changes. The common name for this FTL manner is a warp drive, or sometimes a jump drive depending on who you ask. The other FTL method the Viking class utilizes as a flagship is something known as a rip drive or a singularity drive. I don't understand the science behind it as a whole, but it creates a "shortcut" through space along a 4th-dimensional route. Somehow the vessel is able to traverse a 4th dimensional plane after ripping reality a new hole. It takes an obscene level of power to work but it opens up a shorter path from point A to point B through the dimensions. No clue what that means, but all exterior viewpoints have to be closed because apparently, the 4th dimension will make you crazy or something. This method actually doesn't make the ship faster, the warp drive is utilized along this plane to not only halve the distance but also speed up the process as a massive expanse still has to be crossed.

Powering these two reality-breaking and bending methods of FTL is the Mk34 Sol Dominatus class fusion reactor. This gargantuan powerplant produces 20,150 Terawatts-hours of energy. Supposedly this is the same output as the entire Earth required in the early 21st century. Not only this but the batteries and capacitors onboard can store up to 70 petawatt-hours of energy. So in around 3 hours the batteries can be fully charged if no power is being consumed, but according to diagnostics standard running allows for the batteries to stay full, the only time these batteries are not full is when either of the FTL drives are running, even the miniature sun powering the vessel can't keep up with them. This means each FTL jump or translocation in the case of the rip drive, is limited in range by the amount of power the ship can give it. A tandem usage for the USS Catfish has a maximum range of 8 lightyears before the ship needs to stop and recharge.

The powerplant is also how the ship is propelled, utilizing something called a "solar flare" system the ship practically does a mass coronal ejection to create obscene amounts of thrust, of course, it reduces the energy output of the reactor, but since it is space, the ship only needs to produce a certain level of acceleration rather than maintain thrust for travel like an atmospheric aircraft. The only unfortunate part is that this is the only process that truly consumes fuel in the form of ejecting hydrogen and helium, but since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the galaxy, and is found literally everywhere refueling is quite easy, so long as the reactor never goes out. The maneuvering thrusters use the same system, utilizing a series of pipes to create directional ejections to rotate, pitch, or yaw the ship.

Moving onto weapons, the USS Catfish isn't lacking, but it is not designed to be a slugger. Simply judging by the loadout I can tell my mission is largely not dedicated to combat, or at least combat against peer capital ships. For main weapons, the Catfish utilizes 12 main armament turrets mounting twin-linked 9-inch or 230mm rail-assisted cannons. While not devastating, they can utilize a wide range of munition types, including nuclear-tipped rounds and precision orbital strike munitions. The Chem-Rails as they are called are an older design and technology. Utilizing a half-length charge of modern chemical propellant activated by an ETC system. This alone can accelerate the round anywhere from 25KMS up to 30KMS depending on the mass of each type of ammunition, the computer compensating for changes in ballistics. While this is impressive, since modern space battles begin at multiple light seconds apart this is far too slow for anything but half a light-second distance and even then predictive targeting computers may have trouble, even with proxy-fused nuclear armament. That is where the modern addition of a railgun barrel comes in. The Barrel is composed of four straight rails running the entire barrel length, and then all wrapped in a coil-gun shroud creating a Helical rail system. This allows for better barrel life, while still offering incredible acceleration. With the rails at full power, the shells can be accelerated up to 100KMS but the average is around 80KMS due to that the magnetic forces produced by the barrels can end up bending them which can prematurely detonate nuclear shells which needs to be avoided. This creates a system that produces less heat than a fully powered chemically propelled cannon and has an immediate acceleration requiring a much shorter barrel than an equivalent caliber purely rail weapon. The shots can travel a full light second in around 2 hours which is difficult to actually hit anything, but with some predictive targeting, AI shots are sent on a path to intercept enemies on a predicted trajectory with all 24 cannons firing in a different solution. Although cannons are mostly for battles well within a light second. With a potential of 60RMP, these cannons can do dual-purpose roles from fighters to smaller-sized capital ships.

The other main weapons are the hundreds of VLS tubes containing long-range missiles, some being small interceptor missiles, others 25MT nuclear weapons, and even others being Cassaba howitzer tipped nukes which fire a tungsten-plasma "beam" right through any and all armor, basically a nuclear heat shell. Missiles are the main long-range option, while they are able to fight at closer ranges, the nuclear tipping on them makes this potentially dangerous to nearby allies. Missiles have near unlimited range with semi-autonomous tracking systems allowing them to remain dormant on a certain flight path until the target is within the range of the stored Delta V. The only issue is that missiles are expensive per shot, but the range advantage cannot be overstated. The only limiting factor on the range for missiles is the tracking computers and sensor systems on their vessel.

Every other weapon system is dedicated toward defensive action. This falls within US naval doctrine, avoiding the idea of all guns forward vessels throwing thousands of rounds into the void, instead focusing on countermeasures and strike-first doctrine. This won us the most recent war, only failing against the few monsters who could handle one or two nearby nuclear detonations.

As for defensive armament, the Catfish seemingly has far too much. It has the same amount of CIWS systems and other defensive weapons as the battleship I once commanded which was easily 100 meters longer. There isn't much diversity of these weapons, but there sure are a lot of them. There are the swarmer missiles, small 1-meter long by 50cm diameter missiles that fire in large salvos releasing payloads of dozens of osmium shards to create screens to help intercept missiles. There are the hell-storm batteries, which are composed of 4 turrets, each one being 10 barreled iron-storm style weapons but the internals are still rotary allowing for legitimately millions of RPM, and them also being 25mm in caliber. There are a few laser turrets, but they are really only good at dealing with missiles and at very limited ranges. They are a last-ditch effort to stop incoming ordinance dumping however much power as can be gathered into every laser battery for a near-melee ranged final effort. The final defensive weapon isn't really a weapon but in theory, can do damage. They look like large VLS tubes but instead of missiles, they fire unguided rockets loaded to the brim with chaff. A single one contains enough to create a 16-square-mile chaff screen until the directional force of the blast scatters it too much to be useful.

All these weapons are cooled by a large liquid helium system that encapsulates all barrels and firing mechanisms. The helium is produced by the fusion reactor and put into the system at incredible pressures making it liquid in form. The helium runs over the weapons allowing for convection to cool down the weapons themselves, but the helium can only be cooled through radiation. The ship has "capillaries" as they are called right underneath the outermost layer of armor. They can be shut off independently from one another automatically when a specific side faces a stellar body while all the liquid helium is forced to the top on the side facing away. This allows for heat to radiate into space beyond using the entire dark side of the vessel as a giant radiator. When the heat gets too great the helium can be jettisoned into space where it is quickly replaced by fresh stuff from the reactor, and if this system cannot keep up, then the ship is either already dead or it shuts down all systems.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Another defensive measure is the passive "shielding" of the ship, and they aren't really shields. Forcefields and energy shields have been in concept for a while now, but functionally are either impossible or impractical. There were some past designs but they made it impossible to actually see out of the ship and in some cases even receive communications thanks to the shields being very good at blocking most things, so until they are more practical they will be only prototypes and drawing room concepts. Despite this, there are forms of passive shielding, just not force and energy-based ones. Instead, all ships are equipped with first and foremost a magnetic field generator. This creates a small magnetosphere around the ship, similar to the ones planets have, and this protects the ship from background radiation, it can be cranked up in power during times of great danger to block things like solar flares, partially, and the radiological effects of nuclear weapons. The downside is that when at higher power, most electromagnetic waves cannot pass through, including ones that the ship would want to come through. The other passive "shield" the ship has is linked to the artificial gravity of the ship. Artificial gravity has been a reality for a long time, but only during the space age was a proper method adopted. The one used mostly nowadays is the Podkletnov technique, in which a superconductor is rotated at high speeds in a vacuum to avoid friction and through this, a gravitational field is created. With modern superconductors and electric motors, an earth-like environment can be created even on much smaller ships. This gravity well works as a shield against small debris in space, hoping to avoid any unnecessary damage to the armor and paint. The gravity works like the wake on a ship, simply pushing things around and away from the ship as it moves through space. It is barely capable of stopping high-energy objects like incoming projectiles and missiles, but smaller mass rounds can have their trajectory greatly thrown off.

The final aspect of the Catfish I look at is the hangars and what I get to play with there. There are two personnel shuttles that can carry a maximum of 6 people and are relatively unarmed, they are just for personnel transfers. There are two UD-12 "Pueblo" orbital dropships each one able to deploy twenty marines at a time and are stupidly armored. Then are the three fighters I have onboard. Each one is an SF-21 "Mallard" class fighter, and with them come 6 wingmen drones each. I am not a fighter command type of guy so I have no idea how good or new these fighters are, but considering they are all nuclear rated, I think they will do just fine. I can look it up, but until they are needed I don't feel the need.

The rest of the systems are pretty stock standard, aside from the two massive fabrication plants practically welded to the side of the Catfish. I finished my initial diagnostics and with my neural implant linked to the vessel and now fully online I feel comfortable navigating the ship, and right now I need a painkiller for this brutal headache I have. I get off of my chair and turn off the console. Using the visual overlay granted by my implant I navigate down the rather bleak armored hallways...

With the painkiller kicking in I leave the medbay after some small talk and introductions with the medical staff. They all seem like good dudes, and one of the medic ladies is kinda hot, but even with my batting average of .000 with ladies, I still won't try flirting, it's the only unprofessional thing I won't do. I mean it's been tempting a few times, especially in my early postings as a young and hot-blooded new officer, but thankfully I kept my head on straight. I start thinking about my next plan and dig through the mission files. As the information dances across my vision my heart first sinks, then my stomach churns. It's not just a deep space patrol... it's so much worse. I have to call an all-officers meeting, and I pray they won't mutiny immediately upon hearing of our job...

It takes a while due to the problem of every single officer currently taking a 24-hour rec leave since most are fresh from a separate deployment. Of course, there is grumbling and mumbling about as they bitch and moan about their new commander calling them in, but me telling them this now is a mercy. I finish reading all the files as I stand at the head desk of the main briefing room of the Catfish. I clear my throat quietly and loudly shout,

"Attention!"

The whole room, as if programmed like robots, stands up at once and faces me. I nod and say quieter now,

"Alright, sit down."

They do as commanded and stare directly at me. I then begin a short introduction,

"I am Commodore Hollander, I will be the chief commanding officer of this little fleet we have gathered. As you look around at your fellow officers from different vessels you may quickly see our group is going to be rather diverse in role and capability, this is because our mission is one of great... well...we have a massive lack of information about the area of operation.

Now, let's get this over with. I was one of the first humans to make contact with extraterrestrial life. I even lost a hand due to them too, apparently because of a cultural misunderstanding. We will be going back to that area of operation and we will be... we will..."

I can't spit it out as one of the main objectives of the mission blinks in my vision alongside a single vessel in the fleet. I swallow hard and before I can speak a female voice calls from across the room,

"Our fleet will be performing a diplomatic and scientific mission. The only reason it is a military action is because of both the unknown nature of the area of operation and worsening relations with the nations found within."

I've never heard an entire room groan in unison before until today. Especially a room full of hardened and veteran officers. I held my tongue as I stare at the woman who had just now entered the room. She is a beautiful sort, with tanned skin, piercing emerald eyes that I can see from across the room, gold-streaked brownish hair, and a figure that would make a monk stare. A paradise worlder if I've ever seen one. Someone from a world without flaws, either by human design or by nature. Stable weather nearly worldwide, peaceful flora and fauna, low solar radiation, and beautiful scenery. They are usually used as vacation worlds or related things, but many are also utilized as political capitols for regions of US space. Think like a state or provincial capital. These are usually inhabited by politicians, rich folk, and those in service to either of those two groups. By the way this woman walks and is dressed, I can tell she is from an influential political family to some extent. Her uniform looks similar to a naval officer's uniform but is black instead of the normal navy blue and she doesn't have a hat. In my head, I coin toss whether she is in Naval Intelligence or the Military Diplomatic Corps.

From across the slightly darkened room, my cybernetics pick up her ranking insignia, it's not Army or Navy but I am told that she is equivalent to a Naval Captain in rank. I watch her wearily until she approaches my stand and with a short salute, not giving me enough time to salute back before she introduces herself,

"Diplo-Colonel Shariah Jamestown, I will be your first officer during this entire mission Commodore."

I frown and say,

"And that allows you to disregard proper discipline and proper respect for your superior?"

She sorta scoffs. It's clear she tried to hide an emotion of amusement and I can see intense disdain in her eyes as she locks her two emeralds with mine. She then responds and her answer immediately makes my face go red,

"With all due respect, you are a higher rank, but in no way superior to me."

I feel my face go hot, not out of embarrassment, but a level of rage I haven't felt in a long ass time. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see a bunch of the other officers gain the same expression as me, one of anger. Everyone in the room, aside from this... Diplo-Colonel is a veteran of the last war and we are almost all career Navy or Marines according to the readouts that highlighted each face in the crowd when I gazed across the room. The thing is, this woman was not in any of my readouts or files. I did take note I didn't have a first officer on my list, but assumed I would pick them up somewhere along the way, or it would be my choice.

I am not the most well-behaved naval officer in existence, hell my drunk captaining proves that and that is the reason I only recently became a Commodore. The discipline issues I can ignore, it could've been funny. The disrespect... now I can't look past that, especially in front of every single one of my officers. Not only that but according to the military database Diplo-Colonel is the Military Diplomatic Corps a newer branch, only about 200 years old, and it is separate from all others and is treated as a "better" officer corps. Basically, it is the political and military police branch of the Department of Defense, and their equivalent ranks are usually treated as one or two higher than their other branch equivalent. In short, everyone outside of them hates them with a passion for various reasons depending on the person you ask.

Unfortunately for her, she is on a naval vessel in the fleet I command, and in a room full of Naval and Marine officers. I keep my voice flat despite my face growing red and ask her,

"Are you sure that is what you wish to say? Is there anything else?"

She shakes her head and responds in an almost confused tone,

"No. Unless you want me to do your job for you... Sir, because you've already proven your incompetence at this duty."

In a flash, I feel calm, and it's not a good calm. I take a deep breath and look into the gathered officers and lock eyes with two Marine Captains who are the heads of the main Marine forces we will be bringing along. I say to them calmly and with care,

"Marines. Please escort Miss Jamestown to her new accommodations... room BE-12 please."

She furrows her brows thinking as I send the directions mentally to the Marines whose neural implants decode the message and show them the way to the room I designated. It is the corner cell of the brig, the smallest and without any windows. The marines stand up, even in their officer's uniforms their massive feet slam into the metal floor. The two heavily augmented men march over to the woman and pick her up by her arms, each one holding an arm. She stares at me in horror and says,

"You can't do this. I am important to the mission."

I say calmly,

"You may be important to the mission, but this is my ship and we are not in the area of operations. I am king, judge, executioner, and the jury onboard this ship and the others in the fleet. Until the ship's AI tells me you are willing to apologize I will not let you out of the brig.

You are learning an important lesson in etiquette and a lesson about how you treat those whom you will rely on."

Her face twists into one of indignant rage. Her earlier beauty faded away rather quickly with the ugly expression. She then half-shouts at me,

"This is why I am here! Because you are incapable of being diplomatic and understanding proper role and significance! I've read your file and I know why your hand is missing because you are too stupid to handle this job! You need me and you'll regret this moving forward."

I smirk and give her a little wave as the Marines get tired of her shit and carry her off. As she is about to leave the room I send her off with this,

"And I'll face that regret later."

When the door closes I sigh and apologize to the gathered officers. I then give my real explanation,

"I will explain it to the Marines when they return unless one of you Marine Lieutenants relays it. Regardless, I want to get this over with.

Our mission is to do a long-term action in alien space. We will be escorting a scientific vessel and, as we all unfortunately observed will be escorting at least one diplomat, but I believe there will be a full diplomatic compliment on board the science vessel. We will be visiting at least one, if not more of the aliens nations and will sit around looking tough while the science and Diplo guys and gals handle all the actual work. Apparently, the limited political actions taken during our war have slowly become less productive so this mission will hopefully handle all of that and fix our relations and learn some things.

If things go sideways our role is to avoid engagement with the main forces and we have a duty to retreat back home. I am authorized to glass one or two planets along the way to either delay or break the will of our pursuers. Simply put, we shouldn't do jack."

The whole room quietly mumbles a bit upset that our post-war duty will be something boring rather than something fun or at least entertaining. That's all I have to say right now, the rest of the information is need-to-know in nature so I dismiss the meeting and when I am alone I march back to my command chair in the bridge. Departure is in four hours. I sit at the console and stare ahead, thinking... something that can be dangerous...

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Fleet Composition:

1 Viking Class Large Cruiser- USS Catfish-Role: Flagship and Support.

3 SF-21 Fighters- 6 support wingmen each

2 UD-12 Dropships- Gunship Configuration

Marine compliment- 40

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________