There were thousands of weapons systems up for grabs in the junkyard; Ellie had even found a surface to space rail gun in the junkyard. That was way too heavy to install on a ship, the rounds alone weighed five tons. Way to heavy, thought Ellie, through she really tried to figure out a way to install it.
Gaviton, that weapon could have hurt a dreadnought!
Mounting capital ship weapons on the hull of Fatty caused a major problem for her because Ellie did not want to be mistaken for a pirate and shot at. No one hurt her Fatty!
On the other thruster, installing them inside the ship meant Ellie needed to turn the whole ship to aim. It would be going back to the old days of wooden ships and broadsides. Most modern weapons used armored torrents.
Ellie considered pop up torrents but that would weaken the structural frame she had work so hard to strengthen. In the end she made low profile armored boxes, shaped to look like part of the hull, that would enclosed the entire weapon system.
When not moving, and in their standby position, an enemy would have to visually inspect the ship to find that the boxes were not part of the ship. Each box housed a heavy cruiser railgun with an auto loader system and ammo underneath.
On either side of the rail gun were heavy cruiser laser cannons. After the rail gun fired, the two laser cannons could fire four times before the railgun recharged and reloaded, about two and half seconds.
Ellie had been able to pack in twelve hundred rounds of ammo in each box. Ellie had gone a little nova and installed thirty enclosures on top of the ship, spaced evenly down the full length of Fatty.
She had wanted to install weapon systems on the bottom of Fatty but when the ship landed and settled flat to the ground, Fatty's weight would crush the weapons. Ellie could never land the ship safely.
Along the center line of Fatty facing forward, Ellie had installed four battle cruiser size rail guns. Ellie would have to move the ship to aim but four rounds hitting a light cruiser would destroy it and a heavy cruiser would be severely damaged.
The battle cruiser rounds weighed six hundred pounds, triple the weight of heavy cruiser rounds.
Missiles were another matter entirely. They could be fired form any position and steered toward the enemy. Ellie had found a crashed military supply ship with a hold filled with boxed missile launchers. The launchers were loaded with eight fire and forget missiles.
The launchers were usually mounted on grav trucks to take out enemy drop ships. The launchers could not be reloaded and needed replacement after fired. Ellie installed the boxes on top of the cargo holds right above the cargo bay doors.
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Forty-eight evenly spaced boxes split between port and starboard, twenty-four box missile launchers on each side, four launchers per cargo bay, were concealed by a simple holographic projection making them anther part of the hull. To further conceal the launchers Ellie had the bots spray on radar absorbing paint. The missiles could take out the ramshackle vessels pirates used and that's what Ellie wanted.
Any bloody pirate tried to take her Fatty would eat a swarm of missiles!
Not useful for capital ship to ship fighting but Ellie had no plans to be that stupid. Fatty had more weapons then a heavy cruiser. Ellie could have added a lot more weapon systems; the reactor could easily handle triple the weapons Ellie had installed.
Ellie didn't because she had no plans to be a warship or fighting. She did go a little nova on point defense systems and sensors, but if it saved Ellie and Fatty it would be well worth the extra data lines she had ran.
The only thing she hadn't found were a battle cruiser or bigger Harmonic Drive intact. Ellie had only been able to salvage a heavy cruisers drive. A heavy cruiser sized harmonic drive could get Ellie into dimension three with a small safety margin. If she really pushed it she could slip into dimension four, that would be incredibly dangerous.
With a battle cruiser Harmonic Drive Ellie would have felt a great deal safer pushing the hardware. The deeper you transitioned into the sub dimensions the shorter your travels. The only problem with the drives were the massive power requirements needed to charge the Harmonic drive capacitors, through Fatty had a lot of extra power to spare now.
The drive was simple in concept. Everything in the universe vibrated on the same subatomic frequency, form cosmic dust to stars. The sub dimensions also had their own vibrational frequency. A Harmonic Drive first pushed out a counter frequency to cancel out the universes frequency, then overlaid the sub dimensions frequency, causing the ship to transition.
The Harmonic Drive worked on mass not weight. A condensed mass would need far more power than the same mass spread out. A more condensed mass vibrated louder. It was like trying to tune into a specific radio frequency when someone was jamming the airways.
It was possible if you had enough power. The sub dimensions themselves were vast black voids with nothing in them, not even dust. The lowest sub dimensions any one had reached was dimension six and that was using specialized drones no longer than a foot in length.
Each dimension needed exponential more power to enter. You also needed to enter form the regular prime universe. While you could go form one sub dimension to another, it took four times the power. The Harmonic Drive needed to counter the ships vibrational frequency, the frequency of the dimension it was in, and then overlay the frequency of the sub dimension you wanted to transition to.
It cost vastly more power than jumping to the prime universe, then transitioning to anther sub dimension.
A bulk carrier of Fatty's size would usually be relegated to dimensions one. Dimension two and Dimension three were the main dimension used for median freighters. Dimensions four was for fast small freighters loaded with high valued cargo and rich passengers.
Dimension five was only used by very specialized vassals and communication drones.
If Ellie had a battle cruiser Harmonic Drive and with the installed dreadnought size fusions reactors Fatty should be able to Dimensions four, something unheard of for Fatty’s size.