“We’re coming up on the King Alexander now.” Atreus said with another look back at Arthur. “Here is your chance to see it for yourself.”
Arthur didn’t hesitate in doing as advised, and turned to look out of his window while Perseus gracefully banked the shuttle. The younger Kidemónas must have greatly decreased the vessel’s acceleration somehow without Arthur realizing, because when the King Alexander came into view, it did so slowly and with cinematic grace.
The first thing Arthur noticed was that the ship was painted a perfect and reflective shade of bronze, exactly the color seen in historical displays of ancient Greek arms. The second thing he noticed, with pleasant surprise, was the vessel’s sheer size.
The King Alexander was a colossal elongated spearhead in space, with the same ornate and vicious-looking prow as the vessels he’d briefly seen at the Graecian Calypso point. Her hull looked to be close to 1,500 meters in length, and at a quick and educated guess, most likely 800 meters at her widest point near the rear. Multiple linked triple-barreled plasma batteries adorned her topside, numbering close to ten on each side at a preliminary count.
Rows of anti-starfighter cannons were set between the colossal anti-ship guns, with the double-barreled laser weapons built at a 4:1 ratio when compared to the main batteries.
When the shuttle looped languidly over the flagship, Arthur noticed that the center of the ship was not solid—but instead had a shape not unlike the split line of a paper airplane, tapering backward from a central point and growing wider as it progressed toward the end of the ‘wings’ at the rear of the vessel.
That split was occupied by a cylinder shielded by the split halves’ overhang which Arthur could only assume to be a launching tube. The massive central construction ran the majority of the length of the ship, and if his guess was correct; housed multiple squadrons of interceptors, heavy fighters, and bombers that the warship could deploy at a moment’s notice.
Given the style of the design, Arthur also assumed it to be one of the special deuterium-infused hyper-acceleration catapults used to launch Eidolons.
While all starcraft could use such constructs to launch and land, it was the nature of Eidolons that required such construction. The war machines were not ostensibly difficult to build, but given that fully capable Eidolon pilots were such a critically rare minority of any population, it was seen as foolish bordering on idiotic to not mitigate risks when it came to their preservation.
An Eidolon was rarely more vulnerable than when on approach to an enemy starship, and thanks to their distinctive energy signatures, size, and dimensions; they were priority targets for any enemy within the battlespace. An Eidolon’s power was in the speed of its combat maneuvers, and that meant the machines often sacrificed redundant plating or defensive technology for greater burst acceleration.
It also made them extremely dependent on not being hit.
The answer to avoiding such a critical asset’s early destruction in a battlespace, then, was to simply make it too fast to hit.
When ostensibly fired out of a launching tube with more velocity than a railgun, that goal was far more easily achieved.
“What’s her classification?” Arthur asked out loud while the shuttle looped under the colossal flagship and gave him a view of the matching sets of turrets mounted on her ventral hull. The bottom of the vessel was another flat plane, dispelling any idea of a keel. Given the time for the loop, he further estimated the Graecian flagship to be nearly 400 meters high from its bottom-most surface to its topmost. “There’s no way she’s a Carrier.’ He commented while more and more awareness of voidspace warfare bloomed in his mind. “Even with the Supercarrier-sized catapult, that prow was built for ramming.”
“Well-observed.” Atreus said with a tone that almost sounded impressed, or perhaps pleased. “The King Alexander is the title ship in our Basileus line of Super Dreadnoughts. You see how the catapult is smaller in profile than the highest points on top and below?”
“Yes.” Arthur answered simply.
“The two sections of hull can come together,” Atreus explained with a hint of pride, “shielding the catapult and creating an unbroken spearhead. At that point, special emitters built into the prow create a plasma lance she can use to punch through just about any ship in space.”
“They come together?” Arthur asked dubiously. “Like two halves of a paper airplane?”
The Myrmidón let out a snort. “Yes, Magellan. Like two halves of a paper airplane.”
Perseus’ laughter echoed from the cockpit, and Arthur smiled wryly.
The example had made sense to his mind, at least.
“And the bridge?” Arthur continued without preamble. “Where is that?”
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“Two-thirds back, in the most heavily armored part of the King Alexander.” Atreus answered with only a small amount of hesitation. “The only things more densely shielded are the Alcubierre Drive, Compression Drive, and Conversion reactor.”
Arthur nodded while his mind flashed with knowledge it had not contained even a minute prior. The more he learned, the more his mind seemed to key into what he needed to learn next, and the questions he asked were spurred on by the veritably thirst for information his compulsion to know more created.
“Would it be too much to ask, Atreus, about which factor of drive you’ve iterated?”
Atreus paused for a moment at the question and, from his silence, seemed to be considering whether to answer.
Arthur could understand the hesitation. While his future seemed relatively settled, there was still the chance he could choose to walk away from Graecia. The Myrmidón was likely weighing whether or not the information had been proliferated enough that it didn’t matter what he said to Arthur, like the information about the Basileus class he’d already provided.
Arthur very much doubted any of what Atreus had told him about the King Alexander would be a surprise to the other nations of the Hyperion Cluster. Especially not Parthia.
A few more moments of deliberation later, Atreus finally answered.
“Sixth Factor.” The tall and black-armored Myrmidón said simply.
That was a critical piece of information that Arthur made sure to file away.
While the Alcubierre drive was a crucial piece of technology that almost all of humanity made use of, it was the ‘Mass Factor Rating’ which stood as one of the most defining elements in the military and economic power of different star nations. Arthur knew that as instinctively in that moment as he knew his own heartbeat. More information came, and he reflected on it hungrily.
Mass Factor Rating—or simply ‘Factor’ in short—was the capacity for tonnage inherent to each iteration of warp drive made by different nations. Every newly dispatched colony ship was sent with the blueprints for a Third Factor drive; allowing them to create vessels whose weight could be calculated as maximum warpable mass times three (wm x 3).
Warpable mass, Arthur remembered, was controlled by specific and carefully curated exotic matter coils. These coils interacted with the Alcubierre drive to create a larger bubble of warped space without compromising its stability, though the technology was limited both by understanding of the exotic matter’s production, and the various minutiae of the Alcubierre drive’s development.
Maximum warpable mass without the coils was fixed at 100,000 cubic tonnes.
A Third Factor drive’s coils could thereby warp up to 300,000 cubic tonnes.
A Sixth Factor drive’s coils in comparison could warp up to 600,000 cubic tonnes.
“So she’s at her capacity, then.” Arthur surmised while the information percolated in his mind, and his eyes—with new knowledge and understanding blooming behind them constantly now—swept over the King Alexander with critical analysis.
“Including the interceptor, heavy fighter, and bomber squadrons as well as her shuttles, supplies, crew, and deployable escort craft?” Atreus clarified. “Yes.”
“What’s her unburdened weight?”
“Five hundred and sixty thousand tonnes.”
“That’s impressive.” Arthur admitted. “Especially this far from Sol.”
“The Ascendancy may be a small fish in the scope of the greater humanosphere, but the Hyperion cluster is a lake, and within it we are considered a whale.”
“So I’m learning.” Arthur said with an idle thought for his rapidly returning knowledge.
The last views of the King Alexander filed past his window while they spoke, and the last Arthur saw of the flagship was the blazing luminescence of her plasma drives pushing her through the patrol path she occupied; each one housed within a hexagonal thrust cone depressed into the rear of the gargantuan flagship.
Five main thrusters comprised her rear complement, with smaller honeycomb patterns of sub-engines patterned among the larger majority. It was a popular design choice among stellar warships, and followed the logic of using many individual smaller thrusters linked to a central control so as to avoid losing a large amount of propulsion from a single strike at the engines.
The fact that thrusters were depressed into the rear of the hull under the watchful gaze of her rear guns and a plethora of dedicated point defense lasers surrounding the ‘rectangular maw’ of her engine block certainly helped.
That strike, of course, would still need to penetrate the attached battle group of battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes patrolling in formation with the monstrous flagship.
Not to mention what Arthur assumed was more than a few squadrons of starfighters.
“The King Alexander almost never leaves Graecia.” Atreus commented while Arthur watched the colossal starship fade from view. “She’s the fulcrum upon which our home fleet is centered.”
“Because the star fortresses can’t move to interdict starships,” Arthur said when the clarity of thought came to him. “Though this all assumes that the enemy is able to break your Calypso cordon, and make it past the warp anchor before you can deploy a response force.”
“No bulwark is impenetrable.” Atreus said simply. “There is a reason we named our border fortress at the Korinth Calypso point Thermopylae. Our ancestors learned the price of presumption well.”
“Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” Arthur said quietly.
“And be ready for the catastrophic.” Atreus intoned with a hint of approval.
With that, Arthur realized, both Magellan and Zacaris whole-heartedly agreed.