(Conference Room, Titan Research and Development Center, Titon, Sol System)
“Admiral Han! Thank you for coming!”
Admiral Han Moon-Hee nodded at the men and women who came to a rough semblance of attention as she entered the room. The lack of decorum irked her, but she didn’t let it show. If she were on a Navy ship, she would have their hides for such lax discipline, but this was not a Navy ship, and these people, despite their uniforms and ranks, weren’t Navy, except as a technicality.
No, these people were all Specialists and officers on the engineering track. Scientists and wrench monkeys, as some called them. Military discipline was often relaxed in those departments, for a variety of reasons. Oh, they would all snap to attention if they were conducting a ceremony, at least enough to not embarrass the Navy, but everywhere else, they were a bit more… relaxed.
Part of it had to do with how you couldn’t stop fixing a machine to salute every time your chief walked into a room. Part of it was because the brilliant minds that made up the science corps of the Navy were hampered, rather than helped, by rigid discipline. Either way, the science and engineering departments had always been somewhere that discipline was a function over form situation, where it was adhered to rigidly when it was prudent (such as maintaining a ship’s reactor or in using proper methods for scientific research), but was relaxed or ignored otherwise, unless there was cause.
Since the Battle of Coldana, when she had made her recommendations to the Admiralty, she had gotten to know the dual nature of discipline in the Research & Development department here on Titan quite well. It was part of the reason she stayed away, for the most part. If she was looking over their shoulders, then they tried to behave ‘better’, and it ruined their productivity. But she’d gotten a message that they had results to show her, so here she was.
As she moved to the seat at the head of the table and sat down, she focused on the person in charge of this gaggle of lab coats and tinkerers. “Commander Phillips. I know you all are busy, as am I. You mentioned that you had a presentation for me? Let’s get on with it, then.”
Commander Phillips nodded. “Right you are, Admiral. As you know, we were commissioned to create new designs for the next generation of Imperial Navy equipment, across the entire range of Imperial vessels in use, with particular emphasis on replicating or improving upon technology found in the ships introduced by Black Star. I think you’ll be impressed with our initial designs.”
The Commander pressed a button in front of her, and a hologram of an arrowhead-shaped one-man fighter appeared in the center of the table. “Starting small, we have the XF-382 Strike Fighter. A dual-purpose design, this fighter has heavier armor and shields than is normal for its type. The intended roll for the XF-382 is to engage in close support of forces in space or on the ground, and to make attack runs on enemy ships.”
Admiral Han nodded. “What are its armaments, and top speed?”
“Primary weapon is a reverse-engineered X’thari Grav-lance, similar to what they put on their cruisers. Thanks to advances in technology brought on by the Civil War, we’ve been able to miniaturize the weapon by 25% and reduce the power requirements so that it can be fired once every 2.5 minutes. Secondary weapons include twin rapid-fire blasters mounted on either side, and two missile launchers, each holding up to three standard-sized missiles or a single torpedo in an internal bay.
“Unfortunately, top sublight speed is 15% slower than the current Storm King fighters, but it does have a microjump FTL drive, allowing for quick repositioning around the battlefield. The microjump is limited to 10x light speed, but can be charged and activated in rapid succession. Numbers indicate that it should have an improved length of service doing in-system microjumps on the order of 458% greater than the otherwise more capable drives in use in small craft currently.”
Moon-He considered this information carefully. It was an ambitious concept. The fighter would be ideal for close-support, that was true. The massive grav-lance gave the fighter a serious punch, if it came to it. The slow rate of fire on the primary weapon would be problematic, but at a squadron strength, well, enough hits would add up quickly. The Imperial Marines, at least, would definitely like something like this.
“Very well. You may start prototyping, to get a test craft built. Next?”
The fighter was replaced by an actual warship, a corvette. “This is the XS-390. As you can see, it is based on the more classic corvette structure, though incorporating lightweight armor materials, rather than the typical construction. It represents a middle ground between the current Tenhauser-class corvettes, and the Assassins. The focus was on sticking to the primary function of corvettes in fleet doctrine, rather than introducing new systems, while incorporating technologies and advancements gleaned from the Assassin.
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“The XS-390 is faster and more heavily shielded than the Tenhauser, but more heavily armed than the Assassin. Instead of a massive railgun, we went for the more traditional setup of conventional weapons. Because of this, the XS-390 has triple the point defense of an Assassin, allowing it to better serve as a fighter screen for larger ships. It also boasts more ammunition capacity for its torpedoes than an Assassin, and its primary weapons have a 12% higher rate of fire than the Tenhauser.”
Admiral Han nodded. This was the kind of thing she wanted to hear when she had the Navy’s designers start on this project. They would never beat Black Star “Do we have an answer to the capabilities of the Assassin? With those things proliferating beyond Black Star and the Empire, it is only a matter of time before we face one in a hostile situation.”
“Unfortunately, the answer for the main gun of the Assassins and other Black Star ships is to simply not be where they are firing at, for anything other than a superdreadnought or a station with dedicated ballistic shielding. The simple laws of physics mean there is too much energy to deal with that. However, there are some improvements we can make regarding detection, to keep stealth ships of any sort from being able to get within effective range of their weapons.”
The corvette disappeared, and a series of satellites took its place. “The best solution we have come up with is to expand sensor capabilities. From our tests, the Assassins are not completely invisible to sensors. However, because of their construction, and the materials used, an Assassin on a ballistic trajectory is extremely difficult to detect.
“Spreading ships out to cover the entire system leaves them vulnerable to the sneak attacks they’re meant to discourage. Yes, they force the attacks to happen on escorts rather than command ships, but that is not a solution. Obviously, we need something different.”
Phillips ignored the Admiral’s snort of amusement at that baldfaced understatement, and continued, “To combat this, we suggest using a combination of satellites and mines to control approach vectors. The X-22 Recon Satellite is a stealth sensor platform, focusing primarily on passive sensors, including visual sensors measuring occlusion of light and gravity sensors. While not extremely powerful on their own, they are designed to be used in an array of nine in a cube, with one in the center, allowing them to triangulate and pool sensor readings via short-range comms.”
The satellites were replaced by mines. “These X-8 mines are made using the same stealth materials as the Assassins themselves. They use primarily passive sensors, and can be set as proximity or remote detonation.”
“What kind of mine are they?”
“Well, we have four variants, since we don’t have hard data on what will work on Assassins. X-8A is a fusion bomb-pumped laser. X-8B has a powerful EMP bomb. X-8C is loaded with two single-shot torpedo launchers. And X-8D is an experimental gravity bomb.”
Han’s eyes widened. “Gravity bomb?”
“Ah, yes. We discovered it by accident while working on the miniaturization of the grav-lances for the XF-382 project. Basically, the device creates a microsingularity that compresses everything in its effective radius of one thousand kilometers to a single point before it loses energy and dissipates after approximately twenty seconds. Naturally, larger ships, or ones closer to the edge of the effective range, will be less effected than those closer to the blast point.”
“And you have these on fighters for Navy pilots to fly?”
Commander Phillips, hearing the ice in the Admiral’s tone, quickly waved her hands. “No, no. That defect was caught early on, and has been worked out. It would take a catastrophic failure of multiple systems to make that happen. It is as safe as the reactors on Navy starships.”
Admiral Han took a breath, and forced herself to relax. Slightly. “Very well. What are the benefits and weaknesses of the potential variants?”
“Well, the 8A and 8C have the advantage of being more discriminate weapons, so that if you had ships chasing through the minefield, you could set them to ignore certain IFF signatures being broadcast, something the stealth ships wouldn’t be able to pull off. The disadvantage to both systems is that targeting an Assassin in stealth is extremely difficult to begin with. Also, the 8A is a single-use item, while the 8C can be reloaded.
“On the other hand, 8B and 8D are area effects. The EMP on 8B is powerful, but a ship running with full shields should be unimpaired. Even without shields, most navy ships would be hardened enough that it would have minimal effects on ship systems. However, against fighters, and most pirate or civilian craft, they should disable the craft, at least temporarily. We need to do testing on Assassins to see how they stand up to EMPs.”
She took a breath. “We will need to run practical tests, of course, but we believe that the 8C variant will be good for shoring up general system defense, while the 8B one can be used in areas where civilians might be present. The 8Ds, however represent the best shot at dealing with Assassins, and protecting static installations against their attacks.”
Admiral Han nodded slowly. “All right. And the torpedo launchers on the 8C carry the standard torpedoes?”
“Yes, Ma’am. However, our people have been working on two new torpedo types, that have moved past the initial design phase, and can be considered ready for practical testing, as well. We call them the MARK and the GLASS.”
“I assume those names mean something?”
“Yes, the Mass Altering Remote Kinetic torpedo is our adaptation of the systems found in the Black Star Dragonbreath torpedoes. Using principles common to all gravitic drives, the MARK lightens its mass during the thrust phase, achieving faster acceleration and greater total velocity. Just before impact, the gravity field inverses, magnifiying the missile’s mass, allowing payloads to hit far harder than they ought to.
“The Gravity Lensing Active Singularity System, on the other hand, is based off the 8D mines. The GLASS creates a microsingularity that has a life of only 5 seconds, and an effective radius of 20 kilometers. However, this allows for more precise use of the weapon, with less chance of friendly fire.”
“And why did you seek to pursue this line of study, rather than working on an Imperial version of the Starbolt torpedoes? I happen to know that they were quite effective at taking down the Harvester at Coldana. That seems like the more obvious path to follow.”
“Ah, Admiral, we have designs for that already. Once we realized that it was as simple as removing the components that shut the drive down when it detected that it was heading towards a solid mass, the hardware design was finished in an hour. The software, well, that is where we came into some difficulty. In the end, we decided that it was too difficult to ensure that you didn’t have friendly fire incidents, and that targeting systems didn’t accidentally send an FTL weapon at an inhabited planet.”
“Very well. If they cannot be made safe for friendly ships and planets, then they are more of a burden than a boon, in most cases.” The admiral took a breath, and then looked back to the commander. “What about larger ships?”
“Well, here we have the new Remembrance-class Heavy Destroyer. As you can see, the design is different from the normal destroyers used by the fleet in several ways…”