Captain’s Log May Tenth, 074 SDE,

We have recently accepted a contract to hunt pirates in the vicinity of the Mydorian Homeworld. The Mydorians have told us that many pirates have hidden bases in the Orialias Belt. As such we are now enroute to the Orialias belt, but I have also deployed task forces ahead of the main fleet to scout things out. Their task is to locate these bases, so that we can later take them. I’m planning on using ground troops on any base I find. The Mydorians have graciously given us a database of wanted pirates, which will help with collecting their bounties. These pirates will also make a great test of our ground forces. We even have a couple of toys that haven’t been used outside of a mock battle.

Also on the agenda is to keep an eye out for an exotic mineral that the Mydorians use in their more powerful ships. Our reasons are twofold. First finding new sources of the mineral would help the Mydorians and their allies in fighting the Cylovans. More importantly our own science department is interested in the mineral as well. Ruri already has a few ideas for it, that may enhance our energy weapons. Apparently, the mineral has a few interesting properties that are useful in energy weapons. We would need a larger sample to learn more about it however, and it certainly warrants some looking into.

As Countryman was finishing his log, there was a ding from the doorbell. He signaled that it was okay to come in and Selia their liaison from the Sylnari Remnant came in. She closed the door behind her and silently took a seat before she spoke.

“I hear that the Union is heading out to fight a dreadnought,” said Selia.

“Yes they are,” confirmed Countryman.

“I’m sure you have run simulations by now. Can they win, or will I have to ask my people if they can spare a ship to help?” asked Selia.

“We have a few unknowns that we had to make assumptions on. It really depends on how many ships they have like that battleship they tried to hide from us. We aren’t sure of the exact yield and fire rate of their particle cannons, but we were able to make a few educated guesses. Based on the design, we suspect the cannons can punch through the heavy armor on the Enterprise, and so they should have no trouble punching through Cylovan armor which is almost as tough. If they have enough ships then yes, they can win. Ten of those battleships should be capable of taking on a dreadnought almost evenly. However they will need forces to screen them from Cylovan fighters, and to keep the dreadnoughts guns off them. The real problem they will face is that their deflectors are less than sufficient for protecting against those guns,” said Countryman.

“Knowing the Mydorians their admirals would be lucky to get half that number in a fleet. So they would have a larger complement of light ships. Anyway, those cannons must be pretty good. As your hull plating is the most impressive I have seen outside the Remnant, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you have ideas to improve it,” said Selia.

“Actually we have hit a bit of a roadblock in armor development. We are nearing the limits of our current hull material. Titan Alloy just simply can’t be made much tougher than it is already. We are however looking into new materials. Neutronium actually shows a great deal of promise, but we can’t actually produce the stuff. So instead we have been working on developing new synthetic polymers,” said Countryman.

“I have an idea, but what exactly did you mean by can’t be made tougher than it already is?” asked Selia.

“We simply can’t reinforce the material any more than we have with structural integrity fields. However that doesn’t mean we can’t make the hull tougher. Better materials are a must, but improving the AIF and other components could help us last longer in battle. Honestly we need better weapons, more than we need improved armor however. So most of our ongoing research at the moment is focused on improving our firepower,” said Countryman.

“I know about the torpedo warhead project, but are you saying there are others?” asked Selia.

“Why, yes. Most are classified, but we do have several projects for improving our particle weapons as well. Ruri has been working on creating a miniaturized beam weapons array for some time now. Which you may have heard about, and if not you might have heard mention of something called the LPC project,” said Countryman. Selia thought for a couple of moments, before recalling a conversation she had heard in the hallway. Not that it was very illuminating.

“Yeah, I heard a couple of things in passing, but nothing concrete. What is this LPC project anyway?” asked Selia.

“It is a light ship design project. It is Ruri’s little pet project, and while it is still a fair way from completion last I heard, it is something we could use. The ship she is working on is intended for patrol and scouting missions. In fact it would be nice if we had it now,” said Countryman.

“Maybe I can help. I’m not an engineer or anything, but a fresh perspective can solve problems,” said Selia.

“Trying to get more information on it I see. Let’s go on a walk and see if she would like the help,” said Countryman. Selia showed a bit of surprise, as she had not expected that to actually go anywhere.

They found Ruri down in her lab near the starboard hanger bay. Centered in the middle of the lab was a long and sleek hull that Selia had not seen before. She was near a computer, looking over the results of a simulation.

“Hey, captain. I was just about to send for you,” said Ruri.

“You were?”

“I finally managed to solve my little problem. The LPC is finally ready for a test flight. I just hope the crew forgives me for the cramped corridors and limited living space,” said Ruri.

“What do you mean by cramped?” asked Selia as Countryman started looking over the hull. The ship was about sixty meters long which made it a bit on the small side as corvettes went.

“Those beam cannons were quite a challenge to mount in a full array. My current prototype has most of the internal space devoted to critical systems. Had to, since the beam array and its associated subsystems took up a good quarter of the available space. The ship has only one and a half decks. The main deck has four rooms. The bridge, engineering, the cargo bay, and crew quarters. The lower half deck is the armory, and is where the ships bombs and torpedoes will be stored. The living quarters are actually quite minimal. The crew will be sharing a single multipurpose room during missions. The bath has been attached in a small sub-room, and the corridors are more like tubes than hallways. Still bigger than an access tube though, but that doesn’t mean everyone can walk in them upright. I did make sure that people could walk upright in the main areas though,” said Ruri.

“What is the intended crew complement?” asked Countryman.

“Thanks to onboard computers, I was able to minimize crew size. She has an intended crew of twelve. A five man bridge crew including the captain, two engineers in the engine room, and five gunners for the turrets. However she is designed to carry twenty people, so you can safely place eight marines onboard,” said Ruri.

“That low crew requirement will be a big help. I’ll get some people together for a test flight, and I’ll make sure that they know who to complain to about the ship’s internal layout. So what exactly is she carrying anyway?” asked Countryman.

“For protection she carries five meters of Overlord plating, latest generation. I also loaded her with a stealth field generator, and radiation shields. Unlike our fighters, she actually can support an energy web matrix so she also carries an energy web generator. So she can take a few hits, and is not as vulnerable to missiles as a fighter.

For weapons, the ship carries eight forward particle cannons. Along with two cutting beam arrays, and an electro cannon array. Five light turrets have been mounted on the ship, and each turret mounts dual particle cannons, and a beam cannon. She has four bomb/ torpedo ports mounted on the underside and space to carry upto forty bombs or torpedoes.

Thanks to her main role as a patrol and scout ship, I have given her a rather impressive little sensor array. Despite her small size she has a sensor range and resolution comparable to the larger Saber class destroyers. Very few ships will be able to escape her notice.

The ship is not intended for long term missions, and as such the only medical capabilities she will have are those that can be packed into a first aid kit. She can carry enough supplies to last a crew of twenty people two months, and fuel for three months. Propulsion is achieved by twin set of Tri-core Particle Pulse Wave engines. Which gives her enough speed to outrun most ships in the fleet, only the Twelve O Four Starfighter is faster than this ship. She also has her own Micro-warp drive, a beefed up version of the drive used on the 1205-B that will give her a cruise speed of warp five instead of the warp four that the B is stuck with,” said Ruri.

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“Guess that means my offer of help was completely unnecessary,” said Selia quietly.

“Actually if you want to help, I do have something that could use another perspective,” said Ruri as she moved to a console. A second later a series of images came up on a nearby screen. Including video of an orange red energy beam being fired against ships that Selia didn’t recognize. The ship using the weapon was also unfamiliar.

“What is this, and whose ships are those?” asked Selia.

“This is sensor data from a battle between two different alien races. The Krall and the Valorians. The point of interest is the weapon the Krall destroyer is using in the battle. It is a coherent beam of plasma. We have been attempting to adapt the alien technology to our own particle weapons technology for nearly seventy years with limited success. Our current weapons have not yet achieved the same level of coherency, or power. We have been trying to create a truly coherent phased particle stream for decades, but limited resources has slowed our research,” said Ruri.

“In other words you have been working on a particle laser?” said Selia looking for confirmation.

“That is an apt if imprecise description. Then again, a few of our scientists have started calling them phasers. A term they borrowed from an old scifi series. You can find it in the database under the historical scifi section. It was called Star Trek, and it gives some rather fascinating insights in how our ancestors thought our time would be like,” said Ruri.

“Maybe worth taking a look, if I’m ever bored. So why did they choose to call them phasers?” asked Selia.

“Well the official term for what we are working on is phased particle weapons, and the Krall are using what we call phased plasma weapons,” said Selia as she began explaining the term. At the same moment Countryman found the hatch into Ruri’s Prototype.

The hatch led straight to the bridge. In the center of the bridge and raised slightly above the rest of the bridge was the captain's chair. Four large view screens dominated the front of the bridge, and in front of the view screens were fitted four consoles. Placed against the trapezoidal frontal walls. The two consoles on the front wall were clearly the helm, and weapons console. The one on the left angle wall appeared to be the operations station. Where communications and sensors among other things would be handled, and the last console was an engineering display. It was clearly linked to the engine room in the back, and would allow the bridge crew to access the general condition of the ship. Lockers built directly into the walls took up the rest of the free space on the walls. Countryman even noticed that the floor plates hid access panels to the electronics under the floor. Opposite the airlock he entered from was another airlock. He found a single door the led to the crawlway that Ruri mentioned at the rear of the bridge. He had to hunch over to proceed, but there was room enough for a shorter person to walk normally.

Halfway down the corridor he came across an intersection, and decided to head left. Which quickly led him to the cargo bay. The large storage room was currently empty, but he did note the layout was up to current standards. Against the wall facing the rear of the ship were several large containers marked auxiliary fuel storage. A number of lockers were also placed against the walls for storage. The outside wall turned out to be a large airlock door, which would allow easy loading and offloading of supplies and equipment directly into or off the ship.

Having checked out the cargobay he headed back and went down the other path. Which led to the living quarters on the port side of the ship. At first glance it looked to be an empty room, but a console near the door revealed the secret. Furniture was stowed in the floor, including a popup kitchen module and a lounge area. The beds were stowed in the walls, and controls could be used to deploy them from the walls. There were ten beds on either side of the room with just enough space between them for an average sized person to walk between them. Near the front of the room were two doors in addition to the exit, the one on the left towards the rear of the ship turned out to be a locker room. Obviously intended for the crew to stow their belongings, such as their clothes.

The other door led to the bathroom. It contained a large tub/shower combination in one section, and several toilets in the next. There were five toilets placed in small stalls that were barely big enough to fit the toilet and a person. Opposite the stall was placed five sinks, and a mirror. He didn’t stay long and went to check out the engine room.

The engine room was at the end of the central corridor. It was a small circular room. Most of the walls were covered with banks of monitoring consoles. Surrounded by banks of consoles the center of the room was dominated by the ship’s main reactor core. The large cylindrical reactor was currently dormant, and the familiar hum of an active reactor core was notably absent. On either side of the entrance he found hatches that led to the ship’s maintenance access tunnels. Which were small, and cramped. A technician would have to crawl their way through, but there was nothing unusual about that. The one’s on the Enterprise were the same way. Behind the reactor core, he found a gap in the consoles that allowed a ladder to be placed against the rear wall. Hatches were placed on both ends of the ladder. Heading up he found a crawlway that gave access to three different turrets placed along the upper part of the ships hull.

Nothing really special about the turrets. They were centerline mounted, and the controls were standard. Finding nothing truly special up here, he headed back down and then took the lower hatch. Where he quickly found the ships armory. The rear section had a few weapon lockers, but he had also found two on the bridge and one in the engine room. This was clearly meant to be where the majority of the weapon’s were meant to be stored. He also quickly found what she meant by a half deck. The ceiling down here was notably lower, and the space more cramped than the upper deck.

The fore section of the half deck was filled with racks designed to store standard bomb/torpedo casings. He counted forty slots for the armaments just as Ruri had stated, and the layout wasn’t all that different from other ships in the fleet. Looking around he also found a lower hatch in the locker area, that led to another crawlway that gave access to the lower turrets. Which were also centerline mounts. Given the shape of the hull, this configuration would be fine as they would be able to target most ships. The hull was also angled so that all five could target a forward facing target. Unfortunately, that also meant only the rear pair could fire on a rear facing target. Nothing odd about that, most of the ships currently in use in the fleet were lacking in firepower in the aft quadrant. He could work with that easily enough, and he was looking forward to the test flight data. As only a proper test flight could tell him how effective the ship would prove to be. Seeing that he had already explored the entirety of the new ship, he decided to head back.

Ruri and Selia were deep in conversation, when he left the ship. Neither had apparently noticed that he left to do some exploring. Selia was saying something about a laser, when he left the ship. He listened to her proposal and recalled that he had heard a similar theory from somewhere during his youth.

“That might actually be worth exploring, and I just looked over your ship and found a few things worth a complaint or two,” said Countryman.

“I was thinking the same thing about her theory, it is simple, but sometimes the simple solution is best. Also what about my ship do you have to complain about?” responded Ruri.

“There is only one bathroom on the ship. Need I say more,” said Countryman.

“I guess that could be a minor problem, but I placed it in a good spot. We will see if the crew complains later,” said Ruri. Countryman chuckled and led Selia out of the room while thinking about who to put on the test crew. Sali quickly came to mind as she had expressed interest in the role of test pilot. Also, thinking on it further, he decided they would need an isolated system to test the ship in. He figured he would have a few days to put together a crew. So he started heading to the bridge. Selia left him in the corridors heading for her own quarters.

Countryman entered the bridge to find it unusually busy for the time of day. Normally it wasn’t this busy at this hour, especially during warp. One of the crewman below noticed his entrance, and declared his arrival on deck.

“Sir, long range sensors recently picked up a small Cylovan attack fleet. Twenty destroyer class ships,” said Misaki reporting to him before he even sat in his command chair.

“Report its position to Mydori, and keep an eye on it,” said Countryman.

“We already did, but it is heading for a Mydori colony world, Aizur II. It has minimal defenses, and the nearest union fleet is over five days away from the planet,” said Misaki.

“Define minimal,” said Countryman.

“The system has barely thirty ships to protect it. Most of which are small patrol cruisers. The orbital starport is fairly well fortified, but the planet itself has no fortifications. The starport may be able to take on a destroyer, maybe two, but not twenty. I’m afraid the system would be overrun before the Union fleet can arrive,” said Misaki

“How soon can we get a taskforce into the system?” asked Countryman.

“A little under twelve hours, but the Cylovans will have already reached the system by then,” said Misaki.

“Send a task force then. Standard configuration, one cruiser and two destroyers,” said Countryman. He was also curious as to what the fleet was doing this deep in Union space, but they had intercepted a number of Union transmissions. He knew they had lost a number of outposts on the border, so he guessed it must have slipped by their forces via a gap in their deep space tracking net. The real question was why were they attacking Aizur II.

“Is there anything special about Aizur II?” asked Countryman after Misaki had dispatched the orders. The orders had been given to Shiro’s SFS Battlehawk, the SFS Saber commanded by TR-13, and the SFS Katana commanded by TR-38.

“Nothing that we are aware of. It is a minor trade hub for the union, population two hundred million people. No special resources, no major industry. Her main industry is agriculture, but she does have a fuel refinery. She produces just enough for the ships that pass through the system. Nothing of real strategic value either,” said Misaki.

“Tell captain Shiro to conduct some scans of the system afterwards. There must be something there that we don’t know about,” said Countryman as he watched her ship and its two escorts break off from the main fleet. The display showing blips representing the other ships in the fleet. Warp drive was one of the few FTL methods that didn’t require a ship to decelerate in order to change course.