Hull 721, plot arc the second

[sropike]

Another piece of this superb story is always welcome, even short bits.
This discussion of pad room and pad factors led me thinking in a related direction. While space taken up is important, equally as important is maintenance need. You've touched this in your last post, so I think you're already considering it, so this may be redundant. The next bit is just my humble opinion.
When Lennart works toward the "final" composition of the small crafts, he really should take into account not only their punch, but also their maintenance need. And more importantly, especially in light of his discussion with Raesene, Lennart is already expecting bad times to come, so he really must prepare for spare parts and other sundry goodies to becoma a rare and expensive commodity. So not only do they need on-board manufacturing capabilities, all their small craft should have minimal appetites for spare parts. (During normal operations, combat is an altogether different kind of animal.)

[InsaneTD]

And a lot of cross model parts, modular and such.

I get the feeling a ship the size of an Imperator would already have such machinery spaces, which makes raw materials the problem. No Warship will ever be self sufficient.

[Vianca]

No, in the books they talk about Tie production centers and delivery of spare-parts, not about onboard part production.
That would work rebelion and desertion in the hand.
Remember, we´re talking about something that usealy has to be O´ked by Palpatine for big numbers and he´s a control freak.

It´s just that Black-Prince has a couple of mining droids onboard that can process the stuff into easy parts, as part of the Legion.
Depending on how good and expended the ships production machinery is after Mirrannon has been true with it, is unknown.
What I do know is that atleast on of the ships secondary/tertiary-line reactors has been adapted with molecular furnace technology, so the ships waste products can be trown into what we today know as a Fusion Torch.
Want not, waste not.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Another short update- the first page or so of chapter 26. Kind of appropriate for the season, really.


Commander Raesene was duly ferried over to the Vainglorious- class frigate, with a fresh- stocked spacer's chest and the conventional emblems of rank and rate the ship's stores had been able to root out for him, something very vaguely resembling an explanation of what he was doing there that should satisfy, or at least pop the heads of, some of the fleet's bureaucrats, and a dozen contingencies but no definite plan.

'Something'll explode before long, something almost invariably does.' was Lennart's prophecy on the subject, and he was probably right.



In the sector he had left behind, a man was walking out of an outpatients unit. Whoever it was had said that the flying profession's natural enemies were the medical profession had been spot on.

Almost clear, and now he understood the old stories about people being turned to pillars of sand and the like, and their moral; when you're doing something impossible, especially when it's a second chance, don't hesitate. Don't look back. Get the kriff out.

Once through the flight physical, once put back together well enough, break and extend before they change their minds. Unfortunately, they had thought of that too and were waiting at the gate.


'Doc, don't get in my way. I'm ready to shoot my way out if I have to.' Air Commodore Konstantin Vehrec said to the senior surgeon, and he more than half meant it. As soon as they had given him enough time off physiotherapy he had started reading himself in to his new command, and he could practically taste it.

'Frankly, I'm not sure if we're here to wish you goodbye and good luck or to kick you out. You were a terrible patient.'

'Yes, well. I know what you did, I truly do, but that maybe the first thing you've said that actually made me feel better.' Vehrec said. It had partly been his fault- no, choice- there was so much to do, he had opted for the short, hard road, intensive regeneration. Then fought his way up it, kicking and screaming every step of the way.

Still had dizzy turns and moments when he wasn't entirely sure where his legs were, but that would pass. Probably. If he could get the doctors to leave him alone long enough, take proper charge of himself.


The rest was just formality- didn't need to draw his gun, although a glare at a nurse with a clipboard made them think he was going to- and he was directed down to the parking bay. Expecting a shuttle, a TIE type at least if not a Lambda; couldn't exactly walk to Upper Selezen Theatre Fighter Command, could he?

There was supposed to be one. Instead it was just a port pad. Sandblasted duracrete, grey, empty, sort of place that makes you wonder if there's been a mistake. A droid trundled up to him. 'Follow me, your personal transport is in pad 31.'

All right, he thought, I may have been in a fairly bad mood swapping messages with the command staff, but I didn't think I was being so much of an ass that they wouldn't even bother to come to pick me up- then the door of pad 31 rolled back.

Wings, three of them, each ending in a flat plate with a shiny knobbly bit at each end, and the whole thing with a ball cockpit in the middle. Black and glowering and predatory. One of those D- bird things, what were they, Defenders? Were they serious?


Hell of a way to get back into the saddle. Yee- hah. Turned to the droid anyway, 'Are you sure about this?'

'Here is the tracking note.' it said, handing him a datapad. Item- long serial number- transferred from the complement of HIMS Black Prince to personal care Air Commodore Vehrec, K., associated parts, stores and non- flyable article transferred to Selezen Theatre Command.

They had given him a top of the range superfighter. A first class, elite killing machine. I know the docs basically dragged me back from the grave, he thought looking back at the main body of the hospital, all gleaming white buildings; my head knows I owe them, but my body remembers how much it hurt.

This, though, this feels like being properly reborn. I'm me again.





--------------------------------------

Well, yes. Given the ability of various shadowports and pirate bands to knock up their own craft-as well as virtually every planet that has a spaceport facility to do something like if it has a mind to- for small production runs, it's well within the bounds of physical possibility. The big production plants are much more efficient, that's one of the reasons they thrive on the galactic scale- and control is the other main reason. Anyone attempting to do so would be administratively and probably literally crucified, under the Empire. Look how many of the warlords suddenly put their own pet idea into production after Endor, though.

The legion has manufacturing facilities, the ship has an entire complex- Main Machinery 2- of them, repurposed from the legion, privately obtained, confiscated from rebel ships and shadowports, midnight requisitioned from fleet tenders and so on, and probably could do things up to and including assembling hyperdrive motivators, if the right raw materials were available. Which they usually won't be for a job like that, except perhaps on the fighter scale, and usually have to be scavenged or black- marketed for. This comes up in the rest of the chapter, by the way.

There were four good reasons to go to Corellia for the refit, even though most of the work actually did end up being done by the crew; the other ships acompanying them also in need of repair and refit, that it really was a huge job that would have taken much longer on their own, that the yard would have the raw materials, and that they now have someone else to take the blame at least for the more eccentric innovations.

As I read the shape of the ship, main Machinery-1 (control rooms, admin centre, the publically presentable end of the business) is on the upper slope of and aft of the main reactor, sitting there among the reactor, generator, engines complex; Main Machinery-2 is around the lower slope and abeam of the reactor.


Maintenance requirements and things; rule-of-thumbing it that the maintenance requirement of a fighter (or ground vehicle) is a product- a multiplication- of it's mass, energy density and quality of design, the TIE starts to look really good. The old republic types are smaller but probably higher maintenance simply because they have so much stuff crammed into them; the Rebel types are all heavyweights, and the third party, criminal local and civil craft tend to do abominably poorly on all available axes- the amount of bloated, badly designed, overweight, undercapable crud out there is incredible.

Honourable mentions have to go to the Gauntlet- pays for it's capabilities, true, but does so at a fair rate and isn't nearly as badly broken as some; and Corellian Engineering's Lancet long range fighter. Boos, hisses and turbolaser fire to a very long list, but the worst are the StarViper, Penumbra/Flarestar, Preybird, SupaFighter, and the just-buy-a-YT-already StarHammer. Bloated and only trivially capable.

[Vehrec]

Oh...Oh my. Christmas came early this year. If I had .gifs to spam, I would spam them. You have given my namesake the most prescious gift of all. A sweet ride.

[Vianca]

Do wonder if she has a Hyperdrive Vehrec and if so, what kind.

Well, atleast we now know the other reason why they couldn't rid themself of the whole bridge tower with bridge still on it.
On that note Remnant, what did they do with the secondary bridge?
I'm feeling that it won't be quite that original anymore.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

A good thing was done, then. Now I have to type faster to get round to everyone else...(yes, it does have a hyperdrive, standard is x2, and they even threw in a sector limited nav computer for free.)


Vianca, the idea to put the ship's bridge in the most heavily protected part of the ship, in the centre, has one major problem on an Imperator; that's where the reactor is. The space around there is where most of the engineering gets done, and where the engineers are.

The tower is where it is partly because it's an isolation mounting for the long range main sensor globes; the bridge is next to them for reasons of that, for a short cable path between sensors and interpretation, and also to carry the computers isolated too. Black Prince's bridge tower was lowered, more closely faired into the main hull and hardened, but not eliminated.

The best place to put an alternative primary bridge may be just forward of the main reactor, in amongst and protected by the main structural members that spread out from the reactor there, but that's still fairly close to the flight bay, and among the fuel cells. Damage Control Central- that the exec (on a normal ship anyway) commands from- is in amongst Main Machinery- 1, and the main fire direction centre is in the base of the superstructure.

[Simon_Jester]

Vianca, the idea to put the ship's bridge in the most heavily protected part of the ship, in the centre, has one major problem on an Imperator; that's where the reactor is. The space around there is where most of the engineering gets done, and where the engineers are.

I have to say, conning the ship from a position in the hull when the exposed bridge is destroyed will probably be easier than conning the ship from a position in the hereafter when an exposed reactor is destroyed.

[White Haven]

Such an accomplishment, however, would be pretty freaking awesome.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The main reactor on an Imperator does stick out of the belly of the ship, though; there is that. Partly I reckon to balance the weight of the superstructure, the containment shell probably being the solidest and heaviest bit of the ship.

If what Vianca meant (I think it was, now) was the legal issue, Imperial uniformity against the ability of anyone senior enough to have a little leeway in how they interpret the rules to do their own thing, sponsor their own projects, the mad variety of the variant TIEs and stormtroopers and ground things, then the powerful of the Empire are definitely taking a two faced position, one rule for thee and another rule for me. Condemning improvisation and initiative in others and taking advantage themselves.

Lennart himself is definitely having it both ways too; a not entirely integrity- positive position of condemning the two facedness of high authority and improvising and customising wildly in his own command.

As an aside on bridge modules, the bayless Tector is also bulgeless, and I reckon it uses multiple smaller reactors, an arrangement of three individually about half the volume of the Imperator's; in the gap between the three of them that might make a sensible place to put the Machinery Control Room (centre of Main Machinery-1) and the emergency if not the main bridge. That reactor configuration wouldn't be possible- takes up too much internal space- on anything intended to have much of a fighter and dropship complement, though.

Command from the afterlife might not be all that hard; Ben Kenobi almost managed it- although that was in more of an advisory, back seat role. The training necessary to do it properly might be somewhat dubious though; "This time, Admiral, you need to get much closer to the white light. I know near death experiences are inherently traumatic, but the problem is you're not, um, near enough. You simply have to try to be deader."
" (How did I annoy Palpatine badly enough to be detailed for this?) If there's no alternative, there's no alternative- but can you at least induce it chemically this time?"
"I think that might be the problem, actually, we may need to employ a more impulsive percussion. Assistant, the large mallet if you please."
.....
"Oops. Next candidate."

[Vianca]

Nope Remnant, not at all.

Lennart and all other Imperial ship captains, command from the main bridge, but the secondary bridge is a smaller emergency bridge in the middle of the ship.
Was wondering if it Black Prince's one was still around and if so, how much of it is still original.

Funny how all those Tie's their wing surfaces seems to scrink with each new generation, no?
Take the ships current main Tie fightercraft, for one.
One of the smallest ever.
So either they are really good or they will want their old crafts back, fast.

[Andras]

I think the fight with the Admonisher showed that once the shields go down, it doesn't matter where the bridge is located, unless Aldrem is shooting at you!

[Vianca]

Rebels tend to like to shot up a ships bridge.

[Esquire]

Yeah, but to do that requires shield failure - my personal understanding is that big ships use their shields, while intact, to keep from having to move as erratically as they otherwise would, allowing more accurate gunnery to take out the other guy's shields. Once somebody loses shields, then the bombers go in for component strikes, because the ship that just lost its shields will be trying a lot harder not to get hit than it was while it had something to absorb the energy.

Local shield failure is solved (is supposed to be solved) by rolling the ship to present undamaged shields and tasking extra fighters to defend the exposed section. Star Destroyers, and other Imperial warships, have a problem with this, because so much of their weaponry is concentrated on the dorsal hull. If the bridge tower shields go down, rolling the ship will deprive all the heavy guns of firing solutions, which is certainly not ideal. Interestingly, that might be part of the reason Mon Calamari warships look the way they do; mediocre firepower, but in all arcs, where an SD is designed for overwhelming force along one arc only.

Of course, that's just my personal headcanon, I haven't put too much thought into it. I'll do more when/if I get around to writing a story that requires it...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Broadside to broadside, that works- rolling to present the unengaged side; the smaller the action, though, the less likely it is to be neat and linear and the more likely it is- even between relatively large ships like a Mon Cal Cruiser and an ISD- to be a twisting, turning, swirling fight. That the Mon Cal ship seems to be more closely optimised for, come to think of it.

Anything like angling and rolling is only a temporary fix; the long term solution is, as so often, to get them before they get you. Bombers are supposed to be able to do that, go in for component strikes, but that's a lot easier in a formed, formal battle than the sort of half- piratical skirmishing action that Rebel and Imperial warships so often end up in-
for one thing I doubt if a Y-wing can catch an ISD evading, or a TIE Bomber could make intercept on an MC80, if either were free to manoeuvre. Ambushes work, because you can establish an overrunning vector, a base course that the target ship might not be able to move far enough from in time.

The shrinking wings of the TIE series, I wonder- it's not the case with the Defender and there are a lot of fighters out there with nothing like that, but you know I reckon the panels on the TIE series are basically radiators, not absorbers- not first and foremost anyway- so you'd expect them to get bigger as the units of the series became more powerful and energetic;
what I think is happening is that the later models are progressively abandoning that approach and going back to a (more expensive and harder to maintain, but tactically necessary) large ship style approach, supplementing the radiators with solid- block neutrino radiating heatsinks; otherwise the wings would become too big, and too easy to visually spot and target.

Mirannon's back of the envelope designs are almost all solid state, fairly compact things with the occasional weapon outrigger; combined engine/generator subassemblies, often with the heatsinks built in. Turns out the expensive and time consuming part isn't the design and construction- that's the fun bit;
the grind comes in writing the manual, or at least doing all the operational and ergonomic tests and studies, on how to use the thing and how to maintain, service and repair it properly, sorting out and defining the procedures that go into writing the manual. He's currently trying to come to some kind of deal with Cygnus Spaceworks.

The emergency bridge- and yes, Black Prince still has one- is not far away from main machinery-1, and is where the XO goes (or acting exec at least), and one of the deputy chief engineers, at battle stations.

There's another segment nearly ready, may be up tomorrow.

[Vianca]

Yeah, thats why I usealy find Star Destroyers to be a little lightly armed on the underside, Esquire.

And that is one sweet message, Remnant.

[sropike]

Well, I always thought the SD hull shape is quite good, nearly optimal even. The gun placement on them however...
They wouldn't even need to modify it too much, just mirror the dorsal arrangement on the ventral surface of the ship. If you set up the guns properly stepped, as they are now on Black Prince, you can have a full alpha strike in the frontal arc, and 50% of your guns can fire in any given direction except the rear.
Ventral surface would still be more vulnerable due to the hangar bay.

[Vianca]

Wedge shape is the best, especialy on with two smaller wedges sticking out on the back end.
Tube always comes second to this.

Speed and weapons is the game of any warship, besides their armor and shoting(?) arcs.

[sropike]

Yes, warship design as I understand it, is the game of compromises. You must have enough internal volume to have sufficeint volume for machinery, crew, storage space for fuel, spares, consumables, hangar space, etc. You have to have enough armor to properly protect it all and for the shields to have a good surface to anchor to. You have to have enough guns to gut a ship of the same weight class. (AFAIK the expression over and undergunned stems from this. Overgunned ships have enough firepower to gut heavier opponents, undergunned ships can't cope with a properly gunned ship of teh same weight class.) You have to power it all. And the ship should have enough operational endurance.
Generally if you want more of one, you have to give somehing up, e.g. more guns need more energy, resulting in a larger powerplant, which either needs larger fuel stores, or your endurance suffers. There are a plethora of examples for all cases. One good saying about these compromises: "speed is armor". If they can't hit you, you don't need so much armor, which makes you lighter and swifter...
Wedge shape is pretty good, as properly mounted guns have quite large firing arcs, and you can protect proportionally a good amount of internal volume with a given amount of armor. Which gives you volume, meaning options. I think the ISD is a pretty good hull design, but for the guns...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Domestic update first;


The data architecture was designed and in place, the program modules needed to be tweaked; broken down into small individual elements that could be worked on in isolation, what there was for the tender to do was effectively a job of digital bricklaying.

The ship's own data- jugglers had done the work of setting up the framework and would do the job of integrating them into the whole, and if the tender crew felt the destroyer's people didn't trust them, they would have been right.

At this point it was past paranoia; if there weren't people out to get them, there ought to be. Getting it bitted into place was the easiest and most secure way of getting it done. Should be fairly fast, too.


There was one major personal problem outstanding, and it was what to do with the Captain's daughter. Severian and Jorian Lennart were arguing about it, over food.

'Don't think I'll ever make a gourmet- too much training to eat anything that couldn't escape.' she said. 'It was actually the hardest thing to fake convincingly when I was doing agent things. I suppose if you could arrange to take one, a palate- print would probably be as individual as a retina print and a lot more revealing.'

'You could identify most of our lot with the code phrase "a secret blend of herbs and transuranics",' Lennart said referring to some of the odder ways they had had of passing the time on a long patrol cruise, 'but I think you're right.

How long would it actually take, though, to administer a proper taste spectrum in this day and age of foods from biospheres across the galaxy? Is there a shortcut, an alphabet of taste that stands up to empirical evidence? I reckon it could take years to do a full one. might be a useful stalling tactic to put Rafaella through.'

'It would only confuse and confound the criminal bureaucracy, and they're not the primary problem.' Severian said, short- cutting the tangent. 'the politics and the Force are likely to catch up well before then.'


'Sometimes you have to ambush a problem, you know.' Lennart said. 'There's a more urgent one even there; her boyfriend.' Severian could tell there were several comments he didn't add on the end of that. 'Also all her other potential boyfriends.

It's not her doing, there's too much of her mother in her, but I'm not sure I'd believe in the existence of a fighting spaceman who didn't let at least a few dirty thoughts cross his mind on the subject of the Captain's daughter.'

'Did you?' She couldn't resist asking.

'I was an officer, remember.' He said before adding deadpan 'Of course I did. The one or two that had them, anyway, before I was committed in the strange direction that ended in Rafaella. And even after that it's not gentlemanly to ignore them- may be unavailable but at least you can be friendly. Before you say it, it does feel different from the other side.'

'How you see things changes with your point of view.' She admitted and acknowledged. 'He is a complicating factor, though- and they know or think they do that the thing she dragged back with her is only one step above a Sacorrian sludgeworm, and you're only not saying it out loud to avoid hurting her feelings.'


'Not far off the truth.' Lennart admitted. 'If I let him out of protective custody, the ship's practical jokers would make sure he knows he's not wanted, and strip him of his dignity and probably several organs in the process.

I'm trying not to be gratuitously cruel to him, but there are times when he makes that difficult and I would gladly let them keelhaul him. Even if we could find something useful for him to do, he's not a spaceman, not a warrior and not a natural comrade, in arms or out. Wherever he fits in, it's not here. He doesn't have the temperament for it.'

'Does Rafaella? Considering the ways by which she might come by it, it's good she's short of killer instinct.' Severian stated. 'She has everything else- she's got the hand and eye for it, and the wits, but not the stomach; or the hard spots on the soul. She can strike out in her own defence, but it's no joy to her.'

'I know. By the rank and station I shouldn't ought to be proud of her for that, but- she had a go at the gunnery simulator the other day, with Pel Aldrem supervising; not up to his standard but who is, and he said she was good for a beginner. Until he pointed out that the targets she was scoring on were blockade runners with crews of fifty to a hundred.

She couldn't do it after that; and he said it was interesting watching her gut reaction go back and forth from horror to playing the game to realising what it meant, and crystallise into something she thought.' Lennart said.


'I did notice that you were trying to tuck her under the wing of the ship's more noticeable stable pairings, and away from some of the resident animals like Tyl Dammernorph; Aldrem was the one that made me think I might be wrong about the pattern. She's probably noticed it too by now.'

'As long as she hasn't noticed Dammernorph. He's only had four jilted ex- girlfriends try to assassinate him and I don't want him trying for ace.' Lennart said. 'I'd hope she would spot that pattern; and that she has more sense than to try to break it.'

'I've never actually been one of Aldrem's greatest fans.' Severian said. 'He has a very literal interpretation of danger spaces, and I've been far closer than I'd have chosen to too many big green fireballs with his name on them. If he was a woman I'd wonder what you see in him.' She then looked slightly embarrassed.

'I hope that didn't come out the way you meant it to.' he said, grinning. 'In fact if he wasn't already entangled with a rebel spy I probably would be encouraging Rafaella in his direction, but I'm not going to kick him off the path he's chosen for himself.'

There was a stunned pause, then she said 'This time, this time I ran through what I was going to say, and it ends in "ah." He reminds you of your younger self that much?'


'There's a lot that isn't the same, of course, and he has a crop of eccentricities all of his own; but- kind of, yes.' Lennart admitted. 'Mind you he's bad enough not knowing that, what he would be like if he thought he could get away with it hardly bears thinking about. The courtroom didn't change your mind at all?'

She thought of it, then grudgingly admitted 'He didn't know how much of a part he was playing, and yet managed to play it through and make it work. It's quite hard to pin down the reasons why I don't like him, perhaps just gut.'

'Or you're not particularly proud of them, we're all asking the same questions about which side it's right to be on, and his answers;' he said, playing the conversation forward in his head himself, sure she was doing the same, and decided- 'Perhaps another day. In the meantime, what do we do with Rafaella and Plarch?

If we do nothing- no, wait, that's not a stipulation, setting up a point of reference; what's the ballistic solution, left to themselves what would they do and what would become of them?'


Severian sat back and thought about it, decided to leave the one about answers for another moment and said 'Fall out. As I think it went they were never of a kind really, he was always reaching up to her; and in the course of all of this she has grown, and with a lot of growing pains- but he has shrunk.

One or other of them will realise that- he knows it already but won't admit it to himself, sooner than he does she- I hope- will realise it's no kindness holding him in a situation where he's totally out of his depth.

She and Aldrem, the stature's there but they would be on totally different wavelengths, worldviews, I would think that the last thing you would want is someone with a good perspective on deep time influencing- and being influenced by- someone with the ability to blow spectacular lumps off the present. He's bad enough as it is.'

Lennart nodded, agreeing- superficially at least. 'I don't want to lay down the law to her- because it won't work, not if she's inherited anything like her mother's stubbornness or my idiosyncratic streak, or galactic spirit forbid both. She'll have to be led, not driven. Let them come apart in their own way, then, pick up the pieces of her and put him in a pod to somewhere, and then what?'


'Well, she'll never make a stormtrooper. Although-' Severian said, and Lennart guessed it.

'Traditional place for pacifists in wartime is the medical services, is it not? Would she go, though, that's the question.'

'You're right, I can't see her taking well to being put. Until this all happened to her she was fairly well ordered and orderly; but she's had the lash cracked over her too often, and had the basis of her self discipline broken down- worse than never having had any at all. There's a lot of anger and frustration in her.' Severian said.

'I don't like the thought you're leading up to,' Lennart said, 'but I've had to think it myself anyway. She is a potential danger; and likely to be more so the more we make it obvious that even we think so. She knows that, but I don't think she has any answers of her own.

I'd prefer to be able- it would answer better, call it the illusion of democracy if you like- to give her a choice, even though it would be from an extremely limited palette of options. Letting her go to the docs would be quite a Light Side thing to do.'

'I'm still not convinced in myself that the dark side is absolutely a bad thing to be- but I'm sure now, poor Laurentia, that it's a terrible thing to have to stand next to. She wouldn't be able to fake it, or dance with it, or resist it's will. She's not ready to be a monster yet.' Severian said, and surprised herself by how much she meant it.


'Who is? Well, you're going to have to be her teacher in the Force anyway, whichever side she looks aimed for.' Lennart said.

Severian thought about it for a second- managing to look impressively calm and collected while her liver did somersaults- then said 'For lack of other suitable candidates?'

'You said yourself Pel Aldrem's out, I'm still not easy about letting her near the fighter wing so that rules out Aron Jandras, I can't do it- have you ever see a man trying to teach his daughter to drive? A recipe for drama and often enough trauma. The doc, maybe, but she's too close to the chief.'

'Engineer- Commander Mirannon knows a lot of the theory of the Force- perhaps less than I do, but he has the practical ability to demonstrate it, which I don't.' Severian pointed out.

'Don't underestimate yourself; yes, the chief has theories, but the problem is that too many of them are rigorous and testable.' Lennart pointed out.

'The difficulty there being that-' she considered the problem- ' that what comes after that tends to include the words "experimental subject" somewhere along the way? Muggins it is, then.'


'Got something for you, anyway. You said you needed a new breastplate.'

'I did, but there's nothing wrong with standard issue...oh. wow. That is very shiny.' the closet door slid back to reveal a stand propping up a suit of armour, heavy interleaved plates, no underlayer showing, gleaming, mirror- bright metal.

'To avoid the appearance of favouritism, the team's in the development program- you get to play with it and make it work; the first production units will be going to the boarding batallion, then the special purpose teams once we come up with a camouflage coating that actually sticks, because even I can spot the problem with a reflective sniper.' Lennart said.

'Units- there's something new and special about it that makes it more than just a replacement suit of stormtrooper armour?' She said, a stray corner of her mind thinking; he could have bought me a ring or a pendant or something. Instead, this.

And it is more appropriate- slightly scary too. I trusted him not to try to take me away from where I belong, not to pull me out of harm's way; not that there isn't a shred that would like to be kept safe occasionally. This promises entirely new levels of harm, and many more big green fireballs. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it? It really is very shiny.

'New not entirely, special yes. Light powered frame to support the mass of the powerplant more than the actual shell, which is field permeated ultrachrome. Thruster clusters shoulders, hips- flight capable.'

'Light spacetrooper suit? It's not lightweight if it's built out of ultrachrome, that was used in the old sith wars, isn't it supposed to be lightsabre resistant- who are you expecting us to have to fight?' She said, managing not to gush.


'I don't even want to think about the worst case scenario, which would be silver on black; but yes, it was the toughest and most resistant material we could get our hands on in enough quantity for a mass issue, because unlike Phrik and the rest it's not specifically lightsabre resistant.

It's actually obsolescent starship hull material- superior in some qualities, but it doesn't take tensors and damper fields as well as modern durasteel- which also means it doesn't need them as much.

The last major components we have built out of it are actually mountings and failsafe switches for the field generators because it's more stable under fluctuation. Somebody misplaced a zero on the requisition form.' Lennart pretended to shrug.

'Couldn't have asked for ten times as much, it's cheaper than Mandalorian iron but not that much cheaper; ten times less? An order that had to be repeated in the proper quantity, and you kept the first order anyway?'

Pretty much.' Lennart said, and a few ideas connected themselves in his head. Mandalorian? Hm. If she's like this over a new dress, it's going to be interesting to see what happens when I buy her a pony. Or a Basilisk War- Droid, same difference.



------------

Sropike, there's only so much of the naval architecture and design history of the GFFA I can actually rewrite; there's not much that can be done about that problem really.

[sropike]

ECR, my post was in no way meant criticize your writing, of which I am a HUGE fan. Your alterations to Black Prince already improve her gun layout massively, while keeping the alterations within still believeable limits. And the current layout also makes a sort od sense, as the hangar bay is on the ventral side, meaning point dorsal side towards enemy, so fighter/bomer operations are still possible.
If ambushed from ventral side, roll ship immediately.

Thank you for giving us this superb story.

[Vianca]

If nothing else they could always put clips on the new armor that lets them put the outside covering of stormtrooper armor on it, that or go for the black look all the way.
It's power armor, a little weight won't make you able to not support it's weight anymore.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'd expected this to be ready after the new year, but it happened fairly quickly instead; there's a domestic bit in the middle, but it does include my guess as to why the combat record of the Executor class is quite so pathetic. Happy new year, if I don't see you before then.



Early on the morning of the second day, and Lennart had always been an insomniac. Had got worse the last few years, although unlikely to be an age thing; while his father definitely needed less sleep now that he was in his eighties, it was far too soon for that.

The ship never slept, he tried to look at it that way, so why should he? Except that was just an excuse, it wasn't the cause at all, there was just too much electricity, too much tension in the air; it wasn't the life of the ship, it was the currents of the future pulling at him, threatening to drag him under.

At best, he thought looking around the relatively little changed bridge module, at best we are a scalpel, and to make the difference I want to make would take a supernova. Aldrem was right about that at least.

Now that the plans to do anything monstrously unlikely with the hyperdrive have been abandoned- and I have an idea myself, now that I think about it, but we're not going to have the time and effort until this business is over- we can at least move.

Small craft, we haven't lost any of our talent there. Legion's still it's old self, but I am going to need to find something for them to hit soon; that implant was right, they're not doing their proper jobs, and just because they're useful at the ones they are doing isn't enough of an answer.

On the other hand, unless the main event is delayed by spectacular incompetence on somebody's part, we may have point defence up in local control, some of the main hull shielding, but we won't have integrated- and barely any local zone- battle management, won't have shield and EW interlocks, no in-phase power switching- we'll be operating under a handicap equal to moderate to severe ionisation.

There's something waiting for us, something ugly about to happen, that we're going to need a hundred percent for, maybe more.


The Force talking? only out of the political side of it's mouth- therefore, it's arse- and that only maybe. Fact is even if the Alliance don't want us dead- don't think the cost of picking a fight with us to cover an evacuation is likely to be worth it- there are large parts of the Imperial Starfleet discontented with our continued existence.

Not the best part, but perhaps the larger. Who was it- one of the more notorious chairmen of the Bank of the Core, wasn't it- who laughed off the possibility of a debtors' revolt, because it could never happen as long as half the little people could be bought and paid off to shoot the other half?

The State's hired guns would shoot at each other with even less provocation, Lennart thought. Most of them wouldn't even need to be bribed- if orders weren't enough alone, rivalry would be. There were some famous names on the list of temporary assignees to Death Squadron, too.

Steadfast, Crucible, Thunderflare, ah, there was the one that was making his antennae twitch. Of the twenty- five thousand baseline or near enough Imperators in the fleet, there were three, three only, who had managed a solo, unassisted defeat of a full six plus kilometre battlecruiser or better.

Leviathan had been practically broken in half- her reactor ball had imploded from one of the last shots from Lictor, she was well beyond economical repair, the hulk was being used as a replacement mascot moon over Carida.

There was themselves, and the third name on the short, luminous list was HIMS Swiftsure- also on the list of those assigned to support Death Squadron.


Swiftsure had been battered, but not out of repair viability, in taking down the old Corellian battlecruiser Insufferable; well, that's what you get when you don't have to do two at once, Lennart grumbled- and unlike the more than half renegade Black Prince, she had been feted and honoured at the highest levels.

In fact, she had been assigned as an operations support ship to the Royal Guard.

Why do they want me to know this, Lennart wondered looking at the list. That ship is here to do Palpatine's will, especially if it should happen to diverge from Vader's- or my own.

When I told my crew we were the class of the galaxy, it was no empty boast- there were never many who could match us in single ship combat, and now that Mon Evarra's gone, Guarlara was never in our weight class anyway, Liberty's second- but Swiftsure's the head of the list.

Why would they advertise the fact that they're coming to get us? To give everyone time to choose sides, or to lay bets?


He would have ruminated further but he felt a presence-his daughter. Half- sad, half- angry, and wholly confused. What about, he reused to sense and tried to reason out. Hm. Computer archaeology. Our internal firewalls aren't up yet. No, that's only the beginning of it.

Let me see, they- or more likely he alone- eavesdropped on Severian and I. Then they had a difference of opinion about it. And she's shaking, and her hands are wet. Lennart motioned his daughter over to the command chair. Before she could say anything he started with 'So after he told you, what did you hit him with?'

'If you saw it happen, why didn't you stop me?' she said, and realised that she had actually wanted to be stopped- then, at least.

'I didn't; only figured it out five seconds ago.' Lennart pointed out. 'Considering the chambers you're in, I decided not to monitor; it would have saved some trouble if he had thought to extend the same courtesy. Did you hear all of it?'

'I heard most of it, I- no, how much more was there? Plarch only played your conversation with, hm,'

'Warrant Officer Second Class OB173.' Lennart filled in the official version, for use on the bridge.

Rafaella objected to that, he noticed with interest; thinks it's hypocritical of me. Is it? Don't think so- identity is a coefficient of person and place. Here in official space, the formal version. I should have sent Severian on the Corellian Navy command course instead of Brenn. Perhaps as well as.


Rafaella said 'I got as far as the sludgeworm, and the resident animals and the mad gunman, up to the bit where she said he was totally out of his depth. Then he turned it off and started ranting. I think I could tell it exactly-'

'But clarity hurts and it makes more emotional sense to let it dissolve into a confused, impressionistic blur.' Lennart said, choosing to impale and trample on that rule of grammar. 'Not depth, it's breadth- you were drawn to him in the first place because he had a deep, narrow talent that you needed, and he desperately needed someone to value him for; am I not right so far?'

'How hard it is to do this like a sensible adult.' She digressed, not wanting to admit that he was, not right away, wondering why she hadn't just blurted it out. She had meant to confess it, after all. Was finding it hard. 'I don't think I was being one when, I was overwrought, I-'

'Things with the force involved usually are, you should have heard your mother and I. I think you achieved the angst merit badge when you broke one of the wallscreens on his skull, though. Medical been alerted?' Nodded to one of the technicians to check.


'I, no, I came straight here- how you know if you weren't monitoring us?'

'Cure for not knowing is to figure it out- it was either that or the water feature, and I think you'd be in worse state if you hit him with the sculpture. Do I take it rightly that you and he have now officially fallen out?

More importantly, was it something a reasonable person might reasonably have done in the same circumstances, a legitimate act of self defence, or a moment of dark rage?' Lennart asked, wondering if he should actually have said it.

'I don't know.' she said, part of her wondering why he was being so cold over this, another part understanding the question and huddling away from it. 'It might have been one that led to the other, I- how do you hit someone in the head with a television in a spirit of peace and reconciliation? Don't you have to hate them at least a little bit?'

'I'd reckon so, yes, but I did call it dark rage for a reason.' Lennart said, outwardly calmly enough. Both knowing that the real question was am I right or wrong- are you right or wrong- about how much of a monster you could be.


She shivered. If I was tending that way, I wouldn't be so afraid of it, would I? I'd be proud of it, instead of feeling as if I was being chased by sharks. Is that how it gets you, preys, pops up at the corners of your mind until it's everywhere and the only thing you can do is confront and become your fears?

In which case, what's the way out, what repels? There has to be a way to stop being afraid of myself without submitting to it- it can't be a givin logic box, can it?

'I was afraid that I might have taken him on as a kind of chew toy. I was afraid of the idea that I might be keeping him because he was someone smaller than myself, that I could push around.' She said.

Now do I let her force it out herself, Lennart thought, or do I do better by letting her know that I can say it for her, understand it for her if she needs me to? 'Yes, but you were terrified of the idea that he might want you to, might beg you to let him stay and be your minion- and he did, didn't he? Appealed in the worst possible way. That would be when you hit him?'

She nodded. 'He- he is going to be all right, isn't he?'


'It's certainly not the sort of thing that tends to improve your health. I reckon it probably depends whether you hit him with the flat or the edge.' A note of humour at an unsuitable moment? Probably. 'He'll be gone though, that'll serve as an end to it. Look at it this way; if he still clings to you after that it would not be the basis of a healthy future for either of you.'

'It would also mean that my worst fears were true.' she said, quietly. 'I don't want to, but I have to know.'

'Guilt is an excellent route to the dark side too; it's how it gets the conscientious ones. Makes them think there's more they could have done, things could have worked out better if only they had more power, if only they could make people listen- it's traps are many and you're falling for one of them.

You're offering yourself only the choice of being the villain or the villain, and you have to do better than that. Granted this choice is emerging from television- poisoned soil, what you did was not wonderful and I won't be happy if you do it again.

What you should have done was kick him out and leave him to the crew, most of them would be happy to maim him for you...there are a few tricks to not being a monster that the Warrant Officer is going to have to teach you.' Lennart said.


There were a lot of things she could have said then but she needed to say something, and the first thing that bubbled up was 'I never wanted this, I don't want to have the Force.'

'It's feeling more like it has you? I know. The practicalities are though, that we're operating in distant support of the Executor. Vader. The system knows that you have the force, Mitth'raw'nuruodo will have seen to that. You need to make enough progress that I can justify keeping you out of his clutches. Either of them. Failure isn't an option. Neither's martyrdom.'

To forestall her saying that she had no intention of becoming a martyr, which would mean that she probably had, he added 'I find that the best time for long, complicated, rambling discussions about futures and things is actually just after lunch.'

'How can you think of something so mundane at a time like this?'


'Easy. The traditional time for setting the world to rights is what, small hours of the morning, while usually drunk and probably high as well, isn't it? What usually comes of it?' What just has come of it, he didn't add.

'Lots of wild words and the universe never changes much. Usually, but not this time, I-'

'Then we'd better move to normalise it, hadn't we? I find early afternoon to be a particularly cynical, disgruntled and misanthropic time, which is good because it's usually inviting disaster to make plans in a spirit of buoyant optimism.' Lennart said.

'I thought the rule was that no plan survived contact with the- who is the enemy?'

'That,' Lennart said, 'is the traditional excuse offered up by generations of lazy, incompetent planners for not trying.

Fact is that a well made plan can succeed, even as written, if you accept that being well made includes a realistic shading to pessimistic evaluation of your own strengths and weaknesses, a clear headed appraisal of the enemy, and some but not too much slack built in to allow for cockups along the way. And a devil's advocate, you always need one of those.'


'What is one?I can tell what you mean more or less, and it seems as if I have nothing but, but what exactly is one? Religious connotations?'

'After the worst had happened, I took my head for a walk,' he was actually meaning his court martial two years later, 'and wandered through believing or pretending to in some very odd things. One of them was a sort of syncretic spacer's religion, core of it actually looked made up by a speculative fiction writer when you examined it closely.

It wasn't even so much belief, or pretending to believe, but the playing mind games around the idea of belief; doesn't seem much, but what I wanted then was a dance of moonbeams, the last thing I needed was to believe the universe made sense. Not enough slack in the situation to give you that option. I still swear by the Galactic Spirit occasionally.

One of the things they had borrowed was the notion of the devil's advocate, the person who makes the case for the rottenness of people, the temptations of evil, the demands of entropy; the spokesman of darkness. There's a little of that in everyone, and it tends to come out at civilian lunchtime around here.

Black flag teams to do that should be a regular part of the service, it shouldn't be an obscure religious practise I picked up more or less by accident, it should be right there in general fleet orders; but it isn't, so we improvise, and- yes, what is it?'


There had been a beep on the com console; was that fully up and working again or still patchy? It was medical, at any rate. 'The patient gelVaaru- skull's intact, brain only lightly bruised, no serious neural damage. Face more or less shredded though- major reconstruction and a cloned eyeball required.'

'How's his mental state?'

'Foul. If we could clone him a new personality too, I would.' It was one of the junior medical officers. Lennart didn't know which by voice, but at least they were prepared to speak their mind.

'If the tender can do the reconstructive work- they can? good- send him over there, and tell them we don't want him back.' He turned to his daughter. 'Good news; he hates you for it. There's still the depth of an anger management course- and I think a vocational qualification as a vidscreen repairer- between you and the dark side.'

'I understand that sometimes there have to be jokes, you can't always let the universe be taken as seriously as it wants to be, but- not now, I just can't make fun of this.'


'A hero without humour is a villain waiting to happen. A large part of the leadership of the Alliance would have to be quarried to find any light- heartedness in them; can you picture Mon Mothma at an open mic night?' Lennart said.

'What about the Imperial leadership?'

'Working on it, one nervous breakdown at a time.' There was one of the com scan crew vaguely waving a datapad in his direction. 'What is it?' It was leading spaceman Emphel Hawwareltt. Not brand shiny new on board, but still new enough for the rest of the section to put up to a prank. If there is a squid pie behind that datapad, Lennart thought, I shall be most unimpressed.

What it actually was was a Ravenous message- and that was a sick joke in itself; that was the current callsign/codename for Death Squadron's tactical-A channel. Formal orders and mandates. (The eight fifty-first's current tactical-A was Studdingsail.)

'Be happy this isn't your problem.' Lennart said. 'Go back and listen to the rest of that conversation, and figure out what to do about it from there.'

She wanted to argue, now that the shock was wearing off wanted to have the same kind of shouting match that he and her mother had apparently had, but she could see that he was focusing on something entirely else; that even though things were left unsaid, now was not the time. She nodded and left.


What's Ozzel got now, what's the weasel up to, Lennart thought. Well, they've narrowed rebel central command down to a subsector, and it is the one with Hoth in it, through signal and physical traffic analysis. Wonder if I should make a side bet with Piett, and for what stakes? Would Vader honour the terms of it? Doubtful.

'Department heads to the bridge. Orders group, department heads to the bridge.' Give them a few minutes, time that could be spent looking over what was actually wanted of the ship, weight it up.

Brenn was the first to arrive, having slung a hammock in one of the server rooms off main computing while that stage of the refit was going on; insomniac Mirannon next, in his usual crumpled boiler suit and tool belts; he was sleeping less too these days, which was saying something.

Ob Wathavrah next in a dressing gown, yawning, with a cup of caf. QAG-111, in armour, which meant nothing- Lennart had seen him put it on from snoring, moving like a robot stock- picker, in half a minute flat, and only when all the rest of it but the helmet was done open his eyes and yawn and ask what the fuss was about.

Teret Shulmar, the small craft group commander since Olleyri had left, looking wired and nervous; not a fighter pilot, he had come up through the transport line, and was probably worried he didn't have much presence as a leader; might pose a bit in front of the pilots, had the sense not to do it here.

Rythanor was the last to arrive- the medical department would understand this wasn't their problem, no need for Blei- Korberkk to turn up. Although from the state of the com scan officer, a doctor in attendance might have been a good idea. He looked terrible.


'Right, we have a mission- and a wrinkle. First, look at this list and tell me at what point your spines start shivering.' Lennart handed them the datapad, they clustered round it. Shandon had to be elbowed and handed a cup of caf.

Brenn acted as spokesman. 'Between us all we should be able to tell Death Squadron to kriff off and do it ourselves, faster and neater. Provided we don't end up swapping shot with Swiftsure along the way. Any word on her?' he asked Mirannon.

'Too much.' Mirannon said. 'As a special operations boat operating out of the heart of Azure Hammer, they have access to the best of everything, if you can call Fondor that. Definite weapon upgrades. Replacement crew top flight, too.'

'By the rumours- well, she's not us. Under His Imperial Awesomeness's eye, they can afford no mistakes, even less than under Vader- but they're given the room they need to work up to that. Orthodox tactics, which are orthodox for a reason, carried out instantly, with extreme thoroughness.' Ob Wathavrah stated.

'Are we likely to have anything like full battle management up and running in time to do dry runs against her, before it may come to the real thing?' Lennart asked his apparently spaced out chief com- scan officer.

He came into focus when it was about the job, though. 'Simulation we can do immediately- reality may take a little longer. We're actually trying to get everything up to full function in local control before integrating it all. If the tender's code monkeys don't mutiny at the pace we're asking of them, and there's no more than predictable sabotage and cockups, ten days.'


'As opposed to thirty days by our own efforts alone- time in hand I'll be glad to have, but even that may not be enough. We have a target assigned us.' He called up the Ravenous file on the datapad. 'We're to establish a blockade at a probable transshipment point, Veren Porphyr V.'

'After you fingered Hoth I went through the rest of the sector map looking for oddities, significant worlds that might play a part. This is one of them.' Brenn said. 'It's a logical target, but it's also a cast- gozintium bastard and a political booby trap. It is a trans- shipment point already, it's one of the main support facilities for the subsector.

I didn't finish counting up how many companies with important friends run supplies and equipment in through there, and the take out- and the people rotate of course. It's also not one world- VPV itself is a gas giant; facilities are spread across sixty- odd moons and moonlets, with platforms in the atmosphere, floating space colonies, the big moons are coriformed and the little ones have domes.

You're looking at upwards of a hundred separate station targets with total traffic of at least a thousand hulls, two billion tons deadweight, a day, and a lot of credits riding on it all. If I thought we could trust our own side I'd call it a challenge.'

'Given that we can't I'd call it a setup.' Mirannon said. 'Some kind of backlash, some kind of abuse from the system was probably inevitable, but this is almost excessively sneaky. Price of the future's looking pretty high at the moment, skipper.'


'I wonder if Piett's done something intelligent for once?' Lennart said. 'It's clearly an almost impossible job for one ship, but I've just finished telling my daughter that failure, and martyrdom, are not viable options. We go with this, but carefully, with eyes open, and actually I'm seriously considering doing it as a mass boarding action.'

'An interstellar boarding action.' QAG-111 was the first to make sense of it. 'We have more jump capable small craft and transports than almost any other destroyer; medium load on the -1930Ms, that gives us twelve companies on target. Multiple drop cycles?'

'Brenn's right though, we can't afford to blockade the system in the normal meaning of the word, no ambient chaos. I'm thinking this is going to be an intelligence led raid, not going to be on the docks at all- hit traffic control, com centres, administration, people and places who can tell us who's in contact with the rebels, give leads to follow and a steer on what to ambush.' Lennart pointed out.

'Assuming there actually are any.' Wathavrah pointed out. 'If it isn't a setup, we may need to pull out in a hurry to give chase- if it is, even faster. If nobody gets left behind-' nods from all the rest of the command team- 'then we can't do multiple lifts, can't hit more targets than we have transports.'


'If they're grounded on alert,' Shulmar said, the first time he had said anything so far; worrying, Lennart wanted someone in the job who wasn't afraid to look like a fool. There was a lot he was supposed to know so far, but there was always more to pick up, and someone who asked even the daft questions was probably less likely to take the daft actions when it came to it.

Shulmar carried on, 'most of them can still run full sensor capability off an APU, they can scan and confirm the traffic as it comes; if the fighter wing stand rotations, one in four, they can cover the leakers and the unscheduled arrivals.'

'Good.' QAG-111, whose whitehats would be riding in them, concurred so far. 'I think we missed a trick moving to an assault transport based force though. As individually effective as they are I'd rather have more baskets to put my eggs in. The old Stormtrooper Transports were more elegant craft.'

'I'd have thought you'd be looking at it from the passenger's point of view, and want as much individual superiority as you could get.' Brenn said.

'I appreciate their capabilities, but they offend my sense of neatness.' The Stormtrooper high Colonel said. 'Every Gamma ATR-6 you remove makes room for six Delta DX-9; drop to a squadron of six assault transports, there will be room for two squadrons of stormtrooper transports and we can hit ten more targets.'


'You'd have more troops in system, but most of the individual sites would have half a platoon or less. It's a system full of miners and space truckers; there will be incidents. Medium load on the -1930M's- those things need a nickname by the way- gives you some spare seats; use them as ready reaction force.'

'Enchanter class?' Mirannon suggested.

'How so?' QAG-111 asked. 'Isn't that perilously close to the Force?'

'The factory designation while they were putting the shells together for us was YT series, Imperial Military model. YTIM. Tim. Enchanter. It's perfectly simple.' He realised they were mostly looking blank at him- apart from Lennart who was trying not to laugh- and said 'What, don't they teach the classics any more?'

'You can bring it up at the next hoovie night.' Lennart said. Added to QAG-111 'Pick your bodies carefully for this, they may be there for a while- this is going to be a shade open ended. Lots of datawork to be done. Use the spec ops teams if you feel them appropriate, but not Red-1 and Blue-17.'

'I wouldn't take those clowns into a situation where there were likely to be mining explosives lying around unwatched. A hunter team, on the other hand, would seem to be perfect for the job. Unless you need them for other duties?'

Lennart chose to bypass the innuendo entirely. 'My daughter Rafaella had a fit of psychotic rage this morning. Hopefully they can teach her patience and balance and self discipline so that it not repeat itself. I would call that other duties, yes.'


'Right, Shulmar, do the deal with the tender, their small craft park should have replacements, a dozen Delta- DX-9 for two Gamma ATR-6. Check them over, then arm and preflight everything except the dropships.

Qag, get your teams sorted out on that basis, prepared for a month's detached duty; shouldn't be that long, Piett's probably going to get his finger out of his backside eventually.

Iel, kick the other two shifts out of bed and we'll get to work on the target list. Anything else?'

'Yes, a Death Squadron matter, friend of a friend wants a second opinion on this.' Wathavrah said, mock- casually handing a datapad to Mirannon. 'Apparently it would be quite easy to blow up the Executor.'

'You wouldn't be joking, now, not about that- do you think the rebels are likely to have done the research too?' Lennart asked.

'There's very little to analyse- it's perfectly possible they'd hit on it by accident.' Wathavrah admitted. 'Literally.'


'Gethrim?' Lennart asked after a few moments of acrobatic eyebrows and flying styli.

Mirannon had shrank one sheet on the datapad and was furiously scribbling on the other. 'Void spirits, they have, haven't they- oh kriff- what? Right. Remember the rumours when that beast came out? Secret prototypes, the actual first of the class lost on trials and hushed up, malfunctions, sabotage, KDY's house design team refusing to sign off on the final blueprints?'

'Vaguely. There was something to it?' Brenn said.

'No-one but a raving kriffwit would have signed off on this.' He said, waving the datapad. 'I want to satisfy myself as to the provenance of this and ask a few people a few questions, but the short version- how did you get this by the way?- is Executor's, the entire class's, shield systems are suicidally over- optimised.

The root of the problem's in the thermal switching gear between shields, heatsinks and the ship's own power net, what it was chosen to be able to cope with and what, therefore, it cannot.


If this is telling me what I think it is- and who told you this, and why did they want us to know it?- the shields have a very high peak loading, dreadnought broadside or kamikaze Rebel cruiser class, and the thermal switches that dump energy into the sinks from the shields are optimised for that.

They're not continuously variable, they're specified hardened; criticality one error. A two year old child- anyone who's ever turned on a tap- should know better, this is a mistake someone who did know better was ordered to make, by someone in authority who thought it was worth doing and didn't understand what it would cost.

There are solutions, but I think the project management was bad enough that nobody was listening to them. Fixed hardened does enable a higher peak load but at the cost of a proportionately long reflex time- proportional to the peak, not the actual load.

Conflicts with domestic energy bleed schedules, too, probably why they had to do that in the first place- but for most of a frighteningly long regeneration cycle, there's nowhere for stopped power to go but to be loaded onto the the specific heat capacity of the hull metal-

-which means that in a capital duel, no problems at all, but in a standard rolling fleet melee with light and medium weapons fire everywhere, they're as near as makes no practical difference unshielded.

Scaling the problem down to human size, you could pound on the thing with a sledgehammer all day and do nothing, but take a sewing machine to it and it's doomed. The Alliance has a hell of a lot more sewing machines than sledgehammers. If this is legit, those things- the entire class are basically deathtraps.'


'It was Keir, the nav coordinator for the escort squadron, my old classmate- his ship's chief engineer did the groundwork but isn't senior enough to be heard, so he asked me to give this to you. We're apparently quite famous; something to do with nuclear balloon animals. He thought you'd be able to do something with it.' Brenn said.

'Does he have any friends,' Lennart said, 'who happen to have left Imperial service recently, and possibly at high speed?'

'Hm. Well, we did get the rebels to do our research for us, you think this might be them returning the favour?' Brenn understood. 'Somebody must know about this, surely.'

'Yes, the KDY in house design team- why d'you think they refused to put their names to it? The class were a prima donna's pet project from the start, with an unhealthy amount of political oversight- and the senior designers who should have been supervising to catch things like this were virtually on strike in protest.

That much is common knowledge. This is one of the mistakes they made, and the details are certainly not common knowledge and shouldn't be. Who gets told this?' Mirannon asked the hard question.


'Our gun crews, for a start.' Lennart said. 'Apart from that- chain of command almost certainly doesn't want to know. Would it help the in house team at KDY to have us stand up and say what they've almost certainly been saying all along?'

'It's also a way of sucking us into the vortex of an existing cause celebre,- all right, shitstorm- with ready made panels of enemies, allies and cynics.' Wathavrah pointed out.

'Since when did you do politics?' Brenn asked him.

'Since I started spending a lot of time daydreaming about people I'd actually like to shoot.'

'Probably not an entirely healthy hobby, but yes, point taken.' Lennart agreed. 'Iel, confirm to your friend that they're right to be worried but say no more than that, no details. If only the politics were like that- I could do with a few nicely counterproductive flaws in the system about now.'

[InsaneTD]

Love the squid pie reference.

Interesting bit about the executer, though it is shown taking a beating in the last movie. Or are you thinking someone did a minor refit to the shields by that point?

[Scottish Ninja]

I think the idea is that the Executor took much less of a beating than it should have, pound for pound, at Endor.