Dark Fate, chapter 95 (Patreon)

Chapter 95 – Small Craft Design

“Master! I’m glad you came. I’ve got several new designs for your approval!”

Ran Samiess, my enslaved starship designer, was practically bouncing as she watched me come into the conference room where we would be going over her designs. She was a bubbly genius and a prodigy at what she did, but her insistence on using weaponized antimatter had gotten her enslaved by her former owners. They might have been scared of her, and I certainly was, but I needed big, scary weapons right now.

“What do you have?”

“Well, first, we have the Mark 2 Renegades. The originals, you know, were thrown together to make sure that we had enough guns in space to make a difference. However, they were basically one-trick ponies. You either blast something with antimatter, or you don’t. Sure, they had some ion cannons and point defense, but that really weren’t enough to do the job the one time they were used against an enemy warship.”

“Yes,” I nodded, remembering Renegade 4’s desperate fight after stumbling upon an enemy cruiser. “That would definitely restrict their usefulness, moving forward. While having attack boats is always great, it would be better if they had something more that they could do besides just annihilate things or flail uselessly at them.”

“Exactly, Master. So, this is the Mark 2.” She threw up a three-dimensional hologram on the display. The original Renegades had been, essentially, metal boxes surrounding the reactors and pulse torpedo launchers, with a crew compartment and engines added on to make it look like a solid brick. Functional, cheap, and quickly made, but they’d never be winning any beauty contests.

The Mark 2, on the other hand, at least had some style to it. Instead of a brick, there was a more rounded fuselage, with wings coming off from the side. The overall aesthetic was similar to that of the space shuttles used by NASA, pre-System.

Only, these shuttles were armed to the teeth. The pulse torpedoes were there, and the same as before, capable of launching two shots every thirty minutes. The twin, forward-facing ion cannons, on the other hand, had been beefed up, moving to a larger size, capable of better firepower. Only the point defense laser array hadn’t changed, since it was ‘good enough’ for what they had faced.

But that wasn’t everything. There were two forward-facing missile launchers nestled at the corner where the wing met the fuselage. A pair of wingtip plasma cannons also provided extra attack power, for when the torpedoes were charging, or would be overkill for what was needed. And there was even a rear-mounted missile launcher placed on top of the fuselage, so that the Mark 2 wasn’t completely defenseless when someone got behind them.

“As you can see, the production model is quite a bit better than the Mark 1 prototypes. Those were a proof of concept that was done quickly, with an eye to getting forces in space as quickly as possible. This new version is just as stealthy as the original, but better armed, and the shields are 15% stronger, now that we’ve worked out an interference issue that came up in manufacturing.”

“Consider this approved.” I looked over to Ms. Shumis, the administrator of my design center, and said, “Send the plans to the yards. Order all Mark 1 Renegades rotated back in and replaced with Mark 2s. Then put in an order for twelve more.”

Turning back to my designer, I said, “What else you have?”

“Well, staying with light craft for the moment, I have designs for shuttles, both transport and assault versions, interceptor and support type fighters.”

I nodded slowly. The two types of shuttles were obvious. Assault shuttles were designed for combat. Not dogfighting, but delivering or extracting passengers or cargo while under fire, and maybe providing some supporting fire to the troops, either in space or on the ground.

The others spoke to the four basic classifications of fighter craft under the System: Superiority, Support, Interceptors, and Bombers. Our ‘X-wings’ would be superiority fighters, designed to cover a wide range of roles, and take the fight to enemy fighters or ships, as the need may be. Support was a catchall for things like reconnaissance craft, drone swarm leaders, and other such things. Interceptors were fast ships that existed solely to hunt and kill enemy fighters and bombers before they got too close to anything important. And bombers were designed to bring the pain to major targets, whether in space or on the ground.

Out of all of those, all I had were two unarmed transport shuttles so far, and my superiority fighters. That was not a recipe for a good time, in my book. Far too many weaknesses, and stretching ships to cover things they shouldn’t have to cover.

That said, I didn’t really need to deal with bombers, right now. The Renegades could cover that role easily enough, for now, especially once they were upgraded to the Mark 2s. With the new armament, they could deliver a world of hurt to anyone who got on their bad side. Plus, I already had them, and I wanted to wait a while before I started adding dedicated bombers to my fleet, since those are harder to explain away as being ‘defensive’. At least the Renegades were designed for system patrol and defense, not finding and killing enemy bases.

Interceptors were the next concern. I had to assume that the enemy would return, with fighters. While most of my ‘air wing’ was going to be superiority fighters, I did want some interceptors, to be safe.

“Tell me about the Interceptors.”

She replaced the Renegade hologram with one of a sleek, chisel-shaped fighter. It was shorter than the X-wing, barely longer than it was wide, in fact. It had twin rapid-fire blasters, and an internal missile bay that could hold up to eight anti-fighter missiles. The thing was shielded, but its biggest defense was speed, getting propelled by two powerful engines.

I raised an eye at my designer, as the hologram rotated, and showed the top profile. She just shrugged with a smile, and said, “Well, I figured that our fighters, at least, ought to have a theme to them, to mark them as being different from the rest of the galaxy. And the A-wing was an interceptor in the movies, so…”

I shook my head. She was an unrepentant geek, but her designs had worked, and worked well in live-fire situations, so I didn’t want to hamper her too much. “Fine. I’ll allow it. The A-Pattern Interceptor is approved. What about your support type?”

“Well, I figured that, eventually, you would be wanting to scout out other systems. So, I wanted to develop something that you could use to scan them quietly. Corvettes like the Hellspawn are good, but these fighters will be even stealthier, and could even be used as first strike weapons!”

“Well, I’m all about first strike weapons. Always better to hit people first, than waiting for them to attack. Show me the goods.”

The design was similar to the ‘flying wing’ designs of stealth planes on Earth. The cockpit was a two-seat design, side by side, but there was room behind the seats for the pilots to sleep. The flight suits would take sweat and liquid waste and filter it, turning it into liquid water. Solid waste was more difficult to deal with, so there was a note to have the pilots on liquid rations while on duty.

A small cross-section, with no flat surfaces to bounce signals off of, and sensor-inhibiting paint layered on top of sensor-inhibiting structural materials made the craft incredibly stealthy, even against active scanners. Which was good, because there was no way that it was outrunning superiority fighters, much less interceptors, unless it went to FTL. After all, most of the ship was devoted to stealth and sensor equipment, plus the on-board weapons, so that didn’t leave much room for the power plant and engines. At best, it could reach speeds of .1c. While that was impressive, in absolute terms, interceptors could easily reach sublight speeds of .25c. There would be no running from interceptors without jumping out of the system entirely.

But the weapons on board were worth it, in my opinion. Well, ‘weapons’ was putting it nicely. The fighter’s secondary weapons were two internal bays that could hold missiles, torpedoes, or sensor buoys, depending on the mission. Just, not many of them, due to the size requirements. In fact, each of the bays would hold only a single torpedo, each, though they could hold up to six sensor buoys in each bay.

The main weapon for the fighter was a slightly less powerful version of the Hellfire Cannon fitted on the Hellspawn. The gun could fire once every two minutes, launching the 100kg projectile at .8c. There was only space for six rounds, compared to the fifty that the Hellspawn carried, but the wing had a sensor profile that was one one-thousandth the size of the already fairly stealthy corvette.

It was labeled as a ‘scout reconnaissance’ craft, but this design was more akin to a scout sniper than just a scout. I liked it, but it was going to be an expensive build, and the hardships the pilots would have to endure meant that it was not something that just anyone could use. On the other hand, it was just too useful to pass up.

“Right, we’ll call this the Ghost. Mark it as approved. We’ll probably only do a few of them, but they’ll be the eyes and ears for scouting new systems. Next would be shuttles.”

“Well, the two shuttles you already have are of a solid design, and are used around the galaxy for that reason. So, I didn’t so much change the shuttles as I did make upgrade packs for them which we could install on new shuttles as standard. You’ll lose 5% off the max speed for the converted ones, but they’ll at least be armed with forward cannons, and the shield can be turned into a cloaking device, making them invisible to most scans. Using weapons or other high power draws will deactivate the cloak, unfortunately, but it should allow for the ships to hide, at least a little.”

“Approve the modified version for military use, mark the unarmed one as civilian use. We’ll rotate the two existing ones to full civilian use once we get the military replacements.”

“Very good, Master. Now, the assault shuttle I went with a different design, one currently used by the Great Horde. They like their assault shuttles heavily armed and armored, so that they can support ground assaults. They also have them set up so that they can cut a hole in enemy hulls to conduct hostile boarding operations.”

The assault shuttle was indeed heavily armed, having forward cannons, missile launchers, and a rear turret, to discourage any fighters trying to get on its tail. Gravitic stabilizers backed up by physical clamps allowed the shuttle to catch the side of an enemy ship, and hold itself there while the plasma cutter opened a hole in the hull. The docking ring provided a seal, to prevent loss of atmosphere.

That would let me send a strike force to capture the next group of pirates that showed up, without forcing them to land someplace I controlled. Since I couldn’t exactly go back and repeat the ruse I did with the kovalds now that we were expanding into space, and people knew who we were, this was the only way I’d be able to get actual news about the aliens, and their intentions. Good intelligence was necessary to protect my property, and my people.

Samiess had also come up with some improvements to the base design. In addition to the Grethak-class shuttle’s normal load-out, she added basic stealth systems, and a short-range teleporter. It wouldn’t be good for more than one hundred meters, but that could easily penetrate a ship’s hull, if it wasn’t shielded, or allow the ship to land ground troops without risking more ground fire than was necessary.

Of course, fighters and shuttles would only go so far. “Right, approve the shuttle as the Ran-Variant Grethak-class Assault Shuttle. I’m sure they’ll come in handy. So, next up, I want to hear about what your ideas are for the rest of the fleet.”