The hyperspace field took several seconds to surround the Cold Reaver and Ashley watched the acceleration rate of the ship multiply evenly across the hull sensors. All sections of the ship were accelerating at the same rate, they were safe. She locked the controls and sighed deeply.
“God, Leland's clueless,” Larry stated under his breath, shaking his head.
She nodded. “Captain always had trouble finding good tactical people. I'm starting to understand how he felt. Still, he probably saved our asses, barely.”
“Those Eden ships were taking full on hits from our turrets without slowing down. I hate to admit it, but you're right,” Finn confirmed.
“How is the damage, really?” Ashley asked.
“We're missing the main debarkation ramp in the front, three emitters are gone, one engine is down to nine degrees of rotation and the ventral turret is gone, just gone. I can't tell how bad the shield emitters are for sure but we're missing at least three.”
“Captain's gonna kill me,” she groaned.
“Just blame it on Leland,” Larry shrugged.
“Can't do that. I picked my crew from who was available, he's my responsibility. I'm going to make sure I'm in the room when Stephanie sees his performance review though.”
“She's going to tear him apart.”
Ashley nodded. “He's been spending all his simulation time in fighter jockey scenarios or at the bar. I think he might get put off this time.”
“I'll be there to see him down the gangway,” Larry said quietly. “I won't be blowing kisses either.”
Morning Briefing
It began in the conference room at the front of the bridge with Laura delivering her summary of her understanding of the Triton as a developer of new technologies. All eyes and ears were trained keenly on the relative newcomer in the golden light coming through the transparent hull as she began. “ The Triton was designed and built to be a hard target on her own and with a squadron of fighters on patrol whenever she's running at sunlight speed it would take a large strike force to get through to her. I don't know what the Sol Defence Forces were afraid of, but judging from the redundant systems, extra armour and heavy weaponry built into every fighter or gunship design made to run off of her and the ship herself, they were definitely afraid of something.” Laura said before sitting down near one end of the bridge meeting room table. The view along the left hand wall was of the stellar nursery, the angle they viewed it on that day brought out shades of yellow and blue. All the senior officers except for Ashley were present.
“What could tha' be?” asked Frost. “This ship's harder than the Aboris moons.”
“Well, imagine being sent out on mission for half a century. You don't know if you'll see home during that time, and you know for a fact that you'll be hundreds, thousands of light years away from anyone who can help you if you run into trouble. If you run into a combat situation there's no back up. Few human organizations would actually spend the time or go to the trouble to capture or destroy this ship, so I'm thinking they were preparing to meet up with another race entirely. What's more, there are a lot of rooms made for diplomacy, they made sure that they had both options covered; peace and war. This ship is made to be Earth away from Earth, politically if this were still a Sol System owned ship this would count as one of their territories. ”
“This ship counts as a territory? How does that make sense?” Asked Cynthia.
“In the same sense that an island or a space station equipped with an embassy makes sense. The only difference is that this one can move. The other reasons why I'd say this ship is built around a model of fear is it's hardness to natural forces like meteor strikes, intense radiation and gravitational forces. The architects of this vessel wanted to allay everyone's jitters where living in space was concerned, so single people felt comfortable in her berths and families could feel at home and safe in the larger quarters,” Laura brought up a holographic schematic above the table and went on. “The hull was laid down in four sections as far as I can tell, and using highly refined materials they built the civilian habitation center first, designating it the Botanical Gallery. They should have called it the park, considering its size. The area around it came after and it includes two of the generators, three berths and critical systems, then there's another layer over top that extending to the inner command deck where the officers quarters are located. The thickest, most energy and matter resistant metal surrounds that layer. That same layer extends around the Botanical Gallery and two of the main reactors.”
“Then there's the gunnery deck and hangars?” Frost finished for her.
“That's right, but even they are surrounded by a two meter thick inner hull.”
“Figures we'd be set up in the most dangerous place. My shooters sit right between those double hulls.”
“I wouldn't go that far. In the thinnest points of the outer hull there are five meters of solid material that is specially formulated to get more resistant as more energy and pressure are applied to it. Previous estimates on thickness were based on what we were seeing from the inside, but since the exterior survey was completed I was able to finalize the analysis. Over top the outer hull there are three different types of shield emitters made to work separately or in concert. Wheeler only used one since the others require more training. Conventional shielding, using combined particle and energy emitters were his choice because they're easy to understand, the parts never need to be deployed and they defend against most weapons equally. This ship is equipped with an antigravity shield as well as another hardened energy field I'm still studying. Together they take up a lot of power, but are partially self sustaining since the energy is made to interact and they'll be incredibly difficult to penetrate. I'll also be calibrating over twenty layers of refractive shielding, so we can prevent all light based weapons from hitting us. Most of these systems are made to somehow absorb energy from the outside when they're calibrated and deployed properly, but considering the risks of bringing those functions into play, of creating a feedback across all the emitters, I'm taking it slow. I want to use the shields properly but it'll take time to fully understand them. It would be faster if I had more experience with this kind of shielding but Freeground just started implementing energy shielding less than a decade ago.”
“That all goes down as soon as someone gets an EMP weapon through, right?” Asked Alice.
“No, in fact the hardened energy shield would continue to operate along with all the other critical systems, Liam can go into why in a minute, but my point in all of this is that the Triton was made to be outnumbered. I'm starting to realize why anyone whose survived a fight with Sol Defence considers themselves so lucky. This ship is more heavily armed and shielded than seven or eight vessels in her class, with all the shield systems up and running along with the inherent cloaking properties built into her hull, she's not only hard to find, she's also hard to damage at all.”
“If that's the case, why don't we see other military outfits build ships like this?” Cynthia asked.
“I think Liam could answer that better than I can,” Laura said, nodding at the older gentleman.
Unlike the other officers, who all showed up in the vacsuit uniforms made specifically for their departments, he wore his blue robes to meetings. The Captain had privately insisted he do so, as it was a fair sign of rank on the ship as much as any. Liam had become a spiritual advisor to many crew members and his time was in great demand. “Thank you Laura. The reason why no one outside of the Sol System builds ships like this is simple. It costs at least twenty times what it would to build this compared to a carrier of similar class. That's not even considering how the core systems are built. The computing and command management is set up on a crystalline storage and organic processing system. Quite simply the thinking power behind each system is a self sustaining gel that contains microscopic organisms that calculate at an incredible speed. The crystal that contains them is a data storage system that changes microscopically.”