Isani glared at him, then finally sighed and relented. “Fine! You can have the system installed. But you will not try to use it again until we fix the problem.”
“Of course. I am not suicidal.”
“Then let us go on to the next point on the agenda.” Isani said, then cleared his throat. “The Titan, Tiamat, Specter, and Lighthouse will all be finished by the end of August. The Valhalla, Twilight, Retribution, my Invictus, and Ras’tar by the end of September. Your ship will be the last to be finished. The Harbinger will be done by the end of October.” Adrian was a bit needled that Isani’s ship Invictus would be finished before his but he nodded.
“Good, the Sowir are still waiting, but I don’t think that it will be much longer now. They have over sixteen hundred ships not counting their auxiliaries, and the influx of ships had slowed considerably.”
“Yes I agree. But even if they started towards Nelus today it will still take them about six months to get there as they are limited to hyperspace. We will have plenty of time to finish the ships and get there at the start of their siege. Trans-lane travel form Warpath to Nelus is twelve days.” Isani added.
“I doubt that they will wait until the end of the year. In a two, maybe three months they will be ready.” Adrian said. “Okay, let’s see what’s next on the agenda…” He quickly moved on to the next topic on his implant. “The MD cannon.” He said looking at Chief Lasani.
Lasani cleared her throat and with a flick of a hand changed the holo image to that of the weapon.
“Well, we ran into a bit of a problem. We still have no idea how the Ra’a’zani main weapon does what it does, if we had recovered the weapon intact we might have been able to replicate it. Our version of their weapon doesn’t “eat” through matter it impacts with, but rather weakens the molecular bonds. We don’t have the technology yet to break the bonds outright, but a weakened enemy hull will be much easier to defeat.”
“I knew that already.” Adrian added.
“Yes, well the problem we ran into is power. We greatly underestimated the power needed to fire the weapon. We can’t mount it on most of our ships.” Lasani said.
“Most of our ships?” Adrian asked.
“The only two ships that have enough power requirements are Titan and Tiamat, those two ships were designed as fleet’s bulwarks and their job is to take on enemy fire. For that reason we added three extra generators to help with the power requirements of the field defenses. The two ships can fire the molecular disruption cannon, but only if we also add dedicated power batteries for the weapons. And even if we did add them, they will only be able to fire once every ten minutes, that is the time needed for the ship’s power generators to recharge the battery enough for the weapon to be fired, without compromising the other systems.”
“Can’t we put the batteries on other ships?” Adrian asked.
“No, we can’t add any more power sources on the other ships, the Tiamat and the Titian were designed for more, and the others just don’t have the room. Which means that the recharge time would be around an hour. Perhaps if we ever get more efficient power generators, we could add them. For now there is no point, the weapon itself will not damage the opponent, just weaken the hull integrity.” Lasani said.
“I really wanted those cannons on all ships…” Adrian said disappointed.
“The two ships will be enough. All of our weaponry has been upgraded ways ahead of what we had thirty years ago.” Isani added.
“You’re right. Anything else that we need to know?” Adrian asked
“Not at the moment Clan Leader, everything else is on schedule.” Lasani responded.
“Good.”
Sitting cross-legged in his quarters, Adrian entered his mind space. In there he was attempting to train his brain to focus on many things at the same time. Trying to push his abilities to the point where he could use the Watchtower. The interface itself wasn’t necessary for any other fleet. But Adrian’s fleet was constructed with a completely different approach to battles. Each of the ships was specialized, each had its own strength and weakness.
The Tiamat and the Titan were the largest ships, each was 2900 meters long, between 800 and 1200 meters wide and between 300 and 600 high. The largest ships that the Empire had ever produced. Both had ri-steel hulls and field defenses. The ships were massive with the purpose of drawing the enemy fire to them, shielding the rest of the fleet. Their offensive capabilities were traded in for increased defensive capabilities. Their rail guns were capable of screening the entire area in front of the fleet, their point defense lasers and anti-missile measures the best that the Empire had.
Tiamat had flowing organic line, its front narrow and short, and its back was wide and tall. A few of the designers joked about how it looked like a dragon’s head, and sometimes when Adrian looked at it for a while he could see it. Titan like its commander appeared as if it had a carapace. The hull was shaped as if it had a series of overlapping shells, although it was an illusion only.
Specter was the smallest of the ships, at 1000 meters long. Its hull was made of highly light absorbing ceramics, coated with materials that prevented most scans. The Specter was a stealth ship, its offensive capabilities geared towards striking from the shadows with a single devastating attack, as well as moving around the battlefield unnoticed placing traps.
Its greatest weapon however was the mean by which it moved without being detected. The Specter had gravity drives, based on the drives of the small shuttle that was brought from Sol. The shuttle was built by the League on Earth during the Great War, it was most likely a prototype as no other was ever found. It wasn’t even finished, the obvious room for weapons were left empty as the people working on it died in the war. It was left forgotten until the resistance found it.
The gravity drives worked on the principle of creating a gravitational field that exerted itself on the already present gravity in a system. From planets, suns, and moons, it moved by amplifying and reducing the gravitational influence on the ship. And it was undetectable by any of the conventional sensors. The reasons why no other ship had these drives were many, but the most important one was power requirements. It took a lot of power to run the drives, and the bigger the ship the more power it needed. Which was also one of the reasons for Specter’s smaller size. For now it wasn’t viable for their larger vessels.
Lighthouse was probably the most unique of the ships as it had very little offensive capability. Instead, the 2000 meter long ship was a ‘sensor ship’. The ship had twelve of the most advanced sensory drones that the Empire was capable of producing, with three Ai’s working in concert to interpret and gather all the information.
Valhalla was a pure offensive ship, 2200 meters long with the focus on beam weapons. It had no kinetic weapons, and only a half of the missile load that the other ships had. But its particle beam cannons were the most powerful that they could produce.
Twilight and Retribution were more like conventional ships, each 2000 meters long, with equal loads of all of the Empire’s weapons. Kinetic, laser, particle and missile.
Invictus and Ras’tar were each 2300 meters long, and their weapons were more geared towards missiles, with a myriad of missile types geared for different situations. But they too had other conventional weapons.
The last was Harbinger, Adrian’s ship. Its weapons too were balanced, with a single rail gun that ran half the length of the ship, capable of cracking a small moon. 2800 meters of pure destructive power. It had a secondary energy and data transfer grid throughout the ship. Besides the usual cables and electrical conductors, the Harbinger had a radically new biotechnology. The secondary grid had been ‘grown’ into the ship. Biological, genetically engineered superconductors that passed information at the speed of light, and were also capable of transferring energy while also keeping their temperature low. With that system the Harbinger was highly resistant to any kind of an EMP attack. Harbinger had a strange design, when observed from above it had an arrowhead shape. In its middle, or the core of the ship that spread from the end to the front tip was needle shaped and made out of pure ri-steel. The two of the arrow head’s “wings” were combined ri-steel and most advanced ceramic based material they possessed.