[b][i]ED Explorer[/i][/b]

As the noise subsided and one could hear their own words again, the newly arrived pilots got to look around. Surrounded by a sea of red and gray, it would appear the only one who even noticed their arrival was the Admiral, if it was even her. The hangar appeared smaller than the Narix expected, although they could see several large gates that could have led to other parts. It was reminiscent of a land-based airfield, in a way. Good thing to avert boardings, halt fires and atmospheric bleed in case of a breach, but it introduced unnecessary parking maneuvers into the mix.

“Welcome aboard, pilots. I’m admiral Cygnus, commanding officer of the Explorer.” Cygnus introduced herself, looking at each of the pilots as she did. They were [i]all[/i] towering over her, these creatures. “As part of the OEP, you will be receiving your orders directly from me for the duration of your stay. Let us start by getting you situated on the ship and fleet you will be serving at, then we’ll get to the tools of your trade. SPECIALIST! Please show the rookies to their quarters and then to engineering, the Master engineer will be taking care of them for now.” the admiral barked at the nearest deckhand. “Do you have any inquiries you wish to make before we part for the time being?”

Taking orders straight from an admiral? That was new. As were the looks the Faira was giving them. One would’ve thought she would be used to their appearance by now.
“Where are the fighters we are to use? Not sure about your species, but Narix pilots are expected to service their craft when possible, se we’d like to start learning their ins and outs as soon as possible. All we need is a place to drop our things for now.” The legate said, “Other than that, nothing more sir.”

“I’ll say it plain, pilot, our fleet has no fighters as you know them. Hence why engineering is your first stop after you get your gear stowed. You have sizeable budget allocated to you as well as engineers available to build the best craft you can come up with using our technological basis. I can not guarantee the serial production of what you come up with, but we want to see the potential of such craft. Now, off you go.” the admiral answered, “Oh, and your service times were matched with what you are used to form your ship, including your meal and down time, so hopefully your stay here will be as comfortable as we can make it. Share with the specialist where you want to receive the meals, whether your quarters or the morale sector. I or my XO are available on the intercom should you require anything not in Engineering’s power.”

“Noted, sir!” the trio saluted and, once more slinging their bags over their shoulders, followed the specialist.

“Hear that lads?” praetorian Iris nudged Lindus with his elbow, visibly excited, “Remember all the long evenings of complaining about the location of the gear lever in the Marauders? And the atrocious grounding pin connectors? That is null and void, we get to design our own ships using alien tech! How’s that for a sod who accidentally scraped the paint off his fighters belly on landing approach once?”

“Do you think the Faira would make treetop-resistant paint and primer just for you?”  The three shared a laugh.

“Enlighten me, specialist, but this ‘morale sector’, what’s that?” Lindus inquired. “A recreational area, a library, a propagandist stand? A little bit of both?”

“I do not know how much you have been told about us, Praetorian, but this ship is not only our service station, but also our home. The morale sector is a small city in the middle of the ship. As you said, you can find a little bit of everything there, from environment simulators through hobby stalls to entertainment centers. It is sa place to unwind while off duty and not in recharge, so that people do not go crazy crammed into this can.” the specialist shared, “Your quarters have been built not far from it, although that is more of an issue of available hull volume.”

Turning the corner, the four of them found themselves in a room with a sole Faira in it, with a red circle marked on the floor and a set of green and red lights in the ceiling. Right now, the green was on, but as soon as they entered, the Faira that was in the room tapped a control on her suit. “Morale sector.” the Specialist announced, ushering the pilots into the circle as soon as the green light changed to red. Once they were in there, the other Faira reached out with her arms, and the group was enveloped by a mindstorm. Faster than their eyes could perceive, they were transported to a room much like the previous one, only in different part of the ship. “Not far now.” the specialist said, leading out tf the room.

Immediately following the mindspace transport ordeal, the Narix adopted a wider, lower stance, scanning their new surroundings as they pieced together the events that just transpired.
“I believe we might be looking at a way of dealing with my wifes fear of elevators.” Prefect Iris muttered dryly and returned to his normal stature. “Looks like this tour will have its downsides after all, before we get used to these oddities, that is.”

“Specialist, you mentioned hobby stalls earlier.” Lindus asked upon his recovery from the surprise, “How do your people usually spend your downtime, be it civilians or military personnel?”

“We govern ourselves by [i]being[/i] a military stare, Praetorian. There are no civilians among us. Citizen is the entry rank in the navy, which you receive upon reaching adulthood. Everyone is expected to lend a hand in defending  their ship against boarding at the very least.” the Specialist explained, “As for free time, to each her own. I imagine it is the same with your species. Some of us like to watch documentaries, some like to tinker, some just want to lie down in a well lit and warm place. I work maintaining spacecraft most of the time, so I like to engage my mind with strategy games. I wonder if someone made a modpack yet that would add your fleet into the simulators.” the tech said, the last more for herself than the Narix.

“Unlikely. A month ago, we had no idea of each others existence, so information information regarding active military hardware is closely guarded. It’s for that same reason your ships aren’t in our training simulations yet.” the praetorian offered, grateful for the sensitivity of Narix hearing.

Although the idea of mass drafts wasn’t new to the Narix, it would only be implemented if Naris was threatened, and within certain limits. “What does your formal training look like? Wonder how it compares to ours.” Even with one year of infantry training and four more depending on the individuals specialisation, some Narix thought the general population wouldn’t be of much help in such an event.

They have arrived at the quarters, and the Specialist opened each of the cabins, revealing quarters built to spec with what the Narix were used to on their own ships. There were also Faira looking suits waiting for them inside - a recent development courtesy of the scientists on the Alchemist and Faira’Hexus. “A few rules before I take you to see the Master Engineer. Wear those at all times - in an emergency or through less stable jump nodes, you can be tossed about. They also contain personal computers and IDs to let you through security checkpoints on the ship.”

After leaving the pilots to change and set their gear up, she gathered them again and marched them back to the transport room. “Training depends on the branch you are talented in, both where mindspace usage and general skills are concerned. I am skilled with my hands, so I was trained to be a service technician for strikecraft. Those bravest of us are usually made into Marines. Faira that can outsmart a hundred others are selected for naval command. If you are lucky to have been born an Oracle, you’ll be spending a few decades under another Oracle’s tutelage to learn how to recognize mindspace echoes.” she shrugged.

Someone out there, maybe a god, but more likely people from the Alchemist, were looking out for them. Vanguard standard quarters, although lacking the pilots bunkroom atmosphere, with increased gravity and orange ambient lighting, what more was there to ask for? Even the new suits looked more like a modified PMAPS than an original design, making the act of putting them on and getting them operational a matter of two minutes, despite the vastly different software and user interface. They were even compatible with Narix non-invasive neural interfaces. Ditching their bags and Narix suits onto the beds for the time being, they followed their guide to their next destination.

“My thanks to the engineers that put these together.” Lindus examined the suit as they walked. “We’ll just have to field engineer a way to attach our weapon holsters onto them later. I assume they double as flight suits?”

“I can not answer that, I wasn’t informed on your assignment here as much. The Master engineer will likely know all about them though.” the specialist mentioned. “The ME will be waiting for you on the other side. Enjoy your tour here.” The Faira saluted them off and seemed to vanish as the Narix were transported to engineering.
On the other side, the smallest Faira they have seen so far was waiting for them, barely reaching to their breast height. “Ah, Narix! Good good! I am Master Engineer Casei. Here to get acquainted with your equipment I presume?”

“Correct presumption.” Achzarit responded upon making their introductions, feeling a little odd, having to look [i]down[/i] at the Faira. First the admiral and now this one, why did they even built their doorways so big? “If you don’t mind, we’d like to start with these suits.” he added, tapping the chestpiece. “For starters, how long will the internal air supply last? I assume they are vacuum sealed.”

“Ah, yes, come have a seat, we’ll need visual aids anyway.” Casei lead to a small break room. As they went, they could see the six massive reactor units powering the ship they were on, along with additional equipment they could only guess at. “Your suits were manufactured by the blueprints sent to us from the diplomats that were overseeing their designs. They are very basic in function, thus far providing only NBC protection and motorized motion from physical standpoint, and have a personal information system. The air supply in itself will last about three hours, but there is a CO2 scrubbing system in the suit that extends that by two hours, and is interchangeable even in contaminated space.” she answered the first inquiry.

“Very nice indeed.” Achzarit mumbled. Up to five hours of airtime. That was a significant improvement over the Narix thirty minutes. It showed though, as the suit was noticeably bulkier. Might have to design bigger cockpits. “How hard will it be to enable the suits to connect with a fighter to provide some basic functions, such as certain HUD elements and communications?”

“We would use a full virtual reality rather than HUD…” Casei said, tapping a few controls on the break rooms intercom. Suddenly, the entire room was darkened and a projection of the space around the fleet was shown, with the explorer in the center. “I have been giving it some thought, and I just can not agree to the viewports on your ships when you can have an armored capsule. And if you are projecting the space around, you can as well project gauges. As far as interconnectivity goes, it should certainly be possible, what for though? Extended life support I presume?”

“Virtual reality seems nice until I have to find an actual switch in the cockpit. And we agree on the glass canopy thing. That’s why our fighters don’t have them. The Pillager is an older design, that’s why the pilot and gunner still sit in glazed cabins. The ships we fly, the Marauder-class interceptor and the Raider-class heavy fighter, have internal cockpits, ejectable in case of emergency. Except we use external cameras and LED screens to simulate a canopy. Regarding interconnectivity, not so much life support, that’s just two air tubes, more for connecting the microphone and headset of the suit with the fighters communication system. Narix fighters also use neural control for certain things, and the man-machine interface is a part of the mask we wear under our helmets.” He removed his helmet, showing the faceless mask with wiring woven into the fabric at the sides and back of the head. “A physical connection is more reliable.”

“May I see?” Casei asked, snapping her fingers at the mask. “How does it work? Reading electrical impulses in your nervous  system?” She made a guess. The Faira used a similar interface in their suits, but she could not fathom the need for switches if such an interface was available. “Maybe we are going about this form the wrong end. I want you to dream, people. I want you to tell me what you want, and unbind yourselves form what you [i]know[/i].” she suggested.

“Of course.” Achzarit disconnected two small connectors at the sides of his neck and handed her the mask. “And you are correct. Specific impulses are mapped to specific actions. For example, when we engage magboots and want to walk, the suit recognises that and switches the heel and toe magnets on and off to allow that. The problem there lies with your subconsciousness. Take me for example: First year of my live career, I messed up reentry. All went well until I lost lift at 8500 meters and before I levelled out, I fell 7100 meters. Now, I knew what I had to do to stabilise the fighter, but there was a figurative voice in the back of my mind telling me to forget the fighter and reach for the loud handles. If the neural interface controlled ejection, it would’ve recognised that unwilling impulse and ejected the capsule. Now imagine what that could do if it controlled weapons.”

“As for what we want? To check off the basics, internal cockpit that can be ejected if need be. You’ll have a hard time finding someone who will fly without some ejection system. We are used to a dual stick control setup, right stick for turning, left stick for translation and throttle. Primary weapon hardpoints should be able to pivot, allowing free aiming within a certain margin. Primary weapons themselves shouldn’t be fixed. The option to choose his or her setup leads to happy pilots, and happy pilots perform much better. Thrust vectoring would be welcome. What kind of engines do you use?” He outlined the basic Narix standard.

“Alright, propulsion first then. We use the plasma driver on our current drones - It is basically a subsystem we use to generate and feed plasma into our weaponry, the only difference is that we load a different characteristic into the device to produce more controllable stream rather than as large quantity as it can, and then we accelerate it through an electromagnetic field. As far as I have been briefed, single one of these units would be able to accelerate the craft you came in near the limits of what your physiology can survive. As for thrust vectoring, we find that for space combat, that is highly unnecessary. The polar moments of something like a fighter are so tiny a gyro and RCS can turn it on a dime anyhow. Would that suffice?”

“Two arms, two legs, four fingers per hand AND pretty much the same engines? I did not expect that when I signed up for the Fifth Fleet.”

“There IS another thing to consider…” Casei interrupted, “Operational range. The plasma driver requires a rather sizeable tank to sustain it for any meaningful length of time. What we use on our capital ships are ion drives, which can be made to scale for strikecraft without any decrease in efficiency. It might be worth putting this system onto the craft for long travels - escort missions, patrol duties and the like, so you do not have to call for refuel every day or so.”

“Our fighters can hold patrols several hours long. We never stray too far from our mothership, so frequent refueling isn’t an issue. Not to mention you don’t have to burn the entire way, that also saves a lot. As for thrust vectoring, it allows you to control the fighter without sufficient speed in atmosphere. One of the things that allowed me to save my ship all those years ago.”

“Ah.” Casei said, laying her head into her palm, “I see where the problem is. You are still thinking with the operation parameters of your fleet. Well, let me share with you what you might expect on this tour. We have few ships in the fleet, and only the Explorer is capable of taking on strike craft. Not staying far from the mothership will simply not be possible. Much the same, you won’t ever be deployed into atmosphere. What you can expect are long missions with little logistical support, mostly centered on being the extended arm and precision strikers for line ships, and escort for capital ships, as well as deep space patrols.” she shared.

[i]No hangars on smaller ships? Sounds to me like a design flop.[/i] Iris thought, but chose not to share.

“That would explain the misunderstanding.” Achzarit nodded, “How would your command react with a squadron of fighters that can’t fly in atmosphere if for some reason, say search and rescue, you had to descend into one? Leave your comrades to their own devices? But back to the issue of staying close to motherships, yes, in that case, ion drives sound more sensible. When you say ‘long missions’, can you give us an example? Not sure about your species, but our performance decreases after several hours. And we have to sleep once every thirty or so hours. For extreme missions, have you given any thought to two man craft?”

Looking at the three Narix with an amused glance, Casei Mindjumped onto the seat next to her. “There, problem of crew being stuck on a planet solved. We do not have any examples of planetary warfare in our history, so I can not really answer your question about operating in such conditions. Most likely, the cruiser class would be tasked with those instead. That is something you should be asking the CO, not me, in any event.” the engineer thought out loud.

“Thus far, we have only operated with drones, but in theory, a Faira pilot would be able to easily handle a weeklong patrol. Most of which can naturally be done on autopilot, so if done in shifts, there is ample time to rest. Longest combat deployment we expect is thirty minutes, by that any battle should be either resolved or the ships withdrawn and the strategic situation assessed.” the engineer quoted their handbook. “Two man craft should not be too hard to produce, but is it necessary? In a wing of four, two can be on watch, and two can rest to be woken up for combat if necessary.”

“Right, you can do that. Some of us are bound to more primitive methods.”

“As for weeklong patrols, I can’t imagine sitting fixed in a cockpit for a day, let alone a week, not to mention the additional room for food, water and ways of dealing with waste you would need. As I understand it, you require specific light to function. We need to drink two to three liters of water and eat a small animal every day to survive.” he indicated about thirty centimeters with his hands, “Our bodies don’t process 100% of that, so the waste has to leave the body, preferably not into the suit. Without water, we die in four days and are useless at the start of day two. When it comes to food, make that seven days and start of day two. There is a reason why even our frigates have a hangar bay, albeit a small one.”

“That may be another point to bring up with the admiral then, if your deployments have any specific limits that our fleet will not at present be able to satisfy. I’m not sure we will be able to design and build a support ship in time, hm….” she said, having the room display the model of a standard Faira tactical transport. “Maybe if we added a small airlock here? Or perhaps pull the entire encapsulated cockpit on board.” she thought out loud. “It won’t be able to accompany you, but it can jump great distances quickly and should be available on request within minutes.”

Achzarits head sunk into his palms. “Damn it. One would have thought this would cross the diplomats minds. To put it plainly, ten hours we can do, fifteen if the flight isn’t too crazy.” The specialist than got an idea and started brainstorming. With such a support craft, the situation seemed to be salvageable. “That… could work. Pulling the cockpit on board is too complicated, a docking collar would do. One ventral and one dorsal to allow servicing of two fighters at once, maybe?”

“Well, we are here to learn both from and [i]about[/i] each other. You don’t know our admiral, she might even have the information and just chose not to tell us to provoke neural activity. I would not gloom over it too much. But, yes, this would be a good enough stopgap before we develop a dedicated support ship. I wouldn’t think pulling the cockpit too hard, in fact I’d suggest making the entire design modular, so the maintenance crews both on the destroyer and that might be sent with the support ship could exchange subsystems and armor plates to increase the operational time of the craft itself.” she suggested further.

“Well, that is life support and propulsion taken care of more or less, details can be hammered out later when we have more context. What next? Defense and offense?” Casei asked.

“Very well, what’s on hand? Our go-to weapons are a rapid-firing 50 millimeter gun for strike craft and a slower 75 millimeter cannon for harder targets, plus a variety of missiles and rockets. That lets us build a loadout for any conceivable situation. What are your ships armed with? I assume something similar? As for defense, are there any specific things we need to learn to utilize the shields properly? Our fighters rely on armoring, countermeasures and maneuverability.”

“We are used to energy weapons rather than projectile weapons due to logistical issues. The same plasma driver we use for propulsion can be used to feed our heavy cannon. Then there is a variety of electromagnetic cannons. We use optical lasers on ships, but the same principle can be applied through the entire spectrum, masers, xasers, infrared…” Casei listed out, “I can’t give you an ASB equivalent unfortunately, it is just too large.”

“As for missiles, again, logistical support is an issue, not to mention that we would need to develop a new propulsion system as scaling it down that much is not possible. I’ll talk to the CO to see if the Lanatos could send some samples over.”

“We don’t have much experience with armor, it was always considered too expensive. What you need to know about the shield system is not much - It forms an ion shell and a magnetosphere around the craft, stopping all damage but the most energetic and sizeable projectiles from reaching the hull. We have the habit of splitting them into control quadrants, so you can boost power in specific direction, for example rear when you are on the run.” the engineer said, accompanying the explanation with visuals from the training manual. “The benefit compared to armor is that the shield regenerates. If you disengage from combat for two minutes, you come back as good as new.”

“There’s really no need to use missiles unless you want to engage more targets at once or over vast distances, especially if you can’t supply them. Our missiles still use chemical rockets for propulsion and a gyro for maneuvering. Not leading targets might take some getting used to.”

“Unless your reverse thrusters are woefully weak, there is no real need to turn your back to the enemy when retreating. If you run facing them, you can use your weapons to explain to them that following you is a bad idea.” Iris interjected. “But such a system will be appreciated. Just how much power does it require?”

“You can decide that yourself. The distribution system is controlled by the pilot, and all three of the key power hungry systems have their own buffers, meaning that for a limited time, you can use engine overcharge, weapons or shields with no power fed to them altogether. In a bad situation, you can reallocate all power form weapons to shield to last long enough for your wingmen to get there to help. In worst case, you can release the reactor safeties for a limited time to recharge the buffers quickly.” Casei explained. “Speaking  of which, what power source do you use on your craft?”

“Depends on the craft. The Pillager uses its engines to generate power, but more modern ships use small supercritical water reactors. Making those small enough was the biggest problem the designers have faced. They managed in the end, but they only last a short time before the fuel capsules need to be swapped out. Same story for capital ships, but size wasn’t an issue there. What would happen to the reactor if the safeties were off for too long? More importantly, how long would it take to start melting or irradiate the cockpit?”

“We use fusion reactors with controlled fuel feed. Disabling the safety basically overrides the feed and raises the temperature in the reactor. Without any limit, you are basically sitting on a fusion bomb. A meltdown depends on how higher the temperature gets. Raise it by ten percent, you can probably last a minute. Raise it by fifty, you better re engage the safety as soon as your buffers are charged. Raise it by seventy and your species will cook before the reactor becomes a problem in the first place.” Casei shrugged. “We used a single piece in the drones, but since there will be lives at stake in the new craft, we might want to make the craft slightly bigger and double the reactor. It would give you redundancy, and if needed, stronger output.”

“There is another thing to consider with doubling the reactor and enlarging the craft: maintenance time and costs. Storage and manipulation could also become more difficult. How big are your drones, anyway?”

“The Proton is ten meters in length, four in width and two in height. They are mostly housed in racks in the Explorer’s hangar, which are adjustable so storage of the new classes should not be hard. If we need to make space, the drones are unmanned and can be clamped onto the outer armor. We in fact use this at times when we expect to need to deploy them quickly. In any event, should their reactors prove sufficient, enough manufacturing capacity exists to replace them quickly if necessary, but they are reliable units thus far.”

“Yes, in that case, they will need to be bigger. The Marauder was meant to be small and that’s 19 by 13 by 6 meters. Granted, lack of missile banks and everything necessary for atmospheric flight will allow us to make them smaller. How do you launch them? I don’t think I’ve seen any launch tubes anywhere, so I assume you just fly them out of the hangar door?”

“Aye, or as I mentioned, from the outer hull. Since they are automated to a large degree, they can fly out in a tightly packed formation. Twelve launches per second form a single exit, and the Meteor class has two.”

“For obvious reasons that number will decrease with manned launches, unless you plan to launch automatically and then surrender control to the pilot. Unless that’s the case, it would be best to store the manned ships near the exits. Do you disable gravity for launch, or can you make the fighter support its weight and make it VTOL? We have to go to zero G for retrieving our pilots.”

“It will decrease with the craft size as well, we won’t be able to launch that many next to each other. Yes, the hangar goes zero-g for launch, although a small shield generator can hold the atmosphere. The noise is the most uncomfortable thing ever when you forget to put on your helmet. You only make that mistake once.” she frowned. Her antennae still rang she could swear.

“How do you forget a helmet? Ear plugs I can understand, but helmet?” Such a mistake would cost a Narix their life.

“When you’re a ship’s engineer, you sometimes need to crawl into very tiny spaces. I needed to see somewhere and the helmet was too big to fit.” Casei shrugged, but shrank back in her seat a little in shame. “As I said, you only make that mistake once.”

“So, life support, propulsion, offense, defense and power generation: check. Since we’re not going into atmosphere, we don’t have to bother with wheeled landing gear, control surfaces and the like.”

“I would not say check on defense. What about the missiles? You mentioned some countermeasures?” Casei pointed out.

“I thought we would be using whatever you are. There are several types. For radar guided missiles, our fighters are equipped with chaff dispensers. Chaff are strips of aluminium foil. A cloud of these creates a false contact. Combine that with radar absorbing coating and hull shape meant to dissipate, rather than reflect radio waves and the chaff simply creates a better target than the fighter. We also use radar warning receivers that alert the pilot when a radar is looking at him. IR seeking missiles are more of a problem in space. Flares are the go-to way of dealing with those. The fighter launches several heated ceramic blocks. In theory, the missile will prefer the hotter flares over the colder fighter, but this technology started in atmospheric conditions and they lose effectivity in space. Active jammer can be employed, but much like active sensors, they let everyone know where you are.”

“We [i]could[/i] of course use what we have, which is an EW AI. From what I’ve been told, you’re not too keen on those. Otherwise, we didn’t really bother that much, as the doctrine for the drones is to use them an-masse and they are relatively cheap to replace. With the lack of a pilot, they can also pull much sharper maneuvers and accelerate faster, so simply evading or having another drone shoot the missile down was deemed good enough. The AI would be able to use the strike craft’s avionics package to cancel out the lock of the missile easily enough, and instead of the flares, I’d vent the fusion product form the reactor behind the craft, that will create a cloud of very heated helium that could both confuse the targeting, or downright destroy the missile if it flies through.”

“Truly we are not, the most extreme argument against them is the fear of waking up one day to hear your ship say ‘no’ to you. But a simple, dumb AI would take off a lot of workload from the pilot. Canceling out the lock is what the jammer does. Every time the RWR receives a radar pulse, the jammer emits a pulse. The craft, and anything behind it in that direction, will be covered in random noise, but it lets the radar operator know something doesn’t want to be seen out there. The best we’ve been able to do is have the jammer switch frequencies to make homing in on it harder, but that makes it less effective. Venting the reactor could work, but how long will it take for the cloud to dissipate? The flares burn for up to 40 seconds.”

“That would depends on the venting nozzle and if anything else was employed, like magnetic field. I’d need to know the hull shape ideally to optimize the deployment, but it should last a while longer than the flares.” the engineer thought out loud. “Well, that is the thing, our AI are single purpose, other than EW, in this instance, it doesn’t and can not acquire knowledge to do anything else. What it does, however, is not emit random noise, but a precisely calculated burst that is phase shifted to cancel out with the offending signal, there is nothing left to home in onto.”

“Do you employ EW to target enemy craft itself?” she asked, “Shutting down life support, frying communications and the like?”

“Best way of dealing with a threat is to make a big hole in it. However, we do use the things I named earlier to blind them, not just for defense. A single Pillager with an ECM suite can blind an entire fleet. We also use radar or communication emissions to locate and engage targets. For example, the ADRM-13 missile is designed to home in on enemy radars. The moment they try to lock onto you, the missile locks onto them. Either they die, therefore removing the threat, or they shut down their radar, also removing the threat, at least for the time being.”

“Iiii’m thinking more along the lines of getting the enemy to shoot at each other while we watch.” Casei hinted, baring her teeth. Tapping into the intercom, she let the conversation play out loud. “Sector control, is the Narix transport still in the hangar?”
“Negative, engineering, they are en-route to the Latantos already.”
“Patch me through to them.” she waited until she had a line, “Glaive six, Explorer engineering. We’d like to run a small test. We’d like to let our drone’s electronic warfare suite loose on your systems. Nothing permanent, just to see how effective it would be. Would you be willing to run such exercise?”

[b][i]Glaive Six[/i][/b]

“Wait, what now?” the gunner asked. “They didn’t just ask what I think they did, did they?”
“Explorer, Glaive six, eeehhh. Not sure I am a fan of what I hear, could you elaborate?”

“We want to see how deep our suite could penetrate your systems. It will simply give us a pass or fail mark, nothing on your ship should be affected, but for safety’s sake I’d ask you to bring your ship to a stop for a minute.”

“Received, we’re holding 400 meters off the Latanos’ port side bow, give it your best.”
“You are, without a shadow of a doubt, insane.” the gunner commented in a resigned tone.

“Copy, thank you.” making a hand gesture to switch her line, she got back on the earlier, “Sector control, launch a single drone for EW exercise. Target is Glaive six, perform AI penetration test.”

“Confirmed.”

Casei switched the room’s display to the drone, watching as it approached until it was in broadcast range, five kliks form the Glaive. A readout popped up on the screen. “Glaive six, Explorer. Can you see the drone on your instruments? We are ready to begin on our end.”

“Instruments, check. Visual, check. Ugly little bastard this one.”

“Beginning exercise.” Casei said, linking to the drone’s control and engaging the suite. The combined logic and processing power of the AI started chipping away at the receivers, deconstructing the Narix defense. As it gained access to different systems, it marked them on the list, until it could get nowhere else. “We’ve got into communications and navigation through the networking systems, let’S see what else we can do.” she smirked.
Engaging the masking measures, the drone would have vanished from the Glaives radar locator, although the heat signature would have remained if they were looking for it. “Glaive six, explorer. Can your instruments see the drone?” Casei asked as she maneuvered the drone closer to the dropship.

“Gone from the radars, but they register it for a split second when we switch frequencies. Thermal signature still there of course.” The Pillager turned to face the drone, arming its weapons. “Aaand locked. That all you can do?”

“Challenge accepted.” Casei said, mrith in her tone. The drone was not made to do what she intended, but it would do well for the test of what they intended to do. Opening several menus, she had the entire control system of the drone laid out on floating screens in front of her. Disabling the reactor safeties, she fed more fuel into the reactor, and at the same time opened the emergency vent, simulating the thermal protection system discussed earlier. Spinning the drone in a series of fast maneuvers, soon it was enveloped in a cloud of plasmatised gas too big to get a reliable lock on.

To top it off, the engineer used the communications system to emit a strong EMP burst towards the guns pointed at the drone.

The drone seemed to spazz out for a moment, turning the IR camera screen orange. As the pilot was about to make a snarky remark about the general lack of use of such a maneuver, several non-critical systems died seemingly without a reason before coming back to life as hardware backups engaged where necessary and software rebooted.

“Rated G for Genius, Explorer. By forcing a hard reset of several systems, you’ve effectively undone your efforts to seize control of the ship. And that maneuver the drone executed still leaves us a nice, stationary target for dumb fire weapons, AAA and fighter suppression torpedoes. How well do you think your drone would fare against a 50 millimeter railgun at 3000 rpm?”

“Did I?” Casei asked, having maneuvered the drone towards the ship in the brief window it was blind. The pilots could feel the shudder as the magnetic clamp of the drone caught onto their ship. Casei made a few offhand notes to discuss later.

“Do you think you can tow us away? This ship can support its loaded weight in Naris gravity and reach orbit.”
[i]”True, it needs a refuel after that, but you don’t have to know”[/i] The pilot thought.
“What the drones small size means is that we can’t turn the turret to hit you right now. Unless we have cover or one of us has time to get out the back and do something about the drone manually, we can’t get rid of you. What would the shield do if someone tried to pass through it?”

“I can not tow you through normal space right now, but I could jump you close enough to the sun for the shielded drone to get back, but you two to evaporate instantly. Not the point of the exercise though. Thank you for your assistance glaive. Send me the bill for the fried components.” Casei said, undocking the drone and directing it back to the Explorer. “The shield would just heat up something your size Glaive. Your 50 would probably go straight through as well, unless the magnetosphere could deflect it off course enough. 20mm would probably ablate enough to be harmless.”

“20 Millimeters? Pff. And have our lads shared with you the existence of a 75 millimeter HFR?” the pilot quipped as he turned to land.

Listening in on the conversations in the latanos’ CIC, primarch Ascari made a note to recommend research into blocking the Faira abilities. A cooperating specimen, or several, would be required.

[b][i]ED Explorer[/i][/b]

“All in all, your EW suite is enough to make our job harder, but manageable in groups. You may have more success in attacking capital ships, if you can get past the engineers on duty. And get close enough through the wall of fire.” Achzarit summarized his impressions from the test. “Unless we can make a mess of enemy IFF or better yet, disable their propulsion, I don’t see much use here.”

“Granted, although to attack a capship, another capship would usually be conducting the operation. In any event though, it seems like it might be worthy to investigate a weapon based on a heavy EMP. You can only have so many redundant systems.” she thought out loud. “Well, it seems like most everything for the components. I’ll requisition some of your missiles, as well as armor samples for testing. Until then, we won’t move on the construction of the craft too much. Last thing, I understand you come form differently purposed squadrons - would you tell me about how your military uses your craft?”

“Depends on who you ask. Praetorian Lindus and I are from a heavy fighter squadron. We are meant to be anything from light bombers trough escort fighters to armed recon.”

“I, on the other hand, am from an interceptor squadron.” Praetorian Iris took over, “My job is to escort friendly bombers, intercept hostile bombers and torpedoes and, if unlucky, other fighters. Usually we are told in advance what is expected of us, but sometimes the situation changes mid-flight. We might be launching loaded for photoreconnaissance and end up strafing hostile armor. Our fighters atmospheric capabilities further broaden the scope.”

“Technically, we can do just about anything if a squadron better suited for given task isn’t available.” Achzarit finished. “That a sufficient description, or do you need something more detailed?”

“Bombers?” Casei tilted her head sideways.

The Narix shared puzzled looks. “Pardon?”

“A bomber is a combat air or spacecraft designed to attack ground targets, naval targets and capital ships by dropping air-to-ground weaponry, such as bombs, firing torpedoes and deploying cruise missiles.” Lindus cited the textbook. “You mean to tell us the idea a strikecraft dedicated to attack capital ships has never crossed your minds?”

“It...wasn’t thought they could succeed in such role. We have weapons that can easily shoot down even a shielded craft. As well, our resource situation was not always this positive. Such craft is too expensive to field for us. Only the destroyers are armed with more than four torpedo tubes for exactly that reason. In our navy a torpedo strike is the last resort. We thought it as a weapon for a single destroyer to wipe out an enemy fleet, or bombard a planet.” Casei shared carefully, trying not to spook the Narix about the Explorer’s capabilities. The admiral did share a memo that the Narix seemed to be vastly underestimating their tech, trusting in their numbers. “A single MIRV torpedo fired from this ship would likely severely cripple your cruiser. It has to for the resources spent building it.”

“A single MIRV from this ship would fall short by several kilometers between area suppression munitions, CIWS and the likes of me.” Iris responded. “It’d take a lot of them to overwhelm a defensive screen.” Unless that Vanguard was alone, but if it was, there was already something wrong.

“I guess the lack of bombers could in part be due to your crafts inability to fly in the atmosphere. It is true they are not as effective in space. But it’s nice to have something with two turrets that’s capable of crippling a corvette, our corvette, that is, by itself.”

“Turrets? What nonsense is this, why not just build a full cruiser?” Casei shook her head. “Well we can try to build something like that but I don’t see it going into production. Something like that must be a huge target, but not big enough to have a ship grade shield.” snickering, she waved the thought off.

“Yes, a single one of those would be in trouble, of course so would all the fighters that intercepted it, burned and fried off by the EMP. Have you seen how many of them can the Explorer launch simultaneously? There are two batteries of twenty launch tubes with ten seconds refire rate, each of those missiles has thirty submunitions moving at roughly five hundred meters per second. You mean to tell me, honestly, that you have the ability to protect a battlegroup from that kind of onslaught?” she said, not believing them even if they said they could.

“Why? A cruiser is what? 200 meters and 40 crewmen? A bomber is 30 meters and 3 crewmen that can go into atmosphere without a crewmember possessing a specific talent. And no shields for our ships, remember?”

“Yes yes, but we’re talking on hot to apply your experience with what we have to work with. Yes, a cruiser is ten times bigger, but Nebula class can easily take down ten of the bombers and live, not the other way around. What is the heaviest ordnance you can deploy form such a craft?” she pulled up a simulation, with a single Faira cruiser in it.

“Again, loadout dependant.” Achzarit dodged the question, not intending to reveal the Corsairs full capabilities. That, and he’s never flown one, so he himself wasn’t sure. “Granted, your shields could complicate things a little.”

“Shall we say ten megatons then?” she made a guess, simulating an attack byt sixteen warheads. The shield fell and two warheads got through, given no interception took place.

“You forget standard missile banks, two turrets and two primary weapons. Those can be used to limit the cruisers defenses. Besides, this was a one-on-one engagement. What fool, besides a religious zealot, would charge a cruiser with one bomber?”

“Ship shield is fundamentally different in power output and stopping power. If this simulation is accurate enough, for a cruiser it would take 140 megaton blast to get through it. Can your strikecraft weapons put out that kind of power?” she said, looking at them funnily

“I meant turrets and escorting fighters.” Achzarit returned the expression, “Bomber pilots constantly complain about those.”

“Anyway, we got sidetracked. So, you have one class that prefers mobility and I assume rate of fire. What about the other, survivability and heavy weapons?” she inquired, making more notes.

“One class that prefers mobility and sensor power. The other class prefers heavier armor. Rate of fire is a concern of weapons, not the platform they are mounted on.”

“I beg to differ. With more barrels you can cycle through, you can virtually increase fire rate and make interception easier.” the engineer said, popping what looked like a silver M&M in her mouth. “But additional mounting points require space and thus size increase, which may be detrimental to mobility. Furthermore, the spacing of the weapons itself and ease of connection to heat sinks concerns the fire rate ather lot. You can not think of the craft as a package of components if you want top performance.”

“If you want more barrels on a single ship, why not build a cruiser?” Achzarit used Caseis own munition against her. “Do you really need the rate of fire to be that large? For projectile weapons, maybe, but with laser-based weaponry, the virtually nonexistent travel time works just as well.”

“Heh, you are correct, I would have built a cruiser instead.” the engineer smirked, “But maybe you’ll surprise me. As far as rate of fire goes, that is more so for the plasma cannons, but the laser’s optics will eventually overheat as well. Fighter is hardly a lab where you can keep everything aligned. There will be vibrations and damage. For redundancy’s sake alone it’s a good idea. It would be even better if they were in fixed mounts and you aimed by maneuvering the ship, much more reliable that way.”

“Anyway, those are the two classes you are familiar with, you already mentioned the bombers, any other subtypes I should be aware of?”

“Ah, you’re right. After all, we are here to learn something new as well. Reverting back to the old days of fixed weapons in fixed mountings. As for the wear and tear - that’s the reason most of our ships have hangars.”

“And again, you never counted on long term deployments. I’d rather we could make the most of what we design. Not that the optics on a laser can’t get misaligned even in a single combat deployment. I suppose it’s an even stronger argument for making the design as modular as possible. That way the support ship to be could potentially change your loadout during mission by swapping up an entire turret. That seems like a neat feature to have, since I imagine we all know how long a plan survives.” she frowned. [i]They said the universe will most likely be empty. And what do we find in the second system we explore ever?[/i]

“Now, in-mission repairs and possible changes of loadout are music I like. And we did count with long-term deployments. Except what you call long-term deployment is close to execution by starvation in our circles. Also on the subject of support ships, Perhaps they could be developed in cooperation with our engineers to modify the Pillagers so a Narix ship could service these new fighters as well.” He offered.

“If you could get your commanders to liberate your current ship designs, perhaps we could see if some modifications could be done to your current craft as well to make use of this feature.” Casei agreed readily enough. “I may have something for you too. This is a kind of strike craft we toyed with the thought of.” she said, pulling up a schematic. In there was a strange looking ship, which seemed to be built around a large cylindrical device. “We’ve called the class ‘gunship’ in the blacklab. The theory was to take a line ship gun and build a strike craft around it. The weapon was to be modified to fire at extreme ranges in the span of hundreds of kilometers. It is prohibitively expensive for mass production, but it could be used for surgical strikes against capital ship systems. The biggest advantage is that with its size being what it is, we can cram an intersystem FTL drive inside. Have you ever experimented in something similar?”

“Not to my knowledge, but I am just a simple fighter pilot. Very few people know what or where the 0th Fighter Examination Squadron flies. I see the appeal, but it’d have to be a hit and run weapon, no? I can’t imagine anything could hide its location when it fires. Did this leave the blueprint stage?”

“Not really, no. Cygnus is pretty much the only admiral that wants it, and that is not enough. Of course, Cygnus is the only one in command of a dedicated offensive fleet, while the others are focusing on defense, where understandably such fragile thing is useless, but we in Vanguard believe it would be worth it to put up such large gun where the enemy doesn’t expect it.” the engineer grumbled. “And you are very much correct, it was meant to attack staging points and supply depots. Jump in, do it’s damage, jump out before the escort can close in. I mean, a cruiser could do that just as well, but it’s too big a risk to send a ship that deep behind enemy lines.”

Stretching her arms, Casei shook the tiredness out of them. “Well, we have done a lot, I’ll make a report and submit it on the next command briefing. I imagine you’ll be there. We’ll see what priorities the Admiral gives us. I imagine she would be fond of the heavy fighters. Shall we take a break? Would you like to see some of our stuff up close?”

“We would like to see some at least partially declassified facilities. It might clear the air a little. Hangar seems appropriate, but the description of the Morale sector piqued interest, unless that’s off-limits to aliens?”