Category: Starship

#Lore 24 – Entry #109 – Sci-Fi Month II #18 – The Obstinate Phoenix

From the Personal Logs of Captain Durgen Silvercask, decryption algorithm successful, translated from original Dwarven Script:

She is certainly a decorated vessel, that I cannot deny, but were I to say that I had no reservations about her being attached to this expedition, I would be lying to myself.  She has nearly reached three consecutive centuries of service, so I suppose the brass wanted to give her an easy assignment before they may finally decommission her.  I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t met that fate sooner, given her rather…unique record.

Let’s see…in the dozen battles she’s been part of during that time, she has been severely damaged in all of them, even crash-landed on a planet’s surface twice.  And yet, somehow, each time, she’s been able to recover herself enough to get back home, even turning the tide of two battles that she returned to after getting knocked out of the fight, one of those having been after she crashed. 

I’m not sure if the gods of fortune are blessing her or cursing her, but her name is certainly appropriate regardless. 

She’s a rather unique vessel even without that remarkable record; I’ve spoken to her current captain, Raryliss Steelforger (with a family name like that, I’d almost have thought she was a dwarf, given her build, but she’s undeniably a kobold, of the silver-scaled variety), at some length about her history.  Somewhat experimental when she was constructed, the Phoenix is a rare joint construction effort between the dwarves and kobolds.  Though we’re certainly not as hostile to one another as we used to be, we still don’t mingle too often.  Still, that’s a dwarf-designed skeleton inside the Phoenix, the bulk of construction made using that unique kobold dragon’s breath forging process combined with tried-and-true dwarven construction methods.  Was and still is the largest such construction made with the kobolds’ breath, and what an endeavor that must have been.

She’s been refitted multiple times, but the Phoenix remains a battlecruiser at her heart.  She’s something of a hybrid with her current configuration, what her captain has dubbed an “assault carrier”.  She’s packing the biggest guns of any of the battlecruisers in the fleet and has a pair of (admittedly small) hangar bays for launching escort fighters; she’s got her own fighter group stationed aboard, the Summer-Flame Dragons, I believe is the correct translation, all kobolds.  Most of her crew are kobolds, with the bulk of the others consisting of rattenvolk and gnomes, and after her first refit, that’s historically been the case.  Suppose that would make sense as to why she’s been able to overcome such terrible damage time and again; credit where it’s due, those folk can certain repair anything if it’s at all possible.

Whatever the makeup of her crew, the Phoenix is a fine vessel, and though I’m still not sure what to make the exact nature of her record, I’m certain she will prove to be a valuable addition to the expedition.  I was a bit concerned when I was made aware of a certain technician who has a reputation as something of a jinx being aboard her, but Captain Steelforger assures me that, now that Engineer Longtail is aboard a kobold ship, they’ll have nothing to worry about.  Doesn’t exactly deny what the security department had uncovered about the tech, really makes her record seem a bit more like intentional sabotage, but perhaps there’s more to it than that.  I’m hardly an expert on kobold culture, after all, so I’m not aware of what other connotations the captain’s statement may have.

 

#Lore 24 – Entry #93 – Sci-Fi Month II #2 – UEF-04 – Maharani Morgiana

 

From the Personal Logs of Captain Durgen Silvercask, translated from Dwarven Script:

For all the ridiculous things those idiot engineers have done to this ship, at least they weren’t daft enough to rename her.  This mission has enough bad luck piled onto it already, we didn’t need that to deal with too. 

In spite of all the issues I have with Veylani’s current leadership (who in their right mind wouldn’t have problems with a child running a megacorporation?  I don’t care if she’s an adult by human standards, she needs a good forty or fifty years of experience before tackling something like that!), I will have to admit that Veylani has certainly proven that their modular design philosophy actually works, at least as far as this refit is concerned, anyway. 

The Morgiana herself has a respectable enough service record, having served well in her role as a carrier for over a century, and has flown under three separate flags in her time, only suffering fairly minor damage in her various engagements, the worst being from a fighter that crashed into one of her launch bays and took another half dozen fighters with it, but the main structure of the ship itself wasn’t harmed.  It seems that her list of mostly human commanders hasn’t abused her, though I suspect that’s more due to proper maintenance, and that’s been mostly dwarf and rattenvolk teams.  Since all eyes are on the Demon Sector these days, and nobody has decided to start up another conflict just yet, she was selected to be designated as UEF-04, fourth in the line to lead an expeditionary force into the unknown.

She was already a formidable carrier at a thousand meters, but now she’s become something else entirely.  “Super-carrier” doesn’t seem to do her justice.  Those Releana-class ships that ferry people and their vessels across the Barrier are super-carriers (figures that little twat running the company would name the first new class of ships after herself); these UEF motherships aren’t even space stations, more like mobile space colonies!  She’s been expanded to a mind-boggling 7500 meters and loaded with habitation, research, cargo, manufacturing, garden, docking, and power generation modules.  I might as well have taken a boulder straight to the head when I first laid eyes upon her; I thought she was just another part of Aphelion Station.  And that engine block! Gods, I can barely fathom how much power is in there, and just how large a TK-drive it takes to propel her into hyperspace! 

I’m not certain they’ve even fully calculated her maximum carrying capacity yet, and here we are in her final shakedown before she’s loaded up and sent off into the unknown.  She’s currently packing a hundred starfighters and probably as many troop transports.  Hells, she’s even been fitted with an outer docking frame that will let her support ships connect up with her and travel through hyperspace as one large unit.  This seems ludicrous to me, but somehow it’s working; I’m looking out at the Wyvern’s Fang from my cabin window right now, and there are four other battleships just like her around the superstructure, and we’re maintaining a constant velocity through hyperspace on the way to the Valefor system.

I have my reservations about this mission, as I’ve mentioned before, and as far as I’m concerned, the Morgiana, while at her core is a time-tested vessel, her new incarnation is unproven and dangerous.  As I look at the internal sensor readouts, I’m seeing everything within expected ranges, but she’s not had enough time to grow into her new form.  Who knows when some poorly connected module is going to break loose, or when one of these skyscraper-sized engines is going to develop a fatal flaw and explode?  There should be months if not years of further testing on her before she’s ready to face what might be waiting out there in the Marchosias system. 

And yet, here I am, already resolved to see her into the unknown, untested, and highly experimental, with thousands of lives riding on my decisions.  Somehow, though, even with all the personnel issues and this unproven vessel, I have to admit that I am…excited to go out there, into the void.  This will be the greatest challenge I’ve ever faced, and for all I know, I’ll never see home again.  I won’t say I can feel something calling me, but it’s almost like that, that sense of knowing something is out there that will make all this worth it in the end.

Gods, I’m a damned a fool!  May the Greatfather watch over me!