Chapter 68

It didn’t take long at all to reach Ercan’s office, and after offering everyone refreshments, we immediately got to work.

“So Abi relayed some of the ideas you two had, so I went ahead and drew up some designs for you to review,” Oya said as a small object appeared in her hand. “Which ship class would you like to look at first?”

I took a moment to think. “How about we go biggest to smallest, so show me the command ship.”

She looked at the device in her hand briefly and then pressed a button and a ship appeared on the screen as it slowly rotated. The design was very similar to Abi’s current look, though there were a large amount of turrets visible on the hull, not to mention a staggering eight mass drivers.

“Coming in at eight and a half kilometers in length, the command ship has everything you asked for. The design has eight mass drivers, as you can see, along with two hundred twenty-four gauss cannon turrets for point defense, and a total of seventy-two missile tubes. Forty of those are mounted dorsally while the remainder are mounted ventrally.”

“There are no other weapon types on the initial design, but that can change. In consultation with Hayir, we determined that even with seven power cores, there wouldn’t be enough power available to fire them and maintain a high rate of fire with the mass drivers. Four of the power cores are dedicated to the mass drivers alone, while the other three are dedicated to maintaining power throughout the ship and powering the shields and engines.”

“What kind of rate of fire are we talking about?” Mason asked.

“Initial calculations would be ten rounds per minute if they were fired sequentially or four rounds per minute if they were all fired at once,” Hayir answered.

“Seriously?!” Mason gaped.

Oya nodded. “Jonathan asked for something that would break the back of any ship one of these was unleashed upon. The force of a single volley would probably take out any ship’s shields, if not obliterate it completely, but it can sustain ten rounds per minute if they are given sufficient time to cool down. We’ve never made mass drivers as large as these ones are, but we think the numbers are accurate. Truthfully, we won’t know until it is built.”

While the mass drivers were insane and I really wanted to see them in action, what I was really interested in was the missiles. I knew each of the missiles would be equal to, or slightly exceed the size of something like the Russian R-36 intercontinental ballistic missile, but that was because they would be carrying all sorts of different payloads. All of them would be undergoing development and testing before any of the missile-carrying ships would be built, as missiles would be an important part of the new fleet.

“Tell him about the missile tubes,” I said.

“Right!” Hayir replied. “I’m pretty excited about this, actually, since missiles don’t see as much use as they probably should. They’re exactly ten feet in diameter, though the length of the missiles differ depending on the payload used. The nuclear, ionic and high-explosive missiles are all ninety feet long, while the laser, payload and penetrating missiles would be about one hundred five feet long.”

Mason looked at me. “High explosive? You know that explosions don’t work in space, right? I feel like we’ve talked about this before.”

I nodded. “The explosive force, no, but say you detonate a stealth missile loaded up with thousands of solid steel balls the size of your fist in the middle of an oncoming fighter wave. How do you think that fighter wave would fair?”

“Pretty well if they have shields,” Mason replied.

“True, but from everything I’ve heard, not many fighters have shields. Maybe that will change in the future, but that’s what the payload missiles would be for. Mind explaining those?” I asked, looking back over to Hayir.

He nodded. “These are one of the missiles that do see some use, but they’re never on such a scale as these ones would be. When fired, the onboard computer automatically scans and targets any enemy ships within a certain distance of the missile, if it hasn’t been given a target already. After the first target is acquired, each missile will wait approximately ten seconds and then the outer shell of the missile will detach, revealing hundreds of smaller missiles roughly four and a half feet long and six inches in diameter. Their engines will immediately engage and they will home in on their target. For now, the only two types of missiles in consideration would be of the high-explosive and ionic variety.”

“Half of the missiles loaded would be of the first type, while the other half would be of the second type. If it works the way Jonuth wants it to, the ionic missile would strike first, completely dropping a fighter’s shield or severely weakening it, and then hundreds of smaller steel balls would explode right next to a ship, absolutely shredding it.”

“You know, being a fighter pilot sounded pretty exciting until this exact moment. I’m betting that small size would make them incredibly hard to hit too, right?” Mason asked.

Hayir nodded once more. “They are miniscule in comparison to even the size of a fighter. Most are somewhere in the range of forty to fifty feet long, I believe.”

“How soon do you think you’ll be able to test each of the different types of missiles?” I asked.

“Two months from now,” Ercan said. “We want to know which are viable and which aren’t as soon as possible, so we can adjust the schematics.”

“Sounds good to me,” I replied. “I can’t think of any changes for the command ships, right now, but I’ll let you know if I do before they enter production.”

“Why are they called command ships?” Mason asked.

“Because that’s what they’ll be,” I said. “There will be one command ship per strike group of one hundred twenty ships, and the commander of a strike group will always be assigned to one. All of the other one hundred nineteen ships in a strike group will get their orders from the command ship. They’ll also slave their computers to the command ship when entering hyperspace, so the entire group jumps at once.”

“Ah. So you’ve basically made up a new class of ship to be the heart of a strike group, rather than the ship with the highest ranking officer being the ship the rest get the orders from? What happens if a bunch of strike groups form together though? I’m assuming the highest ranking officer among those commanding a command ship will be the one in charge?”

“Exactly. The command structure won’t change from what it was over fourteen hundred years ago, really. Anyways, I believe the carriers are next?” I asked, looking at Oya.

“That they are,” Oya replied, hitting a button to change the hologram from the display of the missiles Hayir had been talking about, to a weapon-laden ship with hundreds of holes visible on both sides of the ship. It was blockier than one might expect, but it did have some similarities to the command ship and Abi’s current look.

“You’re not messing around, are you?” Mason asked as his eyes were glued to the image.

“Nope,” I chuckled.

“Most aircraft carriers you’ll see will have one hundred fighter launch tubes on each side, at most, which makes them trivial to design in comparison to this. They also aren’t nearly as big. It’s just under seven kilometers long, one-point-two kilometers wide and one kilometer tall. If it were to go forward as I have drawn it, five thousand fighters would be able to be launched every sixty seconds, with five waves able to be launched before there aren’t any more remaining on the ship.”

“They can also land almost as quickly, as there are five separate decks spanning two hundred fifty meters of vertical space that craft can enter, either from the front or the back of the ship. You clearly noticed the point defense turrets, and like the command ship, all three hundred twelve turrets are gauss cannons. This isn’t because the ship is low on power, because it would have four power cores, but three of those are solely dedicated to keeping the shields up. Once people know what these things can do, they’ll be focused heavily, I imagine.”

“No kidding,” Mason replied. “There are some carriers on the way to Earth, right? How many fighters can they launch?”

“Six waves of three hundred every fifteen seconds if they’re pre-loaded into the launch tubes, otherwise three hundred every forty-five seconds if they have to be loaded between launches.”

“Holy shit ... I almost want to be a fighter pilot again, or see the massive swarm of fighters launch from up close.”

“Maybe you’ll get that opportunity one day. Part of the reason I wanted carriers that can launch so many fighters is in case we need them when we head over to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. I doubt we will, but the alien ships were capable of launching tens of thousands of drones or fighters or whatever when their armada was in one group. I wanted something that could even the odds and keep the fighters off the rest of the fleet if we ended up fighting them. Fighters aren’t the only thing that the carriers can carry though.”

“That’s right,” Oya said as a much smaller ship appeared next to the carrier and was simulated as flying into one of the five flight decks. “These new carriers don’t need to be as big as they are to be able to store and launch twenty-five thousand fighters, but that is because they will also be carrying the new frigates. By removing the hyperspace generator, we were to use a larger power core and expand the size of the mass drivers as well. The rate of fire won’t change at all, but the size of the projectile they’re able to fire is about twice the size. The only downside is that they need to be on a carrier to be able to enter hyperspace, but that isn’t that big of a deal. They have shrouds so they can hide in plain sight, if needed.”

Mason nodded. “Okay, so what’s next?”

There were six other designs that Oya had come up with at my request, which were the designs for a battleship, battlecruiser, cruiser, destroyer, and two new ones: a missile carrier and a heavy transport. Of the types that made up the fleet on its way to Earth, the only one that didn’t make the cut were dreadnoughts. I just didn’t see a use for them when the command ships would fulfill the same role of being both an offensive threat and something that could protect other ships. It would be almost like flipping a switch; one moment one of the command ships might be firing a round the size of a small car every six seconds, and the next it might divert all of its power generating capability to the hardshield while using its massive bulk to absorb a staggering amount of damage.

Most of the designs were just better versions of the ships enroute to Earth, which would be made possible thanks to some knowledge that Abi could disclose. Some were slightly bigger or slightly smaller, but they were generally unchanged. The missile carrier was an all new design, however.

If the missiles panned out the way we wanted them to, then the missile carriers would be built solely to launch ridiculous amounts of missiles at whatever target we needed them to hit. The design was far different from the rest of her designs, and it was a ship that was wider than it was long, but it wasn’t by that much.

The dimensions were three hundred fifty meters long by three hundred eighty meters wide and seventy meters tall, giving it the blockiest appearance yet. In Millenium Falcon fashion, the bridge was off to the starboard side of the ship, leaving the rest of the ship to house sixteen rows of one hundred missile tubes, for the capability to launch sixteen hundred missiles at once.

It didn’t just have teeth, it also had three power cores that lent power to the seven engines and fourteen thrusters that spanned the entirety of the rear of the ship. If given the go ahead, it would easily be the fastest ship in the entire fleet, and not by a slim margin. Used properly, they could quickly and easily change the tide of battle.

The heavy transports, on the other hand, were another new design. Calling them super transports would probably be more apt, and the unique thing about them was that the internals were completely modular. Want it to be a troop transport? Everything needed to set up living areas for soldiers is stored in the ship’s dimensional storage, and with a command from the captain, all of that can be set up in moments. Need to carry vehicles instead? Simply revert that change and there would be room for hundreds of vehicles to be loaded, be those mechs, tanks or mobile artillery.

One key part of the design was that it had to be able to land on a planet and unload its payload within three minutes. The four hundred meter long, two hundred meter wide and one hundred twenty meter tall ship would be able to carry five thousand troops, several hundred vehicles of different types, or any combination of the two.

After everything was unloaded, the heavy transport would act as a mobile staging area and command base for ground operations. If needed, it could also provide direct fire support with its twenty-four dorsally mounted gauss cannons, or indirect fire with its twelve large railguns and eight missile tubes.

On top of all that, the ship was equipped with a force field and a hard shield that could be expanded to form a dome one kilometer in diameter, giving soldiers or refugees a very safe place to fall back to.

“Alright, so I’ve seen all of the designs, what would a standard strike group look like?” Mason asked.

“I have no idea,” I replied, curious about that as well.

“We figured one of you might ask that, so we asked Tich for his input. He’s also seen all of the preliminary designs, and he did have some changes he would like to see, but Oya hasn’t gotten around to changing them yet. You’ll probably be able to see them in a few days,” Ercan said, to which Oya nodded.

“Anyways, each strike group would have one command ship, three carriers, fifteen battleships, fifteen battlecruisers, thirty cruisers, thirty-five destroyers, twelve missile carriers and nine heavy transports. The frigates aren’t included in that because they would be housed inside of the carriers, and each carrier would carry forty a piece.”

“So what’s that? One hundred twenty frigates, seventy thousand fighters, and the capability of carrying forty-five thousand troops or a few thousand vehicles?” Mason asked.

“There would be more soldiers than that since the command ship, battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers would all have their own security force that can be deployed if necessary. In the case of cruisers and battlecruisers, those would probably be forces capable of boarding other ships as well. We don’t have the exact numbers just yet, but it would be somewhere along the line of two thousand troops in each of the battleships, one thousand in the battlecruisers, and then seven hundred or so in the cruisers. All in all, it would be around one hundred ten thousand dedicated soldiers.”

“That’s much more reasonable, I think,” Mason said with a laugh. “Forty-five thousand soldiers did seem pretty low.”

“Keep in mind that those numbers would be what you might see in a standard strike group with these designs. You might have more specialized strike wings or strike groups that have more soldiers and less fighters, for example, or the opposite might be true.”

“The heavy transports don’t always need to be attached to a fleet, either,” Hayir said. “‘For example, a border patrol fleet doesn’t really have a use for the heavy transports, so those might be replaced with more destroyers or cruisers.”

“I see what you mean,” Mason nodded.

“Alright, you’ve seen everything now, Jonathan. Are there any changes you would like to see?” Oya asked.

“Did you happen to get to the fighters?”

“Oh, right. I had forgotten about those,” she said as she grabbed her tablet and began typing on it.

When she found what she was looking for, she made a motion with her hand and the design for a fighter appeared in place of the heavy transport that had been there previously. The craft displayed was one designed with both space flight and atmospheric flight in mind, so while it did have wings, they weren’t very large. There were also a number of holes spaced strategically around the ship, which would allow it to move on any vector while still keeping its weapons trained on a target.

It worked by redirecting the thrust produced by the engines through the ship and through those holes. As an example, if a fighter was being chased, its pilot could flip the fighter end over end and keep accelerating away from his pursuer, all while returning fire. In the atmosphere, the fighters behaved no differently than a regular aircraft, except for the fact that the engine was on a gimbal, increasing the fighter’s mobility.

For weaponry, the fighter had both gauss cannons and pulse cannons, as well as hardpoints for missiles or bombs to be added. For space combat, the missiles would likely be of the ionic variety, while in atmosphere they would likely be standard high explosive missiles for both air-to-air and air-to-ground.

The fighter would also have something that most other fighters don’t have, and another thing that other fighters absolutely do not have. The first one was a forcefield, and while it wouldn’t be effective against even a destroyer, it would buy precious seconds against other fighters. As for the thing other fighters do not have; that was a hyperspace drive. Or more accurately, a detachable, single-use hyperdrive.

The basic premise for their use would be that they would be used when initiating a surprise attack, or when joining an ongoing space battle. After stopping a few light years away, fighters could be launched with the hyperdrive already attached, and then the entire fleet--and all the fighters--could jump all at once. In a standard strike group, that would be seventy-five thousand fighters launched into the fray immediately, rather than fifteen thousand every sixty seconds. Alternatively, they could also be used to jump past an enemy formation and attack the most vulnerable ships using their pulse cannons.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“I like it,” I replied. “And it should be able to do everything we asked?”

“I believe so,” she nodded. “We’ll let you know for sure in a few months. There isn’t really anything gamebreaking about it, but the detachable hyperdrive will need to go through extensive testing. It’s the first time we’ve ever tried anything like it, but if it works, we might be able to adapt one for the frigates as well.”

“We’re also going to try to see if we can make it reusable and write a program so it can be taken out of dimensional storage when needed, and put back inside when not needed,” Hayir added. “The latter isn’t an issue since it is something we’ve been doing for hundreds of years, but getting more than one use out of it will be more difficult.”

“Why is that?” Mason asked.

“Because of its small size, it wouldn’t have all the other safety features that regular-sized hyperdrives do. That means that while in use, there would be a barely-controllable overload going on. Unfortunately as soon as the fighter drops out of hyperdrive, it would fully overload and fry the components, making it unusable. If we can figure out how to prevent that overload while keeping it at the same small size, then it could be used maybe a dozen or so times before finally burning out.”

“Why not make it bigger?”

“Two things,” Hayir replied, holding up two fingers briefly. “The first is that it can’t extend past the wingtips on the craft, as the fighter itself was designed to work with the launch tubes. If the hyperdrive is too wide, then it can’t be used in conjunction with the launch tubes. Two, is that we can’t make it much longer, either, because we’re working with limited room. Without crowding them too much, there is room for twenty-five thousand fighters and forty frigates on the five flight decks.”

“When the commander gives the order, there needs to be enough room to attach all the hyperdrives to the fighters. As it stands, there is just enough room to do that to every ship without moving any of them at all, but if we make the hyperdrive longer then it would take more time to install the hyperdrives and more time to launch the fighters.”

“So make the carrier bigger so you have more room to work with.”

I chuckled. “It’s not that simple, nor is it cheap. When sending the specifications for the carriers, missile carriers and heavy transports, those specifications didn’t include the size of the ships. That was left to Oya and her team to figure out. For the carrier, we wanted them to be able to carry forty frigates and twenty-five thousand fighters and be able to launch them within five minutes or less. There also needed to be room for all twenty-five thousand of those fighters to land as well, which is why there are five flight decks.”

“Let’s say it only took the carriers being made three hundred meters longer to be able to fit all forty frigates and twenty-five thousand fighters with reusable hyperdrives. The total volume of that addition would be three hundred sixty million cubic meters. To give you an idea of how big that is, Abi’s total volume is about two hundred eighty million cubic meters, and that will end up increasing a bit more shortly.”

“Now Abi isn’t that big right now, but a ship her size would still easily cost nearly a trillion credits, while the single-use hyperdrive engines would be about five thousand credits or less. Twenty-five thousand fighters could go through eight thousand single-use hyperdrive engines each, just to equal the amount I would need to pay to increase the size of one carrier.”

“Oh,” Mason replied. “It really costs that much?”

I nodded. “It’s not cheap and there are hundreds, if not thousands of moving parts just to build one ship. That’s the many different materials, billions of man hours, et cetera. My sisters and I are pretty rich, as is Thomas, and the fleet enroute to Earth cost him somewhere in the neighbourhood of four quadrillion credits. That includes all of the fighters and transport ships as well, but it gives you an idea of how expensive building a new fleet can be.

“Wow, and thanks for the explanation,” he said.

I chuckled. “Abi says you’re welcome, she was speaking in my ear. But anyways, if you can’t make the hyperdrives reusable, then don’t worry about it, Hayir. They’re honestly not that big of a concern.”

“I’ll be putting one of my people on it, if anyone can figure it out, she can. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to have Abi just tell us how to do it?”

I shook my head. “She can’t, which is somewhat odd since it’s just miniaturizing something that you have already learned how to design and build. Then again, there isn’t actually a rulebook for the restrictions her creators put in place, so either it is some oversight, or it requires you to learn something new and apply it. We don’t know for sure.”

“That is intriguing,” he replied.

“Alright then. Any other changes you would like to see, Jonathan?” Oya asked

“Not that I can think of. I’ll go over it later with Abi and then I’ll let you know. In all likelihood we won’t know if any changes need to be made until you complete the prototypes though.”

“I’ll spend some time soon fixing the minor issues that Tich had and then I’ll send the three of you a new copy of the schematics. If we get the green light, then we’ll start on prototypes.

“Sounds good,” I nodded. “How about we take a break and go grab some lunch?”

“I could eat,” Mason replied.

“You can always eat. When we’re done, there’s something else I want to discuss and then you can explain what type of ship you want. I can’t promise you’ll get it anytime soon, but you can at least get started on it.

“Really?!”

I nodded again. “Design a warship of your own or a pleasure yacht for all I care, the design is entirely up to you.”

“Awesome!” he replied with childish exuberance, causing all of us to laugh.

It turned out that as the owner of Menseio Station, Ercan had a table reserved for him in every single restaurant that could be found on it. That was everything from expensive, high-class restaurants, to the cheaper fast food-like ones. It wasn’t because he owned them either, because he didn’t own any of the two hundred and three restaurants that called the station home.

What he did have was a vested interest in their success. The owners of each restaurant on the station had been invited to the station to ply their trade, and for some of them, it was a second chance. Whether they didn’t have money to start a restaurant on their own or they saw it as a chance to put their name out there, people jumped at the chance to own a restaurant on one of the largest and most-visited space stations in the galaxy.

If someone was chosen before the space station even opened, they were allowed to choose how much space they wanted, within reason. Once the area had been claimed, workers would then move in and build the restaurant to the owner’s exact specifications, all completely free of charge. There was a contract between Ercan and the owners of each restaurant on the station, of course, but outside of restaurants being built and an initial starting sum being given to the owners, there was no exchange of money.

The contracts were basically exclusivity agreements, stating that the owners of each restaurant would not be allowed to open up new restaurants elsewhere, as long as they remained on the station. They also needed to remain on the station for a certain amount of time, which was entirely determined on how big of a space an owner had claimed, and how much it cost to build it. For some owners, they might only need to remain there for two years, while others might need to stay for a few decades.

During this time, the owners got to keep one hundred percent of all profits they earned. Now, one might wonder why someone would put out hundreds of millions of credits to finance restaurants without receiving anything in return, but that wasn’t quite accurate. While he didn’t make any money off of the restaurants themselves, Ercan did make money off of the docking fees of the many ships that arrived at the station every day.

The food court on the station spanned five separate rings towards the center of the station, and they were an attraction in and of themselves. The reason for that was that the owners of the restaurants were chosen for a reason, and they all brought something unique to the station. Those reasons might be that they create absolutely delicious food with odd ingredients, or that they might cater to a specific species’ nutritional needs, but there truly was something for everyone.

The restaurant that we were brought to was a favorite of Ercan’s, and was one where no one was allowed to order what they wanted. Instead, the owner met each and every patron of his restaurant. There were so many different species that I hadn’t seen before, and the owner, a man by the name of Kin’Ja Ir’Kesh belonged to one of those.

He had a mix of brilliant magenta and aquamarine colored scales that ran the length of his serpentine body, but that wasn’t the most interesting part. He had no nose to speak of, and eyes were closer to that of a slug than a snake. He had two pairs of eye stalks in two rows, with the back row being slightly higher than the front row. The front row of eyes was trained on us as he approached, while the second pair of eyes were looking around the room, rotating nearly one hundred eighty degrees to do so.

When he opened his mouth to speak, we were all greeted by two rows of extremely fine and sharp teeth, except for the two pairs of longer--but no less sharp--fangs. After introducing himself in Pygmaean, which Abi had translated for me and Mason’s AI had translated for him, he asked us some questions.

Those questions involved whether we liked alcoholic beverages or non-alcoholic beverages, spicy or non-spicy foods and how hungry we were, among others. As soon as he was done asking Mason, Zaszi and I questions, he turned around without asking Ercan, Oya or Hayir the same questions.

“We’ve been here so many times that Kin’Ja knows what we like and we don’t like, but always surprises and delights us with the food and drinks that are brought out to us, even one hundred and nineteen years later,” Ercan answered with a smile when I asked why none of them were asked any questions.

“Okay, but what was the purpose of the questions?” Mason asked.

“It’s a thing he does and is the reason why he has a restaurant on this station. You saw how packed it was when we entered, and if I didn’t have a private room reserved for my family and I, then we wouldn’t have been able to walk in here. There is something like a four month waiting period to be able to eat here, and it is that long because of what Kin’Ja is able to do.”

“He takes the answers you gave him and your species into account, and then creates a dish that will amaze you. We don’t know how he does it, but each dish is designed specifically for each person, and it always tastes incredible. You will also likely never eat the same dish twice, nor will your drinks ever be the same.”