Chapter 4: Donovan Strauss 3

As the door opened, Don's eyes fell upon a rather odd looking ship.

As a point of reference, it should be noted that ships generally took a more aerodynamic shape the smaller they got. Fighters and scouts tend to be shaped the most like conventional planes, followed by strike craft, then pickets, corvettes, and finally frigates. Once a ship reached the size of a destroyer, it no longer made sense for them to be aerodynamic as they were far less likely to perform atmospheric operations and the potential mobility gained from such a design was irrelevant in comparison to what was lost in terms of space and gained from the increased mass.

From there, ships usually got long and flat, with a gentle slope to their sides to maximize firepower that could be brought to bear with a broadside. Spinal armaments, those weapons that were placed on the flat faces of a ship's six cardinal axes, still found use, but they were generally limited to one or two rows or columns to minimize the amount of flat armor that was presented to the enemy.

This ship did not conform to the stereotypes.

Laying at what he estimated to be around 50 meters long, 10 meters tall, and 20 meters wide, this ship was far smaller than the standard 200 meter long frigate class, but looked almost identical to a battleship in shape.

In other words a long angular brick.

There wasn't a glass cockpit, but he had expected that. A good part of his training was flying off of strictly sensor data, something that was not a prerequisite for a non-visual cockpit.

The thing that surprised him was the apparent lack of weapons on the ship. For something of this shape and size, there were no obvious openings for guided munitions like missiles. He didn't see any protrusions that indicated autocannons either. There were two rather large circular holes in the small vertical plate on the front of the ship that he recognized as potentially being a weapon system, but he had no idea what weapon would be placed on a ship this small that was that big.

"Ugly right?" The Doctor couldn't help but smirk and laugh dejectedly at Don's unhidden display of confusion. "Don't worry, I assure you she flies better than she looks like she will. I was one of the unlucky bastards who had to work on her after all."

Don still examined his new craft for a few more minutes, his head tilting side to side as he looked at it from different angles. He made a lap around it, admiring it's pitch black color, before going back to converse with Helmsguard.

"There's gotta be more to her right?" Don couldn't help but display how underwhelmed he was by this thing. Part of him was wondering how his parents would laugh at him for denying their invitations to run their real estate business only to be stuck flying UES Shadow Brick.

"Would you like to see it?" The Doctor asked, grinning from ear to ear. "Would you like to see why this ship is quite possibly the most lethal piece of technology in the solar system?"

He handed Don a tablet with some basic information on it. However, this information was anything but basic.

"Let's start off with her concealment. Second tab. In the most simple terms she is impossible to spot by conventional means. RADAR, LADAR, or any other form of wave or light based detection systems are completely useless against her. She has a low level projection around her that completely absorbs those forms of energy. As per usual with most ships, visual spotting is already difficult, but that black coating will have a startling effect in combination with that energy shield I mentioned earlier."

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"You don't have to worry about being spotted via heat scanning either. There is some very complex sciencey shit that the onboard computer is in charge of that will take the heat from the sink and dump it in a direction that wont be spotted by sensors. Not gonna explain how that works because I have no idea. The manipulation of thermodynamic principles isn't my field of study" Helmsguard could only shrug at this. It was outside of his field of expertise after all.

"There is a special treat for you onboard, but that cant be activated inside the hangar. I'll show you once we get under way."

"Mobility and Armor are next. Tab three."

"I can't tell you much about how her engines and the like works, classified of course. What I can tell you is that this is currently the fastest ship in the solar system. Linear speed, short jumps, medium jumps, and long jumps are all the fastest that have ever been made. Forward acceleration is around 200 meters a second squared officially, short jumps take less than a second to calculate, medium jumps around five, and long jumps are twice as fast to run to completion than the last generation of jump drive. Only downside is that she turns slower than my wife after a buffet."

Don couldn't help but whistle in admiration. 200m/s^2 was about 50 more than the fastest scout ship model in the fleet. The jump times were also astonishing. In every distance category except for medium, she was twice as fast as the nearest competitor.

"As far as armor is concerned it's a new compound from ACE Labs. From the front you are rated to take kinetic projectiles from anything up to cruiser class railguns. At the sides and rear you can take up to a destroyer class railgun, but they don't recommend it as it would damage internals. You are completely impervious to any sort of shaped charge or blast type munitions. Keep in mind to watch out for nuclear munitions and capital class fire. It's less of the case that you can't take it but more the case that getting hit by something with that much energy is bound to shake up your innards."

"Moving on to weapons systems. Tab four. To her front she has two 30mm autocannons each capable of firing at a rate of 3 rounds a second or 180 rounds per minute." He tapped a button on his own tablet, causing two flaps to open up on the front of the ship. "That's where they are."

"She also has 10 laser weapon systems. Four to the front, two to the rear, and one on every other side. They are variable angle and the lenses are flush with the hull. In a pinch, or in the unlikely event that there is something that has locked on to you, they are capable of burning warheads and blinding scanning systems, all under the control of the onboard computer."

"Nice" Was all Don had to say to that. He wasn't the biggest fan of laser systems during training. They were way too finicky and required that the beam be kept on the same spot for a length of time in order to work properly. The simple act of rolling a ship was more than enough to render a laser useless.

Not having to worry about controlling them was a blessing.

"As I'm sure you've already noticed, there are not ports or pods for guided weapons. Part of the reason for this is that it would ruin her stealth, but primarily it's because that isn't going to be your job."

Don was a little displeased with this part actually. He was neutral towards autocannons and hated lasers, but he was fond of the guided missile. Something about watching a five meter long explosive stick moving at eight times the speed of sound towards a target to then explode with enough force to level a skyscraper had always made him giggle a little bit.

"Instead, and I think you will love this, she has a pair of Capital-Class railguns."

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