Spokoynoy Nochi

[Krasnaya Xue]

Mitczik was a seasoned Rebel at this point. The funny thing was how he had joined in a rather indirect fashion.

The Mon Calamari had been an engineer at Incom back in the day, working on various propulsion systems for fighter craft--particularly, very fast hyperdrives. Benefactor Lasedri had brought him in to work at ECHO initially, especially interested in what he could do for one of the most advanced projects to date. The Nevermore, an Alliance stealth bomber of elegant design and incredible speed, had been the first product he had contributed to, and ever since then, he had become a sort of staple in starship tech development for the Rebels. And that was why Admiral Xue was in need of his services today.

A little less red than he used to be, the Mon Cal engineer was delighted to be stationed on such a world as Lamaredd--a planet that was about as close to home as one could get on this side of the galaxy. In fact, an entire continent held the designation of Little Mon Cal. It finally felt like the Rebellion was making progress, from his point-of-view. And Krasnaya might agree. As headquarters of the Alliance's nationalized shipwright, Lamaredd seemed like the key to bringing the Red Fleet to prominence.

"You're enjoying the weather?" the admiral inquired as they sat down over a set of digital blueprints.

"That's either the silliest question, or the damnedest trick question I've ever heard, Admiral," the old war technician laughed.

"Oh, I'm not the tricky type." An apparition of a rather foxy smile briefly showed itself on Krasnaya's lips.

"I bet not."

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

Wan Min silently walked down the halls of the building in Little Mon Cal, enjoying the nice breeze that wafted through the halls like ocean wind. She had been called to Lamaredd to help with the development of a new class of cruisers, ships that would lead the Rebel Alliance into the big leagues. Her experiences as the fleet commander benefited her immensely as she had her notes written down in a manila envelope she had tucked under her arm. She knew what the fleet's strengths and weaknesses were and she was ready to plug the gaps. As she turned a corner she saw Admiral Xue and Mitczik, the Alliance's chief shipwright and head designer for ECHO Industries, sitting in a small room going over digital blueprints. She walked into the room.

"Admiral Xue, Mitczik, it's a pleasure to see you both here!" She exclaimed as she reached out and shook both of their hands.

"I'm glad that we get the chance to sit down and go over these new schematics. Mitczik, I have some ideas about a new set of cruisers that I want to discuss with you. We're going head to head with a lot of powers in this corner of the galaxy, some with high friends and some without. The Alliance is going to need something that can help us even the odds. Here are some notes that I drew up," Min explained as she handed the Mon Calamari her detailed outline of what she hoped would be a game changing design for the Alliance.

"One baseline cruiser frame that we can modify into two or possibly three sub-categories: A dedicated all-mass driver/all big gun heavy hitter, a dedicated carrier design to extend the Alliance's fighter dominance even further, and an ion/EMP cruiser to better supplement our preexisting fleet that is already heavy on ion cannons," she explained as she pointed out the highlights.

"In addition, we're going to need to start overhauling our corvette fleet. We need at least two new categories of corvettes: One new class of anti-fighter screens, and one class of light gun corvettes that can double as heavy anti-fighter or anti-torpedo screens for our new cruisers," Min stated to Xue and Mitczik.

"If I'm correct then we can start to design a whole new battle philosophy that will better reflect the Rebel Alliance's capabilities. A Fast Attack Fleet, based around fighters, fighter bombers, and torpedo bombers. Long range strikes from our carriers, and our fleet can move in and mop up what's left. No one fights like this anywhere in the galaxy, and I believe that now is the time for us to try a radical new approach to fleet engagements."

[member="Krasnaya Xue"]

 

[Armand Temi]

After Armand had finished up with the tour of the small dock-side museum on Little Mon Cal, he made his way to the nondescript building where the design of the Alliance's new fleet of ships would come to life courtesy of Admiral Brightsky and whoever she had contracted out to engineer the rogue armada. He entered the room where plans were being drafted just as Wan Min had said "radical new approach to fleet engagements."

"Don't let me interrupt," he said, holding up his hand. "I'm just here to observe for now." He silently perused the blueprints and holomodels. I can't wait to see these beauties fly, he thought. And he did as he promised for a thirty minutes. The Hapan doctor silently watched the designers brainstorm and conceptualize, content to stay in the background. But once there was a long pause in the conversation, he said: "First things first, what is our credit situation? Meaning do I need to go hit the pavement today for donors to fund this building enterprise?" He stood and he examined the materials needed for building.

"Second are there any rare or unusual materials I can help order for these ships?"

[member="Krasnaya Xue"] [member="DasGeneral"]

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

"Armand, good to see you old friend!" Min said as she welcomed Temi into the room where they were going over the new designs.

After they had gone over the basic design parameters, Temi brought up the issue of currency.

"As far as I know Armand, we should be alright for credits. We're using the nationalized shipwrights here, so we shouldn't have to worry so much about the cost. This isn't like the old days where we're scraping every credit together to buy something on the black market. We've got planetary economies backing us this time around."

"As for rare materials, I'm not sure. These are just initial concept notes and design schematics, no hard and fast details quite yet. If we can nail down a precise ship frame then I can give you a better answer for materials. For the time being, we're also going to be buying up and salvaging everything that we can find on the open market."

"Speaking of which: Armand I need you to maybe get in touch with a few of your old contacts off world. We're in need of some old large space frames, something like a few Venator Class that we can get back up and operational. You know my salvage contacts as well. Give them a call on the Holonet when you have the time and ask about any new salvage fields where they found Venator Star Destroyers. If they can produce four or five, then we'll pay top credit for them." Min smiled brightly at Armand and handed him a long list of ships and other materials they needed to get their hands on.

[member="Armand Temi"] [member="Krasnaya Xue"]

 

[Armand Temi]

"Will do, Admiral," he said. With the list in his datapad, Armand went to his SoroSuub 3000 which was parked in a nearby docking bay and he began his own planning. Instead of scavenging in space which could be a gamble unless you had the type of connections that Wan Min did, he was going to go directly to the source. He sent a transmission to Jules Barek, a ship mechanic who he had served with in the Hapan Royal Navy. Jules worked on Raxus Prime now and had ties to salvaging operations which were situated on an outpost just off-planet.

Armand wasn't sure if such a large purchase, salvage or not, would go unchecked. To be on the safe side, the Hapan doctor would need to go undercover.

//begin transmission...

Jules, it's Armand. I need to ask a favor of you. I'm sending someone to Raxus Prime to purchase some large Venator Class space frames. Your next communication will come from Battle Dragon. Once Dragon is in touch, the purchase can be made. Dragon is hoping to do this without attracting attention from customs. This needs to be a quiet sale if you catch my drift.

//end transmission...

Now for the facade. He had disguised himself as a mechanic before to infiltrate a shadowport and assist a Jedi. And while that mission had been a failure in his eyes, Armand still had the mechanic coveralls in his ship locker. He set a course for Raxus Prime and while the ship was on autopilot he stretched on a bunk in his quarters to take a nap while the SoroSuub would make the long trip through space.

[member="Krasnaya Xue"] [member="DasGeneral"]

 

[Krasnaya Xue]

It was a three-for-one sort of day, with all but the General of the Marines present to discuss the new plans in expanding Alliance naval roles. The Red Fleet was still running on the core of the original Home One- and Inevitable-class ships, and that just would not do at this stage. While Krasnaya had a fair idea of what craft they would be outlining, the Commander-in-Chief was the more seasoned when it came to blueprinting ship designs. She had gotten her start with salvaging and restoring old warships, after all.

Mitczik accepted the greetings around, being that sort of crusty guy with an all-around appreciation of humor at the same time. He said he was always curious about things, and that was how he stayed relevant with the times despite his longing for the 'good old days'. They did not make them how they used to, and Mitczik was fine with that while he was alive. "Commander; Benefactor. Good to see I'm not stuck with this brash young lady unsupervised." He would have winked if he could have. "Been a long time since I heard we had credits for this crab. Gen used to give me a hard time. She loved me, but you know how she was."

Krasnaya was not as familiar with 'Gen' as some of the more senior Alliance members were, but she was certainly aware of some stories surrounding the previous Benefactor. It was not that long ago that she was running this show. "We've always centralized around our fighter and quick hitters. Home One is showing some tear nowadays, but it's still a contender."

"Old is not bad," Mitczik mischievously chimed in.

"Then let's play this old school." The admiral nodded to her superior. "I think I'll take this chance to learn from what you've got here."

[member="DasGeneral"], [member="Armand Temi"]

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

Admiral Brightsky looked over her notes and began thinking.

"You know Mitczik, we might be better off sticking with a tried and true design platform. I had Armand Temi get in touch with a few of my old associates who can get their hands on some older space frames. Specifically, Venator-Class Star Destroyers from the end of the Clone Wars. I was planning on using them to fill in the holes in our battle fleet until we could start producing our own independent designs. We might be able to not only start rebuilding some of those Venator frames into some usable line ships, but we could also start modifying them as well," Min said to them.

She brought up the old design schematics for the Venator-Class and started looking over the specifics.

"The basic design is solid, if a little bit dated. These things are smaller than the old Imperial Star Destroyers and built to fight in an actual stand-up war, not peacekeeping or terror operations like most capital ships are these days or back during the Imperial era. They've got stronger shields, a fast hyperdrive unit, and one hell of a fighter carrying capacity. If we modify the designs, we can split it up into three distinct sub-categories along the lines of what I'm thinking," Min thought aloud.

"Alright, so modifying this thing into a fleet carrier isn't even really much of a task. We can extend the flight deck about another fifteen to twenty meters, gives us some more flight deck space. We can remove a good 50% of the turbolaser batteries since this thing will be launching and recovering fighters most of the time and will not be on the firing line and shift the power consumption over to the shield grid and light turbolaser batteries for anti-fighter and anti-missile fire. We put a stronger shield grid into it to give us greater protection during fighter launch and recovery, and we're good to go."

"The all-gun type will take some more work. That flight deck has to go, which means that we've go to do structural modifications to the overall design. We shrink it down to the least amount of space possible for the flight deck and start installing more turbolaser batteries and a handful of mass driver cannons. The ventral armored flight doors can be ditched since we're not going to be using this thing to launch large swarms of fighters or land an army, or we can just bring them down to the smallest size possible. Half a kilometer long armored doors are not needed for an all-gun or mostly all-gun cruiser! "

"The downside is that we're going to need more power production, which means another one to three fusion generators to keep those hungry cannons firing. We can begin to automate some of those new turbolaser mounts to reduce crew numbers and tie in fire control to a few computer banks on the ship. The old Venators used manual reloads for the turbolasers, we need to get rid of that and introduce automated reloading and that will further reduce our crew requirements. That can be used across all three design variants."

"The EMP Cruiser design shouldn't be too hard, just a solid compromise between the two. Overall reduction of turbolaser mounts in favor of Ion cannons and EMP generators, keep some fighter capacity but not too much. Baseline crewing requirements would be similar across all three as we're introducing heavy automation into the design. Flexibility, fast speed, and an established history of excellence. What more could we want in a new capital cruiser design for the Rebel Alliance?"

[member="Krasnaya Xue"] [member="Armand Temi"]

 

[Armand Temi]

By the time he reached Raxus Prime, the Rebel Network of infochants had procured a fake worker's permit that would go along with his cover of being a specialty mechanic looking for scrap or parts. He tucked his lightsaber in an interior pocket of the coveralls just in case and brought his yacht into land on the outpost.

But before he could visit his friend Jules, he ran into customs at the exit of the docking bay. He showed his worker's permit and declared nothing. He immediately started fretting about customs on the way out, but it wasn't as if Armand could sneak out of here with Venator Class space frames in his pocket. He hoped Jules would go along with the subterfuge as it may mean risking his friend's livelihood.

The outpost was larger than it looked and he needed to take a high speed shuttle to his friend's location. Soon enough he was near the shop where Jules worked, a salvage operation where spare parts were bought, sold or traded and then recycled into ships and either sent back to the shipyards or sold to private entities.

[member="Krasnaya Xue"] [member="DasGeneral"]

 

[Krasnaya Xue]

"These are pretty specific plans, here," the Mon Cal smiled, leaning back in his chair and resting his elongated head in his webbed hands. "The question is almost always about material--which we seem to be attempting to cover right now.

"And the automation sounds ideal, but we'll need backup systems, just in case. If there was anything I learned at Incom, it was that redundancy was never a bad thing. You're going to need some redundancy on those shields for the ion variant, and we're going to need to proof our own ships. Analog makes for some tricky work when actually utilizing, but it's better than floating dead like the enemy will be. The great news is that the Venators were fairly low-tech in comparison to our modern ships, so we won't have to try too hard to retrofit."

Krasnaya glanced mischievously from side to side, exchanging focus between the engineer and the Commander-in-Chief. These were rather grandiose plans, but teamwork and resolution among the united people of this Rebel Alliance would get the job done, she was certain. Selectivism was the way to victory in her eyes. She was a freedom fighter with nothing to lose. "Redundancy will indeed be integrated into these ships. In fact, I'd suggest all future models incorporate the same 'archaic' functionality." Rebels: archaic. It fit. "I'd propose we work out a carbonite layering between the armor plates to protect our own vessels from the ionic charges. Neuranium would be great, but it's much too heavy and impossible to work with on such a massive construct."

"For sure," Mitczik added. "I think a good decision has been made overall. Never underestimate the Venator-class. It's a workhorse if ever there was one."

[member="DasGeneral"], [member="Armand Temi"]

 

[Armand Temi]

Jules shooed away the jawas who constantly lingered outside the doorstep of the Raxus Prime salvage shop. "Battle Dragon, eh?" he said to Armand. "Now that certainly gave you away at least to me. I'm afraid you'd make a terrible spy, old friend." It had been years since he had seen Jules, so Armand gave him a big hug once they were in the shop.

After picking their way through the junk-filled interior, Jules took the Hapan doctor to a hangar in the backyard which had been converted to storage. The Venator Class frames were easy to spot due to their size. Armand drew out a measuring scanner and made his way all around the frames capturing each measurement. He sent those right back to Admiral Brightsky along with some holopics. "I think these will work," he said to Jules. "How much do I owe you?"

"For an old friend you can have them for half of what they are worth. What do you need them for anyway?" Armand was indebted to his friend but not enough that he would compromise the upcoming mission.

"Let's just say rebuilding ships has become a hobby of mine recently."

Jules looked dubiously at Armand but shrugged and took the credit card as Armand handed it to him.

[member="DasGeneral"] [member="Krasnaya Xue"]

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

Wan Min grinned as the Mon Calamari and she went over the list of designs and specifics a few more times. She was impressed at his ability, there were a scant few true artisans of shipbuilding and design left in the galaxy these days. Most designers went for brute strength and firepower over finesse. The Mon Cal, on the other hand, seemed to be able to straddle both finesse and aesthetics along with the needs of a warship.

"Well, honestly I think we're good to go. Armand is finalizing our purchase of the Venator frames. In the future we should just start producing original frames rather than relying on salvaged frames. The Venator itself isn't a complicated frame, just a smaller version of the later ISD's. She's smaller, but she's got it where it counts," Min said.

She looked over the list of ships they were planning on producing and came to a stop. Min leaned against the design table, one hand resting on it, the other slightly akimbo on her right hip, a look of deep thought plastered on her face.

"We need fast anti-fighter and light anti-ship fire support for these fleets and we just don't have it yet. The Antilles-Class is fast, but it doesn't have the firepower where we need it. We need anti-fighter flack guns and a lot of them if we want to keep our carriers safe from enemy attack. I suppose that we could go with a Lancer Class frigate for anti-fighter support for the moment while we come up with a new option," Min explained. She was concerned about her fleet deployments, especially if the rumors about an ACA attack were to come true.

"We're still going to need a heavy cruiser design that we can modify to fill two rolls: Fire support, and a light carrier that we can crank out in numbers. It'll need to be something that we can salvage or buy on the open market and then modify and start producing on our own," Brightsky said as she pondered the question. She tapped her right hand against her cheek lightly as she looked at the new Venator-Class design variants. She snapped her fingers.

"I've got it!" Min exclaimed. She grabbed her communicator and toggled Armand Temi.

"Temi, it's Brightsky. If you're with your salvaging contact, ask him if he's got access to any old Acclamator-Class hulls as well. I've got a great idea for our fleet and I need to get my hands on a few of those old beauties!" She said and toggled the comm off.

"So, my friend," she said as she brought up the design specifications for the Acclamator Class and looked at the Mon Calamari designer, "What about modifying our old friends, the Acclamator Class frigate?"

[member="Armand Temi"]
[member="Krasnaya Xue"]