GMC Military Arms
20-11-2003, 10:52
[Note: This is partially a dev thread, and partially a little bit of GMC’s history told in flashback. Note the date: GMC says ‘today’ is about 2070, meaning that the events described occurred 122 years ago. And no complaining about strange bits of tech: GMC wasn’t exactly a first-world nation back then. Wasn’t called GMC, either…]
‘Well, what you guys in NSPD think up tends to surprise me…’ Alice conceded, ‘But this is…Well, I’d never even thought it would be possible on any useful scale. That’s what the AFSPD team concluded after some tests…’
Jasmine sighed, ‘Yes, sir, but we’ve been going over their results…That was a fair time ago that the study was made, and that was before our technology sharing agreements with the people from The Hack. Everything we’ve learned since then suggests it’s possible, with powerful enough computers. Difficult, certainly, but possible. And we’ve already got it working on smaller scale units.’
Alice nodded cautiously, ‘But this request doesn’t call for a small-scale unit…And what’s with the stipulation of twenty-one inch guns? Last review said the 19.2 was still perfectly adequate for modern ship armour.’
‘Well, if this ship’s going to be a testbed for new systems we thought we might as well go for trialing the new extended range 21-inch round on it…Can’t hurt, can it?’
Alice grinned, ‘I guess not. I suppose you guys have already done all the prelim work and I just have to greenlight laying her keel?’
Jasmine coughed, ‘Err, actually there was one other thing…Several, actually. We thought that it would be more efficient to contract a few other groups in to sort out details…Obviously she’s going to be using Killer Bees for sighting, so that puts a Hack group on board, and we need their expertise with computers anyway to build a system with a hope of keeping the primary Opt-S functioning the way we want it to…’
‘Ok, I’ll see to the details.’ Alice smiled. Opt-S. Optic Stealth. To any of her predecessors, the thought of making a twelve-hundred eleven foot, one-hundred forty-four thousand ton ship vanish from sight would have seemed ridiculous.
‘Thank you, sir.’ As Jasmine walked out, Alice couldn’t help looking from the new project’s timetable to the pictures on the wall by the door, of her great-great grandfather and the ship he’d served on…One of the wireless operators, if she remembered correctly. The day this new ship was to scheduled to be completed was the same day that ship had been launched. We’ve come a long way since her… She smiled, Amazing how she’s still with us, even after all this time…
Highbridge Station, Marshall City, August 8th, 1948
‘I say!’ the reporter cried, ‘I say, hold the door there!’
A couple of his companions laughed as he finally managed to get on board the leaving train, heading from Marshall City right the way out to the shipyards in Hammer Bay, ‘Dashed train was early again,’ he muttered.
‘Dashed train’s always leaving early with you, Charles,’ he friend smiled, ‘Cigarette?’
‘Thank you.’ Charles accepted, fumbling for a match, ‘So, what the devil’s got everyone so excited? As near as I can tell every reporter from Drake Island to Fortune City…’ he spotted a small group of Elves sitting in one corner of the carriage chatting, ‘…Has been packed up and sent out here to watch some chaps push a boat into the sea.’
‘Bit more than that,’ said his friend, ‘She’s not an ordinary ship, that’s what my editor said. Says she’s bigger than the King George, even.’
‘By a few inches, maybe. Not much point building a ship much longer than the George, otherwise she’d be too big a target for the other chaps to shoot at, that’s what I say!’
A third man grinned sheepishly, ‘I’d heard she was a thousand feet.’
Charles laughed, ‘Read that on the bottom of an empty glass, did you old boy?’
‘It’s just a rumour that’s going around, shouldn’t think there’s no truth in it.’
‘Awful lot of secrecy about the bally thing, isn’t there?’
‘That there is, Charles, that there is…’
Well, he had his orders from the people at internal affairs, whatever the facts of the case. Hold the front page for his story, they’d said, because you’ll want to cover the launch of the new battleship. Must be pretty important to get them so worked up, but even so, the shipyards turned out a new warship every few months, mostly patrol boats, some still with sails, even. Of course, Charles had heard rumours of various newfangled gadgets that were supposedly on board…Ships with oil turbines were getting more common these days in the waters around Marshall Island, but what of these rumours that she carried one of the new valve-operated calculating machines to guess her shell trajectories with greater precision than any human operator? Or that she had a high-precision land radar system to spot aircraft? What, for that matter, of the talk of her being armed with anti-aircraft rockets? Charles had heard them, and assumed them to be nonsense talk from drunken engineers, but there was still a nagging thought at the back of his mind…
Not that it had been easy to find out either way. The Supreme Commander himself had ordered the project proceed in complete secrecy, and so everything about her was a mystery known only to those who needed to: her speed, crew size, displacement, armament…Even her dimensions had been kept top secret right up until now, so all they had to go on was a name, and a vessel type.
Charles sat back and took a deep drag on his cigarette as he pondered how he was going to introduce his readers to the battleship Tanager.
‘Well, what you guys in NSPD think up tends to surprise me…’ Alice conceded, ‘But this is…Well, I’d never even thought it would be possible on any useful scale. That’s what the AFSPD team concluded after some tests…’
Jasmine sighed, ‘Yes, sir, but we’ve been going over their results…That was a fair time ago that the study was made, and that was before our technology sharing agreements with the people from The Hack. Everything we’ve learned since then suggests it’s possible, with powerful enough computers. Difficult, certainly, but possible. And we’ve already got it working on smaller scale units.’
Alice nodded cautiously, ‘But this request doesn’t call for a small-scale unit…And what’s with the stipulation of twenty-one inch guns? Last review said the 19.2 was still perfectly adequate for modern ship armour.’
‘Well, if this ship’s going to be a testbed for new systems we thought we might as well go for trialing the new extended range 21-inch round on it…Can’t hurt, can it?’
Alice grinned, ‘I guess not. I suppose you guys have already done all the prelim work and I just have to greenlight laying her keel?’
Jasmine coughed, ‘Err, actually there was one other thing…Several, actually. We thought that it would be more efficient to contract a few other groups in to sort out details…Obviously she’s going to be using Killer Bees for sighting, so that puts a Hack group on board, and we need their expertise with computers anyway to build a system with a hope of keeping the primary Opt-S functioning the way we want it to…’
‘Ok, I’ll see to the details.’ Alice smiled. Opt-S. Optic Stealth. To any of her predecessors, the thought of making a twelve-hundred eleven foot, one-hundred forty-four thousand ton ship vanish from sight would have seemed ridiculous.
‘Thank you, sir.’ As Jasmine walked out, Alice couldn’t help looking from the new project’s timetable to the pictures on the wall by the door, of her great-great grandfather and the ship he’d served on…One of the wireless operators, if she remembered correctly. The day this new ship was to scheduled to be completed was the same day that ship had been launched. We’ve come a long way since her… She smiled, Amazing how she’s still with us, even after all this time…
Highbridge Station, Marshall City, August 8th, 1948
‘I say!’ the reporter cried, ‘I say, hold the door there!’
A couple of his companions laughed as he finally managed to get on board the leaving train, heading from Marshall City right the way out to the shipyards in Hammer Bay, ‘Dashed train was early again,’ he muttered.
‘Dashed train’s always leaving early with you, Charles,’ he friend smiled, ‘Cigarette?’
‘Thank you.’ Charles accepted, fumbling for a match, ‘So, what the devil’s got everyone so excited? As near as I can tell every reporter from Drake Island to Fortune City…’ he spotted a small group of Elves sitting in one corner of the carriage chatting, ‘…Has been packed up and sent out here to watch some chaps push a boat into the sea.’
‘Bit more than that,’ said his friend, ‘She’s not an ordinary ship, that’s what my editor said. Says she’s bigger than the King George, even.’
‘By a few inches, maybe. Not much point building a ship much longer than the George, otherwise she’d be too big a target for the other chaps to shoot at, that’s what I say!’
A third man grinned sheepishly, ‘I’d heard she was a thousand feet.’
Charles laughed, ‘Read that on the bottom of an empty glass, did you old boy?’
‘It’s just a rumour that’s going around, shouldn’t think there’s no truth in it.’
‘Awful lot of secrecy about the bally thing, isn’t there?’
‘That there is, Charles, that there is…’
Well, he had his orders from the people at internal affairs, whatever the facts of the case. Hold the front page for his story, they’d said, because you’ll want to cover the launch of the new battleship. Must be pretty important to get them so worked up, but even so, the shipyards turned out a new warship every few months, mostly patrol boats, some still with sails, even. Of course, Charles had heard rumours of various newfangled gadgets that were supposedly on board…Ships with oil turbines were getting more common these days in the waters around Marshall Island, but what of these rumours that she carried one of the new valve-operated calculating machines to guess her shell trajectories with greater precision than any human operator? Or that she had a high-precision land radar system to spot aircraft? What, for that matter, of the talk of her being armed with anti-aircraft rockets? Charles had heard them, and assumed them to be nonsense talk from drunken engineers, but there was still a nagging thought at the back of his mind…
Not that it had been easy to find out either way. The Supreme Commander himself had ordered the project proceed in complete secrecy, and so everything about her was a mystery known only to those who needed to: her speed, crew size, displacement, armament…Even her dimensions had been kept top secret right up until now, so all they had to go on was a name, and a vessel type.
Charles sat back and took a deep drag on his cigarette as he pondered how he was going to introduce his readers to the battleship Tanager.