NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This has to do with the Kahta war.
IC:

[Macabea City]
If any being thought the underwater submarine pens inside the city harbor as secret what conjured inside the rotten earth was tenfold as clandestine, a myriad of times more mysterious. Indeed, it would soon be told that no man who walked the hallways of that place, a place which only the few knew as Mortium, ever saw the light again. In that very place the hammers of the slaves of the Empire, slaves which had no indentity, no link with the foreign world, struck once, and once again, against the cold steel of the forges of Mortium, each time, and time again, sparks striking the earth walls and flying like bugs in the summer night sky. The only source of visibility were the sporadic candles arrayed against the walls, one after the other, and after again, providing stark contrast between the shadows and black. The walls vibrated as sound wave collided with sound wave and collided with boundaries. The clink of chains moving back and forth, making sure that the workers below failed to move away, only added to the cacophony of harmonious tones and notes. Yes, an oxymoron, but in this scene it seemed that the entire Macabee society was an oxymoron, a hypocracy, built by the hypocratic. In truth it was nothing of the like as the adminstration, save Emperor Jonach I himself, had little to do, or scant to know about the policies which worked below, as this was not a world of the above and not a world of realism, but a world of the past, a world of feudalism, a world of warfare, a world prepared to destroy even its creators. Fires danced around providing yet a second source of sunlight. But was it really a source? The flames were more of a consumer, consuming the dark liquids of the burnt metals and elements. So ironic that these elements, created for the survival of the earth , had been so misused, so mistreated, that they were bent, stricken, and distorted, to support war.

In the midst of this scene of utter chaos sat a grey being, unnamed, and certainly untamed. What it was was no secret, as nobody knew to keep it that way. It had been a project gone awry, only kept in progress because before it had been so important to hide that those who had worked on it could no longer be released and thusly those who were forced to a life of misery and secrecy kept up the work, and finally the administration, which had worked so hard to destroy ever little bit of evidence of this project, again paid heed to the callings of bellow. The grey hull ran at least six hundred feet long, although even that seemed like little compared to this massive length - perhaps even more? There was no way to be sure as it was not even finished, the bars of the titanium frame sticking out at the end, just like a picture of an upright skyscraper with steel rods jabbing at the heavens ready to make it bigger, larger, stronger than ever before. The cylindrical shape, the best adjetive for it, although it failed to fit even that ended at the beginning of the huge brigde, which even that failed to be finished yet. The tubes, for purpose kept silent, were larger than ever imagined, although it might have been a distortion of the mind, for on paper they were only 500mms in diameter. It failed to matter though, for the tubes had no real significance - that would come soon.

Emperor Jonach I had come as soon as he could to inspect the progress of his monster and he was pleased, the smile on his face said it all. He turned to the lead engineer, shabby without shaving for at least two months, beard outgrowing the creature behind him. Jonach I nodded, smiled and spoke,"The progress made is wonderful. I cannot await until it is finished, I count the days as times goes on, day and day after. The beast is almost completed. How much longer exactly?"

The engineer, a Dr. Heinrich Gerbuch, ex-proffesor of mathematics at the Macabee Imperial Museum of War, smiled too and soon responded with the energy he had had since he was a young man in the officer corp of the Hasselic Army - perhaps another reason he had been damned to these parts of hell,"Yes your majesty. There isn't much time to wait. Perhaps... say, a month longer and it shall be ready to do your bidding."

Emperor Jonach I, in his full military attire, nodded, saluted, and about faced walking towards the elevator, punching in the key and beginning his journey upwards, where he would be left at a receptory where he would be checked and scanned - none who were not allowed to could be let out. Full guards checked the halls, arrived with assault rifles and grenaded - none could be let out - if rebellion occured they would have to be massacred and new "recruits" would have to be transferred in. No matter, it was almost finished... the time would soon come...

The Leviathan was gargantuan at its finished state, five hundred feet in length, titanium frame covering the depths of that man made hell underneath the galant city on the surface, big white double-headed eagle painted at the front, which tapered like the old German u-boats. The hull itself was cylindrical, rising up to one hundred feet high at some palces, making it quite ugly, but effective. A rounder hull was meant to for water pressure to evenly distribute but the tapered end, in u-boat fashion, was designed to slice through the water as there was little surface area - it was a strange marriage of two engineering ideas. The bridge took to another two hundred feet, perhaps more, the Catalan dynasty emblem (an oak[?] tree - my real coat of arms) painted whi,te a contrast to the eagle below. It was simply huge, a frontier never before tested. The hull was covered by a layer of anachoic tiling, as well as a thing strip of gaucho which further absorbed the enemy active sound waves. It truly looked like quite a seam monster. Finally, on the hull, right under the white eagles, there was a HESS-401 Leviathan. There were sporadic ASHUM guns for anti-torpedo warfare, and there were a total of twelve 500mm torpedo tubes, and four 250mm tubes. At large intervals there were jetisons which would serve beautifully as ejectors of steel spikes which would be used to bring down enemy torpedoes - small LIDAR balls would work at extremely small ranges, less than five hundred meters to pin point these incoming torpedoes - they were designed mostly for SuCav torpedoes.

The most wonderful part were the ten (they're not that big) hydrogen fuel cell stacks, protected by internal armored belts, which albeit small and not likely able to stop even a two inch shell, it would be enough to reinforce the titanium frame. The hydrogen fuel cells had been used before on the Macabee tank, and now ten were placed inside a submarine. At a velocity of eight knows the Leviathan could go a range of three hundred kilometers. A second propulsion system, two Valhalla nuclear reactors, which could be switched off and the fuel stacks turned on. It was extremely expensive to place so many propulsion systems (the fuel stacs, though, small) but it was cheaprer than to have to refuel it all the time with converted natural gas (for the fuel cell stacks) all the time. In the end, though, it wouldn't go very fast, it was far too much of a behemoth.

The Leviathan had a brand dnew spherical array SONAR, bigger than those on conventional submarines, but what gave it strength were the TB-76 and the TB-2016 towed array SONARs. The TB-76 used a thing line, rolled up into the ballast tank, over six thousand feet long,with hundreds of hydrophones covering the last five hundred feet, making it quite powerful in passive operations. The TB-2016 was the art. It was rolled from a bottom compartment, long enough to place the hydrophones right on the deep sound axis channel, making it prime for anti-submarine warfare. The Leviathan was designed as a killing machine.

The Leviathan was also designed with three quadruple VLS tubes, with the same fashion as those used in the Toledo class SSN. Each one had four slots, which after every launch the VLS tube gyrated and the now empty slot was restocked while another launching sequence took place. In this sense every ten seconds three missiles could be released, and twelve within forty seconds. They were designed for mass attack and that's how they would be used - most likely with Principe IIIs. They could also be stocked with Praetorian Vs.

The 250mm tubes would be used for the new miniature MT-4s, which were the new Macabee torpedoes designed just for the Leviathan, also very secretly and without markings. The MT-4s were fired with a chea[ metal casing with Super Cavitating abilities (although rarely used). The encasements would wither away and reveal an insulated tungesten rod. The MT-4s were for special purpose operations only - mostly close combat and melee. In essense the MT-4s were the wanderwaffe of the Second Empire, coupled with the Leviathan. (So, the MT-4 works just like a real life SABOT.)

The fires stopped, the hammering halted, and inside the old fire put valves spun open and the pit flooded. Then, when it was finally full the pullies holding the Leviathan snapped and dropped the huge sea monster into what no resembled a wide river. From another elevator hugging the sides of the quarters walked out the crew to the new submarine, all one hundred and seventy officers and men. They were all ready to test drive the Leviathan and give hell to all of the Macabee's enemies. The HESS-401 Leviathan would be the only one of the Leviathan class SSNs for a long while - they were simply too expensive to mass produce in the numbers of the Toledo - but even a few would tear up an enemy - or so it was hoped...