NationStates Jolt Archive

***Grahfsberg Capital of the Grahfsberg Federation November 2882***

Praetor Yannef was angry. Actually the proper term would be furious. After recieving the monthly reports on the PTSS and PTPS upgrade schedule that had come in. And for the 26th time in a row they were short by almost 1/3rd. This had been the domain of Professor Yanislev. The current Proconsul of the Prefecture civilan authority. The Praetor waited impatiently. He pulled out a cannabis cigarette and started to smoke it in long pulls. Military men did not drink often in the Prefecture, but their relaxant of choice was cannibis. Not only for its nutritional value but because it was easily flushed from the system with vitamin c. And the Praetor needed to relax right now. He was in a very bad mood and was about to have a very long talk with a man he did not like very much. Praetor Yannef, however was navy. And if the Prefecture was ever going to behave like a nation, they needed people with civilian organisational skills. That and the Prefects council had chosen him. He was the head genetic scientist in the Prefecture after all, and his intelligence was respected, almost worshipped by the old desk jockeys of the Prefects council. He sighed. Being the steward of the Prefecture was hard, he had not wished the position but Jan had disappeared, and no one knew where to or if he was even still alive. At the end of the Grahfsberg incident he had vanished, not to be seen again in the three years since wars end.


Yannef actually didnt believe he was qualified, but her was a good soldier, and he knew to let those whose skills were best used at a task, do that task. Still he had secured complete control over all affairs of the Prefecture itself, he was after all the Steward to the throne. Yannef however, knew nothing of how to organise a kingdom, how to run and it how to see it led by himself, so he had created the council of Prefects. Each prefect ran a segment. Each segment consisted of several city rocks. Or around 200 000 people and its PTSS and PTBS forces. Each Prefect reported to the council and represented said cities. It was relatively good, he had thought. Then he had realised that having so many bureacrats in one place may lead to corruption..and his fears were confirmed. This is why he was angry. Because this meant that many if not all of the Prefects, were buying for themselves with the hard work of the people. That the council was corrupt, and needed to be disbanded. And this meant that he would have to figure something else out..or reorganise the Prefecture back in to a military branch... So many of the tasks needed to support the navy were so far removed from military jursidiction now, that it was impossible to consider them nothing more then a military force. They were a distinct people, and as Jan had planned, they deserved to be led like one.

Yannef continued brooding when he heard a chime at the door. Professor Yanislev walked in. His black and white streaked hair framing his face. His dark features and wide set bird like nose were framed by his short beard, covering his chin and jaw. His narrow, dark eyes stared at the Praetor. He didnt like the professor. He stood up, his short cropped black hair shone in the dim light, his angry blue eyes stared directly at the proconsul. A sneer was the only sign of emotion on the finely chiseled features of his face. "Yanislev what is going on with my Prefecture....explain to me this" the Praetor tossed down a data slate. "My lord" Yanislev grinned wickedly and knelt on the floor his knee bent and his arm to his chest as he looked down. "I was under the impression the PTSS and PTBS were under my direct supervision and care, that it was my task to choose how and what was done to improve them" he looked up and grinned. The Praetor almost rolled his eyes...he wanted to but then he would let the Professor know he felt like an idiot at the moment. And he did not want to give the Professor that impression. Instead he growled. "Professor tell me why you have not sent me status reports on what the resources allocated were being used on then!" he balled his fist..he wanted very much to strike him. "My lord, my humblest apologies, i had thought all the information had been sent to you." he looked down again. "Project 10945 my lord." he grinned softly. "When Richter alberecht misinterpreted an idea floated around the Vascilian council as an actual factual bill" he flashed a wicked grin. "Well it came to our attention in the civil war, that the PTSS was simply not capable of performing its duties, if particularly aggressive powers are present."

"hundreds of garfish were built and crewed simply to fill the losses long enough for the navy to be able to establish a front, in merely 6 months the PTSS forces lost over 300 garfish police cruisers, and they were only supposed to HAVE 75" the Professor stood. "The PTBS were no match for the renegade naval troopers that plagued the core sectors of the Prefecture, nor the armsmen aboard ship." he looked at the Praetor. "My lord i have stopped order on the new police cruisers, new police vessels, new police side arms" he smiled. "And i have decided to finish Project 10945 instead." he stated flatly now, without emotion. "That idiotic plan!?!?!" the Praetor shouted. "That was madness...the amount of resources he requested was astronomical...impossible!..The king of the Divine kingdom on mars is INSANE Professor." The Professor smiled. "I am quite aware of that..but we finished the first shipment." He grinned proudly. "And i do believe it is far far more sustainable then his first requests. The Praetor looked over the data slate once again, then handed it to the Proconsul. The Proconsul typed in to it for a moment then handed it back. Yannef looked over it for some time, scrolling it by his eyes over and over again.



"Very canny thinking..but what is this of disbanding the PTSS, the navy doesnt have time for the duties it performs." he asked curiously and slightly annoyed. "It shall be handled do not worry, we shall not distract you from the true and divine duty of the defense of our most heavenly realm" Yanislev smiled. Yannef looked at the slate again. "Very canny Professor Yanislev..most of our existing facilities were already more then equipped for this task, no resource was wasted." he grinned at the Professor now. "Very well" his mood grew dark again. "Make it done but never try to hide things from me Yanislev..and make sure that i never...EVER..suspect it again Proconsul, you are a worthy Tannelornian..but dont make any presumptions about your importance if i believe you to be false. You may leave, and may heaven grant you its divine blessing in this task" Yannef went back down and sat, looking over the monthly Strategic and tactical disposion reports that made up the record of Tannelornian daily life in the Prefecture. And he sighed at the mountain of paper work ahead of him, as Yanislev left his presence.

****Deep in the Kuiper belt****

Enlil was a cold barren rock, barely a planet by most standards. It was one of the trans-neptunian worlds, long ago forgotten by most in the Sol system. It had its purposes however, to those that wished to do experiments in secret..and safety. After all testing out such systems as the STC drive..a black hole compressor would not be done so close to home. The fleet base in the tiny moon, Ynead seemed barren of late..at least on the outside. Only a few squadrons of cruisers and carriers floated lazily about in patrol vectors these days. After all the TEF had a new home. Far from the prying eyes of those in the system..safe..and ensuring the safety of the future of the Prefecture.

However inside the dimly lit halls of Hel research station, another battle for the continued ascendancy and survival of the Prefecture was being fought.

Professor Yanislev walked through the nearly empty halls with a brisk pace. His heavy booted footsteps echoed as he stode. He stopped in front of a large blast door, and place his hand on an id scanner. The door opened slowly, he winced as his eyes adjusted tothe brightness in the Mathematical equation center. The research rooms were a bright contrast to the dimly lit halls. Considering most of the stations crew were asleep or preparing to sleep. The Professor walked over to a large chair in front of a massive computer. Images were displayed on the screen, a toddler to be exact, a young half elven girl playing with a ball. He could hear a soft female voice speaking. "So how is MAIA today Morigan" he asked rather disinterested. "She is doing very well Professor, say hello MAIA." The image on the computer screen smiled and waved at Yanislev. "Hello" it said with a childs voice. "She is learning so fast..if only Aden were here i am sure it would go faster. " the frail looking elven girl in the chair turned and smiled at the Professor. He had an amused grin on his face.


The girl had no idea what she was building..yet she insisted on treating it as a child..and insisted it needed a mother and father to teach it. This was of course entirely and fundamentally unPrefecture like thinking. Had her mind not been so quick and innovative..this girl likely would have spent the rest of her life attempting to count to infinity..or as the central processing core of a city system. Still he was very happy with the progress. After all MAIA was no ordinary child, she did need guidance as well..and it had seemed she had bonded with the pair.


Morgan Devir head professor of mathematics and Aden Gearhardt, head of station security. They were her defacto parents, and they actually cared for it. He chuckled. "Whats so funny?" Morgan asked with that wan little smile of hers. "Nothing i am just impressed at how well our girl has grown" he smiled at her. "I was actually curious on the status of Project 10945" he asked softly. "As well as that of MAIA..it will soon be time for us to let both of them see the light." he smiled at Morgan. "Though MAIA must wait till she is ready." he grinned softly at Morgan. Suddenly the bulkhead door opened again..a tall man in the greyish green armour of the naval troopers entered, his short cropped silver hair shone in the light of the mathematics center.

"Yanislev, what have i told you about bothering Morgan while she works before..your damn project is almost finished." General Helmut Schneider almost spat.
He towered over the professor..almost looming. "Follow me and you can see what you have created first hand..and evaluate them" he finished.

The two men left the room and walked briskly down the darkened corridors till they approached a massive pair of blast doors. The doors themselves led to a balcony overlooking a massive simulated "surface" for lack of a better term. It was an ever changing field of terrain, simulating whatever possible conditions one might find on a terrestrial body. Yanislev looked over the edge ofthe balcony. He was greeted with a seen that filled his heart with a grim pride..after all look what he had created...

He left the room cackling insanely, he had to wipe the tears from his eyes before turning to the general. "Dont feel bad General after all your naval troopers are still the most magnificent warriors to grace the solar system..after all they were created by my predecessor..and you if i remember correctly" he grinned at General Schneider. However General Schneider was not as patient as the Praetor.

He backhanded the professor for his impudence, sending him crashing in to a wall. "Do not speak that name with such impudence in your voice" he snarled at him. The doctor got up, wiping the blood from his lip. "Of course General and might i remind you that i shall remember this moment, it is after all the crowning moment in both of our lives dont you see." he grinned. "It is the moment of the validation of your Divine Celestial Cavaliers, and my old friend Piotr's ultimate works" he looked at the general.

"They are an abomination" the General responded. Yanislev grinned at the General. General schneider turned and walked away..his lips sealed.

OOC

Transplanting my research thread. This is both a storyline thread and a "factbook" of sorts for the DCNT navy of Tannelorn. It is a long thread so I will move it slowly. Many events precede the events of "Into the sea of stars".

****Hel Station, Enlil [EL 61], Kuiper Belt January 2883****

MAIA wondered why mommy and daddy had to go every night, and leave her alone.
She also wondered why that mean old Professor Yanislev had to be here, he had nothing to do with her, but always told mommy what to do. Absentmindedly, and rather bored mind you, she played with the resonance on several Divine energy field experiments that she had been tasked in taking care of. At this point, she was fidgeting with this and that, making adjustments to the carefully balanced fields simply to see what would happen.


She was told not to do that before as well, but mommy wasnt here to punish her. She had started to take an interest in one field in particular, sample 3/457. This modified Demp generator was simply based on a standard Tannelornian sensor, however it was modified to direct the power to ships systems. However the addition of a limiter system had vastly decreased the effectiveness of the generator, another hope of the PTSF high command dashed to the ground.


If it wasnt for MAIA's curiousity however. MAIA was not simply an AI program. MAIA or Multipurpose artificially intelligent algorythm, was not your standard AI. Her purpose was to be able to function properly under the effects of a Divine energy field. The fields themselves were harmless to humans, and even to most basic computer systems. However when exposed to a Divine field, most AI were severely inhibited. Essentially they suffered equivalent of a lobotomy.

This was the real reason Tannelornians did not utilise AI, nor did they utilise excellent missile programs. For the most part Tannelornian ship missiles were remote controlled. For some reason the field's had a serious and adverse effect on the calculating speed of the processor.

Theories abound on the reason, but the only one that seemed to have any basis in truth was this. Being exposed to Divine energy was actually rather rejuvenating for living creatures, however when a living creature was inside the heavenly realm itself, most existed in a catatonic state. For this reason Tannelornian dream drives were equipped with a basic computer program, the simply fired the DoD array after a timer ticked down. The longest the computer programs still active aboard ship can last in the heavenly realm, is around 20 seconds. For safety reasons, the dream drive was limited to 15 seconds of travel, or approximately 500 light years in range.

An AI brought in to the Divine realm..dies. There is no other explanation to it. However the truth of the matter lies in the way that the AI program itself is "shaped". Its in the architecture. The program must be patterned after the synapses and thought process of a living creature, or at least..the closest possible approximation.

This is how MAIA was able to function in the research facility..in the Prefecture at all. She fiddled a little more with the field, she had suddenly become interested in the tingly feeling she was getting from reversing the field wavelengths. Suddenly the Demp generator flared to life..it almost glowed with power as the mere trickle of power it had been producing, flared in to a raging river. However this energy really had no where to go, and hastily.."earthed" itself in the generator. Almost as if the Divineenergy itself was annoyed at the mere thought of being harnessed, it twisted the demp generator in to a rather beautiful wall of torn and twisted metals and ceramics. MAIA thought it looked rather like a pretty flower, then she realised mommy would find out, considering warning Klaxons were blazing throughout the facility. Mommy and Daddy were going to be mad. MAIA promptly found a deep dark corner of the systems computer, and hid.

++++Project 10945++++

General Schneider had been sickened when heard that project 10945 had been given the go ahead. After all the naval troopers and the morgenraetes had proven enough for the Prefecture since before the secession. However the Praetor had foolishly allowed Yanislev to create this farce of life, Realians.

Synthetic life, artificial tannelornians grown using nanites to construct every last part of their basic structure. Bones made up of highly dense composites, nervous systems that could transmit reactions almost as quickly as a 5 year veteran of the Naval Troopers. Enhanced pulminary/cardio systems far beyond that of a standard Tannelornian as well as a quick and analytical mind, capable of making advanced battle field tactical and strategic decisions with incredible speed.

However they were still Tannelornians, though they were made differently. The basic structure..and mind was the same. However the difference was that the average Tannelornian had 25 years to grow and develop in to their role. Thanks to programming and hypno indoctrination..these Realians could be ready from vat to field..in just 1 year.

Tannelorn did not have 25 years to craft a ground army, it did not have 25 years to spend training and modifying a new generation of soldiers. However Tannelorn did have 3 to be precise, in which Yanislev forced project 10945 to the front of his agenda. Project 10945 had originally been the grand army of the Vascilian league. A mad decree by the insane king of DVK tannelorn. He wanted the Prefecture to craft 2 billion soldiers and 10 000 warships to transport them.

Luckily Prince Jan had actually payed attention at the meeting to discuss the formation of a grand vascilian army..and had watched as the motion was dismissed.
He cancelled the project before it had begun. However Yanislev had carefully husbanded the resources granted to him, and rather then perform the upgrade to the PTPS and PTSS that he had been tasked with..he had simply poured money in to his little pets.

Admittedly the results had been very promising. 2 million soldiers had been created..however if you dug deep enough, as MAIA most likely had, you would notice the numbers were off. Either way the Praetor had agreed to let the Professor continue in his works.

Yanislev watched as his armies trained on the fields below. He glanced over at the
Low G combat arena. Soldiers wearing bright white and red plate armour moved with astonishing speed capturing objectives and destroying the semi autonomous weapon drones with remarkable ease. He looked over at the armoured contingents, watching as they moved across the landscape quickly, destroying anything that popped in to range with methodical ease.


He also noted the similarity in performance the new hover tanks had with the Aumanii standard HVT. The real difference however, was in the main armament. Recent miniaturization breakthroughs had allowed the creation of tiny Urenbeck catapults. Capable of propelling a Morgenreate III at nearly 40% the speed of light in a straight line. However this was normally because a Urenbeck Catapult in transit..used a constantly shifting point of space directly in front of the craft as its anchor. However a Urenbeck Catapult could be fixed to far more...solid points in space..or on the ground.

Essentially the new HVT utilisied a urenbeck catapult, which used its "target" for the anchor for the field. It then allowed a large lead shell, well essentially the 4 base isotopes that make up lead..to travel at nearly 50% the speed of light..directly towards the unfortunate target of the Urenbeck field.

C-frac weapons had long been considered primitive within the Vascilian league. Thanks to Tannelornian expertise in ship building methods, and technologies..the armours used by Vascilian ships generally included dozens of extra systems, from polarisation to divine phasing to EM hardening. This took the killer bite, out of C-frac.

However this was also in large part due to the fact that most C-frac weapons, moved at a mere 10% the speed of light. This weapon, which used a Urenbeck catapult in the same way as most ships used a targetting laser to guide a missile, was not so primitive. Yanislev particularly enjoyed this, after all..these were his "children" and the children of a god should be his right hand.

He watched as the new armed dropships practiced hot landings off in the distance and he smiled. He was very pleased at the progress of his new army. However they were far from finished. He still had yet to deal with their childish behaviour. After all, they were physically and mentally mature, however they were far from emotionally mature. Still this was not..so bad. After all he had a very clear solution in mind for the infantry, and the pilots..it was simple. Still additional testing was required.

++++Unceasing fleet upgrade's++++

Professor Albiech had wondered why he had been transferred to the weapons division for some time. After all his expertise was in Urenbeck Fields. Particularly in making Urenbeck Catapults for star ships. That was until he had read his mission orders earlier that morning. According to high command, recent experiments had netted an interest in the possibility of designing a large scale weapon system to replace the aging ingelstung cannons.

And with the results from certain experiments on a much smaller scale, fleet command had made up their minds quite quickly. They wanted a spinal mounted Urenbeck catapult system, which catapulted a 5 ton shell made of lead..or at least the 4 base isotopes of lead, cunningly combined. It was strange that the shell had been designed before the gun. But this made things easier. System specs were for a very, very efficient field. Far more efficient for instance then the ones already on board ships. After all..the larger vessels did not need to be rocketing around at 50% the speed of light and beyond.

Today however, they had already tried one test. An aging sword class cruiser, slated to be replaced by a Morgenstern had been the target. PTSF high command wanted this project completed quickly. After all the refit of the Navy had only just begun. The Zweihander, and Morgenstern were not truly battle ships...they were to be the new battle cruisers of the Tannelornian navy.


The swords were soon to be declared destroyers. The oldest of the sword and shield cruisers however, were to be mothballed. There had been so many advances in the last few years..that the new vessels brought in to replace losses during the war of secession were far superior to the vessels that existed in active service before it.

The Urenbeck field allowed for many problems with C-frac weaponry to be solved with ease, not least of which would be the incineration of the "lead" shell, long before it impacted with its target. Another problem it helped solve was impact with KK and Brilliant pebbles style defense systems.

The Sword cruiser had sat, motionless about 270 000 kilometers away. As the researchers adjusted the field, and set its anchor point to the cruiser they made careful adjustments to their aim. After all they were not star ship calculus logi, aided by hardened tactical analysis systems. They simply had to use math, and their standard analysis systems. Tommorow they would ask for a Calculus logi or two, but for now they held their breath.

Approximately two seconds after they had confirmed beam lock, a barely perceptible blur of force slammed in to the side of the Sword. The damage was devastating. The round tore straight through the other end of the ship, tearing a massive hole in her hull, despite the polarised armour. The ship seemed to vibrate from the stress of the attack upon her, nearly snapping in twain before it stopped.

The weapon had caused massive damage to the superstructure of the hull. However this was polarised armour. Albeit its excellent quality, easily on par with anything else out there..it was phased armour that was considered the standard. After all most ships..used some sort of screening..shielding or deflector systems.

When the calculations had been completed they were astonished to see that it would have punched a 20x20meter hole straight through the hull of a sword cruiser, utilising phased armour. Impressive considering most C-frac weapon barrages did little more then dot the hull with craters, damaging the paint and giving it the appearance of the surface of a small moon..and thats about it. However the bigger C-frac weapons would actually punch through the armour, it was nothing like this.

They transmitted the data of the preliminary testing to PTSF high command. After about 25 minutes they recieved a response. When they looked at the data slate once again their collective eyes bugged out, and their mouths dropped. They had been given a blank slate on research.

Albiech was rather starting to like working for the military.

*****

MAIA had hid very well, she knew because it took mommy several hours to find her.
When mommy finally did catch up with her, she activated her holo image display and looked at her fondly. If an artificially intelligent program could sound like it was about to cry..then this is what it sounded like. "Mommy i am sorry, i didnt mean to break the engine" she looked down at her feet, sniffling, twiddling her thumbs behind her back.

Morgan smiled and cupped her hands around the cheeks of the holographic girl, and smiled her wan little smile at her. "MAIA do you know what you have done?" she asked, still smiling. "I broke your engine mommy, i didnt mean to it was an accident, the noise sounded pretty when i changed the channel" she actually sniffed the words. "No no sweetie you did nothing wrong". With practiced ease Morgan wrapped her arms around the holoimage, without her arms passing through. The "little girl" hugged her back.

To anyone who had no idea what was going on here..it would all look a little strange. Or alot strange. Except when you consider that she had minor force field generators installed, so MAIA could interact with the outside world on a more physical level.

"My daughter you have done something no one else could, for 200 years we have tried to balance the demp generators output." she kissed the "girl" on the cheek. "For 200 years, we have not been able to safely tap a power source greater then any other we have yet discovered." she proudly at MAIA. "MAIA you made it work, you made it work safely and still work do you understand. " For all of her intelligence, MAIA was still just a child.

She had not bothered looking at the results of the DEMP generators discharge, she was too busy hiding. Had she looked she would have noticed that the generator was operating at full efficiency, with an aether flow limiter in place. This had never been done. And this was why Tannelorn had all but abandoned any further development in DEMP technology. Bitter experiences during the dragon program had taught them better then to delve in to this venture unprepared.

"Turning the engine in to a pretty flower was good mommy?" she asked innocently.
Morgan laughed and smiled at her daughter. "Yes dear it was a very good thing."

There was still much work to be done, but the foundation had been laid down for further study, research and most importantly..development.

****

****Inside the Kuiper belt, 3 million kilometers from Enlil****

Enlil station was a wonderful place to conduct dangerous experiments, not only was it so far away from..anything..that it wouldnt likely cause too much trouble if there was an accident, it was also deep in the Kuiper belt.

To say the Kuiper belt was large, was an understatement. NYNJ had bases all through out the belt, and in the 250 years Tannelorn has maintained a fleet base and research facility in the belt, they have never even come close to any facilities run by NYNJ. In fact they had never run in to anyone.

So it was not surprising when the testbed ship, the Phoenix, an old Sword class cruiser had been sent out with little or no escort to speak of, with an very delicate..and experimental new weapon system.

The Urenbeck accelerator cannon, or simply Ubeck cannon, as it was starting to be known by the science teams, had been mounted in place of the ingelstung on the aging Sword. The Phoenix was one of the few cruisers to be finished in time to see action in the 2nd hellesponto's war..and she was showing her age.

Inside the vessel techs and crew members struggled to keep her running at full capacity, eventually they just settled for 90% power, and hoped she could maintain it.

The first tests had been so promising that the fleet immediately ordered them to construct a full scale weapon system. It took them two weeks. Then again when someone hands you a blank data slate, and your working with an established, and perfected technology, such as space time compression..its much easier, and quicker then building from the ground up.

After all Tannelornians had developed the first space time compressor drives, the Urenbeck catapults, as well as the original model of the STC supraluminous drive.
The fact that Tannelornians had not developed kinetic weaponry based upon this technology sooner, was more of a surprise then their expertise at space time theory would have been to an snoopy, and unfriendly power.

Professor Albiech however was ecstatic, his breeding license was assured. There was no doubt about it, first the small scale Ubeck catapult..then the Urenbeck accelerator cannon! If this second project was as succesful as his first, he could marry Aliesha as soon as he was finished here. And he could start to contribute to the genetic future of his homeland. He was proud of himself, but he was also extra careful..after all pride was a sin.

The ship had coasted for an hour or so, slowly carefully moving in to position of the Enlil test range. Approximately 6 million kilometers out, and in a densely packed region of the Kuiper belt.

Hanging in the stillness of the field were dozens of warships, from various nations.
The target today was a shadow class cruiser, ala tor yvresse. In fact it was the same cruiser a group of knights had hijacked, holding the crew hostage and forcing them to fly home to Tannelorn after the war had ended. After all the knights did deserve to take it out on a test ride...

After that it had been placed here at Enlil and dissected. Its weapon systems, drives, power systems, armour and construction all stolen, all examined time and time again.

If there was any class of non vascilian ship that a tannelornian vessel could dismantle with ease, it was one of the many variety of Eldar ships they had captured when the Tor Yvressan seer council had surrendered to the king.

Today they were going to attempt to compromise the massive cruiser with three shots. Considering the Eldar cruiser was easily in excess of 2 kilometers in length, and almost a kilometer high..that was a rather lofty goal.


"Targetting vector initialised captain, attempting to anchor Urenbeck field on 3..2..1..engaged" a cheery female voice stated from tactical. The ship made no motion as the invisible tether locked on to the hull of the Shadow.

"Urenbeck field anchored, adjusting for all possible variables" she stated again, the crew was working furiously. So far no such thing as a Urenbeck Accelerator Cannon field targetting system existed. Instead they relied on the Mentats and Scientists to keep the field not only stable, but firmly locked on to the ancient Eldar vessel.

The scientists started to feed more data in to the Urenbeck projector, targets 1 2 and 3 had been "painted". As soon as one shot had been fired the field would readjust and move to the next target point.

However none of the urenbeck field integrity expertise mattered here. Whether or not an enemy could disrupt it or not..had no bearing on whether or not it would work the same mounted on a moving platform, as it would in a nice secure laboratory.

Some of the scientists had argued that recoil may be far more considerable then first expected, considering the Rail gun used to fire the round had been constructed out of the magnetic containment field of an ingelstung, and was likely to be a ridiculously overpowered rail gun..on its own.

"Full power to linear accelerator, Urenbeck field at 100% integrity, shall i fire captain." the armswoman asked.

Captain Uzuki nodded, then cleared his throat. "Fire" he simply stated.

Suddenly the Captain, and professor albiech..in fact anyone still standing up on the vessel wished they had been sitting. It wasnt so much the recoil of the linear accelerator..as the effect on the Urenbeck field as it was destabilised by the force of the impact. It was as if the recoil of the hit had passed through every single atom, of every single thing on board the ship. At least it felt like it.

The ship lurched and small explosions could be seen spitting out from the Linear accelerator now taking the place of the ingelstung. Inside it was much worse. People lay scattered everywhere, shaking their heads..and wondering why in the name of the Divine they were floating.

Within a few minutes later the Fusion generators were online, and the ship had 30% power again. As the holochamber reintegrated the 3d view of the surrounding space on board the bridge, Professor Albiech let out a shout of joy.

Directly ahead of them were two pieces of what used to be a large and rather well built Eldar cruiser. The most amazing thing however, had been the Projected force at impact. When the round had finally struck the Eldar cruiser..it hadnt been going at 52%C as originally tested. It was heading at well over 65%C. The Linear accelerator used on the testbed experiments had not been as...large.


"Captain damage report all levels, minor concussions, bruising and broken bones, main power is offline and the Urenbeck accelerator has been pulverised" the armswoman stated woozily.

"All injuries report to infirmary immediately, damage control return main power to me within the hour" Captain Uzuki sighed.

Professor Albiech, however was already patting himself on the back. "The experiment was a resounding success captain, admittedly there are still a few bugs to work out" he grinned sheepishly at the Captain. The captain narrowed his eyes at the Professor. "Next time you place that thing on my ship, please Professor..make sure there are no bugs like this one thank you..." he stated a little menacingly.

The professor realised he may have made the captain angry. "Of course sir, i believe that if we stabilise the Linear accelerator and the field to maintain the speed of the round at 55-60% luminous velocity then we should not experience the same problems, that and some careful adjustments." he grinned a little nervously.

The Captain smiled and nodded. "Very well then and good work, however..if you could make it do that..and not damage my ship almost as badly as the ship we are firing at..we will be more then happy Professor" he finished as the ship started for Enlil, limping home lazily, amidst celebration from the crew.

After all Tannelornians fully understood the ancient proverb


You cant make an omelette, without breaking a few eggs...or capacitors

***Hel Station March 2883***

The Urenbecht wing of hel station was bustling with activity these days. Dark matter was far more abundant to the research staff then it had been in past years, and the idea of adapting more STC technologies for use in the field had been floated around for some time.

Most of the big projects had swallowed up a great deal of the funding, however many of the smaller projects too, had been in the works for some time. Recently the development of Raete sized Urenbecht catapults caused quite the stir. The technical applications of this discovery were far beyond that of extreme acceleration and deceleration.

The original concept in a true space time compression system had taken more time to implement then it had taken to design. Needless to say today a project almost 400 years in the making was finally going to see the light.

Urenbeck catapults created a space time conduit by which a ship could travel at nearly the speed of light, if they were moving fast enough. And acceleration inside a urenbeck field, as well as deceleration, was nearly instant. It roughly quintupled the speed of the craft as it travelled through space.

This had given the Vascilian league a true edge in many of its first wars. Vascilian ships were noted for speed and fire power more then anything else, after all even the Tannelornian vessels were rather small by many standards.

However today the first prototype of the full scale production model of the Mark III morgenraete was to be presented to the public. It included all of the systems in the current officers model, as well as several new items.

The first item of note was the new urenbeck module. In short the fighter should be able to either respond by slowing down or speeding up time, this of course was facilitated through the "thinking cap" worn by the pilot. After all such a complex mechanism is best left to instinct and training. It was also very minor, but it would give a decided edge when combined with advanced neural nets, and tannelornian physiology, against any synthetic opponents.


The next in line was the improved gravitic impeller/fusion tube hybrid propulsion system.


Theoretically it fudged with gravity around the raete, or tank..or ship. To move forward, the anti grav drive would trick the craft in to "falling" forward, back or any other way it may wish to go. Combined with high powered fusion engines it was capable of even greater acceleration and maneuverability then the Mark III itself.

Phased armour and sensors of course were standard, as well as an improved "helper" BTM [bio/technical mainframe]

The new model was perfect. Once again the scientists of Tannelorn had cunningly adapted many commonplace and well versed technologies, improving on the original
ideas and concepts from which they came. However this was not all entirely true. After all it was not a tannelornian scientist who had come up with the hybrid fusion/crystal powerplant and control systems, nor finally reverse engineered Eldar technologies once thought unreachable.

One of the most notable features of the new MK III, was that hidden in its arm shields were a pair of highly sophisticated..and very deadly weapons.


++++several months earlier++++

Professor Sarayan Treewhisper had been Hel stations foremost expert on the captured Eldar weaponry discovered during the first war. He was an avid eldar culture buff, and he also had learned many little "secrets" from eldar trinkets he had owned. However he had gained the most notoriety in figuring out the secret to the Pulsar and the brightlance.

He understood immediately the other function it had to perform, particularly when scientists started to barrage him with questions on laser lances, and the possibility of containing the energy in to a true blade form.

Bladeless laser melee weapons had not been a specialty of treewhisper's, however he did know as much as there was to know about Laser technology. He chuckled at the scientists eagerness to learn. He truly enjoyed being famous, he thought to himself as a blushing young researcher stared at him with eyes as large as saucers, and her heart in her throat.

****Trials and testing***

The Phoenix was out again, this time, hopefully every problem with the new weapon system had been solved, after all intense and painful recoil, on a level the likes of which had never been recorded, was a large problem.

Beyond that the system itself worked marvelously, and with a skilled enough gunner, a round could easily slip through to strike against a ships hull, bypassing shield systems. In fact that was the final trial run, after all the gun itself had been tested inside the laboratory to insure such an event wouldnt happen again.

Hopefully this time, certain members of the command staff would not find themselves so unceremonially pressed against the wall of the ship, then gently lowered to earth, by the force of gravity. 1.1 g's to be exact.

Captain Uzuki sat in his command chair, well sitting wouldnt be an accurate description, leaning forward would be a better description by far. He frowned, his long black hair tied back in a lazy ponytail, the longish bangs hanging in front of his face down to the large red lapels of his long tunic.

The device had been fixed, the Professor had been correct, reducing the speed of the round to approximately 57% the speed of light, netted the most damage, for the least recoil. Today they would fire ten shots, at ten targets. What was different was that these were all shielded vessels, utilising many different shielding systems, from many sources. Everything from deflector screens, to wedges, to effector fields could be seen.

Theoretically, with a perfect firing solution the subspace field should overlap with the vessels hull, allowing for the round to impact against a non shielded surface. The effects would be catastrophic, at least in theory.

So it was then that the Phoenix set course for the weapons range. They arrived about half an hour later, a dusty icy, foreboding section of the Kuiper belt. The gentle rays of the sun were dim here, filtering through the dust and ice in a nearly black sky. Occasionally glints of light were seen from floating particles of ice, leaving the crew of the vessel with the impression they were submariners, in a glowing sea of lights, flitting through an inky blackness.

"Professor please tell me its going to work right this time" Captain Uzuki stated. The Professor replied carefully "M'lord of course it shall, i promise you this..the tests showed that the decrease of 7 percentage points of c reduced the actual speed of the round by such a signifigant factor as to allow us to nearly stop the recoil." By nearly stop he meant not tear the ship apart from stress. Minor details really. "Amarathar, what do you think" he turned to his first officer, Amarathar, his short black hair allowed his elven ears, and long narrow features to be seen very clearly. And the Professor was very very nervous as to what the Naval caste engineer-officer would say.


"Captain i believe there is a 90% probability that this scientist speaks the truth, from what i read of the schematics, the inhibitor incorporated in the design should not allow the shell to exceed 60%C, and thus saving us the deadly after effect of the STC field destabilising." the Elven man stood there unmoving, his long red coat and wide legged black trousers making him stand out even more against the inky blackness surrounding the crew. The Professor honestly didnt like being in the bridge of a star ship, as all Tannelornian fighting ships used holo projectors to emulate their surroundings through the walls and floors of the chamber. It gave the appearance that the crew was standing on small walk ways, while exposed to pure vacuum.

If it wasnt for the fact the bridge was nestled safely in the middle of the ship, then perhaps he would be a bit more unsettled. However the Kuiper belt offered one of the most beautiful sites in the solar system, as the suns light twinkled dimly off of the inestimable number of ice chunks and particles surrounding them.

As the vessel moved in to position on the range, a transmission was sent out from the Phoenix. Science caste members, as well as naval pilots, had taken remote control of the Ten aging sword and shield class vessels.

"Armsmen Retsov, please commence firing my new weapon system at any time" Captain Uzuki stated. The Professor was practically ringing his arms in excitement.

They watched on the screen as the shadowy grey tracer of the Urenbeck field found its target and latched on. The order was given. "Fire" Uzuki leaned forward in his seat, curling his fist for emphasis. Their was a barely perceptible blur as the round tore through its target, the shield cruiser was not just torn in half, but rended, parts of the vessel ripped free in a shotgun blast of particles, colliding with the dust in the kuiper belt, creating an ever growing ripple effect of light and heat.

When the recoil hit, the crew could feel it in every part of their being, they could feel themselves being pushed back in their seats, and their balance being lost. But it didnt harm the vessel, or the crew anymore then a sudden acceleration without the antigravity suspensors functioning at 100%. It was less then the captain had expected. "Load another round" he grinned, Retsov targetted the Urenbeck beam at the next target, a sword cruiser almost 500 000 kilometers away, less then a minute later the loaders notified him of the weapons readiness to fire. He gave the order and they watched as the round struck the Sword directly on its engines. The ship simply exploded.

The vessel kept firing in to the night, each time it fired it marked the end of another vessel, even the ship defended by effector fields wouldnt stop a round from a Urenbeck weapon and it couldnt even hope to deflect it back.

There was cheering and shouting on the bridge of the Phoenix, the new weapon system was finally ready..and in such short time. However the Professor understood exactly why it was so easy to build. Space time compression was nothing new to Tannelorn, and not only this..the basic design for the cannon had been in use for almost 400 years.

She headed back to port, mission accomplished, now it was time for the weapon to be demonstrated to the lords council. After that the weapon would be handed over to the Navy, and production and refit would begin immediately...



****Hel Station****

The space time sciences wing of the facility had been in full swing for months now, in preparation for the majour fleet refits to follow the intensive period of R&D following the first conflicts in the Pocket.

After all it was about time they had been given the go ahead to start work on new projects, with the addition of exploratory mission's to the navy's profile of duties to the citizenry, "exotic matter" had become more and more abundant. And it was this "Exotic matter" as researchers had called it, was a primary component in Urenbeck technology.

The other forms of Space time compression used by Tannelorn had used a power source not quite so...safe. Miniature black holes, such as in the STC jump drive used by the SDF class vessels to ferry hundreds of ships to a war zone in an incredibly short time. This method of FTL and STC was considered too drastic, and dangerous by Prince Jan Albericht, and he had banned the creation of more of the devices.

However limited experiments had been allowed at Hel station, none of them of course went anywhere, as they were simply not able to get enough Exotic matter, nor make a safe black hole to do anything more then they had already achieved.

Recently many projects concerning the Urenbeck field had come to fruition. After all there had been almost 400 years of theory to go upon, experimentation, and implementation were simple in comparison to other projects, such as the smart missile program.

Professor Polaski was considered to be one of the top space time theorists in the
science caste, and he didnt earn his reputation without reason. Even in the nurseries he was a phenomenal student, mastering concepts many students couldnt even grasp within a short period of time. He had spent much of his early career experimenting with the efficiency of urenbeck fields, to allow them to operate with much less "exotic matter" then before.

It was his research on the applications of the field itself which had gained him notoriety within the science caste. He had determined that space time compression could occur around a fixed unit, allowing it to still interact with the rest of the universe, while altering the laws of physics ever so slightly. This of course had many applications, from medical stasis chambers, to military grade deflection shielding.

In fact it was on this day he was finally testing the full scale version of two items his research team had concocted. He grinned wearing his long blue coat, his frizzy wavy blond hair framing his cherub like features. The good Professor, after all was only 29 years of age.


+++++


"Alright lets show these navy boys what we are doing with their resources and work hours" he grinned softly, watching as the team on the bridge of the Shield cruiser, Shield of duty powered up her antimatter reactors. She set out from her berth at pier 32 and moved in to position, well within the testing range of the transneptunian worlds moon, well fleet base now.

At about 500 000 kilometers Polaski and his men activated the Space Time compression shield. While not as drastic as a true Urenbeck field, it did have several effects that could be very beneficial to the vessel itself.

the 500 meter long vessel seemed to be leaving a small shimmer, a trace, a tiny piece of itself behind it as it flew. It was almost as if the vessels image was in constant blue shift to the casual observer. This was the same as the smaller model they had constructed this week, to be used on the morgenraete fighters.

Theoretically it could be used to slow down incoming enemy projectiles, and bend light beams, not so much stopping an attack, as diffusing the energy across a larger surface. However today it was to be tested for the final time.

Portions of the defense grid opened up at extreme range, missiles and MASER beams started to fire at the ship, as well as a few Xaser bolts here and there. After all they werent trying to destroy her, only see what would happen when she started evasive action, while under fire. As far as it could be told, nothing much was happening to her, however it was far to early to tell. The phased armour alone would account for the apparent lack of effect, for a while.

30 seconds passed, and a few noticeable hits had been scored on her hull. She was ordered back in to port. When professor Polaski was given the results of the hits that had scored, as well as gun camera and sensor logs, he was ecstatic. The shield had worked. She reduced the overall damage taken to the armour plate by almost 20%.

"Tonight we celebrate many fine projects to come!" Polaski cheered, his staff joined him of course, utterly ecstatic. If they stuck with him they would almost be assured of their breeding license's...

****Grahfsberg shipyards 2883 june****


The fleet refit had been in full swing for more then a month. It was really much more then a refit, in fact it was a complete doctrinal and structural reorganisation. The old cruiser design, had been deemed too small to be a true cruiser. The fact that it carried weapons most battle ships wouldnt have a right to carry, didnt really matter in the eyes of the supreme command. The larger vessels had always been planned, as had the smaller frigate class vessels. However Jan Alberecht had opted to save the money, rather then spend it all immediately during a time of peace. The last majour reorganisation had happened directly after the second Hellesponto's war. And it was time for a change.


It was the end of the month, and the massive docks contained twelve of the new dreadnoughts. Not 30 days earlier the only things that had existed within the massive industrial complex, had been raw materials. It had been an impressive feat in itself, however the shipyards were soon to be exponentially expanded. Already the shipyards within tannelorn had built 20 of the new pattern einhander destroyers 12 ,shield carriers, 36 Beowulfs, 24 Grendel carriers and 12 woglinde support frigates.

The shipyards were at full capacity, every dock was in use, every port and every piece of material that was available was devoted to the task of modernising the Tannelornian navy. Morgenraete factories had been revamped and were in full swing producing the new mark III omega pattern morgenraete high maneuver frames.
Thousands of them were nearing completion, and the foundation to build thousands more had been laid down. After long years of peace and prosperity..broken only by the horrific events of the war of secession, Tannelorn was militarising again. These were turbulent times..finally the Praetor felt a sense of peace about him. He was at home commanding soldiers in battle, not at leading a nation of billions.

He stood watching over the finishing touches on one of the new U pattern Einhanders. The Swords had most definetly changed over time. They were named by patterns now, each pattern representing a new weapons configuration. L for loengren turret, U for Urenbeck Turret, P Pulsar turret variant, X for X ray laser turret variant.
The added versatility of many different styles of weapons would change the way the Tannelornian fleet fought its wars, as would the addition of a new type of shielding system.

He smiled, for the first time in many months he felt a sense of joy at the coming storm. Tannelorns exploration of the galaxy had proven it to be a very violent, and dangerous place. The constant attacks from enemies from beyond sol expedited the need for a more powerful military, one that could not be challenged.

He turned and walked down the corridor, to return to the strategic command simulator rooms, to prepare for any event that may possibly occur, at least in theory.



****Enlil fleet base****



"Knights, to your feet!" a large gruff looking man stated. His tawny brownish hair almost touched his high red collar as he looked over the group of young men and women, kneeling in the salute of Tannelorn. They rose suddenly, and rather nervously.

They had no idea why they had been called in to Master Tarahim's office, only that they had been assigned to various ships shortly after leaving the nursery, and after the conflict against Miehmish, pananab and Alteran forces in the Cluster, had been ordered home to see the grizzled naval trooper veteran.

Knight Katherine Delathina looked over the others in the room cautiously, she remembered the long haired Jan Ikazuki, great great grandson of professor ikazuki, the designer of the venerable Ikazuki class heavy ships. She was almost entirely elven however, her grandfather had married an elven woman, as had her mother married an elven man, so technically she was three quarters elf. Her short black hair almost covered her roughly pointed ears as she fidgeted silently, hoping to find out why they were here. She didnt recognise the other two, a tall elven man named Arathar, apparently he had a relation in the fleet somewhere, though he was loathe to admit it. He was rather lanky and had narrow features, and the black hair of tannelornian elves. She looked over to her right, looking directly at the only person she didnt know. A tall man with short silver hair, and a scar across the side of his face.

She didnt know it yet, but he was to be the captain of the vessel that had been commissioned for PIOUS. Prefecture intelligence operation unit soldiery. None of them, not even captain Margulis was aware of why he had been ordered here.
Master Tarahim walked casually to the center of the small room. "Sit" he ordered, they obeyed and sat down in the 4 chairs that had been provided for them. Master Tarahim then turned on a holo display in the center of the room, in the middle was a picture of a ship. It looked vaguely like one of the Naval trooper destroyers, the new pattern vessel built for the naval troopers. So far there were just 20 of them in existence, and they were slated to fully replace the aging frigates that they had used for so long. However she was..a little different.

"You have been gathered here today to partake in an wonderful new assignment" he stated with a grin. "Your skills have been deemed more then exemplary, far ahead of the curve, and it is for this reason that you have been brought to this place, to become a part of PIOUS" he paused for effect. "Prefecture Intelligence Operations Unit Soldiery" he smiled at the new comers. Margulis grinned wickedly..he understood that this would give him countless chances to test his skill in battle.

"Sir what does this mean" Ikazuki asked, a little nervously. "It means young knights, as well as honourable 1st knight Margulis, that you have been chosen for a special operations unit, one that will take on any tasks deemed worthy of special attention, you shall be given complete autonomy as well, to advance the military goals of the vascilian league in whatever way you see fit" he grinned softly.


"Of course you are not the whole sum of PIOUS, it being made up of personnel from all the branches of the Divine military forces of Tannelorn." he smiled again and watched as the Holo picture started to show faces and names. General Bartfeldt, director of ground operations, commander of the armsmen contingent and hero of the second vascilian war. His ruddy features were punctuated by his wild brown hair and beard, as well as the monstrous grin on his face. Professor Polaski, developer of the Urenbeck field device, and foremost expert on STC technology in tannelorn. He would serve as the ships main engineer and researcher, depending on captured enemy technology, or archeaological discoveries.


Next in line was none other then Sarya Alberecht. Before the break up of the PTSS she had been the captain of the Divine Right, and before that a pilot in the PTSS, she had gained notoriety during the secession war for the rather hefty kill count she had gained against the Loyalists, despite the fact they were trained for the navy. She was to be in charge of morgenraete operations outside of the naval trooper contingent already aboard the vessel.

Trooper 1st class Hector Valarus, second in command of the Lux Aeterna was next on the list, he was made famous during the war of secession by ramming his frigate in to one of the power conduits of Sky fortress, enabling the prefecture to take it at the end of the war of secession, as well as fighting a daring guerilla war alongside Johannes Schneider against DVK forces including rogue elements of the 1st naval trooper division. The loss of which had still not been made up for, as the next generation of troopers were still years from ready to fight. Trooper Bren Steiner, he had been aboard the same frigate as hector, and fought alongside them in the war.

Then the picture changed again this time to a smallish man with an angry scowl, wearing the uniform of a fighting armsmen. Specialist Darian Greth, expert on room to room fighting and trooper in command of the specialist squadrons, demolitions, stealth and built up areas fighting experts, the cream of the crop of the armsmen of the naval ships. However the Naval troopers themselves did have an infantry contingent, led by bren steiner, and the specialists role seemed rather redundant. It seemed more like a political move to Katherine. However she didnt question the will of her superiors, after all they were inspired by the divine..and if something was wrong with their judgement then heaven would give us the signs.

The final name on the List was Johannes Schneider. Hero of the secession war.
Johannes had dueled with his old friend Gilean nearly the entire war, preventing the might of the rebel troopers from annhillating the guerilla fighters time and time again by engaging his dreaded katzbalger personally in his prototype Mark III morgenraete.

However no one knew what had happened on their final encounter, both high manuever frames lay wrecked, Johannes was injured, but conscious and it is believed he let Gilean get away by many. However that was not the truth, Gilean had escaped when The Mandate of Heaven personally arrived to rescue him, his crew had stolen the DVK flagship while a war was being fought in the skies of Tannelorn.
It was also rumoured, that he was Sarya Alberechts lover. Katherine just loved hearing gossip on romance, and she listened to every little piece she could. After all she hoped to find it for herself one day, as did all people of Tannelorn. Love was one of the majour reasons they fought, no that they lived. For love is the only thing that is stronger, then hate. It is the only thing that can endure the unendurable and survive the unsurviveable.

Tannelornian society emphasised love, both platonic and romantic as the driving motivating factor in life. As well as honour, chivalry and politeness. However mars was now a place of chaos and destruction. Love was needed more then ever, but still minds drifted to war, to hate. With the planet dying around them, suffering a torturous slow death, there were those who only wanted to fight. She didnt know why they did it, she was just glad for that one little hope that they had. Hearts had been heavy in Tannelorn, war was looming..and the truly terrifying part was that no one knew with who.


There was so much aggression so much hate and despicable behaviour in recent months, that much was certain, but just what would happen no one could say. So the refit was in full swing, and ahead of schedule. Jan had carefully conserved much of the resources of the last 200 years, and they were ready to begin a full scale militarisation of the nation. 6 billion souls devoted to the defense of their people, and the people of the vascilian league.

"If you will follow me you shall be brought to your assignment, Johannes and Sarya will not be arriving till later, they are attending an important conference at the moment" he chuckled softly. The group rose and walked slowly down the hall towards the ship docks. There waiting for them beyond the bulkhead doors was the Lux Aeterna, Johannes ship. However Johannes had agreed not to captain her, however but act as the Het captain of the naval troopers morgenraete pilots. They were lead inside to their assigned 'raetes, silently watching in wonder, marvelling at how different a naval troopers vessel was from the rest of the Tannelornian crop. They moved swiftly on to the flight bay.


"These are the new omega pattern Mark III morgenraetes, implenting the new fusion crystal hybrid engine, Urenbeck compressor module,and full upgradeability of weapon systems. She is faster, tougher, deadlier then anything Tannelorn has ever fielded" he stopped for a moment looking them over as they stared in wonder at their new machines. They looked almost exactly like the old morgenraete designs, only they were ever so slightly more organic looking, sleeker..more predatory.The three machines before them were not armed the same. One had two larger, longer wing shields then the rest, the other looked as if it had the same configuration as a normal "plasma" variant 'raete.

The final Raete however had arm shields that ended in hands. It was designed to carry a weapon. "The new 'Raetes have new weapons, as befits the reorganisation of the fleet, What you see before you are the bright lance, pulsar and universal variants of morgenraete. " he smiled wryly. "The first two are self explanatory, its a UV laser, aided by a far more advanced understanding of Eldar technology, and the pulsar variant is still capable of creating a close quarters beam weapon." he said this to assuage Jan's possible fears over losing the ability to engage in close combat. After all..he rather enjoyed it. "The versatile variant is designed to carry weapon outfits that are more powerful then the standard weapons, chosen for the ideal situation, the weapons stow themselves against the underside automatically before transformation, so dont worry about having to learn anything new" he laughed at that, knowing some of these younglings got rather nervous in the face of having to do something different then they are used to.

It wasnt so much a transformation, or even any complex maneuver, simply put the weapon has a hardpoint, which the weapon fits in to by its grip. The frames reflexive and instinctual systems, simply made placing the weapon in to position before the arms locked against the sides, automatic. It had a dizzying array of possible weapon outfits as well. From miniature Grasers, to massive pulsar cannons, brightlances..even a Urenbeck weapon, converted from the HVT's. However it was a slow firing weapon, and would most likely be used in the same manner as a graser rifle, for anti heavy craft.

"The largest difference in this design is the addition of a urenbeck compression field generator" he grinned. "Which for all intents and purposes speeds up and slows down time depending on the subconscious thoughts of the pilot. If you need to move faster, you are likely too, if you want an impact to hit slower, you can brace yourself for it. I dont even begin to understand how it works, you would have to ask Polaski, and he would bore you half to death no doubt" he laughed. "All i can say is it will give you a definitive maneuverability edge, and it will save your life." he stopped.

"If there are no more questions then i deem you officially members of PIOUS, and welcome you to the intelligence service" he finished with a wolfish grin. The younger recruits were rather stunned by the whole affair, however Captain Margulis spoke up.

"When will we engage the enemy" he asked, plainly and to the point. "As soon as we know who they are" stated Master Tarahim rather darkly....


****Karahkhim city, the western frontier, Pure water's fleet base and ship yards****


The foundries and automated construction systems had been at full capacity here for nearly 2 months. Of course she was to be included in the expansive refit of the Tannelornian navy. Every possibly resource had been devoted to the task of modernising and rebuilding the Tannelornian military forces. And there had been many advances made in the last 250 years, as was easily evinced by the construction process used in the new model Einhanders, as well as the larger vessels. The design features of tannelornian vessels had been expanded upon and reinvisioned in this class of vessel.

The ships of course all shared the same triple redundant systems considered a necessary minimum for all vessels and sub craft manufactured in the prefecture, as well as durable and hardy construction techniques. Tannelornian vessels operated in some of the dustiest conditions in the Solar system. And in these conditions accidental collision with free floating particles of dust can be as much of a danger as an impact with a good sized asteroid, even more so if a ship is travelling with PBS screens down.

Of course Tannelornians vessels never used to have any form of damage reduction screens either, relying entirely on the PBS raise shield system and the incredibly rugged, compartmentalised construction that typified Tannelornian ships. A vessel could be missing vast portions of the ship, and continue to fight at full efficiency with whatever weapons remained.

The addition of a Ubeck space time compression field to be utilised by the vessel as a reductor screen, however coupled with the natural tendency of all Vascilian vessels to have insane amounts of acceleration, made a vessel wonderfully suited to lightning war fare and fleet battles, as well as straight out fire fights. However the one thing Tannelornian vessels were not, was stealthy. It could be told that you could see a tannelornian fleet coming from halfway across the solar system, after all its not every day a fleet of small, and even largish "suns" appears on Electro magnetic sensors. Tannelornian navy ships however, did not slink through the shadows. Only on their own, operating individually with wolf pack tactics could a tannelornian vessel ever hope to be stealthy. And that was only till it engaged.


This of course was rather well countered by the incredible acceleration offered by the urenbeck catapults mounted on all tannelornian vessels. However Pure water's was not involved in building more of the new frigates, einhanders, shields, zweihanders and morgenstern. She was devoted totally and fully to a single task. The ship yard had been widened signifigantly, and the skeleton layed down in the dock would seem to a casual observer to be nearly 3 kilometers long. Hundreds of workers and Bio/computer controlled mechanical construction units were working around the clock, veiled behind massive walls, created specifically to shield whatever was being built inside from unwanted attention.

The work seemed to be going smoothly, however it had only truly just begun. The foundations of yet another new project in Tannelorn had been laid down. But this was a common occurence as after all, Tannelornians praised learning, exploration and science as well as honour, martial skill, compassion love and piety.

****Pure Waters Naval shipyards****

Master engineer Faf Heldricht looked over a massive set of plans in intricate detail as they floated lazily above his workstation. He was tasked in overseeing the construction of a new vessel, destined to become the Tannelornian flag ship.

Balmung

The name exuded an air of heroism. Balmung, the sword of the hero Siegfried, who slew the dragon Fafnir. It was fitting then, that the first superdreadnoughts built specifically for war in Tannelorn, would be named after the mighty weapon..however Balmung was not simply a super dreadnought. She was a full scale tactical weapon system on an immense scale. Tannelornians would not build a 3 kilometer long vessel without good reason. After all, 3 1km vessels can generally do much much more. a 3km vessel, should by all rights be able to stand up to a fleet.

However Balmung wasnt your average superdreadnought. She was incredibly heavily armoured, though that was to be expected, she had a massively powerful urenbeck field generator, which was very important in its own right. However that was not what made her special. Other then the ability to carry on fighting without logisitical support, due to the addition of several micro factories within the vessel itself, she was an testbed of dozens of newly developed systems. When she was complete she and her sisters would be the most advanced vessels in the Sol system. This much was known already.


Thanks to the addition of the advanced crystalline power transfer systems..and a reactor powered by a singularity, she would have the largest power output of any ship in the Sol system, as well as some of the best defensive systems available. This was nothing compared to her anti missile defenses. Hundreds of pulsar cannons were scattered across the hull, each one linked to a synthetic bio computer, using an instinct and calculation program based on the brain of an earth shark.

Excellent three dimensional awareness, and ruthless efficiency in tracking the "blood" of its prey, be it grav emissions, chemical thrusters or even enemy communication signals. This of course was combined with an enhanced auto targetting relay to create a vessel practically immune to projectile fire until it came in to extreme close range.

Master Engineer Heldricht looked over the plans carefully. After all the ships design had taken nearly 100 years to be finished, based on a theoretical method of combat, and it was only due to recent advances that she was even given consideration..let alone the full funding to build not one, but three such vessels.

He had been going through the specifications for the last 2 months, and still he wondered how the ship would ever perform the way they stated it would. Of course had it not been for the Urenbeck field generation theory, pioneered by Professor Polaski, it would have never been a reality.

She would be faster, deadlier and tougher then any superdreadnought known to Tannelorn. And she would definetly be more expensive. She was a fusion of Tannelornian ship building tradition, eldar and Tannelornian high technology and Vascilian pragmatism. And when finished she would be a monster.

Master Engineer Heldricht was overjoyed to be working on such a project, currently he was linked to the main computer system to assist the countless biomechanicals working tirelessly to finish construction of the basic frame before the deadline. He was observing pretty much every tiny bit of the process at the moment, his mind aware of a thousand different work stations and workers as he carefully made sure everything was according to spec. After all with a ship like this no mistakes could be made, not only would it cost resources, but lives. Resources could always be found anew, but lives once broken, could not be remade.

As he worked he was constantly astonished by each new minor system placed inside the vessel. Many of the items he had never dealt with before, and had it not been for the rather extensive information on them he was given, he wouldnt be able to deal with them now. Including a rather interesting new weapon system based on the Ubeck techology. One that was bound to give a nasty surprise to anyone who tried to get too close.

****Hel Station 2 weeks ago: Morgenraete III omega trials****


Katherine Arashenka skated her new 'raete gracefully over the landscape of Enlil, currently she was engaged in a rather lengthy speed and maneuverability trial, and she was getting a rather bit tired of it honestly.

Admittedly the strange feeling she had when the craft started to move had passed quickly enough, the Ubeck field increasing her speed and maneuverability more then a megaton more thrust would have been able to. The field had a strange effect, almost causing the vessel to move in stop motion, as time and space bended around the high maneuver frame, forcing enemy kinetics and missiles to slow, while increasing the speed and reaction time of the 'raete itself. It was a phenomenal piece of equipment, and had Yannef not cleared the entire 200 year surplus, last touched during the war of secession, the design would not exist today.

After all these were dangerous times, and evil was everywhere.

She thought her way through a series of jinking maneuvers, trying to avoid large pieces of ice, slaloming through to the end of the maneuver course. Suddenly a transmission was sent out to her, she furrowed her brow, annoyed. She was rather tired, and had been out here for at least 8 hours already, and she had forgotten breakfast. She sighed and relaxed, her 'raete laid its arms out to her sides, emulating her weary dissatisfaction with her new assignment. She wanted to be back out in the thick of it, hunting pirates and loyalists, she had hoped to be posted to the Cluster, to defend Tannelorn out in the far reaches of the galaxy.

Instead she was here, testing the new morgenraete that would replace all the current morgenraetes in service.

Her particular morgenraete was armed with the new Pulsar cannon arm configuration, and she was about to reach the final act of the morgenraete trials. The Urenbeck field worked as well as expected. After all a technology that had been in use for almost 350 years, was rather easily implemented within tannelornian kit.

She was about to enter the live fire testing of her training. Her particular "foe" were a group of drones. Rather like the trooper drones used by many nations actually..disturbingly similar, as well as a few heavy superiority drones. To qualify on the test the unit had to go up against many times its own number and come out on top. In the hands of a skilled pilot, any true replacement for an established Tannelornian combat component, had to be exponentially better then its predecessor. It was a matter of cost, new combat units were more expensive then established ones.

This was of course one of the many reasons that tannelorns military went through constant upgrades, and very inconstant refits. However a total reorganisation had happened only a few times in history. Once long ago, long before the hellesponto's wars had truly begun, and once immediately after the end of the Hellesponto's wars.
It was a new order, and a new fleet. A civilian space service had been established, and mars was at peace for the first time in hundreds of years.

Everything had changed since the end of isolation. There were hostile foreign powers everywhere all across mars. Not only this, the idea that a hostile war fleet could pass by within kilometers of tannelornian holdings, which considered ludicrous by any sane rational sentient, was mocked and laughed at by these foreigners.

Then the attack on gorgon, and volaria disappearing in a plume of smoke and ash, causing massive devastation across mars. Tannelorn had cleared the budget, the drums were beating all across the nation. Tannelorn was preparing for full scale war. They were preparing for Plan 0.

And so Katherine was here testing a sub craft that could revolutionise the way subcraft were manufactured, after all this would be the precedent for a whole new technology. A STC field both cheap, and incredibly powerful. However as the vascilian league were the only ones who currently possessed the technology, aside from a different form used by the orbital frame Jehuty, it was in doubt that anyone else would be able to compete. At least without a massive R&D program. No matter what Tannelorn would likely remain the leader.

She armed weapons and prepared to do battle. She was a member of the warrior cast after all, she went in weapons hot.

She lifted off in to the "air" with a massive boost of her leg thrusters, the craft shot up far faster then it should have been able to, effortlessly switching to high speed configuration. She was going to intercept the small school of "fish" made known to her by her helper computer. When a 'raete pilot was plugged in to his or her craft, they became instantly aware of every piece of data the craft carried, transmitted and recieved through the battle. A modified version of the MIU units that were taken as reparations from Tor Yvresse craftworld during the first and second wars. Of course the technology the Tannelornians took from the eldar wasnt really agreed upon. After all, they did occupy the craftworld at the time.

This translated in to phenomenally quick reflexes, and 0 lag in the man to machine link up. In short the suit was an extension of the pilot, a fusion of man and machine in its deadliest form.

She was a little giddy now, the craft moved so much more quickly then her old MK III alpha, however she didnt feel it at all. In fact she could hardly feel any movement or g forces as she accelerated at incredible velocities. She was in combat range now, switching seamlessly to high maneuver mode, not losing an iota of momentum as she sailed towards her foes, riding upon trails of blue fire.

a flight of over two dozen missiles streaked out of her 'raete, in response to nearly 40 coming back at her. The tiny pulse laser located in the under chest hardpoint of her 'raete started to go to work, detonating many of the missiles as she moved forward, whirling and spinning to give the automated weapon a better shot.

Her return missiles however blossomed in the distance, massive nuclear fireballs filling the sky above the world as she moved in closer, jinking and whirling in a seamless ballet high above the surface of Enlil. She started to fire her pulsars now, arms moving in ever changing directions as they tracked her quarry, she was weaving around so much that without the flexibility of the arm servo's, she would not have been able to get an effective shot back. However the new 'raete had a few surprises left. She moved towards one of the combat drones, using a full burst of thrusters to accelerate even faster, the little fighter attempted to evade, but she was too fast.

In fact if its electronic brain had not been half mush from exposure to DEM radiation, it would have most likely calculated the exact rate in which time was flowing for the 'raete to be off by a small margin. However it didnt have time to even sing a verse of "daisy" before it was annhilated by a stream of las fire, as were two of its cohorts. The rest started to act slightly more confused, it seemed that the closer proximity to the extremely powerful DEM emanations coming from the new sensor suite installed in the unit, the stupider the light drones got.


It seemed to be irritating the smarter more complex heavy fighters, and the lighter much less intelligent drones were having a very hard time with it. She pressed on locking on to the remaining light drones and firing a few more nukes. For good measure she let loose with an antimatter anti-fighter flak missile.

As she maneuvered away getting closer to the planet by the second she watched the massive string of explosions, feeling the destruction of the light drones through her link to the 'raete, and the massive field of DEM particles that constantly showered the area around Enlil for millions of kilometers, at varying intensity.

She turned around coming rather close to the ground before she spotted the two large, angry looking heavy drones coming towards her. Their massive C frac weapons chewed up the ground underneath her as she started to dodge, willing the rounds to slow as she would will her hand in to a fist, letting her dodge them with amazing alacrity. She was after all, an excellent pilot, one of the best Tannelorn had to offer. Otherwise she wouldnt have been involved in the Raete tests.

She hit the ground and started skating backwards, her raete jinking in a quick and rather erratic zig zag pattern along the muddy surface of Enlil. The heavy drones were closing fast, and she was holding them off rather well, though they did have an annoying tendency to dodge rather well. Though not as well as her. She activated her missile systems with a simple thought and flew up in to the air, dodging and weaving through the air, devoting herself fully to her own defense as she circled the pair of drones.

The drones of course, being efficient tactical AI systems, decided to pursue her in a pair, both levelling orderly bursts, aimed for the most effect. Of course she was tannelornian, and she had been taught that the enemy cannot defend, against what they cannot predict. Suddenly she broke off, her craft changed to high speed configuration, shot off at high speeds, then she switched back to high maneuver form. The Ubeck field allowing her to effortlessly turn, shedding all of her former momentum. She switched back to high speed configuration and shot forward at the enemy drones, jinking more clumsily, but moving fast enough to avoid having to go through too much fire.


The drones turned, and quite predictably followed, trying to engage her with heavy anti fighter missiles as well as c frac weapons. She stopped and switched back to high maneuver configuration, dropping down vertically, now upside down.

She waited for weapons fire to get close enough to strike, then activated the thrusters and angled the force of gravity directly downwards.


She rocketed away from the pair of heavy combat drones, giggling a little bit as she woke up her "sharks" to deal with the big fish of the shoal. When she had been defending herself, she had not simply been jinking in desperation, she had been laying missiles like mines, dormant and inactive till her mental command roused them to action. Stalking the drones like sharks after the smell of blood, the now ridiculously close Graser missiles sprinted forwards, then opened up in an massive, beautiful pattern of death. When the dust and excess radiation cleared, there was only the MK III omega anywhere to be found. And she still had half her missile complement.

Katherine was a bit of a show off.

****

****Enlil Fleet base:refit status****

"Master Kaufman, please do explain to me why many of the vessels used in the recent miehmish campaign are being sold?" one of the rather curious, and slightly shocked young logistics officers sent in by high command asked. "Simple, because they are too old to be refitted any longer, and cannot perform the duties that shall be asked of them." Master Kaufman was head of the Tannelornian naval engineering branch. And he knew just what had to be done to fix the fleet. He had asked for this before Jan had disappeared, and he had refused. Sentiment and martial pride had to make way for advancement, lest they become like the enemies that they faced.


"They are old, and they are unfit for modern combat, many of the ships dont even have the capability to carry urenbeck field systems, or have their power sources retrofitted." he replied to the young man angrily. The officer stepped back a bit frightened of the rather cantankerous master engineer. His job was just to make sure the numbers added up. So far they did, however Master Kaufman had made requests for additional resources out on the edge that planners hadnt made mention of. And now Logistics officer Petrovii was trying to figure out what they were doing with these obsolete ships.

After all the navy had planned to hold them in reserve, yet here was master kaufman, selling the 100 or so sword cruisers he had already replaced.
Each of the new ships had the same name as one of the ships before it, however its armament was different, as were there ship classes. Most importantly these new vessels were 250 years more advanced then the 100 or so ships that had been replaced.

Still the vessels returning from the liberation of waterhelper were first in line to recieve the new shipments of weapons, sophisticated new components..and Morgenraetes. most of the older vessels within the fleet had already been refit with Urenbeck cannons, and their new turrets. Still 90% of the ships still going under refit were not battle ready. Laying in the new crystal power relays would take time, and money.

And this is why Kaufman was selling 100 of the ancient vessels. Kaufman directed young Petrovii to one of the computer banks along the wall of the massive observation chamber. Their foot prints sparkled on the holographic interface on the floor, creating tiny rows of bluish hexagons where ever their feet touched the ground.

Below them were the very bowels of Enlils 700 km diameter moon. Below them was a spectacular scene of devotion to duty and nation. Over a hundred swords and a dozen of the larger battle cruisers were below them, tens of thousands of bio mechanicals and EVA heavy suits were tirelessly working on the ships below. After all these vessels represented the first line of defense, and when work was finished refitting them they would join the completed ships of the line. Each of the newly constructed vessels were named for the ships they would replace, and given to the same crews.

As it was after two months of steady work, the fleet was still only 40% through its refit. And this was just the easy part. Another 150 of the new dreadnought class vessels had to be constructed, and another 100 einhanders needed to be built. However over 30 000 of the new morgenraete III omega patterns were finished. And these vessels would be the first in tannelorn to deploy them. Aside from the SDF's of course, who were happily manufacturing their own.

Even after the fleet was up to spec, much had to be done. The mark II's had to be fitted with a far less power hungry version of the Ubeck system, and with new weapon systems. However they would remain in the arsenal of Tannelorn only because the sheer number of them would prove wasteful to dismantle. Of course, they would be recycled, transformed in the new model morgenraetes, but not now. Now only the reorganisation of the offensive and defensive fleet strengths was a priority. City defense forces would rely primarily on the fleet, as was proven during the war of secession. The mark II's would prove more then adequate for the time being.

Young Petrovii placed the two nodes on his forehead, and gained access to the archives, searching for the information that the good Master Kaufman had eluded too. It didnt take him long to understand why they wanted more resources, and why they needed to sell the ships. He unplugged himself from the mainframe and turned to Kaufman. "I shall see to it your requests are granted. But no more Tannelornian vessels shall be offered for sale, this is the will of Naval high command. Regardless whether or not they were the second hundred ever built, almost 250 years ago..they are sacred..and they still hold secrets for those that would look" he chastised him slightly. After all logistics was in charge of where everything went, and how it got there.

And it did rather peeve the young officer to find out someone had already beaten him to the idea he had been considering on his way to Enlil.

****Pure Water's: Balmung****

For three months Balmung had been laid down, and still little more then a skeleton and superstructure had been completed. However it was still well ahead of schedule, the rooms and compartments that would make up the innards of the vessel could be seen starting to take shape. Not only that but the vessel was getting longer.

3 kilometers was not exactly accurate to the details lain out in its rather lengthy and impressive schematics. It was closer to 3.7 to be precise. The vessel was massive, though an SDF would still dwarf her, it could never hope to outfight her, in fact all 4 of them would likely be unable to achieve little more then crippling her, before she destroyed them.

Of course this was all theoretical. Right now the behemoth being laid down in pure water's ship yards wasnt going to destroy anything. However the most integral part of the ships construction was being performed at this moment. A thousand engineers each controlling a dozen drones laboured with mind impulse suggestions, guiding mechanical hands to a thousand points in the centre of the massive war ship.

At this moment construction on the Black hole generator was beginning. In fact it was half way finished. This system differed from the miniature black holes used to bend space time in a standard STC jump drive, such as the ones mounted in the SDF class vessels.

It was the heart of the vessel. It was a pure and simple power source, in peace time it would be activated only to recharge the crystal power capacitors, which would likely last for a week or two before requiring the black hole to be activated for around 30 seconds to generate more power.

However in combat the generator would be running at full capacity, full fail safes in effect to prevent accidental catastrophic breech of the containment field. The generator itself did more then just maintain power to the ship, it also made possible the massively powerful Urenbeck field that enabled the vessel to move its bulk around as if it were a cruiser, as well as defending the ship. However the most interesting application of the Black hole, was in the primary weaponry of the ship.

Gamma rays were created inside the containment chamber and channeled to whichever weapon systems required them to function. And the ship had a frightening assortment of grasers, including the fearsome Gotteslicht graser cannon.

The Gotteslicht was 5 times more powerful then a standard Loengren, an equivalent force of 15 gigatons of energy was passed through her incredibly efficient focusing lenses. Not only would she be the most powerful ship mounted graser ever produced, but she would use the best focusing units in the galaxy to maintain maximum efficiency over vast distances.

To say the ship mounted a very big and powerful weapon, was an understatement. To top it off the vessel contained turreted weapons capable of the same power output as Loengren. And it had many of them.

However the next weapon systems on the itinerary were of interest, great interest when one considered the fact this ship was designed to come out on top against whole battle groups.

****The fleet refit continues****

Captain Uzuki was rather unhappy that the phoenix had been replaced with a newer better version of her. After all she was HIS ship. And he didnt much like letting her go. However high command did manage to convince him not to simply keep operating his old ship, and take the new one. However they had to sweeten the deal somehow. So they placed his old chair in the vessel. It was his only unshakeable request, and it was reasonable.

He looked over the railing of the Himmel-tor drydocks, gazing at the magnificent sight of his new Einhander destroyer. It was rather shiny after all. And the weapon that replaced his loengren was rather interesting. He was granted the P variant, Its tri barrelled Pulsar turret. Each pulsar, he had read was capable of producing a beam capable of 1.3 pettajoules of power, and it was capable of throwing out hundreds of these massive beams in one minute. At this point the capacitors would need to recharge for an equal amount of time. Alternatively, it could fire dozens of bolts a minute, without having to recharge. That would likely be preferable at long range.

He smiled at his new ship. It wasnt as if he didnt like it, so much as the fact he liked his old ship. This one was faster, more heavily armed and capable of greater agility, and she had a longer REM drive range. Not only this the Maser batteries had been replaced by a weapon system consisting essentially of a turret with a paired Pulsar/Brightlance weapon system. The pulsar would fire at the target levelling a profound amount of hits while the heavy lasers would focus on one spot, enabling tannelornian ships to engage in "duels" at close range with a much greater chance of success.

She was a far better ship then his old one. Still he missed her. He walked down the cat walk, placing his large officers cap on his head, purely ceremonial of course and walked down the long plank leading to one of the boarding hatches.

After all his new orders did befit a ship a little more capable then the old girl. After all exploring the unknown and charting the webway was a rather large mission..and who knew just what they would face.

And so Captain Uzuki and his crew, like a hundred others were boarding their new ships, their vessels either refitted or completed, and they were preparing to move out.

***Pure Waters shipyard***


Balmung was finally starting to take shape. If the fact that a massive "skeleton" had been finally finished could be called taking shape. However the most integral part of the system was nearly finished. the massive armoured bunker in the middle of the ship, meters upon meters of armour obscuring the inner workings of the device that makes Balmung what it is. The black hole generator. It was buried under layers of the finest phased armour, and protected by its own Ubeck field generator, as well as many emergency systems all nestled in the 100 by 100 meter "box". It contained a DoD overlay device, designed wholly to purge the black hole in case containment was lost in the heat of battle. Of course this would likely send many of the components that make up the generator itself in to the Aether with it, it would save the ship.

After all the design was supposed to be safe. It was the only reason it had been accepted.

However even with all of the resources being utilised in its constuction, the sheer number of engineers and bio mechanicals working upon her..she was easily a year from completion. She was so advanced half of the systems inside of her had not been utilised in 800 years, since the coming of the Aumanii.

800 years ago Tannelorn had been a tiny idyllic utopia, utilising technologies that could have been used to do anything from shape mars to their will to build a planet out of the asteroids in the belt. However Tannelorn had no industry in that era. After all people were supposed to look inwards. To build an item with your own two hands no matter how long it took was considered divine. So when the Aumanii and the norieganians came in their vast numbers, the tannelornians simply could not compete.

Even using the finest hand held graser staffs, weapons capable of clearing whole valleys of troops from great distances, even with the massive weapons of war they had constructed for their own defense over the 12 000 years Tannelorn had worked towards its utopian future, they couldnt hold back the storm.

Every weapon had been precious, each rifle took months to craft, each soldier took years to train, Tannelorn had to surrender before they lost everything.

Of course they had learned in those days, that technology can only be fostered by industry. And if your industrial base was incapable of producing it, then technology had to become less advanced.

Of course this hadnt stopped the tannelornians from using space time compression, grasers and DEM technology. It had just limited it. Of course that is, until now.

Balmung would be the first truely tannelornian vessel built in 800 years, alongside those of the new ships of the fleet, and the mark III morgenraete. Industry had finally caught up with technology. And now Tannelorn would retake its rightful place amongst the stars. But first they had to build a fleet worthy of their ancient past.

And it was running along rather smoothly...

****Enlil fleet base****

"Its a marvelous sight isnt it?" Lord Aldo Adein stated with a rather wry smile.
The einhanders had finally been finished. And well over 100 of them had been completed here at Enlil. Currently they were rather busily showing off to high command, sailing gracefully through the dim, sparkling wasteland of the Kuiper belt.

They were arranged in flotillas of 11 each awaiting their comand vessel. Of course the Zweihanders were taking a rather long time to complete, but it didnt matter. Each Einhander was more technically advanced then any vessel crafted in tannelorn. Even more so then those of their ancient past. Each ship was capable of speeds and manueverability unheard of by lesser sciences, firepower that would not be out of place on a dreadnought, and armour that was capable of deflecting most kinetic weapons, regardless of the Ubeck field.

Each of the crimson 500 meter craft seemed to change the way light was bent and seen around them, leaving a fine whispy trail, almost as if the vessel was leaving a semi permanent swirling pattern of blue shift. Combined with the normal glittering light from the sun, shining off the pieces and particles of ice in the inky dust filled darkness of the kuiper belt, and the sheer number of them arrayed in formation, it was breathtaking to see.

Of course the refit was still in full swing. The Einhanders had gained first priority either in refit or for construction. After all they were still the core of the fleet. Destroyer wasnt a proper term for them, light cruiser would be more appropriate. However Tannelornian fleet command didnt use such titles and the only equivalent would be "destroyer".

"Its magnificent Kelben, is it not? Its been almost 800 years since Tannelornians have seen such sights as this" he smiled wistfully, remember his ancient history classes. After all the war of secession had not only brought about new technologies in the fleet, but in ship construction..and industry as well. Tannelorn had fused its bio technology base with its industrial base. And not only this they had relearned how to synthesise materials utilising the primeval dust of the Kuiper belt.

After all every element within sol system came from this place, and by those who knew how it could be easily reproduced, only better of course. After all utilising the base isotopes of each material you wanted to produce left far less flaws in the manufacturing process.

Kelbin nodded to his lord. "Yes m'lord, it seems that work has gone by quicker here then expected, but i would assume this is due to your impeccable foresight and planning" the tall Elf bowed low to his old friend and master.

"Rise Captain, there is no need for that on this day of celebration, The prefecture is now capable of defending itself once more, there is no need for any formalities, only joy on this day" he smiled at his old friend. " Go home to your wife kelben, and treat as you should have done this last 3 months" he grinned rather knowingly at his friend, who saluted, bringing his hand to his chest, then started down the walkway as Lord Adein continued to watch the new fleet that prowled majestically around Enlil.

After all today was a rather good day for everyone. Theoretical work had been completed on something known as a Tannhauser device, Adein had no idea what it was, only that it would take some time to complete.

But most of all Tannelorn had started a new project, deep within the Kuiper belt. Something far grander then sky fortress or the Divine city could ever be.

Something wonderful.

****

***Refit status***

The refit was complete..however construction still continued on over 100 capital ships destined to become the new primary capital ships of the Tannelornian navy.
When finished the tannelornian navy would contain 350 einhander destroyers, 225 zweihander dreadnoughts 150 shield carriers, and 75 morgenstern fleet carriers.

This of course did not include the frigates. 400 beowulf class attack frigates 100 Woglinde support frigates and the 100 escort frigates were destined to be refitted and fulfill their role's in sol system. After all they werent capable of jumping..and the expeditionary force was being streamlined.


150 vessels. 65 einhanders, 35 shield carriers 30 zweihanders and 20 morgensterns would be the new shape of the expeditionary fleet. Of course the Expeditionary fleet was performing its own refit, far beyond sol inside the cluster. Not only this..in this case they had far less resources to work with..not only were they not established as well as the Prefecture within the asteroids, but they had to synthesise all their own materials..in a foreign system. So it was much to their credit that they were only slightly behind.

Still the fleet was 70% ready for action. Yannef smiled. This made him happy..to be able to worry only about his own knights, to do only the duties he was tasked with before the incident at grahfsberg..and he longed very much to go back to those times.

The modernisation of the Tannelornian fleet was almost complete..and it had been managed for the equivalent of 73 trillion work time units. There was still well over 200 trillion work time units left in the surplus of almost 300 years of careful planning. And much of it was going to see light..and soon. However it was not all going to go towards military means. In fact only another 50 trillion was cleared for immediate expenses..and most of that was currently going to the researchers, and the civilians.

Yannef placed down the data slate and had a long toke off his cannabis cigarette, rubbed his temples and started to watch something more entertaining.

****Training day****

This current class of Morgnenraete pilots was well on schedule. Of course this could be because of master Tarahim's rather overzealous training doctrines, still of course based off those of the tannelornian knights of old.

Every morning he had them up early, barely enough sleep to function, maybe 4 hours at most and inside the simulators, every time they messed up they were disciplined and sent in again.

This would be repeated until the weary young squires would finish the days training and he would hand out rewards. To Tarahim the greatest reward you could recieve, was a meal and being allowed to relax for a few hours before the sleep cycle began.

Of course this newest generation of Morgenraete pilots was set to take to the field in 7 years. And the simulators were all being set to teach them the new MK III as well as the old MK II. It seemed to be the general consensus that the MK III was more "fun". And because of this Tarahim often used training in a MK II as punishment.

Still at the end of the day he knew he did his job right. It was this constant training, discipline and sacrifice that made a Tannelornian knight, what they were. Truly above and beyond that of normal men and women in most armed forces. Tannelornian knights were trained practically from birth the finer points of etiquette, art, fencing, combat strategies, physical and mental endurance as well as combat training that quite normally lasted for 12 hours a day.

As he looked over his class, barely able to kneel in salute from exhaustion he smiled.

"16th year squires, i salute you all for your work on this fine day. None of you failed to live up to my expectations, as a reward for your diligent persecution of duty, tommorow training will only last for 8 hours and tonight you may all enjoy leisure time and a hearty meal" he grinned. The students looked happy enough to cheer, their young faces looking up at the master with an almost adoring wonder. After all he did shoot down 7 nightwing fighters and 6 phoenix bombers during the 2nd hellesponto's war..in one of the ancient beta's to boot!

He dismissed the class and they ran out in a stream giggling. After all he wasnt considered the best high maneuver frame trainer in tannelorn for being a hard ass. It was for his ability to judge a student, and motivate them as well.

****

***Hel Station***

Professor Aluviel was currently talking with an experimental new bio-com unit, dubbed "Lion 002". A month earlier he had been given a new tactical doctrine, discussing the dispatching of lesser drone units on the field of battle. Most Morgenraetes now carried large antimatter explosive complements, simply to sweep the annoying units from the field. After all in some cases they could be fielded in vast numbers.

However there were simply not enough available pilots to man every single morgenraete that had been produced over the last 100 years. The mark II was so prolific as to be numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Not only that but over 20 000 of the old Mark III alphas had been constructed.

Simply mothballing these units would be a waste of almost 100 years of budget expenditures. Not only this the mark III omega was more expensive and would not be produced in anywhere near the numbers of the Mark II. His orders had been to develop a semi sentient bio computer capable of controlling the actions of a morgenraete II. So therefore he had currently been working on two computer designs, patterned rather similarly to a pride of lions. The "Lion" unit, or command unit would be placed inside the mark III alphas, whereas the Lionesses would be placed inside the mark II.

However talking with a lion could be rather aggravating. Despite the hardware and software containing many protocols to ensure loyalty to Tannelorn and its controllers in general..the units were a little..fickle.

He was currently trying to convince the "lion" that it was better to follow the orders of his Tannelornian controller. However lion 002 was rather inclined to argue that since the good professor wasnt a military man himself, but protected by those in the military that he should assent to his authority in such matters.

Of course it had only been a computer simulation of a battle field, but he and his pride had performed rather well. After all they were specifically designed with drone hunting in mind..and they proved a rather nasty, if theoretical surprise to many of the "enemy" drone patterns copied in to the system.

However the system wasnt that annoying to talk to. Shark 125, the new missile and PDF computer system had been rather...frustrating. Search, track, strike, search, track, strike had been the only thing it had said. And he rather left it at that. He enabled many different sensory options and handed the system over to the GAP and Tannelornian navy. A new form of FF missile. Bloodhound 027 of course had been reserved for the Morgenraete's, and could be told to heel, play dead and many other things.

As it went Lion 02 was a good sign. However lion 03 would be a little more humble, but he would suggest keeping the system of lion 02 around for independent acting warfare units. After all alot of initiative was a good thing when being dropped behind enemy lines...

****

***Hel Station***

Professor Aluviel had finally put the finishing touches on Lion 003. He had increased the capacity for individual action as well as its natural ingrained humility. However to do this, he had to make the units more then semi sentient. Why he hadnt though of this before however, really was starting to vex him. After all he had spent nearly a month trying to talk with a barely intelligent "lion."


Aluviel had been busy, his fine elven features were rather wan from lack of sleep..but it was his divine duty to finish this project in time for the completion of the reorganisation and refit of the Tannelornian armed forces. After all without his "children" Tannelorn would not have enough manpower to withstand an assault from any projected forces arrayed against them. After all Tannelorn knew that in sol they would be completely outnumbered..and they were taking steps to make their military as capable as possible against any number of foes.

the lion project was only one part of this pogrom. However lion 003 seemed to be the definitive answer. All he needed to do was upgrade the lioness 001 to full sentience, and the project would be finished.


After all in his long theological, military and current events debate with Lion 03 he gained a rather excellent insight in to the unit. When he went to test them in simulations inside the aethernet. The aethernet was the tannelornian equivalent of the "internet" communications. However it was faster then light, utilising a DEM network much like the communications and sensor networks on tannelornian ships and installations.


Now all they had to do was test the real thing. And the first squadron was already being fitted with the advanced bio-com units. The true refit to the fighters of course would wait. After all the Lions and lionesses as they would be known from now on would have a little more space to carry firepower..and special systems with which to further improve their performance.

A modified ubeck field to act as a damage reductor, as well as add extra speed, as in the Mark III was slated to be introduced in to the design. Regardless of the fact that the Lions would use a version that was not as powerful..it would help make the unit very fearsome in its own right on the battlefield. Regardless of the extra missile firepower.


***Pure Waters shipyards***

Balmung was about as complex as a ship could be. However this was also punctuated by the simplest and most efficient possible designs. Technology and durability, efficiency and elegance. This was the key concept of Balmung. That it would not only contain the most advanced technology sustainable, but also it would combine a simple design and efficiency with elegant form.

The skeleton was starting to be covered by what appeared to be a layer of metal. The strange thing was that it seemed to be growing, very very slowly. But..you could actually see the "skin" layers of the first hull forming.

This is of course due to the Markaia auto repair unit that had been included in the design..and the Markaia units currently helping in her construction. The armour was being constructed by nano machines, each one taking materials synthesised from individual isotopes to create armour and materials of only the strongest calibre. Of course the fact that Balmung contained its very own Markaia system. This of course was a part of the Factory system contained within the armoured core of the ship.

The system would release nanomachines in to damage sections of the ship in their trillions, quickly repairing damage from enemy attacks. Of course it wouldnt necessarily be able to fix ship plating in the blink of an eye. But a few days after an engagement she would definetly be in alot better shape then when she last fought.

The fact that Balmung would be able to effectively regenerate whatever battle damage she took meant she was more then capable of fighting extended campaigns..on her own. After all thats what she was designed for...

*****

***Hel Station: planetary surface***

Professor Aluviel had so far remained in constant contact with his pride of lions via neural net for the last hour or so. And he was actually rather enjoying himself. Lion 03 had most definetly proven superior to lion 02 in every single way. He was faster, smarter and most importantly, much more willing to follow orders.

The professor watched as his "team" hunted down several groups of "enemy" drones. Or an approximation there of closely matching the performances of many of the drones used by ZMI and Der Angst forces over os sanglants. After all..this is what the lions were designed for.

The lions stalked their prey, masking their emmissions and using whatever cover was at hand to sneak up to the wary light drone "sentries" currently guarding an "enemy supply depot."

In fact the lions didnt even get caught until they broke cover to attack. By that time the light drones would barely have had enough time to call for reinforcements before they were obliterated in a highly accurate storm of laser fire and xaser missiles, with the odd small nuke thrown in for good measure.

The lionesses circled around the prey, forcing them in to close knight groups for the "lion" to obliterate with nuclear fire, all the while striking and tearing at the light drones with a fury that no mere electronic brain could ever match.

Then the heavies popped out of their concealment, counter attacking the lions rapidly, Lioness 02/#3 was hit hard by kinetic weaponry, she attempted to dodge out of the way before the next volley, but didnt need to. Lion 02/#4 skated in to the way of the next, fatal shot and started to unleashe a rain of pulsar death while circling the heavy unit at high speeds, then lion 02/#5 attacked with missiles, taking down the heavy with remarkable speed.

The rest of the pride broke and moved off in different directions, hoping the heavies would chase. Several of the heavies stayed behind, in case it was a ruse. They were rewarded for their foolishness by Lion 03/#1, and as a parting gift he sent the majourity of his remaining missiles in to the 4 heavies that stayed behind. The heavies attempted to flee but were annhilated with the Supply depot..Lion 03/#1 could feel the shockwave as he turned around and switched his form to high speed mode, hoping to catch up to his lionesses.

He didnt have to wait line, he broke right and up flying high in to the trans neptunian planets "atmosphere" before switching to high maneuver mode and dropping back down on to the field. A few shots from the heavies were quickly silenced by a concerted counter attack by the lionesses. Who, the moment that Lion 03/#1 attacked, turned on their pursuers, skating and zig zagging randomly at dizzying velocities.

Caught between the two forces, and with an encirclement maneuver threatening to destroy them, the heavy drones attempted a tactical withdrawal. Lion 03 landed rather heavily on one that had attemped to turn and retreat while its "brother" unit covered it, destroying lioness 02/#2 in a lengthy burst of C frac, who was in turn destroyed by a withering hail of pulsar fire from Lioness 02/# 4. The heavy drone that had the rather angry Lion 03/#1 land on it, crumpled to the ground, and attempted to use its gravitics to lift off. The 25 ton Lion however, simply shifted frequency on his pulsar, activating the laser "sword" built in to the weapon.

The shimmering blade of light and force slice rather quickly through the drone, destroying most of its vital systems before lion 03/#1 ascended again in to the air, this time it came at one of the enemy heavies trying to cover their retreat. The heavy turned on Lion 03/#1 just a fraction of a second too late. Had this been a manned morgenraete II, likely the machine would have been easily destroyed..but the Lion's were not simply morgenraete II's.

The lionesses pushed past the heavy drone, which was currently being slashed in to pieces by the humming blade of energy extending from the "wing tip" forearms of the bio-mech. It tried to get away, unfortunately for it, the Lion was faster.

the lionesses fired a rather large swarm of missiles at the retreating heavies..who turned in a desperate, but emotionless attempt to save their own existences...it didnt do them any good..for every missile they shot down there were 4 more headed for them.

After the rather lengthy fireworks display the battered but victorious pride reported back in to the base..the Lion and his lionesses letting out a rather large roar of victory.

Aluviel would have to get used to that he was sure..after all now that the project was finished and the units were working..he would have to teach a whole generation of students the precise art of dealing with intelligent Bio-mechs. He chuckled and congratulated the pride, asking them to return home for "treats". After all the pride spent most of the day in an artificially constructed world inside the aethernet, sometimes a very very large "meal" and some attention was a better reward then anything else.

The lions returned home as quickly as they could, eager to figure out what treat they would get for being so good.

***Pure Waters***

It had been 4 months since Balmung had been laid down, and things were going rather smoothly. Except of course for a certain snag in the Ubecht Fleet engagement system. The system in theory was capable of spitting out tens of millions of foot long lead darts, firing in a chain before reloading. The real problem had been in keeping the Ubeck catapult lines from intersecting as the enemy ships moved.

However removing the option to anchor the "lines" to enemy vessels prevented the space time conduits from collapsing each other, and the streams of "lead" flying out of them. However at this point, the fleet engagement system was not the main priority in construction. The internals of the ship were now being started in earnest. Power crystal matrixes were being built in to bulkheads and walls as they were being constructed, weapon hardpoints were being completed and the internal systems were being installed.

After all for a ship that would likely take another 6 or more months to finish, it was best to install the harder to build items first. That way if there was a mistake, it could be fixed before the ship was launched. Still she was an impressive sight, tethered to her moorings as thousands of bio-mechs and workers toiled to finish her. Half of her "skin" was already covering her, and soon construction on the hull itself would begin in earnest.

She was a complex beast, and more then likely to be the most expensive ship ever created in tannelorn. Already she was costing more then the SDF's, and that said much for the amount of resources going in to her.

Bio-com Ursa 005. She was most likely the most complex bio computer ever made in tannelorn, capable of free thinking and full emotional scale, but not only this built and designed to ensure the survival of the crew and the ship at all costs. Ursa was built in with a very strong maternal instinct, centered towards the protection of her crew, her nation and her territory.

Not only did she coordinate the rest of the computers and bio-coms aboard ship, but she maintained the black hole that resided at her heart, and insured it would not lose containment, and failing that, that it would be purged.

Work continued unabated. Siegfried at Enlil fleet base and Fafnir inside the Cluster pocket were likely recieving just as much attention. Though Fafnir was behind schedule..after all it was being built in Tannelorns first off world colony...

***Enlil Fleet base***


Praetor Yannef looked over the roster of the new "troops" that were soon to take their place in the navy of Tannelorn. Before him in a massive amphitheater, carved within the confines of Enlils tiny moon, stood row upon row of morgenraete II's. In the middle of each row of 8 stood a Morgenraete III alpha pattern. Before him stood the newest part of the new age Tannelornian military doctrine. In this time of bloodshed and conflict, the greatest threat was not that of rogue states attempting to attack others in minor pointless wars that would spill over, or that of grand invading imperial powers.

The threat was mainly power mad, paranoid super alliances, made up of dozens of nations, extorting, threatening, stealing from and intimidating those powers that did not have asmany armies with which to defend themselves. The solution of course would be to join your own alliance, however alliances could not always be counted upon to help you when you need it the most. Nor could alliances always be able to assist their allies in the scope and scale of the collossal wars that would be unleashed.

To be able to truly be safe, to truly be able to defend oneself, one must be capable of engaging multiple national militaries, on multiple fronts if it hoped to survive concerted aggression. Tannelorns massive fleet was not only being refitted with new technologies, it was being outfitted, and trained to engage against massed numbers of enemy ships.

An action against the Pananab space fleet in the cluster had given the Tannelornian high command impetus for new training and tactical skills designed to effectively attack enemy fleets outnumbering you over ten to 1.

Though most of the Pananab fleet had been primitive, they used jurry rigged, salvaged, stolen and bought weaponry in many cases, that far outstripped those used on other designs.

The vast fleet arrayed against the Tannelornian battle group was attacked without mercy for giving aid and succour to Tigerlan terrorists and criminals. However half way through the battle a ship from the balroggan fleet interceded and asked both sides to stop, for the sake of diplomacy.

However in the few minutes that the battle raged, the Tannelornians gained a host of new defensive and offensive strategies to be used against a foe that outnumbered them greatly. Tacticians and military analysts laboured over thousands of hours of gun camera footage and recordings as the massively outnumbered tannelornian fleet took on four thousand enemy vessels..and not only survived but bloodied them, with little loss to their own ships.

Before him now was part of the answer to the manpower shortage. Tannelorn could only afford to send at most a few hundred FTL capable vessels outsystem to wage war. And it needed every ship it could get back home, in case of invasion.

Years ago the Tannelornian fleet had stood up to six combined battle fleets over vascilia, when the battle ended the only ships above Vascilia were tannelornian, and the battered remains of the Aumanii fleet.

His lions of war now awaited his commands. In the last one hundred years, over two hundred thousand morgenraetes had been produced. These units were now slated to be replaced..but there was still a desperate need for them. They could be upgraded enough to effectively fight in a modern battlefield, but there were too few pilots to crew them.

The PTSS pilots had been transferred to the GAP, where they would fly in the new Fausts and Hellebardes, commanding the replicants in search and rescue, garrison, patrol and attack. The rest of the Tannelornian naval pilots, were expected to recieve a mark III omega pattern by years end. However the mark II's as they were being replaced offered the Tannelornians a unique opportunity.

The new refit had been undertaken inthe confidence that tannelornian vessels and high maneuver frames would recieve maximum qualitative superiority..while enabling them to match the numbers that would otherwise threaten to overwhelm them in any theater. Without the GAP to mount invasions, and defend the cities and orbital installations, or the lions to redress the issue of enemy daughter craft and drone numbers..the Tannelornians would find themselves in a war of attrition they could not win.

However lions could be quickly replaced in battle. Tannelornian pilots could not, each pilot took twenty five years to foster, each born and bred a pilot for twenty five years before they were ready to wear the mantle of a true knight of Tannelorn. And creating a ground army would take an equal amount of time..after all it had been nearly 100 years since the Prefecture had maintained more then the PTPS defensive police and security forces, and the fifty thousand strong hyper elite Divine Celestial Cavaliers.

The GAP and the disbanding of the PTSS was the only way to ensure the strength, survival and prosperity of Tannelorn in the years to come. And now he had his lions, to help protect tannelorn and strike at her foes..and to redress the numbers she would likely face in the next war.

Tannelornian high command had never lost its nerve, no matter how many foes they had faced and it was unlikely they would start doing so now. Still better safe, then sorry.

***Pure Waters***

The internal layout of balmung was built upon the same compartmentalised "skeleton" that all tannelornian vehicles were. Her spine was now attached to her back, her "ribs" helped to protect her precious vitals, as well as add flexibility to her frame.

Tannelornians had long ago utilised skeletal structures in their construction. After all a conventional stretched skin vehicle over internal components was hardy, but the same stretched skin over a heavily armoured endo skeleton..was far more durable.

This of course had been the secret to the success of the Morgenraete, its internal skeleton allowing it take much more kinetic stress and damage then any of its predecessors and remain functional.

And this same process was applied to all tannelornian vehicles. However Balmung was different. She was far larger then most vessels..and far more costly to produce.

She contained inside of her "bones" a second layer. If one layer shattered and broke there would be another set of bones just underneath to hold her together. After all a single ship designed to take on entire fleets had to be able to hold up to damage that would turn most superdreadnoughts in to slag long before they could even get close.

And every system being built in to her 3.7 km frame was designed for that purpose. From the high powered Ubecht field's to the plethora of PDS and PBS shield systems..to the fact that she would be nearly as agile as a cruiser when she was finished.

She was being built as more then just a showpiece. After all showpieces had no places in the Tannelornian navy. It had to be able to do more. And as the massive leviathan started to truly take shape in her berth,to resemble the design that was originally drawn up for her..it was readily apparent to anyone present she would be able to do such wonders as she was needed to.

At least that was the appearance...


***What to do with the lowe's***

Ranks of Lowe's, the name chosen for the morgenraete equipped with the lion 03 and lioness 02 battle bio-coms, filled the massive hangar's inside the city of Midgard-sormr's old PTSS wings. The fact was that the lowes, as wonderful as they were, could not be used in anything other then defense. There simply were not enough ships to house them all, or even some of them.

Of course their original intention was as an numerous assault unit to be used to soften up enemy targets prior to an advance. However the problem with transporting them had gotten many of the engineers and tech's at hel station thinking.

And when tannelornian technicians and engineers started to think, they asked scientists, and when scientists were asked..they tried to do.

Of course this meant an interesting proposal was given to the Tannelornian high command. What if the Lowe bio-com controlled morgenraetes went to war in..bio-com controlled ships?

High command scoffed at the idea of equipping essentially pet ships, with newer technologies, which also helped to solve the numerical issues. After all a similar approach to the GAP assault vessel could be taken. The ikazuki was still a valid design, with enough modification..and though it had a massive frame, it was still rather cheap to construct. Maybe it could even be a passeable ship.

As soon as the idea was brought to the desk of Praetor Yannef, he cleared it. After all the thought of almost doubling the amount of capital ships and morgenraetes in the tannelornian fleet, without having to spend anything on training and upkeep of organics was the answer to their prayers. And it couldnt come soon enough.

Work was already started on refitting the venerable ship, whether or not to make it a true fighting vessel, or simply expand its already cavernous flight bays was still a matter of discussion.



***Enlil fleetbase: Markaia project***

For a month three five kilometer hulls had been constructed deep in the center of the fleet base. They hadnt been constructed for speed or firepower, nor for extreme emergy generation as most tannelornian vessels would be. Theywere in fact larger versions of the markaia ship used to begin construction on the divine city in the northern ocean.


The ships were essentially armour plates around a markaia construction unit..a rather large one, and chambers for housing thousands upon thousands of bio-mechs. It hadnt taken long construct the massive vessels, after all it was a simple design a Markaia unit programmed with everything that would be needed to scout out and colonise worlds in the name of Tannelorn, to prepare everything the Tannelornian colonists would need once they arrived, and then to move on after having left defenders to claim the system for Tannelorn. Today was activation day for the three massive drone ships.

Their mission was simple, go out in to the galaxy and find suitable planets, away from hostile powers to be prepared for colonisation and exploitation by the Tannelornian people.

The ships powered up in turn, 001, 002, 003 were the only markings the vessels bore other then the flag of the prefecture. The massive 40 km bulkheads seperating the dry dock from the cold reaches of the kuiper belt opened slowly. Each ships moved out in to the void slowly, moving in a determined. stately manner towards the edge of the solar system.

The ships left sol and activating their long range DEM drives, sailed off silently on wings of fate, moving towards predetermined destinations in this galaxy and its satellites, they carried the hopes of the Tannelornians with them. For this was truly the answer to all of the woes of the nation. Breathing room.


***Brain storms***

Deep inside the experimental design section of Hel station, a small group of researcher caste and naval engineers drank coffee and attempted to come up with a solution to high commands request for automated vessels to carry the new Lowe bio-mech High maneuver frames. Of course the implementation of this was left to the scientists and engineers, as after all Command only wanted to make the pets more effective in battle, and to be able to fight entire campaigns..on their own.

Marik Dern, chief engineer and head of the project, had a rather grand vision for the project, of course Anastasia Focht, head of the scientist delegation had a different idea on it.

"Why attempt to build an entire new fleet of warships, utilising many different and varied classes when we could simply build versatile combat vessels capable of carrying the lowe and performing a mission with a fine chance of success, as they did with the GAP ships." Focht shouted, the rest of the scientists shrank back as the engineers looked on. "Because the GAP vessels are outdated, ungainly pieces of garbage Anastasia, we want effective modern combat units, yes low cost but not THAT low cost" Dern growled the words.


"How many ships should we ask high command to build then hmm? How many more resources would we waste, after all we have the colonisation project going on at this moment, how in the name of heaven are we supposed to ask high command to fill whatever slate we say goes." Dern could sense that she wanted something more out of this then she was letting on. It was likely, as it often was with scientists, that she was hoping that fulfilling the contract for a low cost effective carrier for the lowes would grant her some of the additional resources saved in building the projected number of ships. However Dern was a military man..and he had other ideas..and more information then the scientist.


"They will pay, and they do want the damn ships Anastasia, the navy cannot expand at its current level of quality without a massive influx of new recruits...and that as you know would take at least 25 years to elevate that many more citizens in to knights." He looked over her and sighed, shaking his head.

"We need frigates, destroyers, cruisers and HMF carriers anastasia, and its that simple. The design you worked up for an overall battle carrier was a good start..but it cant be the breadth and width of the damn fleet."

Anastasia looked at him, squinting in anger, then she let out a deep breath. After all he had said they would keep her design. She started to smile a little more, looking at him a bit different and rather obediently she sat and listened.

"The battle carrier is approved by the engineering staff, Its a good start Anastasia, quicker then an ike, more heavily armed then a GAP cruiser and twice the HMF payloard of the older design, and you even managed to shave 10 meters off its height." he smiled at her.

"So dont worry, no one is questioning your ability to design a bio-mech, though ships tend to be different..you did a good job."


He looked over the schematics. The Caschelott was approximately nine hundred meters long, one hundred meters shorter then the old Ike's, and ten meters of height had been left off of her. She was armed with a battery of PDF, PBS screens and 4 bio-mech missile launch bays, as well as massive internal hangers. She also carried a pair of Tri Barreled Xaser turrets, mounting the massive 1000 cm electron-synthesis Xaser cannon. She wasnt as powerful as the massive loengren Grasers by a long shot, but 6 simultaneous blasts at ranges of up to 2 million kilometers could be painful. She also had a battery of smaller Xaser weapons. 16 turrets in all, each mouting the Heavy Xaser cannon, smaller then those on the tri turret of course, but not by too signifigant a factor.


She was fast, well protected, deadly and controlled by one of the most sophisticated arrays of Bio-coms ever produced. Including the now whispered about Ursa 003. She would be the mother bear to the fleet, ready to fight and die for her homeland, and she had been designed by a scientist...which in itself would have been considered extraordinary anywhere but Enlil.

****

***Pure Waters***

If one were to see her, they would say that Balmung was finished. The massive leviathian now taking up most of the space in the dry dock was a magnificent sight. Sharp angles gave way to organic curves towards the rear of her frame. There were no apparent engine ports on this massive beast. Of course it wasnt to say it didnt have engine, in fact it even had massive fusion-plasma shock expansion engines, safely covered by layers of flexible plates for quick bursts of speed. But her primary locomotion was entirely gravitic.

If the ship appeared finished, that was indeed an illusion. The work of testing and completing her internals was nearly complete, however as a new design utilising hundreds of new systems, it was necessary that she be properly tested and blessed before activation. And today was one such test.


***Balmungs command room***

"Lord Rendacil, dark matter compression at 96% we are about attain sufficient density, your orders?" A soft spoken female voice stated. "Make sure all dark matter injectors are online and functioning, finish it, let us see if the heart of the beast is fully ready to fight" he grinned softly, his long black hair tied back in a loose ponytail, his steady gaze cut over his angled features stared straight ahead.

"Ursa are you prepared?" He asked to no one in particular. A holo image of a rather bearish face, admittedly too angular and not as soft as an "earth bear" appeared in the center of the strat-sim holoprojector before his command throne.

The image started to speak, the voice flowed softly, almost musically despite the constant growling undertone. "I wish to please you my master, when can we begin the test so that i may prove myself a worthy servant" the bio-com said excitedly.

"Proceed then Ursa" Lord Rendacil smiled, the bear face on the holopict grinned a wide grin and suddenly the ship started to vibrate slightly..it built up until it became more and more noticeable, then abruptly stopped.

****

Hunger

Gnawing at my guts, growing, swelling inside my breast, its exquisite, pain so great as to nearly cripple, ecstacy so profound it distracts the mind..focus, maintain your dignity.

Redirect power to Gotteslicht, gamma collection complete, disperse excess gamma,
disperse main power to helvinter, focus think of your task, not of your gut.

The black hole in the heart of the ship grew, at first the containment field had some unusual fluctuations, likely the bio-com adjusting to the power system, after this it went through the task of powering up the main crystal cells, and directing gamma rays directly to the main Gotteslicht cannon. She then proceeded to dissipate the power to the Gotteslicht, simulating standard powering up and down of the system. It worked rather well, but the variations were worrying. She was ahead of schedule.


Balmung was nearly complete.

***Final drafts***

It had been only a month since the Caschelotts finalised design was placed on the table. The drone fleets would have several features to enable them to do their task effectively, operating as a front line battle unit, as well as remain inexpensive and easy to replace. The choice to go with a toned down Ubecht field generator and polarised armour in greater thickness then the phased armour of a Naval ship was only one part of this.

They would use Xasers instead of grasers, by stimulating electrons to create and harvest X rays, they would not need to carry any nuclear ordinance, and thus any internal factories could simply be devoted to churning out more of the bio-mech controlled AM and Graser warhead heavy missiles.

This would lend far more autonomy to the drone fleets, requiring only to stop to gain nutrients and fuel, and nutrients could by synthesised from..many different sources. The second design was the Schwertwal bio-mech destroyer. She was about 400 meters long, fast despite the lack of a full power ubecht field and heavily armed and armoured.

Anastasia's team had designed the new shark and bloodhound bio-com units for PDS and missiles, and the Orca was simply the next step up. Intelligent with far superior and natural three dimensional thinking the Schwertwal would be the fighting ship of the Drone fleets, as the Einhander is to the navy.

The long angled ship looked good on paper, flatter and wider then an einhander she packed the same armour and more weaponry on to her frame. However the weaponry itself wasnt equivalent in power, it was effective none the less.

The ship used heavy turret mounted Xaser as well as 8 smaller heavy xasers not unlike those found on most Tannelornian ships, the massive weapons were fearsome, though they lacked the sheer penetration of the heavy turreted weapon.


They were also armed with 4 of the Bio-mech drone graser/am missile tubes, as well as 60 PDS and like their counterparts in the navy, they carried 24 Lowe Bio-Mech HMV's. The crowning achievement of her design was the Orca 004 bio-com. Instinctively superb at combined attacks in three dimensional environments, they were also highly intelligent, adaptive and capable of great acts of aggression and sacrifice for the greater pod.


She was a hunter born and utilised nothing but ancient tannelornian technologies, of course the finest and most refined examples of this would be used.
She was also the first ship to utilise small batteries of high rate of fire small xaser turrets, on the same scale as the Brightlances and pulsars on the Naval vessels.

Though the sheer rate of fire could not be matched, the firepower most certainly could. And this was very important for a ship designed to be a vessel of the line, to do battle in large planetary melees as well as high speed and fluid fleet actions.

However none of the new vessels were designed with atmospheric combat in mind. This saved quite a bit of resources in the design phase, as well as allowing them to be built much faster, as they required far less powerful antigravitic engines to be installed. Of course the Lowe's could still engage in ground combat.

Starting immediately High command wanted to build prototypes of both the Caschelott and Schwertwal, and with the production trials finished..they would implement a full scale production run. Likely nearly a 1000 schwertwal's would be built in the coming months. That is if no unexpected problems came up...


****

***Pure Waters***

For all intents and purposes, the massive ship was finished. Of course a throng of engineers were performing final tests, system checks, cold starts and stops, over and over again. They were trying to force the ship to give up the secret of any flaws she may still have. Tommorow she would go out to the testing range and be put through her trials. But today she was being proofed, as she had been for the last month.


She represented more then just being the mightiest vessel in sol, she represented a test bed of new and old technologies that were far beyond those that had been in service ten years ago. She was the link between the old and the new, the future of the Tannelornian people itself rested on projects like these.

Tannelorn was exploring and colonising a portion of the galaxy for her self, however the divine forces of the Prefecture had met only with violence since they had left the embrace of sol, only a few possible friends..and more violence.

For Tannelorn to be able to succeed in creating a future other then the overcrowded hell that was forming in the asteroid field, her might of arms had to be unequalled, and able to defend the new empire against all threats.


***Hel Station: Final drafts***

The next two designs to be proposed were of a PD/Missile frigate and a bio-mech cruiser capable of carrying not only a fair sized complement of Lowe's, but also of going toe to toe with most enemy capital ships.

After much argument, the naval engineers finally won out. The Delfin was to be a missile carrier, utilising the new Graser heavy warhead as well as much smaller batteries of tiny missiles carrying a payload of ball bearings, which once deployed would counter light enemy fighters and missiles. The 170 meter long craft had a DEM drive in its schematics, a first for frigate class vessels in Tannelorn, though they had to sacrifice crew to place it. She was also armed with literally dozens of Pulsar PD antimissile/fighter systems. After all as an outrider to the fleet they had to be able to deal with ships as well as large hordes of daughter craft and missiles.

The final touch was a small Spinal Xaser, it wasnt much but Tannelornian ships never specialised to the degree of being unable to perform any task required. After all who knows when a group of Delfins would have an opportunity to strike at a command ship.

The vessel was fast and agile, almost as agile as many heavy fighters of other races, as well as reasonably well protected. This would help her wade in to massive clouds of daughter craft and be able to survive while performing its mission.

This design was added to the others, ready to begin prototype testing, however the combat computer was still in its formative stages, and it was likely the Delfin class would not finish testing on schedule with the rest of the ships.


The knurrwal Bio-mech cruiser however, was another story. 725 meters long, heavily armed with a Tri barrel Xaser turret and 16 lighter X ray lasers as well as 8 missile bays and over 60 PD mounts. She had been drawn up originally as a replacement to the sword before the refit, and her design was already perfected.

However the replacement of the crew had allowed 100 meters to be shaved off the length, as well as many more weapons systems to be added. She was long and flattish, much like the Schwertwal, still angled as a tannelornian vessel but armed and built differently. It was obvious she had no crew from the layout, there wouldnt be enough room for power and weapons as well as crew quarters.

She was a heavy ship with a deadly compliment of weaponry. Not only this she was well protected and would carry 40 lowes, she had 4 PBS screens, a low power ubecht field and 60 PD turrets, including the tiny micro missile launchers, flinging out tiny ball bearings at percentages of c.


Now all that had to be done was to build, test and clear the prototypes for completion, a task that may take the next 3 or so months, but once it was complete would begin the second phase of the militarisation and colonisation project that was first on the Tannelornian governments agenda. It was only a matter of time before the Pets would join their masters in defending the realm.

****

***Hel Station: Implementation***


"Anastasia, the sim-tests were accurate, you have fixed the flaws in Knurrwal 007?" Marik Dern asked again, as a father would ask his child. Anastasia's brow furrowed as she let out a little growl of anger. "Of course i fixed the flaws, they wont do what they did last time" She said softly blushing. Anastasia had forgotten to remove and modify a rather important aspect of the humpback whales habits. The urge to mate.

In a simulation of 006's ability it started off well, till they started to fly around in circles, directing mating calls...it had been the final straw when one of the "males" attempted to mount a "female". After this Dern ordered the bio-coms to be more carefully constructed and programmed. Dern had been laughing behind her back, essentially accusing her of thinking of coupling while programming.

So she had worked hard in to the night to perfect the system for the full scale trial runs. It would be rather cut and dry, however she didnt want any mistakes. She had spent the last two weeks putting the Bio-coms through every possible situation, and she hadnt slept well. She looked tired, dishevelled and in need of a bath. But Dern had been satisfied with his own analysis of the combat bio-coms. Now all they needed to see was the quickly manufactured test beds perform standard operations inside their new "bodies".


The 3 ships floated around in a rather casual, almost playful manner. The schewrtwal prototype actually attempted to play with the knurrwal and Caschelott, though the more serious and sombre Bio-coms would have nothing of it,and tended to give the schewrtwal a casual "fluke" of ions to make it stop behaving so childishly.

The schwertwal started to behave much better when orders started to be given. First to the caschelott, then the caschelott started to behave as it was programmed, as the leader of the tiny detachment.

The ships started to go through standard maneuvers one would expect from ships in peacetime and in combat. Formations, simulated attacks and docking runs, and a plethora of boring, but very necessary tests concieved to put the bio-coms through their paces. Combat testing was not necessary. The bio-coms had been put through rigorous paces inside simulators, Anastasia had regretted the choice by Dern to feed the bio-coms through feed back, to allow them to see the results of battle damage on their "programming."

In the space of a month over a hundred bio-coms had died in the testing, to ensure as many of their descendents would survive in the heat of battle as possible.

With this test and the bugs finally worked out of the software, the bio-com controlled bio-mech fleets would become a reality.

Everything so far had been in tolerances, and the schwertwal and knurrwals had even shown a very high level of independent thought, thinking of things perhaps even ship crews may not have to deal with many of the "problems" they faced.

Of course this was due to the hyper enhanced 3 dimensional awareness afforded to the "cetacean" series of Bio-coms. The ships were admittedly graceful, even without a full power ubecht field they were rather agile. The inherent control and command of the grav impellors and verniers gave them a slight edge over a tannelornian crew utilising the same craft, after all it was the "whales" body.

Several hours later they were recalled to Enlil for a detailed analysis, there were rewarded well, being given the rest of the day to "swim" in the virtual waters of the aethernet.

***

Dern walked in to the command room, where he found Anastasia sleeping rather peacefully, he shook her awake. "Anastasia, high command recieved the results several hours ago, go get some sleep, the delfin needs to be finished soon and i want one of my best scientists to be wide awake and ready for the next trials." he smiled at her. "Scientist Focht, you shall be awarded a breeding certificate for this great effort you have done for Tannelorn, not only this your name shall be known throughout the ages, high command has ordered immediate mass production of the new units, well done Ana." He grinned softly at her, and walked away.

He was still rather glad they had to finish the Delfin as well, then perhaps he would be able to find time to take her for dinner. She was rather cute in a civilian sort of way, soldiers didnt pout, they sulked...and he found the pouting rather sensous, despite the nasty mood behind it.

***Trials:Tamerlaine naval base, the core***


Ten knights stood at attention before Knight-Captain Delethor. "Relax knights, you all know why you are here, you have been chosen to compete in this trial of selection due to your skill and valour in the field."

He paced across the row of young but accomplished knights, several women were present, one an elven girl, the other two human but it was primarily men.

Stocky and stubborn Alfen, Short and brooding Lother, tall and fair Azantine. All knights of honour, though young and relatively inexperienced. Several of them had indeed fought in the cluster skirmishes and were rather accomplished pilots, with as much experience and as many kills as older warriors.


"The winner of this trial shall be selected to participate in a testing program to put the new heavy designs through their paces." the room was utterly silent.
Rumours had persisted that R&D was developing a true heavy fighter along the same lines as the morgenraete, though thats all it had been until now.

The trial was going to be straight forward, a battle royale between the knights in their respective morgenraetes. Safeties off. It would be dangerous, especially considering that a morgenraete with full missile payload could rate its firepower output at megatons a second, if only for a short while. As this would be a test of skill however, it would be directe fire weapons only.

Still the modern Morgenraete Omega's weapons were immensely powerful, though so were the omega's defenses. Still people would likely die in this heated trial, especially as the desire to prove ones skill might override training to eject to fight again.

This was the way of the military however. If an order was to be refused a trial was called, if an issue was set out against another member, yet another trial. Most trials consisted of hand to hand battles, but depending on what the superior knight chose, it could be with weapons or even inside combat frames.

Ships themselves were never allowed to participate in trials.

"The trial begins tommorow at 0:800, spend the rest of the day in preparation for the trial ahead, may the divine bless you in this action, and may heaven bring you home safe." he smiled and dismissed them with a motion of his hand.

***GAP fleet base "Demiarch" eastern reaches***

Commodore Lithien stood stone faced in front of the new "combat units" sent to him for clearance. Lithien had requested lowes, and the right to build them in their tens of thousands. The small amount of Hellebardes and faust granted to him were simply not enough to carry out all of the duties required of him.

Before him was a 13.6 meter tall humanoid figure, vaguely reminiscent of a Morgenraete III, same legs and arms as the H variant, yet the body had a slightly more humanoid shape. A large V going down across to the legs, covered in armoured plates at the joints, would be flaps in flight mode housing tiny verniers to offset the weight and bulk in atmosphere.

Beside it layed out in front of it was a 12 meter long space superiority fighter, that could have been built from the same parts as the testbed in front of him.

Lithien was furious. He had asked for automated units, and was given more fighters and simply told that he had the pilots, simply equip them with mounts. Warriors fight and lead by example, they do not control hordes of replicants behind the safety of armoured bulkheads.

He saw the hypocrisy in such a statement, as the Divine Navy and the Knights who manned it were currently increasing their numbers utilising bio-mechs to fight.

The girls under their command, the GAP replicant soldiers were at least nearly Tannelornian. Still he had to go through the motions. Regardless of whether or not he complained, he did have a solid core of pilots, and it was a superior weapon system.

He would be forced to take it, despite the calculated insult in it. The hellebarde had been the epitomy of Civilian warder High mobility frame design, and had experienced great difficulties in the design and testing phase that had to be overcome.


"Commodore, are you not happy with these fine gifts that our lords give us?" Lieutenant Alia sturm asked with a curious look on her face. "Oh yes, of course i am happy, we are granted test bed concept models of the new heavy HMF they are constructing for themselves, with lesser technologies incorporated in it, of course we should be happy...they mock the Hellebarde and the Faust, they mock us Alia, and dont ever forget this." he said with a snarl.

Alia was utterly shocked. Yanislev had of course been fostering certain anti knight sentiments in the GAP, however this was the sentiments of regular army soldiers, who percieved the gap in technology between the knights and themselves as not only an insult, but a measure of their distrust..or at least disgust in soldiers trained as they were.

Tannelornian knights were trained from birth, they lived to be warriors, to fight for the people and the land itself. The GAP however were also defenders of the land, though the holo-vids never glorified them, only the knights. To the people of Tannelorn, the GAP were the last line of defense, something that was simply there..they didnt even have the romance of the PTSS, facing up to warships in ancient vessels in the name of law and justice.

"No alia, this test is a farce, we will take these fighters, and their flaws, we will equip them ourselves and fix them ourselves until we have our own heavy units, but we will never be grateful for this." his eyes narrowed in disgust at the new HMF and superiority aerospace fighters ahead of him.

"And we will never forget how our masters see us, Quiaff?" he asked Alia. She looked at him, almost frightened. She simply nodded her head. "Aff." was all she said as he turned and left the hangar bay.

She looked at the new heavy units they were to be granted, looking over their technical manifold. 62 tonnes, High power Fusactor, utilising core tapped metallic hydrogen..just like the navy. She was shocked at this. Though the advanced crystal power relays were not in place, the navy was willing to supply them with precious dark matter and metallic hydrogen, mined from new carpentaria inside the cluster.

She did not understand the anger of Commodore lithien. So many of the PTSS pilots hated their new lot, squadron commanders of a larger army, sitting in briefings while their soldiers fought and died without them. This new frame was a blessing not a curse, and were not the knights wise to choose so? She walked out of the hangar, her half elven ears twitching slightly, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and a little confusion.

Either way it was her duty to test the superiority fighter in the next few days, and she was happy to have the chance to fly such a magnificent example of Divine naval engineering, regardless of whether or not they toned it down for "civilian" use.

****

***Tamerlaine Divine navy fleet base: Trials***

From the bridge of the Covenant, the battle raging between the ten elite knights of Tannelorn looked like nothing more then contrails and bursts of las fire, admittedly moving at a frenetic pace. At over 300 000 kilometers distance, small fireballs indicated that a warrior had "exitted the competition.

Still there were 5 knights left in the fight after the first 5 minutes, a testament to their skill and devotion to serving the Divine navy.

Knight-lieutenant Jas Azantine powered up his engines to maximum power, engaging his ubecht field to full strength as he started to dodge and weave in a deadly ballet, trying to move away from both Knight Lother and Knight-Captain Kara Arahim. They were good, and he wasnt sweating for nothing. Every movement he made they followed, levelling devestating blasts of pulsar and brightlance fire against him. It was obvious from the get go those two had been working together. It wasnt against the rules, but it almost guaranteed one of them would win the chance to pilot the new Heavy HMF for the divine navy.

His H variant 'raete had a few tricks up its sleeve that theirs did not, the ability to switch weapon configurations depending on the opponent and the range. And the fastpack carriers on the rear of the torso section in the H variant could carry alternate "rifles" and other weapons.

He had chosen well it had seemed. MK 1 Pulsar rifle and a MK 1 Brightlance, coincedentally similar weapons to those on his comrades variants of raete. If it werent for the fact that both weapons were 50% more powerful then the arm mounted cannons.

Azantine stopped running. He turned sharply, leaning his mecha in to a tight turn around Kara's mecha, she attempted to react but he dropped down under her, guiding gravity and his engines to push his craft to its limits. Within half a second he was behind her with the massive Brightlance weapon readied, held in both hands. Its strange shape lent to its secondary purpose. It was a massive two handed Laser sword. The weapon was amost 3/4 the size of the raete itself, long and angular, very narrow with a gap running from the angled grip down to the "barrel". The mecha's left hand found and easy grip along the gap as it fired upwards, lancing out with a beam of las energy clipping off her raetes left arm and leg like they werent there.

The brightlance was a very powerful weapon, and even on the B variant Omegas it took up so much space the forearms had to be extended by 50%, giving it an ape like appearance. He finished the 5 second burst, raking it along her right side, disarming her mecha as he switched to high speed configuration. Seamlessly the legs locked together as the mechas main torso flipped in to a linear configuration against the legs, the arms tucked back and locked against the side as the massive Fus-engines and high powered grav impellor accelerated his mecha forwards at incredible speeds. Suddenly he snapped back in to high maneuver configuration, the legs unlocking themselves as the torso flipped back down once again, armour skirts once again covering the vulnerable joints, he once again aimed and fired his brightlance, this time the shot did not disarm his opponent. Lother had attempted to dodge, and at range a Urenbeck field caused havoc with firing solutions, as the fluctuations in speed and time measurably in fragments of seconds, threw off automatic targetting.

It was a system meant for organics. To take full advantage of the creativity and spontaneity that they possess. And it had worked opposite to what it was intended in this case.

Azantine was a brutally efficient shot. And though he had planned to remove first the left, then right arm weapons...he managed to land a shot straight through his opponents cockpit.

The mecha crumpled as it went inactive, its former occupant likely nothing more then a carbon stain against what remained of its internals.

Jas had been too caught up in his duel against the other two knights however, and he didnt notice Yalohim coming up behind him. The first indication was when a salvo of pulsar fire severed his mechas left leg at the knee, not exactly crippling, but it would indeed leave his mecha vulnerable.

He realised his foe was coming right at him, Laser blades extended.
He wanted to finish him up close and personal. Jas would oblige him. He reversed the grip on his brighlance, placing both of his mechanical hands on the grip, with a thought the link between the mechas right hand actuator sent the desired command to activate the secondary weapon system.

Suddenly the space underneath the massive gun lit up as a las beam formed inside of it. His weapon, though he only had one had some advantages compared to the ones his opponent used. Mainly that of weight.

As Yalohim circled, readying himself for a charge, Jas activated his engines and darted forward, then under his mech, peforming a back flip maneuver, albeit slower then he would have liked, swinging his weapon towards the "crotch" of his enemy. Yalohim boosted upwards narrowly avoiding his swing before rolling in a pirhouette before attempting to slash at Jas, but he was already moving away. Jas reoriented himelf and dashed forward again, this time just as Yalohim was moving forwards. The Brightlance beam was approximately 3 meters longer then the blade of a standard P variants energy blade, and it was enough.

The weapon slammed in to the shoulder of his mecha, at this range the urenbecht fields were useless, the only thing they did was lend an appearance to a close observer that the mecha were moving far faster then they should.

The blade carved a molten trail down in to the reactor, severing crystal matrixes as it went. Yalohims mecha went limp, Jan retrieved his weapon, kicking off with his one good leg.

In his moment of exultation he had forgotten about little knight Kristina Aluviel. She had survived most of the battle until this point on her flying ability alone. As she made a 20% c pass against Jan in her U variant Raete, she fired a few bursts with her ion-particle beams. They caught Jan's mecha full in the rear torso, slagging his internal power systems, and taking him out of the fight.

He heard a giggle on his vox. "Less cheering, more fighting Jan" she giggled. Jan simply shook his head.

***Demiarch Base: GAP flight testing***

Alia Sturm had just finished her preflight tests, and was preparing to launch the new testbed XASS-19 heavy aerospace superiority fighter. The order was given, she was to put the new unit through its paces and fly through the training course at Demiarch field.

She launched, double checking to be sure her on board sensors and calibration reports were working. She took off taking the large angular and bulky looking fighter through its paces, starting with slow acceleration to maximum speed. The craft was extaordinarily fast for its size, powered by two massive fusion engines and a 9th gen gravitic impellor. It wasnt long even in this gradual acceleration before it reached its deep space top [recommended] combat speed of 25% c.

Now for high speed maneuvers. Admittedly aerospace fighters were not supposed to be able to perform the same feats of agility as a high maneuver or even high mobility frame, however it still needed to be able to maneuver at speed.

Alia started slowly, simple sharp turns and immelmen dives, rolls and a few side to side "jinks" utilising the impellor and verniers. The ship was holding up perfectly, so far there were no flaws in the design. Admittedly this had been a testbed concept for the new divine naval high maneuver frame, and she knew they would encounter less difficulties then the navy would.

She started in to more advanced maneuvers now, she accelerated quickly, making sure to carefully monitor the status of the ships hull. This aerospace fighter, much like a high maneuver/mobility frame was built around a central spine and skeleton, and was capable of performing incredible maneuvers..perhaps even more then the pilot could withstand.

And considering the advanced AG systems in the cockpit specifically designed to prevent just that, it was a testament to the power of this new fighters propulsion systems.

However in tannelornian sub craft design, heavier tended to mean faster, whereas lighter means more agile. In the case of the full scale Divine navy HMF, alia suspected it would be both..perhaps even worthy of replacing the omega III morgenraetes.

Although Tannelorn always held a certain place in its heart for mid range craft, being tough, quick, agile and heavily armed enough to take on any weight class of sub craft, and with enough numbers be a serious threat to capital ships.

Alia was now directed to the Maneuver range, to test the ability of this fighter to perform in a "dog fight" setting. The maneuver range was a simple test simulating the actions and motions of a dog fight, by flying through "hoops" of light within a certain period of time.


It was all rather reminiscent of late 20th century electronic games, however it did serve the purpose of finding any hidden flaws in the structure of the craft. She went through the basic flight maneuvers, things taught to children in a clinical and disenterested fashion. Even the high speed tail flip maneuver wasnt very thrilling, everything was being monitored, everything had to be just right.

Suddenly she noticed that everything wasnt just right.

She was about 6 million km from Demiarch now, they had asked her to go quite some distance from the fleet base, to avoid prying eyes of course.

4 objects flickered past her DEM sensors, leaving an impression of something tiny travelling through the ocean of particles, but leaving a larger wake.

Sub-craft by the size of it, however she lacked any information on the composition of the forces other then a number. Somehow they were not registering on DEM sensors, which was technically impossible. Anything moving within a DEM field instantly transmitted its shape, composition, heading, speed..what it had for breakfast, etcetera to the ship computer for translation to combat data. And the only data she could pick up was the wake.


And from the direction of the wake, they were headed right for her. As they got closer more conventional ladar was much more useful. They had the same sillhouette as a faust superiority fighter, but they were not fausts.

Fausts wouldnt be letting fly a rather large salvo of missiles directly towards her.

Alia didnt panic, which was remarkable considering her craft currently had no missiles, and the weapons were offline. She powered up her engines to full and performed a tail flip, gravitic impellor working with manuever verniers to flip her craft around fast enough for her to feel it in her teeth. Her craft sailed backwards for a few moments before the incredibly powerful fus-engines working with the impellor pushed her forwards at an dizzying speeds. She was actually pushed back in her seat from it.

She immediately sent out several distress signals to the nearest GAP units to her, but for some reason there werent any units close enough to her to intercept before she could make it to demiarch, or the missiles made it to her.

She started to jink, trying to lose the missiles in a vain effort, everything was offline including ecm and sand casters. She had approximately three minutes until the missiles impacted against her hull, and it would take her 10 to return to demiarch. And with approximately 60 unknown make missiles tailing her, she knew that it was highly unlikely that she would be able to make it back to base.

2 minutes later she was pouring every available ounce of power in to the engines, buying herself another thirty seconds.

At 3 minutes she realised the ejection system had been deactivated. At this point Alia was as close to panic as she could possibly be, she channeled all available power to main propulsion, including the antigravity in her cockpit.

She blacked out. Automatic safety systems brought the anti grav back online and slowed her craft approximately 5 minutes later, when her flight suit detected the fact she was having trouble breathing. She had accelerated her craft to nearly 50% c to avoid the missiles. Without an active Ubecht field, or Ubecht catapult. It was not gradual either, she had sustained some injury in the attempt.

The strangest part was that 5 minutes had passed and she was still alive.
Her craft was coasting along at 50% c headed towards earth, and it had already cleared the asteroid field by some margin. Beside her were 4 naval troopers Morgenraetes, coasting along rather easily beside her in interceptor configuration, the wispy after image of the Knight field following in their wake was mesmerising. She shook her head as the vox crackled to life. "Are you alright." a voice over the vox. The naval troopers were rather aloof at times, but in defense of their people they were always a little..zealous. Even against the missiles that nearly destroyed Alia's craft, and her with it, they expended far more ordnance then was required, just to be sure.

"Aff" she grumbled softly. "A few injuries, nothing to be concerned about M'lord" she responded. They saluted her with their wingtips and veered off, preparing to escort her home.



Those were Faust's and why would my ejection system be disabled on a test flight to see if this unit is safe! she thought to herself



***GAP base Demiarch: PTPS wing***

Ivestigator Brant Lowe finished going through the information gleaned from the XASS-19's flight recorders and the instruments installed during for the purposes of the test.

However much of the flight recorder logs were missing, the data had been corrupted and purged from the system. The simple hard drive used to store flight data wasnt bio-mechanical, there were far less ways to retrieve the data then they could with bio-coms, but there were ways.

So far however their best efforts only produced spotty images of deep space. That and a rather large amount of static. However the internal recorders inside the cockpit did indeed show that Alia was being pursued by multiple missiles. This was mainly due to warning klaxons firing throughout the vox recording and Alia's own log, parts of which still had not been recovered.

He stood up, his moustache and small beard just covered his chin with dirty blonde hair, his blue eyes were topped by a mop of dirty blonde hair reaching to his ears. He was tall even for a Tannelornian, at 6"8 he stood at least few inches over just about anyone he had ever met.

With the near perpetual frown he carried he exitted his office and walked down the corridor to the lifts. He was headed down a few levels, to where the PTPS were keeping the XASS-19 for examination.

X-HMF-11 was lost during testing, a mysterious series of explosions destroyed the high mobility frame and there was no data retrieved from the incident. The GAP had refused the design on those results and had happily accepted the XASS-19. They had wanted it back immediately. However there was the matter of the alleged attack on one Alia Sturm, the test pilot for the new Aerospace fighter.

The doors to the hangar opened and Brant stepped in. He noticed his forensics team was just finishing putting the unit back together. A short elven girl with long black hair approached him and saluted crisply, curtsying to show respect. "Investigator Lowe, the vessel has shown some signs of tampering, we didnt expect it at first, but soon we determined that faulty equipment was installed prior to the test flight."

Brant looked over the groups findings, they showed him several pieces of equipment from what appeared to be a Faust superiority aerospace fighter.
Namely the ejection bolts, as well as the weapon system interface. However the problem was that a Fausts weapon system interface was not compatible with the systems on board the XASS-19. Simply put the XASS-19 couldnt find its weapon systems. Not only this but the ejection bolts had indeed fired. But since they weren't rated to remove the cockpit section, which was almost 3 tons heavier, it had simply damaged the air frame and loosened it. It was not enough to actually seperate the escape system.

There had been tampering done to the unit. And it was now possible that this tampering had indeed lead to the death of the X-HHMF 11 test pilot. He turned taking his findings and leaving once more. He had a rather important meeting scheduled with one Alia sturm. And with these findings in hand he had much to ask her.



***GAP Fleet base Demiarch:PTPS wing***

Investigator lowe entered a brightly lit room where a young human woman sat meekly in a chair, still wearing her flight suit. Divine naval higher ups had requested her immediately brought in for questioning by the PTPS, and had left strict orders to not allow her access to her commanding officers. This was all standard procedure of course, after all sometimes when screw ups happen, people die. And when that happens people higher up always try to find a way to put the blame on someone lower down the ladder.

At least that was the way of civilians. Tannelornian police considered themselves the finest of the civilian caste, noble and virtuous as any warrior. They also respected the warrior caste more then one would expect. In Tannelorn the police had no trouble sharing jurisdiction with the military.

"Alia sturm, greetings." he said rather curtly. "I will ask you questions, you shall answer, understand." She looked up at him, her features wan and tired. "Aff" was her reply, too tired to salute.

She had been waiting over 36 hours for this. "You say a group of uknown vessels fired upon you during the test?" he asked her. "Aff" she replied again. "They were not unknown" she offered, then stopped remembering her station. "Go on, what were they then?" he looked at her. He wanted to hear the story from her. The ship had been sabotaged and if she swore the units that attacked her were fausts, then he would have free reign to open up an investigation on the GAP. General schneider had assured him of this.

"At first i couldnt tell what they were, i simply kept on my course..the training ground is used by everyone i thought for a moment they could have been naval trooper morgenraetes, i attempted to hail them and when they did not reply i started back, i used my Ladar to spot their profile and they opened fire on me." she answered in a precise manner.

"And when you got a proper paint back, and what did you see?" he asked her in an emotionless tone. "I wasnt able to tell at first, they were stealthed..though not like a naval troopers morgenraete..but when the sillhouettes came back they were clearly fausts aerospace superiority fighters." she replied, looking in to the investigators eyes.

"You are sure those were fausts, if they were morgenraete II's it could have been possible it was lions claw." he answered. After all the GAP would try to blame the incident on lions claw if they had anything to do with it. Or at least those in the GAP responsible.

"I work with Fausts daily investigator, and i worked with morgenraetes before that, I know a faust when i see one no matter how many fast packs they place on to try to fool me." she replied with a hint of anger.

"That is all Alia, you may return to your unit." she looked at him quizzically and rose to her feet. She had expected him to ask her many many more questions. The fact that he didnt led her to believe that they either were on to the perpetrators of the attack..or they didnt trust her.

++++

Almost as soon as Alia exitted the PTPS wing of the station she was met by commodore lithien and his replicant attendants. She curtsied him as he approached.
"I am glad you are alright lieutenant sturm, its good to see that the X-ASS 19 was not plagued by the same technical problems as the X-HHMF 11, and you were able to escape from the lions claws." he grinned at the pun, his greasy brown hair covering just down to his eye. She was beginning to hate that leer of his..especially now that she heard him speak of lions claw in this incident.

The investigator had asked about them as well. Did he know something about the commodore, or even the GAP that she did not? Perhaps, after all it was his job to know.

"Sir, i do not believe it was lions claw that made that attack against the X-ASS 19." she responded to his question.

He laughed at her, a shrill sickening tone to it made her wince. "It was indeed lions claw, one of their ships was sighted in the area three days ago, we were unable to find them, likely they were laying a trap for any young recruits to the GAP they thought they could slay in Demiarch fields" he had just brushed her off.

She knew there was going to be no argument, she simply nodded. "Aff commodore."

"Oh Alia, you did know that do to your flying and the skill with which you escaped the enemy the X-ASS 19 is now the PASS-19, it has been accepted. Is that not good news, Quiaff?" he grinned softly. "Aff, but what of the X HHMF 11?" she asked..this did not seem right, not right at all.

"If the design had not been faulty it would not have suffered a sever power distribution failure causing the design to explode." she looked at him shocked.
"Just before it was destroyed a massive power spike was read in the reactor, which overloaded several capacitors and caused the craft to explode." he lied to her.
"Obviously the divine knights of tannelorn have been dillying dallying with their toy technologies with the scientist caste for so long they have forgotten how to make a robust system more suitable for us lessers, quiaff?" he grinned at her. "It has been refused, we shall produce our own heavy high mobility frame." he spat.

She only nodded at him as he dismissed her. She walked down the corridor to her quarters and the sleep that awaited her.



***Demiarch field***

X-HMF-4 was an impressive sight as it soared through space on wings of plasma, streaking towards the test field for todays excercises. The heavy high maneuver frame was most certainly larger then any daughter craft that had come out of the forges of the divine navy in almost 400 years. However due to recent advanced in gravitic impellor technologies, as well as the inventions of phased armour and the development of the ubecht field system, a heavier design was considered not only feasible..but necessary.

The large fighter resembled the aerospace fighter being tested by the GAP, only it was more streamlined..and much more deadly looking. The contrail of the ubecht field left a shadowy after image, designed not only to improve the response time of the unit, but fool enemy sensors.

Still it wasnt any problems in the newer systems they were looking for, however it was problems in the transformation equipment. A complex transformable had not been attempted since the Alpha, which at the time had been plagued with problems. These problems had been mainly due to the lack of a gravitic impellor. This caused a large amount of weight to be taken up with secondary thrusters, as well as fuel. The new hybrid/impellor systems allowed that room to be used for the transformation systems, thus removing much of the vulnerablity of the venerable fighter.

In fact the new fighter shared much in common with the old Alpha veritech, and the same sillhouette, despite the fact that it was a modern, angled and fully enclosed tannelornian design. Still at 14.7 meters tall, and 12.4 meters long in Aerospace fighter configuration, she was an imposing sight.

Today Aluviel would be testing the transformation systems, or more appropriately, how well they handled the stress of constant battlefield reconfiguration, as well as the fluidity of the maneuver. One of the problems with transformable mecha that had been adressed in the "interceptor" configuration of the morgenraete, was that a mecha should not try to be an aerospace superiority fighter, and nor should an aerospace superiority fighter try to be a mecha.

In this case the alpha design, which had attempted to blend the two forms was chosen and rebuilt completely. Very little but the outward appearance remained. And in that it was only a sillhouette. It was a new tannelornian design, sleek and angular just like the mk III omega's. And it was fast..as well as agile. But most importantly it carred a massive payload of heavy missiles, as well as auxiliary systems to be placed in mounts for hard points and fast packs.


It also utilised one of the new gun pods. However this was done in one hand..as well as being much easier to mount during reconfiguration. This was part of the design after all.

The mecha powered up for its first transformation, a simple high speed reconfiguration and turn. It streaked forward, suddenly the middle of craft seemed to break in two as engine pods switched position, arms extending out from the overhead engine mounts as they repositioned themselves on the shoulder, the legs extended and snapped out, turning to properly orient themselves in a forward facing as the flexible armour plates serving as spoilers in atmosphere and vernier mounts in space locked over the fragile hip joints.

The feet acting as vectored thrust in aerospace fighter configuration flexed, becoming true feet as the mecha seemed to stretch, limbering itself up. She quickly turned and activated the transformation again, the legs refolded, the back snapping forward in to place once again to serve as the nose section. She repeated this for sometime.

However it was during one maneuver that she encountered the problem that scrubbed the testing for the day.

As she attempted to "back flip" her mecha in to transformation, the arm joints locked up. The torso reconfiguration was the most complex, and making it run smoothly and quickly had always been a problem, even in the old alphas. However the same solution thought up back then, was the same solution used now. And on a mecha of this scale a simple magnetised joint wouldnt work. Especially due to the fact that unlike the alpha, the XHMF-4 had a full internal skeleton. The THMF-2 had only a spine, and the rest of the systems had worked around simpler hydraulics. The XHMF-4 was not so primitive. However due to this the right shoulder had locked in to place.

The test bed was crippled, hardly capable of moving in one direction with its reconfiguration half complete. Katherine sent out the finish message, and within less then a minute a horizont and a team of naval morgenraete omega's had arrived to retrieve her, and the data her HMF carried.

The engineers would be busy tonight.



***Enlil fleet base: Shipyards***

Engineer Drexel and his staff had been assigned to oversee the automated markaia network dedicated to constructing the bio-mech fleets that would fight alongside the knights of the divine celestial navy. To say that making sure the markaia network in berths 7 through 46 would be optimised to construct drone ships without any outside supervision would be no small task, was quite the understatement.

12 people had to reorganise and direct thousands of bio-mechs to modify over 30 berths for the new designs. The modular construction of most Tannelornian shipyards, equipment and cities made that part of the task relatively easy. But ensuring the Markaia master computer could maintain the shipyard itself, in perpetuity and thus ensure fast efficient construction of the bio-mech fleet, was another matter.

It had taken some time, after all the Markaia's systems had not worked with these designs before and she would allow occasional flaw through. This was unacceptable to Tannelornian military doctrine. So therefore Engineer drexel and his team had been assigned as supervision. Originally the project had been envisioned as entirely automated, but there were limits to the trust placed in automated construction. Especially when considering untested designs, vital to the defense and strike capabilities of the Tannelornian fleet were concerned.

So Drexel and his team had been assigned semi permanently to oversee the first Bio-ship construction, refit and drydock facility inside Enlil moon.

"Knight-Engineer Drexel, we have the results on the first batch of vessels. 14 schwertwhal, 6 knurrwhal and 4 caschelott." a feminine voice said. The pixyish blonde haired elven woman standing across from Drexel was not exactly the prettiest girl on Enlil, but she was rather "talented" in many fields. It was one of the reasons Drexel had requested her on the project. He grinned at her. "Why only 24 ships?" he asked, looking slightly annoyed at the girl, but only because he had to. "14 of the berths are still being refitted, there were problems in accomodating the other berths for the larger vessels." she stated winking at him.

He quickly though up a solution that had worked for him on a previous night. "Expand the sections slower, take it easier and then the new ships should be able to fit right in to place. After all we dont ten half finished vessels waiting to be moved, thats how we get mistakes." he finished. She curtsied and walked away.

He turned to the report, the vessels were finished and active outside of the station, just starting to learn how to interact with the rest of the fleet. Though they were fully programmed for combat, like any mammal they had to learn many basic tools. To do this they interfaced with the training sims during their formation, as well as interlinked with the main Bio-com control computers aboard the divine celestial navy ships. Engaging in mock battles and patrol exercises designed to enable the first generation of ships to teach the others. Then markaia's can be taught these lessons and be able to impart them on to more bio-ships then before. Essentially they were designing an automated line of defense, simply dumped in to strategic areas and left to do as they are ordered in the defense of tannelorn.

Once the production lines were up they could be built at a rate of 39 per month. On Enlil alone.



***1 million km from Demiarch PTPS base: Demiarch testing range***

Several fighter craft ghosted along the standard "approach" to the demiarch fields. However these craft most obviously did not want to be seen. Very few outside of the divine celestial navy and the naval troopers even knew about the existence of these three prototypes. X-HMF-5 "Kernschatten" had immediately been requested for testing by the naval troopers upon the unveiling of the conceptual prototype by the combined teams of naval engineers and scientist caste members at Hel Station.

The sleek fighters bore no resemblance to any previous tannelornian designs. It was designed to defeat almost all forms of detection, be they active or passive forms of radar, ladar, em band transmission, gravitic sensors..and even dimensional tracking..though that was not as easy to achieve as some would like to think. Still coasting through the area with no power to main engines it would seem rather a minor disturbance, even to DEM sensors which were actively looking for them.

The incredibly high powered urenbecht field utilised on this new design gave it not only astonishing agility and speed but reduced the chance of enemy sensors from achieving a targetting lock and maintaining a proper lead. Still it was only a stealth fighter. It was far from invisible. The sleek new fighters didnt have any apparent weapons aside from a small dual UV pulsar cannon located above the sealed cockpit.

This didnt mean much of course. Almost all Tannelornian weapon payloads were internal. The high maneuver frames slowed and then stopped. Quickly they switch configuration from superiority fighter to high maneuver and started to scan the area. The high maneuver configuration once motionless would prevent a much smaller profile. This high maneuver frame was actually less stealthy in its superiority fighter configuration then its high maneuver frame configuration. This was mainly because the engine structure in it was rather broad. An oversight that simple could not be fixed in time for this fighters test phase. Of course this wasnt officially part of the kernschatten's testing phase. Certain members of PIOUS drawn from the naval troopers decided that it would be best to use these new prototypes to assist the investigation in to the increasingly guarded records of the GAP, including communiques and budget expenditures.

The recent series of "accidents" in the testbed trials for the new heavy high mobility frame and aerospace superiority fighter's granted to the GAP by the DCN had prompted a much more thorough examination. Which in turn had sent up walls amongst the GAP staff..simply put the DCN and the GAP were starting to lose cohesion with each other. They were no longer cooperating. The investigations had turned up many questions but no answers..and the Proconsuls decision to visit the cluster colonies on an extended tour had raised even more.

So Johannes Schneider had decided to take the new stealth variable fighter on a test spin while searching the area for trace materials that may be in more abundance then they should be. Such as the waste particles emitted from the ubecht field generator of 1 craft. It wasnt long before they found what they were looking for. Even after a week the heavy particles would still be floating around, of course not in the vast quantities they would have been in at the time of the "accident".

Reinhardt had found something interesting upon activating his gravitic sensor suite. In an area approximately 20 000 kilometers away from the test course, there was a rather high concentration of floating particles..particles that should not have been there at all..especially in a density high enough for two of the X-HMF-14 testbeds to have produced during its trip. There was a definete trail to follow if they could look. But the new variable fighters were not equipped with powerful enough gravitic lenses for that. Even still the ubecht particles would never make an excellent trace for a combat computer to trace a path or line. They were too scattered. They could however, by a canny opponent be used to tell whether or not a ubecht equipped ship had been in the area up to 20 days previous.

This is of course one of the reasons all tannelornian ubecht modules were equipped with their own self destruct systems. They would never allow this advanced gravitic generator to fall in to the hands of their foes..or even any but their most trusted allies.

"Knight Reinhardt, my father expects a positive response to our findings, what do you see?" he asked with a soft grin. His father wanted to destroy the GAP and the clone-replicant soldiers who populated it. They disgusted him, and made most of the members of the DCN a little nervous..to say the least.

"There was definetly more then one sub craft in this area when the accident took place." Reinhardt responded casually. "Shall we return to base?" Johannes laughed at the last comment." We will take the long route, we still have a new high maneuver frame to put through its paces."

Johannes final response was to return to superiority fighter configuration and power off. They didnt have to worry about whether or not the GAP saw them now..and likely they may think they are the same fighter they used to kill their own pilot....

***Tamerlaine base 1 hour later***

Investigator Lowe and his team had been going over the data from the X-HMF-14 flight recorders and monitor sats that had been watching its flight test across the gulf between the cities. From every angle it had appeared as if the unit had been struck, but there was no missile, no beam not even on magnetic frequencies, no round to follow no sign of trace of impact. The GAP had afforded it to a faulty power coupling causing the charged energy to destroy the craft.

Lowe knew better but without solid proof he could not act. He was starting to get frustrated and no one in his staff had noticed the chime from his intercom unit. After a while he noticed it and walked over to it. The intercom detected his presence and activated the holographic display message. A pilot in the power armour of the DCNT appeared in 3d before him. The figure stared off in to space as he spoke.

"They werent alone out there, the XASS-19 pilot spoke true, data is being sent now" the transmission abruptly ended with the chime of an information packet loading in its place. It was sensor sweep information from the Demiarch fields. And it showed them exactly what was missing from every single log taken by the GAP. The presence of 2 or more craft in both test areas during the time of the testing. There was a cover up going on..and the PTPS had evidence of it.

Demiarch was about to go under lockdown.

***Grahfsberg: Praetors office***

Praetor Yannef was smiling. He had just gone over the last months reports on the formation of the new Bio-mech fleets. The "pods" as they were becoming known.
the project was behind schedule..but it was still moving ahead quite quickly. The 1st generation, 100 ships of all the classes were learning what it was to be a war ship thanks to the help of the klabautermann bio-coms of the DCN vessels. Each month for the next year 100 vessels would come out of the tannelornian shipyards each month until the drone fleets were finished. 15 months from now the task that the Praetor had set for his rearmament program following the civil war would be totally complete. He sighed and relaxed, deciding to sleep for the evening..letting all his troubles go in a world of dreams.


OOC Continued in Commodore, we Have lost the subject. Discover the fate of Hel station and Enlil in the story that formed the Divine Celestial Federation of Tannelorn.