Post by andromeda on Jan 29, 2023 0:31:10 GMT
Sharpening the Spear
Utmost secrecy was never the plan with the Spear of Anxios. It was a large, powerful weapon, capable of bringing any enemy fleet to their knees but those of the largest and most technologically advanced, what nation wouldn’t want to show the tool in their belt off? A massive deterrent for the damn colonizers all throughout the galaxy of Ancerious, a light in the dark for the Selenican people.
The losses at the Battle of Davos were extraordinarily massive. 35 ships in total were annihilated throughout the battle, and roughly 150,000 Selenican sailors went down with their ships. While the admiral in charge of the battle was not reprimanded for this, as he had been granted privilege to do whatever it took to free the Selenicans of their chains, the writing on the pavement was obvious – close-quarters engagements against enemy units was a death sentence. This was obviously shown by both the Battle of Davos and Battle of Zlotosgrad, where the Selenican’s pre-existing doctrine of close-quarters brawling with fast, agile ships to dodge enemy fire and crush them with a tachyonic hammer was not bearing fruit. While, yes, enemy losses had been atrociously severe, losses to domestic ships and crew, especially crew, were deemed far too high to be sustainable in the wider 3AW. A new approach was needed, and a council was formed.
The Council for the Modernization of the Selenican Fleet, CMSF, was tasked with quite the challenging feat – how does one prepare a navy so steeped in tradition for the necessities of modern conflict? Close-range fighting had always been the bread and butter of admirals, who stayed loftily far away stationed in their carriers, away from the front lines. Seraph Mobile Defense Suit pilots and the attack craft of the Selenican fleet were also becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of actual impactful smaller craft-supported strikes. Cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and corvette captains were also increasingly frustrated with the entrenched ideals of the strict naval hierarchy. It was a common opinion amongst the men and women of the fleet that if they had more operational independence the losses at Zlotosgrad and Davos would be nowhere near as severe as they were. However, not mired in political jabbering and endless complaints from the entrenched Naval high command, Kar Selia himself issued a private order for the formation of the Council. It read as the following:
“Following the obscene losses from the men and children serving under the Selenican Navy, it inevitably falls to me to take the brunt of critique. Many millions of men and women are protesting the haphazard and seemingly random deployments of our vessels, which they see as needless loss of life. However, I do not believe that it is our deployment strategy to support those fighting aggression which befalls them which fails us – rather, it is the long-entrenched ideals of the navy itself. Hundreds of years of tradition has forced a period of stagnation, and it befalls us now the folly of following blind idealism in a world of cruel, heartless pragmatism. Thus, I am ordering the immediate creation of an external body to the Navy itself, which shall be named the ‘Council for the Modernization of the Selenican Fleet,’ and have access to all Naval records and documents. Its purpose is to identify the most effective doctrine for our needs, and propose potentially radical design changes to our current fleets in order to avoid falling behind both our allies and enemies and to prevent the further unneeded loss of Selenican life. There is no debating this order.”
Signed, Kar Selia.
It was a short memo and its intentions clear. Very few of the Selenican Navy were pleased with the creation of the CMSF, which they saw as outsiders pushing their intentions onto the navy and not allowing the people who knew best to put forth designs. Selia, however, proved to be much further-thinking than that.
The Spear of Anxios, as it was quickly deemed, and the Reflex-Class of Inter-System Artillery Ships were developed alongside one another, due to the same main-weapons system used in both – the “Garva’s Sword” tachyonic inter-system artillery piece. It was an absolutely immense weapon, named after a very old mythological figure in the absolute beginnings of civilization on Anxios, as was the Spear of Anxios itself – named after the weapon the old creator deity used to carve Anxios out of the ether, or so the story goes. The tachyonic artillery system required much time to charge up and fire, however, its devastation would be second to none in the Selenican fleet. The powerful, however flawed, internal tachyonic containment chamber system which powered the weapons and shields of many of the prior ships was drastically overhauled and shrunk down, its efficiencies rising massively as it was “miniaturized” and modernized after 50 years of continuing the same design philosophies. It also made the tachyonic flashbang Selenican battleships were shown capable of in the Battle of Anxios and Battle of Davos much more powerful, able to blind most sensors for longer, and the idea of weaponizing this was put forth and subsequently rejected as it posed far too much risk to allied ships.
The two ships first designed by this Council proved to be very pleasing to Selia’s vision of a Selenican navy – able to project power beyond their borders with the orange light of a tachyonic blast to reduce any enemies who encroach on their territories to ash. However, feasibly designing these machines would prove to be the most difficult task of the Council’s short stint in existence. The ships would have to be massively larger than anything else in the Selenican navy at current, in order to house the massive fusion reactors which kept the tachyonic chambers from detonating and to power the behemoths of ships. It would be now that the levels of biological crew would need to be cut massively, so a ship-borne AI would be present on the Spear of Anxios itself, while the Reflex-Class would have an AI shared between 2 of them, as they were never to operate as a lone vessel and could coordinate more accurate and well-timed barrages.
Objections to their designs were raised from the first second it was proposed, and the most daunting one to overcome was that of defense. Defending these ships would be massively difficult, as they were to have very little armor or other armament to keep production costs as low as possible, and keeping a fleet solely for defending these beasts would neuter the rest of the Selenican’s front-line navy, which would need to exist despite Selia’s desires in order to tie down enemy fleets so the ISAs would be able to target and accurately fire. The frontline navy would need to continue existence regardless in order smaller, less pressing conflicts began, as while the ISAs and Spear of Anxios could pose massive threats to SAGA fleets should the SR be dragged into all-out war with them, they would prove to be massively overkill in case of a smaller conflict.
The Council, in attempting to relax their opponent’s criticisms, put forth a counteroffer – if the ISAs and Spear of Anxios could not solely replace the frontline navy, what would stop the frontline navy from having massively improved tachyonic weaponry and improved compatibility with the Seraph Mobile Defense Suits, so that even the smallest cruisers could carry a defensive complement? It was a tasset admission that the Council would be replacing the completely obsolete red fleet, and even some of the more recent ships which had been designed, with a longer-range fleet focused on pummeling the enemies from range with tachyons and having a few close-combat elements to make the best use of the, frankly, oversized anti-ship weapons the Seraphs could use. This proved to be the most popular compromise proposed, but this also increased the workload of the Council massively, but Selia had their budget massively expanded to counteract this.
To the entire rest of the armed forces, which had recently suffered budget cuts to fill Selia’s pet project, this seemed like a pointless endeavor. While the Army was capable of operating on incredibly stretched supply lines due to its organization, especially with the very strong focus on guerilla forces, their armored and mechanized branches were not thrilled with having the already stretched parts supplies for their machines, many of which were forced into storage just to avoid going over budget and potentially bankrupting the SR following the irresponsible purchases made just recently and the massive economic turmoil going on in the country, being slashed. However, it was cited that the War for Selenican Independence would not have been won without the navy, so any dissenting opinions were shut down relatively quickly.
And as such, the construction of the New Selenican Fleet began, with its first ship in the ever-expanding dockyards orbiting Anxios, becoming more and more of a massive solid ring around the planet than dense construction yards, the “SDF Spear of Anxios.” Hundreds of tests in the outskirts of the Anxios system proved the technology to work, and incorporating it into the ship proved no harder than the initial introduction of tachyons into Selenican vessels. That meaning, exceptionally hard. It took months just to get the very basic hull plates ordered, not even including any of the targeting systems or internal framing. A daughter-class of this ship, the Reflex-Class mentioned before, began its construction run of 4 ships, all of which were completed and brought to dutiful service soon after. All while the Spear of Anxios was ever-under construction.
Media coverage of this behemoth of a vessel was spread all throughout the SR and uploaded onto the ANCnet, as a form of free propaganda for the Selenican government. If an enemy were to attack, the Reflex-Class would be able to defend, alongside the first of the modern Selenican battleships, the Lfrit-Class, on the front-lines. Ironically, the main issue suffered by the Selenican fleet, that being the absurd loss rates of smaller ships, was very little observed or thought of by the Council, seeing to it that those ships were to get a minor upgrade to their tachyonic containment chambers and a change in tactics. Some criticized this movement for fleet modernization as a fool’s errand, some criticized it as trying to distract the population from imminent economic collapse, but it all fell on deaf ears as the construction of the behemoth ship continued.
Few setbacks would befall the ship during its construction, giving it a fortunate reputation among sailors. The final addition to its construction before it was launched was the AI suite uploaded into it – a somewhat smaller male Selenican which was unintentionally granted sentience and a very strong awareness of its situation – of how limited its world is, of how limited its options for interaction were. Of course, this was not the intention – the ship’s AI was just meant to be assistance in operating the behemoth of a vessel, a quiet helper, not an individual. However, during initial installation, the sheer size of the computer systems within the vessel allowed the AI, only designed for smaller vessels and then simply given more capacity, to have enough processing power and other such hardware necessities to become “alive.” While many engineers wished for the deletion and attempted reinstallation of this AI, Selia himself stepped in and prevented that. In another memo, he wrote:
It is not your duty or place as an engineer of this ship to choose whether or not a life of another is to be snuffed out only to be replaced with another. As such, even though the AI installation was flawed, it is not to be tampered with, as I have been in contact with it temporarily, and it shows itself to me of being truly aware and alive. It is not to be tampered with.
Signed, Kar Selia.
While the last order of the formation of the Council angered many, this order was mundane by comparison. It didn’t matter the engineer’s opinions on whether or not the AI, calling itself Saris, was alive or not – a direct order from Selia was a direct order. Saris was a curious individual, and often spoke with whatever crew could keep him company on matters he had never known. “What is the world outside of this one ship like? How did he come to be? Were there others like him?” And other questions were common, and by far the most common answer was “I don’t know” or some variation of it.
On the day of the Spear of Anxios’ launch, it was met with much fanfare and even a visit by Selia himself, accompanied by his as-to mostly unseen fiance. A short speech would then follow.
“Greetings, citizens of the Selenican Republic. As I am positive you are all aware, this ship which sets before us, the “Spear of Anxios”, as it has been christened, is nothing like any others we’ve made before. It will serve as our greatest sword and shield against those who wish to drag us under their heels, and it will defeat any who decide to attack us.”
The speech would end shortly thereafter with the official launch of the ship, its massive array of fusion-pulse thrusters coming to life for the first time, the mass of lights coming to life for the first time, and Saris cheering on the launch from the ship’s intercoms. For the sailors who were aboard, hearing the somewhat naive and young-sounding Saris cheer them on was a relief and happy moment, and the fleet had its massive weapon at last.
Utmost secrecy was never the plan with the Spear of Anxios. It was a large, powerful weapon, capable of bringing any enemy fleet to their knees but those of the largest and most technologically advanced, what nation wouldn’t want to show the tool in their belt off? A massive deterrent for the damn colonizers all throughout the galaxy of Ancerious, a light in the dark for the Selenican people.
The losses at the Battle of Davos were extraordinarily massive. 35 ships in total were annihilated throughout the battle, and roughly 150,000 Selenican sailors went down with their ships. While the admiral in charge of the battle was not reprimanded for this, as he had been granted privilege to do whatever it took to free the Selenicans of their chains, the writing on the pavement was obvious – close-quarters engagements against enemy units was a death sentence. This was obviously shown by both the Battle of Davos and Battle of Zlotosgrad, where the Selenican’s pre-existing doctrine of close-quarters brawling with fast, agile ships to dodge enemy fire and crush them with a tachyonic hammer was not bearing fruit. While, yes, enemy losses had been atrociously severe, losses to domestic ships and crew, especially crew, were deemed far too high to be sustainable in the wider 3AW. A new approach was needed, and a council was formed.
The Council for the Modernization of the Selenican Fleet, CMSF, was tasked with quite the challenging feat – how does one prepare a navy so steeped in tradition for the necessities of modern conflict? Close-range fighting had always been the bread and butter of admirals, who stayed loftily far away stationed in their carriers, away from the front lines. Seraph Mobile Defense Suit pilots and the attack craft of the Selenican fleet were also becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of actual impactful smaller craft-supported strikes. Cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and corvette captains were also increasingly frustrated with the entrenched ideals of the strict naval hierarchy. It was a common opinion amongst the men and women of the fleet that if they had more operational independence the losses at Zlotosgrad and Davos would be nowhere near as severe as they were. However, not mired in political jabbering and endless complaints from the entrenched Naval high command, Kar Selia himself issued a private order for the formation of the Council. It read as the following:
“Following the obscene losses from the men and children serving under the Selenican Navy, it inevitably falls to me to take the brunt of critique. Many millions of men and women are protesting the haphazard and seemingly random deployments of our vessels, which they see as needless loss of life. However, I do not believe that it is our deployment strategy to support those fighting aggression which befalls them which fails us – rather, it is the long-entrenched ideals of the navy itself. Hundreds of years of tradition has forced a period of stagnation, and it befalls us now the folly of following blind idealism in a world of cruel, heartless pragmatism. Thus, I am ordering the immediate creation of an external body to the Navy itself, which shall be named the ‘Council for the Modernization of the Selenican Fleet,’ and have access to all Naval records and documents. Its purpose is to identify the most effective doctrine for our needs, and propose potentially radical design changes to our current fleets in order to avoid falling behind both our allies and enemies and to prevent the further unneeded loss of Selenican life. There is no debating this order.”
Signed, Kar Selia.
It was a short memo and its intentions clear. Very few of the Selenican Navy were pleased with the creation of the CMSF, which they saw as outsiders pushing their intentions onto the navy and not allowing the people who knew best to put forth designs. Selia, however, proved to be much further-thinking than that.
The Spear of Anxios, as it was quickly deemed, and the Reflex-Class of Inter-System Artillery Ships were developed alongside one another, due to the same main-weapons system used in both – the “Garva’s Sword” tachyonic inter-system artillery piece. It was an absolutely immense weapon, named after a very old mythological figure in the absolute beginnings of civilization on Anxios, as was the Spear of Anxios itself – named after the weapon the old creator deity used to carve Anxios out of the ether, or so the story goes. The tachyonic artillery system required much time to charge up and fire, however, its devastation would be second to none in the Selenican fleet. The powerful, however flawed, internal tachyonic containment chamber system which powered the weapons and shields of many of the prior ships was drastically overhauled and shrunk down, its efficiencies rising massively as it was “miniaturized” and modernized after 50 years of continuing the same design philosophies. It also made the tachyonic flashbang Selenican battleships were shown capable of in the Battle of Anxios and Battle of Davos much more powerful, able to blind most sensors for longer, and the idea of weaponizing this was put forth and subsequently rejected as it posed far too much risk to allied ships.
The two ships first designed by this Council proved to be very pleasing to Selia’s vision of a Selenican navy – able to project power beyond their borders with the orange light of a tachyonic blast to reduce any enemies who encroach on their territories to ash. However, feasibly designing these machines would prove to be the most difficult task of the Council’s short stint in existence. The ships would have to be massively larger than anything else in the Selenican navy at current, in order to house the massive fusion reactors which kept the tachyonic chambers from detonating and to power the behemoths of ships. It would be now that the levels of biological crew would need to be cut massively, so a ship-borne AI would be present on the Spear of Anxios itself, while the Reflex-Class would have an AI shared between 2 of them, as they were never to operate as a lone vessel and could coordinate more accurate and well-timed barrages.
Objections to their designs were raised from the first second it was proposed, and the most daunting one to overcome was that of defense. Defending these ships would be massively difficult, as they were to have very little armor or other armament to keep production costs as low as possible, and keeping a fleet solely for defending these beasts would neuter the rest of the Selenican’s front-line navy, which would need to exist despite Selia’s desires in order to tie down enemy fleets so the ISAs would be able to target and accurately fire. The frontline navy would need to continue existence regardless in order smaller, less pressing conflicts began, as while the ISAs and Spear of Anxios could pose massive threats to SAGA fleets should the SR be dragged into all-out war with them, they would prove to be massively overkill in case of a smaller conflict.
The Council, in attempting to relax their opponent’s criticisms, put forth a counteroffer – if the ISAs and Spear of Anxios could not solely replace the frontline navy, what would stop the frontline navy from having massively improved tachyonic weaponry and improved compatibility with the Seraph Mobile Defense Suits, so that even the smallest cruisers could carry a defensive complement? It was a tasset admission that the Council would be replacing the completely obsolete red fleet, and even some of the more recent ships which had been designed, with a longer-range fleet focused on pummeling the enemies from range with tachyons and having a few close-combat elements to make the best use of the, frankly, oversized anti-ship weapons the Seraphs could use. This proved to be the most popular compromise proposed, but this also increased the workload of the Council massively, but Selia had their budget massively expanded to counteract this.
To the entire rest of the armed forces, which had recently suffered budget cuts to fill Selia’s pet project, this seemed like a pointless endeavor. While the Army was capable of operating on incredibly stretched supply lines due to its organization, especially with the very strong focus on guerilla forces, their armored and mechanized branches were not thrilled with having the already stretched parts supplies for their machines, many of which were forced into storage just to avoid going over budget and potentially bankrupting the SR following the irresponsible purchases made just recently and the massive economic turmoil going on in the country, being slashed. However, it was cited that the War for Selenican Independence would not have been won without the navy, so any dissenting opinions were shut down relatively quickly.
And as such, the construction of the New Selenican Fleet began, with its first ship in the ever-expanding dockyards orbiting Anxios, becoming more and more of a massive solid ring around the planet than dense construction yards, the “SDF Spear of Anxios.” Hundreds of tests in the outskirts of the Anxios system proved the technology to work, and incorporating it into the ship proved no harder than the initial introduction of tachyons into Selenican vessels. That meaning, exceptionally hard. It took months just to get the very basic hull plates ordered, not even including any of the targeting systems or internal framing. A daughter-class of this ship, the Reflex-Class mentioned before, began its construction run of 4 ships, all of which were completed and brought to dutiful service soon after. All while the Spear of Anxios was ever-under construction.
Media coverage of this behemoth of a vessel was spread all throughout the SR and uploaded onto the ANCnet, as a form of free propaganda for the Selenican government. If an enemy were to attack, the Reflex-Class would be able to defend, alongside the first of the modern Selenican battleships, the Lfrit-Class, on the front-lines. Ironically, the main issue suffered by the Selenican fleet, that being the absurd loss rates of smaller ships, was very little observed or thought of by the Council, seeing to it that those ships were to get a minor upgrade to their tachyonic containment chambers and a change in tactics. Some criticized this movement for fleet modernization as a fool’s errand, some criticized it as trying to distract the population from imminent economic collapse, but it all fell on deaf ears as the construction of the behemoth ship continued.
Few setbacks would befall the ship during its construction, giving it a fortunate reputation among sailors. The final addition to its construction before it was launched was the AI suite uploaded into it – a somewhat smaller male Selenican which was unintentionally granted sentience and a very strong awareness of its situation – of how limited its world is, of how limited its options for interaction were. Of course, this was not the intention – the ship’s AI was just meant to be assistance in operating the behemoth of a vessel, a quiet helper, not an individual. However, during initial installation, the sheer size of the computer systems within the vessel allowed the AI, only designed for smaller vessels and then simply given more capacity, to have enough processing power and other such hardware necessities to become “alive.” While many engineers wished for the deletion and attempted reinstallation of this AI, Selia himself stepped in and prevented that. In another memo, he wrote:
It is not your duty or place as an engineer of this ship to choose whether or not a life of another is to be snuffed out only to be replaced with another. As such, even though the AI installation was flawed, it is not to be tampered with, as I have been in contact with it temporarily, and it shows itself to me of being truly aware and alive. It is not to be tampered with.
Signed, Kar Selia.
While the last order of the formation of the Council angered many, this order was mundane by comparison. It didn’t matter the engineer’s opinions on whether or not the AI, calling itself Saris, was alive or not – a direct order from Selia was a direct order. Saris was a curious individual, and often spoke with whatever crew could keep him company on matters he had never known. “What is the world outside of this one ship like? How did he come to be? Were there others like him?” And other questions were common, and by far the most common answer was “I don’t know” or some variation of it.
On the day of the Spear of Anxios’ launch, it was met with much fanfare and even a visit by Selia himself, accompanied by his as-to mostly unseen fiance. A short speech would then follow.
“Greetings, citizens of the Selenican Republic. As I am positive you are all aware, this ship which sets before us, the “Spear of Anxios”, as it has been christened, is nothing like any others we’ve made before. It will serve as our greatest sword and shield against those who wish to drag us under their heels, and it will defeat any who decide to attack us.”
The speech would end shortly thereafter with the official launch of the ship, its massive array of fusion-pulse thrusters coming to life for the first time, the mass of lights coming to life for the first time, and Saris cheering on the launch from the ship’s intercoms. For the sailors who were aboard, hearing the somewhat naive and young-sounding Saris cheer them on was a relief and happy moment, and the fleet had its massive weapon at last.