From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/12/06)

[Starhawk]

2417.8 End of an Era
Ross stood next to Yu in the Spaceyard’s gallery staring at the gutted hulls of their ships, both officers were frowning, the captain of Defender couldn’t even bring himself to watch his ship gutted like a fish Ross, and captain Farrin-Hawkwing’s new captain- had only stayed for five minutes before giving the yard master his compliments and beating a hasty retreat from the scene.
The General class heavy cruiser was obsolete and throughout the entire navy they were becoming extinct, gutted at the hands of yard dogs and completely overhauled with totally new systems and internal configurations, they were becoming the Midwinters and although they would be far more powerful then in their former incarnations it was still hard for captains who had lived and fought on the old Generals for nearly ten years now to watch them be opened up from stem to stern and have their innards torn out and discarded like old garbage.
Ross felt as if his firstborn had been sacrificed on an altar before the gods of “progress” when he first heard that the Hawkwing was going to be overhauled, the officers and crew of that old cruiser had fought, lived and died in her hull, their was blood fused into the metal of the bulkheads because of extreme heat caused when shields burned through, blood Icaran spacers who had died in the great metal beast had shed protecting the empire, and now it was all being torn out. Ross’ chest felt empty as he turned to Yu.
His depressed mood suddenly turned to curiosity when he saw the young woman smiling at her opened ship. “Why are you smiling? I thought you were just as sick over this as I was?”.
“I was Sir, but my ship has seen so much death, useless and needless death that seeing her get a new heart, a new -soul- if you will makes me feel better somehow, like she’s got a new life ahead of her now.” Yu’s smile faded, memories of the several disastrous engagements Lenin flashed in her eyes.

“Yeah, I forgot about what happened to your ship in Fornax, I suppose your right, that poor old lady deserves a new life after all she’s been through.” Ross felt something brighten in his own mood as Yu smiled at him again, to him it was like his ship was being gutted but to Yu, her ship was undergoing surgery to give it a new chance at a good life, it had been said that Lenin was cursed, for the first four battles she engaged in she was crippled or in the very least hulled, her crew had been reduced to 1/3 of it’s original compliment by the time she had been re-assigned to the 3rd fleet. That was when the curse it said was broken, for that transfer saved Lenin and her crew from the devastating ambush in Mestra where 5,000 Icarans had died in less then ten minutes.

Ross and Yu watched their ships for a short while before returning to their temporary duties on Wardo base, five months of planet bound duty while the heavy cruisers of 3rd fleet were retrofit to Midwinter specs. It was the end of an Era for the IRN as the largest of her Phased poloron equipped warships were given I-Laser cannons. The old cruisers and light cruisers of the navy could not handle the power requirements of I-Laser technology and thus were facing extinction as soon as enough ships of the ‘new generation’ were built and many captains and Admirals prepared their ’wakes’-the traditional farewell party to a valiant ship facing it’s retirement- as their ships names appeared on the ‘obsolete’ list that would soon lead to their scrapping

I'm proud to announce that my story covers 71 pages in font 10 in MSN Word!!! (passes around beers)

[Renegade 13]

Hmmm, well I'd describe the Icarans as an "expansionist" empire. As such, they are neither "good" nor "bad", since they do not believe that other races have the right to govern themselves. They are not evil, since they simply believe in their own people, which is a healthy form of nationalism. However, they aren't exactly good either, since they don't seem to be interested in forming treaties with empires whom they believe they can defeat in battle, thereby seizing their territories. I too would call them "neutral" (sort of )

[Starhawk]

Hmm thanks for your opinions anyone else that wants to can also chime in on how you see my race.
Same with if I'm writing anything you consider offensive so that I'll know to be more careful about that.

As far as the Sol Coalition goes, they are still lurking about in my space but for the past few years they havn't bothered contacting me and I havn't contacted them.

2419.0 The Nature of High Technology
Lin unbuckled her tunic and collapsed onto her bed, she had been running battle drills for eight hours, ever since the I-Lasers in battery three suddenly overheated during a test firing. The maintenance staff had run so many tests on the subsystems that they practically had to take the weapons apart, and after ten hours of that they asked her to run a combat drill, that went horribly as the same damned battery overheated and nearly took out the heat syncs. Master Chief Tankousky and his work crews worked on the weapons for another hour then had the battle drill run again. And that time the bloody heat syncs collapsed entirely and the firing mechanism burned it’s self to a crisp along with the focusing lens.
Finally after hours of tests and drills and testing the drills battery three functioned without burning it‘s self out, the entire weapon internals had to be replaced the next morning but at least at the moment the engineers said the weapon would fire properly if it needed too. Lin got up and tossed her dirt caked tunic into a wash unit before stepping into her modest bathroom, she sneered at the reflection in the mirror for a moment before disrobing and stepping into the shower to clean the greasy sludge from the battery three off of her exhausted and aching body.

As the warm water kicked in Lin leaned back against her stall and forced herself to relax and enjoy the warmth of the “simulated” water spray. After a few minutes she wearily dried herself off and dressed in her robe before collapsing into bed again. It seemed like only seconds after she had closed her eyes when the com panel on her wall began to beep, then shrill until finally she slammed her fist into the audio only key.
“What is it?” her tone was less then pleasant but at the moment she was fully expecting one of her engineers to inform her that battery three had gone ape**** again.
“Well Captain Yu that’s no way to address your superior now is it?” the voice on the other end of the com link made Yu snap upright with embarrassment.
“Admiral Ross! I’m sorry sir I was expecting.”
“That’s alright Lin I was just messing with you, unfortunately I do have serious business to inform you of, the long range sensors have detected three Phong light cruisers, now I’ve ordered the fleet to alert but not full battle stations because we know that with their capabilities just one of our heavy cruisers could kill all three of them.
And Yu I’ve chosen Lenin for the job, you guys have taken to much crap from those bastards without being able to give much back, so here’s your chance, intercept and destroy those ships then report back to fleet. Understood?” Yu could almost hear the smile on Ross’ face and unconsciously nodded, before remembering that she had set the unit to audio only.
“Understood sir, I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will Yu, give em hell, then send them there Ross out.”

Yu wiped the sleep from her eyes and tabbed another key on the com panel:
“Bridge, Lieutenant Manning here.”
“Lieutenant this is the Captain, you are about to receive coordinates from fleet command, lay in a course to intercept three hostile warships, based on those locations and maximum speed of hostile craft understood?”
“Aye ma’am.”
“Good I’ll be on the bridge next watch, only com me if it’s an emergency.”
“Aye.”
Yu turned off the com unit and finally laid back down and allowed herself to relax again and began meditating like she had been taught by her grandmother when she was ten, in no time she had slipped off to sleep.

Two Days Later:
The Lenin had finally begun closing with the enemy warships after two days of approaching one another.
“Captain Yu, talisman is acquiring lock on the lead two ships, the third one is staying too far out of range at the moment.”
“Confirmed weps.” Yu swiveled her command chair towards the tactical station and waited for the officer to signal combat range.
The officer looked up and nodded sharply at Yu, she spun her chair back to face the main screen, her mind raced, this was her first solo op against an enemy squadron where she wasn’t using the traditional Phased Poloron beam cannons and the thought of failure made her nauseated.
“Weps, open fire.”
The chief weapons officer nodded, the board of targeting info from the gunnery crews lit up and after what seemed like an eternity he pressed the firing studs on his control panel.
Green beams silently connected the Icaran heavy cruiser to the leading two enemy ships and in the blink of an eye both ships vanished in a ball of fire.
“ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! MALFUNCTION!” the computerized voice rang out and Yu clenched her fists in rage and frustration.
“Ma’am battery three is overheating, malfunctions across the board, Master Chief Rameraz says he’s going to have to shut down all but our secondary batteries or else risk total system collapse.”
“Well Damn it all Lieutenant why don’t you just tell Rameraz to have us spit at the enemy.” Yu snapped violently, these new weapons were all [censored], useless [censored], at least as far as her ship was concerned and it frustrated her beyond belief.
“Target secondary batteries and fire.” She continued irritably.

The secondary batteries easily destroyed the enemy warship and Lenin turned around to rejoin the rest of the fleet, for the two day trip the engineers put up with hell from Yu until they finally discovered the source of the problem, some nimrod back at the dock that retrofit them had totally screwed up the heat syncing and installed heat syncs that were designed to deal with the much weaker phased poloron weapons right next to I-laser grade syncs. Yu was going to have someone’s head when she got back to the fleet and most of the engineers spent their time dodging her for the trip back.

[Starhawk]

2419.1 The new breed
The first Lord Nelson class dreadnoughts slipped out of their massive docks and began deploying to their fleets with all possible speed.

[3rd Fleet]:
“My Lord she’s a beast of a ship!” Ross uttered as the massive three kilometer form of the HMS Shadowclaw jumped through the warp point, she dwarfed every other ship in the fleet and made the older cruisers look like toys.
“Aye sir, but she’s also faster then every other ship in our fleet.” Sandra Fowler said with a smile as she looked over what was going to be her new command.
“Yeah that’s right, she uses the new Quantum reaction engines and Solar grav sails doesn’t she?” Ross looked back at Sandra and remembered seeing that same look on her face when he first gave her command of Saber all those years ago, before she was turned into an orbiting museum over Icara.
“That’s right sir, she also uses the new inertial compensation that the quantum reactor has produced, that means that she can go nearly twice as fast as a Heavy cruiser and her crew won’t feel a thing, it’s marvelous isn’t it sir?” She beamed at her Admiral quickly and returned her eyes to the massive warship in front of her.

The cavernous boat bay of the dreadnought overwhelmed Admiral Ross as he walked down the cutter’s ramp, two columns awaited him in parade formation, one of marines the other of ops crew, all of them came to attention sharply and saluted equally as formally. Ross returned the massed salute and walked forward between the two columns, Fowler a step behind him.

“Admiral on DECK!” the marine sentry inside the massive command center announced, the entire command crew snapped to attention and turned to face the entrance.
“As you were.” Ross smiled openly at the magnificent command center that lay before his eyes, it was huge compared to that of his heavy cruiser, two tiered layout with the command chair on a raised “arm” in the center of the bridge. A holotank sat just behind the command chair and it too impressed Ross, the level of detail and it’s sheer size was breathtaking. He turned to see Fowler glowing with pride and excitement he nodded at her as she walked off to inspect her new bridge.
The Shadowclaw was the first and so far only dreadnought assigned to 3rd fleet so Ross made sure he had pulled the best officers and crew he could for her new command staff, unfortunately captain Yu Lin did not have the seniority of Fowler and so she had to remain aboard [/i]Lenin[/i] until the next dreadnought arrived to reinforce their fleet.
Ross had nothing against Fowler, she was a superb officer and an excellent Captain but he had rather hoped to serve directly with the officer who had served as his flag captain while Hawkwing had undergone repairs and who had been his friend since his days in the academy back in the class of 86.
The joyful moment would not let its self fade so easily however and the Admiral felt his apprehension flow away as he strolled the bridge investigating all the latest gadgets the fleet had installed onto their new behemoths, his curiosity wanted to see what this new AI was like as well but she was offline at the moment and remain so for another month until calibration was completed.

Meanwhile;
The first fleet had received priority for receipt of block one production of the Lord Nelson class dreadnought including the class ship herself. Admiral Tyson Babcock was as impressed with the Lord Nelson as Ross had been with the Shadowclaw however Tyson allowed himself a little quirk of pride in the fact that his flagship was not just any dreadnought but she was the FIRST dreadnought, and the one that bore the class name as well as the best crew.
Along with Lord Nelson the dreadnoughts Falcon, Repulse, and Reinhardt joined the 1st fleet, making it the most powerful formation of warships in Icaran space.

[rdouglass]

2 chapters in one day! I find myself looking forward to the next installment more and more. Good stuff!!!