0x48FB21---File---

Name: Annabel Grey
HID#: 5647-94732-80
Astral Forces #: 5147-18328
Birthplace:Civilian Vessel "Harcourt" Registration Number CIH-4733
Date of Birth: 286 Evensky 8
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blonde
Height: 1.52m
Weight: 50kg
House Allegiance: Liandra
Induction: 311 Heartstar 2
Active Since: 311 Darkstorm 14
Separation: [blank]
Rank: Master (Engineering)
Specialty: Starship Engineering
Training: Grade 4 Astral; Grade 1 Infantry; Grade 4 Technical; Basic,
Qualifications: rated for Cargo shuttles, rated for Freighter operation, rated for Gunship Operation [see attached file], Marksman score 200, Technical score 410, Piloting Score 235 [see attached file]
Battles and Campaigns: Indari Joint Offensive
Decorations and Citations: Emerald Citation for Engineering Skill, Fleet Award for Excellence in Technical Achievement (4th Fleet: Year 312, 313), Bravery Citation,
Previous Assignment: INS-Shackleton - Acting Chief Engineer
Current Assignment: INS-Havenspire - Fighter Maintenance Chief
Status: Active

---File---0x7378A2

Annabel scowled at the Cobra she was inspecting.

Technically, as maintenance chief, she didn't have to directly interact with the craft - her job was to manage the seventy six ground crew who were directly responsible for the Havenspire's collective minnows. Still, there was something special about this particular Cobra - and its ornery pilot - that required her personal attention in this instance. Besides, she loved working with the machines far more than she enjoyed dealing with the brass.

"Prime Grey!" She snapped at said pilot, who had been hovering with her own scowl. The older voidborn had not been happy to realise that Annabel had been promoted over her, comforting herself with the line that it was a deck posting and therefore not a real rank. "This has got to stop." Once she had the pilot's attention, she started dressing her down. "You're flying a Cobra. Remember it. You keep pulling these stunt-show tricks on CAP and you'll shear a wing off in actual combat. My guys are good, but they can't heal metal fatigue."

As usual, the engineer was wearing her red over-robe as defence against the cold, although the hood was pushed back and her goggles were sitting atop her head like a second Alice band.

Jayne Grey stood there on flight deck A and just let you drill into her. She flinches as you call her "Prime" and you notice on her uniform, a bare chevron shaped patch above her silver winged star on her flight suit. She stands at attention, eyes forward and heels locked. She might be your big sister and a hotshot pilot, but you have authority in all matters engineering and flight-related, so she really can't do fakkall.

You both know she's in hot water with the brass after what she pulled with the Darksiders a few months back and got moved to the Bomber squadron instead. Ever since you came on board though, she's been less than sisterly towards you.

She waits until you stop and with a pursed expression simply queries "Will that be all, Mistress?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:06, Mon 08 June 2015.

Annie grimaced. She wanted to say more... so much more. She wanted to demand answers... she wanted her sister to recognise her successes, her new rank... but it wasn't the time, so she shook her head.

"Get your head on straight, Jay... please" She finished instead. The short name wasn't quite as informal as calling her 'sis' there and then, but she hoped that just maybe the older Grey would accept the olive branch and seek her out later, when she was off duty.

Unfortunately, Jayne simply gives you a crisp salute, turns on her heel and marches right out of the hanger bay without so much as a with so much as a by-your-leave.

Family drama not withstanding, you did have a lot of work this morning.



The Skyserpent and Cobra fighters were both aging remnants of the succession wars. Despite countless refits, upgrades and software patches, they were needed in replacement or at the very least, new spaceframes or drive rebuilds.

You're now sitting in a tiny office with a window looking into Hanger bay A, on the port side of the Havenspire the sound of flight crew, engineering teams and pilots fill the massive internal space. Before you are a number of standard requisition forms, a mountain of reports from your subordinates, some personal mail and your current problems:

1. Fleet has asked you, and a number of other engineering and piloting specialists to contribute on a project to replace the F/A-40 Skyserpent attack interceptor. Currently, this project is being referred to as the X-45 project.

2. Until the F/A-40 Fighter is replaced, the current generation needs to be updated to more effectively counter-act the enemies Crux-class starfighters. The Squadron Leader wants to see your proposal to replace the weapons and equipment on the current Darksiders squadron over in Hanger bay B on the other side of the ship.

3. The Cobras in Hell's Couriers are technically past their end-of-life for engine rebuilds AND spaceframe replacement. Unfortunately, during the heavy campaigns lately, you just haven't had time to take them out of action long enough.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:33, Sun 14 June 2015.

Annabel sighed, staring at the stacks of paperwork on her desk. This was the real reason she'd been personally investigating her sister's bird. To avoid... this.

She kind of missed the Shackleton.

Much as she wanted to dive into the X-45 project, she realised that her current responsibilities came first. The Cruxes were better planes, and really what she wanted was one to tear apart and see if she could reverse-engineer some of their weapons tech...

Which meant dealing with what she had right now. She pulled up the data on the Serpents, and opened another window with what procurement might be able to get her and looked at refitting the fighters' weapons and ECM to a more effective combination. A third window showed her what the labs were currently buzzing about.

You scan over the specs for the Skyserpents. Like most ships of their class, they were basically an power core, thrusters and a spike drive with a cockpit and some weapons attached. Unlike the Crux-fighters, they had atmospheric fairings and stabilizers built from the ground up. They were aerodynamic and could perform well in atmosphere and even land if required.

Unfortunately, that didn't help them against the Unified Brotherhood's interceptors in the depth of space and since we hadn't had any run-ins with them in atmo yet, it was a bit of a waste. There was perhaps still a reason to keep them on the bombers if fleet was going to use them to hit targets on the surface, but they needed to improve the Skyserpents in 4th fleet to handle space superiority missions.

The first thing you're going to have to do is tear out the airframe. The wings, stablizers, ailerons, some of the hull plating all has to go. That leaves one stripped down and ugly ship. However, it frees up some mass for another system, maybe even additional armor.

Currently, they're armed with a Behring M200 multiphasic dual-phase laser cannon. MDL for short. This weapon has exceptional range and can cut right through the hull plates on a cruiser, even if it can't do all that much damage, very little outside of several inches of reinforced polyceramic overlay will stop it. The problem is that it's not exactly an anti-fighter weapon. It can cut burn holes through a Crux-fighter, but the penetration power is wasted against such a small ship.

However, you have plenty of options to replace the weapons with.




Titan Macrotechnology's D-2R "Thor" Charged Particle Blaster - Also popularly known as a 'Reaper Battery', this weapon basically just taps the energies of the Spike drive and channels them into a burst of charged particles which can easily fry a small ship with a hit or two. This is very similar to the primary armament of the Crux-fighters




Murokawa Armory's "Sandblaster MK V" Defense System - Known commonly as a Sandthrower or Flak cannon, the SDS weapon will hurl a large number tiny metal shards at high speeds to literally shred fighter-class ships. This is a very cost effective weapon system and a version of it is deployed on the older Skyserpent-A varients. It fell out of favor as it is not particularly effective in atmosphere except at relatively close range.




Murokawa Armory's "Piranha MK II" Kinetic Burst Pods - These Fractal Impact Charges are what the Cobra bombers use for both space-to-space and air-to-surface attacks. Small semi-guided bombs which burst open into hundreds of tungsten fractal-surfaced sabot darts which shred whatever they happen to hit. Murokawa insists they new MK II guidance system can track even small fast moving fighter hulls.




Tythan Armor Works AM-99 "Archer" Interceptor Missiles - This pair of void missiles is affixed to the exterior of a fighter-class hull without adding significant additional mass, with the exception of a small fire control system, the pylons and the missiles themselves. Once locked onto a target and released, they accelerate on an intercept vector and detonate within proximity, showering the target with shrapnel. Generally, this weapon is only effective against fighter-class hulls or unarmored craft.




Adare Interstellar Manufacturing M101 ultraviolet-range pulsed laser system. - The M101 is a pulsed laser weapon, relatively low powered when compared to the M200 system offered by Behring, but capable of rapidly pulsing beams to 'drill' through the light armor on a fighter-class hull, inflicting severe damage across the spaceframe in mere moments. This weapon is still new and has yet to be adopted by any military forces yet, but the Astral Fleet has expressed serious interest.

There are additional files labeled under "Defenses and Fittings"
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:24, Tue 23 June 2015.

Annie steepled her fingers as she looked over the options. The Serpents were fitted out as hunter-killers to assist the Cobras in their anti-ship missions, but once upon a time they had been space superiority fighters - damn good ones at that. She was aware of the over-penetration problems, and liked the look of the spike shear cannons, but... something in her gut told her that high command would absolutely love the idea of returning to a cheaper, proven technology.

Of course, really, there were only two people she could call on to discuss this. She wished that number was three, but with Jayne how she was... it just wouldn't work out.

Instead, she keyed her compad and sent a text string to two people.

The first, Karma Sel, was her direct underling, Karma Sel. He was the crew chief of the Skyserpent squadrons, and that rare creature known as a Gareshi tech-head. A violently jovial man, he had a morbid sense of humour that he wielded to a strangely morale-boosting effect.

The second, the Skyserpent pilot known as Takedown - real name Salma Macthan - was possibly part of the source of the friction between Annie and her sister. Through bad luck and skill, Takedown had been made wing leader in Amon Liandra's place after his reassignment. She was proving to be a highly skilled combat tactician, and the first Darksider to make ace in the current conflict.


This message was last edited by the player at 12:34, Tue 14 July 2015.

"Karma" Sel responded almost immediately.



The damn Gareshi spoke Grish, the strangely musical yet guttural language of the Gareshi population half the time, and he was just as likely to write it in reports or communiques. Sure, they all spoke the Prime Tongue, but most of them still preferred their own language. Even some Aesgar nobles fancied it and its runes. In many ways, the Hegemony took as much of the Gareshi into itself as the Gareshi took the Hegemony into themselves.

There was a saying in the Fleet: You can take a Gareshi out of the ice, but you can't the ice out of the Gareshi. Some people would take this to mean they were a cold people, heartless and not taken to displays of passion and emotion. Nothing could be further from the truth. As inured as they were to death and suffering, they were a hearty and passionate people... provided you could win their respect.

The real meaning of the saying was that the Gareshi were slow like ice. Frozen in their ways, they adapted poorly to new ways of thinking. This wasn't necessarily a weakness; High Command certainly didn't think so.

Shortly thereafter, "Karma" Sel arrived. His epithet was based on his tendency to exact vengeance for every slight and reward anyone who did him right. He was generally well liked, though a hard man and gruff in his mannerisms. Much of his body had been replaced by obsolete cyberware. Part of his skull had been caved in during an accident on the flight deck, several of his fingers were missing from frostbite and his entire left leg was gone from a slip up with a plasma torch several decades ago. All of these had been replaced with metal. No attempt to hide it or make it seem lifelike as was the style these days, he lived with the chrome and even flaunted it.

No one really knew his real frostname, but Karma seem to fit him just fine.

The grizzled Warrant Officer gives you a gap-toothed grin. "So whaz the pic-snap, S'nt? You gotta need fer Karma?"

Salma is less responsive, but she shows up all the same. Standing in a grease-stained flight suit in your office. Not surprisingly, as much like many of your pilots, she likes to get down and dirty on her own ships. Your sister isn't like that and you hear the Liandra heir wasn't really the wrench-and-socket type, but more than half your void jocks pour their own sweat, blood and tears into their fighters.

"Mistress?"

"Thanks for coming." Annie nodded to the two. "They've asked me to look at refitting the birds to make a stopgap while the real brain types try give us a new set of problems to fix." Because, of course, no 'new' fighter was ever actually ready for the front lines when it went into service.

She keyed up her design and sent it to the other two. "Thing is, the Serpents are good birds, but they're too heavy right now. Lots of systems that just don't get used, and the gun over-penetrates. So, tell me what I've done wrong."

The redesigned Skyserpent looked little like its current incarnation. The flight surfaces were stripped away completely, replaced with bare-rod weapon mounts. Everything that had been included to make them atmosphere-worthy was simply gone, and what replacements were there included reinforcements to the frame to compensate for the stresses of the frame's age and increased maneuverability.

The weapon had been stripped out and both her ideas were included as suggestions - the Thor and the Sandblaster - as primary weapons. The new design also had a pair of Archers affixed to the nubby pylons that used to be wings, slaved to a fire control system installed just behind the pilot.

"Bit ugly, ain't S'nt?" He looked over the plans a bit "Hmmpp. Sandblasters not me best choice fer aðalvopn. Not mjög against armor. Might aswell toss rocks, S'nt."

His bionic eyes whirled and clicked in their socket-mounts as he poured over what you had.

"Personally, Mistress, I'm happy with the flakkers. Lots of metal, very fast. I've shredded the Exes before with the mark-three's and they were absolutely flash at it. Not so sure about the Thor though. Pretty similar to what Uni is using out there in the black and you know the belt pirates use a crude version, but they're better off burning holes through freighters or vaping shuttles than in a dog-fight. Cursed things are slow as a handcannon and just as hard to aim."

She runs her hand over her buzzed head,, feeling at the coarse stubble as if it helped her think.

"If you want my opinion, the missiles are a good call. It's shame we can't mount more, but then again, they're practically as big as the Serpents already."

Annie made an amused sound. "So really, what we want is a pretty flying wing with just racks and racks of Archers underneath?" She joked, before bending over her computer again and making a few changes. "Actually... if I do that... then, hm.." she sent the updated file. "If I strip out the fuel bunkers, you won't be able to Drill out, but I can either restore your atmo capability... or give you this."

The new configuration featured a thin layer of ablative armour covering the majority of the ship. Thermablatives.

This message was last edited by the player at 12:33, Tue 14 July 2015.

"S'nt, flakkers no good in atmo. Them burn up after not long. Haveta get in knife-close." A mechanic hand with too many fingers flickered and danced over his own compad.

"Tink 'bout the M101 Yew-Vee for the sky-flyer. Good in the black too, S'nt"

"I didn't want to pull on untapped resources for this." Annie admitted. "But I'll admit I was thinking of it myself. If procurement can get us some, then you're right, it would be a good choice... I hope. They're looking at testing them anyway, so we have a chance."


</quote>
This message was last edited by the player at 12:32, Tue 14 July 2015.

The two of them agree: This seems to be a good compromise for the technology and they suggest you propose it to the Admiralty to see what they say.

Both of them give you their support and swear by Zue they'll vouch for you in the Court of the Gods if need be.

Annie grinned, and attached both designs to the message she'd already written regarding the submission. She sent it off to the appropriate recipients for approval.

"Alright. Thanks for your help, Salma. Karma."  She nodded to the two, then glanced at her paperwork. "I'd better get on with some of this crap." She grimaced, before looking back to Karma. "Is your report on the Cobra readiness in there somewhere?"