Ranma had sunk deeply into a Force meditative trace that seemed to leave only his eyes and hands out, poking out of the corners of a dream wherein he saw every component, all the decks and wiring and connections with overlaid circuit diagrams which turned out to be superior to anything yet made jotted down next to notes for logic paths and flow structure for everything from electrons to passenger accomodations up to the paths shock would travel as the ship got hit in combat.
Blissex had long since gone to bed. Ranma himself wasn't sure he wasn't asleep as data flew from his rapidly striking fingertips creating ship plans almost at the speed of thought, and aching that it wasn't fully as fast, that his thoughts had to pause mid-avalanche for the hands to catch up.
Actually some distant part of him knew his fingers weren't typing all the input appearing on the screen before him. That didn't matter, all that counted was keeping up with the flow of ideas appearing fully fleshed and completed before his mind's eye.
As Blissex' snore filled the secret chamber Ranma finished plans for the Flamberge ships. It would require even his functioning ships to report to drydock for a more complete refit, but he didn't care. All he'd learned since that day had somehow found its way into this complete design, and the ships would need to have the upgrade to standard for the newly improved class anyway.
Shields for the Calamari pleasure craft, Alderaan ideas for life support and accomodations, Carrack compartmentalization done on a simpler, less space intensive scale, the new drive, and dozens of things learned from projects termed and passed on by Ucchan, plus what Blissex had shared just now from what he'd learned and some things Ranma invented on the fly as his fingers raced in frenzied motion across the input keypad. The greatest of those last was a shield mounting system; not the generators, just ways they could be put on a ship, that would increase their power efficiency by 30%. The same generators producing the same strength shields cost less power to operate because of the way he installed them. And this should prove true regardless of the style of generators used. In essence, the ship was just easily shielded.
He knew it would work! He knew it. The same way he knew he drew breath he could see and sense and feel every aspect of this ship like it was his own body he was looking down on. If something wasn't right it hurt and had to be fixed, and he knew just which ways to nudge it to make it right, to make it behave and function and work!
That design completed, he closed and saved the file and copied it to a data cube for his personal use even as he was opening another.
The Talaria, he didn't even know it was called that yet, but he knew how it should be. The design of the ship started dancing like fire before his eyes and suddenly it was a need as great as any he'd ever felt for sex to put those designs down for use later. The ship design and schematics grew more and more detailed as he fed the urge to put the fires down to data cube.
He knew how to mesh it and he had to describe that. There were new things that had to be put down and preserved for later. The fire behind his eyes was going out. It had to be kept, had to be put into a format where he could understand and access this later. It could not be lost.
Ranma was found passed out at the controls of an advanced design computer Blissex had let him use. Dancing on the screen before him was a nearly completed ship design for a whole new class of fleet tug and support craft. It was almost, but not quite, completed. The unfinished parts were the only flaws, and Ranma would agonize for months over the last few aspects of the design and still not get them precisely perfect to his mind.
To anyone else, the ship was a design marvel of engineering wizardry.
It could be counted the equal of most light cruisers in combat, outfitted with mostly lasers as a starfighter screening vessel rather than an anti-cruiser ship. Since light cruiser was its size class he was essentially getting the vast support features free as far as ship performance, though of course there would be the costs to construct and maintain all that special gear and equipment. Since starfighter screening was the purpose he felt most present need of the design was an amazing success. As with the Flamberge and Marauder classes the Talaria was also aerodynamicly streamlined for atmospheric combat and capable of full planetary landings. Test cycles would reveal no bugs of any consequence because there were none.
Even Blissex was impressed.
It would be three days before anyone could wake Ranma from his exhausted slumber.
===========
During this time they had quite a fleet forming up.
It was fortunate for them all Ranma had done quite alot to make and keep the costs down. All his designs avoided exposed power cables on outer hulls, yet also included his own invention: a mynock trap, basically a blender exposed to space and with some power lines at the bottom as bait. Anything disturbed the 'trap lines' and the blender whirred into action, producing minced mynock, then reset itself to function again. The invention really cut down on pest problems for his operations, hence maintenance costs. After the war it became a galactic standard piece of equipment, reducing the pest population drastically.
Another option made standard across his fleet was his fuel scoop and solar array system. Anything to make the fleet cheaper to operate without cutting out performance was a good idea, and combined with the vast engineering decks common on most ships he'd designed or refitted made them mostly independant of long supply lines or static base facilities. Once supported by members of the Talaria class they would grow even more so (making long strikes far beyond conventional battle lines an easy tactic for them, and would force the Imperial Navy response to increase garrisons everywhere - which spread them thin and enabled the Rebels to beat them anywhere before tactics were once again readjusted).
But in spite of all they'd done to reduce cost of operations and refits, and all they'd done to build yards and infrastructure, decommissioned warships were flooding in so fast they'd completely swamped their refit capacity. It could be years before even half the ships they had so far were modestly outfitted, and that was if they abanoned Ranma's more ambitious plans for modifications - plans which their strategy depended on, as they simply couldn't support or operate the warships on their meager resources without them.
Clearly their infrastructure needed to be expanded. More and bigger shipyards, facilities for parts manufacture, crew training and everything else had to be upgraded, expanded and more built of it. They'd not even built their stolen shipyards before they'd been forced to expand them, then expand the facilities again until Fireheart and Coldheart (they'd kept the original names of the shipyards, even after stealing them, more or less out of momentum) were each ten times their original size and capabilities.
The cost of that was frightening, but it was either pay it or not have a fleet. So they'd paid.
Of course, this left them money hungry in no small way before they'd even settled down from the last series of piracy raids. A corncern that'd plagued Ranma all the way to Alderaan.
Going back to piracy so quickly could be immensely dangerous, drawing attention not only to the new raids but the not-quite-cooled investigations of the old ones previously gotten away with. And if the Empire got any inkling as to what the Jedi were doing he'd send entire sector forces after them. They would be found, there could be no avoiding it.
Alderaan and Sairune, rich as they were, could not be tapped for the scale of money they needed to do this, and it would be best not to try. It would deplete them and be but a drop in the bucket.
With starships flooding in by the hundreds each week they'd already reached the amazing tally of 520 Victory class Star Destroyers, 2000+ Dreadnoughts and numerous other ships. It was a dream fleet by any standards, more than they'd ever dared hope for (though still only a tiny fraction of those same types of ships still lying unclaimed in reserve yards, not counting those already sold or scrapped). And unless they got some fantastic income soon they'd never be able to use a significant portion of them. The infrastructure to support it just cost too dear, and the Talarias had to be new construction.
They may not be needed as exclusively tugs anymore, with all his other cruisers soon able to fill that slot, but need of emergency ships, medical duties, and all that did not go away merely because his drives were robust. Admittedly, using the same sublight drives would save him space over the heavy and enlarged versions he'd originally intended for in his first concept of the design, and the saved space was already put to enormously good use in other duties in his Force inspired version: A tremendously useful rescue/emergency vessel that would be in service long after the war fleets retired.
Still, it didn't give them hyperdrives. Or guns, or shield generators, or build capacity, or...
They had less than twenty completed Flamberge ships, and those cruisers would now be sent back to complete the refit. Other combat vessels they could operate were fewer still. The build capacity to do the engineering was appearing, and most of their time and energy were being directed toward the creation of a self-sustaining infrastructure.
Jedi had already landed industrial, agricultural and mining machinery on new colony worlds to support these new shipyards with new sectors. But it was looking to be time to find other means to supplement that capacity as it began the long, laborious process of coming to full production. Already, who would live there and run these farms and machines was becoming a time-critical concern.
Even so, should they solve it, two sectors against a galaxy...
It was a long way toward being any kind of deadly threat to the Empire.
See other episodes by Lionheart
(Posted Fri, 09 Apr 2004 01:25)
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