The Solar War

Scifi writin's and ramblin's by Railsmith.

[thesolarwar]

Dossier: Akula

The Akula-class heavy fighter (later Akula-class patrol craft) was a Soviet-designed spacecraft intended as a successor to the Lancer-class long-range fighter widely used during the Solar War. Produced in large quantities for the rapidly-expanding Human Coalition space fleet, the Akula also saw service in the spaceborne forces of the Sjiqoy, as well as in the hands of private contractors for decades after their introduction.

Background The miniaturization of human-developed Tumansky drives in the years following first contact meant that craft originally designed for long-term use around the Solar system could be utilized for interstellar reconnaissance and defense. Due to a sudden need for humanity to patrol a large area of interstellar space, spacecraft like the Soviet-built Lancer heavy fighter/interceptor were repurposed for this task, with many of said type being recovered from storage and rebuilt for faster-than-light travel. However, the Lancer was never designed for such a role and its performance suffered, especially due to the extreme load a Tumansky drive placed upon its electrical system. The inability of the Lancer-class to fulfill all of its roles as an interstellar patrol vessel led to the development of its successor, beginning in March of 1989. The first prototype was launched September 3, 1992 and production commenced early the next year at the L-4 shipyards in Perepelkin crater.

Design Intended to represent a significant leap forward in spacecraft design, the Akula-class utilized new technologies reverse-engineered from Antei and Concordance vessels. Design requirements included independent loitering times of 3 months before resupply, mounting points for the RKT-4 long-range missile, and the capability to land on low-gravity bodies such as the Moon and Ganymede. The requirement for long-duration flights with high-thrust periods for landing and combat caused the selection of metallic hydrogen as the primary propellant, a choice which caused some teething issues during development. The propulsion system relies on a powerful set of rear-mounted motors for on-orbit maneuvering as well as a set of four underside-mounted thrusters for landings and takeoffs. These second motors were occasionally utilized by pilots of the Akula to rotate the vessel faster than the reaction control systems alone, resulting in a turning rate much higher than ships of comparable size.

The Akula-class heavy fighters were 50 meters in length, over double that of the Lancer-class it replaced. This extra length was used to fit larger crew quarters, a compact nuclear reactor instead of the solar cells on the Lancer, and a larger internal fuel reserve. The end result was that the early Akula-class vessels could support a crew of eight for three months or a single shift of four crew for six months. Later advances in automation allowed for a minimum crew of two per shift, increasing endurance dramatically. 

Armament The primary anti-ship weapon of the Akula-class was the RKT-4 long-range guided missile, carrying six such missiles in an internal rotating bay. The RKT-4 active radar homing missile carries a 500-kilogram continuous-rod warhead, with an additional fragmentation filler to ensure effective post-impact damage on a direct hit. An additional warhead based on the W80 nuclear device was developed for the RKT-4, but was not deployed.

As a result of the efficacy shown by kinetic-energy weapons against Antei spacecraft at the end of the Solar War, the Akula-class was designed with a pair of GSh-30-2 autocannon in a fixed forward-firing mount with 400 rounds per gun, to be used as the primary mode of engagement at short distances. As the Akula-class was the last human-built fighter designed to use kinetic-energy weapons in this manner, the class earned the moniker “The Last of the Gunfighters,” in reference to the earlier Vought F-8 Crusader naval fighter.

Performance Despite its size and weight, the Akula-class proved a surprisingly nimble vessel in practice, easily keeping pace with the earlier Lancer- and Eagle-class fighters in terms of agility, and outmatching the Lancer in raw acceleration thanks to its more modern drive system. An Akula was a forgiving machine to operate, often finding use in regimes far outside those intended in its design. One notable engagement involved a Coalition Akula using its significant hovering capability to engage and destroy insurgent drone aircraft on Titan, despite never being rated for atmospheric operations (though the vessel in question required significant overhauling afterwards). 

The title of “The Last Gunfighter” proved no hollow praise, as well: though most combat took place at long range, the twin 30mm cannon were a formidable weapon against targets of all sizes once distances were closed. For vessels not equipped with kinetic shielding, only short bursts were required to deal fatal damage. The advent of human-built directed-energy weapons passed the Akula fleet by, as it was deemed that their cannon retained enough utility to not warrant a replacement. Though civilian contractors often modified the weaponry of their ships, the armament of the Akula-class was never changed in official Coalition service, despite several upgrades to other systems.

In short, the Akula-class heavy fighter filled a performance requirement desperately needed in human fleets: that of a long-range patrol vessel to defend new human territories in a time when both crew and on-orbit mass were at a premium. New advancements in technology eventually made the class outdated, especially with the advent of faster-responding Tumansky drives and more compact power solutions, and the last Akula was retired from Coalition service on August 9, 2026. However, the class lives on in both the Sjiqoy SDF and among private owners, and it will likely do so for many years to come.

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Dossier: Leningrad and Kursk

The spacecraft Leningrad and Kursk (ZS-1 and ZS-2, Russian: Звездное судно, lit. “star ship”) represented the Soviet Union’s largest contribution to the joint Pursuit Fleet constructed following the Antei invasion of early 1983. Following the USS Liberty, Leningrad and Kursk were the second and third human-built manned spacecraft to possess a functioning Tumansky drive. Both vessels served with distinction in the Pursuit Fleet despite multiple teething issues related to their unproven drive and rapid construction. Leningrad was lost with all hands in the Battle of Queensrest on November 16, 1984; her sister ship was also critically damaged in the fighting, but eventually returned to Earth under her own power. Kursk is currently preserved in the Tsiolkovsky Museum Constellation in high Lunar orbit, alongside other relics of the Solar War.

Background Following the successful defense of Earth by American and Soviet spaceborne forces, it became abundantly clear to the united forces that a follow-up attack was necessary to ensure humanity’s security in the galactic environment. The recovery and subsequent reverse-engineering of functional Tumansky drives from captured Antei spacecraft offered a route towards the creation of the Pursuit Fleet, though no spacecraft in the human inventory was capably outfitted for interstellar travel. To counter this, the United States began an extensive refit of their capital ship, the Orion-equipped USS Liberty; having no vessels of similar size, the Soviet Union chose to build new craft for the purpose based on proven designs.

Design In order to rapidly produce vessels of sufficient size and capability for long-term interstellar operation, Soviet designers chose to refit hulls from their successful MK-series of interplanetary patrol vessels. Each spacecraft consisted of two MK-class hulls joined together in tandem, with internal travel between the two hulls facilitated via a permanent tunnel connecting docking port used to dock fighters on the original vessel. Viewed from above, the port-side hull contained fuel, life support systems, storage, and the craft’s Tumansky drive. The starboard-side hull held the crew’s living quarters, docking ports, the ship’s bridge, and the controlling systems for its armament. The vessel contained enough provisions and fuel to support a crew of ten for approximately eighteen months of operation before resupply, ammunition limits notwithstanding. A ZS-class ship carried the nuclear thermal engine mounted on each original craft, though the starboard-side engine was tuned for lower thrust to counter the mass imbalance present in the finalized design.

This unique asymmetrical layout of the ships’ Tumansky drive resulted in the produced warp bubble being much closer to one side of the vessel than the other, creating a distinct lopsided burn pattern which can still be seen on Kursk today. Though rather a dangerous design, this layout allotted a far greater amount of radiation shielding between the drive and the crew than aboard the Liberty, as well as allowing for a very rapid construction time.

Distinctions Being bespoke vessels constructed from extant spacecraft, Leningrad and Kursk by nature had notable differences. Leningrad was built from hulls MK-6113 and MK-6110, veterans of the Saturn campaign and, in the case of 6110, the defense of Earth. The original radar displays on 6113 were kept for the updated Smerch-DM targeting radar installed during the construction of Leningrad, allowing the vessel’s crew to continue using the radar without new training. This lack of parts compatibility with Kursk’s newer radar displays caused Leningrad’s radar to be out of service during the Battle of Queensrest, relying on a wired data link from Kursk to guide her missiles.

Kursk was built as a backup hull in the event that the construction of Leningrad met delays, as it was believed the Soviet Union only had access to a single functioning drive. However, the labs of F. I. Tumansky, having successfully rebuilt the first drive recovered from Mare Orientale, were able to provide a functional drive for Kursk as well. Though this rebuilt Tumansky drive functioned perfectly in itself, the drive’s supporting hardware failed as a result of its age. Kursk’s port-side hull, MK-6089, was one of the oldest MK-class ships still in service, spending the year before the invasion as a Lunar defense station due to engine troubles. Its engine and radiation shielding was replaced during the rebuilding but its wiring, damaged by years of radiation, was not, leading to a short in the hull’s electrical system which disabled the drive. Fortunately, the starboard hull, MK-6120 (a new-build hull which was awaiting launch before the invasion) could support most of the ship’s electrical requirements alone, but the drive was not restored to function until after the engagement at Queensrest. To conduct jumps before the repair, the two vessels docked together and jumped inside Leningrad’s warp bubble, a dangerous task made worse by the novelty of this drive system. Nevertheless, jumps proceeded without issue throughout Leningrad’s service.

Armament Both vessels were stripped of their original weaponry in the name of weight savings and refitted with four RKT-1 two-stage long-range missiles derived from the RSD-10 “Pioner” ballistic missile, though the only commonalities lie in the missiles’ solid motors and structural elements. Semi-active radar homing only in the first hundred kilometers of flight, with active radar homing in its terminal phase, the missiles are capable of engaging at exceptional range with a 1.6-megaton warhead, which proved effective in combat against large Antei vessels.

Fate Serving in the Battle of Queensrest, both Leningrad and Kursk engaged with the remnants of the Antei invasion fleet. Though hampered by its faulty targeting system, Leningrad managed to destroy an Antei cruiser with two of its missiles before a particle-beam strike detonated its fuel reserves, killing all aboard instantly and damaging the communications arrays of Kursk. Kursk continued on through the battle, claiming the sole Antei battleship as well as two troop transports in exchange for a lost engine and a total cabin depressurization, the latter quickly repaired following the battle through the assistance of the USS Liberty. After the defeat of the Antei fleet, Kursk served alongside the Liberty as representatives of humanity during the first contact with the Concordance, before escorting their diplomatic envoy back to Earth.

Upon completing the purpose of the Pursuit Fleet, Kursk had her original drive removed and preserved for posterity (as humanity’s first [captured] faster-than-light drive), and subsequently replaced with an article of the first indigenous production run of human Tumansky drives. Kursk served a brief but storied career as a diplomatic vessel in the human coalition space forces, escorting the Liberty once again to the capitals of several sentient species in the galactic community in the Exploration Tours of 1985. 

Following this, the vessel served in Earth’s defense fleet as it was slowly replaced by more capable craft in the human inventory. ZS-2 Kursk was decommissioned on June 8, 1989 and transferred to the Tsiolkovsky Museum Constellation as one of its first exhibits, where it now remains, preserved as it appeared during the Battle of Queensrest.

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Bio: Tavash, Pt. 1: Biology

Hailing from a planet on the opposite side of the galactic community from Earth, the Tavash are notable for not using their indigenously-developed faster-than-light drive until some seventy Earth years after its invention. This is just one indicator of the overwhelmingly prevalent worldview of the Tavash people: There is no sense in traveling out to find new things when solutions can just as easily be developed at home. This is a product of their biology and culture in their prehistoric hunter-gatherer days, which focused on creating large, secure nests within which a family group would spend most of their time when not hunting for food. 

Compared to a human, the Tavash are very physically imposing. Standing eight feet tall at their largest and covered in thickly-armored scales, an adult resembles little more than an oversized bipedal crocodile--though biologically, there are some key differences. For one, the Tavash are not strong swimmers, living primarily on land in the vast equatorial plains of their home planet, though their body structure implies an amphibious origin. Additionally, though they are often presumed to be carnivores, a Tavash will readily and heartily consume any energy-rich biomass they can acquire. A visitor to any large Tavash eatery will nearly always find a smattering of strange foodstuffs, chosen only by their price at the nearest market.

Their role as ambush predators in the ecosystem before the conceptualization of active hunting resulted in a body type which is more healthy in a sedentary lifestyle than other species. However, as each family group tended to stake out a large territory for hunting, maintaining contact between mates over long distances (and through the thick fog which permeates their planet’s equatorial regions in the winter months) resulted in a peculiar array of abilities. An overdeveloped respiratory system and prominent vocal folds allow an adult Tavash to speak and shout at frankly absurd volumes at a wide tonal range, reaching deep into the infrasonic frequencies. To match their voices, the species also have a keen sense of hearing, to the point that even a 3 dB infrasound tone can be readily detected by adult Tavash. This allows a Tavash to communicate by voice alone over many kilometers’ distance, using a language designed to be audible at long ranges which shares no linguistic background with their standard spoken languages. It is surmised that this song-language was the first language developed by the species, with other languages being developed independently at later dates. 

Such a linguistic background gives a Tavash inherent advantage in learning spoken languages of other species, though their fate as rather slow learners holds them back. Nevertheless, a member of the species who is dedicated to learning a new language may often be confused with a native speaker, thanks to their excellent grasp of pronunciation and dialect.

The Tavash also communicate through pheromones as primary indicators of their health and reproductive status, though the inherent range limitations of pheromones mean this is usually reserved for communication within a nest or territory. This has produced a strong sense of smell capable of detecting low concentrations of atmospheric contaminants in air almost effortlessly at short ranges. Tavash in human contact often make claims about being able to “smell a human’s lies” or similar, though this appears to be an attempt at humor in most cases. However, a Tavash’s vision is rather less developed than a human’s, with less-precise perception of the blue and green spectrum. This has resulted in a clothing trend of warm colors in large, easily-visible patterns for most of their history. Their written language is also rather crude as a result, to the point that technical documents must be written in the script of other sentient species if a Tavash engineer wishes to clearly express information.

A puzzling aspect of the Tavash (from the perspective of human researchers) is their unique trilateral gender structure; as the name suggests, reproduction is achieved with three partners, rather than the more common two. This sexual trimorphism, so to speak, created specific gender roles in the Tavash prehistory which have only been made defunct in recent generations. The egg-producing sex, referred to as M-type by human researchers for brevity, is the most dominant of the three, being responsible for the initial gathering of mates and the maintenance of order in the nest. Historically, M-types were thus the largest, strongest, and most outgoing of the three, briefly resulting in a stereotype of the Tavash being large, frightening creatures until humans were informed of the gender trinary.

The second, the H-type, was in prehistory the member of the species who traveled from the nest to hunt down prey and keep an eye out for predators. This resulted in a leaner body type better suited for long treks across the plains of their home planet, together with a more skittish demeanor. This predilection for travel has made H-types commonly found as land-based scouts for new colonies, not seeming to mind the isolation and hard living of such a life nearly as much as the other two genders.

Finally, the G-type served as a nest’s guardian, tending to the eggs and hatchlings of the nest while others were hunting. The hostile nature of their planet’s environment meant that G-types had to be particularly vicious fighters when cornered by simple sake of necessity. Also, in order to communicate with their mates even when they were many kilometers afield, G-types had the strongest voices of the three, a feature which has not had much use in the modern era outside of the Tavash All-Stars Opera circuit.

The rather strange reproduction cycle of Tavash, given their unique gender layout, has never been described in full to human researchers. It is a commonly held mantra by xenobiologists that unless Tavash reproduction suddenly becomes important to the fate of the galaxy, it is best to leave such arcane processes to the Tavash themselves and, in the words of noted xenobiologist Marcel Rhys, “try not to think about that whole mess.” 

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Bio: The Sjiqoy

The Sjiqoy are a relatively new entrant to the galactic community, having been uplifted into a spacefaring race through the assistance of the Tavash in exchange for trading rights. Their society is nominally a theocracy based around the religion Siepip-i, and is governed in practicality by an elected tiered structure of priests with a high priest or priestess at its head. Since their introduction to the galactic scene, Siepip-i has become a rather popular religion among sentient species, with copies of the Siepip-i religious text the species’ leading export. This is primarily due to the requirement that each copy of the document be handwritten, thus creating more and more jobs for the Sjiqoy as their religion gains traction.

To human eyes, the Sjiqoy resemble little more than eight-foot-long millipedes covered end to end in narrow feathers. The species as a whole are surprisingly nearsighted due to the progressive degeneration of their eyes from birth, though corrective lenses help somewhat. However, their primary sense is touch, as evidenced by the finely-jointed manipulators on their sixteen frontmost limbs. As such, their writing system has both touch- and visual-based components, causing no small amount of trouble for outsiders attempting to learn their written script. Nearly all words in their spoken language are comprised of two or three syllables with few articles, in a pattern reminiscent of languages known by their allies the Tavash. Most visitors to the Sjiqoy homeworld of Fjoysiy, therefore, tend to focus on memorizing the spoken language before all else.

Most Sjiqoy are natural-born writers, and any member of their species traveling off-world may find work as a scribe or calligrapher with no real issue. They have also recently discovered a surprising skill in carving and engraving, to great effect on their global exports. It is said that a team of Sjiqoy carvers working on a large statue is a wholly unique sight which is profoundly horrifying to an outside viewer who is afraid of millipedes.

The Sjiqoy focus on a life of pacifism above all else, as relayed by their religion, but maintain a small spaceborne force for self-defense. This fleet, uniquely, is operated in its majority by volunteers from other species, primarily for the sake of the keener senses and sharper reflexes held by other members of the galactic community. Having no need to go to war, the self-defense forces of the Sjiqoy tend to find the most work in disaster relief and humanitarian aid. A peaceful race, their role in the galaxy has been focused on spreading the word of their religion, though time will tell how long this lasts.