Arkhont-class superdreadnought

## *Arkhont* superdreadnought

> *"It's funny. A single Arkhont-class superdreadnought could completely destroy all our oldest enemies on Earth with firepower alone in mere minutes. And all that's chaining this Simargl rendered in hyperalloy armour plating is a piece of paper that says the war's over..."*
> ~ General Yulia Trotskaya, to BN-012883.
>
>

## Introduction

The ***Arkhont*-class superdreadnought** (English: **Archon**), nicknamed 'Trotskaya's Coffin' (on account of its appearance when viewed from above), is a massive warship designed for use by the Mecharussian and later Mechanocratic Starfleet and entering service in 2170. Measuring some 32.7 kilometres in length, 18.7 in width and 3.3 in height, it is just under 800 metres shorter than the Imperial *Dies Irae*-class superdreadnought that served as its benchmark. However, as a result of being freed from the burden of thousands of aircraft and attack drones (this job being left to dedicated carriers in a fleet), it bears a far heavier armament than its 400 year-old contemporary. The *Arkhont*-class is also notable for being the command ship of choice for General Yulia Trotskaya – her mother, Grand Curatrix Elena Trotskaya, deemed her mature enough to command the lead vessel, MSS *Arkhont*, and had it issued to Yulia for her eighteenth birthday. The second, MSS *Mshcheniye*, supplants the aged MSS *Polunochnaya* as the elder Trotskaya's personal command ship (the *Polunochnaya* is disarmed and converted into a spacegoing luxury yacht for the Trotsky family).

The initial production run of the *Arkhont* superdreadnoughts planned for four to be built throughout the 2170s, each one completed one year after the previous: the *Arkhont*, *Mshcheniye*, *Afina* and *Ares*. Each dreadnought was constructed over the planet that was stripped bare by both machine and slave labour from conquered worlds to harvest the resources to build these spacegoing behemoths and accompanying battlefleets.

*Arkhont*, *Mshcheniye* and *Afina* all fought in the Tindalos Offensive against the Qh'naazi Dynasty in the mid-2170s, with *Afina* being lost in action over Dreadmaw. *Ares*, meanwhile, was kept in orbit over Earth throughout the conflict to defend the planet against a possible Qh'naazi retaliation. Two other Arkhonts were built after the war - MSS *Nika* and MSS *Fobos* - bringing the overall number of superdreadnoughts in Mechanocratic service by the Peaceful Times up to five.

## Characteristics

### Offensive armament

Befitting its colossal size, the *Arkhont*-class has an arsenal able to pose a deadly threat to ships in its weight category, and outright crush anything smaller than it as if it were a cockroach. The primary driving force behind the dreadnought's power is a miniaturised version of the same singularity laser as was designed for the World Eater hyperdreadnought. The devastatingly-powerful weapon uses a derivative of Khazard'Vaari arc-weapons technology to create and sustain an artificial white hole, appearing in front of the dreadnought as a swirling white vortex. The gravity waves emitted from the singularity are coalesced from the vortex into a tight focus, projecting the entirety of the white hole's gravitational force into a single direction. Functionally, it is comparable to a cosmic leaf-blower, pulverising shields and armour into molecular pulp and literally disintegrating its target with the overwhelming fury of a black hole. The only two drawbacks are that the weapon consumes so much power that a burst of twenty seconds takes a full two hours to recharge, and that its range is low enough to put the dreadnought in enemy cannon range; otherwise, any hapless warship caught in its path will be destroyed in a matter of seconds.

For longer-range combat, the *Arkhont* is armed with ten banks of P-1100 Spiral faster-than-light missiles (with 40 missiles each) – this weapon system can engage enemy starships from the exterior of their present solar system from as far away as two light years. Supplementing the singularity laser for closer-range combat are two triple-gun fusion lance mounts, in addition to batteries of hot-ion and plasma artillery. The lances can boast 42 petawatts of power to their name, while the ion and plasma cannons can output 782 terawatts and 200 terawatts respectively (making them only slightly inferior to their Sidh counterparts. This shortfall is compensated by the Arkhont possessing quite a great deal more firepower overall than most Imperial ships, including one thousand 9M390 Peklo medium-range ASMs. Yulia Trotskaya's personal dreadnought, however, replaces two of the Spiral missile banks with immensely-powerful psionic exhibitors, linked directly to the General's mind when she is synchronised to the warship's AI.

### Defensive armament

The first line of defence for the Arkhont is a 464-petawatt nano-lattice energy shield, more than five times as strong as the shield used on the *Badanov*-class battleship. Its designers stake the claim that it is capable of absorbing multiple direct hits from a Sidh World Breaker-class energy lance, the primary weapon of the *Dies Irae*-class superdreadnought. Whether this untested claim holds any truth or not, what *is* no exaggeration is the assertion that nothing short of an entire fleet will be able to bring the shield down – and even if they do, they must contend with magnetic electroreactive armour plating of equivalent strength to at least one hundred metres of rolled homogenous armour. At its thickest point, the armour shielding the main singularity reactor core, nothing of lesser power than a tachyon bolt driver will even be able to penetrate it.

Soft-kill defences include a comprehensive electronic warfare suite, including extensive jamming tech perfected in World War IV, but it is hard-kill countermeasures where the bulk of the Arkhont's defences lie. Thousands of point-defence turrets, including 2K61 rotary plasma CIWS and 9K92 Sarancha-II SHORAD missile batteries, keep the dreadnought safe from incoming missile and aircraft attack, working in tandem with a vast laser turret grid and four thousand active repair drones to patch up hits taken after a battle.

## Notable appearances

Although it has received several passing mentions (such as in the non-canonical Festival of Carnage), an *Arkhont*-class superdreadnought has yet to make a proper appearance.

## Trivia

The *Arkhont* borrows its aesthetic from the *Executor*-class star dreadnought and the idea of fixing a super-powerful weapon onto it from the *Eclipse*-class star dreadnought, both used by the Galactic Empire in the *Star Wars* universe.