Furious

***Furious*** (**CC-900**) was a heavily modified *Mercury*-class star battlecruiser in service with the Terran Alliance Star Fleet under the command of Fleet Admiral Casper Hawkins. She was the fleet flagship of the Terran Alliance throughout her career.

## Design

Initially beginning construction as a *Mercury*-class battlecruiser, part of wartime loss replacements during the Razorbird Crusade, *Furious* would be substantially modified from her original design as part of the Alliance plan to create a testbed warship to field new technologies which it hoped might be able to change the tide against the avian zealots. A radically new hull design was drawn up on the same dimensions - her spaceframe had already been started - utilizing a new, beam-reflecting hull design and fixed gun mounts which offered greater protection than the standard heavy turrets. She had a narrow, wedge-shaped single hull (as opposed to most Alliance double-hulled designs) reminiscent of a dagger with a smooth surface: she was widely considered similar to a Consortium ship after that nation rejoined the galactic stage.

To this formidable fighting machine was added a number of other new innovations: an extremely powerful and sensitive set of experimental sensors and enhanced faster-than-light ansible equipment allowed her to control fleet battles directly in real-time from thousands of light-years away, while the ablative coat added to her hull - giving her her distinctive white appearance - made her practically invulnerable to all but the most concentrated laser and plasma gunfire. Even her bridge received modification, using red hardlight holographic panels and controls as opposed to blue and a simpler, cleaner design to make the controls easier to work with for long periods without developing "blue screen fever."

However, her cost was too much: by the time the modifications were complete, the battlecruiser had cost as much as a ship twice her length and twelve times her mass (a *Terra* dreadnought). Her technological prowess was undeniable, and experience with her equipment led to the adoption of less powerful but cost-effective models for all Alliance flagships, but Alliance artillery experts objected to the fixed nature of her artillery while her ablative coating was considered far too expensive to ever mass produce. Accordingly, a less effective but cheaper variant of the coating was developed in standard Alliance gunmetal grey, and *Furious* would remain alone among the Alliance fleet with her distinctive appearance.

### Dimensions and Role

*Furious* shared the same basic dimensions as a *Mercury*: one kilometre in length, she was classified as a battlecruiser and treated as such. Large size and fast speed made *Mercury* battlecruisers perfect for the role of a command ship for smaller patrol fleets: they could easily keep pace with cruisers and destroyers, and also had the communications facilities necessary to report back to Terra. *Furious* built upon this concept in the fleet flagship/communications role.

### Hull

*Furious* had a single hull, unique among Alliance starships in her time: it was gently sloped and wedge-shaped, with a short and thick communications fin forming an integral part of the rear hull.

### Power

*Furious*'s power plant was fairly modest, considering her advanced equipment and nature as a testbed starship: eighteen conventional cold-fusion reactors gave her the necessary power to operate all of her equipment when she was first constructed. This was a slight increase over the standard *Mercury*, reflecting the increased demands of her sensitive and draining devices and heavier guns, but was relatively sufficient. For hydrogen fuel collection while underway, she had two large Bussard ramjets fixed to her outer hull.

During her mid-life refit in 2503, the decision was taken to replace all of the cold fusion reactors with a **reaction core**: the Terran version of an ionization reactor, just one was sufficient to replace her entire older power plant. While this did reduce her redundancy in case of damage to the main core, the centralized location of the reactor made it far less likely that she would receive such damage.

### Propulsion

*Furious*'s propulsion system was relatively standard for the *Mercury* class: four large Class 1 ion-impulse drives propelled her at sublight speeds, with smaller Class 3 engines forming her main propulsion for manoeuvres and around space stations. Custom-engined to fit her hull, these were considered unsuitable for further use thanks to the specialized requirements needed to maintain them- they would be upgraded to the standards of the later-built *Achilles* during her mid-life refit, reducing propellant consumption drastically.

### Armament

#### Pre-Refit

*Furious*'s main battery was one of the more unique things about her. In lieu of the standard PC-6400 40-megaton laser cannon developed by the Alliance, she used the **PC-6400e**: a 150-megaton-calibre laser cannon, the first of its kind. It had a slower firing rate—average cooldown rate and recharge time between shots was 26 seconds, as opposed to 18 seconds with the former—but made up for that in hitting power: it delivered more than 60% more yield onto a given target. *Furious* carried twenty-four (24) such guns: these were the first among Alliance capital ships to be placed in fixed forward-firing mounts, due to their greater power requirements. While this made *Furious* a powerful opponent to be reckoned with, her extensive blind spots meant that turrets would always be preferred among Alliance naval officers for the main gunline combatants.

Alliance "hail of fire" doctrine was still prevalent in the period in which *Furious* came into being: she carried an extensive suite of 15-megaton and 10.5-kiloton laser batteries in turrets to engage targets under a continuous volley of red lines. Backing these was an extensive suite of 6.5-ton lasers: these were nominally point-defense weapons, but *Furious*'s specialized model allowed them to substitute for the typical laser blasters found as broadside weapons aboard Alliance warships. Backing these weapons up at short range were a number of swarm torpedo launchers, for a devastating surprise.

For point defense, *Furious*'s 10.5-kt and 6.5-t laser cannons formed the outer and medium zones of her layered defense: close-in work was handled by sixty-two (62) twin 2-t snapper balls. Last-ditch defense was handled by the Aegis network: automatically-controlled 1.32-t high intensity lasers. The overall Aegis direction system was capable of controlling all of the point defenses of the *Furious* automatically and engaging every target within range, simultaneously: it could track and burn through a swarm of Alliance torpedoes launched at point-blank before any of them made it close enough for the 1.32-t system to activate, though it was ultimately useless against Consortium otherspace torpedoes.

#### Post-Refit

*Furious*'s comprehensive mid-life refit left practically no system untouched: her weapons were no exception. Though considerably more powerful than other Alliance starships when commissioned, her firepower had become inadequate in the post-Djangor era: modern Alliance starships could reach 380 megatons per second from their laser cannons, compared to her 150 megatons. Her entire battery was, therefore, replaced by eighteen 380 megaton laser cannons of an improved design: they could recharge at roughly twice the rate of the standard model, though as a result of her smaller reaction core, they required capacitors to maintain this firing rate over longer periods. The remaining 150-megaton laser cannon ports were plated over, their gun chambers turned into additional crew space.

Her new-build secondary armament was also comprehensive: brand-new 12.5-megaton single-mounted turrets were mounted across her hull in retractable mountings, replacing both the 15-megaton and 10.5-kiloton batteries on a 1-for-1 basis. Improved versions of the old 'snapper balls' were also provided for point defense purposes, in slightly fewer mounts. While her torpedo armament remained unchanged in quantity, she did receive new, retractable launchers: she also received launch cells for brand-new isokinetic missiles, then under testing.

### Defenses

#### Pre-Refit

*Furious* was unique among Alliance warships in terms of defensive potential - as the first Terran warship to make extensive use of curved armour plating, she received significantly less total armour than her *Mercury*-class cousins. She did, however, have adequate - if "light" - shielding.

The outer layer of *Furious*'s defenses was formed by the *Prydwen* shield system: a "sector" organization was developed for these shields so that they could oscillate frequencies, reinforce at any point, or keep certain places heavily shielded while leaving others idling to conserve power. This was a somewhat standard defense of Alliance capital ships during the period, but *Furious*'s power plant could devote less energy to them due to her equipment.

*Furious*'s main defense, therefore, was her armour protection: 250-mm plates covered the majority of the hull's curved sections, increasing to 400-mm plates around the channels for the main guns and the bases of the secondary batteries. The communications fin was also protected by 400-mm plates on the front, and 250-mm plates on the sides and rear.

The internal protection was also fairly substantial: 250-mm plates formed the internal pressure hull walls, and plates that varied between 250-mm and 400-mm depending on location subdivided the ship into numerous airtight and self-sufficient compartments. Each compartment housed its own shield generator and one of the ship's eighteen reactors—a feature that had not been taken to such extremes prior to her, but would feature in every Alliance ship built after—as well as its own life support system. As demonstrated in later years by numerous Alliance ships with this redundant survivability, had *Furious* taken serious damage (even going so far as to have her entire front end blown off), she could have continued to not only function but also fight.

Critical subsystems were reinforced: the gunports for *Furious*'s main battery received 2-metre-thick armoured plates in their channels and on their armoured shutters, while the 15-cm and 10.5-cm batteries received 1-metre-thick armour plates for their turrets. The reactors were divided into their own armoured compartments by 1-metre thick plates: the power conduits that ran from them to the rest of the ship were protected by armour that varied between 1 and 2 metres thick depending on how close it was to the external hull. The bridge was particularly reinforced due to external placement: the hull in this area had a double layer of 2 metres of armour, while the transparent viewports themselves were also extremely thick in their own right and could be covered with 500-mm-thick noctrium armour plates obtained from the Lucaelian Ascendancy.

#### Post-Refit

*Furious*'s armour scheme was considerably 'beefed up' during her mid-life refit in the Saturn Naval Yards: extensive experimentation and breakthroughs in protection, along with increased power capacity, had made more powerful armour possible. While her internal subdivision did not change in composition or thickness, the majority of her external 250 mm plating was exchanged for 280 mm armour: a nine-layer 'sandwich' of classified monocrystalline metals and foam ceramic composites, recoated in an improved ablative analysis irrespective of mass production cost. Her 400 mm plates were replaced with 530 mm plates using a fourteen-layer 'sandwich' along the same lines, thanks to the mass savings from her improved power plant- moreover, improvements in targeting probability analysis had led to more of the hull coming under this protection, the heavier plates being extended to portions of the main hull based on hit probability and angle of attack.

The plating around her reactor unit and her bridge areas was also substituted with a sandwich of Mindnet charged plating and conventional modern Alliance armour during this time: the coating surface was noctrium, allowing for a drop in mass while improving protection by an order of magnitude. Her increased mobility thanks to her refurbished engines and improved power plant helped to balance out the increased mass she gained during refit as a result of these additions, allowing her to retain the maneuverability she was noted for.

## History

###  Commission

*Furious*, hull number CC-900, commissioned into the Alliance Star Fleet on December 10th, 2480, as part of the replacements for wartime losses during the ongoing Razorbird Crusades. Captain Sophia Blackwell would take command of the vessel upon launch from the Titan extension of the Saturn shipyards in the Sol system, and Fleet Admiral Casper Hawkins would take her as his flagship - making her the flagship of the entire Alliance Fleet.

### Early Service & The Razorbird Crusade

*Furious* was primarily based out of the Sol system itself during the Razorbird crusade as the flagship of the 1st Fleet, the last line of defense for Terra. Admiral Hawkins oversaw the war from her bridge, personally directing many of the victories and defeats from afar. The admiral's primary reasoning for hoisting his flag aboard the battlecruiser as opposed to one of the new dreadnoughts fitting out was that the latter were needed on the front lines rather than for home defense, and *Furious* was more than adequate for the purpose in any case. Admiral Hawkins was also instrumental in bolstering the 4th and 9th Fleets from his meagre reserves to aid the 15th Fleet over Djangor, in what turned into a masterful tactical victory under Admiral James Holland in the *Inextinguishable*.

## Notable officers & crew

### Fleet Admiral Casper Hawkins

*You can find the full article here.*

The intrepid supreme commander of the Alliance star fleet for over sixty years and one of the foremost strategic minds ever produced by the Alliance - or Terra - in its history, widely renowned as "the de Ruyter of space" among Terrans. His remarkable career as the Alliance's sole Fleet Admiral began in 2440 against the Ravasect, and ended only in 2502 with his retirement.

### Fleet Admiral Altantsetseg

The new Fleet Admiral of the Alliance's naval forces and supreme commander of the space fleet, following the retirement of Admiral Hawkins at the age of ninety. Born Terran but raised by Veydreth on Chardok, she would go on to become just as renowned as the man she replaced in the fight against the despotic Sanguine Accord.

### Captain Terry Pike

The Terran-born captain of the *Furious* and described by Hawkins as "a man of action."

### Executive Officer Cir'dalar

A Veydreth Hunter and the executive officer of the *Furious*: described by Hawkins as naturally aggressive, but capable of controlling herself when the situation demands.

### Navigating Officer Alabaster

A Hondaaran and the navigation officer of the *Furious*. Its real name is unknown, so the crew and Hawkins typically referred to it as 'Alabaster' due to the resemblance to the mineral.