Olympus-class dreadnought

The ***Olympus*-class dreadnoughts** were a class of space warships ordered by the various Colonial Planetary Guards in 2126 and transferred to the U.S. Space Force in 2133 to escort the Planetary Task Forces that would operate around Earth during the Third Mexican-American War. Three were completed; two more were laid down but canceled at war's end and scrapped. Like other third-generation American warships, the *Olympus-class* followed the design pattern set forth in the preceding *Armstrong*-class and *Knight*-class dreadnoughts, which emphasized total space supremacy through Space-to-Space and Space-to-Ground warfare.

## Design

At 15 kilometers in length, the Olympus-class ships were the largest warships ever built, discounting the largely stationary Mexican orbitals. Classified as "super-dreadnoughts" these spacecraft served as multi-role space supremacy warships. As such, the Olympus-class ships deviated somewhat from the standard design pattern of Cruisers and Dreadnoughts dating back to the Mk. 2 OCS platform. Like older dreadnoughts, the zenith of the craft features a central ring which serves as the operations and utility decks of the ship, where small space-to-space drones are launched, and munitions deployed. Around the central ring is the the external ring, which acts the a crew quarters of the spacecraft. Immediately beneath the ring are batteries of lasers and rail guns, allong with several missile silos.

Unlike older designs, the central axis of the spacecraft is dedicated to a relativistic rail gun stretching from zenith to nadir. The rail-gun doubles as the primary propulsion system for interplanetary flight, expelling energized plasma from the fusion reactors to propel itself, while a cluster of smaller engines at the center of mass near the zenith of the craft provide orbital maneuvering and station-keeping. The central ring is broken by four large thrusters facing zenith, used primarily as OMUs, but also providing counter-propulsion when the primary railgun fires.

The Olympus-class ships also acted as fleet-carriers to transport whole battlegroups from the Colonies to Earth. Nadir of the habitation and operations rings are hard-points for carrying up to six *Ares-class* cruisers, along with drop carriers, assault carriers, gunships and drones.

### **Propulsion**

Each ship was outfitted with close-orbit and interplanetary propulsion systems, the latter of which served to transport not only the ship itself, but a whole fleet from the Colonies to Earth, as the advanced gravity propulsion system enabled far more efficient high speed flight than any other form of propulsion. During the Battle of Washington, two of the dreadnoughts dropped their fleets early to burn towards Earth in order to prevent the fall of the Capitol.

### **Armament**

The primary weapon used on these warships is the Mark 19 orbital gun, the first relativistic weapon ever fitted to a military spacecraft. Unlike previous railguns that relied on powerful magnetic coils to accelerate a projectile, these guns were the first to use graviton generators to create an artificial gravity well to accelerate their munitions. They could fire burst– and bombardment rounds, and accelerate a 2 meter round at approximately 0.7c. The gravity system also allowed for the containment and expulsion of high-energy plasma for both propulsion and as an short range Casaba Howitzer. The guns themselves are as long as the entire spacecraft, and are the largest mobile weapons ever built (the largest ever being the nuclear pumped lasers on the Mexican orbitals). Each gun fired a projectile weighing upwards of 3000 kg at a maximum speed of 275,359,373 m/s. The maximum firing rate for the gun is 6 shots per minute, however at relativistic speeds it takes over an hour to recover from a single firing.

Like a magnetic rail gun, relativistic weaponry used unguided iron slugs for projectiles. The firing chamber creates a localized artificial gravity well strong enough to turn the slug into white hot molten metal spear just from the friction of its own molecules being forced against each-other. Once fired, the molten slug will leave the cannon at relativistic speeds (fractions of the speed of light). At large fractions of light speed the mass of the molten slug expands significantly, allowing ships to effect the force of the impact to an exponential degree, depending on how fast the round is moving when it strikes the target. If targeting an object through an atmosphere, a laser is first discharged to help clear any potential drag resistance. No relativistic firing during the War exceeded the the kiloton range of force.

Relativistic weapons are virtually impossible to shoot down, unlike most bombardment weapons, and have delivered the highest destructive yield of any non-nuclear weapon. Depending on how close to the velocity of light the projectile is accelerated to, its mass (and therefore the force of its impact) can vary wildly between a few tons to several million. Mass expansion makes it possible for a kinetic weapon to have variable yield capabilities, and Relativistic Weapons on board Olympus-class ships are capable of discharging a round that impacts with the force of the Krakatoa eruption. No such yield was ever used during the war.