Shipboard Phasers

Even before the development of true interstellar spacecraft by various cultures, it was clear that directed-energy devices would be necessary to assist in clearing gas, dust, and micrometeoroid material from vehicle flight paths. Emerging space-faring races are continuing to employ this method as an excellent maximizer of shipboard energy budgets, because a relatively small energy expenditure produces a large result. Material in space can be vaporized, ionized, and eliminated as a hazard to spaceflight. It did not take an enormous leap of imagination, of course, to realize that directed energy could also prove to be an effective weapon system.

The lead defensive system maintained by Starfleet Command for sublight use for the last century is the phaser, the common term for a complicated energy release process developed to replace pure EM devices such as the laser, and particle beam accelerators. Phaser is something of a holdover acronym, PHASed Energy Rectification, referring to the original process by which stored or supplied energy entering the phaser system was converted to another form for release toward a target, without the need for an intermediate energy transformation. This remains essentially true in the current phaser effect.

Phaser energy is released through the application of the rapid nadion effect (RNE). Rapid nadions are short-lived subatomic particles possessing special properties related to high-speed interactions within atomic nuclei. Among these properties is the ability to liberate and transfer strong nuclear forces within a particular class of superconducting crystals known as fushigi-no-umi. The crystals were so named when it appeared to researchers at Starfleet's Tokyo R&D facility that the materials being developed represented a virtual "sea of wonder" before them.

### Shipboard Phasers

Even though the Nova Class is a small vessel, it still utilizes the Type-X array system. The four arrays are all Type-X, the new standard emitter. Individual emitter segments are capable of directing 6.0 megawatts. By comparison, the small personal phasers issued to Starfleet crew members are Type I and II, the latter being limited to 0.01 MW. Certain large dedicated planetary defense emitters are designated as Type X+, as their exact energy output remains classified.

#### Array Locations

Dorsal saucer section is covered by four phaser strips; two of which extend from the aft curvature, along the length of the saucer and stop short of the auxiliary deflector incision. The aft firing arc is covered by two smaller arrays angled on the rear of the saucer section. The relative bottom of the ship is protected by two similar arrays as on the Dorsal, extending to the rear of the saucer and following the curve to the aux deflector incision.

Additional protection is provided by a single array that extends laterally across the ventral engineering hull just fore of the warpcore ejection port. Far aft strips placed laterally on either side of the main shuttlebay on the dorsal engineering hull cover the rearmost firing arc for a total of nine phaser strips.

#### Array Construction

Each array consists of two hundred emitter segments in a dense linear arrangement for optimal control of firing order, thermal effects, field halos, and target impact. Groups of emitters are supplied by redundant sets of energy feeds from the primary trunks of the electro plasma system (EPS), and are similarly interconnected by fire control, thermal management, and sensor lines. The visible hull surface configuration of the phaser is a long shallow raised strip, the bulk of the hardware submerged within the vehicle frame.

In cross section, the phaser array takes on a thickened Y shape, capped with a trapezoidal mass of the actual emitter crystal and phaser-transparent hull antierosion coatings. The base of an array segment sits within a structural honeycomb channel of duranium 235 and supplied with supersonic regenerative LN2 cooling. The complete channel is thermally isolated by eight hundred link struts to the tritanium vehicle frame.

The first stage of the array segment is the EPS submaster flow regulator, the principal mechanism controlling phaser power levels for firing. The flow regulator leads into the plasma distribution manifold (PDM), which branches into two hundred supply conduits to an equal number of prefire chambers. The final stage of the system is the phaser emitter crystal.

Each array fires a steady beam of phaser energy, and the forced-focus emitters discharge the phasers at speeds approaching .986c (which works out to about 182,520 miles per second - nearly warp one). The phaser array automatically rotates phaser frequency and attempts to lock onto the frequency and phase of a threat vehicle's shields for shield penetration.

### Activation Sequence

Upon receiving the command to fire, the EPS submaster flow regulator manages the energetic plasma powering the phaser array through a series of physical irises and magnetic switching gates. Iris response is 0.01 seconds and is used for gross adjustments in plasma distribution; magnetic gate response is 0.0003 seconds and is employed for rapid finetuning of plasma routing within small sections of an array.

Normal control of all irises and gates is affected through the autonomic side of the phaser function command processor, coordinated with the Threat assessment/tracking/targeting system (TA/T/TS). The regulator is manufactured from combined-crystal sonodanite, solenogyn, and rabium tritonide, and lined with a 1.2 cm layer of paranygen animide to provide structural surface protection. Energy is conveyed from each flow regulator to the PDM, a secondary computer-controlled valving device at the head end of each prefire chamber.

The manifold is a single crystal boronite solid, and is machined by phaser cutters. The prefire chamber is a sphere of LiCu 518 reinforced with wound hafnium tritonide, which is gamma- welded. It is within the prefire chamber that energy from the plasma undergoes the handoff and initial EM spectrum shift associated with the rapid nadion effect (RNE).

The energy is confined for between 0.05 and 1.3 nanoseconds by a collapsible charge barrier before passing to the LiCu 518 emitter for discharge. The action of raising and collapsing the charge barrier forms the required pulse for the RNE. The power level commanded by the system or voluntarily set by the responsible officer determines the relative proportion of protonic charge that will be created and pulse frequency in the final emitter stage.

### Beam Emission

The trifaceted crystal that constitutes the final discharge stage is formed from LiCu 518 and measures 3.25 x 2.45 x 1.25 meters for a single segment. The crystal lattice formula used in the forced-matrix process is LixCu»:Si::Fe>:>:0. The collimated energy beam exits one or more of the facets, depending on which prefire chambers are being pumped with plasma.

The segment firing order, as controlled by the phaser function command processor, together with facet discharge direction, determines the final beam vector. Energy from all discharged segments passes directionally over neighboring segments due to force coupling, converging on the release point, where the beam will emerge and travel at near light speed to the target. Narrow beams are created by rapid segment order firing; wider fan or cone beams result from slower firing rates. Wide beams are, of course, prone to marked power loss per unit area covered.