 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | |
MEDICAL
CAT-style scanners are standard features aboard most major installations. Portable medical scanners usually take up a large satchel, but provide detailed information on a patient's condition, including vital signs, temperature, sources within the body of heightened activity and chemical imbalance. The results from such scans are generally only readable by highly-trained medical personnel, however; they are meaningless to the average soldier. Chemical inducement of tissue regrowth is in it's infancy; protoplasters, regeneration, and 'rejuve' therapies are far from perfect development. Computer 'expert systems' using Autonomous Intelligence (AutI) programming are found in the largest medical facilities (at the present time, these are the flagship's sickbay, and the Florence Nightingale Hospital on Deneb V.)
There is no single effective cure for cancers; however, treatments that are much less damaging than 20th-Century radio- and chemo-therapies are available, and the success rate for these are well into the upper 80 percent. Immunology and viropathology studies are well-seated in a significant understanding of viral properties. It is, in theory, possible to completely destroy a virus by genetically engineering a counter-virus; however, there is great reluctance to do this as there is no certain means for prevening the countervirus from mutating into a malignant form.
Prosthetics are at a stage where they function almost but not quite as well as natural limbs. Shipboard and station personnel are not discharged if they must wear a prosthetic; marine personnel as a matter of course must be. There is currently no way to replace lost eyes or other highly-complex organs. Artificial hearts, lungs, and livers are possible and are well-understood technologies.
Bio-containment with a reasonable degree of integrity is possible through micro-engineering of things such as vents, seals, and such. A well-tended isolation laboratory (isolab) is considered safe to contain dangerous pathogens aboard a ship. CSA personnel are regularly immunized against all known biological agents, both natural and artificial. The threat of conflict with Tandara has caused the field of bio-containment to be unusually well-researched. This is in addition to research conducted due to exploration of new and unknown worlds. Hematology is also well-researched, alowing a hematology lab present aboard all stations and surface facilities, and in most major starships (destroyer and larger.)
Medical databases, coupled with computer and AutI developments, have allowed the CSA a good ability to store the wide variety of species' medical data and biological data. This data processing ability does not carry over entirely to data collection, as some tests and examinations take several days and some tests may not be carried out simultaneously. Nevertheless, with diligence, a CSA medical facility, coupled with a science division, can determine most major parameters and 'normal' statistics for an unknown sentient lifeform within a few days.
Common medical implements include spray-bandage, an antiseptic, fast-drying coagulant and liquid dressing; quick-acting foam splints; skeletal sonograph, utilizing sonograms to map the skeletal structure of a being in the field without resorting to ionizing X-rays; laser scalpels, short-lived and short-ranged but generally better than stainless steel; needleless sutures, basically bio-adhesive strips that hold as tightly as sutures but without need for a needle to apply them and which dissolve after several days; various drugs including local and general anesthetics that are less harmful and faster-acting than previous ones, local coagulents, finely-controllable vasodilators and vasoconstrictors, and a wide variety of 'universal' poison cures; and the field pharmaecopia, which, with a properly-trained medic, can produce almost any frequently-needed drug. The selection of the latter is limited, however, restricted to common first-aid medicines and certain 'universal' antidotes.
MATERIALS
Most fabrics are a resistweave polymer, designed for (some) comfort and resistance to damage. All CSA duty uniforms are of this type of material, weather fatigues or coveralls or flight suits. Dress uniforms and casual attire are generaly synthetics or, preferably, made from a high-tensile-strength cousin of simple terrestrial cotton found on Deneb V. Personal body armor consists of carbon alloys, ballistic cloth, and high-density polymer solids.
While most buildings at New Bergen Spacefield are stone, this is because of it's proximity to the somewhat rich Brotherhood Quarry and it's high-grade granites. The Cloisters, the capitol building and high command center, is almost entirely granite. More secure buildings, such as the Thunder Point interdictor and the Galatea Spaceguard Comand Center, are made from a high-strength ferrocrete that has been impregnated with disruptive particles, designed to foil TEMPEST and some forms of more advanced sensors. Civilian buildings tend to be Fraternity granite or ferrocrete.
Starship hulls are a tribute to the determination of CSA shipwrights' refusal to see their ships as being at a disadvantage without shields. The armor belt on a CSA ship is the thickest in space, of course, but it has additional benefits: there is a layer, consisting of highly refractory ceramic plates and embedded high-temperature superconducting cables, designed to counter the effects of directed-energy weapons. The armor belt is also typically double-layered, both layers being lminated alloys, with a honeycombed void space filled with kinetic-, thermal-, and radiation-absorbtive aerogel. Beneath the innermost armor layer is another void space, folowed by the outer hull proper of the ship, then a pressure hull, beyond which is the inhabited areas of the starship. Just below the first armor layer is a thick ablative layer, and above the armor is a highly advanced 'blackball' stealth coating, greatly reducing the ship's radar and sensor cross-sections. The surface of the hull is also designed to absorb, scatter, and refract sensor and radar scans, though against advanced sensors it doesn't do this as well as with radar.
The armor of the new generation of fighting suits is likewise very advanced. It, too, is a double-layer 'sandwich,' with ablative material in between the laminate alloy layers. This abltive material is highly advanced for Cygnus, being a semi-foaming agent that also functions to reduce the kinetic energy of weapons fire and also absorbs thermal and ionizing radiation.
Surface installations are typically pre-fab, however, a system for colonizing remote, near-hostile worlds and for forming outposts upon same was developed. The Bernoulli-vonNewmann factory, named after the theories that the seed factory operates upon, is able to create devices with their own, independant functions, but also to create a device that can create additional devices. To be more specific, a CSA Colonial seed factory, a highly expensive item, is landed on the surface of the target world. The seed factory deploys small robotic 'doolies,' to build from both local materials and items brought aboard the seed factory, a small fusion powerplant, a habitation/command module, a materials processor, and a multipurpose reconfigurable field factory. It was technology intended for in-theater production of supplies that allowed the concept of the seed factory to be implemented.
If the seed factory is to create the core of more than a simple outpost, then what follows after it are landers carrying supplies and colonists. Among the materials shipped down are construction vehicles, also known as ConVecs, and pallets for building additional structures. A number of robot vehicles are also provided, robot surveyors, miners, and explorers. Also typically shipped down are a handful (for a small frontier colony or outpost, no more than two) of light combat vehicles, six-wheeled, lightly armored vehicles with electrothermal hyperkinetic cannons. Small six-legged arachnid robots, used for maintenance, are also provided; some of these, called 'Widowmakers,' are armed with rapidfire support plasers. There are rarely very many full-time militia. Usually there is a small core of marines assigned to Colonial as cadre and security; a military police officer is assigned as 'sherriff.' However, most Colonial personnel are given basic combat training, and all can use plaser rifles.
Cygnus does not have widespread gravity control. Most vessels and stations must rely on rotational 'gravity' and a ship that is not so equipped is not considered for long range/long duration operations, as physiological effects inevitably set in after long exposure to microgravity. Only ships equipped with jump engines may make use of synthetic gravity and tractor beams; these systems draw as much power as the jump drives, and when the jump drives are powered up the synthegrav must be ramped down. Following transit (either ingress to or egress from jumpspace) the synthegrav may be ramped back up.
TRANSPORTATION
The penultimate form of transport in Cygnus is, of course, the jump engine. These are incredibly expensive and power-hungry devices that are found only on the largest starships. The smallest so far is the CSA Orion, a test bed that has since been made into a jump scout ship. Jump gates are a related technology, allowing a ship without jump engines to enter jumpspace. While technologically more complex, and also limiting on the destinations a ship can reach, they allow otherwise short-ranged ships the chance to reach other star systems.
Starships use either fusion drives or, for smaller ships, plasma recombustion engines. Small craft use high-thrust ion engines or plasma recombustion engines. Standard CSA capship-grade fusion engines use a sustained closed-wave fusion event to produce thrust directly. The engine can be run continuously for long periods of time, a desirable feature in capships that can find themselves stranded, without communications or jump engines, deep in the Trinity zone. The mutineers building the CSA Black Star did not have this admittedly difficult technology available to them. The chandlers compromised, using a plasma-based variant of the Daedalus engines. A constant stream of fuel, a carefully-metered mixture of hydrogen and deuterium, is injected into the initial plasmatic firing chamber, where a first-stage laser flash assembly flashes the fuel into plasma. Electromagnetic fields channel the plasma stream into the primary firing chamber, where a combination of lasers and a 'choke' in the EM field cause the plasma to actively fuse. The engine creates a great deal of thrust, much more than plasma recombustion engines, but it is not as efficient as the standard fusion engine. Also unlike the SC-WFE engine, the laser-flash fusion engine may not be continuously run for long periods of time. One advantage that the L-FF engine has is that magnetohydrodynamic couplers may be installed and selectively engaged in order to draw electrical power from the engines. MHDs remain less efficent, if less complex, than the newer magnetothermodynamic couplers.
The problem with all types of fusion, plasma, and even ion engines is that they leave an ion residue in their wake. A common deep space combat strategy is to detect these trails of ions and use them to either backtrack courses, or follow them to their ship of origin. Various means are used to disperse the ion wake; few are ever really effective against an opponent with towed arrays, cloakhunters, banks of sensors, and determination. The carbon-diamond NERVA engine seeks to provide some stealth ability. It is not nearly as efficent as other engine types, but it does prevent ion wake traces. Its theory of operation is based on the NERVA project studies, for 'Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications.' The heart of the engine is basically a plasma core. Over this core, a reaction mass slush formed of micron-sized particulates of industrial carbon diamond is passed. The particulates become extremely energetic, and verge on the plasma state. The particulates are then accellerated in an electromagnetic field and used for thrust. When the particulates cool, they revert to their crystalline state, unionized and non-radioactive. Unless one were to make a long and time-consuming study of all the deep-space particulates in a vast region of space (during which time the craft being pursued would be long gone), it's not possible to track such an engine by its exhaust. Because of its specialized nature and very low efficency, only the Bricriu-class armored scout uses this engine type, and it has plasma turbines as auxiliaries.
PLASERS
Almost a Cygnian trademark, the plasma-laser fires a laser-ignited pellet of ceramite enclosing a helium compound that turns to plasma easily. The plasma 'bullet' is bonded by the laser beam, which accellerates it and adds energy to it prior to release from the weapon. The plaser is ubiquitous in the CSA. Holdout plasers are some officers' last line of defense, while security often carries hand plasers or heavy plaser pistols. The standard infantry weapon is a plaser rifle, and heavier plasers are found on armored fighting vehicles. The heaviest are the tertiary weapons batteries aboard ships, able to be used in point-defense, antifighter, and small ship attack roles. Heavier, 'spatial artillery' versions do not exist, though plaser technology went into development of pulse plasma discharge cannons and the superior pulse plasma impact incendiary round for spatial massdrivers.
INFANTRY
The typical CSA marine rifleman carries a plaser rifle into combat. This weapon is usually equipped with a battlefield laser/reflex sight, and can fire in single or burst modes. It can fire approximately fifty rounds before needing a new magazine. The infantryman is also usually equipped with a fighting blade and set of hand grenades, usually HE, sometimes fragmentation, once in a while plasma concussion. The standard CSA resistweave fatigues are augmented by a protective armor flak vest, or jacket or for more intense situations a full set of combat body armor. For hostile environs, a combat environment suit is worn; this is an exterior resistweve and armor suit and helmet over a thin environment suit. One or two members of a squad may carry grenade launchers, though these are not typically carried considering their limited usefulness in vacuum and the intense damage they can do to a pressure hull aboard ship. Squad support weapons are typically manpack infantry lasers or VRF gauss guns (AKA 'perforator'). Man-portable plasma guns (PGMPs) are reserved for weapons platoons. Semiportable hyperkinetic field guns, towed by panzers, provide basic company- and battalion-level support but these weapons are rare; as with artillery, aviatry and orbital resources provide most fire support. HK sniper rifles are available to marine scouts.
FIGHTING SUITS
A recent development, the fighting suit is designed to give the typical CSA infantryman an advantage in modern combat. It is basically a suit of powered armor, enhancing the wearer's strength and mobility while protecting him or her from the environment. In addition, the fighting suit can carry heavier weapons. Typically, a fighting suit will carry a rapidfire hyperkinetic rifle, and a heavy plaser carbine and five-tube missile launcher fixed to the suit. The launcher fires missiles guided by the pilot's programming, and both the carbine and rifle are tied into the suit's targeting systems.
CAVALRY
Currently, the CSA has a handful of armored fighting vehicles. These are tracked vehicles armed with a main massdriver, a coaxial heavy plaser, a pair of Sherwood gimbal-mounted battlefield lasers, and a rack of field missiles. The other, more common combat vehicle is a wheeled vehicle armed with either a plaser, a laser, a rack of mssiles, or a hyperkinetic cannon. This wheeled vehicle, sometimes known as a 'panzer,' is also capable of carrying small infantry units and is the basic combat utility vehicle. Rumors abound of tests being conducted in remote locations of 'votoms,' also known as anthrotanks or bipedal mecha. In general, anthrotanks are unsuitable for Cygnian tactics. The Widowmaker arachnid robot is more suitable, being a small, disposable, semi-autonomous battlefield robot armed with a pair of plaser cannons.
ARTILLERY
The CSA relies on orbital resources or aviatry for artillery and fire support, though the field missiles carried by the AFVs or panzers can be fired in a long-range indirect fire mode, with good accuracy if forward observers are present to 'paint' a target with an encoded targeting laser.
AVIATRY
Marine units are delivered to a planet in one of two ways. The first is by assault lander, which can drop a full platoon right into the fray. The other, more common method, is by A-9D dropship. This light craft, able to carry two squads of infantry, is designed to punch through an atmosphere and either drop its troops from altitude, or to land in anything even halfway resembling a landing zone, or even hover above ground, and release its troops.
There is a spaceborne counterpart to the dropship, known as the GosHawk OTV, designed to deliver two squads of space marines to a vessel under combat conditions. It is equipped with a boarding airlock and is based upon the Gosling OTV spaceframe, which was also the source for the Coventry cloakhunter.
A vehicle related to the dropship is the A-9G gunship, a vehicle armed with a battlefield laser, light hyperkinetic cannon, and a pair of field missile racks. Gunships, unlike their dropship cousins, are often used in antiorbital strikes, carrying ASAT rockets. They can also be found escorting GosHawks. They are rarely used for high-intensity space combat, however, as the Nebula Starfury and Lightningbolt are much more suited to this.
The A-9S strikeship is essentially a 'dive' attack fighter, designed to enter an atmosphere and deliver a payload of ordnance quickly. Unlike the gunship, whose mission is tactical fire support, the strikeship is intended to take out hardened targets and to attack other aerial and orbital units, using a generous ordnance load, a pair of fixed rapidfire plasers, and a battlefield laser. Since the Lightningbolt and IT-7 Defender already fulfill this mission, no A-9S's are currently in service or production.
Armored fighting vehicles and panzers are delivered by D-10 heavy lifters. Able to carry two AFVs or three panzers, or a dozen Widowmakers, the D-10 can, in theory, be outfitted as a heavy bomber. The D-10B variant is capable of carrying the largest ordnance, and a test-fire of a StarLance missile was undertaken once. The D-10 is therefore part of the Skysplitter defense network for Deneb V, carrying StarLances to the edge of atmosphere before releasing them against orbiting capital ships. A D-10B can also carry a total of eight shrikes, and also fills the role of shrike carriage and delivery in the Skysplitter net. D-10s can be outfitted as advanced early warning and control aircraft, D-10Es, as well, although none have been produced yet.
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- GUIDED
The StarLance is an autonomous 'cruise'-style missile designed for long-range attack of capital ships. Armed with either a reflex warhead or a very powerful plasma consussion wearhead, or, on occassion, a detonation-pumped laser or atomic warhead, the StarLance is a canny, multimode, stealthy weapon. Effective use of the weapon is achieved when using an advanced fire control and tracking system, such as Artemis or LORICA-Plus.
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- HEAVY
This class of weapons is those that have fixed firing arcs but do not rate being classed as spinal, coaxial, axial, or janus mounts. In the CSA, these are typically neutral particle accellerator weapons, or fusion lasers. The NPAW is a large, heavy particle beam cannon that projects a very powerful beam of neutral particles against a target, resulting in radiation and EMP effects as well as thermal and impact damage. The fusion laser is a device that uses a small, tamped fusion reaction, and directly lases the output; the weapon effectively powers itself though it does need 'seed energy' from the ship's weapons power delivery systems. The NPAW is well-suited to long range combat, with highy accurate fire control available to it. The fusion laser is slightly less elegant and more suited to close-quarters saber dancing, but with a good fire control system and a steady hand on the helm it can be used effectively at great ranges.
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- HYPERKINETIC
The hyperkinetic cannon isn't a massdriver proper. It uses a binary
liquid propellant and an electrothermal ignition system, coupled with a
very fast reloading mechanism and liquid cooling system. Typical calibers
for HK cannons are between 50 and 100mm; the projectile, usually a high
explosive/armor piercing round, is accellerated to extremely high
velocities through an alloy-lined barrel, making larger calibers
unneccessary; higher damage ratings are usually achieved by using
turreted massdrivers, such as those aboard the Blacksilver. Various hyperkinetic cannons are also used by some ground vehicles.
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- MASSDRIVERS
Not to be confused with the kinetic-kill weapons, hyperkinetic cannons, or plasers, massdrivers come in two forms in the CSA: the turret-mounted version and the spinal. Only the CSA Blacksilver carried a spinal massdriver, and this installation required recoil thrust gates on her engines, moreso because the weapon, while 'spinal,' was mounted off the ship's center of mass. It usually fired a 10cm 'crowbar,' a zero-fault machined penetrator designed to dump all of it's kinetic energy into the target. Originally designed to break a target's spine in one shot, the weapon could only manage projectile velocities in the subrelativistic range.
The turret-mounted massdriver is more common. These are heavy weapons that are often called upon to conduct surface-support fire operations as well as being brought to bear in starship combat actions. They are typically mounted broadsides, allowing a withering barrage from the sides while heavy weapons such as fusion lasers or NPAWs take up the offense forward and aft. Normally they can fire fragmenting impactors, penetrators, or the new pulse plasma impact incendiary rounds.
PULSE PLASMA DISCHARGE CANNON
The plaser by itself is a good weapon. However, it's main drawback is
that it has limited ammunition in the form of the ceramite-enclosed
helium. Certain advances in high-temperature physics allowed the
production of a limited, true plasma gun: the pulse plasma discharge
cannon. This weapon uses a very small 'seed' of hydrogen fuel skimmed
from the main engine fuel tanks, flashes it with a series of lasers, and
accellerates it down a short magnetic-field-lined barrel. Without the
need to vaporize the ceramite round, the lasers can vastly increase the
energy of the plasma seed, and accellerate it more. However, these
additional systems require increases in power, and so only ships mount
pulse cannons. Nevertheless, the weapon can be fired rapidly, and
performs well at short-to-medium ranges.
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- TORPEDOS
The torpedo is a highly versatile weapon. They are often used in both space combat and surface action support/orbital bombardment. Using some autonomous programming, it is a medium-range weapon that delivers a payload against its target. These payloads can vary hugely. Some of them are listed here:
STARSHIP WEAPONS -- MINES
Much like torpedoes, mines come with a variety of payloads. The most common mine, and generally the only one acknowledged to be usable in deep space, is the MANTIS (Mobile ANTI-Ship) mine. Using a small 'cold' chemical thruster and compressed gas to maneuver, these stealthy weapons can track and, to some limited extent, hunt objects identified as targets in their preprogrammed database.
SHOTPACTORS
The shotpactor, sometimes called an ILR shotpactor, was developed by mutinous forces during the CSA civil war. It is a heavy kinetic weapon designed to attack targets on a planetary surface. This is also a weapon of mass destruction. The shotpactor is fired at extremely high velocities at the target, and as it enters the atmosphere it breaks up into several hundred smaller impactors, distributing the massive thermal and kinetic energy of the projectile over a great area and increasing by several factors the force of the shockwave. Since it produces no radioactive fallout, it is currently the only WOMD that, by CSA policy, may be deployed. It is usually deployed by a StarLance launcher.
REFLEX WEAPONS
The reflex weapon is considered 'second stage' in terms of weapons of mass destruction of the CSA. It is based on the principle of accellerated proton decay. Approved for use in ship-to-ship combat, in addition to the weapon's powerful blast -- usually one hundred kilotonnes for torpedo warheads and one-point-two megatonnes for capship missiles -- it releases a brief, highly intense burst of non-ionizing radiation. This prevents fallout or most harmful radiation effects, though high-energy subnuclear particles are still created.
NOVA WEAPONS
Using degenrate matter found in stars that have gone or are about to go nova, the so-called nova bomb is a weapon of incredible destructive force. The standard CSA nova bomb is equivalent to four of five hundred megatonnes standard. It is highly unstable, and cannot be delivered by missile or torpedo, only by freefall bomb casing or low-velocity delivery vehicle. By CSA policy only the small stockpile of five nova bombs is maintained, holdovers from the occupation of 61 Cygnus; currently no plans exist to construct additional nova bombs. The CSA keeps these weapons in a secure, undisclosed location. (Classified UMBRA)
ARMOR
Starship hulls are a tribute to the determination of CSA shipwrights' refusal to see their ships as being at a disadvantage without shields. The armor belt on a CSA ship is the thickest in space, of course, but it has additional benefits: there is a layer, consisting of highly refractory ceramic plates and embedded high-temperature superconducting cables, designed to counter the effects of directed-energy weapons. The armor belt is also typically double-layered, both layers being laminated alloys, with a honeycombed void space filled with kinetic-, thermal-, and radiation-absorbtive aerogel. Beneath the innermost armor layer is another void space, folowed by the outer hull proper of the ship, then a pressure hull, beyond which is the inhabited areas of the starship. Just below the first armor layer is a thick ablative layer, and above the armor is a highly advanced 'blackball' stealth coating, greatly reducing the ship's radar and sensor cross-sections. The surface of the hull is also designed to absorb, scatter, and refract sensor and radar scans, though against advanced sensors it doesn't do this as well as with radar.
ELECTRONIC WARFARE
Several types of electronic warfare systems are used by the CSA. Jammers, with an effective range from 10 to 100 kilometers, buries anything within that range with (admittedly highly visible) static. These are typically coupled with sensor maskers, which do the opposite: the ship and near space within approximately one to ten kilometers is the closest thing to a cloak Cygnus can manage, a region of greatly reduced sensor returns. Focussed sensors will, however, pick out the affected ships, and sensor anomalies and artifacts will be a problem. This is usually used to great effect when silent running, though some simulations have suggested that not using the masking arrays adds to the effectiveness of EMCON (emissions control) by avoiding situations such as small asteroidal debris suddenly disappearing from sensors in the region near the attempting-to-hide ships.
As for offensive EW systems, a counterjamming array is used. These are advanced sensors designed to scan sensor interference specifically, linked to a computer bank to defeat jamming and generating a destructively harmonic counterjamming pattern. The DFF track-on-jam/pattern analyzer has a library of jamming patterns, and uses this information to determine the source of jamming. It can, in theory, be defeated by asymmetric interference generation, though the pattern analysis portion of the array. Finally, the bernoulli sensor manticore is designed to counter sensor chimera technology, which uses exotic alloys and false sensor returns to conceal a ship's components and equipment and, sometimes, true shillouette. The manticore is a very delicate system, however, an extremely sensitive piece of equipment, and is engaged only rarely, though it's computer is as hardy as any other CSA electro-optical system.
ANTI-TRANSPORTER SYSTEMS
In between the outer hull and the inner armor layer is a series of conduits that feed a complex network of tandem twisted-pair cabling. These conduits carry high-energy phased radio frequency energy, and the network is designed to destructively interfere with transporter systems. This system makes the ship highly visible to electromagnetic sensors, however, so a coaxial harmonic system is engaged when stealth is required. This dramatically reduces the EM signature of the ship, with only a slight reduction of effectiveness, enough to prevent quantum-level and most molecular-level transports into the ship.