even those where heavy armor was the deciding tactical arm. Dai Nihon’s conquest of space gave a new dimension to the tactical balance: space superiority. Today, it is axiomatic that control of a planet’s surface can only be achieved through control of circumambient space.
— Armored Combat: A Modern Military Overview
Heisaku Ariyoshi
C.E. 2523
Donryu meant Storm Dragon, and she was flagship of Kawashima’s Ohka Squadron. Nine hundred meters long, massing nearly two million tons, she was a Dai Nihon dragonship, one of only nine such vessels in the entire Shichiju. Though she was as swift within the K-T plenum as her smaller consorts, in normal space she had a maximum acceleration of less than half a G and a combat maneuverability that led her crew to call her o-yuseisan, “honored planet,” or, in a more bantering tone, Shiri-omo, “Heavy Ass.” Indeed, her core shielding had begun service as a small, nano-shaped planetoid, and her crew of six thousand was larger than the population of some outpost worlds.
In combat, however, she was not expected to maneuver. Her vast size reflected the massiveness of her Quantum Power Tap; she could generate a harmonically tuned singularity pair massive enough to leak 10 13 joules through her skyscraper-sized converters—some ten thousand gigawatts per second—most of which was required simply to move her ponderous bulk through space. More than enough energy was left over, however, to power her batteries of charged particle and neutron guns, and the exhaust of her plasma drive alone could theoretically sterilize a planet. Her primary long-range weapon, however, was the carrier wing of sentoki, the sleek, highly maneuverable air-space interceptors popularly called space fighters.
There was nothing, nothing throughout the Shichiju to match these Ryu-class carriers. They’d been conceived and constructed during the first four decades of the twenty-sixth century, when the Imperium recognized that the Xenophobes posed a serious threat to humankind but still believed that the alien foe must possess some sort of powerful space fleet in order to spread the Xeno infestations from world to world. That theory had been disproved by the Alyan Expedition, of course, but the Ryus remained a visible symbol of Imperial power, prowess, and invincibility… and the ultimate threat to any challenge of Imperial authority.
There would be no further challenge of that authority, not after 26 Draconis was brought back into the Hegemony’s fold.
Jefferson was dissolving into chaos. Though the government’s first impulse had been to withhold from the public the news that an Imperial fleet was in-system, word had leaked out within minutes through a hundred separate sources. Now, mobs of people filled the parks and walkways between Jefferson’s archaic glass towers, like brightly colored rivers lapping between blue and silver cliffs. A giant towered above them; a five-story display screen raised along the side of the Weiler Building overlooking Franklin Park was replaying Duane Lassiter’s announcement of the fleet’s arrival. As Katya crossed the park, the image of the Eostran delegate seemed to be speaking directly to her, even though she couldn’t hear the words. For that, you needed a newslink feed pressed against your palm interface, or, if you had T-sockets, a ViRcom plugged in and tuned to the appropriate channel. Half of the city’s population, Katya estimated, must be ’faced in by now, as the world’s news services downloaded megabytes of news, sound, picture, and virtual reality, to the panicky crowds.
Katya was amused, in a sour way, that the news services, which had taken surprisingly little interest in the proceedings in the Hall of Congress during the past weeks, had been out in force since Lassiter’s announcement. Reporters and sensors for all the major ViRnews downloaders had invaded the former Sony Building, seeking sensory downloads from anyone who’d had anything
— Armored Combat: A Modern Military Overview
Heisaku Ariyoshi
C.E. 2523
Donryu meant Storm Dragon, and she was flagship of Kawashima’s Ohka Squadron. Nine hundred meters long, massing nearly two million tons, she was a Dai Nihon dragonship, one of only nine such vessels in the entire Shichiju. Though she was as swift within the K-T plenum as her smaller consorts, in normal space she had a maximum acceleration of less than half a G and a combat maneuverability that led her crew to call her o-yuseisan, “honored planet,” or, in a more bantering tone, Shiri-omo, “Heavy Ass.” Indeed, her core shielding had begun service as a small, nano-shaped planetoid, and her crew of six thousand was larger than the population of some outpost worlds.
In combat, however, she was not expected to maneuver. Her vast size reflected the massiveness of her Quantum Power Tap; she could generate a harmonically tuned singularity pair massive enough to leak 10 13 joules through her skyscraper-sized converters—some ten thousand gigawatts per second—most of which was required simply to move her ponderous bulk through space. More than enough energy was left over, however, to power her batteries of charged particle and neutron guns, and the exhaust of her plasma drive alone could theoretically sterilize a planet. Her primary long-range weapon, however, was the carrier wing of sentoki, the sleek, highly maneuverable air-space interceptors popularly called space fighters.
There was nothing, nothing throughout the Shichiju to match these Ryu-class carriers. They’d been conceived and constructed during the first four decades of the twenty-sixth century, when the Imperium recognized that the Xenophobes posed a serious threat to humankind but still believed that the alien foe must possess some sort of powerful space fleet in order to spread the Xeno infestations from world to world. That theory had been disproved by the Alyan Expedition, of course, but the Ryus remained a visible symbol of Imperial power, prowess, and invincibility… and the ultimate threat to any challenge of Imperial authority.
There would be no further challenge of that authority, not after 26 Draconis was brought back into the Hegemony’s fold.
Jefferson was dissolving into chaos. Though the government’s first impulse had been to withhold from the public the news that an Imperial fleet was in-system, word had leaked out within minutes through a hundred separate sources. Now, mobs of people filled the parks and walkways between Jefferson’s archaic glass towers, like brightly colored rivers lapping between blue and silver cliffs. A giant towered above them; a five-story display screen raised along the side of the Weiler Building overlooking Franklin Park was replaying Duane Lassiter’s announcement of the fleet’s arrival. As Katya crossed the park, the image of the Eostran delegate seemed to be speaking directly to her, even though she couldn’t hear the words. For that, you needed a newslink feed pressed against your palm interface, or, if you had T-sockets, a ViRcom plugged in and tuned to the appropriate channel. Half of the city’s population, Katya estimated, must be ’faced in by now, as the world’s news services downloaded megabytes of news, sound, picture, and virtual reality, to the panicky crowds.
Katya was amused, in a sour way, that the news services, which had taken surprisingly little interest in the proceedings in the Hall of Congress during the past weeks, had been out in force since Lassiter’s announcement. Reporters and sensors for all the major ViRnews downloaders had invaded the former Sony Building, seeking sensory downloads from anyone who’d had anything
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