Birth of the Courier
- In 2891, while attempting to reclaim the Edethex system for the Emperor,
the 3rd Fleet suffered one of the worst defeats in its entire history
at the hands of the Federal Navy. The Feds had an "unfair"
advantage, mind you: they had the Asp, fresh off the production lines,
capable of making short work of anything comparable in the Emperor's
fleets. Fearful that this sudden imbalance of power might lead
to a full scale invasion attempt by a now more powerful Federal Navy,
Emperor Fournier ordered the immediate development and production of
a spacecraft FASTER, BIGGER
and STRONGER than the Asp. Problems? Yea.
The Asp had a state of the art two-cycle fusion powered plasma engine
capable of heaving the 150 tons of a fully laden Asp at 22 gees and
one sixth of C on internal fuel only. It was a big ship, with plenty
of room for weapons, fuel and armor. It could absorb tremendous amounts
of damage and keep itself in one piece. And the Emperor wanted something
better.
The first team of engineers concluded that the Emperor was asking
the impossible. They should have known better. The second team of engineers,
after watching the live execution of their colleagues had a sudden burst
of creativity and said that not only it was doable, but that they will
DO it. With that, they set themselves to work.
"Chili sauce smeared butthole"
- First problem that faced the team was speed. The Asp engine was already
at the limits of what could be achieved by plasma engines. Any ship
bigger than the Asp would likely have inferior acceleration. So they
turned to history: a fusion engine was capable of delivering the thrust
required to fling a large vessel with Asp acceleration, and a ramscoop
would allow it to reach tremendous speeds without having to carry impossible
amounts of fuel on board. They needed a ramjet. Unfortunately, the only
ramjets ever build were the size of a small city and were used to eat
lightyears through realspace on their way to colonise a world. Hyperspace
had made them obsolete. Somehow, our fellows had to come up with a miniature
ramjet. And given the fact that material sciences and magnetohydrodynamics
had come a long way since the 2300's, they succeeded. By 2896 they had
a "thing" that was 52 meters in length, 10 meters in diameter,
sucked in hydrogen like a ramscoop and spit out a 2*10^9 Kelvin stream
of plasma at half the speed of light like a fusion engine. From then
on it was a piece of cake, comparatively. They built the rest of the
ship around the engines (yes, two were needed to reach the specs) and
by 2899 the prototype was ready. In a series of tests, it demonstrated
.9 C top speed and 23 gees of acceleration empty at v < .1 C. One
Navy admiral present put it this way: "Folks, that contraption
of yours runs like a cheetah with chili sauce smeared on its butthole".
In other words, success.
The White Navy - By 2900, shipyards
throughout the Empire were spitting out a Courier every 18 hours in
an effort to equip the Navy as soon as possible with this remarkable
ship. This caused great concern in the Federation and caused them to
cancel their invasion plans, for they indeed were thinking to profit
from the Asp's superiority and achieve what had eluded them in the 2350's,
the total anihilation of the Empire. Anyway, in less that 13 years since
its defeat at Edethex, the Imperial Navy had completely replaced everything
except its capital ships with the newly designed Courier and the Osprey,
a project designed to counter the federal Falcon. Since the Osprey and
the Courier sported a predominately white color scheme, HMIN (His Majesty's
Imperial Navy) soon became known as the white Navy. While serving with
the Navy, the Courier was equipped with a lot of stuff, including the
newly designed Navy heavy laser. As such, it became slightly less capable
as the Asp, maneuvrabilty wise. But since it was four times bigger and
the latest Navy modifications really packed a punch, it was regarded
as being capable of making mincemeat out of a squadron of Asps. The
Empire was quick to test this as it launched a series of probing strikes
in Federal space, after 2910. The Courier proved to be the desired "Asp-killer".
While the feds frantically scrambled to counter this new threat, the
Courier evolved into a faster, lighter reconaissance version with longer
hyperspace range and also a heavier and more powerful system defence
version that sported a 100 Megawatt beam laser but was not hyperspace
capable.
Civilian Couriers - By Imperial
decree, Emperor Fournier ordered that the Courier be made avaiable to
the Imperial citisens so that they can defend against Federal "savagery".
Unfortunately this started a major crime wave as police forces were
powerless against the Courier equipped pirates and assasins. Fournier
himself fell prey to a Federal-sponsored hitman in a Courier. His successor,
Duval I ordered that all civilian-sold Couriers be equipped with standard
plasma engines and downgraded flight controls that now required a crew
of three to operate instead of the usual one. This move, effected in
3250 greatly degraded Courier's performance and led to the creation
of an underground smuggling movement of Courier parts required to restore
it to military specs. Still, the civilian Courier had a few aces in
his hand, the extra space that was made avaiable by replacing the fusion
engines with standard ones allowed for a bigger hyperdrive to be fitted
which increased its range well above the standard Navy Courier and even
above the recon version. Recent events suggest that the full spec Courier
will be built again; and even customized and improved versions may be
in order - the Navy decided to release the Courier blueprints to the
public after it announced a Courier successor is on its way. The data
was relabeled as "public domain-releaseable" on 29th December
3300, 1100 PM, Topaz time.