Tech-Cruiser

Officially the akkat ("unity") class, the Tech-Cruiser was, until the introduction of the Tech-Explorer, the largest non-freighter ship built in Gaeni space. The hull was based on the Pallas-Abatt Institute's mortallar-class interstellar research platform, but so many compromises and hybridizations had taken place by the time the prototype was laid down, and so much individual variation already planned for the following hulls according to the whims of their commissioning institutes, that the ship was clearly something entirely different. Even the hull itself had expanded from 1.2 megatons to 1.5 megatons. Though the kludgework of high-powered components makes for an inelegant and somewhat unstable package, the high performances of each individual subsystem give rise to some surprising emergent qualities that make the tech-cruiser a versatile and useful craft in nearly any situation. Assuming nothing goes wrong.

Starting at the rear starboard quarter of the vessel, the blocky, isometric stardrive unit contains the vessel's warp core, along with what many would consider a slightly excessive supply of antimatter fuel. This volatile warehouse is justified, however, by both the large bulk of the ship in proportion to its slightly undersized nacelles, and the many self-powered devices used throughout the ship, some of which are likewise annihilation-powered. Nearly half of the cruiser's 235 crew technicians are stationed around the warp core and antimatter containment units, where they constantly perform minute-to-minute alterations to flow rates and reaction amplitudes to keep up with the fluctuating power requirements of the rest of the ship. There is no way to safely eject this mess of annihilation bombs waiting to happen; instead of a core ejection sequence, the tech-cruiser has the ability to release the entire engineering section, giving the crew onboard scarcely little time to evacuate.

Mounted off to the side is the tower-like nacelle pylon, which extends dozens of meters above and below the starboard hull and holds the cruiser's twin rod nacelles off to the side. While the nacelle placement is hardly ideal for the size and shape of the cruiser (which accounts, in part, of the vessel's low cruising warp), they were not placed with solely propulsion in mind. The tech-cruiser can reshape its warp bubble out to a distance of several kilometers off the starboard hull, enveloping other ships, stellar objects, or spacial phenomenon in its area of altered physics for the purpose of anchoring, capture, or experimental manipulation. Perhaps even more impressively, the nacelles can narrow their field to create a narrow V-shape of warped space that intersects 60 meters off the midpoint of the pylon tower. At the intersection point, space is tightly compressed into what the gaeni call a "subspace spring." A large object that intersects with this vortice will be ripped to shreds as its internals fluctuate wildly in effective mass. A small object, however, will be launched away at high warp, at a trajectory that can be manipulated via micro-adjustments of the field projectors. Just port of engineering, the ship's dual impulse thrusters strain against their asymmetrical burden, helped along by low-intensity warp fields. Compared to the warp engines, gaeni impulse thrusters are fairly standard.

Moving forward and portward, the auxiliary deflector dome is built into the raised section of the main hull that locks the engineering module in place; as close as possible to the antimatter fuel without actually putting it on the ejectable section. This deflector takes on the role of shielding the ship when the main deflector sphere (see below) is occupied with special operations, and works in tandem with it otherwise; this redundancy is partly to thank for the tech-cruiser's unusually strong shielding. Protruding from the port hull is the shelflike longranged sensor module, which boasts some of the most impressive subspace, gravitational, and radioscopic scanning technology in the known galaxy. While auxiliary sensor banks can be found along the sides of the ship's midsection, it is the port module that enables the tech-cruiser to perform deep scans of high-energy nebulae and dense planetary cores, or to track warp signatures from the better part of a sector away. Just beneath the large subspace sensor disc is the tech-cruiser's largest transporter room; working from the same module computer as the sensors, this longranged transporter can beam through much more interference or obstruction than most ships could ever dream, assuming the transport technician - cybernetically plugged into the aforementioned computer - knows what they are doing. The Haddas-Amal team that designed the transporter have left an open challenge to Starfleet's Captain Straak to outperform a skilled tech-cruiser crew at beaming through solid rock. To date, the Vulcan has not responded to this challenge.

The midship is the most conventional area of the tech-cruiser, and the least modified from the original Pallas-Abbat design. Crew quarters, cargo bays, and simple laboratory and infirmary spaces are arranged along a pair of powered corridors that stretch from the impulse engines to the ship's prow, just above the EPS aorta that powers the anterior systems, including the secondary sensors previously mentioned. The technician associates' quarters are the furthest back, near the engineering section, then the enlisted associate spacers, then the larger and more comfortable accommodations for the ship's specialists; a total crew count of 470. At the front, just before the main deflector housing, are the large recreation center, state and conference rooms for the Senior Naval Specialist and any VIP guests, and the bridge. These are all supplied by a distributed environmental control network based on the escape pods, and by the signature gaen technology of food replicators that draw upon a supply of highly compressed recycled matter in a ventral storage compartment to create any of a vast cookbook's worth of recipes.

The very front of the ship houses a final auxiliary sensor bank, as well as the large, box-shaped shuttle hangar hanging off the starboard hull and the huge main deflector sphere opposite it, on the port. In addition to conventional shuttlecraft, the hangar typically carries a variety of probes and other remote devices with modular high-energy onboard engines fueled from the ship's antimatter store. Frighteningly, said antimatter is carried along the powered corridors along the entire length of the ship from engineering when these drones need refueling. The sphere shaped main deflector, clearly visible from almost any side of the ship, isn't the strongest or most reliable shield generator in known space, but it is without a doubt the most versatile. In addition to maintaining the main shield layer around the tech-cruiser, the sphere can - assuming a skilled and quick-thinking operator plugged into its computer - reactively place extra supplemental shield barriers from specific directions or even reinforce an internal SIF field without destabilizing the main field too badly. Lastly, with careful calibrations, the sphere can project an expanding "shield burst" that repulses incoming objects for a considerable distance around the hull, though doing this too quickly or against too much mass can overtax the deflector. Anecdotes abound of specific Gaeni crews who have used the sphere to create more exotic effects as well, most famously an incident in 2301 when a tech-cruiser reportedly projected a zone of anti-gravity onto the surface of a planet it was orbiting.

In the late twenty-third century, Orion and Yrillian raiders made the mistake of assuming that the science-focused Gaeni would make easy targets. Encounters with a tech-cruiser quickly taught them their error. Though the cruiser's three "sigma pattern" phaser banks - located on the aft engineering section, the sensor module, and the prow - are relatively low powered, they interact with the tech-cruiser's powerful sensors and distributed computer/cyborg command nodes in a manner that compensates for their mediocre output. Each phaser fires two shots in extremely rapid succession, with the second shot being recalibrated at the last microsecond to exploit even the smallest shield instability left by the first, maximizing its damage to the enemy's shields and standing a good chance of burnthrough. The first torpedo bay, located on the ship's underbelly, is a conventional launcher. The second, mounted on the nacelle pylon tower, however, is the tech-cruiser's greatest offensive weapon. The torpedoes (or other, more exotic, devices) are launched into the "subspace spring" created by the nacelles, which catapults them across the battlefield at high warp to fly at the enemy from a completely different vector. While calibrating the warp vortice to send the torpedoes to exactly the right spot while conserving their forward momentum into exactly the right direction requires a rare level of skill from the operators, even a poorly aimed spring-torpedo can cause enough confusion in the enemy to disrupt its evasive maneuvers, allowing the sigma-phasers to land another few hits. To this day, the Perkoia-Tanar scientists who devised this launch system insist that the "iron hail" device built by the Licori House Ixaria was based on their own stolen research, rather than being a Mentat invention as the Ixaria claim. Lastly, a tech-cruiser expecting battle is likely to carry a small army of Institutional Security Officers in cryostasis in one of the lab spaces. The deflector, sensor, and transport technicians - networked with each other at the speed of thought - can sometimes manage to drop a section of the tech-cruiser's own shields for just long enough to beam a team of ISO's onto an unshielded or poorly shielded enemy vessel. The idea of the Gaeni as effete, fragile scientists is quickly dispelled when one suddenly finds one's ship overrun by these recklessly aggressive cyborg commandos.

The cybernetic interfaces used to access the tech-cruiser's main computers and coordinate its major systems, while disconcerting to most non-Gaeni, is one of the tech-cruiser's strongest assets. In addition to the high reaction time it affords, this system compensates for the unreliable manual systems and inefficient layout of the ship's realspace; without this, the tech-cruiser's chaotic design would drag its performance down significantly. The Kadeshi process of becoming "Unbound" was at least partially inspired by these interface systems, though even the Gaeni would balk at the extremes to which the Kadeshi have taken biomechanical fusion.

A refit program scales up the warp nacelles to take better advantage of the ship's antimatter supply, adds a dedicated computer module to better process the longranged sensor input and handle diplomatic simulations, improves the structural integrity fields to better protect the ship, and refurbishes the habitation area with a holodeck, guaranteed to improve crew morale and make a much better impression on guests and dignitaries.