Nadir Reprisal Initiative - Faction Information

[Nadir Reprisal Initiative]

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#108 The Fleet - Steel and Fire and Stone

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“An object impacting at 3km/s delivers kinetic
energy equivalent to its mass in TNT.”

— Rick Robinson’s First Law of Space Combat

Self-sufficient fleets have been fixtures in human history since the sleeper ships departed Sol more than eight hundred years ago. Modern Sirius; however, has come to regard the notion with a sort of amused contempt. Equipped with an abundance of orbital stations and burgeoning colonies, and locked away from further expansion by the benevolent tyranny of the jump network, the notion of self-sustaining starships has become nothing more than an interesting historical titbit for most, an archaic lifestyle retained only by a handful of backward Zoner populations on the raggedy edges of human space.

Locked away from the facilities they once called home, the NRI has found itself forced to rediscover that ancient art, and a swarm of hastily retrofitted auxiliaries flies alongside the battle-scarred warships of the Initiative. Fabricators hide in the bellies of everything larger than a freighter, most capable of producing nothing more complex than a hull patch, a circuit board, or one of a hundred synthpaste analogues.

The largest and most powerful systems, such as those aboard Newfoundland, are capable of manufacturing certain strikecraft weapons, dreadnought-grade munitions, and more complex ship systems. Given an excess of time and resources, and a number of pre-assembled components, the largest fabricators possess the capability to manufacture dreadnought hulls in their entirety. For the NRI; however, excess on such a scale is purely theoretical next to the fleet’s ravenous need for fuel, repairs, and the simplest requirements of life.

The NRI’s available ships are carefully rationed, each functionally irreplaceable. Each ship is rostered, assigned, and accounted for. Each is a vital cog in a life support system so distant from help that a distress signal serves as little more than a casualty notification.

The list below discusses spacecraft availability. Detailed information on major ships and strikecraft squadrons is available from the Fleet Register.

Capital Ships

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Osiris-class Dreadnought

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Fleet Director and CO: Apotheosis only.
The only capital ship in the fleet to survive contact with Nemesis, Apotheosis serves as the NRI’s flagship, primary carrier, and only long-range subspace communication station rolled in to one. She also serves as a home, albeit a cramped one, to the vast majority of the Initiative’s Order-derived personnel. The communications systems aboard Apotheosis’ are vital to the Initiative, and the dreadnought’s survival is crucial to the NRI’s ongoing operations.

Hathor-class Gunboat

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Ship CO’s only.
Agile enough to escape contact with larger nomad entities and fitted with enough weapons systems to overcome anything smaller than a mindnode, the NRI’s few surviving Hathors are the workhorses of the fleet. Most often encountered in an escort configuration screening larger ships or serving as jump point pickets; one of the fleet’s gunboats has been outfitted as a long-range scout, trading some offensive bite for a paired subspace connection to Apotheosis and extended life support systems.

Strikecraft

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Onuris-class Interceptor

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
A capable, if fragile, intrasystem scout, the NRI has turned its handful of Onuris’ away from their original role as interceptors and instead employs the craft as scouts to screen potentially valuable resources prior to the arrival of supporting elements.

Executioner-class Fighter

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
Property of the junior member of Aisling’s strike force, the NRI’s inherited Executioner lacks the long-range refinements of the fleet’s other strikecraft and rarely sees use, save as a target tug for bored gunners.

Bastet-class Fighter

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
The Bastet MkII had barely rolled off the production line when Apotheosis left the Omicrons on her unsanctioned expedition to the Libertonian borderworlds. Without the minor updates and design corrections available to more recent models, the fleet’s Bastet’s are demonstrating a rate of system failures remarkable even among the under maintained ships of the NRI. Nonetheless, when functional, the Bastet has proven to be a remarkably versatile craft, and a capable match for the Initiative’s human enemies.

Avenger-class Fighter

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Number Available: Two.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
A pair of the Liberty Navy’s premiere patrol craft survived the transition to the NRI, and continue to serve as escorts for the support fleet they protected while flying naval colours. Equipped with unusually potent radiation shielding and reactors, the Initiative's modified Avengers have shown themselves to be every bit as capable of operations in the Omicrons as in core space; however, a lack of replacement parts makes maintenance of the ships’ advanced systems difficult and the decline is beginning to show in the Avenger’s performance.

Guardian-class Fighter

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
Equipped with expanded fuel bunkers and non-standard life support, the ESRD’s Guardian-class fighters have remained operational in the distant Omicrons and are the go-to fighter for most of the Initiative’s former naval operatives. As with the Avenger-class; however, ongoing maintenance issues threaten to drastically shorten the Guardian’s operational lifespan.

Nephthys-class Fighter

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
One of the few strikecraft capable of matching a nomad morph for firepower, if not for manoeuvrability, the Nephthys is the primary long-range fighter of the NRI. One squadron of Nephthys’ calls Apotheosis’ carrier deck home.

Sekhmet-class Bomber

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Number Available: Three.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
Bulky, rugged, and resource-hungry, the Sekhmet’s fills a peculiar role within the fleet. A number of core components are interchangeable with the Nephthys-class and, as replacements grow harder to source, certain key parts are being swapped between squadrons with alarming regularity. Like the Nephthys, the Sekhmet possesses outstanding long-range performance, and Apotheosis’ Sekhmet squadron is the fleet’s first line of defence against nomad mindnodes.

Support Ships

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Hegemon-class Mobile Refinery

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Ship CO only.
If Apotheosis is the brain of the NRI, Newfoundland is its skeleton, heart, and lungs. Once an ESRD fleet auxiliary, Newfoundland is now the sole ship in the fleet capable of refining raw materials into fuel and useful starship-sized equipment. Hull panels and H-fuel, weapons and wiring, all are forged in Newfoundland’s iron belly. She also plays host to a pair of Phoenix-class scoop drones, capable of extracting limited quantities of helium 3, a necessary ingredient in H-fuel, from the thick atmospheres of gas giants. Command of Newfoundland does not carry with it the glamour of a warship, but without the auxiliary’s ceaseless labour the fleet would run itself dry inside a month.

Bison-class Transport

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Ship CO only.
Two ESRD Bison-class transports were intended to meet with Apotheosis and her support fleet. En route to their rendezvous, one of the two was isolated in a skirmish, and suffered catastrophic damage with all hands lost. The remaining transport is one of the NRI's most precious resources, as the continued supply of the fleet relies on her sole ability to provide bulk shipping. A product of her naval heritage, Furiosa is one of the most heavily militarised ships in the fleet, and the majority of the crew are former ESRD personnel, now baptised in fire. Her decks are one of the few places in the NRI that salutes are offered unironically.

Longhorn-class Repair Ship

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Number Available: Two.
Restrictions: Ship CO’s only.
The workers that keep the NRI’s fleet alive. The development of extensive shipyards within Liberty saw the Longhorn-class relegated to duty in distant systems, far from the light of the core worlds, and Aisling’s defectors were able to retrieve a handful of the ships en route to Apotheosis. The Longhorn’s extensive repair and salvage arrays have proven extremely valuable in keeping the Initiative’s ships flying.

Dromedary-class Freighter

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Number Available: Two.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
A common sight on the edge of inhabited space, Dromedary-class freighters are in frequent use due to their availability and rugged ease of maintenance. Equally comfortable serving as a one-way dropship or shuttling passengers and materials between the fleet’s ships, Dromedaries are often forced into picket and courier roles when no Hathor-class gunboats are available.

Voyager-class Freighter

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
In the unforgiving void of the Edge Worlds accurate intelligence saves lives. The NRI's single Voyager-class freighter is a vital cog in the organisation's ceaseless search for accurate information. Equipped with fighter-compatible refuelling tethers and an advanced sensor array, the Voyager is just as capable of carrying out lengthy scouting expeditions to neighbouring stars alone as it is boosting a fighter squadron to a distant target.

Rhino-class Freighter

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Number Available: One.
Restrictions: Pilots only.
Once a naval shuttle, the one Rhino absorbed into the NRI was hastily overhauled to survive the demanding environment of the Omicrons. Though sneered at by seasoned members of the fleet as overcomplicated and underperforming compared to the more readily-available Dromedary, the solitary Rhino has remained in use with the support fleet – largely because the Dromedaries lack the facilities to dock with Newfoundland directly.