|Sicily Rising| - Part 2

[Sciamach]

Phases 1&2

Any capital vessel is an immense investment of resources and expert personnel- regardless of size. Though some might claim to be the sole contributor or architect of a warship, the realities of ship construction requires hundreds or thousands of hands to work in unison and parity to change a basic digital blueprint, into a floating fortress.

Callahan was reminded of this simple tenet of construction as he oversaw the manifest list in his hand; a plethora of names from wildly different backgrounds and places within Sirius had all touched upon the cargo that was in the process of being unloaded above him. Not only the Junkers - the regular suppliers of resources to Malta, but members of Rheinland's Imperialist movement the Unioners, pilots from the Natio Octavarium- the Tau's resurgent nomadic micro-state, and even staff from the National Council; a group that some more tribalistically-minded thought a rival to the Amalfi Union had pitched in to the aid of the Sicily. All were united in their support of Amalfi, and it was with a slight touch of pride that Harry looked on to the construction work underway before him.

Phase 1 was largely the simple construction process of the exterior pressure-hull and armoring; with the multitudes of alloys, polymers and panels delivered being lanced to a super-alloy superstructure skeleton. Hull panels were then lanced into place around the frame, providing the exterior 'shell' that extended from the ventral exterior of the ship, all the way back to the engine-pods. For many of the trusses between the exterior and interior bulkheads, and a number of the armor plates - the salvage recovered from Bering were slotted in alongside Valetta's own freshly-made panels and newly delivered ones to form a powerful defense from both the rigors of battle, and the radiation and gravitational stresses of deep space; within and without a heliosphere. To supplement the absorption of incoming high energy particles - both natural and artificial, the final step of the first phase of construction was a simple, Beryllium Alloy sheen coating applied to the outward-facing panels, nearly fully protecting the crew inside from all but the most constant sustained barrage of Beta and Gamma particles.

Phase 2 delved into the significantly more complex step of the ship's propulsion systems. Maltese RM-2A Storta Destroyers use a series of engine 'pods' - not dissimilar to that of the twin nacelles used on the Tridente-class escort - as a primary propulsion method. Secondary thrusters dotted along the hull in sequences allow for the vessel's swift maneuverability. In practice: each nacelle is its own self-contained fusion-torch array; magnetically bottling high-temperature plasma in doughnut-shaped chambers stacked along the length of the 'pod', and funneling the resulting exhaust into a single, central vent down the center to achieve massive amounts of thrust. In most warships, the fusion-drives and propulsion systems are largely some of the most undesirable and dangerous jobs onboard- with the fusion technologies at play requiring near constant maintenance and monitoring to function. Maltese innovations however had led to the entire system be miniaturized, stacked, and compartmentalized into the tube-shaped nacelles just aft of the power-plant compartment, encased in armor plates and held together by the ship's frame, with the only inputs being fuel and control for thrust-vectoring at the exhaust-end of the 'pod'. Should any single chamber fail or take damage, all of the others are still capable of firing and functioning independently, with each nacelle wired into a series of computers that track the resulting thrust of the whole array, and counteracting any imbalances automatically with no need for input from the onboard staff for normal functions.

While the typical RM-1 and RM-2A Storta employ a battery of five of these drive nacelles, the significant increase in overall mass by the Misericorde's hangar bay and sensor dish necessitate another pair of them be mounted onto the sides of the aft-recovery and storage hangar directly below the main drive array.

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Simulated below: one of the internal fusion-chambers of the engine nacelles.

[p3d]irush+wireonxray+spin[/p3d]

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.