Liberty Navy 46th Fleet - Capital Ship Database

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LNW-LRSC-01: "Essex"

Liberty Navy 46th Fleet

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Ship Information LNS-Essex "Atlantis"-Class Carrier Laid down: 823 A.S. Launched: 825 A.S. Commissioned: 825 A.S. Motto: "Guardian Angel" Status: Active service Hull Number: 4441 Serial Number: SC-01B Flag Officer: Captain Rachel Mikai Commanding Officer: Captain Rachel Mikai Executive Officer: Lieutenant Commander Verena Taldori Crew: x600 Crewmates x250 Marines x200 Engineering Crew x50 Pilots x150 Skeleton Crew

Summarized History Built in the years before the Gallic attack on New London, the Essex specialised in relief effort for the duration of the war. After returning to Liberty briefly after the wars' end she received a refit to fulfill her new purpose as a blockade ship in the defense of the recently established jumpgate in Omicron Nu. After her second year in the blockade, she suffered critical damage during a large scale Outcast attack and had to return to the Norfolk Shipyard. She was moored there for several months until being put back into active service by the 46th Liberty Fleet in 830 A.S. .

Equipment [CLASSIFIED]

Personnel Files Rachel Mikai Basic Information Surname: Rachel Name: Mikai Rank: Captain Gender: Female Date of birth: [Missing Data] Place of birth: Planet Pittsburgh Appearance Height: 1,82m Weight: 83kg Hair color: Brown Eye color: Brown/Green Qualifications Language qualifications: Libertonian - Native Proficiency, Hispanic - Professional Working Proficiency Flight qualifications: 2 year basic flight course 1 year heavy ordnance snubcraft course 3 year basic capital ship course 1 year advanced capital ship course, still ongoing Other qualifications: Various Degrees in Technical Engineering Further education in Optical- and Electrical Engineering Combat Training Basic Combat Training Further Training in Ship Boarding and Close Combat Biography Rachel was born on Planet Pittsburgh as the daughter of two minimum wage logistic workers. Their life wasn't anything to go by, with her parents probably sending her to go the same way as they once did, trading their education for an early start into the working life, helping to keep the family financially afloat. Since the young Rachel would have nothing of what her parents told her to do, she was frequently faced with the local security officers and even low ranking LSF members that had ended up on this floating, brown mining colony. Her life would continue this way for around eighteen years. Tensions between her and her parents rose due to her unwillingness to accept her destined life as an underpayed rock-pusher. However, eventually there would be a turningpoint for her, briefly after stealing a shipment of food from the local garrison that was home to the same guards she kept getting into trouble with over sometimes more, sometimes less important matter. At this point, the authorities last resort was to send her to one of Libertys many prison stations for the sum of her crimes. Quite the waking call for someone at her age. While none of her smaller offenses were ever enough for a serious sentence, they would all raise the duration of her jailtime. Faced with the fact that she would spend more than her current lifetime in prison it would throw her off the path she had chosen up to this point. From actually working for the money to pay back for some of her fines, to redistributing the remaining stolen supplies - she would actually go out of her way to avoid her sentence. In about one year her view would shift from seeing the authorities as the oppressors of her people, to realising that she was basically half, if not more, of that whole issue. Those officers weren't out there to put every person they could find behind bars, but were simply ordered to keep this colony running. As her motivation to follow her parents' footsteps was still rather low, a well paid job as one of those officers seemed rather endearing. However, Rachel quickly had to find out that someone with a criminal record longer than their CV would not be eligible for service in the LSF. As luck would have it though, the rising amount of Gallic attacks on Bretonia had the Navy periodically lower its recruiting requirements down to the point of actually allowing citizen without a flawless record to enlist themselves for service within the fleet. This would begin her time as a recruit for the fifth Liberty Navy Fleet. With her amongst a number of other citizen from Pittsburgh they would all be taken to West Point station to absolve their entry tests and be categorized for service. Without any prior education it would take her a total of three attempts to pass the written exams to qualify for her enlistment. Her early life within the fleet was plagued by sleepless nights full of studying, visiting courses about anything from Libertonian law, down to improving her reading and writing. Contrary to most of the other recruits who would more often suffer with physical exams, simply catching up on what most of the others had received early into their life would take up most of her innitial two years within the fleet, exclusively spent at the rank of recruit, later on ensign. Rachels third year would start off with a wind of change however, with her being promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and Lt. Commander around half a year later. As Bretonia was mere months away from an all out invasion, the fleet's high command saw an ever increasing need for soldiers capable of piloting capital ships - even resulting in sending lower ranking individuals to attend classes on commanding capital ships. By the time that Gallia sent its invasion forces, Rachel had begun to establish herself as the commanding officer of the 'Atlantis'-Class Carrier Essex. The ship's main purpose was to supply relief effort to the stations and planets that the joined forces of Bretonia and Liberty would liberate once Gallic forces had been pushed back to their homeland - and hopefully beyond that. Upon the Essex' arrival in the New London system the ship was sent directly to its capital planet in order to blockade the Gallic invasion forces that had launched a desperate last effort attack. Yet with how focused the invaders were on making New London a second Planet Leeds, they would entirely ignore the recently assembled blockade around the planet and break right through the planet's atmosphere. Given the situation, Rachel could not justify remaining on the Essex' bridge and took to flight in her Waran snubcraft against the orders she had been given. A desperate rush to the planet's surface would ensue, with Libertonian and Bretonian forces attempting their best to take out any of the Gallic destroyers on their suicide mission to glass the planet. While the attackers were eventually eliminated, the captain's snubcraft would be hit by several projectiles from one of the destroyer's point defense batteries, resulting in an explosion of the bomber's ammunition compartment. From this point onwards Rachel would know nothing but the insides of a hospital room for several months as doctors tried their best to see her through this. After having mostly recovered from being paralized downwards from the hip, she would reach out to the fifth's high command to return to active service as soon as possible. After several additional medical exams it was decided to dispatch the Essex with Rachel as its commanding officer to the somewhat recently established jumpgate in Omicron Nu to establish a good foothold in this new area. With the carrier's ability for long term self-sustainability and given that at first the mission was deemed low risk it would seem like the best place she could find herself - which was true at first. For the first couple of months the emergency drills would keep her and the crew more busy than actual encounters with bandits. While it was definitely to the distaste of some more adventureous crewmembers, it gave Rachel the time to get herself back into the position she almost had to give up entirely due to her accident. However, eventually tensions would rise and information about Liberty's foothold in Nu would spread, causing a spike in activity around the area. While most interferences with the likes of Outcasts would end without noticeable impact on the Essex, about eighteen months into her deployment she would encounter the heaviest beating since her launch around five years ago. After an Outcast battlecruiser managed to breach deeply into the Essex' defense it managed to land a full broadside of all of its cannons, almost puncturing the carrier's hull down to the main reactor. The tide of battle would sway in the Navy's favor with the arrival of a sizeable battlegroup, yet there was no way the mobile repair ships would be able to return the ship to its original shape. Shortly after the battle concluded, Rachel would give the command for the carrier to make its way back to New York, Norfolk Shipyard, accompanied by the battlecruiser Crescent. With the Essex moored in one of the Norfolk's docks for major repairs, the captain spent most of her time educating the less experienced recruits and ensigns of the Fifth Fleet. While she loved hearing the experiences younger soldiers and get their input on current topics and events, she desired a change of pace. The rising monoty of her current position and recent encounters with the forty-sixth Fleet eventually lead to her reaching out to both fleet's high command to arrange something.

The "Atlantis"-Class Carrier Essex is one of the newer additions to the Forty-Sixth Navy Fleet. Due to the increasingly escalating war between Bretonia and Gallia in 825 A.S. the building process for this behemoth would be completed within little more than two years to strengthen Libertonian relief efforts in New London primarily. Given this specific task that the ship would be assigned, she was fitted with larger than usual cargoholds and all but some of the carrier's snubcraft would be replaced with landing craft suited for planetary entry. Due to her young age, the carrier was built with some of the most up to date technical developments in mind, also allowing her to be fit for a variety of tasks.

Once the battle of New London had concluded, the Essex was sent to Planet Leeds in order to provide both escorts for repairships, as well as medical transports that would be the first to set foot into the Leeds system after the Gallic's retreat. She would remain in Bretonia for another few months before returning back to Liberty to be rearmed, resupplied and refit for her new purpose - border control and self-sufficient enforcement of Liberty's presence in a hostile enviroment.

Despite being almost brand new, considering the overall age of Liberty's fleets, the Essex would receive her first upgrade not even two years into service. Her scanners were upgraded to increase detection range and give her the ability for detailed analytics about the bandit's armament and hull specifications. Some parts of her hangar bay were replaced with greenhouses and modular cargobays, further improving on her already extended combat-readiness inbetween resupplies. To make up for the decreased hangar size, she would lose all but a few of her landing craft and give home to some of the Navy's most recently developed fully automatic snubcraft with various kinds of ordnance. Forgoing the need for a pilot and thus being more compact, these drone-like fighters and bombers would retain the carrier's ability to engage a variety of threats.

After passing her trial flights with this new set of upgrades, she would be sent directly towards the recently established jumpgate in the Omicron Nu system to grant Liberty a foothold in the area. During the two year period in this alien space the Essex was put up against a variety of threats, ranging from Outcast raiders all the way to nomad probes of various sizes. The ability to adapt all sorts of foes and objectives turned out to be her biggest calling card in this dangerous enviroment. However, no triumph lasts forever and so it would eventually lead to a large scale Outcast attack on the gate, during which the carrier's main reactor was critically damaged, narrowly missing a disaster. She was towed back to the Norfolk Shipyard for emergency repairs, and following another upgrade package including her armor plating and power generators. Concluding these upgrades were the preparations to fit a personal jumpdrive to the ship during her next stay in the shipyard to further improve on her adaptability.