squadrons and three companies of Marines). The point of the mega-carrier concept is a vessel that can deal effectively with any local crisis – ground-based, orbital or deep-space – with minimal escort, but which can also serve as the centre of a strike force or carrier group in the event of actual war.
The Midway is 1830 metres in length, with a displacement of 200 000 tonnes. It’s not heavily armoured for a ship of its size, but its shield generators are the equal of those found on most wartime top-security permanent installations, making the Midway a flying fortress. In addition to its fighters, its offensive capabilities include laser turrets and missile stations for anti-fighter defence, plus medium ion cannon turrets for slug-fests against other cap ships.
One of the major innovations of the Midway’s design is that, while all the fighters in an old carrier were kept in a central hangar bay, the Midway class uses a new arterial concept of fighter storage. Fighters are stored along an arterial launch corridor that runs the full length of the ship, with six launch bays leading to space. Any fighter can be launched from any bay. During the war, one gutsy Dralthi pilot with dreams of glory could simultaneously find glorious martyrdom and eliminate a carrier’s whole fighter complement with one suicide run through the hangar doors, but the Midway can keep launching and landing ships for as long as any tube remains clear.
The ‘egg-heads’ in Science Division represent an innovation never before seen on a Confed warship. We’re here to solve problems – any problems, from correcting an alkaline imbalance in an agricultural colony’s soybean fields, to explaining anomalous radiation readings in the corona of a type-K star, to triangulating
