Spindle

Overview:
 

Spindle is a nation in the Depths of Space universe and is one of the smallest nations but is currently heavily involved in galactic politics. It is lead by King Armillius Dynat and the Council of Shadows.

 

History:
 

Spindle was formed during the seventh wave of colonists sent from Sol, crowding to the edges of known space in order to find freedom from the 'imposing' government that Earth was being increasingly inundated in. The colony ship left the Titan shipyards with over a million colonists in cryostasis, and the jump landed them near what would eventually become Spindle. The planet reacted well to terraforming, so well that within thirty years the original colonists only made up five percent of the total population, such was the immigration. Cities of glass and crystal sprang up amidst the emerging plains, no-one wanting much to do with anyone else, or any interference with their own personal freedoms.

For a while they found the peace they so loved, free of any responsibilities to their fellow man. Unfortunately, few societies based upon such philosophy can survive outside pressure and when a wave of piracy hit the area, the colonists were totally unprepared and unable to respond.

With the orbital lanes totally uncontested, the pirates were able to devastate Spindle from orbit, levelling cities and wreaking havoc upon the fragile terraforming process. Within months over ninety percent of the population had died, either from violence or the rapidly transforming atmosphere and landscape, and the pirates held almost all of the colonists' military and economic assets. And it was from this that the Monarchy would rise.

They were a simple family, but it was they who first began to strike back against the pirates, appearing like ghosts and leaving only red ruin in their wake. It began with outposts on the very Northernmost edge of conflict simply disappearing, the backup teams dispatched to investigate finding their corpses strung out, impaled or simply gone, only the bloodstains remaining. Within the year, they began to foment larger and larger opposition, culminating in the taking of the Puriel Spaceport.

It began with a feint campaign, upping the tempo of raids to force the pirates to divert their ship on an orbital flyby, searching for the colonists. In the three hour window that opened, almost one hundred colonists, the Invisibles, infiltrated inside the lines, slipping into the outskirts of Puriel’s sewage system as the pirates resumed geostationary orbit.

After another two hours squirming through the pipes, the Invisibles emerged within the inner city limits of Puriel and began their operation. One squad infiltrated into the primary command and control center, other squads entering the secondary and tertiary, cutting down the workers manning the consoles and severing communications with the ship above. With this, the first objective was achieved.

From there, the pirates were to be destroyed...a more difficult task than it may have seemed, as their main reserves of heavy armour were just on the outskirts of the city, perfectly poised to surround and crush the Invisibles if they became aware of the ongoing battle.

Fifteen blocks were cleared before a lone pirate was able to transmit a garbled plea for help. Even as the tanks mobilised and began to thunder into the city to find out what had happened, the Invisibles prepared for their imminent deaths.

That was when the charges blew.

It had been the work of one spare squad of Invisibles. Finding themselves in the motor pool, they had hurriedly rigged dozens of anti-tank shells to the undersides of the tanks and jury-rigged them for a ten-minute detonation before scarpering.

Taking the mass driver usually used to fire pods into orbit to be collected by orbiting starships, the colonists instead used it to destroy the pirate’s ship, its shields only at ten percent as those onboard struggled to understand what was happening on the planet’s surface.

With the raiders trapped on the planet, they were at the resurgent colonists' mercy. For three weeks they waited, each day bringing the surety of their death ever closer. But the colonists did not attack.

On the twenty-second day, the power generators for the pirate's defences blew. The bunkers, designed to withstand tactical nuclear devices, instead became tombs, unopenable from inside or out. The pirates died deaths slow and fast, from asphyxiation, lack of food or simply misguided attempts to escape.

The next day, the colonists crowned Jeremiah, the father of their heroes, as king and he ruled until his death six years later. In that time he oversaw the bitter fighting to retake the orbital colonies and the deadly game of trap and counter-trap fought in the reaches of the system as well as bringing the economy into order and reforming the social system. While many thought of the new government as the oppression that they had fled from, more saw that the government was, if no more, a necessary evil and many actively supported it.

As the population struggled its way back, a problem was discovered. The remains of Spindle were almost entirely doused in lethal levels of radiation, meaning that there was very little land available. This was fine for the first few decades and the orbital colonies managed that were built in that time took up some of the slack for the planet but it was soon recognised that a long-term solution was needed. Colonies were needed on other planets and needed fast.

The other objects in the system were invariably unsuitable given the timeframe available and the only option was deemed to be an extrastellar colony, with three candidates being noted as being potentially suitable for Human life. The problem in the way of this plan, however, was that Spindle's knowledge of b-space mechanics was severely lacking and even the remains of the pirate ship had only taught them little. It would prove to be a stumbling block for seven years.

The breakthrough wasn't scientific. Instead, the engine-master of the pirate's ship was discovered selling illegal augs on the Requiem orbital colony and was arrested and brought into the project. From there, leaps and bounds were made, although every claim the pirate made needed to be fully verified. Progress was frustratingly slow, but it was there for the first time in almost a decade.

The three ships departed to their respective destinations. Fifteen years later, the follow-up ships that had been constructed found two thriving colonies and a single dead world, scoured of all Human existence. This anomaly was odd, yet the two colonies that had survived had both grown into disparate cultures and lifestyles.

Umbara's bizarre meteorological phenomena had forced its populace to live under protective domes for their entire life, and their continual reliance upon technology had forced them to create an integrated, holistic approach to science and technology. Umbara would soon become the most well-known source of scientific and engineering advances in the Commonwealth. However, the weather also attracted another kind of person-the artist, the writer and the sculptor. All drawn to the magnificent weather, Umbara soon became renowned for its creative side, often integrated into the technological pieces produced. Umbara was an artisan's paradise.

Erebus was an entirely different beast. Here, the rich veins of ore and minerals had caused a flourishing mining and manufacturing industry to spring up, and goods in abundance prepared to flow from the waiting manufactories. Yet Erebus had a darker side and it was from here that the first aug-gangs began to spread into Spindle, prompting the beginning of the so-called 'eternal war': the war between the police and the aug-gangs.

And yet, Spindle spent almost a century more in splendid isolation before it began to re-enter the galactic stage...but that century was not wasted. The Sparatoi network, a series of highly-auged operatives working under deep cover to gain information, was extended into the civilisations nearest and then beyond. Despite initial predictions, the galaxy was filled with teeming civilisations and this meant that, since its very inception, the Sparatoi have been underfunded and undermanned. It is a testament to their skills that they still manage to place within the top-tier of galactic intelligence services even with this burden.

However, despite the efforts of the Sparatoi, the first first contact Spindle engaged in went horribly wrong, only referred to in diplomatic chambers as 'the Sol fiasco'. While the full details are yet to be released to the public, it is known that Lady Ophius played a key role in diffusing tensions between Spindle and the UTT and preventing it from becoming 'the Sol disaster'.

The Taari Armada provided a much smoother, if somewhat more disruptive first contact, despite coming completely out of the blue. Much has been made of this by analysts, but the fact remains that within two days of setting foot on the Imperator's Might, Lady Eris was engaged to Imperator Khronos Vorr. She now resides full-time on the Imperator's Might with Khronos and their son, Gawain.

 

Government:
 

The government of Spindle is made up of four levels: the People, the Parliament, the Lords and the Council of Shadows.

 

The People are the teeming masses who elect their representatives, the Parliament, who make the laws that all parts of society and decide the budget for all the various departments and bureaus.

 

The Lords take up most important and many unimportant roles in the military, bureaucracy and economy. Although titles can be hereditary, the most important ones are not and anyone can advance in titles, although only at the expense of others. In fact, even the People can gain titles and the relationship between those with titles and those without can often be fluid.

The Council of Shadows is the ultimate authority on all matters in Spindle, from military conflict to social policy. Consisting of three elected representatives, or the triumvirate, the three highest-ranked Lords and Ladies and the current Monarch, they meet as and when it is necessary, but most commonly it is simply for the monthly Council Meeting.

Starship Design:
Spindlean starship design is centered on a two- or three-ring philosophy, depending on whether the ship is civilian or military. Civilian ships have two rings of engines, one towards the prow and one towards the aft in order to facilitate efficient maneuver, while military ships have a third ring, the podlayer bulge, which is used for deployment of missile pods. In addition to this, the main engines are located at the aft to provide the main acceleration for the ship. Spindlean military ships have most of their weaponry and ECM modules are mounted towards the fore, in keeping with traditional Spindlean doctrine, and the fusion and fission piles, munitions stockpiles and grav generators are located toward the aft. One of the interesting side-effects of this is that, under combat situations, 'up' is actually the current direction of acceleration. This creates a very important problem for Spindlean shipbuilders: do you compromise the spinal support column to fit an effective lift or do you have personnel-only lifts and keep the spinal support column intact? It was a subject of intense debate before the first spinal-mounted cannon began production, and after that it was simply academic.

Spindlean warships have five decks, which are labelled from zero (near the 'nose' of the ship) through four (near the 'tail' of the ship). This is true of almost every ship, with exclusions for those that aren't true warships, or are hybrids designed for civilian tasks as well. These increase in importance the further towards the 'tail' they are, with the CIC and critical machinery being located on deck four, and crew quarters on deck zero.

Spindlean warships focus around delivering the maximum missile salvo to the enemy at the maximum range and so Spindlean ships’ often appear blotchy, as their skin is covered with dozens, if not hundreds, of sensors and telemetry with which to precisely locate the enemy and to direct the swarms of missile towards them. On the inside, almost ten per cent of all computing power goes toward predicting the enemy’s drunkwalking pattern and penetrating their ECM, information which is then sent back to the missiles to adapt their programming mid-flight.

When Spindlean missiles detonate, they first eject their submunitions, which each use the data from the main missile to target. Then the nuclear device detonates, and the burst of gamma rays is captured by the submunitions, focussing them and placing them in step before the submunitions are destroyed. The resultant GRASERs then hit the enemy’s ship one second later. The effects of a GRASER hit are three-fold: firstly, there is the physical impact of energy hitting the ship’s armour. This also ionises certain parts of the ship, which results in a charge building up and therefore current flowing. This current rarely affects hardened systems, but delicate systems or non-hardened systems will often suffer damage from this. The third effect is upon the crew and is not obviously apparent, but instead manifests itself in the weeks and months after the battle, if they survive, as multiple, severe cancers.

MASERs form the bulk of Spindlean short-ranged firepower, but they can be devastating. Although their range barely makes up two light-seconds, they are capable of putting out far more energy than missiles can, and also contribute to heating up the opponent’s vessel, causing them to shut down systems to preserve coolant. However, the ultimate benefit to the MASER is that it will only ever take two seconds to reach the enemy, and they will never see it coming. The current Spindlean MASER is the Adam, and it has so far been relatively untested, compared with the missile and countermissile equipment. However it seems capable of sustaining twelve two-second bursts per minute, with radiators at battle positions, without undue rises in coolant heat.

At the same time as wanting to extend their own range, Spindlean warships aim to shorten the enemy’s range with their own drunkwalking and ECM, increasing their unpredictability and minimising the need for passive defences. The unpredictability is enhanced by the extra acceleration allowed by the use of amniotic tanks and using Legionnaires as marines instead of organics. This, combined with the two rings of engines, means that almost every Spindlean warship can project at least nineteen gees of acceleration into any vector, except a fifteen degree cone directly towards the prow, at any time. This allows Spindlean ships to dodge fully kinetic attacks with less than one-tenth of a second of acceleration, and it gives them a drunkwalking radius of one hundred and forty meters.

Point defences on Spindlean warships fall into two categories. The first is the ‘assured range’ category, which mainly consists of countermissiles of various forms. These provide basic point defence up to two light seconds and are responsible for removing any lighter salvoes and thinning out larger salvoes. The second category is ‘last-ditch’, and is filled by Lilith anti-missile IRASERs. Liliths are capable of three hundred pulses a seconds and with a maximum range of around three hundred and seventy-five thousand kilometers, designed to devastate missile salvoes in the four seconds before they detonate or to change the vector on kinetic warheads sufficiently that other shots can be dodged into the vector opened up.

EM fields form the next line of defence. One of the weaker shielding types on the galactic stage, they prevent certain types of kinetic munition, mainly railgun and coilgun shots, from hitting the ship by deflecting them away, to prevent the kinetic energy from damaging the generators too much. LASERs will veer away of their own accord, but, plasma bursts and charged particle beams are deflected away from the generator dependant on the charge of the shield. Positive charges on a shield will repel plasma and positively charged particle beams, while a negatively charged particle beam will be repelled by a negatively charged field. Neutrally charged particle beams and non-magnetic kinetics are unaffected by an EM field, regardless of charge.

The final defence is the armour on a ship. This comes in two stages: firstly the whipple shield. A thin sheet of metal held fifty centimeters away from the main armour layers by the EM field, this is designed to prevent hypervelocity impacts from ‘splashing’ the main armour layers. The main layer is composed of depleted uranium and protects the main hull from impacts and explosions. The third layer is composed of lead and prevents too much ionising radiation from leaking through to the vulnerable components and crew members.

All Spindlean ships are piloted with the interlink system, to keep personnel costs down and combat effectiveness up. The interlink system integrates the controllers into the computer system, allowing them to control far more than they would be able to at a console. Because of this, many of the systems on Spindlean warships are automated, including boarding defensive and offensive duties, run specifically by a special branch of The Legion, the Voidrunners. These Legionnaires provide specialised loadouts and skills for boarding actions without compromising the accelerational abilities of the vessels they are assigned to.