HMS Alacrity

Motto Adjuvero propero (“I hurry to help”).

An LSDV-5, of the Amazon sub-class used by the Royal Navy. We’re working off the Spaceships 8 description, with clarifications from older THS books at the GM’s discretion.

Engines

There are two separate and independent fusion pulse drives. Both have limited gimbal mounts to accommodate imperfect stowage, allow some steering, and handle operating the drive with one unit out of action. Impulse from a single pulse is fixed, and one varies the thrust by varying the pulse rate. On trials, with three AKVs and a boarding pod mounted, 0.23G seemed to be the practical limit, as any more caused the fuel pellets in the tanks to start bouncing and threatening to fail to feed.

The ship has 43.2mps of delta-V, less a bit for the mass of the AKVs and boarding pod. Earth’s orbital velocity is 18.5mps, so there isn’t fuel to throw around.

Antimatter engines aren’t allowed in LEO, and RN policy is to keep them above 1,500 miles altitude.

These ships can refuel with ordinary fusion pellets, reckons David Pulver. He didn’t decide where the antimatter is stored in the Spaceships simplification, but a bay as part of the engines seems OK. Having that carry several fuel loads (in this case, four) worth of antimatter makes sense, and was added in the recent refit. The bay is modular, divided into eight units, which can be ejected independently. If you turn off a lot of safeties, the units will explode.

Manoeuvring thrusters

These are two rings, forward and aft, of quads of chemical thrusters. They burn MON and monomethylhydrazine, pressure-fed, from helium-pressurised tankage. Helium is used for this because it’s light and unreactive.

First Light Space Squadron

This is the main deployable force of RN Cislunar Command, Rear-Admiral Amanda Wreford, based at Vosper-Babbage Factory Asteroid.

Alacrity started a three-month refit 1^st October 2099. The new crew arrived 1^st November, to learn the ship and act as quality control. They had her underway on 1^st December, started a training cycle 1^st January, when Amazon went into refit, were reserve QRA from 1^st April, and lead QRA 1^st May. The previous SAI engineer, “Agatha Hetrodyne,” was a bit overly creative, so the computer replacements that were happening anyway have been extended to all the cabling.

Ships of this size and complexity, with small crews, can’t do all of their own long-term maintenance, which is why your duty cycle works like this:

In practice, a ship in training is expected to be able to work on a day or two’s notice, if it isn’t newly commissioned.

You do 2 to 4 years as a commission, then change crews during the refit. This is Alacrity’s second commission, the last of the squadron to start her second commission.

Cislunar Command officers

Commanding: Rear-Admiral Amanda Wreford

Operations: Commander Sarah Wiseman

Personnel & Training: Commander Mark Gibson.

Dockyard: Captain Harry Broome, 2 i/c Cislunar Command

Qualifications

The Captain and XO have done the Command Course, qualifying them to captain a warship. Anybody who is a Navy Lieutenant or higher is also a qualified Master Spacefarer, allowing them to operate any size of spacecraft or space station. Royal Marines officers don’t usually have that qualification. Large habitats are a different set of qualifications.

Current crew

Midshipman Tracy Addams is young and confident, because she’s a really good pilot, although she needs to work on other officer skills. LAI “Minder.”

Lieutenant Hugh Stewart is a retread: he served in the RN at sea in the 2070s and 2080s, retired, uploaded after a mild heart attack, and re-joined. He’s caused a few personnel rules to be re-written. LAI “Scheherazade.”

Accommodation

Captain and XO get cabins. Xavier gets one of the bunkrooms, because he’s a twitchy, noisy sleeper. Dara and Tracey share the other bunkroom

Equipment

Computers are THS, weapons are UT. The bridge has a Complexity 9 Macroframe, and a backup for it. The Navy fits a Complexity 9 Macroframe, half a ton, plus a backup, in cargo space, for general usage, and there’s another pair for Lieutenant Stewart, which are much more than he needs.

Sidearms are electrolaser pistols with the optional lethal mode on a simple, purely mechanical, switch.

Two ETC Storm Carbines. You have an underbarrel gyroc launcher, and a launcher for the same 30mm micromissiles as the RATS use.

Field uniforms are nanoweave, or skinsuits when you’re in the ship under safe circumstances. Space suits for potentially dangerous manoeuvrers and hostile situations are nanoweave space suits. These are counterpressure suits, rather than inflated suits, and don’t limit fine manipulation.

You carry a single Commando Battlesuit (the default is a Command suit) for the Marine officer, with plenty of accessories. You also carry hand thrusters and a couple of thruster packs (Ultra-Tech p. 231) for EVA.

The ship is built to take depressurised operation, and the medbay has independent life-support, although one door of its airlock is nanoweave fabric. Your ship’s surgeon is an LAI in a bush robot.

Sabotage Nanosats x 3, Hyperspectral vision, rather than 360^o. High Frontier p. 11 & Shell-Tech.

The ship has 70 tons of cargo space, of which 20 tons go on your eight RATS and their support equipment. There are two fire teams of four. Recon Team, of Microgravity RATS, is Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, while Assault Team, of Jump RATS, is Jill, Sabrina, Kelly, and Bosley. We have 15mm gyroc launchers for Recon team, since their lasers are feeble, and strap-on thruster packs for Assault Team.

You have a boarding pod for the RATS (a “Puma”), from p. 21 of Spaceships 8), which means you have space for 3 AKVs: Ziggy, Aladdin, and Duke to their friends. They’re IQ11 LAIs.

The Navy is happy for crew members to use up to a ton of cargo capacity each, but doesn’t accept liability if it gets destroyed.