Alexander Nevsky

From Acw

An FTL Colony Ship was a massive undertaking to the already-strained orbital shipbuilding industry on Earth in the 2130s and 40s, and for the massively bloated Soviet shuttle fleets servicing the Mars-Earth run, it proved too much of a strain. The decision was therefore reached to produce a small, lightly armoured but heavily-armed ship, about the size of a modern cruiser, equipped with a Krasnikov generator. It was the reasoning of the Commissariat of Extrasolar Exploration that such a ship, if built in secret, could effectively deter any enemy colony ships from taking any planet that the Nevsky was guarding. It was a short-term solution only, but assuming secrecy could be maintained, it would give the Soviets the time they needed to get a full-scale colony ship out to Chimera.

A stopgap solution it may have been, but the Nevsky was nothing short of revolutionary. It employed the first spherical bridge at the front of the hull, allowing for an almost unrestricted field of view in all three dimensions for the captain. To prevent battle damage to the frail plexiglass canopy, the design employed a de-pressurised battleready state, with the crew fighting in spacesuits. This also eliminated the need for armour. It was armed with a massive particle accelerator, firing forward in a fixed hull installation as its primary armament, and two turrets (one dorsal, one ventral) of three 300mm ex-naval cannon, modified for firing in a vacuum.

The Nevsky worked perfectly from the get-go, secrecy being maintained from the commencement of construction through until the moment that it saw off the Seevogel from what was to become New Ukraine. This strategic coup led to the Battle of New Ukraine, and indirectly to the beginnings of spacebound warfare, and let the Soviets snatch the prize of the Chimera system from the other extrasolar powers, well before its colony ship was ready.