OBT Forum

From: Dr Joseph Kowalski, Office of Naval Intelligence, Capellan Confederation Armed Forces
To: Office of the Sang-jiang-jun
Subject: Columbia class Battleship Pegasus

     I should start by saying that this is a report I never expected to be asked to compile. As an expert on warship design and development, I have been asked, from time to time, to cast a critical eye on several classes of warship, be they theoretical or operational, foreign or domestic, and I have always done my best to maintain a certain degree of detached objectivity in my work. Even with the arrival of the Clans and the unveiling of the secret fleet maintained by ComStar, I never expected to have to compile a report on the Federated Suns' Columbia class Battleship, a type long through to be extinct.
     So perhaps I should start at the beginning?

Design History & Overview
     Ever since the Age of Sail, military planners have been faced with the task of protecting troops as they travel from their transports to the landing grounds. All our dispersal from Terra has done is make that job that much more complicated. Over the last millennia or so, several ideas have been tried and tested, with the Columbia being one of the more radical of recent centuries.
     Closer to the original definition of a Battlecruiser than a Battleship, the designers of the Columbia were faced with the age old maxim of military engineering: Speed, Armour & Armament; pick any two.
     While other's would have been willing to sacrifice the protection of heavy armour to provide speed and heavy fire-power, the Davion's apparently wanted a ship that could survive longer in combat, even if its combat effectiveness was below par for a ship its size. To offset this, they fitted it with the Rolls Royce 'Kraken' interplanetary drive, the single most powerful reaction drive ever built under the Star League, and still the benchmark more modern designs are measured against. The Kraken system was notoriously maintenance intensive, but their raw power was such that, outside of combat operations, it was possible for the Columbia to operate on only one, while the other two were rested or repaired. This in-flight maintenance cycle required a larger engineering crew, but allowed the ships to go longer between shipyard refits.
     To save weight, the designers decided to limit the ships offensive punch, and put the save space and tonnage into a pair of large hanger decks, each capable of two fighter wings and support craft, normally multi-role shuttles that could carry  out boarding actions or conduct search and rescue operations. They also found space for four docking hard-points on the ships broad back, allowing it to carry additional fire-power in the shape of assault DropShips or extra fighter carriers. The Columbia class also carries a company of Marines for both shipboard security and boarding operations. There is also a limited passenger capacity, allowing the ship to act as an orbital command post or impromptu flagship.
     Offensively, the Columbia is limited to a number of large calibre lasers spread around the hull in duel turrets, but the forward arcs also carry a quartet of heavy particle projection cannons and a number of capital scale missile tubes, with the idea that it will most likely have to fight its way through a blockade to reach its target. The ferro-carbide armour is also heaviest towards the bow, allowing it to take several direct hits before anything more than superficial damage is done.

Construction & Cancellation
     We have no hard evidence of just how many Columbia's the Federated Suns admiralty planned on building; with a price tag of almost 16-billion each (adjusted for inflation), they were very expensive. On the other hand, they were a potential game-changing design with a flexible mission profile. It is known that an order was placed with the New Avalon Shipyards, with the lead ship, the AFFS Columbia, being launched in a naming ceremony presided over by First Prince Samuel Davion in 2684. It was followed less then a year later by the Acropolis and the Atlantia, with the Pacifica, Pegasus, Rycon and Triton following on at intervals of around 18-months.
     But it was at this point that the Star League stepped in, and prohibited the sale of further Kraken drives to the Federated Suns in one of their periodical bids to clamp down on arms build-ups between the member states. Work had just started on the Bellerophon at this time, and the ship was quickly dismantled and the parts returned to stores. The Cerberus and the Ulysses never made it off the drawing-board.

Operational History
     The Columbia and Pegasus served with the Fifth Fleet during several skirmished with the the Taurian Concordat in and around the Pleiades Cluster during the so-called Hidden Wars that were a widely known secret during the days of the Star League. Both ships lived up to their expectations, acting as heavy escorts for DropShip formations, using their superior acceleration to run rings around their opponents. The Acropolis, Rycon and Pacifica spent much of their lives patrolling the Davion side of our own boarders, while the Atlantia and Triton saw limited action against Draconis Combine raiding parties but took part in no major operations. The only ship to be damaged enough to require a shipyard was the Columbia, which suffered a major internal fire caused by enemy action in 2696, and was forced to pull back to Kathil to make repairs.
     But it was the start of the Succession Wars that put an end to the Columbia class. The Draconis Combine managed to claim the Columbia, Acropolis and Atlantia during an raid aimed at decapitating the AFFS by either capturing or killing the First Prince and much of the High Command. But they evidently underestimated the strength and disposition of the defences, and were caught between elements of the Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Fleets. The battle was unusually brutal, even by the standards of the day, with over a hundred thousand killed or missing when the surviving Draconis units fled in disarray. The Acropolis and Atlantia were destroyed outright, while the Columbia was so badly damaged she was scrapped for much-needed spare parts.
      Our own fleet destroyed the Pacifica over Emerson shortly after the start of the Second Succession War, while the Trition was lost when a Draconis Strike Force caught her in the Adrian system. With one of the Kraken drives disabled due to lack of maintenance, and still suffering from  battle damage sustained during the previous war, they were able to corner her with heavy units and blast her to scrap in short order. The battle ended when her captain gave the order to ram the Draconis flagship, utterly destroying both vessels.
     It is here that the mystery begins.
     Both the Pegasus and Rycon suffered major battle damage during the First Succession War when they were forced to stand and fight opponents in their own weight range, and they were still listed as part of the AFFS order of battle at the start of the second war, but even after combing through our archives, I have been unable to find any information about their operational history during the conflict. Both ships were listed as lost in action some time around 2846 (even our records from that time our somewhat fragmented at best), but I can find no record of a corresponding battle that they are known to have taken part with. It is therefore obvious, in the light of recent events, that at least one of the ships was moved to a secure location.
     At some point the ship was repaired and returned to operational condition, but it saw no action during the remaining years of the Second Succession War or for several centuries that followed. The most likely explanation for this is that the Davion's simply lacked the ability to repair the ship, and mothballed her in the hopes on one day recovering enough lost knowledge and technology to carry out the work.
     Whatever the case, the ship was evidently operational when Jacob Varnay launched his unsuccessful coup d'état of the Federated Suns in April of 3073, and it made its first public appearance in 250 years when she jumped into the Galax system. Publicly identified as the missing Pegasus, First Prince Victor Davion proclaimed her his flagship and commanded the space-born portion of the following assault on New Avalon from her bridge.
      The battle saw fleet scale engagement between the Pegasus, the Andrew Davion (Avalon) and the Alexander Davion (Davion III) under Victor's command face off against the Thunderchild (First Prince), Fox (Fox) and Ian Davion (Avalon) loyal to Varnay. While the defending forces attempted to blockade New Avalon, the Pegasus fulfilled her intended role, using her impressive speed and forward armament to plough through the opposition, her fighters protecting a number of troop-transport DropShips, while her armour allowed her to shrug off the few shots that made contact. With her charges free and clear, she then turn back and engaged the Varnay forces from behind, catching them in a pincer movement.
     The Andrew Davion and the Alexander Davion concentrated their fire on first the Fox then the Ian Davion, destroying both in short order while taking heavy but not critical damage in return. Meanwhile the Pegasus engaged the Thunderchild in the kind of titanic duel to the death normally reserved for bad TriVid movies or pulp novels. While the rebel ship had the edge in fire-power, the greater armour and agility of Victor's command were enough to give it an edge, and it emerged victorious.
     I'm sorry; I'm getting as bad as those movies and books I just mentioned.
     The three ship task force moved into a high orbit of New Avalon, allowing them to support the troops on the ground without getting too deep into the planets gravity well. This is an almost universally taught tactic for warship support of planetary invasions, and could be found in any text book on the subject across human inhabited space.
      We know that by this time that the First Prince had joined his ground forces on planet, and was as is his custom, leading from the front. It was at this time that a Riga class Frigate and a Pinto class Corvette entered the system by way of a nearby pirate point and caught the Alexander Davion in a crossfire. The destroyer was disabled in a reasonably stable orbit, while the Pegasus and Andrew Davion moved to counter attack. The Pinto was struck by a massed volley of heavy laser and particle cannon fire from the Pegasus and quickly exploded, while the Battleships fighters aided the Andrew Davion in tackling the Riga. The frigate took several hits from long range missiles and its weapons were badly damaged. Reports indicate that it was attempting to open the range between itself and its opponent, possible with the intent of jumping back out, when a fluke hit disabled its inter-system drives. The Pegasus and Andrew Davion made ready to deploy boarding parties, but the Riga exploded unexpectedly.
     Analysis of released gun-camera footage indicates that this was a deliberate act on the part of the ships commander, and the blast pastern is consistent with that classes scuttling charges.
     With the end of hostilities, the Pegasus vanished again, reappearing back at Galax almost a year later with completely rebuilt interplanetary drives and fresh armour. It is most likely at this time that they missiles were upgraded to Kraken-T's, and improved anti-fighter and point defence weapons were added at the apparent expense of some of the cargo space.
     Since rejoining the fleet, the Pegasus has spent most of its time in and around the Capellan March, including several insentience where it has engaged our own fleet in battle. It was always deployed against ships it out-massed, out-gunned and could out-accelerate, costing us dearly. Whatever damage the drives took over New Avalon has evidently been repaired, and the ship remains as potent a weapon as ever.

A Riddle Wrapped In A Mystery Inside An Enigma
     So, just where was the Pegasus hiding for all those years?
     The New Avalon yards where it was built were destroyed by the DCMS during the Succession Wars, and every other known yard capable of handling a ship its size was either destroyed outright or so badly damaged it would have been impossible for them to hide something so big. But as the old saying goes, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, and that means an unknown yard.
     We know that there are a number of 'lost' outposts out there; the Age of War and Succession Wars cost humanity dearly, and as Word of Blake proved, it's possible to make an entire world just vanish. So it is no stretch of the imagination that the Federated Suns was able to hide some kind of maintenance and repair facility. I spent many days in our archives, going over reports either too old or too sensitive to put onto even the most secure of computers, and I found something I believe may shed some light on the mystery. Back in 3026, shortly before the start of the Fourth Succession War, my predecessors agreed to share some intelligence on the Federated Suns with their counterparts in the Draconis Combine. While much of it was little more than fanciful rumour and hearsay, there was a short report, no more than two typed pages, referring to a suspected secret naval yard somewhere in the Crucis March known only by the code-name Hadrian's Command, where the Davion's were suspect of having hidden a number of badly damaged warships dating back to the time of the Star League.
     While there was little hard data, there was a link to a long missing Challenge System's shipyard, where the Davion's had worked on the Congress class. While they have no evidence, an analysis of shipping routes and transit times in the area would place it somewhere within four jumps of New Avalon, an area of space that contains hundreds on uninhabited star systems where such a secret facility could easily be located.
     It's hardly my place to say, but I have to wonder if trying to track down such a well hidden outpost, one the Davion's have managed to keep off the maps for hundreds of years, would really be worth the cost in time and lives?

The Rycon
     Only one mystery remains; the fate of the Rycon. The most likely answer is that she was birthed at the New Avalon yards when they were destroyed, and was lost with them. Another is that she was lost to one of the warships that were known to have turned pirate back during those dark days, or possibly even ComStar.
     The last confirmed sighting of the Rycon was at the Galax yards, where some of the Federated Suns largest companies were pooling their resources in a bit to get the ship repaired to defend their interests from outside attack. This represented, at the time, the last known attempt of the part of the Federated Suns to maintain the Columbia class in active service, and its disappearance caused at least two companies to go bust.

Future Developments
     Recent reports indicate that a new, upgraded version of the Columbia class is in the works, but none of our agents in the known yards have passed on details. All we have to date are the code-names Mercury and Black Prince.
     Beyond that, I dare not speculate.

Dr J. Kowalski