Captain Doyal thought she was final getting the hang of this, roughshod command style. Right now she had the inside of the ship mostly to herself, the crew had been given twelve hours leave before they started the emplacement of the new hardware.
The crew. All two hundred of them. Half of what they needed. She thumbed through the list again the faces and records flying through quickly. Her new captain had giver her a list of personnel that had applied to first fleet and asked her to recommend some for department heads. But she couldn't focus.
It was all too amazing, this whole ship was against the nature of starfleet, it was designed as a warship. And no matter how many phasers Kayetan pulled out it still was an engine of destruction. She closed the crew list and put a schematic up.
The USS Storm was four-hundred and ninety-two meters, putting her more than one hundred meters shorter than the Sovereign class but with twenty-four decks and a more compact design she had almost the same internal volume, but er crew was only two-thirds the size, the difference being made up through far more numerous backup and weapon systems.
Those weapons. It was almost scary. There were twenty-two phaser banks, a number which seemed high, but they were twelve-betas, a smaller more rapidly firing version of standard ships phasers. And that was how many were left after they had pulled eight banks from each side of the ship. Then there were the torpedo launchers, originally they could only fire the more powerful quantum torpedoes, but Kayetan had acquired a set of multi-launchers that could fire both photon and quantum torpedoes. So all eight launchers, six on the front of the engineering hull, and two on the rear had been replaced with them.
But the real teeth of this predator were the four remaining sustained burst phasers mounted in the forward superstructure. They were insane. First, they could not be fired while in warp, as ninety-eight percent of warp power was used to fire the damn things. They couldn't be aimed anywhere but forward, but they could overload almost any known shield type with only a three second burst. However, their power up phase took two hundred and seven seconds, almost three and a half minutes and no other weapon system could be used while they were firing. There were other drawbacks, like the interference they put out practically blinding the sensors and alerting every ship in the sector of their presence.
This whole ship was contrary to the tenants of starfleet. It wasn't an explorer, or science vessel, even with the captains modifications, adding more long range survey equipment, pulling some of the phasers for science labs adding more shuttle storage and equipment fabrication facilities. Yes these changes would make it easer for the ship on long range patrols, but it still didn't change the fact that anyone or anything that scanned the Storm would know it was a war ship, not a 'peaceful' explorer.
And then there was 'the piece' of equipment the captain had picked up. It had taken a few days but in the end he, with several minions and one Captain Doyal in tow had acquired a Slipstream Overdrive. The slipstream overdrive is one of the breakthroughs that came when the USS Voyager came back from her sojourn in the delta quadrant. Particularly, with the designs for the quantum slipstream drive. At first starfleet engineers were ecstatic when they got access to the data on the quantum slipstream, however, when they attempted to apply the data in a prototype ship even with their improvements on B'elanna Torres's original schematics, the prototype still failed. After picking up the pieces of the prototype scattered halfway around the alpha quadrant, the design team declared that with current technology it was technically infeasible to make the slipstream work. But one of the team members wasn't quite ready to give up and requested permission to keep working on the drive with a small team because he felt that it was the future of transportation technology. He was half right. While the slipstream core itself was impractical with the current levels, many of the subsystems involved in generating a slipstream corridor were quite feasible.
Many new power supply methods came from this derivative work but it wasn't until it was thought upon to apply the quantum drive deflector modifications to a vessel but instead of using it to open a slipstream corridor they would use it to enhance the 'normal' warp field of the ship. It was because of one of these modifications that the research vessel USS T'plana Hath, NAR-14922, became the first vessel to reach warp 9.99999999 under its own power and hold it for two minutes before the warp field destabilized and the ship was thrown clear.
To better understand this achievement one needs to understand how the quantum slipstream works, instead of folding space around the ship (as a normal warp drive) the slipstream uses the deflector to generate a 'tunnel' in front of the ship, something like the trans-warp conduits the borg use. In fact, some theories suggest that the slipstream drive is an off chute of the trans-warp conduit. Now, during normal warp flight your actual speeds will vary depending on the amount of subspace turbulence, gravity wells and anything that has an effect on subspace. This same interference is what causes the 'warp ten' barrier; the amount of power needed to overcome these effects is too great to actually generate and so the tenth 'warp threshold' is impossible.
The quantum slipstream overcomes this basic flaw in the 'normal' drive by, instead of generating a field around the ship to propel it, a much stronger 'curved' subspace field is generated in front of the ship allowing it to 'slide' through at incredible speeds. Despite this amazing increase in speed, there are two main inerrant flaws in the slipstream; the amount of power it takes, while not nearly the 'infinite' amounts needed for warp ten, is still phenomenal and causes the power systems of the ship to overload; and the speed of the slipstream is so great that sensors can't 'see' where the ship is headed. This 'quantum resonance effect' is similar to the Einstein effect seen on normal faster than light travel. Sensors of the current type, including astrometric sensors, just aren't capable of seeing fast enough to steer the ship. Even the use of 'pilot' vessels, like a shuttle, don't make up for this. Perhaps future breakthroughs will enable us to create a working slipstream drive but until then the Quantum Slipstream is too unstable for practical use.
Until that time though, we have the Overdrive. The Overdrive is a kind of 'cross' of what is known of the quantum slipstream and normal warp drive. A ship equipped with the modified Overdrive deflector starts warp flight as normal until reaching the ninth warp threshold, IE: warp nine-pont-oh. At this point the deflector is engaged generating a 'subspace plow' in front of the ship. The warp plow 'smooths' space in front of the ship, allowing the main warp field to work at vastly improved rate much like the Slipstream Drive. It is this that allows a ship to engage a maximum of four more warp thresholds. These warp thresholds are not as strong as the ones generated by the main warp coils, they can't be or they would destabilize the main warp field. The theory behind the devices use was explained in the annual Starfleet engineers log as, 'imagine if the warp drive were like running uphill through a narrow ravine dodging boulders constantly falling toward you. When you add the Overdrive its now like running downhill, on a clear open plain.' While this turn of phrase gets the point across it makes the drive sound like it will replace the standard warp drive quickly. This is untrue. While the Overdrive will make extreme long distance quicker the inherent faults it has will limit it to just that.
First, the Overdrive is extremely delicate, even a micron out of alignment, a particle in the wrong space, and BOOM, no more ship. Like hitting a brick wall at full impulse. Second, the transition period. The additional warp fields generated by it must be engaged slowly, about thirty minutes for each, compounded. So the first one takes thirty minutes, the next, one hour, and next an hour and a half, etc. etc. Therefore, if you wanted to go to warp 11, (which is warp 9.0+Overdrive 2) it would take a total of an hour and a half to get there. So to get to the maximum of warp 13, it would take 6 ½ hrs to get there. And the same time to disengage the drive. No sudden stops there.
Third is power requirements. Using the overdrive takes about 100 KiloCochranes of power usage. Nearly the maximum that a standard Galaxy class ship warp core produces.
These and other drawbacks mean the Warp Overdrive will not see wide-spread service other then long rage transportation and exploration. And then only in larger ships like the Sovereign, Excalibur, Corsica and Galaxy refit classes. Although there is now a dedicated passenger service running from Q'noS stopping by Earth and then to Bajor, a cross Federation route.
Now as to the Storm, there was a an additional complication, two warp cores. Yup. The ship had twin warp cores. It had been attempted before but was discarded as impractical, as well as unfeasible; one couldn't align the matter anti-matter feeds so the two cores would just interfere with each others warp fields. Well, it seemed that an engineering team, led by no less than her current superior, had found how to do it; just have them feed from the same injector assemblies. It had meant inventing a whole new method for the process, but they did it. They ended up with a system that had a massive power curve. Indeed, when she was reading the specs of the core one of the initial designers had indicated a problem with dumping power, they just had too much and the warp field only took so much, the rest had to be sent to subsystems. And usually there were enough to suck the excess, and then some. But the old runabout they had tested the twin core in didn't, so they just ran a plasma conduit to the rear of the ship and dumped the excess energy there. It was odd actually, normally one designed a ship, worked out what you wanted it to do then designed a core for it, one tailored to its power needs. In the Storm's case it the other way around, they had a core and wanted a hull to use it. According to the reports they first tried a small ship, no larger than a Defiant, the Scarab class project. Even with that the twin core design was over powered, its power curve was just too extreme. They added huge plasma impulse engines, massive shields and weapons banks, by then they were ready to try anything. They tried bigger. Enter the Storm class. Some flag officer had decided Sterfleet needed a response to the Romulan warbirds, Cardissian galors and Dominion battleships and so commissioned a design team. Interesting really, how the various teams came together, a weapons design team working on a new phaser system, the Twin-core team and meta-phasic shield teams, all brought under Kayetan and let loose. The Storm and two sisters were laid down less than six months later. It was an impressive testament to the engineers, designing such an impressive ship in so short a time, the Galaxy class had taken more than ten years to design and it wasn't half as complicated as the Storm.
Sam sighed. It was kind of sad but just because she understood what it had taken to build the Storm didn't mean she agreed with its philosophy. It was the right thing, to cancel the class build, the war had been won and starfleet didn't need a fleet of battleships running around while they rebuilt. Especially such resource intensive ones. No, it had been best to put them in deep storage and forget what depths the war had brought them to.
But now she would be serving on that ship. For a year. Well, she had her pride, spy or not she would learn the ins and outs of her ship and be as good a first officer as she could, even with the crew of misfits and castoffs Kayetan seemed to be drawing. She just wouldn't like it.
And now she had to put together a crew list
So, if she didn't have a say in which ship, she did have one on who crewed her. Security Chief and Head of Engineering were taken by Orrourak and Lallal respectively and they seemed to have someone in mind for Operations and Medical. So that left Science Officer, Conning Officer, their Fighter Wing Commander, the JAG officer they wanted to take with them, and the multitude of junior officers that would be needed to crew the ship. Her choices were limited to those who had volunteered for the five year missions and that in and of itself drew some strange types.
It was going to be a long night.