The 11th
Legacy Name: The 11th

"Offence, Defence, Speed and Stealth. These are the qualities that define a spaceship built for combat."

That was how the group's thesis began. It was to be their final project at the high university and they were determined to make it an astounding one, and what better way (their self appointed leader insisted) than to create the best ships ever built. I was their computer mainframe, and I was to help them accomplish this.

The first to be built was Speed, well Speed Mk.II actually, the Mk.I's hull had to be rebuilt from scratch after an accident during test flight. Speed was the most manoeuvrable of the fleet, being able to perform complete 180° turns in the tightest of spaces, even at her top speed, which (of course) was very fast indeed. Her top speed in fact will not be matched in commercial ships until 8015 (a full 1950 years after her construction), although she is due for an upgrade in the 7th millennium...

Offence and Defence (later re-christened as Force and Bastion) were the next ships to come into being and they were pitted against each other constantly during their development. There is, I believe, an old philosophical discussion about the outcome of a battle between immeasurable power and impenetrable defence, and these mock battles certainly seemed close to the scenario. In the end though it always come down to which pilot made the first mistake, usually after an hour long bout, and the final score stood at 643 to 639, in Bastion's favour.

Stealth's pilot was the most strategic of the group and he enjoyed his ship immensely. With a fully shielded core and a hull reminiscent of the void ships of legend, Stealth was the very definition of undetectable. In battle she was light, fast (though not as fast as Speed) and deadly accurate, her pilot's favourite strategy been to silently orbit an enemy ship and pinpoint its greatest weakness. There has yet to be a sensor array capable of detecting Stealth in under a minute, and none capable of keeping a stable lock. Her pilot was immensely proud of that as I recall.

The success of the four ships was as astounding as they had hoped and between them they could take on a fully armed fleet of 25 quite comfortably. Over the next few months new ideas were put forward by the group and they soon added three more ships to their collection, each as powerful and deadly as the others.

Paradox was a ship of impossibility and possessed a time drive powerful (and stable) enough to be able to cross its own time-line twice, while not causing the universe to implode, effectively becoming three vessels at once. A joke about armed and dangerous asteroids (don't ask) led to the design of an intriguing ship called Mimic, who's freely malleable hull and clever holographic system enabled her to assume almost any form or size within two seconds, something that the group would later use extensively to infiltrate unfriendly territories (and joyride through asteroid belts). Last to join the fleet was Indomitable, a simple, unassuming ship with only one curiosity to her name: a terrifying amount of adaptive Nanotechnology. Built purely as 'a ship that learns' Indomitable specialised in drawn out fights, where her adaptive and self-repair technology would eventually leave the opponent with no option but that of surrender.

[Still writing, still writing ...]