Omake: Come To The Dark Side, We Have Cookies Missiles
“Dear, we have a disaster on our hands!” cried Willis as he rushed into the royal quarters, eyes wide with panic and arms waving frantically. “Thanh has fallen to the Dark Side and it’s all YOUR fault!”
“Oh really now?”
“Yes! You keep putting her in command of big ships, and now she’s gone and betrayed fighter pilots forever!!!” Willis sank into the very comfortable couch and thrust a data slate at the Empress. “Just look at this!”
“What am I looking at here?”
“It’s an unholy abomination of anti-fighter-ness that Thanh cooked up with S.A.R.A.H.!”
“Dad is just all sour grapes because he can’t come up with a way to beat Project Typhon with ASFs.” declared Thanh with distinct smugness as she entered the room. “It’s a long term answer to large-scale swarm attacks like the Dracs just threw at us, albeit one based on Star League naval weapons that we haven’t actually redeveloped yet.”
“It’s evil and cheating.” grumbled Willis. “Nobody should ever have that many missiles in one place.”
Jackie raised an eyebrow at the ship specs. “Logistics is going to have griffkittens supplying this monster. One hundred forty-four LRM-20 racks, forty-eight launchers for the new Swordfish subcapital point-defense missiles that haven’t even made it out of the lab yet, and how many Star League capital missiles?”
“Ninety-six launchers -- twelve in each firing arc, with two hundred forty missiles in the ready magazines.” expounded the naval officer cheerfully. “And they’re Killer Whales as opposed to Barracudas -- the very heaviest capital missiles in the Star League arsenal, which makes them the most effective at punching through massed anti-missile fire.”
“See!” Willis pointed his finger in grand accusation. “This is all your fault!”
“In all seriousness, this looks like an excellent idea.” said the Empress approvingly. “While I'm cautiously optimistic that the Dracs will be a resolved matter by the time we could actually put these vessels into production, an anti-fighter WarShip along these lines would be an excellent counter to the large numbers of drone fighters operated by the Amaris pirates. You totally have my approval to push it to actual design work.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”