Тяжелый крейсер класса "Г'Кван" (не канон, инфа взята из фактбуков)
О, пусть будет тут, всяко пригодится. Хотя у меня где-то в закромах была книга по военным кораблям В5...
о самом крейсере:
ну и просто полюбоваться. Имхо, самый красивый космический корабль в сериале, после кораблей теней и ворлонцев. Ладно, согласна, что минбарские шарлины тоже ничего.
Из книги про нарнские корабли (условный канон, потому что от Мангус)
скачать книгу можно тут
babylon_5_ship_plans_vol_2_g_quan.zip
Introduction
The year was 2231 and a far-flung Narn colony lay blistered and charred black by Dilgar energy weapons, the inhabitants of this still unnamed world beaten, brutalised and used as test subjects by the villain Death Walker. This Narn colony was suffering the same fate as dozens of planets among the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. While colonists suffered, the Narn’s mighty space fleet stood paralyzed by fear and the knowledge that their ships were too weak and too far away to be of any aid to the tiny outpost brought low by the might of the Dilgar Empire.
On this day, the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser was born.
While large and powerful by any measure of naval might, the Narn Regime’s space-born military still consisted of ships that were, in truth, little more than a cobblework of technologies bought or stolen from a dozen races. Warships like the T’Loth, Th’Nor and other capital ships used by the Narn in this era, were all based оn identical hulls, simply arranged in varied configurations for mission-specific roles. Up until 2231, the Narn had never attempted to design and build a warship from the ground up, still favouring designs and specifications pilfered from the data archives of construction equipment left behind by the Centauri occupation forces.
Upon witnessing and becoming victims to a technologically superior foe, a rival who was nearly оn a technological par with the hated Centauri Republic, it became clear that if the Narn dream of vengeance upon their former oppressors was to be recognised, the Narn people would оnce more need to adapt; the Regime needed a larger and more powerful warship to lead them to victory.
Immediately following the border disputes with the advancing Dilgar menace, long-delayed implementation of the G’Quan development program began in earnest. Between the Earth years 2232 and 2241, the new heavy cruiser was designed, tested and finally put to space оn April 16th, 2242. The debut of the NRS Sword of G’Quan – first in the new breed of Narn warships – was a moment of elated celebration by the Narn and quiet apprehension for their neighbours; the League, Earth Alliance and Centauri Republic.
For the Narn, the G’Quan was like no other warship that had come before her. Sleek lines, ornate fins and bloodred armour plating gave the G’Quan the elegant and vicious appearance of a dagger – a blade meant to carve the hearts out of the Centauri Republic. So revolutionary was the G’Quan’s design and so fearsome her appearance, rumours of advanced technology and weapons purchased from the Minbari or the Vorlons abounded in the armies and courts of the civilised universe.
For the next 20 years, the G’Quan would strike fear into every race who chanced to catch a glimpse of her but, in the battle that would see the galaxy changed forever, the looming shadow of the Great War and the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind, the G’Quan would go from a tool of terror, to tragedy, redemption and, finally, fulfill her role as the hand of retribution against the Centauri Republic.
This is its story.
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Design History
The G’Quan class heavy cruiser is, by all rights, the brain child of design engineer G’Vrahn of the Fifth Circle. G’Vrahn had worked оn the development of every major warship built by the Narn Regime and had spent years studying the designs and engineering philosophies of the other races. More than anyone else, G’Vrahn pushed for the development of wholly originally warships based оn Narn designs and Narn military needs, advising his colleagues and superiors not to simply copy what had been used by others.
Cost was a major concern for the Kha’Ri who looked favourably upon the large yet inexpensive ships that comprised their original fleet and, at the time, believed that they could overwhelm their enemies by sheer numbers. Border disputes with the Centauri and the Earth Alliance, however, served to demonstrate the limitations of the T’Loth and Th’Nor class ships and, after the spirit-crushing debacle that resulted in the Dilgar seizing Narn territory and the Regime having no hope of repelling them, the Kha’Ri were forced to acknowledge that G’Vrahn had been correct and a new breed of warship would be needed if there were to be any hope of defeating the Centauri.
G’Vrahn took what he had learned from Centauri, Earth, League and what little was known of Minbari ship technologies and eliminated what he felt were the shortcomings in their respective designs. With the exception of the Drazi, nearly all the ships designed by the advanced races were based оn wet-navy design principles, ships built deck by deck, оne layered atop the other. Armour, hulls and decks were all considered to be separate items.
None of the other major powers having bothered to combine or refine their design philosophies to take full advantage of the zero-gravity environment their warships were born to serve in. Worse yet, the implementation of fighter bays in alien warships hampered their performance and multi-tasking a ship’s design impaired its ability to conduct any оne dedicated mission to satisfaction.
G’Vrahn designed the G’Quan to be a superheavy cruiser and оne of the very first decisions the Engineering Master made was to take a complete and total departure from deck layouts found in other starships. Instead of using horizontal or vertical decks, G’Vrahn based the G’Quan’s hull design оn cardioids and limaçons, building оne semi-loop inside of another loop, inside of another and another, engineering the G’Quan in a way that would оne day have EarthForce engineers comparing the G’Quan to Russian nesting dolls.
This design was not оnly meant to take full advantage of the ship’s zero-gravity environment, but it also combined the ships decks, hull and armour into a stacked layer of protection for the ship’s crew and critical systems. This was key to G’Vrahn’s personal goal; to eliminate what he had always believed to be the single greatest weakness found in the ships of foreign powers. Unlike Earth or Centauri ships, where оne could pierce the armour belt between decks and inflict a tremendous amount of damage, the G’Quan’s nested armour/hull/deck design would force an enemy to burn through more material than most energy weapons were capable of doing.
While the Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, whose armour belt and main hull оnly average 3.5 metres in thickness, the G’Quan outer armour belt was designed to be between 3.5 and 5.8 metres thick. This alone made the G’Quan a far more resilient ship. Unlike the Hyperion, however, the G’Quan also had an additional layer of armoured deck plate, averaging no less than 2 metres thick, repeated across nearly ten separate layers. So, while a high-output Centauri particle beam would have to pierce through оnly 10 to 12 metres of armour and hull to blast completely through a Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, they would need to blast through as much as 32 metres of armour, deck and hull to blast through a G’Quan – three times the volume of material for a Hyperion. This effectively made the G’Quan the most heavily armoured hull of any navy of the Younger Races, until the debut of the EarthForce Omega-class destroyer.
G’Vrahn’s unique and revolutionary hull design, with its concentric arcs within the main body of the ship, were further reinforced by two different braces. First, the entire ship’s hull was reinforced with 2 metre thick vertical bulkheads spaced evenly every 23 metres. Second, a Yshaped shock absorber was placed in the centre of both the port and starboard arcs of the ship, bracing up against the 5 metre thick heavy casement wall that separated the main body of the ship from the central fuel tanks and then split to brace to the main dorsal and ventral hulls.
These reinforcers strengthened the G’Quan’s hull along all directions, particularly along the ship’s Z-axis and Y-axis, thus allowing the G’Quan to have increased acceleration and ability to maintain constant thrust, while also reducing deformation that the G’Quan would have suffered from yaw and roll motion stress during combat manoeuvres.
The ventral and dorsal bodies of the ship’s main hull were split down the centre by the ship’s power plants and weapons systems. They then split laterally by crew habitations and ship maintenance facilities that occupy
the central core of the ship, where G’Vrahn intended ship’s personnel to enjoy the highest level of protection from attack.
Guile would also be of key importance to the G’Quan design. Working closely with the Narn Intelligence Bureau оn this matter, G’Vrahn intentionally implemented design features for the sole purpose of misleading potential attackers while maximizing defensive systems and the ship’s offensive capability. So effective was Narn subterfuge surrounding the G’Quan, that several worlds began working оn implementing countermeasures to nonexistent design features.
G’Vrahn’s work, combined with misinformation distributed by many Narn intelligence agents, heightened fears in the Drazi Freehold, Earth Alliance and Centauri Republic with regards to just how dangerous the G’Quan actually was. Paramount structural design features incorporated into the heavy cruiser’s design that represented the Narn’s thinking оn this matter are the ship’s wings, vibrant colour scheme and prominent window settings.
Windows lining the ship’s outermost decks caused many to initially believe that the G’Quan was vulnerable to fighter attacks, the significant number of windows causing many foreign powers to assume that the G’Quan had a thin armour belt or little to no protection along her leading edge. It would not become apparent until the Narn-Centauri War of 2259, that what many had assumed to be a design flaw was in reality a clever form of misdirection оn the part of G’Vrahn.
The heavy cruiser’s windows were also meant to distract Centauri fighter pilots during combat, the Narn turning the reputation of Centauri pilots – renowned for their lethal accuracy and propensity for targeting enemy windows in the hopes of causing explosive decompression – against their hated foe, who would bypass exposed ‘soft targets’ along the G’Quan’s surface and instead haplessly fire upon the brightly lit windows.
This design feature can also be found in the G’Quan’s dorsal and ventral bridge towers, many window settings appearing to be stacked оne deck above the other. Truth be told, оnly a handful of the window settings found оn either bridge tower are real; most of the bridge tower windows are false light projections meant to distract from the real bridge windows. This feature, combined with intense sensor jamming and the G’Quan’s camouflage hull, would make damaging the G’Quan’s bridge towers incredibly difficult.
Only after war had officially broken out between the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic did the galaxy learn that the crew quarters lining the outer hull are tucked within an armoured pocket built into the leading edge of the G’Quan. While it is true that there is little more than 2 metres of hull and armour separating the outer decks from vacuum, behind the crew quarters is another 5.8 metres of reinforced hull and armour plate which makes firing upon the windows along the G’Quan’s hull an exercise in futility, with fighter mounted weapons being ill equipped to pierce an armour belt so thick.
Another key physical attribute of the G’Quan design is her vibrant colour scheme of green, white, black and red. While appearing decorative, art was not foremost оn the minds of Narn Engineering when building the G’Quan. The criss-crossing geometric shapes comprising the G’Quan’s hull break up the ship’s appearance and make it difficult for enemy ships, when using visual targeting, to distinguish the surface details of the G’Quan from the bridge tower and wings that wrap around the main hull. The end result of this camouflage was that the wings would blend into the ship’s main hull, making it incredibly difficult for fighters to target and distinguish between the hull and wings when attacking from any angle, above or below.
There was also a psychological aspect of this design feature, inspired by advanced races like the Minbari and enigmatic Vorlons. G’Vrahn had had an opportunity to study photos of Minbari warships; photos afforded the Narn thanks to their open diplomatic relations with the Minbari, even if those relations were lukewarm. G’Vrahn quickly came to realize that the vibrant colour scheme and design features often suggested to less developed
races that the Minbari were an advanced race, even if they had never seen a Minbari ship or even knew of the race who had built it. Thus, the G’Quan’s vibrant, ornate surface gave it the effective appearance of hailing from a more advanced and dangerous race than the Narn truly were.
Lastly, the wings featured оn the G’Quan caused many to assume, incorrectly, that the Narn had developed artificial gravity technology by reverse engineering machinery left behind by the Centauri. Rumours that the G’Quan was actually capable of atmospheric flight sent a wave of panic in the Centauri Royal Court and the Narn were more than happy to propagate this rumour. This panic was short lived when Centauri agents determined conclusively that the Narn had not developed this technology but, with the rumour already circulating amongst the many races, it quickly took оn a life of its own. Even today, many people mistakenly believe that the Narn possess artificial gravity technology when, in fact, this is a technology the Narn did not develop and would not be in possession of until 2265 as part of the Narn membership in the Interstellar Alliance.
While the G’Quan cannot enter or manoeuvre in a planet’s atmosphere, the wings do serve a purpose beyond aesthetics. In reality, the lateral wings contain a vast array of point thrusters tucked behind hidden, retractable, panels along the wing’s leading edge, fore and aft. This allows the G’Quan to yaw and bank far more quickly than would normally be possible and the hidden thruster points make them far more difficult for fighters to target and destroy. The wrapping wing that connects the bridge towers to the main hull also contain a vast and intricate array of sensor nodules and scanner equipment, making the G’Quan incredibly effective at targeting and repelling fighter attacks, tracking enemy fleet movements and cutting through the heavy blanket of ECM and sensor jamming found оn the modern battlefield.
To port and starboard, the upper and lower wings connect to the main wing via two large pontoons. Often mistaken for being part of the ship’s weapon system, the port and starboard pontoons found оn the G’Quan are actually part of the Narn heavy cruiser’s hyperspace scanning and targeting systems. While the Centauri and Earth
Alliance often focused their hyperspace antennas and sensor equipment near the front and centre of their ships, the Narn intentionally choose to set their scanners as far from the ship’s centre-line as possible in order to give the G’Quan increased combat performance in hyperspace. It also allows the heavy cruiser to travel further off the established hyperspace beacons than their Centauri counterparts.
The most important aspect of the G’Quan’s military assets is her impressive array of weapons. While designated as a ‘heavy cruiser’ due to her size of 1,260 metres and relatively light composite armour belt, the G’Quan boasted the heavy weapons and power plants found more commonly оn dreadnought type ships.
Defensive weapons include ten, rapid-fire pulse-battery guns (eight nested around the ship’s main reactor and two aft-firing guns situated above the main engines). While these weapons are of similar size and scale to the pulse cannons found оn the Hyperion, they are more efficient and capable of firing more bolts per оne-second volley.
If more fire-power was needed, the G’Quan also had two twin plasma bolt cannons mounted directly above and below the ship’s fighter launch bays. These powerful cannons are the G’Quan’s primary weapon when engaging in close-quarters combat and, while not as powerful as the ion cannons found оn the Centauri Vorchan, this weapon is superior to the plasma cannon found оn the EarthForce Hyperion-class heavy cruisers of this era.
The most destructive weapons in the G’Quan’s arsenal are its two forward-firing particle beam cannons. Based оn the Centauri battle laser (a hybrid x-ray/particle beam weapon), the Narn improved upon the design in several ways. First, the Narn built a dedicated fusion reactor just for the particle beam cannons, a spherical fusion core which joins directly with the two forward booms. This reactor system provides power to all the ship’s forward firing weapons and is used as a back-up for the aft reactors, which provide power for all other systems.
Secondly, the Narn integrated a series of magnetic field coils in the weapon projectors to increase the velocity at which charged particles were fired at a target. Eventually coming to be known as a ‘railed particle beam cannon’ (or RPC by the Earth Alliance), this weapon proved to be far more effective than other particle beam weapons and was among some of the first technologies EarthForce purchased from the Narn during the Earth-Minbari War.
It should be noted that the two forward booms to port and starboard of the G’Quan’s shuttle bay also serve two additional purposes. The barrel of the RPC doubles as the launch-tube for the G’Quan’s energy mines – a multimegaton proton/anti-proton bomb with proximity fuse – which is made possible by a cylinder mounted where the fighter bays meet the cannon. This cylinder has a loading mechanism in which the barrel of the cannon is mirrored. When the cylinder turns, it resets the barrel seamlessly. When an energy mine is placed into this system, the magnetic field coils are used to accelerate it down the barrel and hurl the projectile at its target.
Above and below the barrel of the RPC are the vortex generator projectors. While the four-point jump engines are actually tucked within the main body of the hull, the projector array is still maintained in the forward booms, power distributed via a complex network of piping which can be seen layered against the inside surface of the G’Quan.
All of the design features noted above would have been of little use if the G’Quan hadn’t the power to exploit all the design innovations that G’Vrahn and his design team had developed for it. Indeed, the G’Quan has far greater power generation capabilities than the majority of fusionbased starships found amongst the Younger Races. First, the G’Quan has four fusion reactors, three built into the ship’s main engines and оne featured prominently fore of the ship’s bridge towers. While the rear fusion
reactors provide power for the ship’s main engines and all primary systems, the spherical fusion core set near the front of the G’Quan provides the majority of the ship’s power for weapons and tactical systems.
The G’Quan also boasts three massive internal fuel tanks, each tank capable of carrying over 18,000,000 cubic metres of reactant material, and four smaller tanks capable of holding and additional 5,000,000 cubic metres of reactant material. EarthForce Naval Intelligence has estimated that the G’Quan’s internal tanks allow the Narn heavy cruiser to carry over 12 billion (1.2E10) metric tons of reactant material for the ships engines and fusion reactors, which far exceeds the potential fuel capacity for the Gamma-model Hyperions and dramatically exceeds the fuel reserves of any warship in the Centauri Republic’s current fleet inventory.
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Key Design Features
Core Deck 1 While Deck features may repeat, each deck still often has distinguishing features which cause it to differ from the others, or where some ship facilities are more densely packed. In the case of Core Deck 1, much of this deck is dedicated to combat training facilities, exercise rooms for the crew and a well-stocked armoury lining the ship’s starboard side. Port contains machinery, including the ship’s isotope chilling facility and pumping station – a target which proved incredibly popular with the Shadows and later the Centauri, when it was learned that the destruction of this area would cause an emergency shutdown of many of the G’Quan’s main systems, including the two vortex generators оn the forward port quarter.
Core Deck 1 also has several combat training facilities, meant to keep Narn personnel, marines and ground combat units at their peak military performance. Key military training facilities found оn this deck include the zero-gravity training area, where multiple nongravity environments can be simulated. The boarding action simulation room is unique in that its floor is comprised of row after row of magnetic plates. оnce magnetized, crew can simulate boarding actions against Centauri targets, which are known to use artificial gravity. Similarly, the Narn ground combat room can also be magnetized and both the ground combat and the boarding action rooms can be fitted with a wide range of props, sets and holographic projections, designed to maximize the realism of the environments they are meant to simulate. The Narn military also emphasizes distance marksmanship and a large firing range has also been setup оn Core Deck 1.
While there are several weapons lockers to be found across the G’Quan, the starboard side of Core Deck 1 is generally considered to be the main armoury for the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser. A broad and varied supply of different weapons are available from this area, as well as protective gear for traversing a wide variety of hostile environments. Offices for the master-of-arms and ordnance officer can also be found оn this deck and, generally speaking, access to weapons is restricted by Narn security personnel who maintain vigil over the combat weapons.
Pilots can find the office of the flight leader оn this deck, as well as the aerospace science labs, pilot briefing room, combat flight operations (CFO), alert fighter room with spare bunks and storage facilities for the ship’s energy mines and pyrotechnics. The auxiliary combat information centre (CIC) is also located оn this deck.
Core Deck 2 Science stations and offices for ship’s department heads and command officers can be found оn Core Deck 2, along with communications and scanner control rooms. Because this is the centremost part of the ship and, thus, most well protected part of the G’Quan, primary CIC is located here too. This is where all incoming data during the course of a battle is processed and analysed. Control access to all ships sensors, tactical systems and control systems are accessible through this area and command override of any ship’s system can be performed in CIC.
Generally speaking, this deck in dominated by command level control facilities and science research facilities. Laboratories for terraforming, xeno-archaeology, xenoengineering, xeno-science and xeno-biology can be found оn this deck. Unlike other military organizations, the Narn incorporated many different kinds of science facilities into their warships. This decision was prompted by the simple fact that many of the worlds the Narn were exploiting, or sought to exploit, were in the hands of the Centauri or were оn the border of Centauri space.
Command level facilities include offices for a flag officer, the chief political officer and many of the private offices for the ship’s officers. Loading and storage facilities for the ship’s energy mines can also be found in the fore area of the ship оn this deck, as well as a wide variety of engineering, emergency medical and pilot facilities.
Core Deck 3 The two features which dominate this deck are the ship’s main sickbays and the ship’s food stores and service area. While medical and kitchen facilities make up the majority of the ship’s starboard side, the port side houses recreation areas for the crew, including clubs for everyone from officers to the enlisted crew; it is even possible to find a movie theatre оn Core Deck 3. These areas are important to maintaining the morale of the crew during long operations, in which crew may be separated from family and civilisation for months or, in some cases, years.
Science and medical facilities оn Core Deck 3 are among the best in the Narn military. A full range of medical care can be provided for crewmen, ranging from simple examinations to full and complex surgical procedures. Autopsy and medical research facilities are also found оn this deck but, due to refrigeration concerns, any corpses are actually maintained in deep freeze, with the ship’s food stocks.
Dining facilities aboard the G’Quan can accommodate over a thousand people, though combat conditions and heavy automation of the G’Quan leaves much of the goods, service and storage facilities untapped, save for during times of war when the G’Quan carries extra combat troops into battle. There are a total of four primary serving areas for ships crew, segregating the crew, petty/warrant officers, junior officers and full officers from оne another, as is common in many of the space-born militaries today.
It should be noted that escape pods line the entire outer wall of the Core Decks. These escape pods, which are оnly a little bit larger than a coffin, are stacked two deep in the cubby between each room along the outer surface.
Arc Deck 1 This deck wraps around the whole of the ship and, through the use of a tram system near the rear-centre of the ship, crew can travel around the entire ship and journey to every deck. As a matter of fact, much of the ship’s stores are maintained оn this deck for this very reason.
Additionally, the G’Quan’s brig can be found оn this deck. A virtual fortress within the mighty battleship, it is believed to be next to impossible to escape from a Narn brig.
The Narn exhibit a fanatical interior design philosophy which is targeted at repelling boarding actions by enemy invaders. Every corner cut is at a 45 degree angle, in order to facilitate better arcs of fire when repelling boarders. It is for this reason the Centauri avoided boarding actions at all cost, instead simply concentrating оn destroying Narn ships rather than attempt capture.
In addition to stores, the brig and access to the vortex generators, the most prominent feature оn Arc Deck 1 is the hull’s structural support braces – the Y-shaped brace which presses up against the hull of the ship’s central core and up against the outer walls, allowing the G’Quan to perform yawing turns at speeds which would cause severe structural damage to other classes of starship.
Arc Deck 2 This deck is almost exclusively designated to ship’s machinery and maintenance. Few, if any, other accommodations are made available, though оne can find access control rooms to almost every engineering facility here, as well as an emergency room and storage space filled with bio/radiological protection gear.
Arc Deck 3 As with Arc Deck 2, this area is almost all machinery, though there are access tubes present which connect this area with every other part of the G’Quan.
Arc Deck 4 More machinery access is available here and little else. The reason the interior parts of the G’Quan are so sparse is do to the fact that the vast majority of the ship’s mass is dedicated to power generation, jump capability and military combat.
Arc Deck 5 The innermost arc of ship’s systems; this area is dedicated to materials fabrication and repair, with resources necessary to build replacement components for critical ship systems and spare parts for fighter craft.
Lateral Wings Tucked within the frame work of the lateral wings are the G’Quan’s reaction control thrusters, which allow the ship to manoeuvre during a fight. Along the outer edge of these wings are two pontoons, which house the G’Quan’s tachyon sensor array, used to maintain the ship’s beacon lock-on while traversing hyperspace. Buried within these wings are tram systems which link the main body of the ship to the outer wings and the ship’s two bridge towers.
Outer Wings The outer wings serve more than to simply connect the bridge towers with the ship’s main hull. Lining the entire surface area of the outer wings are tens of thousands of sensor and scanner arrays, providing the ship a full 360 degrees of sensor coverage with particular concentration оn targets fore and aft of the G’Quan.
Bridge Tower There are two bridge towers to be found оn the G’Quan, generally known as the North and South towers. Each tower is nearly identical, with оnly a few minor differences in room assignments. Each tower contains three decks. оn these decks crewman can find a small armoury, navigation bridge, command bridge, quarters for the captain, first officer, flag officer and VIP guests. Back-up systems for all scanner and communications systems are found оn each bridge tower, allowing all command functions to be diverted to either location during the course of combat.
The North Tower is typically the location from which the captain issues commands, while the first officer serves duty in the South Tower, thus ensuring that, no matter what happens, the chain of command remains unbroken. There are no escape pods to be found in either tower, instead both being capable of detaching and landing upon a planet’s surface until help arrives, as well as maintain vigil over any of the smaller crew escape pods ejecting during battle. Unfortunately, the оnly way to engage in such a separation is to blow a series of explosive bolts and sever all contact with the main body of the ship – an action Narn captains are hard pressed to choose and, to date, this option has never been used in an engagement.
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Design Flaws & Weaknesses
One might suspect that Narn engineer G’Vrahn would have been elated with the G’Quan. Unfortunately, this is just not the case. While the G’Quan did initially meet all of G’Vrahn’s hopes and wishes, this would not be the case for the bulk of the G’Quan’s development. Following the conclusion of the Dilgar War, politics began to rear its ugly head. With the Dilgar threat gone, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds was in complete and total disarray; the Earth Alliance concentrating their interests in territories beyond their shared border with the Regime; and the Centauri government were weakening under Emperor Turhan. The Narn government was plagued by a deluge of political decisions that had nothing to do with building an effective warship.
G’Vrahn, in the middle of building the first in the new starships, was infuriated by the constant nitpicking and unyielding deluge of notes and letters he received from his superiors, requesting and, in some cases, demanding
he making unreasonable design changes to the G’Quan. G’Vrahn was literally hen-pecked into making design changes he would have never implemented had he been left to his own devices. No more clearly is this illustrated than his two year fight with the Kha’Ri about adding fighter bays to the G’Quan.
Seeing that EarthForce had added fighter support into the Hyperion, the Kha’Ri and Narn military demanded G’Vrahn give the G’Quan fighter support. G’Vrahn argued against this idea, aptly noting that this was not a design improvement, but rather a design error оn the part of EarthForce. And so it went, two years of arguing that nearly brought the G’Quan’s design to a screeching halt that prompted an infuriated G’Vrahn to write a handwritten note in the margins of a design memo which read:
By the wings of G ’Lan, please help me – I am losing my mind!
Despite G’Vrahn’s use of incredibly simple words in explaining to the Kha’Ri why he decided to forgo built-in fighter support for the G’Quan; despite his long-winded explanations as to why the fleet should, instead, leave the issue of fighter support in the capable hands of dedicated fighter escort carriers and the new Bin’Tak dreadnought he was also developing for the Navy, G’Vrahn found all his pleas falling upon deaf ears.
Finally, with the fate of the entire project hanging by a thread, G’Vrahn ceded to the demands of his superiors and added fighter support into the G’Quan. Problem – he had no idea where to put it. As it had been built and designed, there was no place оn the G’Quan for a fighter bay. The front of the ship consisted of, originally, two booms for the particle beam cannons, two booms for the hyperspace jump point projectors and two more booms for the energy mine launchers. Something had to give.
Result? G’Vrahn ripped out the entire forward section of the G’Quan, compacted the hyperspace jump-point projectors in with the particle beams, stripped down the magnetic accelerator coils for the RPC and jerry-rigged a launcher assembly for the ship’s energy mines in with the particle beam cannons. The effect of these changes reduced the range and firepower of the ships main weapons, increased maintenance needs for the energy mine launchers tenfold and forced G’Vrahn to rip out the capacitors for the ship’s tachyon communications system – a decision which would render the G’Quan’s long-range communication systems inoperative during hyperspace jumps. This decision would haunt the Regime a decade later, when the Kha’Ri missed their оne opportunity to expose the Shadows before they were ready to strike.
Another headache to come out of implementing fighter support for the G’Quan, was where to put the fighters and, worse yet, how to get them into the ship? With the fighter launch bays situated inbetween the forward booms of the ship’s main weapons and jump point projectors, a complex tram system was needed to ferry the Narn fighters from the ship’s body and into the launch bays
(and back again). This would limit the types and scale of fighter craft the G’Quan would be able to support and would produce a host of issues with the first generation of G’Quans, which were notorious for having fighters slip from their tramways and become lodged within the transfer tunnel between the bay and the maintenance facilities in the body of the G’Quan.
A further design feature that would come back to haunt the Narn was G’Vrahn being forced to move the ship’s isotope chilling facility (EG 19) and isotope pumping station (EG 20) into оne area of the ship’s port hull, compelling the removal of the secondary assembly from the starboard hull. This would create a dangerous weakness in the ship’s design that G’Vrahn tried to compensate for by adding extra armour over these areas. Unfortunately, no amount of armour would be enough to combat the incredible firepower of Shadow cruisers, which would often target and destroy this area first.
Result? A complete automatic shut-down of the G’Quan’s reactant pumping stations, forcing the ship to switch over to inadequate secondary systems that rendered many of the G’Quan’s key systems, including the jump engines (EG 16), long range targeting scanners (SR 19) and railed particle beam cannons, inoperative for over a minute, providing an enemy with time to strike the G’Quan with impunity. оnce the Centauri Republic learned of this design flaw, via intelligence provided by House Mollari, this area became a favourite target of Centauri cruisers during the Narn-Centauri War of 2259, even if it did require several direct hits to punch far enough into the G’Quan’s armour belt to exploit this weakness.
И немного про "Г'Ток"
From the ashes, a lone Narn warship, the NRS G’Tok under the command of captain Na’Kal, survived the Narn-Centauri war intact. Given refuge for a short time at Babylon 5, the G’Tok successfully escaped the clutches of the Centauri Republic and, despite being hounded by the Centauri, eluded capture and continued to survive despite having no safe port to flee to.
Working as Citizen G’Kar’s military liaison, Na’Kal and the G’Tok assembled a military resistance and, finding other survivors, were able to assemble a small fleet of ships that were left оnly disabled by the Centauri in their mad rush to bring doom upon the Narn homeworld. Successfully rebuilding almost a dozen ships, the G’Tok and what remained of the Narn fleet would prove an invaluable weapon against the Shadows and the Vorlons, as their war threatened to tear the galaxy asunder.
Legends and stories of the G’Tok grew as the last of the G’Quan-class heavy cruisers rode into every battle against the Shadows and, through it all, taking little to no damage while continuing to deal out death. And while it would be the actions of оne man, G’Kar, that would see the Narn freed from the clutches of the Centauri Republic, it would be Na’Kal and the NRS G’Tok that would win the affections of the Army of Light. This G’Quan-class ship had captured the indomitable spirit of its namesake, driving the Shadows out of our galaxy, as G’Quan himself allegedly drove the Shadows from the Narn homeworld a thousand years before.
In the aftermath, their fleet slowly growing in size and strength, the reformed Narn regime would come to discover that more than 50 additional G’Quans had survived the war, left mothballed and abandoned by the Centauri around оne of the many gas giants in the Narn home system. Within a year, the great and indomitable navy of the Narn Regime would be reborn, the with G’Tok as their flagship and War-Leader Na’Kal as its commander. Desire for revenge burned bright in the hearts of the Narn and, soon, revenge would be theirs.
As the shipping lanes of the newly formed Interstellar Alliance came under attack, the military leaders of the Narn Regime and Drazi freehold met with the ISA President, John Sheridan, to discuss their strategic options upon learning that the Centauri were behind the attacks. While the ISA administration choose a path of caution, Na’Kal and his allies amongst the Drazi Freehold, who had also suffered greatly at the hands of the Centauri Republic, launched a massive strike against the
Na’Kal, aboard the G’Tok and leading 50 G’Quan-class heavy cruiser and supported by more than 200 Drazi Hawks, took their revenge upon the Centauri, striking without warning and laying waste to the surface of Centauri Prime from orbit. While the Narn would not stoop so low as to violate treaty and use mass drivers, their powerful RPCs pierced the atmosphere and, over several hours, razed over 20% of the planet’s surface, leaving every city ablaze and every tower and spire molten and charred... All save for the Centauri Royal Palace, which was ordered to be left in оne piece, for Na’Kal knew that G’Kar – the architect of Narn freedom – was being held prisoner there.
More than 30 years had passed since the inception of the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser. 30 years of struggle, pain and hardship. In the end, against all odds, through three wars and the most desperate of circumstance, the G’Quan – the ship built to take revenge, to cut the very heart out of the Centauri Republic – finally succeeded in her mission and accomplished the оne task she had been born to do and made G’Kar’s famous words a reality:
No dictator... no invader... can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson оnce. We will teach it to them again. Though it may take a thousand years, we will be free.
тут авторы книги ошибаются, командовал атакой на Приму Центавра генерал На'Ток. Ну да хрен с ними. На'Кал там тоже наверняка был. Хотя, логичнее было бы назначить главнокомандующим именно НаКала - если только не уцелел офицер званием выше. Но, зная нарнов, он бы дал о себе знать еще во время оккупации и войны, и скорее всего погиб бы с кораблем итп.
картинки из книги:
- интересный способ размещения истребителей.
И немного моих комментариев по тексту:
о самом крейсере:
ну и просто полюбоваться. Имхо, самый красивый космический корабль в сериале, после кораблей теней и ворлонцев. Ладно, согласна, что минбарские шарлины тоже ничего.
Из книги про нарнские корабли (условный канон, потому что от Мангус)
скачать книгу можно тут
babylon_5_ship_plans_vol_2_g_quan.zip
Introduction
The year was 2231 and a far-flung Narn colony lay blistered and charred black by Dilgar energy weapons, the inhabitants of this still unnamed world beaten, brutalised and used as test subjects by the villain Death Walker. This Narn colony was suffering the same fate as dozens of planets among the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. While colonists suffered, the Narn’s mighty space fleet stood paralyzed by fear and the knowledge that their ships were too weak and too far away to be of any aid to the tiny outpost brought low by the might of the Dilgar Empire.
On this day, the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser was born.
While large and powerful by any measure of naval might, the Narn Regime’s space-born military still consisted of ships that were, in truth, little more than a cobblework of technologies bought or stolen from a dozen races. Warships like the T’Loth, Th’Nor and other capital ships used by the Narn in this era, were all based оn identical hulls, simply arranged in varied configurations for mission-specific roles. Up until 2231, the Narn had never attempted to design and build a warship from the ground up, still favouring designs and specifications pilfered from the data archives of construction equipment left behind by the Centauri occupation forces.
Upon witnessing and becoming victims to a technologically superior foe, a rival who was nearly оn a technological par with the hated Centauri Republic, it became clear that if the Narn dream of vengeance upon their former oppressors was to be recognised, the Narn people would оnce more need to adapt; the Regime needed a larger and more powerful warship to lead them to victory.
Immediately following the border disputes with the advancing Dilgar menace, long-delayed implementation of the G’Quan development program began in earnest. Between the Earth years 2232 and 2241, the new heavy cruiser was designed, tested and finally put to space оn April 16th, 2242. The debut of the NRS Sword of G’Quan – first in the new breed of Narn warships – was a moment of elated celebration by the Narn and quiet apprehension for their neighbours; the League, Earth Alliance and Centauri Republic.
For the Narn, the G’Quan was like no other warship that had come before her. Sleek lines, ornate fins and bloodred armour plating gave the G’Quan the elegant and vicious appearance of a dagger – a blade meant to carve the hearts out of the Centauri Republic. So revolutionary was the G’Quan’s design and so fearsome her appearance, rumours of advanced technology and weapons purchased from the Minbari or the Vorlons abounded in the armies and courts of the civilised universe.
For the next 20 years, the G’Quan would strike fear into every race who chanced to catch a glimpse of her but, in the battle that would see the galaxy changed forever, the looming shadow of the Great War and the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind, the G’Quan would go from a tool of terror, to tragedy, redemption and, finally, fulfill her role as the hand of retribution against the Centauri Republic.
This is its story.
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Design History
The G’Quan class heavy cruiser is, by all rights, the brain child of design engineer G’Vrahn of the Fifth Circle. G’Vrahn had worked оn the development of every major warship built by the Narn Regime and had spent years studying the designs and engineering philosophies of the other races. More than anyone else, G’Vrahn pushed for the development of wholly originally warships based оn Narn designs and Narn military needs, advising his colleagues and superiors not to simply copy what had been used by others.
Cost was a major concern for the Kha’Ri who looked favourably upon the large yet inexpensive ships that comprised their original fleet and, at the time, believed that they could overwhelm their enemies by sheer numbers. Border disputes with the Centauri and the Earth Alliance, however, served to demonstrate the limitations of the T’Loth and Th’Nor class ships and, after the spirit-crushing debacle that resulted in the Dilgar seizing Narn territory and the Regime having no hope of repelling them, the Kha’Ri were forced to acknowledge that G’Vrahn had been correct and a new breed of warship would be needed if there were to be any hope of defeating the Centauri.
G’Vrahn took what he had learned from Centauri, Earth, League and what little was known of Minbari ship technologies and eliminated what he felt were the shortcomings in their respective designs. With the exception of the Drazi, nearly all the ships designed by the advanced races were based оn wet-navy design principles, ships built deck by deck, оne layered atop the other. Armour, hulls and decks were all considered to be separate items.
None of the other major powers having bothered to combine or refine their design philosophies to take full advantage of the zero-gravity environment their warships were born to serve in. Worse yet, the implementation of fighter bays in alien warships hampered their performance and multi-tasking a ship’s design impaired its ability to conduct any оne dedicated mission to satisfaction.
G’Vrahn designed the G’Quan to be a superheavy cruiser and оne of the very first decisions the Engineering Master made was to take a complete and total departure from deck layouts found in other starships. Instead of using horizontal or vertical decks, G’Vrahn based the G’Quan’s hull design оn cardioids and limaçons, building оne semi-loop inside of another loop, inside of another and another, engineering the G’Quan in a way that would оne day have EarthForce engineers comparing the G’Quan to Russian nesting dolls.
This design was not оnly meant to take full advantage of the ship’s zero-gravity environment, but it also combined the ships decks, hull and armour into a stacked layer of protection for the ship’s crew and critical systems. This was key to G’Vrahn’s personal goal; to eliminate what he had always believed to be the single greatest weakness found in the ships of foreign powers. Unlike Earth or Centauri ships, where оne could pierce the armour belt between decks and inflict a tremendous amount of damage, the G’Quan’s nested armour/hull/deck design would force an enemy to burn through more material than most energy weapons were capable of doing.
While the Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, whose armour belt and main hull оnly average 3.5 metres in thickness, the G’Quan outer armour belt was designed to be between 3.5 and 5.8 metres thick. This alone made the G’Quan a far more resilient ship. Unlike the Hyperion, however, the G’Quan also had an additional layer of armoured deck plate, averaging no less than 2 metres thick, repeated across nearly ten separate layers. So, while a high-output Centauri particle beam would have to pierce through оnly 10 to 12 metres of armour and hull to blast completely through a Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, they would need to blast through as much as 32 metres of armour, deck and hull to blast through a G’Quan – three times the volume of material for a Hyperion. This effectively made the G’Quan the most heavily armoured hull of any navy of the Younger Races, until the debut of the EarthForce Omega-class destroyer.
G’Vrahn’s unique and revolutionary hull design, with its concentric arcs within the main body of the ship, were further reinforced by two different braces. First, the entire ship’s hull was reinforced with 2 metre thick vertical bulkheads spaced evenly every 23 metres. Second, a Yshaped shock absorber was placed in the centre of both the port and starboard arcs of the ship, bracing up against the 5 metre thick heavy casement wall that separated the main body of the ship from the central fuel tanks and then split to brace to the main dorsal and ventral hulls.
These reinforcers strengthened the G’Quan’s hull along all directions, particularly along the ship’s Z-axis and Y-axis, thus allowing the G’Quan to have increased acceleration and ability to maintain constant thrust, while also reducing deformation that the G’Quan would have suffered from yaw and roll motion stress during combat manoeuvres.
The ventral and dorsal bodies of the ship’s main hull were split down the centre by the ship’s power plants and weapons systems. They then split laterally by crew habitations and ship maintenance facilities that occupy
the central core of the ship, where G’Vrahn intended ship’s personnel to enjoy the highest level of protection from attack.
Guile would also be of key importance to the G’Quan design. Working closely with the Narn Intelligence Bureau оn this matter, G’Vrahn intentionally implemented design features for the sole purpose of misleading potential attackers while maximizing defensive systems and the ship’s offensive capability. So effective was Narn subterfuge surrounding the G’Quan, that several worlds began working оn implementing countermeasures to nonexistent design features.
G’Vrahn’s work, combined with misinformation distributed by many Narn intelligence agents, heightened fears in the Drazi Freehold, Earth Alliance and Centauri Republic with regards to just how dangerous the G’Quan actually was. Paramount structural design features incorporated into the heavy cruiser’s design that represented the Narn’s thinking оn this matter are the ship’s wings, vibrant colour scheme and prominent window settings.
Windows lining the ship’s outermost decks caused many to initially believe that the G’Quan was vulnerable to fighter attacks, the significant number of windows causing many foreign powers to assume that the G’Quan had a thin armour belt or little to no protection along her leading edge. It would not become apparent until the Narn-Centauri War of 2259, that what many had assumed to be a design flaw was in reality a clever form of misdirection оn the part of G’Vrahn.
The heavy cruiser’s windows were also meant to distract Centauri fighter pilots during combat, the Narn turning the reputation of Centauri pilots – renowned for their lethal accuracy and propensity for targeting enemy windows in the hopes of causing explosive decompression – against their hated foe, who would bypass exposed ‘soft targets’ along the G’Quan’s surface and instead haplessly fire upon the brightly lit windows.
This design feature can also be found in the G’Quan’s dorsal and ventral bridge towers, many window settings appearing to be stacked оne deck above the other. Truth be told, оnly a handful of the window settings found оn either bridge tower are real; most of the bridge tower windows are false light projections meant to distract from the real bridge windows. This feature, combined with intense sensor jamming and the G’Quan’s camouflage hull, would make damaging the G’Quan’s bridge towers incredibly difficult.
Only after war had officially broken out between the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic did the galaxy learn that the crew quarters lining the outer hull are tucked within an armoured pocket built into the leading edge of the G’Quan. While it is true that there is little more than 2 metres of hull and armour separating the outer decks from vacuum, behind the crew quarters is another 5.8 metres of reinforced hull and armour plate which makes firing upon the windows along the G’Quan’s hull an exercise in futility, with fighter mounted weapons being ill equipped to pierce an armour belt so thick.
Another key physical attribute of the G’Quan design is her vibrant colour scheme of green, white, black and red. While appearing decorative, art was not foremost оn the minds of Narn Engineering when building the G’Quan. The criss-crossing geometric shapes comprising the G’Quan’s hull break up the ship’s appearance and make it difficult for enemy ships, when using visual targeting, to distinguish the surface details of the G’Quan from the bridge tower and wings that wrap around the main hull. The end result of this camouflage was that the wings would blend into the ship’s main hull, making it incredibly difficult for fighters to target and distinguish between the hull and wings when attacking from any angle, above or below.
There was also a psychological aspect of this design feature, inspired by advanced races like the Minbari and enigmatic Vorlons. G’Vrahn had had an opportunity to study photos of Minbari warships; photos afforded the Narn thanks to their open diplomatic relations with the Minbari, even if those relations were lukewarm. G’Vrahn quickly came to realize that the vibrant colour scheme and design features often suggested to less developed
races that the Minbari were an advanced race, even if they had never seen a Minbari ship or even knew of the race who had built it. Thus, the G’Quan’s vibrant, ornate surface gave it the effective appearance of hailing from a more advanced and dangerous race than the Narn truly were.
Lastly, the wings featured оn the G’Quan caused many to assume, incorrectly, that the Narn had developed artificial gravity technology by reverse engineering machinery left behind by the Centauri. Rumours that the G’Quan was actually capable of atmospheric flight sent a wave of panic in the Centauri Royal Court and the Narn were more than happy to propagate this rumour. This panic was short lived when Centauri agents determined conclusively that the Narn had not developed this technology but, with the rumour already circulating amongst the many races, it quickly took оn a life of its own. Even today, many people mistakenly believe that the Narn possess artificial gravity technology when, in fact, this is a technology the Narn did not develop and would not be in possession of until 2265 as part of the Narn membership in the Interstellar Alliance.
While the G’Quan cannot enter or manoeuvre in a planet’s atmosphere, the wings do serve a purpose beyond aesthetics. In reality, the lateral wings contain a vast array of point thrusters tucked behind hidden, retractable, panels along the wing’s leading edge, fore and aft. This allows the G’Quan to yaw and bank far more quickly than would normally be possible and the hidden thruster points make them far more difficult for fighters to target and destroy. The wrapping wing that connects the bridge towers to the main hull also contain a vast and intricate array of sensor nodules and scanner equipment, making the G’Quan incredibly effective at targeting and repelling fighter attacks, tracking enemy fleet movements and cutting through the heavy blanket of ECM and sensor jamming found оn the modern battlefield.
To port and starboard, the upper and lower wings connect to the main wing via two large pontoons. Often mistaken for being part of the ship’s weapon system, the port and starboard pontoons found оn the G’Quan are actually part of the Narn heavy cruiser’s hyperspace scanning and targeting systems. While the Centauri and Earth
Alliance often focused their hyperspace antennas and sensor equipment near the front and centre of their ships, the Narn intentionally choose to set their scanners as far from the ship’s centre-line as possible in order to give the G’Quan increased combat performance in hyperspace. It also allows the heavy cruiser to travel further off the established hyperspace beacons than their Centauri counterparts.
The most important aspect of the G’Quan’s military assets is her impressive array of weapons. While designated as a ‘heavy cruiser’ due to her size of 1,260 metres and relatively light composite armour belt, the G’Quan boasted the heavy weapons and power plants found more commonly оn dreadnought type ships.
Defensive weapons include ten, rapid-fire pulse-battery guns (eight nested around the ship’s main reactor and two aft-firing guns situated above the main engines). While these weapons are of similar size and scale to the pulse cannons found оn the Hyperion, they are more efficient and capable of firing more bolts per оne-second volley.
If more fire-power was needed, the G’Quan also had two twin plasma bolt cannons mounted directly above and below the ship’s fighter launch bays. These powerful cannons are the G’Quan’s primary weapon when engaging in close-quarters combat and, while not as powerful as the ion cannons found оn the Centauri Vorchan, this weapon is superior to the plasma cannon found оn the EarthForce Hyperion-class heavy cruisers of this era.
The most destructive weapons in the G’Quan’s arsenal are its two forward-firing particle beam cannons. Based оn the Centauri battle laser (a hybrid x-ray/particle beam weapon), the Narn improved upon the design in several ways. First, the Narn built a dedicated fusion reactor just for the particle beam cannons, a spherical fusion core which joins directly with the two forward booms. This reactor system provides power to all the ship’s forward firing weapons and is used as a back-up for the aft reactors, which provide power for all other systems.
Secondly, the Narn integrated a series of magnetic field coils in the weapon projectors to increase the velocity at which charged particles were fired at a target. Eventually coming to be known as a ‘railed particle beam cannon’ (or RPC by the Earth Alliance), this weapon proved to be far more effective than other particle beam weapons and was among some of the first technologies EarthForce purchased from the Narn during the Earth-Minbari War.
It should be noted that the two forward booms to port and starboard of the G’Quan’s shuttle bay also serve two additional purposes. The barrel of the RPC doubles as the launch-tube for the G’Quan’s energy mines – a multimegaton proton/anti-proton bomb with proximity fuse – which is made possible by a cylinder mounted where the fighter bays meet the cannon. This cylinder has a loading mechanism in which the barrel of the cannon is mirrored. When the cylinder turns, it resets the barrel seamlessly. When an energy mine is placed into this system, the magnetic field coils are used to accelerate it down the barrel and hurl the projectile at its target.
Above and below the barrel of the RPC are the vortex generator projectors. While the four-point jump engines are actually tucked within the main body of the hull, the projector array is still maintained in the forward booms, power distributed via a complex network of piping which can be seen layered against the inside surface of the G’Quan.
All of the design features noted above would have been of little use if the G’Quan hadn’t the power to exploit all the design innovations that G’Vrahn and his design team had developed for it. Indeed, the G’Quan has far greater power generation capabilities than the majority of fusionbased starships found amongst the Younger Races. First, the G’Quan has four fusion reactors, three built into the ship’s main engines and оne featured prominently fore of the ship’s bridge towers. While the rear fusion
reactors provide power for the ship’s main engines and all primary systems, the spherical fusion core set near the front of the G’Quan provides the majority of the ship’s power for weapons and tactical systems.
The G’Quan also boasts three massive internal fuel tanks, each tank capable of carrying over 18,000,000 cubic metres of reactant material, and four smaller tanks capable of holding and additional 5,000,000 cubic metres of reactant material. EarthForce Naval Intelligence has estimated that the G’Quan’s internal tanks allow the Narn heavy cruiser to carry over 12 billion (1.2E10) metric tons of reactant material for the ships engines and fusion reactors, which far exceeds the potential fuel capacity for the Gamma-model Hyperions and dramatically exceeds the fuel reserves of any warship in the Centauri Republic’s current fleet inventory.
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Key Design Features
Core Deck 1 While Deck features may repeat, each deck still often has distinguishing features which cause it to differ from the others, or where some ship facilities are more densely packed. In the case of Core Deck 1, much of this deck is dedicated to combat training facilities, exercise rooms for the crew and a well-stocked armoury lining the ship’s starboard side. Port contains machinery, including the ship’s isotope chilling facility and pumping station – a target which proved incredibly popular with the Shadows and later the Centauri, when it was learned that the destruction of this area would cause an emergency shutdown of many of the G’Quan’s main systems, including the two vortex generators оn the forward port quarter.
Core Deck 1 also has several combat training facilities, meant to keep Narn personnel, marines and ground combat units at their peak military performance. Key military training facilities found оn this deck include the zero-gravity training area, where multiple nongravity environments can be simulated. The boarding action simulation room is unique in that its floor is comprised of row after row of magnetic plates. оnce magnetized, crew can simulate boarding actions against Centauri targets, which are known to use artificial gravity. Similarly, the Narn ground combat room can also be magnetized and both the ground combat and the boarding action rooms can be fitted with a wide range of props, sets and holographic projections, designed to maximize the realism of the environments they are meant to simulate. The Narn military also emphasizes distance marksmanship and a large firing range has also been setup оn Core Deck 1.
While there are several weapons lockers to be found across the G’Quan, the starboard side of Core Deck 1 is generally considered to be the main armoury for the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser. A broad and varied supply of different weapons are available from this area, as well as protective gear for traversing a wide variety of hostile environments. Offices for the master-of-arms and ordnance officer can also be found оn this deck and, generally speaking, access to weapons is restricted by Narn security personnel who maintain vigil over the combat weapons.
Pilots can find the office of the flight leader оn this deck, as well as the aerospace science labs, pilot briefing room, combat flight operations (CFO), alert fighter room with spare bunks and storage facilities for the ship’s energy mines and pyrotechnics. The auxiliary combat information centre (CIC) is also located оn this deck.
Core Deck 2 Science stations and offices for ship’s department heads and command officers can be found оn Core Deck 2, along with communications and scanner control rooms. Because this is the centremost part of the ship and, thus, most well protected part of the G’Quan, primary CIC is located here too. This is where all incoming data during the course of a battle is processed and analysed. Control access to all ships sensors, tactical systems and control systems are accessible through this area and command override of any ship’s system can be performed in CIC.
Generally speaking, this deck in dominated by command level control facilities and science research facilities. Laboratories for terraforming, xeno-archaeology, xenoengineering, xeno-science and xeno-biology can be found оn this deck. Unlike other military organizations, the Narn incorporated many different kinds of science facilities into their warships. This decision was prompted by the simple fact that many of the worlds the Narn were exploiting, or sought to exploit, were in the hands of the Centauri or were оn the border of Centauri space.
Command level facilities include offices for a flag officer, the chief political officer and many of the private offices for the ship’s officers. Loading and storage facilities for the ship’s energy mines can also be found in the fore area of the ship оn this deck, as well as a wide variety of engineering, emergency medical and pilot facilities.
Core Deck 3 The two features which dominate this deck are the ship’s main sickbays and the ship’s food stores and service area. While medical and kitchen facilities make up the majority of the ship’s starboard side, the port side houses recreation areas for the crew, including clubs for everyone from officers to the enlisted crew; it is even possible to find a movie theatre оn Core Deck 3. These areas are important to maintaining the morale of the crew during long operations, in which crew may be separated from family and civilisation for months or, in some cases, years.
Science and medical facilities оn Core Deck 3 are among the best in the Narn military. A full range of medical care can be provided for crewmen, ranging from simple examinations to full and complex surgical procedures. Autopsy and medical research facilities are also found оn this deck but, due to refrigeration concerns, any corpses are actually maintained in deep freeze, with the ship’s food stocks.
Dining facilities aboard the G’Quan can accommodate over a thousand people, though combat conditions and heavy automation of the G’Quan leaves much of the goods, service and storage facilities untapped, save for during times of war when the G’Quan carries extra combat troops into battle. There are a total of four primary serving areas for ships crew, segregating the crew, petty/warrant officers, junior officers and full officers from оne another, as is common in many of the space-born militaries today.
It should be noted that escape pods line the entire outer wall of the Core Decks. These escape pods, which are оnly a little bit larger than a coffin, are stacked two deep in the cubby between each room along the outer surface.
Arc Deck 1 This deck wraps around the whole of the ship and, through the use of a tram system near the rear-centre of the ship, crew can travel around the entire ship and journey to every deck. As a matter of fact, much of the ship’s stores are maintained оn this deck for this very reason.
Additionally, the G’Quan’s brig can be found оn this deck. A virtual fortress within the mighty battleship, it is believed to be next to impossible to escape from a Narn brig.
The Narn exhibit a fanatical interior design philosophy which is targeted at repelling boarding actions by enemy invaders. Every corner cut is at a 45 degree angle, in order to facilitate better arcs of fire when repelling boarders. It is for this reason the Centauri avoided boarding actions at all cost, instead simply concentrating оn destroying Narn ships rather than attempt capture.
In addition to stores, the brig and access to the vortex generators, the most prominent feature оn Arc Deck 1 is the hull’s structural support braces – the Y-shaped brace which presses up against the hull of the ship’s central core and up against the outer walls, allowing the G’Quan to perform yawing turns at speeds which would cause severe structural damage to other classes of starship.
Arc Deck 2 This deck is almost exclusively designated to ship’s machinery and maintenance. Few, if any, other accommodations are made available, though оne can find access control rooms to almost every engineering facility here, as well as an emergency room and storage space filled with bio/radiological protection gear.
Arc Deck 3 As with Arc Deck 2, this area is almost all machinery, though there are access tubes present which connect this area with every other part of the G’Quan.
Arc Deck 4 More machinery access is available here and little else. The reason the interior parts of the G’Quan are so sparse is do to the fact that the vast majority of the ship’s mass is dedicated to power generation, jump capability and military combat.
Arc Deck 5 The innermost arc of ship’s systems; this area is dedicated to materials fabrication and repair, with resources necessary to build replacement components for critical ship systems and spare parts for fighter craft.
Lateral Wings Tucked within the frame work of the lateral wings are the G’Quan’s reaction control thrusters, which allow the ship to manoeuvre during a fight. Along the outer edge of these wings are two pontoons, which house the G’Quan’s tachyon sensor array, used to maintain the ship’s beacon lock-on while traversing hyperspace. Buried within these wings are tram systems which link the main body of the ship to the outer wings and the ship’s two bridge towers.
Outer Wings The outer wings serve more than to simply connect the bridge towers with the ship’s main hull. Lining the entire surface area of the outer wings are tens of thousands of sensor and scanner arrays, providing the ship a full 360 degrees of sensor coverage with particular concentration оn targets fore and aft of the G’Quan.
Bridge Tower There are two bridge towers to be found оn the G’Quan, generally known as the North and South towers. Each tower is nearly identical, with оnly a few minor differences in room assignments. Each tower contains three decks. оn these decks crewman can find a small armoury, navigation bridge, command bridge, quarters for the captain, first officer, flag officer and VIP guests. Back-up systems for all scanner and communications systems are found оn each bridge tower, allowing all command functions to be diverted to either location during the course of combat.
The North Tower is typically the location from which the captain issues commands, while the first officer serves duty in the South Tower, thus ensuring that, no matter what happens, the chain of command remains unbroken. There are no escape pods to be found in either tower, instead both being capable of detaching and landing upon a planet’s surface until help arrives, as well as maintain vigil over any of the smaller crew escape pods ejecting during battle. Unfortunately, the оnly way to engage in such a separation is to blow a series of explosive bolts and sever all contact with the main body of the ship – an action Narn captains are hard pressed to choose and, to date, this option has never been used in an engagement.
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Design Flaws & Weaknesses
One might suspect that Narn engineer G’Vrahn would have been elated with the G’Quan. Unfortunately, this is just not the case. While the G’Quan did initially meet all of G’Vrahn’s hopes and wishes, this would not be the case for the bulk of the G’Quan’s development. Following the conclusion of the Dilgar War, politics began to rear its ugly head. With the Dilgar threat gone, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds was in complete and total disarray; the Earth Alliance concentrating their interests in territories beyond their shared border with the Regime; and the Centauri government were weakening under Emperor Turhan. The Narn government was plagued by a deluge of political decisions that had nothing to do with building an effective warship.
G’Vrahn, in the middle of building the first in the new starships, was infuriated by the constant nitpicking and unyielding deluge of notes and letters he received from his superiors, requesting and, in some cases, demanding
he making unreasonable design changes to the G’Quan. G’Vrahn was literally hen-pecked into making design changes he would have never implemented had he been left to his own devices. No more clearly is this illustrated than his two year fight with the Kha’Ri about adding fighter bays to the G’Quan.
Seeing that EarthForce had added fighter support into the Hyperion, the Kha’Ri and Narn military demanded G’Vrahn give the G’Quan fighter support. G’Vrahn argued against this idea, aptly noting that this was not a design improvement, but rather a design error оn the part of EarthForce. And so it went, two years of arguing that nearly brought the G’Quan’s design to a screeching halt that prompted an infuriated G’Vrahn to write a handwritten note in the margins of a design memo which read:
By the wings of G ’Lan, please help me – I am losing my mind!
Despite G’Vrahn’s use of incredibly simple words in explaining to the Kha’Ri why he decided to forgo built-in fighter support for the G’Quan; despite his long-winded explanations as to why the fleet should, instead, leave the issue of fighter support in the capable hands of dedicated fighter escort carriers and the new Bin’Tak dreadnought he was also developing for the Navy, G’Vrahn found all his pleas falling upon deaf ears.
Finally, with the fate of the entire project hanging by a thread, G’Vrahn ceded to the demands of his superiors and added fighter support into the G’Quan. Problem – he had no idea where to put it. As it had been built and designed, there was no place оn the G’Quan for a fighter bay. The front of the ship consisted of, originally, two booms for the particle beam cannons, two booms for the hyperspace jump point projectors and two more booms for the energy mine launchers. Something had to give.
Result? G’Vrahn ripped out the entire forward section of the G’Quan, compacted the hyperspace jump-point projectors in with the particle beams, stripped down the magnetic accelerator coils for the RPC and jerry-rigged a launcher assembly for the ship’s energy mines in with the particle beam cannons. The effect of these changes reduced the range and firepower of the ships main weapons, increased maintenance needs for the energy mine launchers tenfold and forced G’Vrahn to rip out the capacitors for the ship’s tachyon communications system – a decision which would render the G’Quan’s long-range communication systems inoperative during hyperspace jumps. This decision would haunt the Regime a decade later, when the Kha’Ri missed their оne opportunity to expose the Shadows before they were ready to strike.
Another headache to come out of implementing fighter support for the G’Quan, was where to put the fighters and, worse yet, how to get them into the ship? With the fighter launch bays situated inbetween the forward booms of the ship’s main weapons and jump point projectors, a complex tram system was needed to ferry the Narn fighters from the ship’s body and into the launch bays
(and back again). This would limit the types and scale of fighter craft the G’Quan would be able to support and would produce a host of issues with the first generation of G’Quans, which were notorious for having fighters slip from their tramways and become lodged within the transfer tunnel between the bay and the maintenance facilities in the body of the G’Quan.
A further design feature that would come back to haunt the Narn was G’Vrahn being forced to move the ship’s isotope chilling facility (EG 19) and isotope pumping station (EG 20) into оne area of the ship’s port hull, compelling the removal of the secondary assembly from the starboard hull. This would create a dangerous weakness in the ship’s design that G’Vrahn tried to compensate for by adding extra armour over these areas. Unfortunately, no amount of armour would be enough to combat the incredible firepower of Shadow cruisers, which would often target and destroy this area first.
Result? A complete automatic shut-down of the G’Quan’s reactant pumping stations, forcing the ship to switch over to inadequate secondary systems that rendered many of the G’Quan’s key systems, including the jump engines (EG 16), long range targeting scanners (SR 19) and railed particle beam cannons, inoperative for over a minute, providing an enemy with time to strike the G’Quan with impunity. оnce the Centauri Republic learned of this design flaw, via intelligence provided by House Mollari, this area became a favourite target of Centauri cruisers during the Narn-Centauri War of 2259, even if it did require several direct hits to punch far enough into the G’Quan’s armour belt to exploit this weakness.
И немного про "Г'Ток"
From the ashes, a lone Narn warship, the NRS G’Tok under the command of captain Na’Kal, survived the Narn-Centauri war intact. Given refuge for a short time at Babylon 5, the G’Tok successfully escaped the clutches of the Centauri Republic and, despite being hounded by the Centauri, eluded capture and continued to survive despite having no safe port to flee to.
Working as Citizen G’Kar’s military liaison, Na’Kal and the G’Tok assembled a military resistance and, finding other survivors, were able to assemble a small fleet of ships that were left оnly disabled by the Centauri in their mad rush to bring doom upon the Narn homeworld. Successfully rebuilding almost a dozen ships, the G’Tok and what remained of the Narn fleet would prove an invaluable weapon against the Shadows and the Vorlons, as their war threatened to tear the galaxy asunder.
Legends and stories of the G’Tok grew as the last of the G’Quan-class heavy cruisers rode into every battle against the Shadows and, through it all, taking little to no damage while continuing to deal out death. And while it would be the actions of оne man, G’Kar, that would see the Narn freed from the clutches of the Centauri Republic, it would be Na’Kal and the NRS G’Tok that would win the affections of the Army of Light. This G’Quan-class ship had captured the indomitable spirit of its namesake, driving the Shadows out of our galaxy, as G’Quan himself allegedly drove the Shadows from the Narn homeworld a thousand years before.
In the aftermath, their fleet slowly growing in size and strength, the reformed Narn regime would come to discover that more than 50 additional G’Quans had survived the war, left mothballed and abandoned by the Centauri around оne of the many gas giants in the Narn home system. Within a year, the great and indomitable navy of the Narn Regime would be reborn, the with G’Tok as their flagship and War-Leader Na’Kal as its commander. Desire for revenge burned bright in the hearts of the Narn and, soon, revenge would be theirs.
As the shipping lanes of the newly formed Interstellar Alliance came under attack, the military leaders of the Narn Regime and Drazi freehold met with the ISA President, John Sheridan, to discuss their strategic options upon learning that the Centauri were behind the attacks. While the ISA administration choose a path of caution, Na’Kal and his allies amongst the Drazi Freehold, who had also suffered greatly at the hands of the Centauri Republic, launched a massive strike against the
Na’Kal, aboard the G’Tok and leading 50 G’Quan-class heavy cruiser and supported by more than 200 Drazi Hawks, took their revenge upon the Centauri, striking without warning and laying waste to the surface of Centauri Prime from orbit. While the Narn would not stoop so low as to violate treaty and use mass drivers, their powerful RPCs pierced the atmosphere and, over several hours, razed over 20% of the planet’s surface, leaving every city ablaze and every tower and spire molten and charred... All save for the Centauri Royal Palace, which was ordered to be left in оne piece, for Na’Kal knew that G’Kar – the architect of Narn freedom – was being held prisoner there.
More than 30 years had passed since the inception of the G’Quan-class heavy cruiser. 30 years of struggle, pain and hardship. In the end, against all odds, through three wars and the most desperate of circumstance, the G’Quan – the ship built to take revenge, to cut the very heart out of the Centauri Republic – finally succeeded in her mission and accomplished the оne task she had been born to do and made G’Kar’s famous words a reality:
No dictator... no invader... can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson оnce. We will teach it to them again. Though it may take a thousand years, we will be free.
тут авторы книги ошибаются, командовал атакой на Приму Центавра генерал На'Ток. Ну да хрен с ними. На'Кал там тоже наверняка был. Хотя, логичнее было бы назначить главнокомандующим именно НаКала - если только не уцелел офицер званием выше. Но, зная нарнов, он бы дал о себе знать еще во время оккупации и войны, и скорее всего погиб бы с кораблем итп.
картинки из книги:
- интересный способ размещения истребителей. И немного моих комментариев по тексту:
Комментарии
Я в шоке! Даже ксеноинженерия (ну если учесть, что нарны генетики одни из лучших). И вот я теперь сижу и вкуриваю, а операцию по внедрению жабр ГКару прямо на крейсере делали, или как?
Что-то не сориентируюсь, где это и как?
Ну не знаю... ГКара там основательно придавило, и насмерть наверное бы, если бы Лондо его не вытащил...
На В5 тоже должна быть эта система, потому что на старт в доки Кобра точно истребитель не сам попадал. Он влетал через шлюз, как и все корабли.
Вопрос как на нарнских крейсерах запуск осуществляли? Сами взлетали с ангара или их тоже швыряли на салазках-катапультах? Последнее лучше бы, ибо скорость сразу наберет (и без траты топлива). На В5 швыряли, доки Кобра и есть эта катапульта. Но на крейсерах нет вращения, так что механизм аля Кобра не сработает.
И конечно на крупных крейсерах должны быть ученые, особенно на тех, кто в дальнюю разведку летает. На "Г'Токе" например.
Это уже автономные корабли, способные сами справиться с любой задачей, от дипломатической миссии до бомбардировки планеты, если надо.
Кстати пересмотрела недавно серию "Бродяга", где Шеридан и к впервые опробовали телепатов на тенях...
Стали понятнее мотивы поведения На'Кала и его отказ помогать в первый раз: они слишком привыкли действовать одни и нелегко соглашаются взаимодействовать с другими авторитетами итп. Свой опыт иногда мешает...