It had taken a small army of cleaning and repair droids more than a week to remove all the dead bodies, clean the armor and the ship's interior, before they had placed everything back in their proper place.
The result was spectacular, as the hangar was spotless, with row after row of fighter craft hanging from the top rack in the hangar, looking ready to deploy. At only ten meters in length, it was small for a strikefighter, but it looked fast and deadly.
Next to me, Keller had noticed the direction I was looking at and was smiling widely. "You'll be pleased to hear that the starfighter complement in the Experimental Battlegroup is different from that of a normal Imperial Battlegroup. Except for the ones on the repair ship, half the Mark VI Supremacy-Class starfighters have been replaced with the Dromund Kalakar produced M7 Nightsinger, and all the S13 Sting scouts have been replaced with the S13a Super Sting."
"I'm not familiar with these ships, but it sounds like Dromund Kalakar replaced the normal complement of fighters, with their own versions... So, what are the differences?"
"Well, the M7 Nightsinger is an upgrade of the Mark VI, which turned it into a Strike Fighter. It has shields, two more lasers and an additional missile launcher, without giving up much of the speed and manoeuvrability of the Supremacy-class, and perhaps more importantly, it has a hyper drive."
"Let me guess." I said slowly. "It was more expensive and couldn't compete with the Mk VI Supremacy-class?"
"Almost right, sir." He said with a sigh. "It was produced and most likely still is, but the Supremacy-class is so cheap to make, that it's by far the most used starfighter." He shrugged. "It was the same story with the S13 Sting versus the S13a Super Sting. Dromund Kalakar's Super Sting is basically a slightly modified S13, with upgraded weapons, sensor, and communication equipment. All in all, it was the superior craft, but the Sting was easier and cheaper to produce."
Since I didn't know the crafts, he was talking about, I just nodded slowly, assuming I would have time to read up on them.
However, from what he had told me so far, it sounded like the Experimental Battlegroup had been designed by engineers, that didn't know much of how the Empire fought space battles, and just wanted to make the best ships they could.
While that was a commendable goal, in this case it wasn't smart as it resulted in ships that didn't fit into Imperial naval doctrine. At least not when it came to star fighters. According to the lessons at the Chiss Naval Academy, the Imperial doctrine for star fighters was to deploy overwhelming numbers of fast and highly manoeuvrable crafts, like the Mark VI Supremacy-Class, which used a complicated swarm tactic to take down the enemy starfighters, leaving the Republic's capital ships to the Dreadnoughts and Cruisers.
With their largest ship being the five hundred meters long Valor-class cruiser, the Republic didn't really have dreadnoughts and so relied heavily on their starfighters to damage the much larger imperial capital ships, before the republic capital ships went into combat with them.
Consequently, the Imperial main starfighter was a space superiority fighter, like the Supremacy-class, while the Republic main starfighter was a Strike Fighter, like the Liberator-class.
That was not to say that Imperial star fighters didn't attack large ships or that the republic strike fighters didn't go into combat with enemy fighters, it just wasn't their speciality and not the way they were normally used.
With that in mind, making a strike fighter for the Empire wasn't a good idea. Especially not, if you expected it to be the main fighter of the Empire.
I discovered that Chief Engineer Keller was looking at me, like he had asked a question I hadn't heard. "Sorry, Chief Engineer. I just needed to sort out in my head, why your superior design of the M7 Nightsinger wasn't that successful."
"If you come to a conclusion, I would like to know as well, sir." He said with a sigh. "I think it has bothered me ever since."
"Oh." I said and explained my thoughts to him, finishing with. "So, the engineers of Dromund Kalakar built a strikefighter to the wrong navy doctrine. The capital ships and the S-13 Super Sting all had a chance, as they fit into the naval doctrine, but a strike fighter like the Mk. VII simply doesn't fit, since the Empire mainly uses space superiority fighters and I doubt that it'll be produced in any significant numbers by the Empire."
Engineer Keller looked thoughtful for a moment before he said. "I think you're right and I haven't seen it that way before, sir." He smiled a little and changed the subject. "As for the numbers you asked for, the Dragon-class got room for ten wings of twelve fighters, which sums up to one hundred and twenty, but as I said, it's standard procedure to use only half the full complement of fighters during tests." He smiled widely. "It looks like the shipyard at Dromund Kalakar bent the rules somewhat, because while the ship has sixty Mk. VI Supremacy class, it also has sixty M7 Nightsingers." He turned and started to walk down the rows of fighter craft. "There're no bombers, but on the bonus side, there are ninety-six S13a Super Sting scouts, since the leadership at Dromund was showing those off to the Admiral in hope that he would recommend them."
He gestured in the direction of several rows of smaller craft hanging in top racks, just like the Interceptors, and gave me the specs. Admittedly, I was impressed.
At only seven meters in length, the small scout not only had two hard-hitting rapid-fire lasers as most Sith starfighters, but it also had ship-to-ship Ion missiles and hardened armor and shields. As all scouts, it had an excellent sensor and communication suite, and it was both faster and more manoeuvrable than the Interceptor.
In fact, it was so good, that I didn't understand why the leadership at Dromund Kalakar had even bothered to make the Nightsinger, when they already had a starfighter, that despite being a scout could be used as a new and better space superiority fighter at production cost that was only slightly higher than the Mk. VI Supremacy-Class.
Deciding that the ways of the Sith were strange, I nodded at what Keller had said and looked around. It was by far the largest hangar I had ever been in, easily overshadowing even the largest Chiss ships, which a short while ago had seemed like invincible giants. They didn't seem so invincible now, as the Dreadnoughts of the Sith Empire were bigger, better armed, had better shields and their Turbolasers had a longer range than the Chiss Mega Masers. All facts that made me worry about the future of the Chiss Ascendency.
"Chief Engineer Keller, if you have sent the statistics of the Dragon-class to me, I simply haven't had time to read them. You said that the Dragon-class is an improved version of the Harrower-Class, so aside from a greater degree of automatization and slightly better shields, what exactly makes it better?"
He looked like he just remembered something and blushed a little. "Sorry, sir. Sending the statistics to you has completely slipped my mind."
"Not a problem, Chief Engineer. We've all been busy. However, the question still stands: What makes the Dragon-class better?"
"Research, sir." He said with a wry smile. "The leadership wanted a ship that was better than the Harrower, so the design-team went over the most frequently expressed criticism of the Harrower and tried to rectify them. For example, some Harrower captains have complained that the rugged exterior of the Harrower enabled Republic starfighters to fly between the structures on the ships surface, making them impossible to hit with point defence lasers. So, the exterior of the Dragon-class is a lot smoother, and a better point defence system was added."
"Good choice." I commented.
He nodded and continued. "It was also determined that it could use a little extra punch, so the ship has six heavy turbolasers with increased range on the top, enabling the Dreadnought to engage most enemies, before they can engage the dreadnought."
I nodded without saying anything. With the speed that starships flew in, it was normally only good for a single salvo before the enemy was within range of the other weapons, but my experiences from both Alpha Viga and Centauri 21 told me that if used well, the advantage in range could make a huge difference. The downside was that Heavy Turbolasers were even slower to aim and fire than normal Turbolasers, making them useless against anything else than other capital ships.
"However, the biggest change in weaponry between the Harrower and the Dragon, is that the Harrower has four medium Ion cannons, but the Dragon has no less than twelve heavy Ion cannons, though only ten of them can hit a forward target at the same time. We had to limit the number of Proton Torpedo and Concussion Missile launchers to eight each for that, but I think it's worth it."
I raised my eyebrows. That was an unusual high number of Ion cannons, but not unheard of. As far as I remembered from the classes at the Naval Academy, that was the same as one of the Mandalorian battleship types had during the Mandalorian War, and that had proved highly successful.
