U.E.A.S. Indefatigable

U.E.A.S. Indefatigable was an Alliance warship that achieved great fame during the Kamian Succession Wars by destroying a Kamian battle cruiser, one of a very precious few kills made by Alliance vessels.

Indefatigable

The Indefatigable was a variant Stinger design, itself a variant of the venerable Bounty-class Stealth Attack Ship. Late in the war, the Alliance was struggling to field as many fighting ships as they could, and had made many concessions. The Stinger variants were often built without a main cannon, relying instead on missiles and torpedoes. Most Stingers in this configuration were being used for mine-laying duty, as they lacked the fire power needed to engage anything larger than a Kamian frigate.

Modifications

Indefatigable's captain, L. Mann Perferous, was regarded as a cunning tactician, and well-known for his capacity for unconventional warfare. Before being assigned the Indefatigable, he had achieved some respect for his unexpected destruction of a Kamian destroyer. This kill was achieved by positioning his own ship(also a mine-laying Stinger-varient) well-ahead of the enemy vessel, then setting all of his mines to home in on "anything". He also ejected all sixteen of his torpedoes and forty missiles, having programmed them to lock onto and engage on any target picked up by the mines. While costly in terms of munitions, the tactic was successful, though difficult to repeat.

When transferred to the Indefatigable, Perferous approached his superiors with an even more audacious proposal. In order to maintain parity with the countless similar warships in production, Indefatigable had simply been built with a large hollow space where the gun was supposed to be. This cavity was not even inside the ship's pressure hull, though it was covered on the outside by plating.

Perferous proposed fitting the largest torpedo that could be built into this space. While not approved as a standard variant, the idea was considered promising enough to at least attempt. The torpedo design, being a one-off, was given low-observable stealth characteristics as well as heat-masking engine baffles coppied from the original Bounty design. Instead of attempting to create a large single warhead, the weapon was fitted with thirty-six standard torpedo warheads wired for simultaneous detonation.