Appearance:

There is little exceptional about Sarett's height, save that she stands taller than a wheelchair. Her features are proud and defiant, the expression on her face is that of someone who has walked through Hell and perhaps was not terribly impressed. She has a slim, athletic build made of lean, long lines, and she moves with a careful and practiced grace that echoes the motion of a ballet dancer. Silver-streaked dark hair, slightly wavy, complements the warm olive tones of her skin, held in a loose ponytail to her shoulders but with enough escaping to frame her face. Her eyes, though, are large, intelligent, and dazzling. The left is a glittering jade-green deeper than any gemstone, and the right is pale blue, subtly but clearly artificial, the skin nearby marked by the fine silver lines of surgical scars. Indeed, her left arm, leg, and parts of her trunk have also been replaced with prostheses, the grey and white of ceramics and alloys a marked contrast to her uniform. For those times when her neural bridges and interfaces are not operating at peak efficiency, Sarett also owns a cane made from a salvaged piece of scorched starship armor plating.



Name: Sarett, Ashley T.

Age: 38

Gender: Female

Callsign: N/A

Kills:

Responsible for the destruction of the Coalition Third Fleet at the Battle of Kassir.

Responsible for the loss of INS Nocturne, an experimental stealth-equipped destroyer, and 280 of the 400 souls aboard during same engagement.

Responsible for the loss of Task Force Typhon during same engagement.


Psychological Analysis:

Proud and confident, in a way that can strike people as being arrogant, Sarett is never shy with her opinions. Infuriating to her detractors, she also speaks only when she is sure of something and has good reason for that surety. She is a brilliant tactician, analytical at speed, and ferociously intelligent. Her attude and manner of speech is direct but rarely rude, and she manages to walk the line between pragmatic and sentimental. Sarett has a tendency to hold herself to a higher standard than those around her, which can have a distancing effect on relationships with her peer and crews, though she does not take her own failings out on others. A systemic, end-goal thinker by inclination, Sarett tends to issue orders and expect them to be carried out without micromanagement, and officers in her charge tend to have broad leeway to accomplish tasks given to them. Perhaps more than other commanding officers, Sarett has demonstrated a willingness to treat herself and those under her command as acceptable losses in order for others to gain a tactical advantage, most famously at the Battle of Kassir.

Sarett has very little trouble speaking her mind, an insouciance that has been taken as insubordination by some of her commanding officers. She retains this tendency even in the face of disciplinary hearings, of which she has had many. She is however extraordinarily difficult to rattle or emotionally unmoor, at least in public; nobody she has served with can even recall her raising her voice in anger. Instead, at times she is dismissive, viciously sarcastic, or belittling, treating someone that tries to get a rise out of her with contempt and with the attitude that they are somehow 'beneath' her.

Along these lines, Sarett is, when asked and when her answer is explicitly requested (occasionally with the on-the-record statement that her words will provoke no retaliation), not especially enthusiastic to be a Naval officer, and is a voice advocating for peace with the Coalition.

Away from her duties in the Navy, which occupy most of her time and attention, Sarett remains a cool and sometimes distant person. She enjoys drinking, though more in the flavor of small amounts of exceptional liquor than in losing herself to the bottle, and rumour has it she has laid in a supply onboard for special occasions. Sarett has never been married and has no children; her last serious relationship ended some time ago. That said, Sarett is very much not a sexless automaton; however the execution of her duties and continuous physical therapy make pursuing others difficult. Recently, she has taken up gardening, with several pots of flowering plants taking up a small shelf in her quarters.

She worries intensely about her sister, Lara, who is a MAS pilot of considerable distinction in the 8th MAS Team, 44th Legion. Lara is currently posted on the INS Atagaris.



Military Record:

The room was too bright, or at least Sarett thought so. The autonomic responess of her new eye weren't entirely dialed in yet, and she already knew that the increased sensitivity on one side was going to leave her with a headache. The technicians could not sign off on her implants quickly enough, for her preferences, so that she could modify them on her own rather than relying on hospital staff. The new uniform felt scratchy both on her living skin and on the tactile response network on her new leg, and she shifted her weight from side to side, trying to ease the sensation a little. She also tried - and failed - not to rub at the scars around her eye, the strange smoothness of her artificial hand a novel and not entirely unpleasant sensation against the last of the swelling from more surgeries than she could count. The door across from her opened, and Sarett dropped her arm to her side. A man in a uniform so sharp it looked like it had been pressed while he was wearing it came out, nodded.

"Admiral Lasca will see you now," the man said, and gestured into the office beyond the door.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Sarett said, her voice smooth and lightly accented. At least that hadn't changed.

The door shut behind her, fitting into its felt-lined frame in perfect silence. Ahead, an older man, his hair gone iron-grey, sat at a desk littered with detritus. Printouts and folders were arranged in chaotic stacks along with at least half a dozen infopads, some propped up and glowing, others half-buried in a slide of paper. The man, though, sat in front of a wide clear work area, a single new infopad held in one hand, flicking through something on the screen with the other. He was neat, not quite the almost-caricature of his assistant, and watched Sarett with cool blue eyes.

"Ashely Sarett, reporting, Sir," Sarett said, her voice polite.

"Of course," Lasca said, gesturing to a chair, "Have a seat." She did, lowering herself with care to the cushion.

"How's your recovery going?" Lasca said, setting the infopad aside.

"Better than I expected, Sir," Sarett said, "The med techs tell me they'll be willing to sign off on my implants in the next couple of days. Frankly, I wish it were sooner because they seem to have a fairly monsterous idea of what my eyes are supposed to do. Beyond that, apparently I could make a complete recovery, in time."

"My daughter has a neural bridge," Lasca said, gesturing at her, "She had a very difficult time learning to walk again."

Sarett shrugged, "I can't explain it, Sir. It isn't perfect, and there are better days than others, but I'll manage." She paused, then said, "Permission to speak freely?"

At Lasca's gesture, she said, "I don't think you brought me in here to ask about how my artificial eye is doing."

The Admiral leaned back, a small grin on his face. "Tell me a little about yourself." He tilted his hand, forestalling another question, "Consider it an order."

Sarett took a breath, "I was born in space, my parents were weapons designers for the UEE. They moved around a lot, wherever the R&D facilities were, I guess. They had two children, me and my sister, and we spent almost our whole childhood on ships or stations. I didn't even see the ground until I was almost a teenager." She smirked, "I still remember not quite believing the idea that there wasn't some huge piece of machinery moving air around planetside. The first night we actually stayed on a colony, I couldn't sleep. It was too quiet."

"Not an uncommon story," Lasca said, gesturing for her to continue.

"Um...I mean, I always knew that Mom and Dad were doing something with the government, something with the war. Sometimes we'd have to pack up and leave in the middle of the night, and they told me later that's because we were getting out of the way of Coalition ships. Dad always gave us the patriotic lecture about what we were fighting for, how we were taking back what the Coalition stole from us," her voice lapsed into a slightly bored monotone, "He really believed, you know? He even pulled all kinds of strings when we were older, made sure Lara and I got into the Academy."

"I didn't...I wasn't all that excited about going," Sarett said, "But I couldn't let Dad down, he wanted it so much. And..I don't know. I understood everything they told me, I really did. They told me I was one of the best students they'd had in a while."

"You didn't enjoy your time at the Academy?" Lasca said.

"Not particularly. I mean, I got laid a lot," Sarett said, "That was nice."

Lasca let out a laugh and tapped the infopad, "Your record - all of your records - say you excelled."

"If I'm going to do a thing," Sarett said, "I'm going to do it well; there's no point otherwise. And my whole life, Dad had been making sure that what I could do was be a good Navy officer. I'm not going to pull the bare minimum just becuase I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the career I'm in. I am not particularly pleased at what the skills in my life have wound up being, but I will use them to the best of my ability." She paused. "Sir."

"That certainly seemed to be the case at Kassir," Lasca said, putting the infopad back down.

Sarett sighed. She'd hoped that this wouldn't come up. The smell of burning flesh and plasma fires, the sound of tearing hull plating, and the faces of the dead were still just behind the darkness of her mind.

"Sir, with all due respect, I just had a hearing about Kassir," she said.

"Do you know how many kills the Nocturne is credited with?" Lasca said.

"No, and I'm not particularly interested," Sarett replied.

"More than any other experimental ship has in the history of the Fleet," said Lasca.

"Good for it," Sarett said, "The Nocturne is gone, and it took a lot of good people with it."

Lasca sighed, "How long were you in command?"

"About twelve hours," Sarett replied, "After Sera...Captain Beaumont died in the ambush."

Lasca tapped his infopad again, "Why didn't you come back to the main Fleet afterward?"

Sarett shook her head, pinched the bridge of her nose. Why was Lasca doing this? These were the same questions the tribunal had asked, the same thing she had to explain over and over again after she'd finally hit the distress beacon and someone came to rescue them. She smelled smoke and burning hair, and her hands clenched into fists.

"Because we knew what we'd run into wasn't a random patrol," Sarett said, keeping her voice calm with an effort, "They were the advanced scouts for a large-scale jump-in. We jammed them the moment we saw them, and just barely managed to disable them. The fight wasn’t long, and we came out with a lot of damage, but we were also sure that they hadn’t managed to contact the Coalition. When the dust settled, Captain Beaumont was dead, along with a dozen other crewmen and we…I…had a decision to make.”

She swallowed. “We knew where the Coalition was going to jump in, but we’d taken damage to the comm system; we could send data but not receive. I decided that if we ran back to the Fleet, we'd just be one more ship and the Fleet would be no richer for it. If we stayed, and the stealth system kept working, we could relay data back to the rest of them, real-time, and without having to account for the echoes of everything in the graveyard. The Fleet would have, at least for a while, better visuals and better situational awareness than the Coalition did. So we squirted our intention back to Fleet Command, and went dark."

Sarett took a breath, and continued before Lasca could ask another question, "And then I realized that the place wasn't just a graveyard, it was a graveyard of warships, and that there were so many fights there that scavengers tended to keep away. Too many people getting killed by automated defenses on wrecks to make the trip profitable. And we didn't have many guns, but what we did have were manipulator arms, and environment suits, and a ship full of people whose whole life was making things up while they went along. We found a dreadnought wreck, and we started scooping torpedoes, mines, fuel cells, anything that we could make explode out of it. We attached charges to thenm, remote-controlled detonators; I even had someone wire my sidearm to a warhead with a timing trigger, and we used some of that to mine the Coaliton's approach vector."

"That's not all you did," Lasca said.

"I ordered the ship to make a short-range jump tangent to the Coalition's approach, just far enough away so that we would be a little outside their high-gain sensor range when they approached in-system," Sarett said with a sigh, "And we started accelerating under conventional drives, fast as we could make the engines burn. A couple of hours later, we were moving at a pretty intense velocity, and we kicked almost all of the mines overboard on an intersecting path with where the Coaltion would probably move after they got hit by the other mines we'd laid down. There was really only one path that didn't involve shouldering wrecks out of the way; that's why we picked that spot. There aren't a lot of good jump-in points in Kassir anymore, and you have to spend a lot of time on conventional drives after arrival even in three dimensions. You can go totally out of system plane, but that's announcing your arrival with a big flashing sign and we already knew they weren't doing that."

“We made another jump to bleed off our velocity, somewhere above-plane and not too far from the wreckage, with the stealth system on. The Coalition fleet jumped in, and we started relaying information to Fleet Command fast as we could. Our sensors were closer, and we had the benefit of not having to try and scan through half a dozen dead battleships. We watched the first set of mines go off, and that was pretty spectacular, I remember seeing one of the smaller ships go drifting. When they changed course, it wasn't exactly on the vector I'd thought, but a few of the mines hit. With all the extra speed, one of them tore a hole in a carrier and it started venting atmosphere."

Sarett shifted in her seat, “Do you really want me to go on?”

“I wasn’t at the hearing,” Lasca said.

“Then let me be frank,” Sarett said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re going to disobey an order?” Lasca said, arching one eyebrow.

Sarett opened her mouth, then closed it again, biting off the beginning of something that probably would get her before yet another disciplinary committee. She took a long, slow breath, let it out between her pursed lips.

“Everything was going fine,” she said, her voice a tight, “Until the ship’s communication officer said that they thought there might be a problem with stealth system. We had to broadcast tight and loud in order to make sure the Fleet could hear us over the interference and refraction in Kassir. That meant we had a certain amount of signal leakage, and it seemed like the stealth system hadn’t accounted for long-term, high-gain data transmission. About ten seconds later, we saw half a dozen Coalition ships breaking formation and heading in our direction. They were sending out such loud scanner pings that they threw sparks off the derelicts.”

She cleared her throat, “We didn’t have enough fuel for a jump all the way back to the Fleet. The fight with the Coalition scouts had damaged our fuel storage system and I’d burned up a lot of what was left setting the trap with the mines. That also meant we probably didn’t have enough fuel to get back on thrusters, at least not in any way that would be remotely safe. We’d run dry along a path where we had to evade debris but avoid Coalition guns and sensors, and if we made a ballistic trajectory along a clear corridor, we were in the path of the Coalition’s biggest guns without cover. I…made a mistake. I failed. I had put us out of the reach of help, in the path of danger, and used up our ability to escape.”

Lasca stayed quiet, raised one finger in the smallest possible gesture to continue.

“So, I decided that if we were going to die, we’d make it matter,” Sarett said, “I told the crew to take the stealth system offline and crank the reactor up. The ship’s power system was already oversized, and without it we must have registered on every scanner across the system. We widened the beam on our data transmission, making sure that the Coalition could hear it. If they decrypted it, then they knew what we were doing, and that worked great for me. If they didn’t, they still knew we were communicating a lot of information, and they’d want to make sure we stopped. More Coalition ships broke formation, we ran, they launched ship-busters, and eventually there was no way out.”

“After we put the fires out, half the ship was in hard vacuum and the reactor had gone offline. I was hurt, shrapnel from the ship-buster explosion, fire from an overloading power bus. The doctor had enough stims and painkillers to keep me going, but he couldn’t make my eye work. Radiation damage, apparently.” She chuffed out something like a laugh, flexed her artificial fingers, “That worked out for me.”

“We wound up in the debris field of some huge ship,” Sarett continued, “Something so large the pieces of the ship were actually orbiting one another. One of the heavy hitters from the Coalition fleet stayed on station near where we went in, scanning for us to finish us off, I think because they realized the Nocturne was something unusual, something worth salvaging. More important, that meant it wasn’t joining the main battle.”

“We watched the fireworks for an hour. The Coalition ship eventually moved off, but not so far away that we could try and get away from it - the reactor was offline, we were leaking air, and even the cold-gas thrusters were damaged. I made the decision to not pull the pin on our emergency distress beacon. If I did that, the Coalition would know where we were. It’s the same reason I chose to keep radio-silent when Task Force Typhon came to investigate where the Fleet had last seen our broadcast. A handful of suits would have had no chance to begin with, and if we’d sounded an alarm it would be even worse than if I had pulled the emergency beacon. I weighed their four lives against the lives on my ship, and I watched them die.” Sarett kept her voice level, though it cracked around the edges at the end.

Lasca was quiet for what felt like an eternity, watching Sarett with an expression of careful evaluation. Sarett, for her part, felt her muscles seize up at the small of her back but kept herself sitting upright, matching the Admiral’s look. She had no idea what was going on, why the man had wanted to hear that story. The whole report had to be somewhere in front of him on one of those infopads, complete with telemetry and sensor data and no doubt annotated by some back-room tactician with all the mistakes and ‘grave errors in judgement’ highlighted and underlined in red. No doubt, the Admiral had received some kind of recommendation regarding what to do with Sarett; with her history of insubordination, of questioning authority, of her many disciplinary hearings. Now she’d lost a ship, and for what? A point on a map, a convenient location to let jump engines cool. She would be drummed out of the Navy, she was sure of it.

And then what? Sarett did not particularly relish the set of skills she’d developed, or that finding ways to seize a tactical advantage came to her naturally. Her upbringing, her childhood, the way her brain had developed, and years of training and expectations had honed her into a weapon the likes of which came around perhaps a half-dozen times in a generation, and she…didn’t really care for it. But what would she do if she wasn’t part of the Navy? Learn to cook? She could burn a boiled egg. Take up gardening on some colony far from the front lines? Maybe she could make something grow, watch a tree take root and make flowers and fruit. Sit in its shade while starships burned overhead, and wonder if she might have helped.

Lasca broke his gaze, “What is your rank, if you don’t mind?” He said, shattering Sarett’s reverie.

“Commander,” Sarett said, suddenly off balance.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Lasca said.

Sarett blinked, “Sir?”

“You said you commanded the Nocturne for twelve hours, but she’s still commissioned. The hulk has been salvaged, though I don’t know what’s going to happen to it. By tradition and procedure then, you’ve been captain of the Nocturne for…” Lasca checked his calendar, “Three months, two weeks, and five days, by my count. The situation was something nobody could have wanted, but here we are.”

“I spent all that time in a hospital bed, it doesn’t-“ Sarett began,

“I have a desperate need for competent captains,” Lasca said, holding up his hand, “People who are intelligent and thoughtful, ferocious and driven. You are all of these things and more. And, because I am aware of your opinion on the state of the war, I will tell you that I have a mission in mind, especially for you.”

Sarett held the breath she’d drawn to object, her train of thought suddenly off track.

“…What?” She managed.

“The Empire and the Coalition have agreed to peace talks,” Lasca said, “The news is going out to the feeds in the morning. The Navy will be sending a detachment to escort the politicians and the diplomats, and…well. I’m sure you can figure out the rest. Don’t worry, they won’t be on your ship, probably. I need someone who isn’t a bright-eyed zealot on this mission, someone inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt, but will defend the Empire’s interests with uncommon prowess should the question be raised. I, in fact, need you.”

Sarett coughed to cover her surprise, “You’re giving me a ship?”

“A captain without a ship is a tragedy,” Lasca said, “And yes, I’m formalizing your promotion.” He tapped the infopad, turned it around to face Sarett.

“I didn’t know this class had launched yet,” Sarett said, taking the pad and scrolling.

“First of her line,” Lasca said, “Efficient, more of a rapier than a broadsword. Nimble, for a ship its size - and there are a few other things that I’ll let you find out on your own.”

Sarett looked at the Admiral, one eyebrow raised. Not intentionally; the nerves over her artificial eye hadn’t reconnected yet. She looked back down at the infopad, and swiped across the screen. The diagrams of the smooth, sleek ship slid away, replaced by a complex piece of paperwork. She knew what it was with only a cursory look. Lasca had been telling the truth. All she had to do was touch her thumb to the reader, and she would accept her promotion. And become master of a ship, take on responsibility for the crew. She closed her eyes, took a long, slow breath, blew it out in meditative stillness.

She pressed her thumb to the pad. Really, what else could she do?

She and Lasca spoke for a few more minutes, taking care of a handful of logistic, legal, and bureaucratic details. From the Admiral’s description, there would absolutely be a few people who would be upset that Sarett was taking command of the newest ship in the Empire’s fleet, but that didn’t bother her at all. By the end, she almost felt like herself again, save for the knot of anxiety forming in her stomach. Strangely, part of it fluttered away when she shoved the Admiral’s door open, making her way back to the reception area.

“Captain Sarett,” the Lieutenant, standing up from his desk, “The Admiral has asked me to take you to the drydock. You must be excited to get back to the fight,” He grinned, and stuck up a pose from the latest round of propaganda posters, “‘The Coalition grows fat on the blood spilled in our stolen systems,’ right? And look at you, with that cool prosthetic arm, all the scars! You look ready to take on the whole Coalition yourself - hey, maybe they should put you on the next poster! I bet the Admiral could make that happen.”

Sarett paused by the man’s desk, and turned her head with a kind of precise, delicate slowness to fix him with her gaze. When she spoke, she made sure her voice was clear, cool, and loud enough that there could be no mistaking her words.

"I don't like fighting, Lieutenant," Sarett said, "I don't like war. From my point of view, it has been a painfuful, disfiguring, humiliating waste of my time. But it also happens that I am very, very good at it, and if my fighting keeps someone else from going through what I have, then I will fight, and I will win." She looked at the man, her mismatched eyes glittering, “Now take me to my ship.”


Equipment:

Nearly 60% of Sarett’s body has been replaced or modified with advanced neuroprostheses, the result of extensive burns, blunt trauma, and severe radiation exposure. Virtually every system in her body has some kind of artificial intrusion, though beyond direct prosthetic replacement, those systems are only monitored rather than being wholly replaced. Her prostheses and implants give her some interesting, though subtle, advantages, but otherwise function as replacements for normal human limbs and sensory apparatus - she cannot see into the X-ray spectrum, and her artificial limbs are not stronger than human baseline. Sarett has a set of personal diagnostic tools to adjust certain sensory responses in her quarters, and the ship’s medical staff have another set.

Sarett also has a cane, fashioned from the hull plating of the Nocturne. The hull fragment is a piece that was not part of the stealth system.

She owns a guitar, having been told by her physical therapists that learning to play it will help maintain and improve the dexterity in her artificial hand. She plays regularly, though privately.

Class Olympus
Function: Strike Carrier
Manufacturer: Athoek Drive Yards
Length: 318m
Displacement: 203,800 long tons
Crew Complement: Crew complement of 800, air wing of 400, Marine compliment of 400, artificial intelligence construct compliment of 1 (backup core installed).

Assigned Groups:
MAS complement: 12th MAS Squadron
Air complement: 114th Aerospace Squadron (‘Stormriders’), 519th Aerospace Squadron (‘Pluggers’)
Marine complement: 8th Battalion, 2nd Marines (‘Delta Victor’)

Description:

The Olympus-class is first in the line of next-generation warships, designed to complement and augment existing battle strategies while opening up new avenues of attack and defense. Unlike older vessels, which are designed to project overwhelming firepower from relatively stationary positions, the Olympus class is designed to dictate the field of engagement on its own terms. The ship has a very large central fusion reactor compared to its displacement, which powers a short-recharge Jump drive and provides plasma flow for outsized conventional thrusters. It is additionally armed with forward-facing hypervelocity rail guns and a full compliment of conventional anti-ship and anti-air weaponry. Captains tasked with commanding an Olympus will know that where compromises have been made, they have tended to affect the ship’s armor plating. These ships will not endure the punishment of larger battleships and dreadnoughts, and tactics should include the understanding that these ships are designed to avoid fire, rather than simply absorb incoming. That is not to say they are not still well-armored, but they are meant to be hard to hit and hard to kill.

These tasks are made considerably easier by the ship’s largest persistent upgrade from traditional Naval vessels, their quantum-core artificial intelligence construct. Many of the ship’s functions, especially data aggregation and command execution, are handled in a way similar to the synthetic personality matrices that will remain in use for the foreseeable future. Unlike the SPM installations, the Olympus intelligence is capable not only of managing data aggregation and shipboard communication, but it is an additional member of the crew (nominally of a Master Sergeant rank), and is capable of synthesizing and contextualizing information and relaying experience-driven suggestions to command staff. In combat, the AI can coordinate firing solutions at marginally faster-than-human timescales for incoming fire, analyze and coordinate target tracking, and many other functions.

Power:

Artemis, like all ships of her class, is powered by a Kandon Dynamics fusion plant buried deep in the heart of the craft. Waste heat is piped via superconductive pathways to exterior hull radiators, or captured to use for shipboard functions. The core is similar to those used in vessels nearly twice Artemis’ tonnage, modified to be stable at comparatively low average power production and with additional stability measures for extremely rapid power ramp-up.

Propulsion: Olympus-class vessels are designed to move around their local volume with considerably more speed than ships of their size typically do. High-temperature plasma diverted from the reactor is capable of moving the ship at 3.5g for an indefinite period of time. The thrusters are additionally equipped with layers of ablative armor that will allow up to 6g of acceleration for no more than 12 hours, after which the ship will be limited to 0.25g acceleration until the armor panels, or possibly the entire thrusters, are replaced. In addition, the ship is equipped with unusually powerful reaction-control systems, and is capable of changing the ship’s direction comparatively quickly - all the better to bring the fixed-arc forward weapons to bear.

Finally, the ship’s Jump drive is capable of moving it up to 35 light years in a single jump, after which the ship will require at least 38 hours of cool-off and recharge time. The drive is, however, optimized for smaller jumps in the light-hour range, requiring as little as 5 minutes of recharge time for the shortest jumps. This is an entirely novel capability, and one that allows an Olympus a tremendous degree of mobility in the field of combat. These short-range Jumps are, however, very hard on the ship’s power system, and even minor damage will render these “combat jumps” inadvisable. In addition, with every Jump the ship must dissipate more and more heat, and it is entirely possible for an incautious captain to overtax the ship’s heat reservoirs and render themselves entirely unable to jump for a considerable period of time - or of destroying the Jump drive entirely.

Weapons

The ship is equipped with full coverage arcs for anti-aircraft and anti-incoming weaponry, ranging from propellant-based mass drivers to small plasma casters to vaporize or physically disrupt incoming ammunition, missiles, or ships on suicide trajectories. These weapons can be selectively controlled by the onboard intelligence, though the AI is not capable of coordinating the entire defense grid unless she devotes her entire consciousness to the task. Large communication arrays can be used for fleet coordination, or used for electronic warfare, jamming, or even direct remote override of any system that (foolishly) accepts connection.

The ship’s primary armaments, two longitudinally mounted (one above the other) hypervelocity rail guns, are in a fixed, non-overlapping profile, and can fire out either the front or rear of the vessel. They are primarily designed to deliver massive, inert slugs of metal at relativistic speeds, but they can be modified (via easily-manufactured sabot) to fire anything that will fit down the bore. Acceleration and desired muzzle speed are nearly infinitely variable, and the payloads can range from battalions of Marines to megaton-class fusion bombs. Artemis is currently equipped with 12 fusion payloads, and deployment requires the joint authorization of the Captain and the ship’s AI construct. In addition, the ship is equipped with four large plasma casters on deployable turrets in a spinal-mount orientation. These weapons are intended for direct capital ship combat, orbital bombardment, or other tasks that require a large amount of firepower.

Defenses

While captains are instructed to consider the ship’s mobility its primary defense system, Artemis is equipped with a high-performance shield system, designed to absorb or deflect most energy weapons. By varying the field, it is additionally possible for electrically conductive incoming fire to be physically deflected, though the degree of course change can be very small. In effect, a heavy-caliber mass driver could be steered to hit a less-critical area of the ship under absolutely ideal situations. Most small-arms fire can be much more easily manipulated, however the field geometry changes required represent an considerable investment of time by either onboard subroutines that could be doing something else, or direct intervention by the majority of conscious bandwidth available to the ship’s AI construct.

The ship’s armor plating is largely conventional, and lighter than a ship of this size would typically mount. The armor has been applied in clever geometries to minimize energy transferred to the plating (weapons tend to ‘skip’ off it, rather than deform or remove it), but concentrated effort, bad luck, or well-aimed heavy weapons will inflict considerable damage. While the ship is designed to be highly survivable, and critical areas (fusion reactors, warhead storage) remain heavily armored, the ship is not designed to be an immovable bulwark.

Flight Deck

The ship’s flight deck is mounted forward, with the hangar bay beginning halfway down the forward “neck” of the ship. Fighter and MAS recovery is handled through a large opening on the “bottom” of the ship, and the “top” is heavily armored and reinforced to withstand crash and combat landings. The ship provides armament, repair, and refit capability for 5 MAS units at once, and can mount 40 aerospace fighters of varying types. There are an additional 3 boarding craft, 2 railgun-launched “breaching pods” for Marines, and a number of personnel shuttles and utility craft.

The hangar is a busy place, and if many ships are undergoing refit or are out of stowage, space can be very tight. Most tools and repair stations fit into panels and storage compartments that rectract or flip out of the hull, and any tools left on the flight deck during combat launches are likely to be swept out with the initial burst to vacuum. Pop-deploy air shelters, oxygen masks, and other accoutrements of an area likely to be rapidly depressurized are in prominent and visible locations throughout the deck.

Artificial Intelligence

Artemis is inhabited by a quantum-core artificial intelligence that has named herself “Ava.” She is professional, polite, but anything but subservient. She is accorded the rank of Marine Master Sergeant, and while she is the primary authority for few things on the ship, she is a respected member of the crew. While she is very aware that she is not human, Ava does have emotions, though they tend to be somewhat more muted than a human’s. She is wholly conscious and self-aware, and has a tremendous ability to process and analyze information, but she is not necessarily more intelligent than a very bright human being. By inclination rather than programmed-in directive, Ava is affectionate and cares quite a lot for the crew, and could not be accused of considering them only as assets to be spent or saved.

Due to the extensive artificial intrusion already present in Captain Sarett’s brain, Ava has an unusual relationship with the Captain. She is capable of displaying information directly into Ava’s field of view, and of relaying information or conversation into her mind without needing a terminal or voice output. This connection goes two ways, is consensual, and either party may terminate or request reconnection at any point. She typically keeps the Captain aware of overall ship function and various administrative data (ETA, fuel reserves, etc) through ambient information (similar to a nonintrusive HUD), but is capable of other tasks. Ava tends to work closely with the ship’s executive officer, but augments, rather than replaces, that officer’s function.

Should the ship’s human compliment be killed or disabled, Ava is capable of returning the ship to friendly space on her own, with a complex series of conditions that must be met in order for her to assume that level of management over the ship. She does not, however, have the capability to replace the entire crew during a combat situation (her total available mental capacity is insufficient to manage all ship systems), and as she has no physical body, there are many maintenance and repair tasks that she cannot perform.

(Disregard the crossbow and the bare thighs, the picture is otherwise perfect).
Name: O’Connor, Chloe
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Callsign: Noob
Kills: 0! For now.

Psychological Analysis: Chloe is peppy, energetic, and always talking. She’s an absolutely zealous worker and at times an insufferable kiss-up to authority figures, both habits born from the days when she had to work odd jobs to keep her family off the streets – to her, perfection is necessary to survive. She possesses a confidence that at times crosses the border completely into arrogance, being well aware that she had to work very hard to get where she is, and she often acts like she understands situations better than she actually does. She resents her position as the ‘FNG’ a bit, but for the most part she takes it as a challenge; she’s determined to prove her worth to her new contemporaries and show them just why she belongs alongside them.

Chloe’s friendly enough to most people who can put up with her, though she has a habit of making snap judgements about people that tend to stick around for a very long time, for good or ill. She loves conversation and comparing tactics, strategies or technical notes with her peers; she’s obsessed with self-improvement and being better at her job, so if she can accept that someone has some knowledge or experience she doesn’t, she’ll do her level best to get it out of them.

Deep down, her perfectionism gives way to a gnawing anxiety about her place in the world and in the 101st Legion, and she tends to deal with outright failure very poorly. She loves her family, and writes home to them frequently, though she’d be lying if she said she had any deep patriotic feelings for the UEE. To her, the Legion is a potentially lucrative career, a place she can perform well and rise far; she hasn’t put much thought into the actual ‘combat’ part of it, the risking of her own life and the taking of others’, but she believes that she’ll manage, when the time comes. The prospect of peace conflicts her – she’s seen enough devastation caused by the war to know it would be a good thing, but at the same time… it would really throw a wrench in her career goals.


Military Record: Military Record: Chloe was born on in a city on Ganymede, the first of three children. Her parents were refugees from the planet Artal, an agrarian world that had recently fallen after a prolonged invasion by Coalition forces. The city was an urban jungle, sprawling and filthy and poverty stricken from a growing refugee crisis. Chloe grew up in a two-room apartment in the slums of the city, which she shared with her parents and her two twin siblings; for most of her life, the family was wretchedly poor, there being little good work for people whose only marketable skills were in off-world farming.

In addition to her public education, Chloe started working odd jobs from the age of 12 to supplement her parent’s income; she hauled garbage, waited tables in in restaurants in the ‘nice’ part of town – once or twice she got involved in more illegal operations, though she made certain not to get too far into that game. The city was dangerous; everyone carried a gun, and everyone knew how to use one. All the while, she studied as much as she could, often skipping meals or sleep so that she would have time to complete her schoolwork. From the very beginning, she was planning her escape; how she would one day provide a better life for her family. Nobody in any serious professional field would take her education seriously, but there was some precedent for well-performing students in the slums to find success in the military.

Shortly after her seventeenth birthday, Chloe and her classmates were given the Ganymede aptitude test; and, much to the surprise of her peers, Chloe’s remarkable performance caught the eye of a recruitment officer who was fond of ‘giving the little guys a chance’, as he said no less than three times in her interview with him. One letter of recommendation later, Chloe was on her way to the planet’s most prestigious military academy with a single bag full of possessions.

Chloe excelled in the academy, though most of her peers considered her absolutely insufferable. She trained and studied obsessively, graduating three years later at the top of her class and immediately being promoted to active duty as a MAS Pilot with the 101st. She has yet to see actual combat, but she’s looking forward to the opportunity to finally prove that she deserves this chance; and make a little money for her family in the bargain.

Equipment: Simple magnetic pilot’s sidearm in a thigh holster. She also has a picture of her little brother and sister scrunched up in her back pocket.

Designation: FTX-075 Shrike MkIII C (Custom)
Role: Rapid Response
Chassis: Medium
Engine: TriCore Engine. 15 PWR
Operating Time: 6 Hours
Description:
The Shrike was designed as a high-mobility platform, intended to bridge the gap between more heavily armored Medium MAS's, and faster, more mobile Light MAS's. However, despite, or perhaps due to its increased mobility and versatility, the Shrike sports thinner than average and can be difficult to pilot. Its high speed combined with lightweight armor and deadly strike package make the Shrike a versatile high performance unit. Though favored by veteran pilots for both its aesthetic and performance, Shrike Mk IIIs are slowly being phased out for the more standardized and cost efficient PTX-101 Gladiators.
Systems: [20WT|15PWR]
X180 30mm Autocannon. 5 WT 3 PWR. - A 30mm assault weapon designed by the UEE, the X180 has a light frame, and a rather fast rate of fire. Firing 30mm Autocannon rounds from a 300 round magazine at a rate of 800 rounds per minute, the X180 fires in single, fully automatic, and 4 round burst. The X180 additionally has a secondary weapon mounted under the main barrel. Firing from an internal 20 round magazine, the X180 can also fire a scattershot of superheated iridium pellets, melting through armor at close ranges, but relatively ineffective against shields.
Countermeasures. 0 WT 0 PWR - Countermeasure systems are often used by lighter MAS's to avoid missiles instead of using body mounted machine guns to intercept them. Using chaff and flares, countermeasure systems are negligible in terms of weight and power, but only has 3 chaff uses, and 6 sets of flares before needing to rearm.
.50 Caliber Rotary Gun. 1 WT 0 PWR. - A torso mounted .50 cal rotary gun provides the Shrike with Anti-personnel weaponry and point defense. The rotary gun fires up to 2000 rounds per minute, and comes with a 480 round magazine.
Class 2 Shield Generator. 5 Wt 5 PWR. - The Shrike comes armed with a Class 2 shield Generator on top of its standard armor for defense.
FLEX-Wing Armed Aerospace Booster. 5 Wt 4 PWR. - By equipping the Shrike with a its Aerospace Boosters, along side a pair of folding wings, The Shrike can reach speeds rivaling that of some Light MAS's- typically ones without extra boosters themselves, such as the Sparrow. The Booster also makes the Shrike to fly in atmosphere, and comes equipped with 6 Claymore missiles.
Composite Shield. 3 WT - A sizable, but lightweight alloy shield treated with anti-plasma/beam coating provides the Shrike with limited directional protection from oncoming fire. Mounted on the forearm via a rotating mount, allowing the shield to rotate as the user desires, as well as allowing a small range of movement up and down the arm.
Energy Saber. 1 WT 3 PWR - A high powered energy saber stored in the shield. The blade length can be adjusted, but due to the saber using its own power capacitors, the operational limit of the blade is an hour before needing to be stored to recharge.

'Overlord'

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Physique: James appears to be of average build, despite that this build may be obscured by his uniform or armor at times.

Height: Six foot one.

Weight: 200 LBS.

Hair: Brown.

Eyes: Hazel

Skin: Fair.

Scars / Markings / Etc: Along his left forearm is a tattoo sleeve. It’s a black – dead rose.

Clothing Description: Standing at six foot one, James is adorned in an officer’s uniform. Ornate in nature, it covers the man head to toe. Accompanying the uniform would be his duty belt which carried his sidearm and various equipment. His boots are shined to an almost perfect finish, his trousers also are bloused. His hair is a short length, groomed and neat as it lays on his head. His beard is plentiful but remains trimmed and professional. Gray sport his head and beard, as the man is of an older age.

• Standard issue officer’s pistol – dubbed The Darcy Persuasion by Tolliver.
• Various medals and ribbons.
• A duty belt with various equipment befit an officer.
• A whiskey flask
• Various documents and personal identification
• A PDA.
• Bowman’s radio headset.

Personality: Calculating, Cunning and Tactical.

These three words would best describe Tolliver’s battle prowess, the man has always planned out his moves. One could think he was a prophet as he always plans for the worst case scenario, or any situation when feasible. Being prepared is one’s key to survival, especially in an ever growing and violent warzone such men occupy. Perhaps it was a habit picked up from the academy, drilled into every cadet or an “on the job” type of mentality that lingered in the elderly Commander. He was always vicious in his fighting, a die-hard patriot some comment. The Patriots usually find themselves commanding other patriots, especially a double ace. Tolliver’s sense of duty and pride seem to ride high on his list of priorities, “the job must be done and we must win attitude” is an attitude desired by some. Perhaps some should be more reserved when dealing with matters of war but Tolliver has always been open to serving his country.

Despite his nationalistic tendencies and drive to fight the Coalition, the man holds a deep respect for the men and women that serve under him. He takes pride in making sure his crew’s morale is high and they are prepared, however, he is never one to be too kind or soft to his enlisted personnel. There was a war to be fought and hand-holding would never get his ship, crew or ground teams ahead of any other unit. Each man and woman had to find and fight their own demons, Tolliver was there to guide. Outside of commanding and combat, Tolliver is usually reserved. While he is more open to his fellow command staff and higher ranks, he doesn’t open up nor tend to fraternize with the enlisted personnel too much. He’s afraid that his image – his persona as a commander may be moved or tainted. He wants to maintain his image as a vicious, battle-hardened commander, for the sake of his crew.

Sometimes cynical, Tolliver always looks to soldiers he can trust. If you’re trusted by the Commander to do something you should be bringing results him – positive results. Those who betray his trust, while few have – feel the hell unleashed by him. While Tolliver fights with his own demons and aspires to reach his own goals, he is always vindictive to those who may try to impede or cause him harm. Rebellious subordinates usually are met by a myriad of scare tactics, security forces, and red tape. Some see Tolliver as a glory hound, while others see him as a washed up ace turned space jockey or a lapdog to the Empire. Tolliver continues to make the decisions that best suits him, and his men.

Strengths:
While his MAS combat prowess is a feat, Tolliver is a hard-pressed, tenacious man. When put on a task he makes sure to get down to work and get it finished. He is known to micromanage his staff and hand off lesser duties to his command staff. His tactics are sound and are mostly from the academy, his transition from MAS to Fleet has provided him with an insight a career naval officer wouldn’t have.

Weaknesses:
His behavior of over planning has often been ineffective, whether it’s in regards to logistics, load outs or fleet placement something can go wrong and it may not be the thing that was planned for. His inability to take criticism has left some of his tactical planning and prowess flawed, perhaps it’s the glory from the MAS days that has his judgment impaired. The fact his relationships with his enlisted personnel are minimal could attribute to this.

Likes:
A disciplined crew – cohesion is like clockwork.
Drinking, when it’s appropriate.
Security Forces – they’re always a reliable department of the ship.
Patriotic troopers – we all fight for the same thing.
Results – always result. They better be good, otherwise, it results he doesn’t want to see or hear.
Reading, a soldier can stay knowledge and mentally fit with a good book.
Having an intellectual and deep conversation with officers, as he rarely does have one with enlisted personnel.
Earth and The Empire, home.
Women~
His MAS, despite it,’s no longer being used.


Dislikes:
Rebellious soldiers and traitors – they should hang.
Conscientious objectors.
Cowards.
The Coalition and those who sympathize with them.
Undisciplined soldiers.
When plans go awry.

Fears:
Death, plain and simple.
Being demoted.
Becoming a failure.
Shaming his family.
Losing the war.










to be added

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Name: Mäkinen, Atalyah.
Age: Forty-four (44).
Gender: ♂ Male.
Callsign: Nix.
Kills: 32 confirmed MAS kills, although rumor would suggest that there's more hidden behind black ink and security clearances.

Psychological Analysis: Atalyah is a jading man, continuously growing more distant and unenthusiastic about his work, with little more than one goal in mind: either step down to an auxiliary role, or if that's not possible, make it to retirement.

To most, Atalyah keeps his business to himself. While not distant or estranged from his team - he's quite active, especially where informal training and soldiering skills are concerned - he never lets the conversation focus on himself. Rumors would suggest all sorts of reasons for why he's like this: some of the more dramatic stories whispered between the youngest staff on the ship tell tales of a man with nothing left to live for, or a man hounded by shadowy echelons of the earth government. The reality is much more simple: he's just very solitary where his personal life goes, wanting to keep his personal life and professional life separate until his last few years in the service are done.

Beneath all of what he presents is a man faced with his mid-life crisis, yet too estranged from it to do anything about it. After his many years in the service, all he wants to do is to retire to a civil sector job and see his children regularly; yet between his current contract with the United Earth Imperial Armed Forces and his divorced wife that keeps his children away from him, that seems impossible for him. He's tired and stressed, yet too stubborn to admit it to anybody, including himself - especially to the younger members of his team. It has yet to make a significant impact on his military career, yet it coming up in the near future isn't farfetched.

Military Record: Atalyah was born and raised on one of the many artificial homes in the galaxy: great structures floating in the depths of space, clad in life as if it were anything to the likeness of a planet. His parents, claiming a proud Finnish heritage yet ethnically a hotpot of races between them, both worked in hospitality. His parents - his father being the manager of a cafe and his mother being a chef - met when they were both in their young early 20's and were married by 25. Atalyah was born as the oldest of three children, with two younger twin sisters that came after him.

Growing up, Atalyah initially had a sheltered life. He started in a public school before his parents eventually opened up their own business and became successful, where he then transferred to private education shortly after starting middle school. His grades were initially above average throughout elementary school, where they then dipped worryingly low throughout middle school as he lost interest. He lacked aspiration: all he wanted was a quiet existence, with a simple job and a nice house away from the bustle of it all. He pictured himself as a laborer, or even working for his parents in hospitality. Yet, as time went on - out of a mix of his own volition and his parents encouraging him to aspire for something greater - he started putting hard work back into his education, ascending to high grades by the end of high school.

The reason Atalyah decided to focus on his education was an aspiration to join the armed forces. He was inspired by stories of officers in the war against the Coalition, inspiring their men and achieving great victories through cunning and tenacity. Yet, then something else caught his eye: mobile armored suits. What else could be more romantic to a teenage boy then valiant heroes in mecha, fighting against the despicable, peace-hating enemy that was the Coalition? It inspired Atalyah to strive for something, gave him a goal, and with his efforts he was eventually rewarded: he graded high enough on his final exams to quality for the United Earth Forces Academy on Mars, where he was accepted to study to become an MAS pilot, after passing the extensive trials and tests required to become a pilot.

Moving to the core worlds was incredibly exciting for Atalyah. The lights and glamour of it all wasn't lost on him, the impressionable young mind that he was. During the week, he studied to become the man he wanted to be, yet during the weekends, he took out to the streets of Mars to experience life in the core worlds. After so many months, the glamour was lost on him, yet it was exciting while it lasted. Throughout his 4 years at the academy, Atalyah fluctuated with his performance until he eventually graduated with slightly above-average grades, which led to his graduation and further training at the Mobile Armor Academy for another 2 years before finally receiving his posting.

Much like post of the graduating MAS pilots, Atalyah was posted to the 101st Mobile Armour Suit Legion, alongside the bulk of the mechanized fighting force for the United Earth Empire. He found the transition difficult: much of what he had been taught barely qualified him to be considered a rookie when compared to what the veterans knew. He found himself second-guessing his decision, yet caught upto speed given time.

It was during his early career as a pilot that Atalyah met his future wife, Ieva Astrauckas. Ieva was a naval crewman that worked in a logistics role on board his ship of posting. The two took a shine to one another over the first few months of their posting, both being relatively new, before they eventually entered a romantic relationship. It was difficult to maintain, the two soon being posted apart from one another, but they made it work.

Throughout his early career as a MAS pilot, Atalyah saw most of his combat in and around the Free-Enterprise zone. The Orion Arm Theater became his home for most of his early career as a pilot, before he eventually found himself posted to the Perseus Arm, taking part in offensive campaigns against the Coalition. It was in the Perseus Arm that Atalyah really cut his teeth with MAS warfare, finding himself surviving where many of his team members were not - some times by narrow, near-death chance, and others by more reliable planning and piloting. After taking command of his flight, and later his squadron temporarily after his squadron commander died in combat, Atalyah was eventually assessed as a special forces candidate. He passed, where he was then sent off to a classified region of UEE space for training. It was during Atalyah's time with Special Forces Command that he married Ieva and had two kids - a son and a daughter. By the time he transferred out of the outfit several years later, they had divorced, having grown apart between the secrecy and restricted communications.

What Atalyah did between being picked up by Mobile Armor Special Forces and returning to the 101st Mobile Armor Legion is uncertain. Much of what he did has been tightly guarded by UEE Special Forces Command, much to the chagrin of senior commanders in the 101st. A mix of independent reports, Coalition propoganda, and leaks, have placed him in several sensitive areas throughout the conflict: ranging from uncooperative neutral planets in the Free-Enterprise Zone to suspicious incidents behind Coalition lines. At some point, for some reason, Atalyah returned to the 101st MAS Legion, local commanders only being told that he served with Special Forces Command and that no further questions were to be asked.

Now, for little over two years, Atalyah has remained with the 101st. For that entire time, he has stayed true to his newfound policy of keeping his professional life and his personal life separate. There have been times where he's simply vanished for weeks at a time, his commanders left an e-mail from Special Forces Command letting them know he'd be missing, before returning as if nothing ever happened.

Equipment: Normally, Atalyah carries a select range of his standard issue equipment. He rarely carries his handgun, only when the alert order would dictate that he must. Among his personal possessions, he notably has a laptop with all sorts of odds and ends on it, as well as a photo of his two kids.

Designation:
PTX-098 SOC 'Aegis'.

Role:
Breakthrough assault.

Chassis:
Heavy [+35 WT]

Engine:
PentaCore™ Engine [+25 PWR]

Description:
The PTX-098 SOC, formally designated as Aegis but often nicknamed Biwing or Biplane after it's two additional limbs, is a shock assault heavy MAS designed by B████ █████ and L███ ██████████ for use by ███ ███████ █████ ███████. It saw a limited production where it was issued to specialist members of the aforementioned unit, where it received mixed responses regarding performance. Many special forces outfits preferred medium and light MAS, rarely seeing the intense combat that required a breakthrough unit such as the Aegis. With the introduction of next-generation MAS alongside the lack of drive in next-generation heavy MAS development, most PTX-098 MAS models found uses elsewhere within the United Earth Government: namely as escort units for high value persons and in conventional MAS units, where it's capabilities were more task relevant.

Systems [WT: 35/35 | PWR: 22/25]
M-09C 'Bastard' Plasma Blade [1 WT | 3 PWR]
A plasma blade stored in the left side of the unit's torso, subject to an ejection mechanism as to be 'drawn' by the pilot. The M-09C 'Bastard' is named after the medieval 'bastard sword': namely that it's effective regardless of if it's held with one or two hands. The blade has a fixed length that measures longer than the average plasma sword.

AC-2 50mm Autocannon [5 WT | 3 PWR]
The primary ranged weapon of the Aegis is it's 50mm autocannon, constructed with a single barrel that fires at almost 1 shot per second. The weapon is designed to be carried in both hands and features slight modifications so it can be better angled around objects, such as the shields in the Aegis' design. It is fitted to a hip harness which pulls the weapon into a position sitting against the back of the unit's hip, which is where it sits where unused; this allows for the unit to rapidly draw it's plasma blade without sacrificing the autocannon.

Aegis-class alloy shield limbs [8 WT | 0 PWR]
On top of the two standard arms featured on the PTX-098 is a pair of additional limbs, each bearing an extensively large alloy shield almost as large as the unit itself. These shield limbs feature systems installed into them and can move independently of the rest of the body, keeping the main two hands free for whatever they may want to hold.

Optimized Alloy Plating [5 WT | 0 PWR]
Unfortunately, the two shield limbs on the PTX-098 aren't enough to defend it from combat: flanking maneuvers and renegade shots bring about other sources of damage, just to name a few. To this end, the PTX-098 has been fitted with optimized alloy plating, providing it with better protection without over-encumbering it.

Aegis-class class 5 shield [10 WT | 15 PWR]
While the two shield limbs provide significant protection as is, it is not enough for the breakthrough assault MAS. It features an integrated class 5 shield system, capable of extending and withdrawing it's protection to the alloy shield limbs on demand should they be overwhelmed or surpassed.

Aegis-class missile matrix [6 WT | 4 PWR]
Across the chassis of the MAS is a series of missile units - a total of 2 pods: one in the shoulders and one in the torso. These missiles put the 'breakthrough' in breakthrough assault, often being fired around the two shield arms while the pilot simultaneously engages with other weapons. Naturally, there are only so many missiles per missile pod, limiting each pod to 2 uses per battle.