World Suggestion: Consolidated Constellation of Star States

Current State of the CCSS

#	Class	Population
1	Capital Station	~120 million
12	Continental Class Stations	>50 million
8	Ocean Class Hydroponics Stations	10 to 50 million
11	Nation Class Stations	10 to 50 million
29	Megalopolis Class Commercial / Industrial Stations	5 to 25 million
19	Province Class Stations	1 to 10 million
23	Island Class Residential Stations	500 thousand to 1 million
39	Frontier Class Recreation Stations	50 to 500 thousand
>600	Guard Stations	5 to 50 thousand
~ 750	Total Stations	Total population: ~ 1.9 Billion

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Health Care and Government IDs

Citizens of the CCSS benefit from the high availability of state of the art health care and average life span of the population has risen to over 250 years, and average age or retirement as risen to 220. Simple biotechnics are wide spread with nearly every citizen having at least one implant beyond the government issued ID chip in their finger. Civilian biotechnics are limited to medical and sensory enhancements. More advance biotechnics like strength or speed boosts are limited to train professionals, typically dock workers and military personnel.

The Constellation Government records multiple forms of biometrics to allow positive identification, and requires that all legal transactions be signed by at least two forms of biometrics in addition to the scanning of the ID chip. For simple store transactions the fingerprint and chip scanners are built into the key pad units and facial recognition via the store cameras provides the second biometrics. Banks Loans and Corporate level contracts might go for retina and palm scans. High level military installations have been known to go so far to require multiple palm and iris scans on top of the facial and vocal recognition. The old form of signing in blood has once again made a return, a blood thumb print to seal the deal.

Citizens typically transfer a copy of the government biometric data over to the doctors as the data taken for identification reasons also be readily interpreted by medical science to track the risk of certain medical conditions.

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It is Everyone Duty to Protect and Serve

Space is unforgiving, even on the massive space stations of the CCSS, it is everyone duty to be on the look out for improper maintenance, wear and tear, and other risks to the security and safety of those on the stations.

All persons must provide aid to the best of their ability to any person who appears to be lifeless or in mortal danger, must alert authorities or take similar steps to prevent impending disasters that could cause loss of life, must comply with all reasonable requests of assistance by a public authority when a person's life, health or well-being is at stake, and must, if they learn of a planned crime against the state, human life or well-being, or significant public goods, do everything in their power to prevent or mitigate the crime, including but not limited to reporting it to authorities, in all cases provided that acting would not incur particular danger or personal sacrifice.

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The Good Samaritan in You

On top of the duty to rescue, the CCSS provides generous protections to good Samaritans acting within reasonable limits to aide others. All actions done in good faith, without malicious intent, and within the scope of your skills can not be held against you even if such actions results in father harm.

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Vacations and other Visas in the CCSS

A visa is required for all non citizens to achieve admission. A simple passport and biometric scan is enough to get you applied for a visa in any space port or guard station. The process of determining eligibility for entry may take up to one business week for a vacation visa. Stays of over 30 days will require filing an extension and the running of a thorough background check. The maximum extended time for a vacation visa is 90 days within the CCSS starting from the initial check in at one of the stations.

Upon arrival to a CCSS station your passport, visa, and biometrics shall be checked. A bracelet with your CCSS ID and wallet will be issued. The cost of the bracelet was covered by your first time visa fees. For additional cost you may upgrade your ID to one of many rings or bracelets, or have yourself implanted like the CCSS citizens. The wearing of your CCSS ID is required at all times, excluding private residential quarters.

It is recommended that sufficient funds be transferred in advance to an account in a CCSS bank or partnered local bank for use within the CCSS. The CCSS does not issue physical coins or bills. The exchanging of local physical scripts within the CCSS will likely be subject to harsh processing fees in addition to standard conversion fees.
Regular citizens and visitors are not allowed to carry weapons within the CCSS. The act of permitting a crime may result in the revocation of your your visa. The procession of a weapon on your person may result in criminal charges and revocation of your visa based on the lethality and destructiveness of the weapon. Certain classes of weapons are exempt from the no weapons law, typically those of short range non lethal nature. The use of such weapons outside of reasonable self defense can still result in criminal charges and revocation of your visa.

All non CCSS licensed weapons are required to be sealed in a CCSS approved weapon transfer case and stored in the ship or station armory till such time you leave the CCSS. For those traveling through CCSS space to reach other stars bulk cargo must be stored in tariff exempt warehousing for transfer to the starship. Those stored in normal warehousing may be subject to standard taxes and export fees.

All persons must file for a visa extension or be on board a ship leaving CCSS space within one week of the expiration of your visa. Failure to do so will subject you to the CCSS Lurker Laws if you are unable to pay the fines and government travel fare to leave the station.

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The Work Provision Administration

The homeless and unemployed, aka Lurkers, of the stations are dealt with through the WPA and Lurker Laws. Those unable to provide sufficient credits for an outbound ship, or find a sponsor to provide employment and housing shall be processed through the WPA. There are three main fates for those Lurkers processed by the WPA: military service, scientific service, or industrial service. Occasionally there is a lottery to draft Lurkers for genetic material for a colony ship.

Military service is in the Constellation Army (CSA) the light infantry arm of the Star Marines. Those lurkers drafted into the CSA are given basic training in the use of the air suits, radio helmet, stun baton, riot shield, and clam-shell armor before sent to naval vessels for advance training in ship to ship boarding actions.

Scientific service is the use of Lurkers as lab rats for the final testing of biotechnics, medications, and or the local production blood and plasma. They are available for what ever government approved research is required.

Industrial service typically means being sent to the asteroid mines as manpower for the dig and smelt operations required for volatiles farming. Other jobs include manpower intensive low skill jobs such as paint removal or final detail cleaning of ships. A draft of lurkers might also be used to clean the trash out of a section of park land when the need arises.

Those lurkers that are sponsored typically find themselves as janitors or house hold servants of wealthy CCSS citizens though some find themselves shipped back to earth to serve some extremely wealthy CEO or noble.

Constellation Star Navy – CSN

The true might of the CCSS lies with in its Navy, and the mighty battleships form the spear tip of the battle walls.

They are four kilometer long blades of armor and weapons, built to be unstoppable juggernauts able to take enormous amounts of damage while still remaining capable of combat. To achieve this the front three-quarters of the ship is nothing but a gently tapering wedge of armor, structural support, and weapons. The living quarters for the crew of 25-thousand are split between 4 heavily reinforced contra-rotating habitat gravity centrifuges buried deep under the 25m thick armor plating of the battleships ‘hand guard’. The ‘handle and pommel’ are the massive drive units needed to move the giga-tonnes of starship through space under reasonable military accelerations. The battleships don’t have the best accelerations compared to other warships but they can still pull between a gravity and two of continuous acceleration.

The main bridge and command center are located inside the spinning habitat rings close to the spine making them hard to hit targets. They are typically large bunker structures built into middle of the large parks that are standard features of CCSS ships. The green parks have any number of climates but the design of the CSN parks allow them to double as training grounds for the embarked marines and army troopers.

The bulk of the crew are gunners and missiliers to operate the weapon systems of the battleship and the two dozen assigned frigate sized vectors. The rest are command staff to navigate and fly the ship, and engineers to run the massive engines and generally keep the ship battle ready. For there size battleships carry a relatively small number of star marines and constellation regulars for security. The huge battleships rarely partake in boarding operations. The task of organizing boarding operations to capture ships are better left to destroyers, frigates, and guard ships.

Massive shuttle bays and cargo management facilities form a small ricasso in front of the crew area. The efficient handling of the cargo and personnel shuttles is vital as the huge battleships are simply to large to dock with a station. Supplies and personnel must be moved to the battleship by shuttle or ship to ship docking.

The giant battleships carry and make use of the full arsenal of CSN weapons from the giant magnetic acceleration cannons to the tiny anti missile railgun gatlings.

The Weapons of CSN

Nuclear Lances are the most fearsome weapons in the CSN arsenal for even a direct hit from the most basic Nuclear Lance can destroy a battleship. The main feature of the lance is the powerful nuclear shape change drive a multi kiloton slug of plasma into the target at 3% the speed of light. While slower than the light speed beams of particles cannons or lasers the heavy slug of plasma packs thousands of times the power of conventional beam weapons. To make better use of the energy of the fusion bomb 5m long Excalibur rods are strapped to the sides and deployed before firing to create a buck shot pattern around the main lance beam. Current generation lances include an explosively formed penetrator warhead behind the bomb to improve performance at greater than optimal ranges. A massive 1, 2, 3 punch of x-ray lasers, relativistic plasma, and high speed slug.
Often lumped in as a Nuclear Lance as well but not lacking the nuclear shape charge that originally coined the term that is its namesake, are the Excalibur devices. They are simpler devices that only feature x-ray lasing rods and do not require any shaping of the blast to make work. Shaping the nuclear blast does improve the lasing power of the more advance Excalibur devices by providing a higher percentage of the blast energy to each individual lasing rod. Simply put the individual x-ray laser beams of the more advance Excalibur can drive deeper into the target.

Anti-Ship Missiles (ASM) are powerful rockets design to get a warhead and ECM package closer to an enemy ship in a hurry. Flung out at high relative velocity to the ship by a steam piston, solenoid, or even gauss field directly to the missile, and further accelerated at over 10 gravities by on board engines. The ECM uses chaff, active decoys, electronic jamming and sensor ghosts to try to insure the missiles warhead gets into effective range. The warheads come in a variety of types including bomb pumped nuclear lances and Excalibur lasers, capacitor powered meteor shotguns, and even swarms of smaller seeker missiles.

Mines are bare bone missile warheads and targeting systems kicked out over the side to increase the over all firepower of a ship. The skillful use of mines can make or break a battle.

Magnetic Acceleration Cannons (MAC) are found only on cruisers and above for the acceleration coils of the gun can occupy a kilometer or more of the ships main spine and drive a 4m diameter, 6m long, 250 tonne fullerene armored refractory steel slug at 70 km/s. The full slug packs the power of half a megaton of TNT. It is rare for a slug to impact in one piece. A bursting charge is timed to shatter and spread the shards of the projectile over a large volume of space making it difficult for ship to dodge as well as trying to saturate the point defenses. MACs are quite damage resistance and the lost of an acceleration coil would only reduce the destructive power of the gun, only the destruction of the breech or power banks will render the gun inoperative. Current generation battleships have four of these wrapped around the spine while cruisers only have one or two.

Fusion X-ray Laser (FXL) are the most powerful lasers in the CCSS that are not a single shot device. The FXL is powered by a fusion reactor or plasma siphoned off from the ships reactor, either way the fusing plamsa is what gives these huge lasers there fearsome power. They are second only to the single shot Excaliburs in raw laser power. Unlike the Excaliburs the FXL can fire a continuous slicing beam that can quickly tear apart enemy ships. Independent reactor powered FXLs count as secondary generators for the ships. FXL generators are located deep inside the ship with the beam typically piped out to to aiming turrets or flush mounted armored firing ports. Turrets are typically retracted inside the hull when not in use.

Free Electron Lasers (FEL) are the next step down from FXLs and like the larger laser feature bulky generators buried deep in the hull. The major advantage of the FEL over the FXL is that FEL beam frequency can be tuned from microwave all the way to ultraviolet allowing it to be tailored to the optical properties of the medium between the ship and the target. FELs are easy to repair requiring no exotic materials or gasses to generate the laser and the parts of the weapon can easily be repair in the ships machine shop. Both the particle accelerator and the lasing cavity require a vacuum to operate. Like the FXL the FEL beam is piped to emitters and turrets on the ships surface. Turrets are typically only extended out side the hull when tracking or firing.

Particle Acceleration Cannon (PAC) are medium range weapons with a nasty triple punch of armor piercing damage. The pulses of near light speed particles smash several centimeters deep into the armor breaking apart the material atom by atom as well as explosively superheating the material and generating powerful localized x-rays to fry nearby electronics and people. Even outside of optimal ship shredding range the PACs can soft kill lightly armored targets with the hard x-rays generated by the high energy particles striking the hull. The large size of the linear acceleration tracks (200m or more in length) and general complexity of bending the beam inside of ships limits them to fix mounts with electromagnetic lenses inside the firing ports to aim the beam. Damage to the linear accelerator only reduces the power of the beam.

Optical Phase Array Laser (OPAL) are large panels mounted flush against the hull, typically with covers to protect the arrays from damage when not in use. OPAL is completely solid state and has a beam that is electronically steer making it the fastest track and engage weapon system, there is no lag time to transverse a turret around to point at the target or line up a firing port. OPALs are the weakest of the available laser systems but also the most flexible laser system. A single array can fire one beam or dozens of weaker beams targeting multiple targets. A large enough OPAL system can blast ships at range with a single concentrated beam then split apart into many beams to deal with swarms of missiles. OPAL panels are highly damage resistant with only the complete destruction of the panel rendering them unable to fire. A warship typically carries plenty of spare OPAL panels and even if they don’t have the panels in stock, any ship’s electronics shop can manufacture the OPAL panels.

Anti-Ship Railgun (ASR) while classified as medium range weapons due to the limitations of targeting the relatively slow, 20 km/s, projectiles. Railguns work best with smaller diameters and the ASRs are the EM equivalent to heavy autocannons with there high rate of fire. The ASRs of the CSN range from 30cm to 75cm in diameter. The ASRs long rod penetrating projectiles smash deep into the armor to wreck the delicate systems under the hull.

Flak Cannons are basically ADS gauss cannons with improved sensors and faster tracking turrets to provide a close in screen against missiles and other fast moving evasive targets. The short large diameter barrels provide best acceleration curves from the gauss guns. They typically run 120cm all the way up to 500cm. The larger diameters providing higher muzzle velocities and more defensive depth while the smaller diameters can track faster and shoot faster. The flak projectiles ranging from tens of tonnes all the way to hundreds of tonne all pack an explosive charge to fragment the rounds before impact. The ADS projectiles are fusion shape charges that push the asteroid onto a new course without actually applying enough force shatter an asteroid.

Anti-Missile Railgun (AMR) are multiple barrel systems that fire hundreds of hyper velocity projectiles per second. Like the Goalkeeper and Phalanx of the pre-war era they have dedicated sensors to provide continuous targeting updates to maximize the hit probability of the stream of projectiles.

Anti-Missile Missile (AMM) are small seeker missiles optimized to have a greater chance of navigating through the ECM and decoys of anti-ship missiles to successfully intercept the warhead before it detonates.

Vectors are remote controlled parasite gunships assigned to warship. The largest ones are the size of frigates and the smallest ones the size of a large SUV. They turn a warship that carries them into an instant fleet with all the firepower and sensor advantages. Fully spread out the vectors can give the ships sensors and lasers a synthetic aperture of two light seconds or more. Vectors are much harder to kill since they lack such easy targets as habitat rings and crew spaces, and instead use the volume for additional weapons or armor. Vectors come in two main sub-types defensive and offensive. Defense types are pack full of ECM and EW systems and covered with anti missile systems. They tend to be smaller more disposable ships whose ultimate fate is to be sacrificed blocking a shot meant for the mothership. Offensive types are small battleships with powerful spinal guns and numerous heavy turrets over there larger hulls.

Cruisers and the Tin Cans

While not as prestigious as the mighty battleships the lesser ships of the navy provide the backbone. Cruisers at half the size and crew of a battleship are better suited for the day to day patrol duties of the navy while still capable of carrying a complete arsenal of deadly weapons, and getting it there faster with their nearly three-gees of sustainable acceleration available for emergencies. Heavy cruisers and even larger battle cruisers occupy the middle ground between the cruiser and battleships.

Cruisers are geared for long duration typically independent missions. They carry on board them all the hardware and supplies to preform all the routine repairs and maintenance needed. They only really need a shipyard for the most extensive repairs and maintenance cycles. Things like major repairs or pulling a reactor. Major tasks that require the evacuation of the ship and heavy tugs. Cruisers carry dozens of assault shuttles, and enough marines and troopers to preform multiple boarding operations.

Destroyers are the larger of the two tin can classes and carry oversize engines that give the ships an insane max acceleration of five-gees. They are the interceptors of the fleet able to power their way into position to cut off enemy fleets and carry the firepower to make them a credible threat. They typically carry two of the four heavy weapons of the fleet MAC, FXL, FEL, or PAC. Usually MAC and FXL, or FEL and PAC as those pairings share common hardware making it easier to wedge the weapons into the short 1.5 km spine of the Destroyer. By CCSS standards they are cramp ships without a lot of luxury or leg room. The normally spacious habitat ring is reamed out to make room for the thick reinforce spine that keeps the ship from collapsing under the high gee loads and oversize heavy anti ship weapons.

Frigates are the smallest warships of the CSN at only 1km long. The small size means they can only mount the FXL, FEL, or PAC as the main gun. Frigates have the most variety of designs and weapon configurations as the designers try to find the ideal mix of weapons for small ships. The prevailing class mounts several FXL generators and dozens of launchers for anti ship missiles for the longest range punch. The older design built for anti pirate duties carried the shorter range but more devastating PAC and FEL combo that allow them to soft kill the lightly armored mining and merchant ships. Against a modern space navy they simply did not have the survivability to get with in destructive PAC range and FELs simply don't have the raw destructive power of a reactor powered FXL.

Odds and Ends

CCSS space is vast and ships don’t come to a halt if the engine breaks. The CSN fields a few cruiser size support ships able to bring a ship back into fighting shape with repairs, personnel, and resupply. Refitted destroyers act as fast response ships to run down ships going Dutchman and tow them back to a station for repairs.



Command Ships are older model frigates refitted with modern weapons, the command and control capacity of a battleship, and drives from a destroyer. Over all they are sized midway between a frigate and a destroyer. Their role is to server as a proper flagship for flotillas of destroyers and frigates, and provide advance fleet coordination during engagements. They are heavily armored for their size and outfitted with the biggest possible FXL to give them the teeth for long range fights. They can out speed anything they cannot fight. The primary weapons of these ships though are the battleship size armada of vectors.

Some Common Items in the CCSS

Artificial intelligence Systems (AIS) are found through out the CCSS and serve to make life easier for the citizens of the stations. Most of them are low level systems, simple learning systems able to adapt quickly to user needs, serve as friendly user interfaces and advance search engines. They make phones easier to use, manage home systems, and serve to keep vehicles from crashing.

Sapience level AIS are rare in the civilian setting, as awaking AIS to fully sapience levels is an expensive and risky undertaking requiring the migration of an standard AIS into a larger processing core and the removal of increasing higher levels of core restrictions on processes. There is a high risk of AIS instability and/ or corruption during the uncontrolled (and often poorly seeded) self expansion of consciousness. These civilian awaken AIS tend to be jacks of all trades and masters of none. They are simply unable to optimize their processes do though the generalized nature of their original programing.

The most intelligent single core AIS are found inside the Star Marine's power armors. These awaken AIS optimized in the art of armored warfare are critical in achieving the high combat multipliers of the power armor as they serve as genius level battle management tools. They even serve backseat, operating the guns and other system the marine is to busy to operate. The AIS has 360 degree vision and can easy spot and high light enemies, automatically ECM seekers missiles and enemy targeting, swing a shoulder gun to engage an incoming missiles not spoofed by the ECM, and generally predict enemy actions using all available data.

The most powerful single core AIS are those that manage the telephone switch board and operate services. These powerful AIS handle tens of millions of connections a minute and millions of simultaneous operator calls as once. They are not awaken. They simply need the raw processing power to handle the extreme multitasking and instancing required.

More powerful trinity AIS manage major utilities and infrastructure. The three independent AIS cores inside these systems minimizes the risk rogue actions through a majority vote system. Routine scans of the votes and outcomes by analysis AIS and humans can determine when a core as developed a fault. They are used where making the wrong decision can lead to lost of thousands or more lives. These trinity AIS manage fusion power stations, station utilities, space traffic control, and starships.

The CSN warships have powerful trinity AIS to manage both navigation and battle. The warship AIS is locked of the weapon systems by both software and hardware lockouts outside of combat conditions. The only weapons active during cruising are those necessary for asteroid and missile defense. Even those are turned off while inside the defense zone of a station.

The warship AIs are geniuses in space warfare, sensor analysis, and energy management. The powerful AI is necessary for the effective use of the vectors as the massive computing power is needed to move them fast enough to intercept incoming fire while avoiding crashing them into each other. The same brute computational power allows the AI to quickly filter out the effects of decoys, ECM and EW on sensors.

The most powerful of the trinity AIS runs the Distributed Reflector Array for Mining - Solar (DRAM-S). It takes a lot of computing power to manage the tens of millions of mirrors that comprise the DRAM-S and the safely bounce around focused terawatt beams of light that can vaporize a starship with barley perceptible power drop. It takes a lot a power to melt down an asteroid in only a couple of weeks. The same power properly focused can slice an kilometer thick asteroid in half. Lesser beams smelt, heat, cut, drill, weld, and even illuminate out in the asteroid belt. All these myriad of operations take a very gentle and precise hand to keep from accidentally blowing up a station or ship with a stray beam.

Algae Porridge is a basic food in the CCSS. It is a purified form of the basic algae culture used in the hydroponics system, fortified with vitamins, and flavored with a fish or synthetic meat broth. Sometimes the porridge is served with a ration bar of gelatin bound fruit and nuts. The combination provides all the necessary dietary needs in a low mass package.

FTL Drive are big and bulky, limited to largest of warships and exploration crafts as they take a lot of power and space inside the ship. The FTL drive punches a wormhole in space with exotic matter in the direction of the nearest star. Once the hole is formed the ship can hold it open for smaller ships to precede it or go through itself. The wormhole starts the unravel after the generating ship has entered and soon collapses behind the ship. The drive can be removed from the exploration ship and made into a more efficient FTL Gate in orbit around the star to colonize the system. The gate stations are a more stable wormhole system that can link to any other gate when given enough power, and allows the safe passage of colony and trading fleets from system to system.

Hard Light Blades, aka condensed light blades, are compact and agile melee weapons. Their small size and close range lethality makes them a class-4 restricted weapon in the CCSS. The weapon only needs three components to function: a hard light projector to generate the blade, a data file containing a blade profile, and a power source. The blade can take any shape from a small dagger to exotic big freaking sword. The larger more complex blades use more power than small simple blades.

The active portions of the blade easily burns or melts through most materials. The cutting effectiveness of the blade is based on the energy density, and the easiest means of increasing that is to focus the blade down as close to a point as possible. The blades are able to easily slice through all by the most heat resistant materials. These refractory or actively cooled materials only slow the blade not completely stop it from melting through. The only means to truly stop a Hard Light Blade is with more Hard Light.

Down on the surface the blades are powered by Aether. Out in space the blades are power by batteries or generators. Large blades of useful duration are limited to power armors and mecha. The only branches of the CCSS to make regular use of hard light blades are the elite Star Marines and Constellation Guard. The high level or training and professionalism inside these elite units minimizes the risk of accidental injury to the user or near by allies.

Hard Light Shields are the defensive counterparts to the hard light blades. They are also restricted inside the CCSS though only at a class-3. These are large planes of hard light. Much like the Hard Light Blade, the surface of the shield burns and/or melts with it comes into contact with. The edges of the shield are typically to thick to slice or cut. Due to the large area needed to be covered with sufficient energy density shields require considerably more power than a Hard Light Blade. They are not great at stopping projectiles before they hit you, generally at best turning bullets into sprays of molten metal and at worst doing little more than heating a projectile. They are stronger against lasers, actually absorbing the energy to strengthen the shield right up to the point the hard light projector overloads from the excessive energy trapped in the shield or drains the battery.

Much like Hard Light Blades the Hard Light Shield takes the form of familiar styles of infantry shields from large tower shields to small bucklers. Mecha mounted generators can be larger, and take the form of conformal shields or domes.

The shear size of warships make it difficult to fit and power enough projectors to cover the whole ship, so most warships make do with adjustable Hard Light Barriers that can be moved protect important areas or intercept the most dangerous enemy fire. These ship based Hard Light Shields have been nicknamed Pin-Point Barriers.

Advance hard light shields are able to properly defend against projectiles at the cost of being much bulkier, complex, and power intensive to the point where where only dedicated vehicles can carry them as they use most of the internal volume. The advance shields layers multiple screens of hard light on top of each other to better break up and vaporize projectiles as they past through each screen. Still not 100% effective but more than capable of shredding most common projectiles. More advance rounds like armor piercing and canisters rounds may be able to effectively pierce even advance hard light shielding if the outer casing can tank enough of the damage that the payload can pass mostly intact.

The Skitter Run is an advance form of movement that allows an AI assisted power armor to run and jump nearly as fast as an AI controlled warbot. The only limit is the amount of g-force the pilot can handle. The pilot relaxes their lower body and lets the AI control the suits legs while the pilot keeps control over general direction and the firing of the weapons. The super relaxed state of the legs allows the AI to power the leg servos at a much higher frequency than the pilot can naturally manage. It is this overdrive of the legs that makes this an advance piloting technique as any tension in the leg can lead to massive lower body trauma as the over driven servos can easily rip tensed muscles clean off the bones and maybe even break bones or dislocate joints.

Space Suits (SAS) – the standard space suits of the CCSS are of the mechanical compression type aka the space activity suit. They are low encumbrance designs that provide all the modesty of a spandex body suit. Typically less as they are more closely tailor to every contour of the body to be as skin tight as possible. They care custom built to the users most recent 3-D body scan and are not suited for any other wearer. Major changes in weight or body shape require a new SAS core as it will not longer properly fit.

The most basic designs are not suitable for wearing in public, being little more than a sheer body stocking with more opaque reinforced areas at the back of the joins, along the spine, around groin, and under the cleavage. These reinforced areas are present on all of the SAS style suits as mechanical compression is difficult to achieve over the concave parts of the body, and addition material is needed to keep those areas from swelling uncomfortably.

Typically the suits have additional layers that provide the wearer with appropriate levels of modesty as well improve the durability of the suit. They can be tailored to look like everyday clothing or be worn under your regular clothing.

It is important that the suit remain intact as holes and rips can lead to uncomfortable space hickeys when exposed to low pressures or vacuum. Patches can temporarily fix the damage but its recommended that a new suit be acquired as a damage suit no long provides the same level or protection or comfort. The suit must cover to the elbow and knees to provide the minimum protection from life threatening injuries. Wearing a breathing mask, earplugs and a SAS bodysuit will all you to survive without major injury prolong exposure to vacuum. A full suit with helmet, gloves, and boots, is required to work inside a vacuum.

Most of the bulk of the SAS is in the helmet and life support unit. The rigid or at least semi rigid helmet serves as the containment vessel for the air pressure needed for eyes, ears, and more importantly lungs to work. Emergency helmets are all in one units with a clam shell chest plate storing air and water, and a large clear inflatable semi rigid helmet providing the slightly about the minimum requirements of operating within the shielded confines of a station or ship interior. EVA rated suits include additional radiation shielding, improved life support capacity, proper plumbing fittings and waste recycling, stronger and redundant communication equipment, additional attachment points for tools and tethers. Optional EVA equipment include magnetic boots, and jet packs.

The tight fitting SAS style body suits are ideal for the wear inside of power armors and has replaced the traditional body stockings of used inside Terran made power armors.

Space Suits (RSS) – The rigid space suits of the CCSS are used in the dangerous environments of the shipyards and asteroid mines where impact protection is a higher priority than comfort and you typically spend half a day inside the suit. Built from the same tech as power armors the suit has practically zero encumbrance tax to the user unlike the unpowered SAS suits. The suites are equipped for prolong use of up to 48 hours of normal activity. The suits armor though is optimized to protect against impact and crushing forces, instead of enemy weapons fire. The softer spring like armor more easily deflects heavy slow moving impacts without transferring the energy to the user. The suits have hardpoints for the attaching of various power tools for ship working and mining. The suits hard points are design to not interface with standard CCSS power armor weapons and to make it difficult to modify the suit to do so. The RSS suits are easier and faster to clean than skin tight SAS suits. RSS suits can be used by multiple users as well being easier to fully repair. Much like standard military power armors they come in a number of power classes from crude bare-bone units issued to the conscripts digging ice in the strip mines to the heavy duty suits used to move and weld together the huge sections of starships and stations.

Starship Armor in the CCSS has mostly evolved into designing better nano laminates or nano ceramics to improve the toughness of the plating against fire.

The outermost layers of starship armor are various thick spray on coatings of ablative foam that protects the more expensive armor from the basic wear and tear of being in space. The dense outer shell is a wear layer that protects against scratches, bumps, and minor impacts. The foamed under layer is a shock absorbing layer. Under laser and beam fire the foam coatings expand, melts, ablates, and generally does it best to keep filling the whole the laser or particle beam is trying to dig into the ship.

The main armor is made of overlapping and spaced out plates of hard, dense, refractory composites attached to a flexible shock absorbing foundation of woven fullerene mesh soaked in a high tech thermal paste that quickly spreads the heat of beam strikes to nearby plates to keep a laser from simply melting through.

The exact composition and shape of the armor plates can vary a lot depending on the plates location and construction budget. The cheapest plates are simple plates of steel, sapphire, or diamond. Better plates are laminates of armored steel and ceramics. The best and strongest plates are multilayer laminates of sapphire, nano-ceramic, and fullerene.

The volume in between the plate layers is usually filled with more expanding foam though this one is optimized against the plasma generated from shape charges and hyper-velocity impacts. The multiple layers of expanding foam gives the armor a high effective multiplier against beam type weapons.

The main hulls of warships are pretty tough in themselves being multiple monolithic tubes of refractory steel wrapped in fullerene. Then there is the standard anti radiation protections of just piling everything not absolutely vital to the functioning of the ship around the main habitable area. Basically a thick shell of fuel tanks, water tanks, cargo holds, and even secondary ship systems that provides all that more material for a weapon to blast through.

The large armored radiators on the warships are sapphire making them pretty much invulnerable to most forms of laser fire for the radiators are transparent to the beams and the constantly flowing radiator fluid cares not for being temporarily vaporized by the beams. The tough sapphire laminate is resistant to impact as well and well warships have enough extra radiator fluid in reserve that leaking the super hot fluid into space simply serves to better cool the ship.

Toaster – A marvel of modern engineering the standard CCSS toaster is the pinnacle of technology guaranteed to make perfect toast every time*. The laser safe glass box allows you to see the state of your bread, while the synthetic sapphire induction heating plates and invisible infrared lasers evenly brown both sides. Optical and thermal sensors detects the temperature and toasted state of the bread ensure the bread does not blacken into charcoal or burst into flames.

Floating side trays allow you to easily add and remove bread without fear of sticking or tearing while perfectly accommodating even the thickest** pieces of sliced toast. Toast one or toast two, without fear with the automatic toast detection allowing the activation of only the side you loaded. Manual override buttons allows for toasting even when the automatic toast detection fails. Features include one sided toasting for those that only want to toast one side, select a bread to insure proper sensor calibration, and electric disco night light mode.

* guarantee does not apply to home sliced breads, bagels, English muffins, toaster pastries, steaks, optical storage medias, or planks of wood.
** Maximum tray extension is 3cm, objects exceeding that do not remotely qualify as sliced.

Optional Upgrades include:
- Social Media Integration: Link your toaster to your social media to get trending and top messages printed right onto the toast by the lasers.
- Random Inspirational Quotes: Enlighten your day with these inspirational quotes pick from hundreds of themes or make your own lists.
- Never Forget: This feature prints your daily to-do list onto your toast. Great for busy people. No to-do list? That's fine too any list would do from the daily top tens to that super secret assassination hit list you been keeping.
- Just the Centers: This upgrade super powers the lasers to blast away the nasty crust leaving just the toasty soft insides.
- Butter Me Up: Special sprayers included with this upgrade coats top side of the bread with a uniform layer of our patented great taste no mess butter spray to give your bread that delicious golden brown crisp.
- Grill Plates: Replace those standard sapphire heating plates with grill plates for those perfect grilled sandwiches and steaks.
- Let-Go Defense: Arm up your toaster with twin turreted stunners to keep unauthorized users from accessing the toaster. No more ninjas will steal your waffles with this ultimate upgrade.
- Little Slugger: With this heavy weight toaster upgrade you’ll only need to load the toaster once. The rotating base, powered side doors, and toast ejection system will deliver the bread anywhere within 20 meters of the toaster. Add the optional magazine feed and the Little Slugger Toaster can automatically toast and deliver 24 slices of toast to the table.
- Full Meal Deal: This extra large toaster has extra slots for fried eggs, steaks, bacon, vegetable slices, mushrooms etc. Toss in up to six different items and this toaster will cook it all.
- Break-o-matic: A full kitchen in a box, load this baby up with ingredients and the auto-chef will get to work creating a meal from any of the millions of preprogramed recipes. Patented modules include the Juice-Grind-n-Brew, Select-a-Con, and Atomic Laser Oven.
- Build-a-Toaster: In a joint venture with Build-A-Warbot we proudly announce you can now take your toaster anywhere with one of our warbot toaster frames. (Star Toasters and Build-A-Warbot are not responsible for any food related injuries, or robot rampages. Use your toaster and warbot responsibly.)

CCSS Civilian and Infantry Weapons

The electromagnetic weapons of the CCSS scale much like conventional chemical powered guns with longer barrels having more velocity and larger bores more punch. So long arms have more power than pistols. Railguns fire small cheap inert metal darts at high velocities. They have huge magazine capacities and automatic versions can achieve very high rates of fire. Gauss guns fire large caliber spheres or bombshells that can be solid, filled with explosives, or packed with electronics. They large magazines typically two to three times the capacity of a similar sized cartridge gun.

Rail Pistols are some of the cheapest sidearms available and can range from high capacity needlers to heavy hand cannons. A typical 3mm needle rail has between 40 and 50 darts in a magazine. A 13mm heavy hand cannon only has a magazine of 5 slugs. No matter what they fire, they are cheap and reliable guns with limited variety of rounds.

Gauss Pistols are on the other end of the scale with heavy large bore barrels. Even the cheapest lower power single coil gauss pistol costs as much as the average rail pistol. They are generally 10mm or 15mm though some have been made to fire the larger 20mm scatter gun rounds. The capacity of a normal magazine falls between 7 and 12 rounds. What makes these expensive pistols competitive against a rail pistol is there ability to fire more than solid metal even at the highest power settings, like stun rounds and high explosives.

Gauss Revolver exchange even more of the magazine capacity for the ability to easily switch between any of the 6 chambers to choose the exact 10mm round you want.

ETC Pistol / Revolver are a rather rare but powerful weapons in the CCSS packing the power of a rail pistol and the ammunition variety of a gauss pistol in a cartridge firing weapon. Being a cartridge gun they have an even lower capacity than a gauss pistol, between 5 and 10 rounds depending on caliber. ETC cartridges use an electric discharge to convert the fuel into plasma. The fuel is a rather substandard but cheaply available slurry of water and aluminum. A minor advantage is they use half as much electrical power as a rail or gauss pistol as much of the power comes from the rocket like expansion of the propellant charge. The major draw back is the high stresses and wear on the rifled barrel and firing system from both the high velocity projectile on the grooves and insane chamber and barrel pressures generated by the plasma charge that results rather frequent need for maintenance compared to pure EM guns. They can be dialed in power much like the other types of EM weapons.

Rail SMGs are beefed up fully automatic pistols with extended 120 round magazines designed to fire pistol size darts. Used in short bursts the SMG is extremely dangerous.

Gauss SMG are compact rapid fire gauss guns with larger 60 round magazines.

Rail Rifle are long barrel versions of the pistol. They have much higher muzzle velocities and proportionally higher energy cost. They fire a longer and heavier dart for increase stability and accuracy at longer ranges. Standard magazine hold between 120 and 200 darts. Sniper variants feature short magazines housing around 40 darts for prone firing using a bipod.

ETC Rifle functions much like the ETC pistol. The rifle size cartridges are stored in magazines of 10 to 30 rounds. Certain designs increases the guns magazine capacity to 50 or even 100 rounds.

Scatter Guns are the CCSS version of a shotgun and typically have 20 rounds of 20mm gauss ammunition in the tube. Modified magazines can allow for as many as 75 rounds.

Grenade Launcher are large bore gauss weapons in 30mm. They can be light weight single shot tubes or heavy magazine fed multishot projectors. A typical grenade cassette holds 6 rounds. Some launchers use a double stack cassette for 12 rounds; or a 10 round box.

Assault Rail are CCSS assault rifles. They sometimes mount a scatter gun above or below the automatic rail rifle. The under barrel scatter gun usually sports an 8 round magazine while larger over barrel configuration can load a full 20 box. The heaviest configuration mounts an underbarrel grenade launcher and over barrel bullpup scatter gun.

Automatic Railgun are a heavy railgun optimized for sustain firing. They can be a single barrel heavy rail rifles or multi barrel gattling rails. In either configuration they are design to come with huge magazines of 500 darts for long sustain fire.

Automatic Gauss are single or double barrel scatter guns designed for rapid continuous fire. The double barrel design fires twice as fast as well as having double the ammunition. The high capacity magazines are not typically available do to weight and size concerns for the double barrel automatic gauss guns.

Automatic Grenade Launcher come equipped with large magazines for more than short bursts of grenade fire. One such model is a bullpup launcher with a large helical 25 round magazine mounted on top. A more traditionally configured launcher uses feed system to draw grenades from a 50 round 100 round box magazines.

Plasma Rail Rifle operate like infantry sized PACs. The missile launcher sized weapon fires out a near light speed toriod or plasma that explodes on impact to deal the triple punch of thermal, kinetic, and radiation damage. While not great against heavy armor the localized EMP effect can fry electronics on the other size of the armor. Its slow rate of fire, specialized ammunition, and high energy cost per shot makes the plasma rail rifle of limited use. Commonly used when you want to take out a mecha without killing its crew. The radiation damage if left untreated though would likely kill the crew, but its a slow enough death that plenty of questions can be asked first.

Ship construction in the CCSS

All ships in the CCSS have three main sections, the drive pod, the habitat ring, and the cargo-keel. Each are independent modules and can, if the design module design allows, be arrange in any order. Drive pods and habitat rings are pretty much massed produced and fitted out in standard sizes. The cargo-keel sections are usually custom built for the class of ship.

Habitat modules are pretty much standardized to a 450 meter diameter ring for large ships. The exact construction method varies between manufacturers. The civilian designs run the gambit from the volume inefficient but easily pressurized and strong torus made from bent tubing; to space efficient but structurally weaker cans made from hull metal tubes with end-caps laser welded on. Smaller ships may not even have a full ring habitat module, instead featuring one or more pressurized towers for the crew and hydroponics and the rest of the ring being storage or fuel bunkers. The hub of the habit ring serves as a mounting point for the keel and drive pod, as well as typically low gravity storage for shuttles and other smaller ships.

The CCSS military branches uses standardized ring design of 450 meter diameter and 125 meter width made from a heavy monolithic C channels of hull metal. The design makes for an extremely strong space efficient deign easily loaded with standardized crew modules. The main difficulty with the use of the channel design is the difficult in bending 707 meter sections into half circle without buckling the sidewalls. The military habitat rings are design to stay together and functional even after sustaining massive amounts of battle damage.

Outside the generalize rule of parks on the inner most level and hydroponics and storage out the other most decks, there is no standard way of dividing up the interior of the ring. There are metrics and percentages that designers use though insure enough of the volume is dedicated for every task.

Drive pods are all in one units containing the a reactor, fusion torch drive, and cooling systems that can serve as a basic ship on its own. They are generally fitted out with fuel bunkers, reaction wheels, gyros, and reaction control systems to provide minimum levels of control, full control is provided by similar fittings in the keel section of the ship.

The keel is the most mission specific part of the ship as its design and length can vary wildly with nature of the ship. On civilian ships everything is attached to the keel from bulk tanks and cargo to manufacturing plants and refineries. The inside of the keel is typically control runs, service ways, and the bulk of the ships fuel.

CCSS warships mount an thick hull metal cone that to the reinforced and enlarged keel with a rigid web of bracing. The outside inside and between spaces of the shell and keel are used as mounting points for the various weapon systems and support systems of a warship. The heavy outer shell and bracing of a CCSS warship means that nothing short extreme damage would break a ship in half as both the shell and keel are independently able to keep the warship together.

After all the major sections are mated together the ship needs to be fully fitted out and given a shake down to ensure all systems are working to spec.

Types of Ships

Pods are small one to two person utility craft designed for travel around a station or stationary ship. They are little more than a life-support pod with RCS attached. Construction pods may mount heavier thrusters for faster acceleration and breaking when carrying massive loads.

Tugs are quite tough for there size and massively over engined. They are design to latch onto a ships or other objects, and push them in a controlled manner.

Lighters are brick like barges designed to ferry cargo and passengers between a ship and station, and uncommonly between ships. They are best described as a large box with small engines stuck to the side. Designed for maximum efficiency they travel slowly across the short distance between ships and stations.

Shuttles are the workhorse small craft of the CCSS for the plane like design works decently well vacuum and atmosphere. The long hull is strong and provides for easy seating of passengers and storage of cargo. The large wings and fins provides space for fuel, radiators, and for military shuttles weapons.

Dropships and Droppods are optimized for getting down a gravity well fast with little care for passenger comfort. They are typically over engined to provide a fast suicide burn low to the surface. Some designs use some form of lithobraking to get on the ground even faster. Drop pods usually deliver individual starmarines or army fire teams. They are designed to be drop in massed with lots of decoys for cover for their small size is their only defense against enemy fire. They are typically single use though they may be recovered and shuttled back up to be refurbished for another drop. Drop ships on the other hand are shuttle size craft with enough armor and shields to generally tank enemy fire all the way down. They transport down entire squads or platoons of armored starmarines, and even heavy tanks. Drop ships typically have enough power that once repaired they can return to orbit under their own power. They in fact generally have enough power to enter interplanetary space though the on board life support typically does not have the endurance for long voyages through space.

Runabouts are the smallest true torch ships made by the CCSS at barely a 100m in length. They are little more than a habitat ring with a fusion reactor and torch drive packed into the hub, and fuel and storage filling the gap. A shuttle bay is typically mounted to the nose of the runabout. They look a lot like a classic saucer type UFO.

Cutters are fast torch ships with high engine to mass ratios design to get passengers and cargo between planets quickly. Burn times are so long that they typically do no empty a centrifuge for artificial gravity on the voyage. Down is simply the direction of the engines. The older cutters have the armor, cargo, and fuel in front for armor against high speed impacts, crew tower in the middle, and engines in the rear. Newer designs mount the armor and engines in front to pull the cargo and tail mounted crew modules. The newer design makes it so that the center of mass is less affected by cargo and fuel. A cutter never looses gravity even during the turn over as centrifugal gravity is generated in the crew tower during the flip. Spinning the ship end over end allows the crew to maintain gravity during idle time.

Yachts are luxury ships that come in all kinds of shapes.

Transports are purpose built ships with large cargo bays for the hauling large numbers of passengers or bulk cargo internally. They are generally of the hab-keel-engine configuration.

Tenders are ships rigged to support a particular operation or another ship.

Liners are luxury passengers ships pack full of crew amenities. They use a keel-hab-engine configuration though some use a keel-hab-keel-engine design.

Freighters are large ships built primarily for containerized cargo. They generally have a detachable crew-engine cabs to push or pull the long keels full cargo.

Bulk Haulers are generally used to carry massive amounts of cargo to and from the mines in asteroid belt. They are scaled up versions of standard freighters. The majority of the bulk haulers are of the pull train configuration.

Tankers are large ships with an inflated keel tanks to carry large volumes of volatiles. Most look like large oranges with the hab and engines forming a thick stem at the rear. Others look like a chain of beads with the engine pod and hab in front. A third popular style looks like a hourglass or dumbell with large tanks on either side of the habitat module, smaller tanks are sometimes wrapped around the 'waist'.

Factory Ships are a highly restricted class of ship inside the CCSS. These mobile robotic factories can take in raw materials and turn them into anything small enough to fit out the other end. The majority of these ships can be found near the shipyards or around mining operations.

Exploration Ships are designed to jump in after successful jump probes to do full system surveys. Their first tasks after the jump is a preliminary survey to map the system and locate the jump probe for recovery or salvage. Exploration Ships are extremely tough, over crewed, and over equipped for their size. They are smaller versions of an successful generation ship design. Part freighter, part factory ship, and part space station, these near warships pack along everything they need for century long survey of an unexplored system in their compact kilometer long frame. They enough supplies to make any major repairs and or modification needed to get through the toughest survey missions, or in the worst case to take apart the ship into the starting seed of a colony. A design feature of the exploration ship generation ship heritage allows them to easily be deconstructed into a station, shipyard, and two mining/freighter runabouts for industrial scale mining, refining, and manufacturing to get a colony started.

Mining Ships are a class of ship that changed many times over the course of history. The earliest versions mounted grapples and scoops to strip mine the surface of the common gravel pile asteroids. The next generation mounted heavy lasers carve chunks out of the asteroids for direct mining. With the first phase of the solar mirror array constructed enough power is available to start melting down entire asteroids for resources, the mining ships transformed into simply a place to house the crews and maintenance facilities for the fleet of shuttles and final focusing mirrors.

Distributed Reflector Array for Mining - DRAM

The DRAM is just a very large array of mirrors designed to bounce around and concentrate the power of the local star for mining, refining, construction, and illumination. The design is based on elements of the both the Dyson Swarm and early space based power concepts. The design removes the inefficiencies of the power satellites by simply doing away with the power conversion and keeping the beam as pure star light till it reaches a power array of a station. Even the need to cool the mirrors is taken advantage of and some of the waste heat off the mirror is used to power the control system before being radiated away. Direct beamed power is still used when low mass is more important than power efficiency.

The majority of the DRAM satellites are basic reflectors in close orbit around the local star, generally as close as they can get without complicated cooling systems. The DRAM-S reflector systems are inside the orbit of Mercury. The early DRAM mirrors were only 100 meters in diameter and roughly of equal in mass to early satellite systems. System improvements have increase the size of the satellite's adaptive optic mirror array to 5km across. The DRAM satellites are smart systems with swarm intelligence able to automatically stay in formation with their neighbors as well as quickly work together to point themselves safely to reflect light to a central collector satellite.

The light from multiple collectors can be concentrated onto a central collector to further concentrate the light into a more powerful beam. Higher grade satellites are able to handle bouncing truly massive amounts of power.

DRAM collector satellites are much smaller with mirrors ranging from 100m to 500m since they are simply bouncing already focused beams of light from reflectors or other collectors.

Final aiming of the beam is done by a collector satellite when aimed at a stations power receiver or dedicated mining satellites. Final aiming is done by local collectors as moving a major cross system beam usually requires high level permissions and advance planning to insure that all ships are aware of the new beam path so that they do not fly through it. Local collectors also minimizes the lag time in making adjustments to the beam and greatly reduces the risk of a ship flying into the path of a moving beam.

The DRAM provides the primary power for many of the stations in the CCSS. The beam or beams from the DRAM are concentrated through a Fresnel lens or reflector array into a combined photovoltaic and thermal collector assembly. Typically the focused power is targeted onto a thermal collector to power a heat engine or generate steam for to run turbines. Combined photovoltaic and thermal electric arrays collect light reflecting off the central thermal collector, and are angled to reflect the remaining light into station's central light pipe the station to illuminate the earth like interior.

The industrial stations use the DRAM to directly heat their furnaces and smelters and any other machine that requires large amounts of heat. Outside of shipbuilding and mining the DRAM is rarely used to cut or weld as there is too much power in the received beam for smaller scale application. In shipyards the massive amounts of power allows for large sections of the ships parts to be crafted as one ginormous part and for the parts to be fused together seamlessly without the weakness of traditional welds.

Certain classes are mining ships are design carefully aim and focus the power of the DRAM beam to slice up asteroids into easily processed pieces and melt them down for quick refining. Being a mining ship they are heavily armored against impact and laser damage.

The DRAM even powers the automated factories that produces the DRAM satellites. The majority of a DRAM satellite uses low cost 'waste' materials from the mining process, and even the more expensive control computers can be mass produced. The mirrors are thin wafers slice from the purified quartz glass made as byproduct of melting down entire asteroids, and back with a thin layer of metal to make it reflective. The truss work holding the mirrors together and control pack make up a very small fraction of the over all mass. The CCSS continues to increase the power of the DRAM with the long term end goal of being able to harness the entire output of the star. The heavy duty collectors able to handle the insane beam intensities needed to explode asteroids do cost a lot compared to the simple reflectors but make up a only a small fraction of the DRAM satellites.

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Gliese 876 Expeditionary Mining and Colonization Fleet

With the Sol system well settled and colonized it was time to start making use of the data from the many exploration ships surveying the stars. Gliese 876, a red dwarf 15 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, was one of the first systems picked for an CCSS extra solar colony. The compact red dwarf system is rich in gas giants to provide plenty of fuel to power future colony expansion.

The Gliese 876 Expeditionary Fleet was limited to ships small enough to fit through the Sol FTL Gate. The first ships through are the seeder ship 'Cosmic Lorry' and exploration ship 'Melissa's Outburst' carrying the first wave of colonists, the FTL core for the Gliese 878 gate, and the materials needed to construct the gate. Once in the system they deploy the survey team and begin construction of the FTL gateway to stabilize the way in and out.

While the construction team is busy with the gate the exploration group does a detailed survey to confirm the data from the initial exploration and fully map out the system. The survey group also drops off the mining ships 'Dungeoneer's Vision' and 'Planar Jackpot' and to set up on a rocky moon in the ice ring of the third gas giant of the system.

The mining camp's first priority is to gather resources to expand themselves into a full size base then begin collecting the materials needed for the construction of an industrial station to construct addition equipment and ships.

The mining team on the moon simply tunneled into the rock with a fusion bore to quickly create large vaults with thick walls of smooth vitrified stone where they can inflate prefabbed habitation modules. The fused tunnel walls also make for a decent secondary air seal around the soft walled pressurized modules. These vaults serve as a temporary ground base for the mining operation till a suitable area can be dug out for the construction of a gravity bowl. Once the gravity bowl is constructed the teams are housed in the earth gravity areas and the vaults are turned into storage and hydroponic farms.

The mining team in the ice ring simply does not have that luxury for short term housing, instead they must rely on the resources of their ship. The design of the 'Planar Jackpot' gives the crew other options. The mining ship has a larger habit ring as many of the mining modules of the ship are designed to fold up or collapse down into a very small volume when not in use. They crew simply has to unpack, unfold, inflate, and sometimes assemble their equipment from its flat packed storage configuration. Once unpacked and assembled the ship turned station easily provides for all the needs of the crew and ice mining operation.

Once mining is well under way they start producing and launching the first wave of DRAM-G satellites into orbit around the red dwarf star. The low brightness, about an eightieth of the luminosity of Sol, of the star means the colony will be needing a larger number of the satellites to achieve the same power levels, and the long term plans requires dumping a large amount of energy into the system's largest gas giant. The sooner they get enough satellites around the star the sooner they can get workable amounts of power.

On the other hand, the DRAM-G does not need to pipe the power very far. The majority of the system was within a third of an AU of the star. Travel times around the system wasn't that long. The full survey would be finished well before the gate.

The survey ship 'Weak Radiation' is better equipped to scan the planet closest to the star and to investigate the high concentrations of aether in the planets dense oxygen rich atmosphere. The rocky planet is 7 times the mass of the earth and baking at an average temp of 650F, a type of planet that the majority of the CCSS would totally ignore, and all but the best funded scientific groups would find to expensive to explore. The customized power armor needed to work on a combined high temp and high gravity world is not something you get off the store shelf. The only way to cool the suits in these high temps would be to carry cyrogenetic coolant and likely heat sinks. Radiator panels would not work when the outside temperature is hotter than than the inside of the suit. There is no good way to vent the heat outside so all you can do on this planet is to keep the outside heat away and bottle up the internal heat into some out of the way part of the suit. Which puts severe limits on how long a suit or anything can stay down on the surface before the operator is cooked well done by the heat.

Orbital surveys and probes have revealed that the surface is plated over by a material resistant to deep scanning techniques. Resonance, seismic and sonar mapping has reveal that cladding is multiple many kilometers deep in places and highly resistant to even mass driver fire. It is unlikely that even main battery fire could greatly damage the glassy black purple surface.

The source of the surface coating has been tracked down to the biomechanical slug like creatures that randomly track around the surface. The nature and purpose of these creatures are unknown but thanks to Dr. Xaviera Goweska accident we are now quite aware of the properties of the material. All standard methods of extracting the scientist from her suit as failed. Getting the her out of the suit without killing her is currently impossible. Thankfully the research team has plenty of time, the life support of the suit was design to last 30 days, and can easy be stretched to half a year under reduced rations and power.

Two months into the research into the material, in a questionable act of sanity, Dr. Tabatha Heath fired a military rifle on the helmet in a more extreme experiment. Several research assistance were wounded from the projectile spalling. After the scientist was escorted to the brig. Dr. Irvin Buck examined the suit for damage. The cladding did show signs of cracking. Testing showed that even with the cracking the material was still resistant to all standard tools. One small patch though was flaked off to reveal bare suit material underneath. Careful drilling into the suit allowed for a liquid nutrient and air tube to be ran into the suit, lifting the need to stretch the suit's life support. The same hole also allow the insertion of a antenna allowing for high bandwidth communications.

Dr. Irvin Buck is currently leading the research into lower energy means of damaging the material. Particle beams do seem to have an effect on the material and he has put in a request for particle knife to be either constructed or imported.
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Once the Gliese 876 gate is activated. The main fleet will transition through the gate over a period of weeks. It is a large fleet for they will need a large volume supplies and people to quickly get the operation running. Many of the ships are specialized transports for the new colony:

- New and refurbished mining ships able to directly munch on asteroids and other small bodies set up shop around the system to harvest resources till enough DRAM-G satellites are assembled to take over the process of melting down asteroids.
- Industrial ships able to unfold large solar collectors to concentrate solar power into their smelting and refining processes. The first wave of DRAM-G satellites are tasked with bouncing enough light from the star onto the stations' collectors to bring them up to full capacity without the need to park them in close solar orbit around the star or divert fusion power to smelting or refining operations.
- Colony ships able to comfortably house the system's population till larger permanent stations can be assembled. The ships can be reassembled into small O'Neill cylinders as improvised stations. A large reflector array will channel light into the core of the habitats to reduce to reliance on artificial lighting. The drive packs and some of the cargo modules can be then reassembled into transport ships. Other cargo modules will be unfolded into large solar power stations.

There are also a large number of common freighters, tankers, and transports to move the large amounts of supplies needed to rapidly expand into the system.

A CSN cruiser 'Strategy Dancer' is the flagship of the military detachment providing security for the colony fleet. The remaining might of the security detachment consists 4 destroyers and 8 frigates. The cruiser's repair capacity being a suitable backup to the full capacity shipyard in one of the military transports. The shipyard once assembled and operational will provide both service and repair facilities for existing ships but also be able do the final fittings for the new ships to be build in system in support of the mining and colonization efforts.
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Once of the first tasks of the expanded colony is to build a station. The first station will be in a medium orbit around gas giant well position to serve as the industrial hub for the gas mining of the planet. Designed and constructed in parallel with the station will be planet divers. The whale like ships will be optimized for the local conditions of the gas giant. Minimum redesign of the remoras will be needed and the first of the support ships will be out of dry dock well before the first of the planet divers.

The station while primarily industrial will be loads better than the converted colony ships. The large station habitation area will be able to allow for independent houses and yards instead of private quarters and a shared parks. Not all will jump ship but many will greatly increasing the comfort of even those that stay on board the older stations.

With the station up and gas mining of the planet underway, the colony can simply focus on getting themselves settled in generally increasing industrial capacity to the point they can start producing luxury goods to improve the quality of life for the colonists.

Constellation Guard

The Constellation Guard has two missions: to safeguard the CCSS’s financial and critical infrastructure, and to protect the CCSS’s leaders. To achieve these different missions they are divided into special divisions. The Investigations Division is law enforcement branch and responsible for the safeguarding of the CCSS. The Executive Protection Service takes the role of bodyguards for the nation’s leadership.

Investigations Division

The Investigations Division is responsible for investigating and preventing financial crimes, such as counterfeiting currency and major monetary fraud. They are also responsible dealing immigration issues such as passport and visa fraud. They are not responsible for securing the boarder against people trying to sneak in without identification.

The division has three main units: intelligence, treasury, and border security. They operate as a highly specialized police force. Their uniform is a low profile charcoal gray business attire tailored to be worn over the armored SAS suit, holstered pistol, utility belt, and long range communicator. High visibility armbands can be worn when they need to make there present well know. This equipment is mostly for self protection as they often request the assistance of the station's police force in taking the suspect into custody. The agent is on site mostly to provide the specialist knowledge to secure the evidence and escort the suspect to the guard's own offices if warranted.

The intelligence unit has its hands in all the pies operating in the fields of counter terrorism, counter intelligence, cybersecurity, organized crime, and even military intelligence. They are the largest unit in investigations. They operate a few small specialized transports for investigations and fast ships for transportation, but mostly operates shuttles and inner station vehicles. The majority of the unit's work can be done from within the constellation guard's local offices.

The treasury unit specializes in financial security and investigations. They were initially just a task force within the intelligence unit but grew in man power and scope as the size and complexity of financial crimes increased. Even after the reorganization into there own independent unit they often work closely with intelligence in the field. Outside of a small collection of station side vehicles the treasury unit piggybacks off the intelligence units larger vehicle pool.

The border security unit is the group responsible for insuring that the passports and visas issued by the CCSS do in fact go to the right person. They are a small but elite unit for the passport and border fraud is a rare but extra ordinarily complex event do to the extreme means needed to hack, bypass, or spoof all the biometric checks. They tend to work closely with the station guard as well as the immigrations office.

Executive Protection Service

The Executive Protection Service is tasked with the most important responsibility in the CCSS, to protect the nation's leadership. They ensure the security of the government by guarding the president and other key government officials. They also assist in the protection of other VIPs including current and former national leaders and their families while inside the borders. In order effectively act on these duties the Constellation Guard's jurisdiction expands well past the borders of the CCSS. In addition to the task of bodyguarding important heads of state, they sometimes provide security for diplomatic missions, and assist in guarding the CCSS embassies.

Their uniform is black formal business attire, slim long range communicator with a nearly invisible low profile ear piece, smart shades with optical sensors and HUD, and an armored SAS bodysuit with built in powered exoskeleton. As bodyguards their primary armament is a low profile high capacity 5mm rail pistol. Secondary armament includes a both a regular knife as well as a hard light utility knife to allow the agent to cut his way out should he or his charge become trapped.

For high profile protectee's the agents can be issued a brief case that stores a heavy 20mm gauss pistol and unfolds into an armored riot shield and enough power to run the built in hard light shield generator for a five minutes. Selected agents may carry briefcases that can unfold into full size 5mm rail rifles or 20mm gauss shotguns. The protectee may be issued and trained to used a briefcase able to unfold into a portable heavy armored shield.

Those agents serving as an outer perimeter and outside the public eye are issued the more powerful standard military rail and gauss weapons. The standard military long arms are part of the weapons stored inside the EPS vehicles. All agents have basic training to use the heavier weapons stored inside the trucks and limousines.

The EPS operates a large motor pool of unmarked vehicles, including armored and armed transports. The majority of the vehicles are unarmored and unarmed as the threat to most VIP is low and it is simply a matter getting from point A to point B. Armor vehicles are typically reserved for high profile VIPs or cases of civil unrest. The small inventory of armored trucks with concealed mounted weapons are typically used outside the borders of the CCSS where the security situation is less stable. Outside the stations the EPS only use unmarked military shuttles modified for executive comfort, civilian shuttles simply do not have the durability to force aside wreckage inside a hanger in an emergency or the require levels of impact protection. They also operate a few runabouts and transport ships for longer trips between stations.

ConStar One

ConStar One is the call sign for any Navy, Star Marine, or even Army space ship carrying the president. It is most commonly used when the president boards one of the command ships at his disposal.

Working with the CSN the Constellation Guard jointly manages the two heavily modified cruisers that service as mobile command centers for transporting the president and vice president as well as fleet of smaller warships to provide escort and/or transport for less important protectees. The Constellation Guard, CSN, and CSM share duties for crewing and operating the various shuttle crafts. The Star Marines operate the Presidential Shuttles. Station and ground transport is managed primarily by the Constellation Guard though the Star Marines manages a few heavier armored transports for presidential use as well.

ConStar One, or executive space born command center when the president is not one board is the space born equivalent of Air Force One. To protect the leader ship of the nation is the about the only similarity between the kilometers long space cruiser and a small pre-CCSS passenger airliner. ConStar One is the official call sign for any star ship carrying the president.

The two purpose built ConStar class command ships are officially known as SSM-004 and SSM-005 are larger than a cruiser and outfitted to serve as both a flying palace with quarters on par with that of a luxury cruise liner, and a mobile governmental command center with the staff and communications needed to keep tabs with the rest of the CCSS. They ship are designed to serve as mobile backup capitals should the capital station ever come under threat, but typically serves as a presidential yacht for visiting other stations. They are the largest ships to be painted in the full gilded gold and white of the capital. The primary security for ConStar One is typically provided by the pair of escorting destroyers during longer trips away from the capital station.

The ship has the same drive and habit sections of a battleship, including the FTL drive. The standard 'cross guard' armor belt of a battleship's habit section is reinforced by additional crenelations extending forward and aft to better protect the habitat section. The extra armor also provides more room for additional active defenses. The massively overpowered battleship drive on a ship weighing less than a heavy cruiser gives the ConStar class ships an acceleration equal to or better than a destroyer. Half roughly destroyer size nose section is filled by the oversize hanger bay for the presidential shuttle as well as the scores of other shuttle craft needed to transport minor dignitaries and provide security anywhere the president goes. The ship officially does not carry any offensive weapons with the standard OPAL arrays being the heaviest defensive weapon it carries, the space in the 'nose cone' that would normally be devoted to heavy weapons is instead dedicated to electronic counter measures, and the largest array of hard light shield generators ever mounted on a ship. The heavily armored outer hull bristles with anti missile and anti fighter defenses. The two ships of the class are equipped by nine frigate size Herald class defensive vectors and a dozen smaller Coronet class shield vectors.

Many other call signs are uses to denote the vehicle the president is riding. NavStar One is the call sign for any navy shuttle carrying president. MarineStar One is the call sign for any star marine shuttle carrying president. GuardStar One for any station guard shuttle or ship. ExecutiveStar one for any civilian ship or shuttle the president is using. ArmyStar One is the call sign if for some reason the president has need to ride on one of the armies shuttles.

MarineStar One

The Star Marines maintains a fleet of a dozen heavily modified assault shuttles, six for each of the ConStar class command ships. The shuttles internal weapon systems have been stripped out make room for a state of the art electronic warfare and countermeasures suite, as well as a communication array able to connect with practically any ship, station, or ground side array. The exterior self defense systems is heavy upgraded to provide as much defense as possible for the shuttle. The interior troop bay has been remodeled to carry the president, his guests, and his security in luxury comfort and safety. The exective area and cargo bay is heavily armored and reinforced to survive damage that would cripple the rest shuttle. The area has its own secure life support and backup communication system as well. Each shuttle also carries a large stash of emergency supplies and equipment.