COBRA starship Squamate By Imperator-Zor Watch

20 Favourites 0 Comments 1K Views

After it's long journey concluded in 2030, the passengers of the Coatl made their way to the surface of the moon of Cobra Prime. Once they arrived on their home system, the interstellar refugees focused their efforts planet-side for the next half century. Their first priority was survival, their second was the establishment of a power base. They set up farms, built factories, raised families, used exowomb technology to expand their population rapidly, gave these future generations an vision and fought to conquer the bronze age native Sauroids. Cobra Commander's (latter known as the First Commander) plan would take lifetimes to be realized. Manned spaceflight was only reestablished in 2078 and that was limited until 2082. After that point, the Coatl was extensively rebuilt. Much of it was broken up and either salvaged or recycled. The Habitat Module was extensively renovated to serve as crew quarters and onto it was built ore processors, machine shops, fabricators, storehouses and assembly berths. First it assembled low range mining ships collecting material from Cobra-II's ring system, but it's first warp capable ship was completed in 2086: the Cobra Space Navy ship Squamate (Experimental Test Vehicle 01).



Several systems from the Squamate were directly salvaged from the Coatl, most notably it made use of four of it's Warp Nacelles. Three were used in it's construction while the forth was kept as a spare. This fact contributed to the trilateral hull profile common on COBRA warships. The Squamate was 108 meters long and originally weighed 7,500 tonnes and had a crew of 30 while being powered by a fusion reactor. It could carry some cargo internally, as well as either a shuttle or an external cargo pod. It's maximum speed was 6 C. It had multiple redundancies to many systems. It's shakedown cruise was successful, even if it did have a few problems. Initially the Squamate was unarmed.



The Squamate's name was symbolic of it's purpose. Squamata is the taxonomic order of reptiles which includes lizards and snakes, as well as encompassing the ancestors of both modern groups. It is the latter that the Squamate drew it's name from, for like those ancestral reptiles the Squamate was to be the progenitor for COBRA's space navy. It was built to serve as a training craft for crews, test out new designs and to perform various interplanetary tasks. Even so after the creation of a long range Subspace Scanner array everything changed. Up until this point COBRA's leadership had operated on the assumption that their were no other space fairing races anywhere close to earth. It came as quite a shock when a warp field was detected within 3 light-years of Cobra Prime. Fearing the possibility of attack, COBRA began a crash space armament program. Among the manifestations of this was the arming of the Squamate. MARS provided a set of four Laser Cannons and sixteen Torpedo Launch cells, a fact which also increased the ship's mass to 8,200 tonnes, the crew complement to 36 and ate up a fair bit of internal space due to the addition of capacitors and a reworked power system. These changes were distinctly unpopular with the crew. Regardless the upgrade would prove to be essential in dealing with the coming challenges.

IMAGE DETAILS Image size 1514x667px 247.93 KB Show More