top of page

Javelin

  • Firepower

  • Agility

  • Speed

  • Defense

  • Utility

  • Ascendancy Javelin Fighter

  • Width/Length/Height: 10x12x10 meters

  • Reactor: Radioisotope reactor 50 Megawatts

  • Propulsion: Thermal particle-stream thruster, Semi-inertialess maneuvering and 3 g's max acceleration. Combat speed 750 m/s

  • Defenses: Light force shield

  • Additional equipment: Grade one dimensional engine, radar and optical sensors

Javelin.jpg

Design

The Javelin is the main proper fighter in Ascendancy forces, being many times more expensive but also more powerful than a Pilum. It carries the smallest type of dimensional engine in use by Ascendancy forces, allowing it excellent agility and giving it resistance to dimensional wave-drag emitters. This fact alone makes it drastically superior to the smaller Pilum, which is highly vulnerable to enemy distortion attacks and is limited by its inability to quickly come to a halt or stop.

The Javelin is equipped with either a proton blaster or mass driver, underslung beneath the main body. The mass driver is slower firing but has a higher velocity and lower dispersion making it more effective at longer ranges, while also inflicting more damage. The proton blaster conversely has a higher fire rate and limited effective range, but the corrosive effects of the free proton gas generated by the weapon means it can effectively chew through armored targets and inflict greater damage to lightly armored craft that the mass driver might overpenetrate.

The Javelin is not as well armored as a cytaari Sentinel, but can almost match their agility and exceeds their speed. Its only protection is a light thermal shield, which provides some protection against fragmentation and light point defenses but ultimately does not stand a chance against a serious assault.

Javelin's are typically of the class of robotic entities known as 'steel-souls', animals- including humans- captured by the Ascendancy and then digitized into a machine-being. Most of the creatures personality is destroyed by this transition, and its will is enslaved to a loyal pawn of the Ascendancy, though some glimmer of animal instinct may occassionally shine through. "Citizens" of the ascendancy, as they are, tend to be larger and more powerful vessels.

The fighters weaved their way through the asteroid field, moving in perfect synchronization as they chased the Cytaari corvette. At the start of the pursuit there had been perhaps two dozens of them, though they had lost half that number by this point. Regardless, they hunted on, dogedly pursuing their quarry.

Dodging between asteroids, the Vengeance sought to make it too dangerous to continue further pursuit, or at least buy time while its slow-firing plasma lances recharged. But it would find no such reprieve, as the Javelins weaved through dense asteroid coverage, thermal shields deflecting small asteroid fragments as their cannons- proton blasters and mass drivers- blasted away at the Vengeance.

The Vengeances energized armor strained to absorb the shots. Mass drivers would fail to penetrate armor, but the proton pulses ate away at the ships structure, eventually outpacing its regeneration.

In a last gambit to escape, the Vengeance rode off into open space and fired its engines at full power, diverting power away from weapons and armor. Too little too late, as the Javelins unleashed a salvo of fire, bolts of energy and molten slugs of metal puncturing the Vengeance's thrusters. The few remaining Javelins dispersed as they returned to their carrier, at the edge of their service range. The Vengeance, drifting helplessly through space, could only wait for the coup de'grace delivered by the Ascendancy Ballista's long-range cannons.
 

bottom of page