When Humanity lost the war against the Saravan, they became slaves of the alien race. It remained that way for several
hundred years; Humans were little more than property (and even food animals on occasion). This went on until another
species, the Turgrans, encountered the Saravan.
The Turgrans knew about the Saravan years before the Saravan knew about them; recognising that conflict was inevitable
given the violent nature of the Saravan, they had time to build up their forces.
The Imperial Warship Askad-Colisels was a Turgran heavy cruiser. The ship was a rough match for Saravan
vessels of the time, and showed many improvements over the designs the Humans had been using when they
were defeated.
Most visibly, the sail system employed a four sail configuration. This gave the Colisels a top speed of 240 x c. The Colisels
sails were armoured, vastly increasing their resistance to damage. The ship's own repair systems were also a great
improvement on previous vessels. Whilst doctrine was still to leave sails in a safe place before combat if possible, the
armoured sails conferred greater flexibility of operation.
Her repellor engine was a four lobed design, which gave a sublight acceleration of 45 gees. The repellor was
protected by an armoured shroud; however, the great heat produced by an operating repellor would damage the
shroud if long periods of high acceleration were used. In fact it is a truism of any repellor drive system that armour
significant enough to give protection will melt if the drive was used at full power.
There was a single rotating pressure hull - gyrocompensators has removed the need for contra-rotating hulls.
Colisels was formidably armed. Four drop missile silos carried 224 heavy offensive missiles; a further fourteen octuple
launchers carried 112 point defence missiles. All missiles were fitted with a repellor drive and singularity warheads.
Completeing the armament were six 60 Gigawatt gamma ray laser cannon. Many of the weapons were mounted
directly onto the pressure hull; firecontrol systems had advanced to the point where targeting weapons from a rotating
hull was not significantly more difficult than previous, more stable weapons.
The Colisels was fitted to carry four subships; small transport craft were the norm, though there were some
experiments with fighter-style craft.
