Edward Preble Type: Corvette In Class: 2 at its height In Service: early 28th century Mass: 220,000 Sail Integrity: 3 Thrust: 5/8 Fuel: 3000 tons Structural Integrity: 40 Armor: 176 tons of standard armor (106, 21+4 fwd, 9+4 aft, 19+4 all others) Docking Collars: 0 Fighters: 0 Small Craft: 6 Crew: 120 Lifeboats: 20 Escape Pods: 0 Grav Decks: 1 40 meter Cargo: 12,000 Bay 1: Small Craft (3) 1 door Bay 2: Cargo (12,000) 1 door Bay 3: Small Craft (3) 1 door Weapons: Foreward 1 Heavy Naval PPC 4 Large Lasers Port Quarter / Starbord Quarter 10 Naval Laser 35s 4 Large Lasers Designer's notes: Underweight by about twenty thousand tons, but then it has a jury rigged jumpdrive. I admit that I am not as up on Taurian history as I would like. I appologize for any grotesque errors I might have made in the fluff. Overview: The Edward Preble and her sister ships were originally concieved by members of the Taurian resistance during the years of the Star League. With the Taurian military largely disarmed after the reunification war and the Taurian fleet virtually anihilated, the Concordat would face a serious challenge if it were to ever make a bid for independence. While elements of the Concordat government quietly rebuilt what they could of the TDF, it was realized that there was no hope of building new warships to challenge the Star League Navy in open combat, especially with so much of the Concordat's industry in ruins. Instead, planners for the Concordats eventual bid for freedom decided to concentrate largely on a ground based campaign. A group of Taurian industrialists headquartered on the capital refused to accept this. They believed that an active force of warships, even small ones, could cause significant damage against enemy commerce and at the same time serve as a real morale boost. These industrialists, later known as the Tripoli group, set out to build such a force. Over the course of ten years they assembled a pair of small assembly facilities in uninhabited systems about three jumps from the Hyades cluster. They also quietly recruited a number of eager young naval engineers fresh out of universities in the Federated Suns (for the time being putting aside national prejudices) and Free Worlds League. With their staff and facilities in hand, all they needed to do was build warships from virtually nothing. The biggest problem was the jump drive. The Concordat had lost all of its shipbuilding capability during the reunification war, and as a consequence there was no source for compact jump drives. Engineers instead devised plans to modify the standard jump core used on the Merchant class jumpship. Acting under the cover of pirate bands, mercenaries in the employ of the Tripoli Group siezed half a dozen jumpships over the course of a year, briefly provoking the SLDF to send a squadron of warships into the Pirates Haven star cluster to eradicate a number of pirate bands. With the jump drives in hand, the Tripoli group began gathering the rest of the components they needed. Through numerous shell companies, materials slowly filtered to the assembly plants. Though it is not known exactly how long construction took, the first two ships, the Edward Preble and David Porter, were fully operational several decades before the Periphery uprising. Capabilities: The Tripoli group had to accomplish its work without proper shipbuilding facilities or factories, and as a result the Edward Preble and her sisters have a real "hand made" feel about them, from the scavenged and patchwork aligned crystal steel armor to the juryrigged jump drive. Despite that, these craft performed extremely well during their careers, a testament to the design work of the Tripoli group's engineers. The ships were designed to outrun anything they couldn't defeat in a stand up fight, however much like the jump drive there was no source for a standard interplanetary drive for the Prebels, so the engineers had to improvise. Propulsion is provided by twenty large dropship engines aquired from sources across the inner sphere. Though this gave the ships extremely good acceleration capability there are a number of drawbacks. In the first case there simply isn't any room to mount weaponry directly aft, and rear armor protection has likewise been compromised. The shear number of engines also seriously complicated control and fuel distribution, not to mention putting a serious load on the fusion reactors. Despite these problems, the propulsion system performed well enough to allow these ships to outrun even the fastest destroyers in the SLDF during the uprising. The primary weapon for these ships is a single heavy naval PPC. These weapons were salvaged from the battlefields of the Reunification war by resistance members and were originally intended to be used for planetary defense. The Tripoli group aquired them in exchange for two lances of new battlemechs and sent them out to the assembly yards. This single gun gives the ships a fair long range punch against jumpships and dropships, but it isn't enough to do more than harrass any warship bigger than a corvette. Secondary armament is provided by a pair of naval laser clusters, one on each aft quarter. These weapons were more or less hand built at the assembly yards using civilian goods, and as a consequence never performed as well or as reliably as normal military grade weapons. This means that they were usually used sparingly as adjuncts to the PPC. Standard tactics for the ship was to engage hostile vessels at maximum range with the PPC, only closing in to use the lasers when there is an almost certain chance of success. Like most ships of its era, the Edward Preble and her sisters were not very well protected against fighters. Six large lasers and a handful of aerofighters (operating from the shuttle bays) provided a minimal cover, though this was generally enough for most situations the ship found itself in. Deployment and battle history: Though from a pure military point of view the Edward Preble and David Porter did little to affect the situation, both ships were true nussances for the SLDF. Ultimately the Star League was forced to devote considerable effort to bringing the two ships to heel. The Edward Preble first saw action at the start of the Periphery uprising when she defeated an SLDF Vincent class corvette that was moving in to enforce a blockade of the Hyades cluster. Despite her intended role as a commerce raider, her principle role during the campaign was harrassing Star League occupation forces in Concordat territory. The SLDF forces on scene soon proved so incapable of preventing her raids that they were forced to call in the new light cruiser San Francisco and the attack cruiser Sovremenyy, two of the few warships available that could match the smaller ship's speed, to deal with her. After an audacious raiding campaign that had lasted seven months, the Edward Preble was cornered by the San Francisco over Taurus and forced to surrender. The David Porter on the other hand plunged into the Federated Suns to attack the SLDF's supply lines, over the next year racking up an impressive number of victories. Though the damage being done to the supply network wasn't severe, the effect on morale and public opinion was, and General Kerensky was forced to find a solution. With so few ships available that could run down the nimble raider, and with the Taurian vessel hitting targets from Macintosh to Remagen, Kerensky turned to his small fleet of Balao class attack ships, ships designed with enough stealth gear to hide in the middle of a convoy undetected. The tactic worked. While closing in on what it thought was an unguarded convoy, the David Porter was surprised by the SLS Tang. Hit repeatedly by naval autocannon fire in its vunerable rear, the David Porter was quickly reduced to a wreck. Shortly after the destruction of the David Porter, SLDF forces located both yards where construction of the class had taken place. There they moved in to sieze two more uncompleted ships, the Stephen Decatur and Issac Hull. Though yard workers were able to cripple the Issac Hull beyond repair, the Stephen Decatur was taken nearly intact. SLDF engineers were able to complete the ship and pressed her into service alongside the captured Edward Preble (though the SLDF renamed the ships the Insolent and Stubborn). Both ships served admirably as pickets and raiders with the SLDF fleet after that, actually surviving the uprising and the Amaris Coup and acompanying the SLDF fleet on the exodus. They were mothballed soon after arriving at the pentagon cluster, and since then none of the clans have expressed any interest in them. In many ways the craft were expected to fade into obscurity as little more than a footnote in history describing Taurian tenacity. In late 3066 all that changed, however, when explorers working for a private Taurian company stumbled across the William Baimbridge, the fifth Preble class ship. Though the SLDF had though they had gotten all the ships when they took the assembly yards, the fact was that the Tripoli group had been simply too good at destroying records, and had successfully hidden the existance of the Baimbridge. The ship had been completed barely a week before the SLDF had moved in on the yard and jumped to another uninhabited system with a skeleton crew and barely any fuel before League ships arrived. The crew had just enough fuel to stabilize the ship's orbit, but soon after the KF Drive (which had never adequately been tested) failed. The handful of personel couldn't get the problem fixed with the meager resources they had on hand, and as a result found themselves marooned in the system. Based on what the explorers found when they surveyed the planets in the system, the unwilling settlers had established a colony on the fourth planet that lasted for about fifty years before dying out due to lack of food, fresh water, and low birth rate (there had been very few women in the crew), leaving behind written accounts in the hopes that one day someone would find them. The fate of the William Baimbridge is still in debate. The problem with the KF drive was actually very easy to fix (the original crew simply lacked the needed parts) and the ship is arguably more ready for service than the Vandenburg, but the company that found the ship has refused to turn it over to the Taurian government, claiming it for themselves. This company, which is widely known as opponents to Grover Shraplen's regime, has spent the last five years looking for a place to start a colony for those opposed to Shraplen and his "dangerous foreign adventures". This system and the Baimbridge seem almost heaven sent to them, and they aren't prepared to give either up. Only time will tell what will happen to either.