The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

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The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Fuck Yeah!



USS VALLEY FORGE (SB-1)

”Hey, I sure wouldn't mind getting some more of that Arcturian poontang! Remember that time?”

The Valley Forge is the United States of America’s first ever space battleship and its foremost, a lean and mean state-of-the-art interstellar combat vessel serving as a lasting legacy of the Baron-President Ronald von Reagan’s Defense Bolstering, built in the late 1980s and launched in the early 1990s to show everyone – both on Earth and in space - just what a Runaway Defense Budget could do. The battleship is named in memory of the hardships of the winter at Valley Forge during the American Revolutionary War, where despite disease and bouts of dysentery the men serving under General George Washington rallied to become a fighting force that won America its freedoms.

At eight hundred meters long, and weighing in an amount of tons normally reserved for nuclear weapons yields, the Valley Forge is an epic achievement of American ingenuity, if not of American originality. The principal technology that lies in the core of the Forge is not of this Earth, but is in fact extraterrestrial, specifically Orionian, really specifically from the saucer that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, back in 1947. Though the alien technology was jealously guarded by the Blacksuit Organization, the Baron-President’s casual ‘yoinking’ of key ‘Suit resources and facilities placed the well-preserved Orionian wreckage in the safe and trusted hands of select members inside his rampant military-industrial complex. With the successful test of a jerry-rigged Orionian hyperdrive on the Interstellar Megafortress Valkyrie, the Reaganites very quickly set about creating a dedicated strategic weapons platform that would bring American foreign interests to the heavens themselves.

The warship’s elongated hull structure, hard edges and sleek angles makes it look like nothing so much as a giant gun in space. Its shark-like predatory silhouette gives out an image of brute strength and rigid military efficiency, showing its purpose of waging war in the heavens and taking the fight to the extraterrestrial forces that have been so content to screw around with Earth for so long. As such, it comes armed to the teeth with numerous varieties of weapons systems – both bleeding-edge and tried and true – to allow it to survive in the supremely hostile regions of outer space, where enemies can be technologically lightyears more advanced than anything Earth has to offer, and where alien depravities truly know no bounds. In a fight, the Valley Forge is built to live long and prosper, and make sure its enemies don’t.

The Forge’s primary weapons come in the form of Westinghouse phased plasma pulse cannons mounted in dorsal turrets, capable of anti-ship alpha strikes or frying half a city from high orbit. Further armaments are found in the specially DARPA-designed rapid acceleration railgun (RARG) batteries that can either fire everything from kinetic-killer missiles to hypervelocity buckshot in the faces of whatever hostile aliens the Forge might encounter, along with solid-state high energy laser (SHEL) arrays and a General Electric independently targeting particle beam phalanx as a close-in weapons system for point-defense. For strategic purposes, the Valley Forge also has lateral launchers for the BGM-1000Z Super Spacebeard space missiles, armed with special global thermonuclear warheads and modified to target both surface and space targets. Though the Valley Forge itself hasn’t gotten the chance to used its Super Spacebeards yet, the missiles had previously proven themselves when the Interstellar Megafortress Valkyrie launched a salvo at the Orionian sanctuary moon of Nii’ebru, where the special warheads did a bang up job in destroying the rogue Xabathite xenoflora that was threatening to corrupt the entire moon’s biosphere. Despite the rescue and evacuation of almost the entirety of the Orionian population in the Nii’ebru Incident, the thermonuclear annihilation of one of their holiest sites in space led to a similar nuking of Orionian-American diplomatic relations.

Controlling and coordinating the Valley Forge’s powerful weapons is a complex senor suite centered on the Reagan-Raytheon Fotzauge passive-aggressive array located primarily in the forest of antennae on the Forge’s prow, with distributed secondary and tertiary redundant sites scattered the hull. The system automatically directs weapons systems to quietly track and lock onto any and all potential targets and threats detected by the Fotzauge’s eyes. When the targets are determined to be hostile, the Fotzauge activates its Quickdraw active-aggressive alpha-strike protocols to ensure that even though the Valley Forge may not always shoot first, the Forge will still always shoot to kill. The Fotzauge proved itself when, in one of its space patrols, the Valley Forge encountered an alien spacecraft of indeterminate origin that, upon hailing, opened its weapons ports towards the Forge. In response, the Fotzauge immediately activated the Quickdraw, allowing the Forge to fire the first shot of the fight and the last one as well, which was the same shot anyway. Though the civilian consultants onboard the Forge objected to the preemptive strike, citing that the incident may have been a simple misunderstanding, there wasn’t much left of the alien ship to form any definitive conclusions.

Though being designed as a space combatant vessel, the Forge also has a small hangar bay capable of carrying a composite squadron of Silver Stork spacefighters and Flamingo HEAT craft. The Silver Storks were acquired despite the vehement objection of the United States Air Force, which protested the Navy’s possession of its own space fighters. The Flamingo HEAT (high exo-atmsopheric transport) craft are part of the United States Marine Corp’s Aerospace Rapid Transit Offworld Operations (ARTOO) Detachment II tactical space transport wing, and serve as the main ride for the platoon of jarheads on board the Forge. The Forge routinely carries Recon Marines, gyrenes trained in space warfare and equipped with the ultimate in state-of-the-art weaponry and Doomvee Recon Assault Ground (DRAG) vehicles, although on occasion its passengers have also included the clandestine COBRA Unit, led by none other than Commander Marion Bravura, on deniable blackops missions deep in both Orionian and Mogar Space.

Parts of the Valley Forge’s hull are armored with hyperalloys derived from Orionian materials sciences, while the most vital areas also sport the latest Hero Labs Concentrated Energy Shield Armoring (CESA) generators that project hull-hugging energy fields over small areas. The CESA is capable of withstanding intense energies, provided that its circuit breakers hold, although when they fail they tend to do so spectacularly, which is why the CESA generators and their operators are typically hunkered down behind blast doors and inside ventable compartments.

The Forge is propelled by a Lockheed-Martin Nimbus drive and powered by a binary fusion generator, based again on Orionian designs. However, it is the Valley Forge’s hyperdrive that is the main showcase of extraterrestrial equipment – an actual-factual working example of Orionian ultratech from the Roswell wreckage itself. Initially trashed from its crash in 1947, the hyperdrive was definitely not in working condition when it was first acquired by the US Navy’s various contractors. However, experience from a second hyperdrive, another sample of Orionian technology from another crashed saucer, gave the American scientists the information needed to refurbish the Roswell drive. This second ‘Gorman’ hyperdrive was successfully tested on board the Interstellar Megafortress Valkyrie, but the Nii’ebru Incident saw the furious Orionians demand the neutering of all American interstellar FTL capabilities and the confiscation of the Gorman drive (as well as the imprisonment of all the members of the COBRA Unit for one thousand years in carbonite). But the Orionians remained unaware of the Roswell drive, which was slowly repaired and fitted into the Valley Forge.

However, the Valley Forge was not built with the Roswell Drive in mind. The Roswell Drive was not only an already-damaged piece of refurbished secondhand extraterrestrial hardware, but the original Orionian saucer that had used the hyperdrive was nowhere near the size of the Valley Forge. With the hyperdrive being too small and the Forge being simply too big, the US Navy contractors had to jerry rig a working solution – by cramming the inadequate little Roswell drive with as much power as possible, and by adding extraneous ‘modulars’ to serve as buffers, coolers, and circuit breakers. This rigging has resulted in a gas-guzzling monstrosity of an FTL drive, several times larger than it originally was, and almost completely unrecognizable to the Orionians who built it.

This has resulted, and continues to result, in a fair share of hardships for the men and women on board the Forge. The rig is extremely maintenance heavy, with long cooldown times per jump and requiring days of tender loving care for whenever the drive is feeling particularly temperamental, and prone to malfunctions and breaking down. While the rig allows the Valley Forge to jump extremely vast amounts of interstellar space, making long-distance runs clocking in at least twelve parsecs, should the Forge end up requiring spare parts not immediately on hand, the vessel may end up having to limp home or drift about until the crew comes up with a particularly innovative solution (that may not work the next time it happens), or until the Recon Marines or the COBRA Unit can ‘borrow’ the necessary parts from any generous donators nearby.

The USS Valley Forge is currently commanded by Rear Admiral Duke “The Duke” Bainbridge, who is sailing the Forge in the fringe worlds of Mogar Space, undergoing plausibly deniable operations with a Letter of Marque from the Felins of Arcturus. Admiral Duke replaced former Rear Admiral and now Front Admiral Don Ulysses Homer-Hammond, the first commander of the Forge, who now teaches insterstellar naval warfare at Annapolis. Other prominent crewmembers of the Forge include Colonel Reese McBiehn, commanding officer of the Recon Marines on board the vessel; Daniel Donnali, leader of the civilian Negotiations and Diplomacy Attaché (NADA) appointed to the Forge by the U.S. Senate Space Committee; Lieutenant Amanda King as the commanding officer of the naval quantum physicists manning the hyperdrive; and occasionally Commander Marion “Cobra” Bravura and his COBRA Unit hardcases, interstellar and interdimensional blackops crackpack veterans and the very same people who were involved in the thermonuclear Nii’ebru Incident; as well as the various ‘military liaisons’ who may or may not be entirely human, and who may or may not be conscripted from the worst hives of scum and villainy in the galaxy to fight for truth, freedom and American pie.

As it is, heavily armed and dangerous, crewed by the finest spacemen of the US Navy, capable of breaking the light barrier and carrying special forces into the armpits of the galaxy, the Valley Forge has become a crucial component of the United States Space Command as not only an offensive and defensive platform, but as an instrument to take American influence and military might beyond the stars – to infinity and beyond!
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Booted Vulture »

Mang; like James Cameron much? :P

Nice article. Though i myself wouldn't call 800 metres 'nearly a kilometre' I'd call it 800 metres. Is there anything that wacky Reagan didn't have a hand in?
Last edited by Booted Vulture on Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Siege »

Loved all the little references and shout-outs, Shroom :D. And man, was Reagan ever a dick. I can just imagine the Thunderchild trailing the Valley Forge at the behest of the UN, trying to repair human-alien relations whenever the USA screwed up (again!) during the 1980s...
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

90s, Siege. The Forge was launched in the 1990s. :P

To be fair, the 'Gorman' was a total bonus for me. I was looking for alternative UFO incidents that I could use as another source for convenient Grey tech, and when I saw this I couldn't resist. Of course, the Comix equivalent probably occurred in the 1970s and with the pilot encountering the xenomorphs while flying an F-108 Rapier or something... (Carter probably pinky-pwomised the Greys to return the wreck, but after Reagan took over he decided to stick the Gorman in a Megafort instead :twisted: )

I also decided to name the Grey sanctuary moon after Planet X.

The Valley Forge is an edifice of neoconservatism, in space.
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Peregrin »

Is it possible that the designers of the Valley Forge wanted it to look like the Sulaco? It was built in the late 1980s after all... also, could fit into how the real-life space shuttle Enterprise was named after the ship in Star Trek so it's not that unlikely I would say.

On a more serious note: Won't the Orionians eventually discover the United States having defied their orders to de-FTL-ize it? I imagine however awe-inspiring the Valley Forge might be to someone from Earth it would be rather feeble against some of the space battleships the Orionians can build. I remember Shroomy talking about the US Navy getting a Marquis letter from the Orionians to do really sensitive wetwork for them...
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Malchus »

Well, not much to add since the others have said most of what I was gonna say.

However, I am happy that you included the Gorman Dogfight incident. I have a copy of Edward J. Ruppelt's The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, and I immediately recognized said incident. Heh, now I wanna go dig that old thing up...
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Peregrin wrote:Is it possible that the designers of the Valley Forge wanted it to look like the Sulaco? It was built in the late 1980s after all... also, could fit into how the real-life space shuttle Enterprise was named after the ship in Star Trek so it's not that unlikely I would say.
Why not? Reagan nicknamed the real-life SDI after Star Wars, he also loved quoting Back to the Future, and his speeches also had him going on and on about aliens. For all we know, he could've pointed to his TV playing a betamax tape of Aliens and told the US Navy to make their warship look like Sulaco. :lol:

However, Siege did convince me to go with "thematically period-appropriate" styles. His 50s/60s-era Thunderchild is meant to be retro-pulpish, and my Valley Forge is meant to epitome the gritty hard metal aesthetic popularized in 80s sci-fi.
On a more serious note: Won't the Orionians eventually discover the United States having defied their orders to de-FTL-ize it? I imagine however awe-inspiring the Valley Forge might be to someone from Earth it would be rather feeble against some of the space battleships the Orionians can build. I remember Shroomy talking about the US Navy getting a Marquis letter from the Orionians to do really sensitive wetwork for them...
The Grey orders were probably very specifically worded, stating the return of the FTL drive the USA obtained during the Gorman Incident (which, though named after the RL Gorman Dogfight, probably occurred much differently... with an F-108 Rapier, or something, taking on a saucer). The Greys would've been unaware of the Roswell Drive, and would not have specified it in their orders, giving Von Reagan a legal loophole to exploit.

A similar loophole was also exploited for the early parole of the COBRA Unit. After COBRA's direct involved in the nuking of the sanctuary moon, the Orionians ordered the USA to put the whole Unit in prison for one thousand years in carbonite. A few months (or years) later, Reagan released the COBRA Unit. When asked by furious Greys why, Reagan simply stated that the Greys didn't specify a specific unit of time and that in some alien planets, a few Earth months do translate to hundreds of alien years. :twisted:
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Re: The Guns of America - The Firepower of Freedom!

Post by Ford Prefect »

Also let's be honest here: the earth has kicked the shit* out Mogar and Damask. The Orionians may be slightly leery of pushing the issue, especially given how much of their experience with humans is with 80's Americana: so they'd probably have this impression of Planet Earth as being full of deranged sociopaths.

*This isn't strictly true, but I imagine Chinese whispers might have a part to play here. Challenge of the Dawn portrayed a lot of information floating about the place mostly as rumour spread by word of mouth.
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