by Ben Robinson
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD
COMMISSIONING A BIRD-OF-PREY
B’REL VERSUS K’VORT-CLASS
CLOAKING DEVICE HISTORY
WING POSITIONS
I.K.S. ROTARRAN
CUTAWAY
OPERATIONAL HISTORY
DECK PLANS
WEAPONS AND DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS
DISRUPTOR CANNONS
TORPEDO LAUNCHER
TORPEDOS
CLOAKING DEVICE
SHIELDS AND ARMOR PLATING
PROPULSION AND NAVIGATION
WARP ENGINES
WARP ENGINE ROOM
ANTIMATTER STORAGE
ANTIMATTER MANIFOLD
DILITHIUM CHAMBER
WARP COILS
IMPULSE ENGINES
IMPULSE ENGINE ROOM
RCS THRUSTERS
NAVIGATIONAL DEFLECTOR
SHIP’S SYSTEMS
LANDING
DOCKING
COMMUNICATIONS
LIFE SUPPORT
GRAVITY
MAIN COMPUTER
TRANSPORTER SYSTEMS
ENERGY DISTRIBUTION
SENSORS
MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE
AUTODESTRUCT
ESCAPE PODS
LIFE ON BOARD
BRIDGE
BRIDGE STATIONS
CREW
SHIFT SYSTEM
FLEET COMPARISON
RAPTOR-CLASS
22ND-CENTURY BIRD-OF-PREY
D5-CLASS
K’TINGA-CLASS
VOR’CHA-CLASS
NEGH’VAR-CLASS
DICTIONARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT RICK STERNBACH AND BEN ROBINSON
FOREWORD BY J.G. HERTZLER
It was my choice to flag my Ninth Fleet as Supreme Commander with my beloved Rotarran. I had no use for the immensity, the sheer sluggishness, the inertia, the lack of acceleration and the unneeded armor of the giant battle cruiser of the Vor’cha-class, and especially I did not want to assume command aboard the Negh’var. That was Gowron’s favorite fighting ship and may Kahless bless him and her for that marriage of personality and weaponry. But that is not my spirit. The Negh’var reflects nothing about me or my approach to battle. My approach to ship-to-ship confrontation is best embodied in the versatility, the speed, the incredible acceleration and appropriate weaponry found aboard the Rotarran, for any engagement from a known or unknown enemy.
For the known enemy, our weaponry is superior to any and all military craft in the four quadrants. For the unknown attacker, the Rotarran’s ability to instantly disappear into deep space to both the naked eye and all known and theoretical molecular scanning devices offers the most extraordinary strategic defense imaginable and has succeeded in saving my old skin on several occasions.
The Vor’cha-class may be capable of absorbing an attack by an entire fleet of warbirds and any known alien battle cruiser. My preference is to evade such an attack, not to absorb it, and return within nano-seconds from completely unexpected coordinates to neutralize the attack with minimal damage to my Flagship and the fleet. The Vor’cha-class cruiser is incapable of such tactics, thereby allowing massive collateral damage while awaiting cessation of the alien attack before turning to neutralize the enemy ship.
The only warship in the Klingon fleet capable of executing the swiftness and elusiveness of my preferred tactics in ship-to-ship warfare is the B’rel-class Bird-of-Prey. And of course, the precise specifications of the Rotarran are not known to anyone beyond myself and my most executive officers.
I am compelled to allow posterity and the military historians to evaluate the success and failure of my approach to close combat as opposed to that of Chancellor Gowron. Perhaps my tactics are rooted in my understanding of a young life lived on the streets of the Ketha Lowlands rather than in the more comfortable manor houses of the rich valleys surrounding the central plateau of the First City, the homeland of Chancellor Gowron.
As to which tactics are more effective, all I can offer is the hard truth that I am here, the House of Martok stands today, but the ruined House of Gowron is gone from the face of Qo’noS and gone from the annals of military victories of the Klingon Empire.
GENERAL MARTOK
SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE NINTH FLEET
AND CHANCELLOR OF THE KLINGON EMPIRE
GENERAL MARTOK PORTRAYED BY J.G. HERTZLER
COMMISSIONING A BIRD-OF-PREY
The Bird-of-Prey is the classic Klingon starship. It is a fast and deadly scouting and raiding ship that has been at the heart of the Klingon Defense Force for centuries. The first examples even pre-date Klingon spaceflight. Small fighters with the same basic layout have been in use since early planetary conflicts. That design has been modified over the centuries, first to incorporate impulse engines, then warp engines. Even fundamental changes to the science have been incorporated into the same basic spaceframe. The Klingons have simply seen no need to change something that they believe is fundamentally correct.
By the late 2370s, the design of the Bird-of-Prey had been settled for over a century, but ships were produced at a variety of scales from vast K’vort-class battlecruisers to tiny scouting vessels. The archetypal version of the ship is the B’rel-class, a 139-meter long ship with seven decks and a crew of 36. The internal layout and even weaponry vary from ship to ship, but they are all capable of high warp speeds, and fitted with a cloaking device. To many Klingon minds it is the perfect fighting vessel—as fast, tough and deadly as its crew.
When the semi-mythical Klingon leader Kahless united the Klingon people over a thousand years ago, he established the great Klingon Military Academies, which are operated under the control of the High Council rather than by the individual Great Houses. The most famous of these are the Training Academy at Ogat and the Klingon Naval Academy on Dek’Go’Kor. The Klingon Naval Academy is responsible for the principal design and mass production of ships.
The Academy has far greater resources than even the most powerful of the Great Houses and has the remit of concentrating on large-scale technological developments in areas such as warp and impulse dynamics, and the fundamentals of spaceframe design. The Houses are then left to concentrate on the details of how the ships are fitted out and are much more likely to improve the design of weapons and shielding as they seek to find even the smallest advantage in combat.
Klingon design philosophy has always centered on tried-and-tested methods and places great importance on the ability to mass-produce ships at great speed. As such, it has concentrated on a handful of basic designs, which form the backbone of the Klingon fleet, the Bird-of-Prey and the battle cruiser being the most common. The modular design means that the maximum number of ships can be produced at the fastest possible rate.
Wherever possible, the same structural elements are scaled up or down to produce ships of different sizes. The Klingons are reluctant to make major structural changes to their starship designs, preferring to concentrate on improving the individual systems. As a result, Birds-of-Prey vary enormously in size from tiny B’rel-class scouting ships to vast K’vort-class cruisers. The larger of these ships are literally scaled up versions of the basic design even down to the size of the disruptor cannons, which become e
normous units that are almost as long as the smallest ships.
DORSAL VIEW
1 Defensive Shield Plating
2 Cloaking Field Emitter
3 Deck 4 Entry/Escape Hatch
4 Subspace Communications Antenna
5 Space Environment Sensor Group
6 Tactical Command Transceiver
7 Atmospheric Flight Flow Sensor
8 Deck 3 Cargo Bay External Access
9 Deck 3 Access Hatch
10 Deck 1 & 2 Dorsal Blister
11 Upper Wing Hinge Plates
12 Lower Wing Hinge Plates
13 Warp Field External Shaping Plates
14 Reaction Control System Thrusters
15 Warp Wing Induction Energy Storage
16 Warp System External Resupply Connections
17 Dorsal Aft Impulse Engines
All the Great Houses in the Empire pledge their loyalty—and their ships—to the High Chancellor.
Of course, this approach means that Klingon ship design is rarely as innovative as that used by other groups such as the Federation and although there have been advances in warp and weapons technology, anyone looking at a Bird-of-Prey from the 2370s would instantly recognize it as being the same as models that were in use well over a century earlier.
For hundreds of years the Bird-of-Prey has been designed for warp flight, for sublight travel within a planetary system, and to enter a planet’s atmosphere, where it is highly maneuverable and can land on the surface. All Birds-of-Prey are heavily armed and heavily armored, follow the same basic layout, and are fitted with a cloaking device that can render them invisible to sensors, but beyond this there are significant differences between each ship.
There is no central authority that dictates how a Klingon starship should be fitted out. Although almost all Klingon ships operate as part of the Klingon Defense Force, they are not commissioned or even operated by a central body in the way that ships are in the Federation or the Romulan Empire. Klingon society operates on feudal lines, with individuals and families pledging their allegiance to Houses, the greatest of which come together to form the Klingon High Council, which is led by the High Chancellor. It is these Houses that are responsible for commissioning ships.
VENTRAL VIEW
1 Central Navigational Deflector
2 Photon Torpedo Launcher
3 Emergency Subspace Buoys
4 Central Computer Core
5 Ventral Sensor Cap
6 Plasma Power Conduit
7 Forward Impulse Engine
8 Active/Passive Targeting Sensors
9 Port Warp Wing
10 Wingtip Disruptor
11 Secondary Disruptor Cannons
12 Primary Disruptor Cannon
13 Warp Field External Shaping Plates
14 Warp Wing Structural Reinforcements
15 Ventral Aft Impulse Engines
16 Deck 7 Loading Ramp
17 Tractor Beam Emitter
Kruge’s Bird-of-Prey decloaking before its encounter with the tiny Merchantman.
This means that individual Birds-of-Prey are fitted out very differently depending on the resources and personal preferences of the House that commissions them. One House may prefer speed and maneuverability over pure power; another may choose to fit its ships with phasers rather than disruptors. There are potentiality as many permutations as there are Klingon ships. It is a well-known saying that no two weapons are the same. This variety has proved a great strength in battle; for example, during the Dominion War one Klingon Bird-of-Prey, the Ki’tang, proved to be immune to the devastating Breen energy dampening weapon because it used a different tritium intermix to the other ships in the fleet.
Despite this enormous diversity in the way Klingon ships are equipped, the fundamental structure of the spaceframe is the same for almost every one and all Birds-of-Prey, whether they are raiders or cruisers, have the same basic layout with the bridge in the section at the head, above the photon torpedo launcher, and the impulse and warp engineering sections at the rear between the wings, which generate the warp fields. The disruptor cannons are always at the tips of the wings, and the bottom of the ship always features a landing ramp that can be extended to the ground.
When a House is ready to commission a ship, it contacts the Naval Academy shipyards and arranges payment. The shipyards then assign a renwl’, or architect, to the project and he meets with the representatives of the House to discuss the exact fit and specifications of the ship. The standard Bird-of -Prey is the 139-meter B’rel-class scout. This is the starting point for every version of the ship and is by far the most common. When a Bird-of-Prey is scaled up, the basic vehicle spaceframe remains proportionally the same, with extra decks being added as the ship increases in size.
FORE VIEW
AFT VIEW
1 Defensive Shield Plating
2 Central Navigational Deflector
3 Photon Torpedo Launcher
4 Cloaking Field Emitter
5 Subspace Communications Antenna
6 Active/Passive Targeting Sensors
7 Warp Wing
8 Reaction Control System Thrusters
9 Deck 1 & 2 Dorsal Blister
10 Lower Wing Hinge Plates
11 Short Range Sensors
12 Disruptor Cannon Structural Extension
13 Wingtip Disruptor
14 Secondary Disruptor Cannons
15 Primary Disruptor Cannon
16 Upper Wing Hinge Plates
17 Warp Wing Induction Energy Storage
18 Warp Wing Structural Reinforcements
19 Dorsal Aft Impulse Engines
20 Ventral Aft Impulse Engines
21 Deck 7 Loading Ramp
The Bird-of-Prey is one of the most common ships in the Klingon fleet and is the ideal scouting and raiding vessel.
However, most Klingon commanders are happy with the standard sized ship. The disagreements tend to come when the shipyard has to fit the engines and weapon systems. Not all Klingons appreciate the compromises that are needed to produce an effective ship and there are stories of Klingon Houses insisting on overpowered engines and dangerously over-specced disruptors. The renwl’ has a duty to reign in these excesses and to produce a good fighting ship. It is not unheard of for these disagreements to end in violence and accordingly the architects are among the most physically impressive and skilled non-warriors in the Klingon Empire. It is a position of great honor since it is one of the rare roles that allows a common civilian to tell a noble warrior that he is wrong.
STARBOARD VIEW
1 Cloaking Field Emitter
2 Central Navigational Deflector
3 Defensive Shield Plating
4 Space Environment Sensor Group
5 Ventral Sensor Cap
6 Central Computer Core
7 Plasma Power Conduit
8 Atmospheric Flight Flow Sensor
9 Short Range Sensors
10 Lower Wing Hinge Plates
11 Upper Wing Hinge Plates
12 Warp Wing Induction Energy Storage
13 Reaction Control System Thrusters
14 Warp Field External Shaping Plates
15 Disruptor Cannon Structural Extension
16 Wingtip Disruptor
17 Secondary Disruptor Cannons
18 Primary Disruptor Cannon
Klingon Birds-of-Prey fought on both sides of the Klingon civil war that followed K’mpec’s death and captains such as Kurn became important men.
The internal layout of a Bird-of-Prey can vary enormously from ship to ship. Commander Kruge favoured an unusual design of bridge that put him on a raised platform.
The wiser houses understand exactly what it takes to make a good fighting ship, which, according to the Klingon bards, should be like a finely balanced blade, quick to respond to the hand but heavy and sharp enough to cut deep. As a result there is such a thing as a classic Bird-of-Prey and any differences normally relate to the internal layout, th
e kind of torpedoes carried and the precise balance between maneuverability and power.
One of the defining characteristics of the Bird-of-Prey’s design is the Klingons’ devotion to multiple redundancies. All the ship’s important systems operate in pairs—or multiples—of interconnected systems. Thus there are twin warp cores, and 12 impulse engines that produce forward propulsion (a further pair of impulse engines produces downward ‘thrust’). Even the EPS (electroplasma) conduits that distribute power around the ship operate in branching pairs.
If one of the systems is completely knocked out there is another to take over its duties, but this isn’t simply a case of one system coming into play when another fails; the systems on a Bird-of-Prey are interconnected and permanently operating. This means that if one of the warp cores isn’t functioning at full capacity, the other one can take on a portion of its load to compensate. The Klingons have taken the system even further so the impulse and warp engines are tied into one another and can supplement each other if one of them is severely damaged.
By designing their ships this way, the Klingons are following the nature of their own bodies, which have a similar form of redundancy known as brak’lul. For example, the Klingon body has 23 ribs (double the number found on a human being), two livers, and an eight-chambered rather than four-chambered heart.
In many ways this system of multiple redundancies could be seen as wasteful. In some cases it means forcing barely compatible systems to work together in ways that other cultures wouldn’t even attempt, but it also makes Klingon ships remarkably tough and as a consequence they can withstand more damage than almost any comparable vessel.
The biggest differences between individual Birds-of-Prey are often seen in the internal layout. The interior bulkheads are designed to be repositionable, so that a commander can choose how the internal volume is divided. A B’rel-class ship is actually surprisingly spacious for the standard crew of 36, but in some cases commanders still insist on making their crews share quarters and devoting disproportionately large areas to cargo. Even after the ship has been commissioned the bulkheads can be moved around easily, converting a raiding ship into a troop transporter that is suitable for delivering warriors to the front line of a ground-based battle.
