The TAS Deathbringer was a peculiar ship, even when compared to its colleagues. It was the last of its line, and its shape reflected a time that had passed in spacefaring. Lacking a TMDS, the Deathbringer was not rounded, as was necessary for the functional use of a TMDS without tearing a ship apart. Instead, it used an older, fusion-powered positron drive system, which meant that its back was considerably wider than its front, which was brought to a point at the foremost part of the ship. The overall shape resembled an arrowhead aimed outward at space.

The Deathbringer did not have hypenet access, again due to the lack of a TMDS, which meant that its hull had to be heavily shielded from particles that would collide with it as it traveled at high speeds. The mass of all this shielding meant that the drive system had to be immensely powerful in order to push the hunk of metal through space. That also meant that the Deathbringer could not land planetside. The weight of the ship would be so imbalanced that it would be unable to take off from the surface of a planet.

The ship also had its hangar in the forward section of the ship instead of the aft section, as ultracarriers did. This meant that in order to deploy or land fighters, the ship had to slow down. It also meant that the upper array of guns that was present on an ultracarrier simply wasn’t present. The entire hangar had to be lifted from the main section of the ship due to the sleek design of the ship. If it were held above the main portion of the ship, it would be torn apart from colliding particles as the ship traveled at ultra-high velocities.

The bridge of the ship could not be in an exposed part of the ship for the same reason. Like the hangar, it could be lifted up at lower velocities, but this was rarely done. Instead, the bridge was kept docked with the main section of the ship, where it was completely shielded from outside damage. Such was the style of what Armadians called a Blockade Buster, so named because it was specifically designed to provide overwhelming offensive power against the ships holding the Ginnung Gap while simultaneously being well-shielded enough to withstand the beating dealt by the Blockade’s smaller fighter swarms.

All of this resulted in a rather peculiar wedge shape with arched sides that allowed for a slight increase in speeds. This was a stark contrast to the pill-shaped ships around it in the fleet, so shaped for their TMD Systems. The Deathbringer was a ship designed to fight a war in a way that had become obsolete. Even at its maximum speeds, its average velocity couldn’t come close to matching that of a ship that hyped to distant destinations, even when cooldowns were necessary. It couldn’t carry as many troops as an ultracarrier, and it couldn’t hold as many guns, either. Its drive system required massive amounts of fuel, and the TMDS required almost none. The bridge couldn’t maintain a constant eye on a battlefield, and the hangar couldn’t always launch fighters.

That was why today, Gril’Die Khuda’Mundi stood on the bridge of the Deathbringer as it was taken to its final destination, a museum dedicated to the Ginnung Wars. Thinking back to recent events, Gril’Die found it amusing that most people considered the Ginnung Wars to be over. Indeed, the museum declared that the wars had ended many cycles ago, even though the Treaty of Nivlahim only brought about an armistice on the Ginnung planets. Even so, the Ginnung waged the war onward to greater heights every day, even on its own worlds, where the Armada still held a moderate occupational force.

It was natural for people to resist occupations of any sort, whether their own government had agreed to it or not. In addition, some of the people on outer worlds such as Valhal and Nivlahim did not subscribe to the Thorlinthian state religion, Jalihu’dai. This made some tensions so great that guerilla warfare and outright intimidation attacks were utilized to keep the Armada back from those territories, where the people continued to practice as they saw fit freely despite the laws against the practice of other religions. The Monarch had decided to tolerate this practice in specific areas in order to prevent unnecessary Thorlinthian casualties, so instead of attacking them, he simply issued a mandated boycott on anything from those areas, preventing what he called, “the spread of the infection.”

As the Deathbringer approached the planet, Lok’hi, Gril’Die was reminded of a time long ago that he had stood in this bridge, observing charts and sensor readings while leading the attack on the same planet. He had been invited to participate in the ship’s retirement for that very reason. Of course, he had arranged for his own invitation, but that was alright. The important part was that he had been invited to do it instead of simply ignoring the retirement of such a significant ship as the Deathbringer.

The Deathbringer was the last surviving ship of its kind. Every other Armadian ship was driven by a TMDS. Every other ship was sleeker and rounded, while the Deathbringer was hard and sharp in shape. Its edges, Gril’Die thought, were its most attractive features. It gave the Deathbringer an intimidating look that the bulbous new ships just lacked. The Deathbringer was black and blended with the dark of space. The new ships were a very light gray, almost white, and stood out like sore thumbs wherever they were.

Nonetheless, the new ships had serious advances in technology and comfort that had never been seen in a military ship in Thorlinthian history. Despite their awkward-looking shape and size, the TMDS ships were capable of high-speed maneuvering within an atmosphere, and the largest of these ships were even capable of external hyping, wherein the ship hyped another object without hyping itself. The TMDS ships had more room for guns and less wasted space from heavy shielding and bulky drives. They utilized high-energy, cold plasma shields for protecting against colliding debris in space. This had been a nearly impossible concept before the aliens had come. The
TMDS wasn’t the only system that had been taken from them.

Gril’Die watched as the sensors began to indicate approach toward the gravitational point of no return as the ship descended toward Lok’hi. He barked orders just as he had cycles ago on this very bridge when it was cutting-edge technology. He remembered the casualties taken over the cycles during which he had held command of the ship. Finally, the ship was met mid-descent by a group of small ships that acted similar to tugboats at sea. At touchdown, the ship groaned loudly, unable ever to take off again without blasting away a quarter of the planet’s life with its powerful drives.

As he stepped out of the ship to a crowd of applauding civilians and saluting Armadians, Gril’Die smiled at them all and waved. When the time came for the decommissioning speech, he made his way through his notes as if someone else had written them. When he stepped down from the stage and looked at that ship again, now covered in battlescars and dented where smaller ships had collided with the Deathbringer, he spoke three words which had never sounded so profound to him before. “I’m getting old.”