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[DNS] Emerald Siege Cruiser

Even older than the likes of the Azurite frigate, the venerable Emerald siege cruiser is the oldest surviving design template still in service in the Dominion’s fleets. It is the origin of the axehead design style of most Dominion ships, and even through extensive modernization over thousands of years of service, refits, redesigns, and ground-up overhauls, there are unchangeable hallmarks of the frame that are integral to the ship, for better or worse.

The most evident of these unchanging characteristics is the cavernous aft engineering section, which even with modern reactors and fuel systems, still takes up a majority of the back half of the ship. It is a mess of overlapping pipelines and cables, stiflingly hot, and requires there to be no oxygen in the room due to the central fuel storage’s constant throughput to feed its hungry drive engines. This means engineers must wear EVA pressure suits at all times in the section, which provides a claustrophobic work experience even with the large amounts of open space.

Additionally, the ships dual forward railguns, a modernized upgrade from ancient rock-cracker mass drivers, put incredible strain on the ships hull when firing, requiring a bulky structural bracing system to enclose them and making maintenance of the weapons a logistical nightmare. The two quad assault turrets on the dorsal surface are in fact entirely new additions with the most recent refit, replacing older artillery turrets that provided ineffective firing power with single barrels and long reloads. Fortunately, its large volume of double-barrel assault and artillery turrets have remained consistently satisfactory provided their modernizations, and will likely remain as they are, providing a good degree of omnidirectional fire.

The designation of ‘Siege Cruiser’ in the Dominion navy applies to more than just bristling fields of fire and heavy armaments, but also being able to far outlast opponents on both a tactical and strategic scale. The Emerald has a redundant control area far removed from the bridge, providing longevity in battle, along with a full assembler and refinery system capable of manufacturing any needed components from raw resources, which can be gathered by attached worker craft stored in it’s small hangar bay or on it’s aft landing pad. It’s jump capability is sub-par, and will remain so due to it’s sheer mass, and it’s impossible to land or even fly on most planets, but it’s direct fighting capability and strategic support capacity makes it the flagship of many fleets, with new Emerald cruisers rolling off the line containing major communications and sensor upgrades to further fulfill this role.

An Emerald of particular note was the Vigilant Authority, solely for the fact that the ship was older than it's initial prospected service life by well over 300 years, with each Captain and crew leaving behind mementos for their successors, and adding to a collaborative mural that covers the exterior of the ship in the names of those who served aboard her. After a particularly fierce battle in the Dominion's darkest hour, the Vigilant authority martyred itself by shielding the capital from an orbital bombardment attack, suffering catastrophic damage, and finally being laid to rest after the battle concluded. Many fragments of her mural plates did survive the battle, and many are housed in places of honor & tradition, such as prestigious naval academies, or in the Imperial Palace's archival wing.