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Hartford Class Fleet Carrier - Bare

Many may know the illustrious Hartford Class Fleet Carrier from the famous battle of The Blind Pyre, her actions at the time secured a previously unknown chance at victory with the revolutionary use of strike craft.

In some of the most brutal fighting during the war, most of the Crown Navy carriers were destroyed in the initial pass at the Chykol Shipyards, as a result of this assault, the crown needed to implement emergency protocols for conversion
hulls. One of the first hulls looked at was the Northford Class Heavy Fleet Tender, initial conversion simulations were promising, but they took too much time to finalize the process. After nine different hull simulations were tested,
one was finally decided on, engineers had observed all of the statistical and input data they could get their hands on, and decided the Branford Class Heavy Cruiser was a suitable hull conversion. Unfortunately, through all of the
simulations, all of the data, and all of the measurements, the Branford Class was as difficult to convert as she would be to destroy. Originally designed to survive even the toughest environments, the worst enemy assaults, and the
lack of training from even the most incompetent press gang, the Branford Class had proven to be uniquely difficult to repair or convert. During the conversion process it was decided she would need to be gutted of all her armor plating,
spaghetti level fuel lines, non-functioning redundancies, and excess material she was inadvertently built with.

When all was said and done, shipyard directors had made mention that it would have been simpler, faster, and cheaper to build the previously designed New Haven Class Fleet Carriers, than to do more Branford Class conversions. This input was quite useful when the Crown Viscount Oversight ministry had observed the results, after the war the Viscounts elected to modernize and or mothball most of the existing Hartford Class Fleet Carriers as a byproduct of the in production New Haven Class Fleet Carriers, The Viscount's believed this would reduce overall costs and facility usage, while reducing the cost of having an equal number of New Haven Class's built to match the old Hartford fleet. This decision had far reaching implications and consequences for the Crown in the future, but that's something for the New Haven's entry.

The most notable vessel in the Hartford Class Fleet Carrier, would be the C.N.V. Bently Sharpe, named after the location of where she was built, as is tradition with all Crown Vessels.

Her direct actions during and after the battle of The Blind Pyre, were so revolutionary in the use of new tactics, that battle-groups all across Crown space were adopting them as fast as the pulse-waves could carry the information. During the journey to
Tasforce 311 lead by her sister ship The Aurel Black, Bently Sharpe faced difficult decisions to prepare for the potential battles ahead, her participation in the Battle for The Blind Pyre had allowed her to secure vital
resources, unfortunately her battle-damage was too severe to be repaired solely with the resources on hand. Her Captain, Erstas Fane, had five decisions, one of which was to scrap half of her effective strike craft and sacrifice
the remainder of her capabilities to manufacture more, this was deemed too risky for her tastes and instead ordered something rather radical.

Erstas had gathered her engineering teams along with the renaming crew, in the atrium of the Bently Sharpe. Initially she had begun speaking about the state of the Bently Sharpe and how she'd be relegated to a rearguard with one
remaining Strike Group, many crew were shocked when she announced her intentions. Starting with her own quarters, they would gut the Bently Sharp, down to her superstructure. All vital components would be used to repair and
produce new strike craft, due to the necessity of certain vital components, emergency power banks, all but one elevator, life support components, and gravity to all but ten percent of the ship, would be consumed...making the new unknown mission, a possible one shot. If the Task-force and her sister-ship were on the other end of the co-ordinates, then her gamble would be a safe bet, allowing them to become fully combat capable and able to replace vital components with the Task-force. However, if the Task-force was destroyed, or waylaid on route...her gamble would be a costly one.

With the final jump charged and prepared, Erstas ordered the Bently Sharpe to General Quarters...The final Jump was made, only to discover the enemy waiting for them, they were not alone. The Bently Sharpe had jumped into a massive
skirmish between the Task-force and the enemy fleet, ordering her crew to battle-stations, all strike groups were launched and actively picking off enemy threats. The enemy had not expected another Fleet Carrier to participate in the trap, they quickly called for more reinforcements as they began to engage the shaky but still combat effective Bently Sharpe. The opening moments of the engagement would have been in disfavor for Task-force 311, the enemy fleet composition was well designed to pick off Task-force 311's ships in rapid succession, the presence of a second fleet carrier caused issue. As both sides called for reinforcements, The Bently Sharpe began an aggressive action to save the Heavy Cruiser Dolomite from a squadron of Pike Heavy Gunships. Unfortunately, this move caused a devastating blow to the Bently Sharpe's forward thrusters causing her to be locked in a perpetual course. The Bently Sharpe entered and exited the battle In such haste, but her impact was enormous. Her captain was last heard by the crew, to abandon ship, she and a handful of remaining officers chose to stay behind and ensure the rest of the crew could get off alive.

The recovery efforts made to reclaim the Bently Sharpe post battle, were nothing more than extraordinary, Task-force 311 expended all of its influence and political clout to set up the recovery project. The project had paid off, but
the result was a bittersweet moment. The crew of the bently Sharpe was given right of first entry, a right they took seriously, none of them broke line, none of them showed any hint of pity or remorse, when they walked into the bridge,
The only thing they felt was an immense sense of pride and honor. The Captain and Officers were at their posts, up until the end, still in their suits so they could do everything possible to repair the ship before their air ran out.
As the crew prepared to leave the ship, the Assistant Engineer Beuman noticed something in the corner of his eye, the status information panel was showing alerts for every section of the ship, except for the bridge. Recognizing the
oddity of the situation, Beuman called his fellow engineers to request an emergency power unit be brought into the ship. Beuman had been onto something, he could feel it, then it happened, pulses, pulses were chiming from the still
hibernating medical bay. Tracing the pulses, they discovered the audio had emerged from the suits worn by the officers, all of the crew describe Beuman's eyes grew wide as he realized what this meant, calls went up, over wave and local audio for medical personnel. The captain and her officers had worked together, knowing they couldn't repair one cryopod, much less six, they had worked to integrate cryo-capacity into their suits, knowing the cryo-pods had already done what suits do, they only needed to connect each other to one cryo-cell and network their suits into the medical bay's monitoring system to let each suit act as a single cryo-pod.

The Bently Sharpe was towed into port on the Crown World, her entire crew stood on deck as they pulled into the dockyards flanked by millions of citizens cheering and praising her for the actions they took, that day saw the Bently Sharpe mothballed, in case she ever needed to be of service once again.