Fist of Alpha

The Fist of Alpha, with the rest of the forward "antenna farm" of S-14

Overview of the Fist

A fifty kilometer long railgun originally mounted on the front of the panNorm colony ship S-14. It is made of 216 hollow rails filled with superconducting cryogenic liquid hydrogen and capable of launching a two ton molybdenum or rubidium steel slug with a muzzle velocity of 90,000 kilometers per second. This gives a resultant kinetic energy of 8.1 exajoules, which is equivalent to the explosive energy in 1.935 gigatons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). This is about 150 thousand times more powerful than the 13 kiloton TNT equivalent "Little Boy" nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It has a refire rate from standby of approximately six hours but can fire up to once every five minutes if it has sufficient energy stored in reserve batteries.

Operation of the Fist

Because of the strategic nature of this powerful weapon, its use must be agreed upon by all the OverCoordinators of the panNorm. In ways similar to those used in nuclear missile silos elsewhere, each OverCoordinator confirms authorization for unlocking the Fist of Alpha and verifies the target. Then Alpha (S-14's central intelligence) resolves target lock, readies the Fist, and reports weapon ready to fire. Finally, all OverCoordinators turn activation switches simultaneously, authorizing the fire order. If not specified otherwise, the fire order tells Alpha to continue firing until the target is destroyed.

Limitations of the Fist

Being 50 kilometers long and mounted on a ship 540 kilometers long, the Fist of Alpha could not be used on anything smaller than a planet with any sort of effectiveness. This was acceptable for the panNorm, as the Fist of Alpha was originally intended as an extinction-level weapon of mass destruction for use as a 'broom' to sweep away hostile survival-threatening species on any planet the ship could colonize. Now that S-14 is limited to Venusian orbit with minimal maneuvering capability, the Fist of Alpha's traverse is so limited as to be useless.

Future of the Fist

The panNorm are currently removing the Fist of Alpha from S-14 and converting it into a self-contained mobile weapons platform with modern advanced propulsion and energy systems. While the mobile fire platform will be much less stable than S-14, it will be far more effective as the Fist of Alpha will once again have the potential of actually being used.