USS Hades

The Hades Class Super-dreadnaught was designed and produced as the mainstay of infamous the Section 31 Black Ops department of Starfleet. This ships was made under top secret discretion, due to its designed usage. Even from the beginning, the ship was designed to use a highly modified Romulan Cloaking Device, as well as a recently designed variant of Ablative Armor generators called Quantum Armor Generators. The Hades Class concept was designed specifically as a covert operations/interdiction craft, working highly secret missions through various territories, especially working on intelligence gathering throughout the Dominion and Borg space. Due to these demands, the ship had to be built with the utmost stealth, but the power to defend itself if identified, requiring incredible amount of power output to power all the systems on the ship at once.

This idea had been carried out before when the federation had refitted the K’Vort Class cruisers of the Klingon Empire, utilizing two reactors at the same time on the ship to be able to power all the systems on the whip at once. Due to the K’Vort Class Refits success, the design was carried over to the new Hades Class. The ship was designed with two reactor cores set side by side in engineering with massively increased plasma cooling systems to compensate for the increased heat build up from running both at once through high warp factors. But with the ship needing to be small enough to evade sensors more easily, as well as housing that much power, it was deemed that the only ship frame capable of taking such modifications was the frame of the Intrepid Class starship. The Intrepid Class had proved to be a very resilient ship, so one was pulled out of dry dock over mars and taken to the Section 31 shipyards.

With the frame on hand, the technicians set to work completely redesigning the ship to meet the needs of Section 31. Much of the exterior was redesigned, creating a distinct profile while still reminiscent of its cousins of the Intrepid Class. In the end, 90% of the ship needed to be completely redesigned to fit the specifications. The main things that hadn’t been remade were the ships crew quarters and medical bay, seeing these as being adequate for the ship already.

The ships profile was designed with a thicker saucer section to house the cloaking systems as well as accommodate the Quantum Armor Generators. The lower hull of the ship was made thicker as well to house the increased room of the Engineering section to be able to accommodate the twin reactor cores. The warp nacelles were designed as being retractable, pulling into the hull of the ship when not in use to reduce the ships target profile from the front, keeping ships from being able to target the warp nacelles as easily. The hull of the ship was created thicker as well with a thin ablative coating applied the entire surface of the ship to help dissipate energy weapons if the shields were to fall during an attack.

Offensive abilities of the ship were designed to be able to take on a small fleet of ships on its own. It was given two forward firing Advanced Burst Fire Type 3 Torpedo Tubes as well as a single tube firing to the aft. These tubes are able to fire three volleys of 5 torpedoes within 1 second. Each torpedo is able to be independently targeted to a different ship if desired due to the enhanced targeting systems. The ships phaser banks were set up in non-traditional format as well. The systems themselves were highly modified Type XII phaser banks, doubling the power output of the traditional Type XIIs. Two separate phaser banks were placed on the Dorsal and Ventral sides of the Saucer Section, allowing for each bank to be able to target independently when the Quantum Armor is not engaged. Phaser banks were placed over and under the warp nacelles as well as a single strip placed Dorsal and Ventral along he Engineering Hull, allowing for even more impressive attack patterns. The main advancement in this ships Offensive power was the design and implementation of the Quantum Armor. The system was designed BY Section 31 for their purposes only. This systems works much like Ablative Armor generators, but only on a much more impressive scale. Replicator systems on the outside of the ship replicate sections of a specially designed armor and place them over 90% of the entire Saucer Section. These armor plates are nearly just over 3 feet thick and made of super dense alloys, impregnated with Phaser emitters. This system not only turns the entire saucer section onto a single massive phaser bank able to emit a single phaser blast from each panel at once, but it is also dense enough to be able to ram clean through an enemy ship without injuring the Hades itself. The entire ship was accommodated with double Structural Integrity Fields as Inertial Dampening Fields to help maintain structural hold as the ship smashed through anything in its path. The Quantum Armor systems are never engaged while the cloaking device is engaged because the power requirements to the saucer section overheats the entire saucer section in a matter of minutes. Even so, the Quantum Armor, combined with the advanced shield systems of the ship allow the Hades Class to be able to wither horrific amounts of incoming fire and still survive a battle.

To this date, only a single Hades Class ship has been built. It was awaiting deployment from the Section 31 shipyards when the entire facility was abandoned during the Great Purge. Hostiles never found the facility though, leaving one of the former federations most potent weapons lifeless and still in its drydock.