Behemoth-class battlecruiser

The Behemoth-class battlecruiser was a class of terran capital ship and the most common type of battlecruiser in service during the Great War. A noticeable improvement over the older Leviathan-class, it became the mainstay of the terran fleet and remained a recognizable workhorse of the Koprulu sector into the Second Great War. Its most famous example was the Hyperion, and the class took its name, like the biblical Leviathan that preceded it, from scripture rather than the Greek mythology that named the later Gorgon-class and Minotaur-class.

Design and capabilities#

The Behemoth-class was the most common type of battlecruiser during the Great War and represented a noticeable improvement over the Leviathan-class it replaced. It could travel through warp space, operate within atmospheres, and land on planetary surfaces. First Great War-era Behemoths generally carried crews in the range of 500 to 1,000, while by the Second Great War the figure had risen to around 6,000. The class was protected by standard neosteel armor and energy shields, and was less vulnerable to enemy boarding actions than the Leviathan, whose auxiliary craft ports had sat dangerously close to the bridge.

Behemoths were powered by fusion reactors, which were regarded as outdated when compared with the cleaner fusion technology of the later Minotaur-class. Efforts were made to retrofit older vessels, but many ships of the old ex-Confederate guard continued to run antiquated reactors, poorly maintained or jury-rigged for higher output and prone to leaking. The bridges of earlier Behemoths had a low profile, with port and starboard view decks to ensure maximum visibility against ambush, a precaution against attacks such as a sudden Zerg strike.

Armament#

The Behemoth-class was armed with burst laser batteries and nuclear warheads. Older ships lacked side firing arcs for their laser batteries, and the batteries themselves were vulnerable to interceptors. Some warheads were reserved for orbital bombardment rather than ship-to-ship combat, while certain Behemoths carried ten-kiloton tactical warheads designed to serve in both roles.

The Yamato cannon entered service aboard the Behemoth just before the Great War, and to meet its enormous energy requirements the class received the Colossus reactor. A single hit from a Yamato cannon could cripple a Behemoth. Terran Dominion Behemoths of one era required access to physics labs to power up their weapon systems, and the loss of those labs could cripple a fleet. A Behemoth could carry hundreds to thousands of troops and their equipment, deployed by dropships, alongside up to two dozen starfighters such as Wraiths and scoutships carried in its docking bays.

Service history and legacy#

The Behemoth proved an enduring design and continued to serve into the Second Great War, receiving periodic upgrades along the way. Its hammerhead profile inspired succeeding types, and planetary defense forces such as the Knights of Tyrador went on using Behemoths well into the reign of Valerian Mengsk. The class also gave the terran fleet its most storied individual ship in the Hyperion, a souped-up Behemoth able to make warp jumps from within a planetary atmosphere, a feat beyond the standard vessel of the class.

Known Behemoth-class ships included the Antietam, the Bismarck, the Gray Tiger, the Hephaestus, the Huey Long, the Iron Fist, the Jackson V, the Napoleon, the Ragnorak, the Theodore G. Bilbo, the Venerable Monk, and the Hyperion, along with the Norad-series vessels Norad II and Norad III. As successor classes such as the Minotaur-class and the Gorgon-class entered service, the Behemoth's fusion reactors were increasingly seen as outdated, yet the design's longevity kept it in active use across decades of conflict in the Koprulu sector.