Moirai-class battlecruiser: exclusive capital ship of the Dominion Special Forces

The Moirai-class battlecruiser was a terran capital ship developed for the Dominion Special Forces, the elite covert operations branch of the Terran Dominion. Commissioned during the reign of Emperor Valerian Mengsk, the class emerged from a lengthy research and testing period as an upgrade over its predecessors in the long line of terran battlecruisers. Unlike earlier classes, which spread across Dominion fleets and beyond, the Moirai was made exclusive to the Special Forces, and its design placed such demands on shipboard power that a new variant of fusion core had to be engineered simply to accommodate it.

An elite branch and its exclusive warship#

The Dominion Special Forces were an elite branch of the armed forces of the Terran Dominion, devoted to covert operations and specialist assignments. The branch was brought in to make the best of bad situations, and its personnel were routinely sent into engagements where they were outnumbered. To compensate, the Special Forces were outfitted with some of the best technology and hardware the Dominion had to offer, from soldiers drawn among the Dominion's finest to high tech structures engineered for stealth, durability, and performance under the most extreme conditions.

Emperor Valerian Mengsk himself oversaw vast research grants and reforms to the organization, and it was under this program of imperial investment that the Moirai-class battlecruiser was developed. Where the wider Dominion military flew the established battlecruiser classes of the Koprulu Sector, the Moirai belonged to the Special Forces alone. It stood among the exclusive vehicles of the branch's arsenal, a capital ship reserved for a force whose work was rarely acknowledged and whose operations demanded equipment no other formation possessed.

Development and testing#

The Moirai-class did not enter service quickly. The design underwent a lengthy research and testing period before it was fielded, and when it finally emerged it represented an upgrade over the battlecruiser classes that had come before it. That exclusivity was preserved after its introduction: the Moirai was never distributed to the regular fleets, remaining the property of the Special Forces throughout its service.

The protracted development reflected the technical problem at the heart of the design. Battlecruiser research in the Dominion era was conducted through the fusion core, a facility that harnessed nuclear power and antimatter to increase battlecruiser capabilities. Work within a fusion core was extremely delicate, and the Moirai pushed that work further than any standard installation could support. Fielding the new class meant re-engineering the infrastructure beneath it before the ships themselves could fly.

The fusion core breakthrough#

To accommodate the Moirai-class, the Dominion Special Forces utilized a variant of the fusion core with quadruple the power output of the standard model, achieved without any increase in its heat signature. That combination outpaced anything the Dominion had fielded before. Standard fusion cores already channeled nuclear energy and antimatter into battlecruiser development, and multiplying their output fourfold while holding thermal emissions flat was an achievement of a different order from the periodic refinements earlier classes had received.

The suppressed heat signature suited the branch that commissioned it. The Special Forces built their installations for stealth as much as durability, and a power plant that quadrupled output without betraying itself thermally fit an organization whose missions depended on going unnoticed. The enhanced cores were used to field the branch's battlecruisers, and they joined a roster of improved Special Forces infrastructure that included upgraded reactors, tech labs, and engineering bays fitted with advanced artificial intelligence.

Heritage of the battlecruiser line#

The Moirai descended from a lineage of capital ships stretching back to the early days of the Terran Confederacy. Battlecruisers had fought through the Guild Wars, when space engagements were decided by capital ships and medium sized gunships, and the type survived the rise of anti capital starfighters such as the Wraith by adapting to carry strike craft of its own. By the Dominion era the battlecruiser remained an integral part of terran space forces, serving as a general purpose warship and as a command ship during extended campaigns.

Every class in the line shared a common anatomy. Battlecruisers were armed with lasers and protected by neosteel armor, mounting twin cannon laser batteries across the hull for aerial defense and surface bombardment, with air to ground guns that used electromagnetic coils to increase the potency of their shots. Gravity accelerators and warp drives were fitted to all of them, granting faster than light travel, while antigravity technology kept them aloft in atmosphere. The ships were not unlike self contained cities, housing crews that ranged from four thousand to seven thousand, and in emergencies their complements could abandon ship in jump pods built to keep crew alive in deep space for days.

The Moirai arrived at the end of a long succession of designs. The Leviathan-class had largely been supplanted by the Behemoth-class by the start of the twenty sixth century, and the Behemoth in turn gave way to the Hercules, the Minotaur, and the Gorgon-class, the most powerful warship ever fielded by the terrans of the Koprulu Sector. During the End War the Dominion Fleet flew the Sovereign-class alongside the forces of Mira Han. The Moirai, developed afterward under Valerian's reign, continued the naming tradition that ran through the line: where the Leviathan and Behemoth took their names from ancient scripture, the Hercules, Minotaur, Gorgon, and Moirai all drew theirs from the myths of old Earth Greece.

Among the Special Forces arsenal#

The Moirai served within an arsenal assembled to the same exacting standard. The Special Forces modified their cyclones and hellions to suit specific environments and missions, and applied the latest advancements in neosteel to field more complex plating on units such as thors and liberators. Their ravens were the pride of the force, reputed to be able to hear a Kel-Morian miner whispering two kilometers underground. After one covert operation ended in considerable losses, the branch's leadership approved the use of medivac dropships on a greater number of assignments.

The branch's ground infrastructure matched its fleet. Its missile turrets were more powerful than the standard pattern, its planetary fortresses mounted advanced cannons whose recoil required anchors drilled three times deeper to keep the structures from skidding backward with every shot, and its sensor towers were so sensitive that one once registered a large moth, an incident that led to the destruction of a Mar Sara trading post and a scaling back of tower sensitivity. Most reconnaissance was handled from orbit through advanced orbital commands, to the relief of the ground forces usually assigned to such work.

The Special Forces did not stop improving after the Moirai entered service. Following the End War, the branch took part in the recovery of xel'naga construct remnants, work that led to further advancements in neosteel design, and it pilfered allied protoss nanotech to upgrade its tech labs. The Moirai-class flew at the center of that arsenal, the exclusive capital ship of a force that answered directly to the emperor's program of reform and fought its wars out of sight.