Navy of the Black Sun

The Navy of the Black Sun (sometimes NBS) is the elite navy of the Shekeshta Hegemony. Only Shekeshta personnel are admitted and the Navy is provided with the most advanced and effective Hegemony technology.

Mission
Official remit of the NBS is to protect and further the interests of the Hegemony, providing effective force projection or security for Hegemony space. It is to use the support of the Shekeshta Auxiliary Navy and counter the space forces of hostile factions.

Organisation
The NBS maintains 3,400 active spacecraft. The number of personnel is in the hundreds of thousands and support staff number in the millions. It is internally divided into the crewmen and 'espatiers'; infantry under the command of the Navy.

Traditionally, the Blood-King is the commander-in-chief of the NBS. Ranks are as follows, with espatier equivalents appended where they exist:
 * High Admiral/-
 * Admiral/-
 * Commodore/-
 * Captain/-
 * Commander/Commander
 * Sub-Commander/Lt. Commander
 * Lieutenant/Lieutenant
 * Sub-Lieutenant/Second Lieutenant
 * Ensign/-
 * Midshipman/-
 * Chief Warrant Officer/Chief Warrant Officer
 * Warrant Officer/Warrant Officer
 * Chief Petty Officer/Sergeant Major
 * Petty Officer/Master Sergeant
 * Sub-Petty Officer/Staff Sergeant
 * Leading Spaceman/Corporal
 * Spaceman/Private

Training
80% of personnel accepted into the NBS are veterans of the SAN, with at least five years experience. These personnel will undergo a further year of general training and two more years of specialist training if required.

The remainder of accepted recruits have finished within the top 10% of their military academy. These individuals will be required to do two years of general training and another two years of specialist training if this is required.

Vessels
The spacecraft of the NBS are larger, more powerful, and better equipped than comparable SAN vessels. Design takes into account durability, strategic and tactical manouevrability, and offensive capability.

Propulsion is achieved through 3He-D MC fusion. Vessels can have a sublight delta v of over 40% of light speed. FTL travel uses the shift-drive, a system invented convergently to that of The Sequence that moves the ship partially into one of Omni 01's unobservable dimensions to allow it to reach many times c.

The general structure of vessels is based on armour-grade steel. Ship hulls use composite armour, in which sandwiched ceramics and steel are used in order to lessen the effectiveness of enemy fire. Points which will be exposed to high thermal gradients are protected by heatproof ceramics and high-insulation polymer/co-polymer mixtures with added ceramic and inorganic components that can resist temperatures of many thousands of degrees for an extended period.

Point-defence and sensors are attached to the isogrid structural complex. High-ROF cannon are used with megawatt-class lasers and missile pods for interception and destruction of incoming projectiles. Shift-field generators are also attached- by diverting energy from enemy weaponry into an unobservable dimension, these can lessen the energy of an impactor or incident DEW by ten times. The effectiveness of the shift-field declines as distance from the ship increases, as per the inverse-square law.

NBS vessels rarely set down, instead using shuttles and dropships to transport personnel, fuel, and materiel.