leviathan
noun
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Several men walked through the cold, sterile halls. Three wore crisp, clean military uniforms, laden with medals, bars, and rank insignias. The fourth wore a simple white coat over jeans and a t-shirt. The three generals looked like they would rather be anywhere else. Their guide looked incredibly pleased with himself.
He was busy congratulating himself for his own work. The officers looked unimpressed by the man’s self-important rambling. One of them was very tempted to just hit the smaller man. He figured none of his colleagues would mind. But they needed him to explain what they had been summoned for.
“Oh, trust me, generals, once you see what we’ve built here, you’ll be begging to increase our funding. We’re changing the face of warfare forever. Really, beyond the cutting edge stuff here.”
One of the generals, General Leeson, finally snapped. “Oh just shut up already, would you? You keep saying how great everything is, but so far, all we’ve seen is hallways.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I know. But there’s a reason for that. You see, we need a lot of space to build, so we’re quite far underground. We should be at the main building area in a minute or so.”
The generals grumbled, but withheld further questions. Their guide stopped in front of a door. The only door they had come across since entering the top secret facility. A smile even larger than usual crossed the young scientist’s face.
“Now, gentlemen, let me give you a rundown of the projects that are going on here. I don’t need to tell you three, but there are three main areas of combat, land, sea, and air, right? Well, we’re working on three projects that will allow us to dominate all three of them with only a handful of vehicles. We’re calling them Leviathan, Behemoth, and Dragon. So far, Behemoth and Dragon are only in the planning stages, mainly due to lack of funding. But Leviathan is in a working prototype phase. It still has a lot of work to be done, but it’s sea worthy, and all the main facilities are working within expectations.”
“Very dramatic. But I hardly see the point of us being here. If all you’re doing is building a new warship, then it hardly warrants us being here.”
“Oh, oh, no. Leviathan isn’t just another warship. It’s a whole fleet by itself. It’s far greater than anything ever produced by man. Here, let me show you.”
He opened the door, revealing a vast shipyard. The place was big enough to fit three skyscrapers laid end to end with room to spare. And resting in that vast space was a ship unlike anything the generals had ever seen. It looked like a combination of a sea plane, an aircraft carrier, and a Star Destroyer. It’s triangular main body rested on three massive floatation devices, currently aided by supports built into the shipyard. It’s deck looked big enough to have four or five football games going on at once, while a command tower the size of a skyscraper rose into the air. And the thing was loaded with more weapons than a small army. Massive heavy cannons, thousands of high caliber gun turrets, rows of AA guns, and even a few missile platforms were all present.
One of the generals let out a low whistle. “Well, it certainly looks impressive.”
“As good as it looks, it performs even better. This thing is a seafaring fortress. No modern weapons short of a nuke will get through the Leviathan’s armor. It would take a concentrated salvo of the best missiles in the world just to put a dent in it. And boy does it have some serious firepower. What you see is just the tip of the iceberg. The Leviathan’s effective range is half a hemisphere. And that’s just the big guns. If you take the guided missiles into account, it’s a lot farther.”
“This ship has ICBMs?”
“About fifty of them, yes. Or, it will once it’s armed. Right now all the missile bays are empty.”
“Can it even float?”
“Of course it can. It has dozens of ways to regulate its buoyancy. It’ll float like a champ. It’s not fast, but it doesn’t need to be. Considering its range and the amount of planes it can dock, it barely needs to move at all. And don’t worry about fuel either. While it can run on good ‘ol deasil, that’s just the backup. It mainly runs of a combination of solar and hydro power. Solar is obvious. Thing’s got a solar far built right into it. And below, it takes in sea water and uses that to power itself. It has agricultural bays, recreational bays, everything a man or woman could want. It’s practically a floating, battle ready city. In short, generals, the Leviathan is completely self-sustaining. Sure, it’ll need to dock every now and then for maintenance and crew exchanges, but it can go for years without seeing land, easy.”
The generals looked at the ship. Each of them was thinking what such a vessel could do. How it looked like it could demolish most navies on Earth by itself. The three of them looked at each other.
“How long until its complete?”
“It’s ready for an initial test run right now. All the systems left to do are ancillary. The critical systems should be good to go.”
“Excellent. And you said you have plans for two more of these?”
“The Behemoth crawling fortress and the Dragon airship, yes. If you agree to further funding, we’ll finish the Leviathan within a year, and then get to work on Behemoth. Dragon’s going to be a little harder, so it’s going to take more time and money. But yeah, we can get all three built.”
“Good. Show us the interior. We’ll work out the details later.”
The scientist’s smile should not have been able to grow as much as it did. “Wonderful. I knew you’d make the right choice. Now, the tour, right. Come on then. It’s a big ship, and there’s lots to see. Don’t worry, I promise you’ll like all of it.”
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Fortunately, something like this is probably not possible to build. The size of it would make it too expensive, and it might have a lot more trouble floating that I let on. Plus, the resource cost of it would be astronomical. Really, not possible to build with our current technology. And for that, I am very grateful.
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