"Comman- Sorry, Admiral Mei?" I said. "It's been a long time."
"It is the nature of my job." she said. "We were on a peaceful mission to Neptune, but looks like Alliance is still bitter over the outcomes of the war."
"Did anything interesting happen?"
"As soon as we entered orbit, the Alliance's atmospheric methane extraction station continuously broadcasted messages back home, accusing us of harassing them. I figured it would be best to get out of the region before they called for an Alliance fleet to harass us back. Oh, maybe they even did, but we didn't encounter anyone on our way."
"I see. Now, what were you going to say?"
"Oh, I... Well..." she said. "It is about another interesting thing that happened during our mission."
"Which is?"
"On our way back, two of our seven ships, including the fleet's flagship XS Lodos II, detected a signal from the Kuiper Belt."
"Kuiper Belt itself is a large area. Do you know exactly where?"
"There are a few notable large objects roughly where the signal is coming from, the most notable one being the dwarf planet Makemake."
"I see. What is your point? Do you want us to send a science team to investigate?"
"I was going to ask to take a fleet there myself, sir, rather than a science team." she said.
"We need your expertise in military matters, Mei, that's alright... But please let research teams show their expertise in science matters." I argued.
"You don't understand." she said. "The signal was man made. We could record some of it."
"Man made? From the Kuiper Belt?" I asked. The reason of my shock was that there was no known human settlements beyond Neptune's moon Triton, except for a few scientific observatories, all of which were very well known and documented among the space-faring community. This was mostly due to the Kuiper Belt's sheer distance from Earth and Mars, which were still the only bodies in the Sol System used for common civil accommodation. Using today's technology, traveling from Earth or Mars to any object in the Kuiper Belt took no less than 7 months using civilian-grade propulsion systems, and once there, there was nothing a regular civilian could do, other than perhaps some very unprofitable mining (especially since the asteroid belt and trojan asteroid clusters were much much closer). On the other hand, it took around few weeks using the latest military-grade nuclear salt-water drives, but there was pretty much no reason to have a military presence there to begin with.
"Did you try sending a message back?" I asked.
"No. We couldn't risk letting them know that we are aware of their presence... whoever they are."
"Good, although I personally think it is just some random transmission from an exploration ship, it is okay to be cautious." I said. "Does our Grand Admiral know of this?"
"Yes, sir. However, he said that I had to ask the president about situations that could possibly involve political-"
"Yes, yes." I said. "Why didn't HE call me, though?"
"Maybe he thought the details were not enough?" Mei answered.
"Either case, Admiral..." I said. "Take whatever it is you need, and-" I suddenly had a change of mind. "Actually, wait a minute."
I made a 360 degree turn in my chair while thinking.
"How much Federation crew do you have aboard?" I asked.
"Feds? Uh... I don't exactly know, I have to see again." she said.
"Come see me down here please, Mei." I said. "*cough* Admiral Mei."
"As you wish, Mr. President." she chuckled a little, mocking the title of 'president' in a friendly way. I shouldn't have almost called him Commander, or just by her name. Luckily, that conversation was only between us two.
Mei left her fleet in Martian orbit, and using one of the new Lodos' shuttles, started descending into Mars' atmosphere.
Her ship, the new Lodos, officially XS Lodos II, was a completely new ship built to honor the older LC/M Lodos, which was now an orbital museum dedicated to War of Sol.
In technical terms, the new and old Lodos had no similarities at all - the only thing they had in common was the lack of ships on their classifications. LC/M Lodos was old and outdated, but XS Lodos II was possibly the most technologically advanced spaceship of the mankind.
LC/M Lodos was a light carrier and missile cruiser hybrid, whereas XS Lodos II was an experimental stealth ship. The latter was more of an armed prototype rather than a standardized-assembly warship. It was also much shorter than the old one-kilometer-long LC/M Lodos, only about 300 meters long. However, it was much faster, agile, stealthy and deadly. It's smaller size and highly automated systems had drastically reduced the skeleton crew requirement to an impressive number of just three, and a full crew was comprised of forty five.
Unlike Lodos, Lodos II didn't have a cylindrical shape, because artificial gravity in Lodos II was provided by special wearable accessories with computer-driven electromagnets that simulated gravity, instead of the Coriolis effect. Many small ferromagnetic and diamagnetic devices were carefully arranged behind the walls, above the ceilings and below the floors on the ship's decks to give the entire crew the same amount of gravity, again, unlike the old Lodos. The artificial gravity could be adjusted for the entire ship (from the bridge, by the commanding officer's orders), an entire deck (by local control panels) or a single person (through the personal accessories). This meant extra comfort for regular crew, easy work for engineers/rescue crews and tactical advantage for marines.
XS Lodos II wasn't armored like old Lodos, because it relied on agility and stealth instead. Outer hull of XS Lodos II was covered in a very sophisticated, thin layer of expensive material. It was state-of-art nanotechnology; by changing that material's atomic arrangements using some energy, Lodos could achieve almost complete electromagnetic stealth - almost no light (either optical, infrared or ultraviolet) would be emitted from the ship at that state, and if Lodos II wasn't blocking the light of another object behind itself (which would be a rare case during Lodos II's missions (because it would avoid traveling near such troublesome bodies)), it would practically be undetectable. The stealth system's downsides were the massive energy requirements and the incredible heat buildup during it's use.
The heat buildup could be partially countered by accumulating it on heat sinks, which would then be thrown out into space. The powerful infrared emissions of those incredibly hot heat sinks could then give Lodos's location away, however; so these special heat sinks were designed to change their trajectories using rocket motors every few seconds after their jettison from the ship. That would still give Lodos' presence away, but not it's accurate position or trajectory. Unfortunately, there was no workaround for the energy requirements, so most other subsystems of Lodos would be underpowered during that time period, even the most conservative systems like passive sensors or internal lighting. Other power hungry activities like combat were completely out of the question.
That stealth layer could also be modified for an extreme reflection/emission state, rather than stealth. In this mode, Lodos' hull would reflect most of the beam weapons like an excellent mirror, as well as radiate away lots of internal heat - quite the opposite of stealth mode; making itself very easy to detect and cooling down the ship rapidly. However, the massive energy requirements still applied to this mode as well, and the shielding was no use against projectiles. For charged particles, on the other hand, the ship's magnetosphere-shield would do the job.
Long story short, it was a well protected soup of electric and magnetic fields regulated by powerful computers and odd algorithms.
And quite obviously, all these had come at a very, very big strategic disadvantage to the Republic; the financial cost of this prototype vessel was more than half of our already existing navy after the War of Sol. If we included all the research and development costs as well, it was nearly as expensive as our entire navy BEFORE the war! If it wasn't for the Federation's aid, we could've never completed such a project.
But all these aside, as her commanding officer was walking down the hallway to my office now, I had no regrets. That ship - the only one of it's kind so far - was in the hands of one of the most loyal and capable officers of the navy.