Gas-Leviathans

"The majority of people in the Helium Co-Operatives spend most of their lives working on Leviathan-Class vessels, the monumental ships that collect resources from the gas-giant's atmosphere. Each ship was nearly as large as some of the Union Navy's cruisers, kept aloft by a quintet of exposed aneutronic-reaction thrusters and holding two detachable shuttles to ferry freshly harvested gasses up to the refineries in orbit. Much more than mere ships, they were the tiny cities and homelands that made up the Co-Operatives, each one filled as much with culture and folklore as they were with the stuff that kept the whole colony alive."

— Rosalina Toro - Reflections of Parime, Revised Edition.

"The true stroke o' genius about the leviathans is that they're as self-sufficient as any of the colonies on Loum, and not much higher maintenence. We're surrounded by our main power-sources, the size of the tanks give us more than enough room to fit all the needed amenities on top, and there's always enough bored crew to keep things running without much complaint. You'll see a lot of funnies in the news about how we live like rats - and one look at my quarters might prove that right - but even the Vaduz can't argue that life on a Leviathan's a lot less stressful than their stations, even if the higher gravity does murder on them."

— Crewman Yamakawa "Trapper" Archontí, circa 5002u

Designation

GVSH

Manufacturer

The Helium Co-Operatives

Width

181 meters

Length

606 metres

Height

222 meters

Weight

Aprox 419,000 metric tons

Speed

50.1 km/h cruising-speed, 68.9 km/h emergency

Complement / Crew

Aprox 550 Personel, Potential 1,100 Emergency-Compliment