Glais - Class Frigate

Small bioships of the HF, grown and built by the UAC. 

The Glais - class are an oddity among Harkas bioships. They have no weapons, and resemble a large jellyfish with a diameter of about 2 km. The Glais - class has a very large number of tentacles that are very strong and able to sharpen the tips and allow it to penetrate thin metal by stabbing it. Though this will not go through the heavy armour of a warship, they are meant to exploit various weak points that are not normally targeted in a space battle, including gun barrels and RCS thrusters. It will then penetrate deep into the target ship, using superconducting channels within the tentacles to redirect the ship's power from it's generator to the bioship, leaving the target completely powerless. This reduces the wartime antimatter consumption that the HF has to supply to it. It sends electricity into a large capacitor gland and the energy is slowly used by the bioship before energy gained through the antimatter annihilation core. While tentacles are inside the target, they can strike other objects that are not the generators in order to cause even more damage, depressurizing many rooms and likely killing most of the crew. The HF sees this doctrine as highly gruesome because it is rare for any survivors to escape. As such the ship is also somewhat limited in use by the Hyperion Ethics Committee, and is not often seen in use outside of virtual universe simulations. The Glais has no digestive system, so it will not eat any crew members, but they are sometimes stabbed anyway.

It also must get close to the target in order to strike it like this. It usually achieves this through a large Cloaking Device-like organ deep in the bioship itself. This requires a lot of energy, especially to hide from a large line of large enemy ships. It also requires a relatively fast acceleration in order to quickly reach an enemy.

It is crewed by a number of harkas who reside in a large crew chamber inside the bioship. The bioship would not take hits very easily at all, and only the crew chamber has armour in order to give the crew time to evacuate in case it is hit. Any round that penetrates a Glais' skin is likely to damage an important organ. The ship requires a skilled crew because of its weak armour and extremely aggressive doctrine. These skilled crew members are usually trained in a virtual universe simulation. Although the harkas inside it determine where the penetrating tentacles are sent, the bioship's brain controls the tentacles because they are too complex to be controlled easily by the harkas themselves. 

The Glais is rarely used by the HF in a real war. The doctrine that this bioship was designed for is significantly different from that of the rest of the HF military but it may be used in a support role in many wars and battles. They are usually used to cripple a single, highly powerful ship with few escorts or to destroy an enemy artillery line or reserves. They are rarely seen when the HF knows the enemy has a large number of cloaking inhibition machines.