The Captain's sword (Hellfire 'Darkness Falls')
Hellfire the Captain’s Sword
The Captain’s sword is not anything you would be able to get your hand on from any military body or weapons specialist, it is his own hand crafted weapon. He constructed the sword back on Earth when he was only eighteen years old. Captain Sharman or Chris as he was known back then always wanted to travel the stars. But he had already heard how dangerous space travel was; even if you were not part of any military body. So the sword was a sort of protection project for if he ever made it to the stars.
The sword its self is much more than just a steel blade and plain handle; it is in fact a very powerfully charged energy weapon. The sword has two blades instead of one that sit in parallel sink alongside each other, with nothing but a fifteen millimetre gap between them both. The blades have been hand cut from scrap steel acquired from a nearby metal works. They were then tempered using a laser heat welder, large hammer and a bath of cold water. Each blade was folded one hundred and fifty times before it was polished to a mirror finish, then the blades were fitted into the technologically filled handle. The blades are separated from the outer handle by the swords hilt. This part of the sword is a very important for the safety of the user and is made up from three separate pieces. The two metal outer plates and one non conductive carbon based alloy plate that is sandwiched between the two outer panels; this provides an electrical buffer stopping the user from being electrocuted by the weapon when it is active.
The handle is again made up from a complex mixture of electrical cables, small feedback power storage units and safety feedback regulator systems. This system allows the sword to absorb large amounts of power and feeds the excess back into the swords feedback power storage units. The storage units then holds the power until it is needed to run the sword off at a later time.
The main power storage unit is located and pretty much makes up the swords pommel. This unit is quite large and heavy; but it does do what the pommel was originally designed to do for a sword. The weight of the pommel gives the sword a perfectly balanced state, making the swords blades feel lighter and ultimately making the sword easier to fight with, and for longer periods of time. The main coating of the outer handle is made up from the same carbon based alloy and again this is to help make the active sword safer to use.
Why take a sword into space?
Well there are several reasons why having a weapon around in space is a good idea. Firstly space travel can be highly dangerous; especially when venturing onto new worlds, alien colonies and ships. Then there is the need to defend yourself aboard your own ship from boarding parties, hostile alien life forms and from the occasional pirate attack.
From the very beginning of human space travel; well from the point when we left our own solar system, all media bodies have reported ships being attacked, colonies being plundered and this doesn’t even mention the wars that have been fort as we have spread out to the stars. All of these events have lead to out breaks of violence aboard space ships, stations and colonies. Early ships were not as sturdy as the one’s mentioned in Hellfire ‘Darkness Falls’ and were in affect quite fragile from both the outer structure and inner workings. This meant that projectile weapons could not be used aboard space ships for the fear of causing a hull breach that could not be fixed. This led the military to arm their crews with a selection of non projectile weapons, such as knifes, swords and stun sticks. This kind of armament seemed to work well against most hostile races that used a combination of both sharp and blunt weapons on their attacks.
But still the reason the Captain decided to use a sword instead of any other type of hand weapon was because he used to sword fight when he was younger and by having this skill, it seemed like the perfect choice of weapon.
The idea behind the energy sword was a simple one. The sword could be used as a conventional weapon in any fight; but it could also be used to defend against charged energy weapons or stun sticks. The sword when active can also be used to destroy electrical terminals, power generator and so on. But at its most simple function; the sword when active gives the user the upper hand against much larger and stronger foe. All in all this makes the Captain’s sword a most desirable weapon to have around when a fight breaks out.
