The Cobra

The Cobra! What a name for an interatomspheric fighter. One of the things snakes are known for is slithering along the ground. So, why name this fighter after a snake. Well, there are a few reasons. First, if you look at the fighter head on, it almost looks like a cobra snake head. Kinda, and only if you use your imagination. But there are other reasons. Snakes are know for their agility and bite. This is one fighter that has both of those. The final reason is even simpler than that. That's what the team that designed this called it. This fighter is remarkable in so many ways. But first, here are it's stats:

The Cobra Stats:

As you can see from these stats, this fighter is a virtual space based tank. Capable of dealing with just about anything you can send at it. This was exactly the point. At first, the story of this fighter isn't all that unusual from most ordinary fighters. It was designed, by a team for a very specific purpose. It was designed in a time of relative peace, and well after the era of Dr. Bordos. The Lego Federation was strong, and though inter-solar system travel was common. Each solar system had it's own sector. At the time this ship was first put into production, there were 193 sectors that were considered a part of the federation. In that, 26 races lived. Some solar systems were found to be void of life while others weren't really what we would call solar systems all together. They were nebula's and other such things. In this time, warp speed was fast enough that you could cross the federation in about one week at maximum warp. At first, most races feared the federation and resisted joining until diplomacy or war convinced them otherwise. I should clarify though that it wasn't the kinda of war where the federation said, join us or we will destroy you. Rather, either they were attacking the federation and had lost or were being threatened by another neighboring force.

The Cobra was specifically designed to fill a potential tactical void that existed in the Lego Federations forces at that time. It had dozens of fighter ships, but almost all had specific abilities and capabilities. There were explorers, policers, really fast ships, tough ships, ships that had teeth, or were command ships. But no ship that was specifically, and only designed for war. Thus, the concept behind the Cobra was born. A team was assembled of the best power and weapons specialists that were available. It also included in the team a war tactics specialist as well as half a dozen specialists in other important areas. This fighter was meant to be tough, fast, and to have teeth. It enjoyed a few years of service so that it's pilots could get plenty of training and a little bit of experience before a threat never seen before by the federation came knocking on it's door step. A threat that at first, even defeated a whole fleet of Cobra's.

It was a peaceful day in sector 96, on the outrims of the Federations borders when a distress signal was intercepted. It was sent from the Guiya command. This was a race that was not in the federation, but was a peaceful race that traded regularly with the federation. A strange ship had entered their space and when approached, started firing upon anything and everything that approached it. The trouble is, nothing they did could seem to stop it. The Guiya Defense Network, as they called it, sent at first one ship, then three ships, then a fleet of 20 ships, then anything they could muster in order to stop it. The strange thing was that it went straight to the Guiya Defense Network command center. And after running some scans, it left. Except this time it headed straight for the Lego Federation. Imediately command sent an armada of fighters, to intercept this strange vessal. Included in this armada was an entire fleet of 20 Cobra's.

When it finally showed up in the federations backyard, they were surprised in more ways than one. First, they were surprised at the size and look of this ship. It didn't appear to be large enough to even have a cockpit, much less enough power to destroy an entire armada. While, it couldn't destroy the armada, because every ship had it's healing machines and would repair itself almost instantly if damaged. Nothing that was thrown at it seemed to stop it. Finally the armada withdrew, and regrouped. Pure force would not work so they tried diplomacy. But at a distance. They sent peace and good will messages in all known languages and all known communication mediums. Nothing worked! The frustration grew when it's course was comfirmed, Federation Command. What was going on? The Command hoped it would do the same thing as with the Guiya Command. Would it just run some scans and move on? No one could be sure.

The scene shifts to a scientist posted at a station near where the alien ship first entered federation space. His name was, Dr. Hase Edigo and he had been running an analsys since it first came into sensor range. He had also been working on a highly theoretical new shielding system. However, nothing we yet had could generate the power output necessary to accomplish it effectively. He was working on a shooting shield. Instead of just putting an electromagnetic wall up around a ship. This system would arm the ship with several electromagnetic guns that can deflect just about anything. In viewing the tactical scans he took of the intial battle he was able to detect the millions of little elctromagnetic fields that would theoretically exist if such a shield were to be employed. He rushed to tell command and help them develop a defense. They were able to develop a clear disc laser that could shoot a cloaked laser at any target. It could not be detected by any of the federations sensors. But it required a lot of power. There was only one ship with enough power cells to deploy the new technology.

If you were guessing The Cobra, you are right. It turned out to be perfect for the job. It was just fast enough to catch the strange vessal and had just enough power cells to fire the clear disc lasers. So, they went to work fitting the technology on a fleet of Cobras. They finished just in time because even though the alien ship had remained in orbit for almost a week and had shown almost no signs of leaving. It started to enter the atmosphere. It began to launch an all out attack on the Lego Federations command center. No one knew why it had acted differently, but everyone knew that they could only slow it down a little if the new clear disc lasers didn't work. The fleet of Cobra's were sent in and the technology worked marvously. They were able to even disable the ship with out completely destroying it. Once they had effectively disabled it and brought it in for examination, they discovered that it was actually an Namuh Probe from another galaxy. This was an amazing discovery because no one had ever communicated with or been to another galaxy before. This probe was a long ways away from home. You can learn more about the probe itself by clicking on the link above. Oh, and by the way, the Guiya joined the federation after this event making it 27 races and 197 sectors once they added their four sectors to the federation.