The fast, maneuverable, rough-and-ready LC-15 Wasp served as the mainstay of the Feron fleets during the War. The Feron’s carrier-driven naval doctrine relies on swarming the battlefield with overwhelming numbers of small fighter, bomber, and boarding craft to overcome the Malleon ships’ superior arms and armor. The Wasp became the centerpiece of this strategy because its balance between carrying capacity and speed proved ideal against the Venture-class battleships that served as the backbone of the Malleon Navy: An individual Wasp would lose to a Venture-class, but tandem attacks where a second or third Wasp could exploit the battleships’ blind spots devastated the Malleon Navy during the early years of the War.

Feron capital ships have a segmented “totem pole” design that reflects the Feron caste system.  From the Wasp’s top to bottom, 740 yards, there’s (1) the heavily armored command and engineering segment, run by Avidae senior officers, (2) a long honeycomb of hangar bays, segregated by caste, with the Avidae hangars on the upper decks, the Klykovy and Makhla hangars on the upper-middle decks, and the Naharad hangars comprising the bottom half of the hangars, and (3) a weapon segment consisting of a long, detachable “shock stinger” designed to ram and pierce enemy hulls then use EMP blasts to disrupt enemies’ internal systems to help clear the way for boarding parties. These decks are circular and stacked vertically. (If you’re looking at a Wasp horizontally, the “top” segment with the engines is the stern or rear of the ship, with the weapon segment at the bow or front, pointed at the enemy. The Feron, however, view space combat in vertical terms: The command segment of the ship is “up” and the weapon segment pointed at enemy target is always “down.” The Wasp’s artificial gravity is in this orientation.) Stock Wasps are lightly armed, with a number of light turrets and point-defense cannons on the command segment, plus more point-defense cannons in the hangar segment, although with a smaller ratio of point-defense cannons to hangar openings as you descend from the upper caste to the lower caste decks. As the Feron captured or destroyed Malleon and Isan vessels, they used salvaged Malleon turrets and Fresnel armor to upgrade their ships—only Malleon turrets are effective against advanced Malleon capital-ship armor—and built couplings to attach Isan modules. As a result, the upgraded, veteran Wasps are easily distinguishable by their patchwork appearance compared to stock Wasps fresh from the shipyards. Wasp engines have one large, oval-shaped exhaust port at the top of the command segment: When viewed in vertical “totem pole” orientation, the energy plume coming out of the exhaust port resembles a large signal fire shooting from the top of the “totem pole.” 

Feron military doctrine revolves around the concept of fulgressus, lightning-fast swarm assaults designed to disorient and overwhelm the enemy. Rather than catapult its support craft a few at a time from a flight deck like Malleon battleships, Feron carriers like the Wasp are designed to flood the battlefield by pouring its craft out all at once through the honeycomb’s many hangars, using disposable rocket boosters to reach assault speed. As the Wasp empties out, it closes the distance to the enemy to use its stinger weapon, presenting another deadly threat. Fulgressus disrupts enemy plans and formations by forcing enemy ships to scramble a hasty, often-ineffective defense, especially when multiple Feron ships attack, because a Malleon ship can only track one target for a full broadside. Because suichodori, the Malleon’s naval doctrine, maximizes its battleships’ effectiveness by organizing them into formations capable of controlling the battlefield with multi-ship firing solutions, a well-executed fulgressus strike at key ships can break that formation and force the Malleon ships-of-the-line to fight by herself. Because fulgressus focuses on sending enough force at an enemy rather than on the specifics of allied ship formations, and on singling out and swarming targets of opportunity, Feron ships work more effectively the more chaotic a battlefield becomes.

Pound for pound, the Wasp was the most effective ship in the War because Wasps allowed Feron admirals to use fulgressus to its full potential. While only about a quarter the size of a Malleon Venture-class, groups of three or even two Wasps could take one down, attacking from multiple angles so that only one Wasp at any time was in line-of-sight for a broadside. These attacks could often disable a Venture­-class in exchange for a much less valuable Wasp. Against unprepared Malleon admirals, this numerical advantage would cascade until a battle that seemed even on paper would become a rout.

Sometimes these tandem attacks could even leave the targeted Wasp damaged but still capable of fighting. One of the keys to the Wasp’s success is the redundant, cellular design of Feron systems: Most of the length of the ship is a honeycomb of small hangars, each with a web of connections to adjoining sections. As the “honeycomb” segment takes fire, bulkheads seal off critically damaged sections—jettisoning them if necessary—and power and networking are rerouted through undamaged pathways. This allows the Wasp to continue fighting even after the honeycomb segment is severely damaged. Wasps can also jettison the stinger segment entirely, which often becomes necessary once it’s embedded in an enemy ship. Rather than try to save damaged Wasps, admirals would keep fighting until all that’s left was the command segment and a mostly destroyed honeycomb segment. An admiral who survived commanding a Wasp that was disabled in the process of taking down a Venture-class would receive the Order of Tonitrus, and the honor of joining the “tonitri” further encouraged Wasp admirals’ aggressive tactics.