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The ship that would became the Syndicliga flagship Sirene is an aging underworld copycat of the famous LNS Spyglass, constructed together from inferior components and a less-than-intuitive understanding of the original hull by unspecified third parties within the Kansas system, in the years immediately following the Nomad War – neither the Hellfire Legion, Vagrant Raiders, or Lane Hackers have claimed responsibility for the hull. Whilst externally comparable to the original model, the vessel generated an unacceptable volume of electromagnetic noise from its jammers, effectively nullifying its strategic utility. What logs of its successive crews remain from the era of its construction complain of continuous, sleep-depriving headaches, equipment failures and even auditory hallucinations – even strokes and cellular damage in areas of the vessel where gauss exposure exceeded human toleration by several thousand times. Amidst the few circles who kept record of the unlucky ship’s existence, the vessel gained a reputation as a Sirian Marie Celeste, doomed to bring ill-fates to whoever boarded her decks. Alternately junkerised together by squatters or robbed for components by scavengers, the ship drifted abandoned within the borderworlds for nearly twenty years, drifting out of the unstable jump connection into the Cologne system, where its chimerical jammers, idly operational since the ship’s abandonment, started to compromise Unioner patrols in the region. Pilots within the belt would report hearing a ‘siren’s song’ of noise as comlinks and neuralnet navigation failed, leading to a massive increase in Unioner arrests and interceptions by the Rheinland Federal Police. As the MND mounted an investigation into the hull, the Unioners likewise attempted to suppress the legend of the much-mythologised hulk that lead unwitting Unioners to their doom, fearing a collective decay of morale.

In 823, the BDM successfully recovered the Sirene by cross-referencing the narratives of the captured Unioners against one another, impounding the hulk within the Thuringia naval reserve for future disassembly. Languishing in the Thuringia reserve yards, Captain Lutz Gilger of the MND, delegated to oversee the project, believed that the vessel’s extensive sensor arrays would prove invaluable after the initiation of conflict between Rheinland and the Gas Mining Guild within the depths of the crow nebulae. Gilger. This point of view made Gilger extremely unpopular with those who would rather have seen the navigational hazard reduced to its structural members, however, Gilger persisted, re-arming the vessel with flak and Cerberus cannons in demonstration of its strategic utility. Unfortunately for Captain Gilger, the Unioner investigation into the object had successfully identified the hull as the cause of the interference. Hoping that a successful capture of the Siren’s Song would sabotage the cult of paranoia developing within the Unioners, the Direktorate mounted, under the aggressive-ex Schwartzwald commander Erika Abendroth, a daring raid into the naval reserve, successfully capturing the vessel whilst local defence forces were sorting out to prepare for coming strikes into Sigma 13. Commandeering an experimental Jump Drive carrier extracted from the League of Hyperspace People, Abendroth successfully abducted the hulk into the protective fields of the independent worlds, whereupon Unioner bomber craft pelted Gilger’s newly configured point defence batteries into submission. Overjoyed at Abendroth’s successeses, the Liga quickly began stripping the vessel’s systems, hoping to turn the warship into a figurehead for the cosmicist movement that favoured the spaceborne expansion of Unioner society over lobbying for the development of Unioner planetary interests. Crudely completing the battleship’s re-armament, the Sirene was positioned as a floating battery in Pacifica low orbit, one part deterrent, and two part propaganda statement.



The Unioners have found the Sirene extremely adaptable to their strategic imperatives – far more so than the half handful of oxidising, chimerical Bayern battleships in their possession that, despite their age, possess far more sophisticated anti-tamper systems than are present within the Sirene. Whilst the Unioners field sufficient shipyard capacity to in theory construct indigenous battleships, a lack of any planetary industry makes it more fiscally cost effective for the Unioners to restrict their largest ship classes to the modification of existing hulls. Due to Sirene’s adaptable nature, the warship has repeatedly been the subject of cutting-edge Unioner overhauls to her offensive, defensive, power and propulsion systems, to the point where as much as thirty five percent of the battleship’s original internals have been replaced by Unioner patches and improvements.

The ship is considered part prestige command and part drudgery for the few gifted Star Arbiters who command her hull, yet remains notoriously unpopular with her crews – who, despite added insulation and the mending of many of the battleship’s worst defects, experience health conditions within the machine spaces of the Sirene’s stern. There remains a pervasive rumour – that the Direktorate has struggled to suppress, that the ship is uniquely vulnerable to invasive electronic warfare when the vessel’s jammers are offline, in part due to the total absence of the same anti-tamper systems that make the Sirene so invaluable to the Unioners.

- Longstanding tensions between the Separatists and the Unioners inflame into a surprise hot war. Pacifica is unprepared to defend itself and is near-immediately blockaded by the Separatists. The Unioners begin to assemble a task force to relieve Pacifica.

- Pacifica is struck by an NEMP bomb fired by the Hellfire Legion and sanctioned by the Separatists. The Unioners conclude that the task force will not arrive in time to evacuate the station.

- The Unioners decide to jury-rig the Sirene with a crash-developed hyper-efficient jump drive module. Development begins on the drive.

- The Drive system is steadily fleshed out as specific requirements are isolated. External suppliers are dragged into the program.

- In the meantime, the Unioner diplomatic corps labour to expedite the program through the acquisition of material and technical assistance via third parties.