CRV-01 Zelanzy

Zelanzy Details: 1 in class

Length: 1000 feet long

Displacement: 200,000 tons

Decks: 8

Speed: 36 knots

Capacity: 350 passengers, 150,000 tons cargo space

Crew: 40

The Zelanzy is currently a one of a kind ship, and is the largest catamaran in the world. This was decided on as the multi-hull ship is intended to be modular in nature, with variant hulls being created and then connected together. There are seven corridors connecting both hulls, along with redundant power, water, and structural components to keep the hulls locked together.

Dexter Hull

The Dexter hull, also the main hull, is the main part of the ship, and if broken in half, the Dexter hull is fully capable of carrying on without the Sinister hull. The core of Dexter Hull is a large self contained arc reactor. This provides the ship with large amounts of power, only requiring the addition of small amounts of sea water and cooling. This commands most of the weight of the hull, along with three electric expansion motors driving three large propellers. The Dexter hull contains the CIC and bridge of the ship, as well as a communications tower, helipad, and quarters for the crew of both hulls, security features, and the rest of the facilities required for an ocean going vessel. The hull has minimal cargo storage space, and what is available is take up by sundry supplies for the crew of the ship.

Sinister Hull

The Sinister hull is almost completely free space, aside from redundant features like an auxiliary bridge, secondary helipad, and the same triple electric expansion motors as the Dexter hull. The Sinister hull does not have any power generating capability, and aside from emergency power and a generator room, fully reliant on the Dexter hull for power. When all 6 of the electric motors are driving their props, the large ship can reach speeds up to 36 knots, even fully laden.

Sinister Hull types

Given the relatively low cost of building a hull, there are a number of secondary hulls that have been proposed, prototyped, and a handful built. Without a Dexter Hull, these are glorified barges, and have been considered a waste of corporate resources. Or they are until a strange mission arises, and the appropriate hull can be linked up with the Zelanzy main hull and sent out.

Cargo/Container - proposed - the bulk cargo sinister hull could carry up to 100,000 tons of materials. While the fusion powered Zelanzy could haul this with relative ease, the BOD has likened it to hooking a Uhaul trailer to a Bugatti Veyron. Plausible but a waste of resources. A secondary proposal has the Dexter hull mated to a Sinister hull on both sides as a trimaran, with 9 motors and a 200,000 ton cargo capacity. The only benefit to this is the carbon free powerplant, but given the cost of the ship and reactor, it would have to haul gold, exotic cars, or some other absurd cargo to justify the costs of the ship.

Refinery - built - the refinery hull takes on crude oil from tankers, rigs, or anything capable of pumping to it, runs it through it's 10 story refinery towers and pumps gasoline out into waiting gas tankers.

Medical - built - the Medical hull is a fully equipped hospital, with 1000 beds, 12 operating theatres, full on board laboratory and diagnostics facilities, and a gas plant for generating it's own oxygen supply.

Scientific/Biological - classified - Similar to the Medical hull, the Scientific/Biological hull would have far fewer mundane facilities like beds and ORs, and would have more labs and research facilities. This has become something of a conspiracy boondoggle. Critics of Aegis and the Kingdom Medical Combine have claimed that the medical research hull is nothing more than a floating viral weapons lab built to exploit international maritime laws, providing illegal mind control chemicals to various governments to placate the population, as well as creating the new strains of influenza to keep Big Vaccine in power.

Scientific/Physics - classified - considered akin to the Enterprise, this hull is a floating research center, complete with miniature particle acclerator, high energy research facilities, and other such black box goodies. Like the Bio hull, this hull has been accused of being used for creating mind control beams, death rays, and even universe resetting events, mimicking the claims that CERN has been altering the timeline of Earth.

The Truth Behind the Hulls

The secret behind the Zelanzy's modular hull design is far less conspiratorial than many would want to believe. The ship does operate in international waters, and by not being registered in the US, it is considered exempt from American federal regulations. This means that the EPA and OSHA have no legal rights aboard the ship. Efforts to build new refineries are stymied by local protests and the EPA, the same goes for building things like high energy laboratories, and other such facilities. The mobile hulls can be built and activated as needed. When not needed, they can still be hooked up to local power grids in the harbors they are parked in, and their facilities can still operate.

The unfortunate element of this arrangement is that the Zelanzy and it's component hulls are not allowed to dock in American harbors. This has been considered a bit problematic as they are built in the US, and in times of crisis, the medical facilities offered by the ship are legally not allowed to be used by the United States.

Author's Note

The Zelanzy is currently being used in my home game as a medical research vessel responding to a viral discovery in Antarctica. It is set in a near modern setting, the US is still the US, but there are fusion reactors (disputed legality, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the Dept of Energy have locked horns with the company that build them, oversight versus intellectual property) androids, etc.