Balmung

The Balmung is a refitted Imperial Legion destroyer, sixteen hundred meters long, by far the oldest vessel in the Meidua Red Company's fleet. It is smaller than the Pharaoh, which exceeds two miles in length. The Schiavona is described as resembling a thinner, meaner version of the Balmung. The ship is designed in the Imperial style: all black gloss, brass, and polished angles, with a blade-like arrowhead shape and slit windows barely as wide as a man's chest along the outer hull. Its bridge uses technical readouts and holograph plates rather than windows. In profile, the Balmung appears knife-edged.

The loading bay is at the rear of the ship beneath the primary drive cluster, with massive doors opening out the rear. It stretches nearly two hundred yards and is nearly fifty deep, with a full wing of lightercraft on gantries above and room for several shuttles on the gleaming black deck. The Balmung houses twelve Sparrowhawk attack lighters in the hangar bay, each massing three times the size of a standard groundcar and roughly eight meters end to end, secured by electromagnetic grapnels on the ceiling. Hadrian keeps Sparrowhawk-class lighters in the Balmung's bays, which he notes he can fly himself.

The hangar bay includes a panopticon -- an armored observation blister high in the far wall -- from which Brux commands during battle. The ship's corridors have ribbed walls and a trapezoidal cross-section profile. Its gravity is described as heavier than Rustam's. The ship has approximately a foot of solid titanium in its bulkheads, with walls of titanium and carbon fiber honeycombed with wiring and fluid conduits. Security cameras line the outer walls between ribs of black metal.

The ship contains a ventral observatory -- a small room at the rear with a glass geodesic bubble looking out onto space -- used for conferences. It also has a cubiculum where the eleven Cielcin prisoners -- including the prisoner Tanaran -- sleep in large fugue creches, each the size of a bull auroch transport, arranged along a curving arc. A hydroponics department houses Valka's study.

Jinan's captain's suite contains a ceramic basin for ritual morning cleansing, incense tapers in a bronze holder, and a red silk curtain from a Pharos bazaar printed with a hero fighting a smoke-belching dragon outside a walking city, the figures done in cloth-of-gold. The ship has an executive dining room with a glass dining table, a holograph plate on the wall, and a small kitchen with a hydroponics section.

The Balmung is the original ship of the Red Company. It was one of the two Norman ships acquired by the fleet since Pharos. Command of the Balmung passed to Bassander, though Jinan Azhar and her Jaddian forces also serve aboard.

The Balmung was folded into the Obdurate's massive holds along with the Pharaoh, bound for a rendezvous point with Raine Smythe's fleet. Hadrian refers to killing men on the Balmung as part of his treasons, and Pallino mentions that Switch stunned Bassander aboard the Balmung during events preceding the ship's transfer. During the negotiations, the Balmung flanked the Obdurate as one of the Imperial destroyers, appearing knife-edged in profile on the holographic tactical display.

Bassander commands the Balmung. Jinan Azhar and her Jaddian forces serve aboard. Brux commands from the hangar bay panopticon during battle. Switch stunned Bassander aboard the Balmung during events preceding its transfer to the Obdurate.