Eminence Hauler: Overview

The second largest aerial transport in GDS, used for transporting thousands of legionnaires en mass anywhere in the world. Given the size of the aircraft, it has onboard engineers and mechanics, medical personnel for the passengers, and security personnel since everyone knows the Vanguards are going to get bored halfway through the trip and try to get creative.

There’s nothing really to say here about the design phase or how it came about. We simply needed a mass transport for legionnaires and got to work on just that. We took all of our lessons from the Apocalypse Taxi and made efficiency cuts where possible, so while this is still the second largest transport we’ve got its nowhere near the same level of ridiculous overhead. A few major focuses we had were crew and passenger comfort given this is meant for intercontinental travel, and that meant ensuring it had all the facilities that kind of stuff would require.

Lounge areas, bunks, restrooms, break areas, two kitchens, three armories, two mechanic’s shops, by all means this is like a war ready cruise ship. We even spent extra to ensure the armories are triple reinforced in the hull, not to defend against AA, but to contain the explosion when some Vanguard inevitably oopsies a hand grenade due to turbulence.
Most of it was done, and then Varith showed up and wanted to redo the entire fucking interior to match his design “ vision ” or some such bullshit. It was superficial stuff like wood walls, carpeting, light fixtures and other stuff, but still annoying as hell.
_{You should now understand why I sit in my office late at night, drinking and screaming. – Dr. Baddarick}

An Eminence Hauler isn't as large of a pain to deploy as an Apocalypse Taxi but Christ above is it still a chore.
We have to wrangle crew from the Security, Medical, and Mechanical legions for each flight and that takes way longer than it has any right to. Nobody wants to be a “permanent flight attendant” so we have to keep getting new people or rotating them out frequently. I get that, but at the same time fuck you for keeping me at my desk past midnight anytime we need these things because some SNCO in the Mechanical Legion won't pick up his info slate.

These don't pack armor as thick as the Apocalypse Taxi, so escort forces are a must including interceptors, gunships, bombers, and aerial drone systems. But we keep it packed with enough counterintelligence hardware to make even the latest detection systems have a hard time seeing it. I'm acting as if the thunderous engines weren't enough to tip the enemy off, but these aren't stealth craft. I don't care that you know an Eminence Hauler is en route, if anything that counts as a deterrent towards enemy advancement. Aeroprene Thread ports were added to counter missiles and other such projectiles, but like with an Apocalypse Taxi, we never want to be in a situation where that’s needed.

To be honest these aren’t really meant to be combat transports, that’s what we have Longboats for. Our guiding principle is that we use these to move entire forces from base to base in as efficient and easy a manner as possible, but if needed in a combat scenario they can deliver a literal fortress garrison worth of legionnaires anywhere on the battlefield. If I were an enemy officer, I would NOT want something of this magnitude, packing that many soldiers, to swerve around and then land right on my position's ass.

Fuel costs aren't the worst in the world since our aircraft’s powerplants are akin to reactors, meaning it's got intercontinental range so long as the reactor and engines get vented in-flight every 10,000km. Usually that’s done in a specific pattern of powerplant 1, powerplant 2, etc…
We don’t just shut off all the power output at once midflight, as funny as that would be for the reactions of any passengers.

If you’re reading this and you’re a new legionnaire in the Aeronautical Legion, you may be wondering how we train pilots to both fly and land an Eminence Hauler or Apocalypse Taxi. If you’d like to go that route then I certainly hope you like snow, because the only place where we have enough land to practice with is at Frostfall.
Landing however isn’t as hard as you would think, since we created a system that allows the pilots to see everything around them in a 360 degree view as they begin their approach. Thousands of sensors, cameras and probes feed data into a unified connection to the pilots’ comm hoods to create this visualization, where it’s as if the hull is removed from view so they can see everything around the aircraft. To be honest, as someone who went through the training to verify it, the first few times you do it are nauseating until you get used to the sensation.

There’s always the concern about if the system goes down, so we built in redundancies. If those go down as well, then you are sincerely up the shit creek without a paddle. At that point your options are to rely on your eyes, the view outside the bridge, and the hope that some poor idiot isn’t standing beneath your landing gear.

-FrW Azan Kinrados