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SAN’TOK.YĀI
MEDIUM-CLASS FIGHTER
INTELLIGENCE HISTORY
On 2948-11-28, the Aopoa Council sent shockwaves through industry watchers with the announcement that their San’tok.yāi medium-class fighter was available for purchase in an export model. This decision took the Human civilian and military authorities by surprise, undercutting years of effort to learn more about the Xi’an’s notoriously secret aerospace program. While it is not possible for a Human publication to properly catalog the Xi’an medium fighter development due to the limited amount of information available, it is possible to track the United Empire of Earth’s efforts to gather their own intelligence on the spacecraft and its precursors.
Analysts agree that the current generation of Xi’an medium fighter was introduced to replace an aging prior design around 2934, although it is believed that off-production-line military conversions began significantly earlier. Under this theory, Xi’an home guard units could have a new medium fighter design as early as 2915, with the Empire only choosing to reveal the design to Earth in 2934 in response to the previous summer’s minor trade dispute. Human signal intelligence began noting unexpected movement among Xi’an units stationed along the old Perry Line, with many existing medium fighter squadrons that were previously believed to have been on permanent assignment leaving after years on station. In December, secondhand reports began to filter back suggesting that sightings of older-style Xi’an dogfighters had dropped sharply and that a new design had begun to appear. This was in line with what was known about the highly regimented manner in which the Xi’an Empire had deployed new spacecraft in the past. Unlike Human units, which typically slowly transition to new designs, the Xi’an has always taken an all-or-nothing approach, manufacturing spacecraft to a long-term schedule and replacing designs en masse in a given theater so as to reduce the need to continue providing duplicate service and support processes.
The UEE military was immediately concerned with both the overall political meaning of upgraded mainline dogfighters along their border and the potential threat offered by this unfamiliar fighter. The Navy, concerned about the development of its next generation of ‘space superiority fighter’, was especially keen to gather intelligence on the new Xi’an ship. The fighter was given the intelligence reporting name ARES and assets in the Xi’an sphere of influence were issued a memo instructing them to gather information wherever possible.
The first reliable military accounts of the Xi’an medium fighter in service came in 2937, when a Hornet on a training mission came within scanner range of a group of six on patrol. Information gathered in this encounter regarding the speed and maneuverability of the medium fighter confirmed existing theories that it operated an upgraded version of the dual-vector maneuvering thrusters found on the earlier Khartu-al. In April 2938, a remote sensing outpost recorded a pair of Xi’an medium fighters coming to the rescue of a transport besieged by raiders outside of visual range. The sensor recording confirmed secondhand reports about the improved dual thrust array and, most importantly, spectrum analysis revealed for the first time that the ship’s centerline energy weapon was a model of laser repeater not yet encountered. Additional encounters with the Xi’an medium fighter were recorded throughout the late 2930s, each providing small clues as to its overall capabilities, with other unspecified intelligence assets filling out the picture. Recently declassified military reviews from this period believe that the ship was a rough parity with the F7A Hornet or the civilian-model Super Hornet.
In 2941, the military had their closest encounter to date with enigmatic medium fighter. On the morning of September 24th, a manned reconnaissance outpost in the Yā’mon (Hadur) system detected a major explosion which was quickly traced back to the orbit of one of the system’s dwarf planets. Sensors indicated that a debris field had formed at the site of the explosion, with metallurgical analysis revealing that it most likely consisted of metals processed by the Xi’an. Further observation revealed that in addition to the debris field, now believed to have originated from an explosion aboard a larger Xi’an packet ship, there were four tracks on the snowy planet itself consistent with soft-landings by fighter-sized ships. The outpost’s crew concluded that an accident aboard a Xi’an transport had stranded several short-range escort fighters, forcing them to crash land on the planet as onboard oxygen supplies diminished.
The planet in question was particularly distant from both Human and Xi’an settlements. No distress call had been received from the packet ship or her escorts. Analysis suggested that even if Xi’an authorities knew the rough location of the crash, it would take some time for the ships to be declared overdue and for a capable rescue party to be deployed. Meanwhile, elements of a UEEN escort squadron were conducting space trials within communication range of the covert reconnaissance outpost that performed the initial study and analysis. The base commander made the decision that the possibility of rescuing survivors from the crashed spacecraft was valuable enough to risk revealing the location of his outpost. He dispatched all available information to the destroyer group, prompting them to move into range of the crash sites.
A pair of Argo spacecraft dispatched from the UEES Eagle’s Talon found that the ships in question were indeed Xi’an medium dogfighters. Two of the four escorts had not made controlled descents at all; they had suffered heavy damage in the initial explosion and had been completely destroyed in the crash. Survey teams transmitted scans of the wreckage and moved to locate the other ships. The third fighter was found in better condition: the ship had skidded to a stop on an icy plain. Crew from the escort began de-icing the wreck site to quickly reach the pilot. The work ended in tragedy when the industrial heating units set off what is believed to have been a still-armed munitions package on the ship’s wing destroying the entire site. All members of the first rescue team and the fighter’s pilot were killed in the blast.
Meanwhile, the second Argo discovered that the final escort had not crashed at all: it had landed safely on a stable plane. Tracks in the snow confirmed that pilot had survived and was heading to reach his wingman. The surviving pilot was located by air and taken aboard the escort where he was treated for exposure and ultimately repatriated to the Xi’an Empire. Despite the casualties, the incident was seen as a net positive for Human-Xi’an relations with the safe rescue of the surviving pilot. Military intelligence officers were not as happy about the incident as they gained only a limited amount of usable information from the initial crash site scans of the medium fighter. It seemed the UEE would never get its long-desired look at the Xi’an medium fighter in action.
However, the 2948 Intergalactic Aerospace Expo rendered years of intelligence gathering obsolete with the stunning announcement that the company was making a civilian-spec medium fighter part of their export lineup; Aopoa’s decision had seemingly been made after almost three decades of increasing Khartu-al sales to Human concerns. The spacecraft, named the San’tok.yāi, was revealed at an opulent invitation only gala which broadly celebrated Xi’an culture and was centered around an unabridged presentation of āluo’a Thasyu se Xo’ma. What the public saw was an impressive new Xi’an design, the military already knew as a development of the frontline medium fighter they had studied for over ten years. As an export model, the San’tok.yāi is not an exact match for any of the mil-spec spacecraft observed previously, but is similar enough in both design and capabilities that it can be said with certainty to have been derived from them. The overall fuselage and flight configurations closely match recorded encounters with frontline medium fighter models. The dual-vector thrusters and Yeng’tu Laser Repeaters, included with the base civilian model, also conform to what was already known about the ship. Additionally, all footage of the San’tok.yāi maneuvering has been within the limits of previous military observations. Analysts have noted with some concern that the San’tok.yāi’s capabilities are so close to what is known about the Xi’an medium fighter that this sudden reveal strongly indicates that the military must have access to a more advanced model that has not yet been seen - a potential roadblock for the recently commissioned F8 Lightning.
The United Empire of Earth Navy will, unsurprisingly, be among the first San’tok.yāi customers. Per the Naval Office of Budget and Planning, the military has been approved for the requisition of nine of the spacecraft. If these examples follow the pattern of previous alien designs requisitioned by the military these San’tok.yāi will be divided between engineering study artifacts for disassembly and for aggressor training (the Empire does not formally acknowledge that it operates Xi’an or simulated Xi’an spacecraft in combat training, though it has purchased Khartu-al for unspecified research projects regularly since it was introduced to Human space).
Whitleys’ partners at Sabre Defense have also joined the waitlist for a San’tok.yāi and will conduct a full suite of testing and a complete engineering and component breakdown once a production model becomes available. For further information, watch out for the Q4 2948 addendum of the 2949 edition of Whitley’s Guide to Spacecraft for the complete, hands-on flight analysis.
This article originally appeared in Jump Point 6.11.