Sustenance

The Sustenance-class brings Confederacy fuel doctrine to capital scale. Twenty-two pressurized bunkerage cells, each independently monitored, hold enough fuel to keep a six-ship convoy in deep transit for the better part of a Solarian fiscal quarter. The Bureau of Logistics designed the manifest tracking system before the engineering team had finished the hull, and the engineering team had to retrofit four additional sensor packages to satisfy reporting requirements they had not been told existed. The result is the most thoroughly documented tanker in the empire — every kilogram of fuel it carries is logged, signed, countersigned, and reconciled against three independent ledgers before it leaves the dock. Pilots note that the Sustenance is not fast, but it is consistent, a property the Confederacy considers more valuable than speed. The default damage control system reflects the Bureau's position that a tanker on fire is a regulatory matter best resolved before the regulators arrive.