During the Ukal War, the need arose for a long-range bombardment vessel capable of crippling Ukal warships at range. The Ukal specialized in long range gravitic weaponry, and their vessels were able to pound away at oncoming Circasian formations and rip them apart before a death-blow could be delivered Circasian fleets normal tactics.

The remaining Kolanis hulls were pulled out of mothballs and refitted with the plasma mine, a weapon which had been toyed with from time to time, but never quite appealed to the military, and the logistics strain made the War Council wary to field it in any numbers. The refitted ships—redesignated Koric Mine Cruisers—traded most of their close-in firepower for the long range bombardment abilities offered by the plasma mine. Their use shifted the balance of power temporarily in favor of the Circasians and caught the Ukal off guard. All in-roads made into Ukal space through the virtue of the Koric were rendered moot when the Ukal counter-offensive began, with the border war being resolved via a truce three months later in March of 1992.

As the Kolanis before it, the Koric was again put into mothballs at the orbital yards at Hathdam. Though many had been lost, enough replacements had been built at other shipyards that the number of Korics actually increased, however slightly. The sixteen Korics sat idle, waiting for their next chance to again see combat.

The day came in the winter of 2013. The first of the major wars with the Courata had escalated, and things were looking bleak for the Circasians. The minor mining system of Tidun had been conquered by the Courata and with it they had gained access to an important jump link leading to the principal Circasian mining and production center of Senshuka. Worried about their overextended military presence in other sectors, the War Council quickly de-mothballed many ships, including the remaining Korics, and sent them at best speed to Tidun to intercept and slow down the Courata fleet. It was never considered for a second that the ships would do anything more than slow down the enemy, but the Koric’s element of surprise was underestimated.

The Second Battle of Tidun, much more dramatic than the first, ended in a full Courata retreat. The surprise of being confronted by vast fields of exploding, reactive plasma caught the Courata fleet entirely off-guard. The Courata ships were torn to shreds before they could adequately react, but approximately half of the fleet managed to flee. The War Council felt that this somehow showed that the Koric was a superior ship and several shipyards across the empire retooled for construction of the Koric. The following months, though, showed that this was an error in judgement. The impact of the Korics was not due to their tactical superiority, but rather the surprise factor of their use. After the first battle, the Courata were much more wary when a Koric was spotted, and they were quickly destroyed by Courata warships. The Koric also had a hard time fitting into the harshly dictated fleet tactics of the Circasians, though most of the time it was tacked onto standard fleet formations to add addition options to existing fleets.

Of the 21 Koric Mine Cruisers refitted or produced, only 1 of them survived to the end of the war, and then only because of the virtue of the actions of its captain. The Shalin-thoi-tal (“Fire Travels Through All”) defected from the fleet in 2024, joining the Ukal liberation fleet that sought to free Circasian-controlled races along their borders. It is rumored that the ship’s captain had taken a female Ukal as a lover, yet others claim that the captain was attempting to hide out the war and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nonetheless, the fate of most Koric’s was a fiery and swift one.