Ships

E-2 Asteroid Miner

(Marauder Starjacker)

Image created by Daniel Routh and used with permission. Visit his website here.

The Marauder Starjacker was one of two ore-raiding ships commanded by the pirate captain Finhead Stonebone. Captain Stonebone used the ships to raid Ithullian colossus wasps, and while for a time Stonebone made a handsome profit on his runs, his raids incurred the wrath of Bogga the Hutt. After being capture by Bogga's dreadnaught Enforcer One, Stonebone and the Starjacker were pressed into Bogga's Service.

The Marauder Starjacker and her sister ship, the Stenness Raider, began service as standard Byblos Drive Yards E-2 asteroid-mining ships. While they appear at first glance to be small insectoid ships, the mining vessels are actually over one hundred meters long. E-2 mining ships, found throughout the galaxy, offer a simple and cheap alternative to using tractor beams to move asteroids. They have rugged claws with which to dig through solid rock and attach to an asteroid. Once they are locked in place, their thruster jets are fired to move the trapped asteroid to a specific location. An E-2 miner has plasma drills to cut through useless rock, while a central suction tube draws material up into the E-2's filtration system: valuable ores are stored in the cargo bays, while waste material is used as fuel for the E-2's thrusters. Each mining ship normally has a command crew of four, a bridge crew of ten, and over a hundred asteroid miners.

When Captain Stonebone set out to begin raiding the colossus wasps, he knew the E-2s could be put to use. He destroyed a mining operation near the Varl system and stole two of these vessels, after which his engineers modified them for ore raiding. The plasma drills were moved to the front of the ship to serve as weapons; a trio of power generators fed each drill, and the prismatic drill crystals were modified to give the weapons a longer range. While the drills lacked the range of laser cannons, they were powerful enough to punch through the wasp carapaces.

For added speed, he replaced the motors with four Corellia StarDrive microthrusters. He reinforced the digging claws with monomolecular slicers, making the claws capable of slicing through the wasps' thick armor plating. Stonebone removed the filtering system, since he knew his ships would be drawing in only pure ore--this also increased his cargo space by a third. He removed the mining stations, giving him enough space to carry over a hundred raiders for boarding actions.

When attacking ore haulers, Stonebone's battle plan was simple: the raiding ships cut through the target wasp's hull and exposed the cargo holds to space. This created a vacuum which drew the ore modules (and wasp crew members) into the cargo bays of the raiding ships. Stonebone's raiders then entered the cargo bays to sort the loot and to "space" any ore hauler crew members not worth keeping alive.

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