3125 Scale Orion X-Ship Battle Raider (BRX) CVN

The Pirates of Orion cover the entire Alpha Octant, but by the time of the General War, few of them were actually Orions. Orion originally joined the Federation as an ally during the First Romulan War. Because the Federation needed Orion technology, ships, and shipyards, the Federation made a deal that gave the Orion province special autonomy. Among other things, this meant that the Orions (not the Federation) enforced Federation law inside Orion space. Pirate organizations based on Orion took advantage of this, becoming the headquarters of a far-reaching criminal operation, including piracy, smuggling, and creating illegal mining colonies on unclaimed planets. The territory of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Gorns, Kzintis, Lyrans, and Hydrans was overlayed by a network of fiercely independent criminal cartels. A crimelord led each cartel and leased parts of his area to individual pirates as franchises for various criminal operations. One pirate might lease an area where he had the sole right to attack merchant ships, while another pirate might get the franchise for all smuggling into and out of the Rigellian system. Each of these minor pirates was supported by the cartel network, which bought stolen or smuggled goods, repaired damaged ships, bought and sold captured freighters, and traded in intelligence information on shipping schedules and police patrols. Most of the independent ship captains operating piracy franchises used light raiders or raider cruisers; the cartel itself maintained heavy cruisers, which it used as enforcers to deal with those who poached without a franchise or failed to pay their franchise fees.

Orion ships are designed to avoid detection, being basically flat with angled hull plates to scatter any scanner beam that touches them. Internal volume is half as much as a regular warship of the same class, but this comes at the cost of miniaturized systems, high maintenance costs, and a distinct lack of crew comfort. The hexagonal structures on the wings are passive sensors that detect scanner beams at long range (before the ship doing the scanning can detect anything) and will then rotate the ship to be edge-on to the scanning ship, allowing it to evade detection while on its way to raid, smuggle, or illegally mine something.

The Orions, of necessity, built some advanced technology ships, but the overall numbers of them were low. Individual cartels could not hope to build as many advanced-technology ships as the various empires could. In any case, the majority of their victims (freighters, isolated colonies) would not have access to the technology for decades. Still, the cartels did need some advanced technology ships to “protect their interests” both from the local constabularies and from intrusions by neighboring cartels.

Most Cartel Lords chose to concentrate the advanced technology where it would protect their own operations. Independent contractors were allowed to purchase the technology, but the expense generally meant that such ships were relatively small (X-Ship Light Raider, FreeX-Traitor, X-Ship Salvage Cruiser, or X-Ship War Destroyer). There were some exceptions. A few independents had the cash to purchase an X-Ship Raider Cruiser, although most of these were owned by the cartels (and a few cartels acquired some by “repossession” when the independent operator was not able to make his payments). The Battle Raider design concept was the ships were built with the idea of a “short life, but an exciting one.” Thus, existing battle raiders could not be converted to advanced X-technology. The X-Ship Raider Cruiser was built for long-term service, and existing ships could be converted to X-technology. Even so, most cartels started building new long-service Battle Raiders (which cost more) and building their X-technology into the hulls from the start. The Federation code name for this ship was Assassin-X. Known names include Jeddow, Jodberg, Alobot, Zadow, Excruciator, and Exterminator.

This ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.