Cubicle Fighter

Cubicle fighters are special small fighter craft designed to be stored in standardized small craft cubicles, often mounted within a larger ship or station. The Planetary League Cubicle Fighter depicted in the illustration was a standardized design, mas-produced by a number of manufacturers throughout Era-1.

These inexpensive craft were widely used by most Planetary League agencies as light defensive fighters. There was also a very active private surplus market for these craft, and a wide array of variants, including many re-purposed versions were widely available.

The Planetary League standard cubicle fighter was designed solely for use in space. Having no landing gear, it could only depart or dock at a standardized craft cubicle. These cubicles were used for a number of small craft, including the also widely used Cubicle Shuttle, a sister craft produced by the same government programs and private manufacturers as the fighter. Docking and deployment was facilitated by robotic arms, and the pylons that connected the main guns to the fuselage had built in grip points for this system.

PLAS Deep Space Scout Frigate

History

The PLAS Deep Space Scout Frigate is a marvel of automation. Designed to transport a lone scout into the depths of space for extended exploration missions, the earliest versions of this ship saw service starting in GSC 140, but variants of this basic design were in use throughout the remainder of the history of the Planetary League.

First appearance: The Sunset Chronicles / Chapter 1: Exodus

Equipment

The Deep Space Scout Frigate was equipped to support a single scout on missions of indefinite length. This ship could launch salvos of drones, probes and other robotic assistants through a series of ports on the outer hull. These served as additional eyes, ears, and hands for the scout.

Defenses typically included a Pegasus Cybernetics point-defense laser array to deal with micro-meteors and other small obstacles, an Ares Systems medium deflector-shield to protect against larger impacts, and a Danforth-Galactic light anti-capital ship railgun to deal with many of the unknown threats of deep space.

The ship’s wings typically remained folded inside the hull during space flight (to facilitate docking and to present a smaller profile to the hazards of space), but deployed for atmospheric operations. The vertical stabilizer was not retractable, but contained an array of sensors, probes and point-defense systems useful in deep space.

The interior of the DSSF was divided into two decks, with the upper deck used for the scout’s quarters and the lower mainly devoted to storage and life-support. The aft section of both decks was devoted to engineering, and the forward section of the upper deck was the ship’s cockpit with an impressive 2.6 meter high canopy designed for maximum visibility.

PLS Nightingale

Several ships named after Florence Nightingale bore this designation during Era-1 (all but one were hospital ships).  The most famous of these was the one that closed the Era. 

During the Great Reckoning, the Nightingale was dispatched to the planet Aldebaran 2 under the authority of the Tardigrades with the mission of evacuating the most productive and prominent scientists and academics before the Holy Empire of Man could reach the planet.  The refugees aboard the Nightingale helped to form the foundation of what was to become the Galactic Republic.

A beacon of hope and mercy throughout the galaxy.