Confederation: Blackhawks

[Usdrothek]

Blackhawks

These bitek starships were initially derived from voidhawks by Rubra (an Edenist Serpent), the owner of Valisk, to be used by his company Magellanic Itg as its transport fleet. Several were sold to Adamists outside Rubra's family line, and some were allegedly constructed by quasi-legal biotechnology companies across the Confederation. Origins are notroiously hard to pin down, though Tropicana's involvement in their development is widely acknowledged. Although undoubtedly originating from voidhawk stock, blackhawks come in a variety of shapes, though there is unlikely to be any truth in the rumour that xenoc genes have been spliced into their genome.

The commonest blackhawk profile is an onion shape, although lozenges, spheroids, tapering cylinders and even rings have been seen. One of the reason for this divergence (or evolution) from the voidhawk norm is alterations spliced in to give the blackhawks an improved combat performance. Although nominally listed as independent trades, blackhawk captains pick up the major income by hiring themselves out as mercenaries, certainly in their early years when their performance is at its peak.

Blackhawks have a much larger swallow range than their cousins, typically 20 light years, allowing them to jump easily out of navy voidhawk interception range - although they can only store enough energy to perform six to eight of these jumps sequentially. They can manoeuvre with high agility, but likevoidhawks are not able to protect their crew from continuous acceleratiom above 3-4 gees. However, most blackhawk crew-members have nanonic boosted bodies specifically designed for high gee resistance, allowing typical combat speeds of 10-15 gees to be sustained over long periods and up to 20 gees for short bursts.

Blackhawks use the five independent habitats as bases for their mating flights, and the eggs are sold to the highest bidder. The blackhawk captains do not have the affinity gene, and instead use neuron symbionts to bond with the ships - essentially duplicating the strong bond that exists between voidhawks and their captains; although, given that the blackhawk captains will be much older when the process starts, this puts a somewhat different slant on the relationship in that the blackhawk is heavily influenced by its captain's personality. Blackhawk captains tend to stay in the base habitat while the blackhawk matures over a dozen years.

Blackhawk life expectancy is around 75 years. The exact numbers of blackhawks in the Confederation is unknown, but is estimated at around 10,000; the exact figure is difficult to determine because their registration is frequently changed, and some fly with false CAB (Confederation Astronautics Board) certificates.

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