Blade

The Vanduul Blade (UEE designation) is a light carrier-based fighter with high maneuverability that is often used as scouts and first wave assault crafts. With over a quarter-millennia of recorded encounters, it is both one of the first of the species’ spacecraft encountered by the United Empire of Earth and one of the most common. Blades are Over the decade of conflict, it has been increasingly used to take out comm arrays and early warning systems. It has also served well as skirmisher units due to their speed allowing them to chase down any ships attempting to flee the area.

Specifications
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History
The Blade was first sighted in 2681-09-15 in Orion while its attack on a cargo ship. Earlier models of the Blade took part in the first raids on Human colonies in the same system. Although aspects of the design have been upgraded over the decades (and like all Vanduul ships, vary slightly from clan to clan) the modern variant has retained an extremely similar silhouette with improved control surfaces and more modern weapons attachment points. Tens of thousands of individual Blades have been destroyed over more than two centuries, and countless others have been tracked by Naval intelligence.

While the Blade’s more advanced cousins, the Scythe and its offshoots, have become iconic symbols of present-day Vanduul terror, the light fighter remains a hugely important supporting element of the Vanduul frontline fleet. The most notable feature of the Blade is its shifting wingspan, which ‘cuts’ between a streamlined travel mode and a more expansive battle mode. When in travel mode, the Blade lacks significant offensive punch but improves its direct speed and maneuverability; when in attack mode, the pilot has access to three forward-firing gun positions and a pair of missile racks.

Design
"It's kind of like the Scythe but smaller. Whereas the Scythe has a couple of size five guns, the Blade actually has four size two guns instead. (...) Essentially it's the Vanduul equivalent of the Gladius. (...) It's fast and aggressive as Vanduul ships tend to be. It's also got a fairly interesting profile where it's almost shaped like the batwing. It's got this little U-shaped curve to it. (...) Some of the organic elements - it glows, it pulses continuously throughout the ship to give it a lot more live and then there are some animated ribs that open up to reveal the landing gear. (...)   It’s a multi-purpose fighter really, it's just one of the smaller Vanduul ships that are supposed to be coming out of the bigger ships - gets deployed by the Kingship. The idea behind the Blade’s landing mechanism is that the wings fold in towards via cockpit and then there's a panel that pops off underneath the wing itself on both sides and then acts the landing gear and in the back there’s the ribs which just fold out and reveal the main landing gear in the back which just acts as a counterbalance to the rest of it as otherwise it would just tip over."

- Geoff Coffin and Robin Karlsson, Around the Verse: Vanduul Blade & Shops 'n Trade

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