Built by the Imperial Courier Service to serve as both a fast courier ship and provide regular shipping services to Tier I to III colony worlds, the Corridos-class message packet offered a variety of capabilities, including rough-field landing ability, small cargo carrying capacity, and several forms of emergency services for colony worlds that might see larger support from the Imperial Courier Service or the Imperial Navy on a three-to-six month basis.
The design would be licensed not only for the Imperial Courier Service, but for private sale. The Imperial Navy would consider the Corridos-class for a packet courier, but would eventually go with the Chapar Khaneh-class message packet/commando transport.
Design History
The Corridos-class was built due to a need for the Imperial Courier Service to provide statute-required services to Imperial colony worlds at the Class I to III level. Since the statute of the Imperial Moot required at least two Courier Service ships a month arriving at colony worlds (a minimum of one outbound and one inbound towards the Core)-the design would have to be able to carry a small amount of cargo, be capable of rough-field takeoff and land, and have a minimal emergency medical capability. The end result would be the Corridos-class, built in the mid-Imperium period.
Designed with a rough lifting-body shape, the Corridos-class is built around a single large internal cargo bay that is capable of carrying sixteen TEU modules in a 4x2x2 bay configuration. A half-height hatch is mounted in the front and a full-height hatch is mounted in the aft of the ship, allowing for large cargoes to be loaded and unloaded. Ship systems are built around the cargo bay, with engineering access for the dorsal and flanks of the ship and crew compartments in the ventral portions of the ship, with elevators and access tubes to the various levels.
The ship carries not only a full crew, but sufficient spare staterooms for up to ten passengers in single-bunking capacity, a ten-unit stasis bay, and a three-bay medical facility with automed systems and resleeving for bioshells and cybershells. When possible, at least 45% of ships on a route would have a qualified general doctor for medical needs and a qualified Imperial Marshal’s Service officer for law-enforcement needs. The ship also contains three redundant data servers and a high-powered laser communicator to serve as an electronic mail message node.
The ship is rough-field rated with full-length landing skids and carrying a full AG-lift system that can bring the ship up to orbit in a 6-G grav field with a full load. While not armed, the ship does carry point defense against debris and missiles in the form of eight 20mm xaser cannons scattered around the hull. The ship also carries four Rodeo-class anti-missile decoys for self-defense and a full sensor system (minus the deployable VLBI array) equivalent to an Imperial destroyer.
The ship carries two anti-gravity skip-loaders for moving around cargo containers and acting as prime movers for cargo needs. A single cutter is carried in a ventral bay for when a separate small craft is needed. The Hegemony version of the ship would mount a quantum fabricator to build small parts for colony worlds that needed emergency equipment of some kind and small spare parts for itself, fed by two harvesting drones in bays on the ship’s port and starboard sides.
Service History
The Corridos-class would be built in incredible numbers, with over 15,000 being built in the Flight I-IV construction alone. The ship would remain in service during the mid-Hegemony period, with steady upgrades and improvements even as the Yubin-class message packet entered service.
Older versions of the hull would see significant sales as a short-haul transport for colony worlds on the frontier, fast packet transports for commercial cargo services, and adapted into a number of roles for civilian and quasi-civilian services. One popular version was the Aurora-class luxury yacht, which converts the cargo bay into a luxury crew area for up to twenty people, a separate vehicle bay, and high-grade bioprinters for creating high-end food items.
General Characteristics
Dimensions: 80m x 12m x 14m
Mass: 2000 tons (fully loaded, Flight I-V un-retrofitted), 2200 tons (Flight VI-XII, Flight I-V retrofitted)
Power Systems:
2x Yoyodine Type 11 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Mid Imperial Era)
2x Yoyodine Type 11-B Gravity Fusion Reactors (Late Imperial Era)
2x Yoyodine Type 14-A Gravity Fusion Reactors (Hegemony Era)
Propulsion Systems:
4x Q-Coils (380 G acceleration Mid/Late Imperial Era, 400 G acceleration Hegemony era, all flights)
2x Slipspace rings (8 LY/day Mid/Late Imperial Era, 10LY/day Hegemony era, all flights)
4xAG Lifters (6 G VTOL rated)
Endurance:
180 days on stored supplies, hydrogen scoops, hydrogen production system (All Eras)
Crew:
One Class II AI, 5 Officers, 15 Able Spacers, backup bioshells and cybershells (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
One Class II AI, three Class I AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 20 crew members, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)
Armament:
None mounted.
Defenses:
ECM: AN/SL(E)-11 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer
options (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
AL/SN(M)-18 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options (Hegemony Era)
4x Rodeo-class missile decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).
Point Defense: 8 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.
Shields: Standard Mid/Late Imperial/Hegemony Navigational Shields
Combat Shield Generators-50% capacity bow, 25% capacity, starboard, port, ventral, dorsal and stern (Mid/Late Imperial Era).
50% capacity bow, port, starboard, ventral and dorsal, 25% capacity stern (Hegemony Era)
Armor: Milspec Titanium with Fibersteel Inserts, 1 cm maximum (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
Fibersteel, 1 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)
Secondary Craft:
2xSkip-Loaders, 1xCutter (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
2xSkip-Loaders, 1xCutter, 2xHarvesting Drones (Hegemony Era)
Cargo Capacity:
16 TEU in a 4x2x2 configuration.
Designer Notes
Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand…
If you want to see the Imperial version of the Firefly-class, the Fives Full, or the Kalantha-class free trader-this is where you start. It’s built to be “a little bit of everything,” because it often is a little bit of everything when it gets out to the frontier.
Cargo hauler? Got that.
Sending someone an email? The Imperial Courier Service doesn’t have or need a separate X-Boat type of ship, so…
Visiting family members on a colony world somewhere? You can pay a bit for a single stateroom or share a bunk with someone for a bit less.
Need medical care but an Imperial Navy Patrol Fleet task group is at least a month out? They’ll at least stabilize someone long enough for that task group to get there-or haul them in stasis to somewhere that has a real hospital.
Need a lawman, for values of “lawman”? We might have one of those, too. Might.
It’s all in a hull that can take off and land pretty much “straight up” and “straight down” on AG lift. You can fly this ship in an atmosphere from place to place, but be very, very careful and either have a very hot-shot pilot or have all of your backups off the ship. And, yes, it is fast-the only spaceships with greater acceleration than a Corridos is a navy message packet or a missile in normal space. There’s a few things faster in slipspace than this ship, but not that many…
This isn’t the Millennium Falcon, mind you. If you want one of those, you should look at some of the “stock frontier freighter” hulls and get the permits needed to officially mount light cannons on it.
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