The Ballad of Bessie Bishop

[Big Bison Bessie]

Datafile for AP-18100 Hammerhead, Coyote II

---

Coyote II’s History

The ship currently known as Coyote II was commissioned in 798 AS and manufactured in the AP facilities on planet Houston in House Liberty in batch 214-11-10-798 of the AP-18100’s production lifetime. The ship would briefly serve BHG tracker Abigail Rodregiez as the Commando before her untimely demise three months later in a traffic accident on Planet New Tokyo. The ship would then be passed down to career hunter Roger Dalton at the end of 799 AS and be renamed Thunderbolt.

Roger Dalton would have a multi-decade’s long successful career until he retired to a strictly advisory and training role in 824 AS. His work would see him largely staying in the Texas system, combing the prison system and poaching disgruntled corporate pilots for recruits.

Dalton had taken several pilots under his wing over his years working in Houston, and in 830 AS, he found a woman named Bessie Bishop who was serving her time aboard LPI Sugarland. The Rogue pilot had caught his attention when he had gone through her records. The number of LPI ships that had been required to disable her Z-5500 was what Dalton had described as “notably above average.” He began working with the LPI to get her back in the field, this time on their side.

Dalton pulled some strings to get her paroled early, in exchange for working for the Guild, and to his surprise she seemed genuinely interested. He took her under his wing as his protege, and passed his ship along to her in 834 AS when he retired properly. Bessie Bishop renamed the ship to Coyote II, and has been using it in her Guild work ever since.

Armaments

Coyote II’s primary armament is a set of four LB-42 Reavers. These AP designed weapons are long range rapid fire electric pulse lasers. Each “laser blast” is actually a pulse of thirty two rapid laser beam activations, each weapon capable of discharging an extremely rapid fire rate of five hundred pulses per minute (500 weapon activations per minute, approximately 16,000 laser activations per minute). This causes heavy mechanical shock to the target from brief periods of extremely high heating, rather than overtly vaporizing the point of impact. Each Reaver laser is rated at 65 megawatts at a 2.5 micron range and unlike some chemical lasers employed by the Liberty Navy, the laser is entirely limited by power supply and thermal load rather than lasing medium. An upscaled version of this weapon is mounted on the tail of the ship and used to fire at pursuing craft.

Secondary armament consists of a pair of rapid fire CB-m “Improved” Debilitator pulse cannons. These electromagnetic pulse weapons utilize a pair of rapid charge micro fusion powered capacitors to package a massive amount of ionizing particles into a single small magnetic capsule which is then discharged at a target. While most modern ships possess hardened electronics, EMP weapons such as the CB-m quickly overwhelm shield systems and can often cause malfunctions in a target’s capacitors, leading to power loss and module malfunctions as opposed to overtly disabling the target.

Utility weapons on the Coyote II include a CD88a Wasp class cruise disruptor. This small and fast tracking missile packs a load of highly energetic particles which explode near a target and contaminates the space around them. While the missile does little damage, most ships have fuel ramscoops that collect free floating hydrogen to supplement their fuel efficiency. The Wasp drowns this system and forces the engines briefly into emergency mode as the ship’s safety systems try to prevent a perceived critical failure. Attempting to power up the cruise engine while the engines are saturated often leads to malfunctions and engine misfires until the system can be purged, often taking upwards of five seconds.

Additional utility weapons include a minelayer, capable of loading a variety of explosive payloads depending on mission profile, though anti-ship mines are the most common type loaded into the device. The M56-D Shredder is Bishop’s mine of choice, a homing explosive weapon loaded with shaped tungsten spikes that can cause crippling damage to any ships caught in the blast radius.

The final armament is a pair of retrofitted aftermarket Detroit Munitions Guardian 117 Auto-Sentries turrets. These automated anti-personnel weapons are mounted in hidden compartments covered by retractable armor plates down on the lower fin of the Coyote II. These turrets can be set to automatically target and attack anything the computer designates as a valid target within their range, and it is often paired with facial recognition software to prevent friendly fire or to isolate a specific target. The guns can also be set to manual control from inside the cockpit. While they are too weak to penetrate space craft armor, they will shred through people and lightly armored vehicles.

Power and Propulsion

The Coyote II’s primary propulsion comes from a pair of HN-C11 long range engines. The HN series itself is an advanced fusion rocket that uses plasma from the ship’s Ageira P-185 Tokamak B1 Fusion Core and funnels it into a pair of magnetically contained thruster assemblies. The highly charged stream of material is accelerated to a fraction of lightspeed, providing excellent thrust to mass ratio, especially when paired with the ship’s inertial dampening paragravity generator that somewhat reduces its relative mass. The HN series is designed to function for extended lengths of time with minimum maintenance, and features almost no moving parts or components that suffer extensive thermal load. The downside of this is that the entire engine typically reaches the end of its operational lifetime before similar, higher maintenance engines. This core also powers the ship’s large array of RCS thrusters.

A downside of this type of drive system is that once the reactor core becomes inoperable, so do the main engines. In case of emergencies, a small number of plasma fuel cells are kept on board to power the RCS system or briefly power the main engines, but this would be unable to sustain the Coyote II in combat and is often barely enough to limp back to a base in the same star system.

Should the main reactor fail, the Coyote II is equipped with a large array of batteries in her aft, just below the cargo bay. These power cells contain enough energy to restart the reactor should it be disabled, and can otherwise provide power to all of the ship’s systems save for weapons for approximately three weeks before running dry. Additionally, the emergency battery power can be dumped into the shield system at a moment’s notice, providing emergency reinforcement.

Defensive Systems

The primary defense system of the Coyote II is an Ageira manufactured SG-e2 graviton shield. The shield is formed by a bi-woven pair of force fields that creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion that contains an energetic graviton field. This type of defensive shielding is excellent at scattering intense clusters of photons such as those from lasers, but repeated physical impacts often destabilize the field rendering it less effective against charged particle weapons.

Armor wise, the Coyote II’s armor is concentrated on its forward quarter, with the rear being substantially less well armored, notably around the engines. The armor itself consists of layers of an ablative ceramic fabric that’s been bonded to the vessel’s titanium alloy frame and radiation shielding. The armor is designed to absorb high energy discharges and vaporize in a controlled manner while minimizing energy bleedthrough to critical ship systems beneath it.

Other Systems and Features

Throughout Dalton and Bishop’s careers, the ship currently known as Coyote II has been modded dozens of times with aftermarket features with the intent of making its bounty hunters all the more successful.

The main sensors array for the Coyote II is the Kishiro Tech R-67 Jintsuriki scanner. This device is a phased array RADAR with nano-filament sensors, paired with a complex LADAR array to detect ships at extreme ranges. The scanner’s powerful optronic processing unit is backed up by a bio-neural processor that is able to use ‘fuzzy logic’ to make educated ‘best guesses’ at a ship’s overall hull geometry and identification based on known variants. This allows the scanner to operate at ranges far oustripping more standard issue equipment, with the downside of the bio-neural processor requiring replacement about every 18 months as it wears out from use and radiation.

The cargo bay has been modified to hold a magnetically sealed prison cell, containing its own life support system. This is for any targets needed alive. The cargo hold can be vented into vacuum, discouraging escape attempts. However should someone manage to somehow leave the cell, the cargo bay floor is equipped with a high power paragravity plate that can generate forces upwards of 5.2gs, usually more than enough to incapacitate a prisoner long enough for the hunter to regain control of the situation.

The cargo bay also plays host to the ship’s coterie of Kishiro Tech Magpie-32 drones. These small hovering drones are designed to scout out an area, providing detailed information on traffic, topography, movement, and can be programmed to search for specific vehicle or facial recognition features.

For long range travel on a planet’s surface, a gantry rack for a small hoverbike is attached to the top of the cargo hold’s ceiling. This can comfortably secure most models of said vehicle, and would allow the pilot a quick alternative for travel should taking the ship to a new location on the planet be impractical.

The main cabin of the Coyote II is small and practical, containing little more than a bunk, cook prep station, and access to a lavatory/shower. Numerous gravity secure shelves and compartments allow for the safe storage of personal items and firearms. Hidden compartments with weapons also dot the cabin and cockpit, in case of emergency. In addition to the normal food prep counter and rations, the Coyote II is equipped with a SynthFoods Inc Happy Cook Food Printer. This machine can combine a variety of flavored synthpastes and texture formulas to effectively ‘print’ a variety of nutritious food items at various temperatures. This unit requires synthpaste cartridges that need to be regularly swapped out for full and fresh ones. Synthfoods anti-tampering technology prevents refilling or third party cartridge usage.

Regardless, rations and supplies are often stocked to allow a month of continuous work away from stations.

---

☆The Ballad of Bessie Bishop☆ | ☆Elizabeth Bishop LPI Records☆ | ☆Feedback☆