The Hellion is an Arbeiter Very Heavy Fighter in the personal duty roster of Vorarbeiter Gunda Riehl. Unlike the majority of spacecraft used by the Union, the Hellion is on a pilot specific holdlist – a category of spacecraft that the Direktorate subsidise the maintenance of despite personal, non-syndicated operation of the fighter. As such, the vessel is in a list of ships such as the Lied Der Siele which exist at the intersection between private and public property, in the exception, not in service, to wider organisations, yet are considered more sensitive to Unioner security than to be viewed as individual craft.
This is predominantly due to the large number of highly irregular modifications made to the Hellion by its primary operator, Gunda Riehl. Whilst nearly all Unioner spacecraft are individualistic, and pilots are expected to operate both as their own flight engineer and spacecraft architect in a wide ranging set of circumstances, the Hellion has been known to have included components sourced from highly irregular – highly valuable origins, such as off-books secure weapons dumps or discontinued machined spacecraft components. Whilst the Hellion is hardly a technological marvel, many of the components attached to the Hellion are highly individualistic aftermarket upgrades, often deliberately offhanded to Riehl by Freeman Driveyards operations teams keen to provide opportunistic Unioner architecture designers with an in-space evaluation frame. Many of the ersatz retrofits made to the Hellion occur without directorate oversight or approval, independently of GEIST investigation or surveillance. The Hellion is in effect a slightly more exaggerated variant of mercantile experimental designs, attuned specifically for piracy.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
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