The Marauder Starjacker was
one of two ore-raiding ships commanded by the pirate captain Finhead Stonebone.
Captain Stonebone used the ships to raid Ithullian colossus wasps, and
while for a time Stonebone made a handsome profit on his runs, his raids
incurred the wrath of Bogga the Hutt. After being capture by Bogga's dreadnaught
Enforcer One, Stonebone and the Starjacker were pressed into Bogga's
Service.
The Marauder Starjacker and
her sister ship, the Stenness Raider, began service as standard
Byblos Drive Yards E-2 asteroid-mining ships. While they appear at first
glance to be small insectoid ships, the mining vessels are actually over
one hundred meters long. E-2 mining ships, found throughout the galaxy,
offer a simple and cheap alternative to using tractor beams to move asteroids.
they have rugged claws with which to dig through solid rock and attach
to an asteroid. Once they are locked in place, their thruster jets are
fired to move the trapped asteroid to a specific location. An E-2 miner
has plasma drills to cut through useless rock, while a central suction
tube draws material up into the E-2's filtration system: valuable ores
are stored in the cargo bays, while waste material is used as fuel for
the E-2's thrusters. Each mining ship normally has a command crew of four,
a bridge crew of ten, and over a hundred asteroid miners.
When Captain Stonebone set out to
begin raiding the colossus wasps, he knew the E-2s could be put to use.
He destroyed a mining operation near the Varl system and stole two of these
vessels, after which his engineers modified them for ore raiding. The plasma
drills were moved to the front of the ship to serve as weapons; a trio
of power generators fed each drill, and the prismatic drill crystals were
modified to give the weapons a longer range. While the drills lacked the
range of laser cannons, they were powerful enough to punch through the
wasp carapaces.
For added speed, he replaced the motors
with four Corellia StarDrive microthrusters. He reinforced the digging
claws with monomolecular slicers, making the claws capable of slicing through
the wasps' thick armor plating. Stonebone removed the filtering system,
since he knew his ships would be drawing in only pure ore-this also increased
his cargo space by a third. He removed the mining stations, giving him
enough space to carry over a hundred raiders for boarding actions.
When attacking ore haulers, Stonebone's
battle plan was simple: the raiding ships cut through the target warship's
hull and exposed the cargo holds to space. This created a vacuum which
drew the ore modules (and wasp crew members) into the cargo bays of the
raiding ships. Stonebone's raiders then entered the cargo bays to sort
the loot and to "space" any ore haulers crew members not worth keeping
alive.
