Val-kyrie Bladewing Starfighter

Crew - 1
Defense - ablative armor
Armament:
2x primary railgun
2x secondary railgun
2x primary plasma blaster
2x secondary plasma blaster
2x ion cannon

For generations, the Horde batmek has been the dominant starfighter in the galaxy. After perfecting the current Mark 20 battlestar, the Val-kyrie turned their attention to their starfighters, which were woafully inadequate to the task of protecting the battlestars much less doing anything else. The solution was to design a new starfighter from the ground up that could do as many of the same missions as a batmek except for torpedo bombing. After acquiring an intact batmek of each variant - including the torpedo bomber - the Val-kyrie set about not only turning the starfighter world on its ear, they kicked it into an uncontrolled spin just for good measure.

The result was a mission variable platform that takes certifiable nightmare into a whole new direction. Called the bladewing because of its characteristic crescent shape in flight, the Val-kyrie used every scrap of knowledge gleaned from examining the captured enemy craft and incorporated into the bladewing's ability to combat a batmek.

Bladewing sports an impressive armament that makes it - pound for pound - the most heavily armed craft of any type. Powered by a cold fusion reactor and equipped with a unique array of repulsor jets, the craft handles the same in atmosphere as it does in vacuum ensuring that it can literally fly rings around a batmek fighter, and has the firepower to destroy it with one shot. Or a pilot can choose to disable an enemy craft with the ion cannons. Ablative armor gives bladewing a durability not seen anywhere else. Add to that an internal weapons bay for atmospheric missions utilizing missiles and bombs, and you have a truely superior weapon system. Bladewing also has three pylon mounts on the belly, but they are only used in space - where there is no aerodynamic drag - for equipping sensor pods or the newly developed mini-torpedo for attack runs against capital ships to knock out an enemy ship's defenses.

A unique feature of bladewing is the out wing assemblies having pivot joints to rotate the wing pods to 90-degrees down from horizontal. This allows for using the weapons pods and their secondary engines for VTOL (verticle take-off) landings, and they are equipped with roller assemblies for standard take-off and landings. The reduced area of the wings and pods in the landed position ensured that a battlestar can easily carry the standard 300 fighters plus available spare units.

Continuous upgrades will ensure that bladewing reigns supreme for years to come, or until the Horde is ultimately defeated; in which case the Val-kyrie expect to retire bladewing in favor of something newer and even better.

Variants include: stealth/recon, air/space superiority fighter, fighter bomber, and a new larger model with an aft boarding ramp and able to carrier 2 pilots and 4 passengers.

Note: basic design barrowed from the cartoon War Planets and modified according to the above specs.