3125 Scale Orion Heavy Battlecruiser (BCH) CVN

The Pirates of Orion cover the entire Alpha Octant, but by the time of the General War, few of them were actually Orions. Orion originally joined the Federation as an ally during the First Romulan War. Because the Federation needed Orion technology, ships, and shipyards, the Federation made a deal that gave the Orion province special autonomy. Among other things, this meant that the Orions (not the Federation) enforced Federation law inside Orion space. Pirate organizations based on Orion took advantage of this, becoming the headquarters of a far-reaching criminal operation including piracy, smuggling, and creating illegal mining colonies on unclaimed planets. The territory of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Gorns, Kzintis, Lyrans, and Hydrans was overlayed by a network of fiercely independent criminal cartels. A crimelord led each cartel, and leased parts of his area to individual pirates as franchises for various criminal operations. One pirate might lease an area in which he had the sole right to attack merchant ships, while another pirate might get the franchise for all smuggling into and out of the Rigelian system. Each of these minor pirates was supported by the cartel network which bought stolen or smuggled goods, repaired damaged ships, bought and sold captured freighters, and traded in intelligence information on shipping schedules and police patrols. Most of the independent ship captains operating piracy franchises used light raiders or raider cruisers; the cartel itself maintained heavy cruisers which it used as enforcers to deal with those who poached without a franchise or failed to pay their franchise fees.

Orion ships are designed to avoid detection, being basically flat with angled hull plates to scatter any scanner beam that touches them. Internal volume is half as much as a regular warship of the same class, but this comes at the cost of miniaturized systems, high maintenance costs, and a distinct lack of crew comfort. The hexagonal structures on the wings are passive sensors which detect scanner beams at long range (before the ship doing the scanning can detect anything) and will then rotate the ship to be edge-on to the scanning ship, allowing it to evade detection while on its way to raid, smuggle, or illegally mine something.

Built the same year that Orion pirate ship Captain Deth O’Kay disappeared, the Sword of Orion was designed as an “enforcer” by the Pharaoh Cartel. Some other cartels later built similar ships. The need for such a heavy ship was created by the proliferation of Battle Raiders among the pirates and by the general size increases among warships of the non-pirate fleets. The design was based on a “stretched” heavy cruiser hull (more so than the battlecruiser) because the Orions had no facilities to build a hull of greater cross-section. Simply adding a few frame sections to the heavy cruiser hull design also simplified construction.

The ship is not nimble and cannot land on planets. It does have stealth. The only Orion design with a laboratory research capability, this was actually a tactical analysis section combining data from sensors, scanners, and communications intercepts. Not every cartel had such a ship and no cartel ever had more than one. Due to its high cost and irreplaceability, it would almost never be used in piracy operations and would never be leased as a mercenary warship. Its use would be limited to eliminating rogue pirates operating in unlicensed areas, maintaining control over franchised operators, and (rarely) eliminating a troublesome warship that had been guarding a key sector. The Orion Heavy Battlecruiser should be able to fight evenly with a non-pirate heavy battlecruiser (although it would never be risked in such a duel), counting on its awesome power supply to reinforce the shields. The Federation codename for this ship was Executioner.

This ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.