Unitologist Dropship

The Unitologist Dropship was a troop transport of unknown class used mainly by the Unitologist extremists of the Circle. It served both as a means of moving fighters quickly across a battlefield and as a gunship, and it appeared throughout the campaign on Tau Volantis and the conflict that surrounded it, deploying squads of fanatics against Isaac Clarke and John Carver.

Design#

The Unitologist Dropship was built around a passenger hold flanked by two doors that slid into the body of the ship, allowing troops to be deployed rapidly from both sides. Grappling hooks could be attached at the doorways, in the manner of older atmospheric helicopters, so that fighters could be inserted while the ship hovered in mid-air. A corridor led forward to a cockpit holding a single seat for the pilot, with the controls for the ship's systems gathered around it.

For armament the dropship carried a double-barreled turret capable of rotating a full 360 degrees, together with a missile launcher installed beneath the cockpit. This let it serve as a gunship as readily as a transport, providing covering fire over the squads it carried and engaging targets on the ground.

Propulsion and markings#

Two large exhaust ports were set on the front of the ship and could rotate between its flight and landing positions. Behind them ran two pairs of thrusters, the smaller pair built directly into the hull and the larger pair mounted on external limbs that helped stabilize the craft in atmosphere and, it appeared, allowed finer movement in space; these too could be rotated for landing. Four flaps along the back of the ship, able to angle up and down, further aided stability within a planet's atmosphere. For travel between systems the dropship was fitted with a ShockPoint drive.

The hull carried various stylized Marker symbols, echoed across the rest of the fanatics' equipment, and was finished mainly in orange with touches of yellow and grey.

Service with the Circle#

The dropship appeared frequently in the Circle's operations during the conflict on Tau Volantis and in the events that followed. The fanatics used it to patrol particular areas and to bring squads of troops onto the field with little delay, and it acted as one of their principal combat craft near the end of the campaign. Such ships were a known hazard to the vessels of the Earth Defense Force; the USM Eudora destroyed one in a single shot during the fighting over the New Horizons Lunar Colony.