Cheetah
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VC42 Cheetah
A very fast attack shuttle, the VC42 Cheetah resembles "a demented cross between an American A-5 Vigilante bomber from the 1960's and a German Horton 229 flying wing from the Second World War". It is unarmed, travels at hypersonic speed and carries a crew of two. No Marine infantry are carried on board; instead, a stack of Kitten self-transporting transporter nexuses are dropped out the tail from a tubular cargo bay, similar to the bomb bay of the Vigilante, and land in a controlled fashion in the drop zone. The Marines emerge from those nexuses. The cargo bay is precisely the same height and shape as a Kitten lying on its side.
The advantages of the design are high survivability, and low casualties in the event of destruction of the shuttle. The only disadvantages: the lack of on-board armaments, the inability to carry much cargo beyond the Kittens, and an inability to land on unprepared surfaces (it requires a prepared runway or carrier-type landing bay).
If desired, the Cheetah can drop bombs in a fashion similar to the A-5 Vigilante, however this is not the shuttle's primary role.
First used in Chosen Frozen II.
See Also
Story Usage
A textual analysis of the story repository, current as of 2018 and performed on 2019-09-06 identified the following usage counts for Cheetah:
- Bettie_ a Swarm Cycle Year Four by corsair 4 instances.
- Chosen_Frozen_II by lordshipmayhem 11 instances.
- Pickup Loop Hole by corsair 20 instances.
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