Spacecraft Data: Joan Lafitte

Joan Lafitte

Technical Data

Class: Gulf-class frigate

Name: Joan Lafitte

Classification: light frigate partly reconfigured as a freighter

Manufacturer: Augusta Yards

Operator: Roberts’ Raiders, Orleans colony, PAX

First deployment: CY 74

Crew: 4 command crew and up to 24 other passengers and crew standard; helmsman and 2 crew, skeleton

Keel: 86 meters

Beam: 40 meters

Draft: 24 meters

Weight: dry weight 2240 metric tons, full weight 3860 metric tons

Powerplant: ISBC Fusion reactor

Fixed armaments: x2 70mm point-defense linear cannon turret

Propulsion: 2x main engine, 4x auxiliary engine, top speed 180,000 kph

Sensors: custom gravitic, EM, optical, and radiation detection array

Support craft: x4 Combat Frames

Special equipment: ion field projector, military-grade electronic warfare suite, extensive A.I. automation, TC/D

Captain: William “Drake” Roberts

General Notes

They say the captain of the Joan Lafitte was once a member of the Saeculum. Expelled from the order for love, misconduct, or excess enthusiasm depending on the tale, it is known that Captain William “Drake” Roberts—an obvious alias—became a soldier of fortune or a pirate. Again, depending on who’s telling.

No one knows where Drake obtained the ship that served him throughout his exile. But current and former crewmen have let slip that the Joan Lafitte—named for the governor of Orleans colony’s daughter—holds secrets that her aging hull belies.

Drake stripped out much of the Augusta Yards frigate’s original equipment, stations, and quarters to make more room for cargo. It was no accident that the JL’s hold could accommodate up to four combat frames. A quartet of ReXPros of unknown provenance, supported by two autocannon turrets upgraded to load 70mm carbyne-tungsten rounds, formed the backbone of the ship’s defenses.

Military-grade weaponry wasn’t the only advantage Drake gave his ship. The JL somehow sported an unlicensed TC/D drive jailbroken from ISBC regs by Pants, the ship’s chief tech. Thanks to the supremely illegal device, Drake and his crew were free to hop from one ExSol to the next, taking under-the-table contracts few others could fulfill.

One such job came down from the governor of Orleans himself. In the hope of winning his love’s hand, Drake answered her father’s plea to defend the newly independent ExSol from UCP forces. At the cost of the JL’s backup TC/D and a decommissioned helium freighter, Drake managed to down a Daedalus-class carrier and bluff the Pucks into retreat. But the class disparity between a governor’s daughter and an outlaw captain would leave his romantic dreams unrealized.

Yet as Drake heard often in his youth, Providence never closes a door without opening a window. Drake’s next window of opportunity opened in the aftermath of the battle, when a mysterious emissary offered him a royal pardon in exchange for service to PAX.

The Joan Lafitte would go on to serve with honor throughout the ExSol Rebellion, most often as an escort for the Sovereign Protector under Captain Jasmine Blaine. During their battles together, a relationship born of respect for Drake’s comrade-in-arms would grow to eclipse his lost dream.

Thrill to the JL crew’s adventures. Read Combat Frame Ƶ XSeed now: