Redline

"Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah? Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah!"

-- Old Coruscanti folk song.

Background

The Redline is a CEC YT-2000 obtained by Zhu Yan during a bout of poetic exploration of the Nar Shaddaa Scrapyards in the Gearhead district. Initially it was, unlike the Millenium Falcon of yore, actually a piece of junk. Yan, however, got it back up and running and after a few problems with the fuel intake manifold (repaired by repeated percussive maintenance) it eventually came close to something resembling full factory spec. He's always tweaking, modifying, and dare I say redecorating the ship, never quite happy with how it's performing at any one time.

After flying the ship for some months and coming to grips with how it handled, Yan started making major modifications. He cleaned up the exterior so that it looked a little bit less like junk and more like a modern-grade freighter and he got the lower gun turret working. In addition, he turned it over to Moergog for a period to have the engines boosted to military-grade standard and had the hyperdrive replaced with one that was both astonishingly fast and astonishingly illegal. As Yan's business is itself astonishingly illegal, it's no skin off his nose.

Using some of his "courier" profits, Yan has purchased an R3 droid for assistance in keeping the ship up and running. With the designation R3-D1, Yan showed a staggering amount of imagination when he named her "Reddie".

What looks like an old junker is actually a fast and highly agile courier of less-than-legal goods, perfectly suited for the pilot that takes great care to look like an idiot. Its high-end weaponry is constantly threatening to blow fuses and trip circuits when fired for more than ten seconds, its armor plating and shields are borderline paper-like when compared to its contemporaries, but it can now happily keep up with an X-Wing in a dogfight. However, the maneuverability of a fighter combined with the weight of a freighter renders the ship notoriously twitchy and tricky to control when flying at anything more than half-power.

As the years passed, additional "repairs" and "improvements" have pushed the Redline above and beyond what a YT-2000 should well be capable of doing.

This has not come without its drawbacks.

Yan's endless desire to turn the Redline into the fastest and most dangerous ship in space has done so at the cost of turning it into a deathtrap. The junker aspect of the ship has taken a spike owing to the fact that Yan is not exactly inclined to clean up after himself, and certain safety features such as one of the escape pods, preflight check computers, and automated thruster regulators are missing. The internal atmospherics are inexorably set to the early-to-mid-80s with the humidity to match. It definitely has not lost its irritable disposition when flown at low speeds.

For the average pilot, flying this freighter at anything beyond a gentle point-to-point transit is a great way to go spinning off into the ether. For Yan himself, with a ship that has developed to match his high-flying and extremely loud personality, a full-tilt show of speed through a twisting asteroid field that ends in a reverse-microjump (including a rude gesture to everyone in second place or worse) is a non-issue.

Crew

• Zhu Yan - Owner, pilot, everything else. The greatest individual in the galaxy.
• R3-D1 "Reddie" - R3 droid, handles repairs, general computing and knowledge, and backup piloting/astrogation duties. A bit of a pain in the ass.
• Eriu Jynx - Co-pilot, hacking nerd, knife nut, significant other, a gigantic pain in the ass.
• B'haav Adasta - Worst. Gunner. Ever. A slight pain in the ass.

Operations

In chronological order...

• Acquisition of Delta-7 Aethersprite fighter on Bimmisaari.
• Liberation of slaves on Nal Hutta.
• Illegal cybernetics transaction, disguised as the Three Move Mate.
• Came out on top of a three-way between a Resistance convoy, pirate raiders, and a First Order TIE Squadron.
• Getaway starship for a daring slave rescue.
• Confiscation of a Baleen-class Heavy Freighter from some very bad people.
• VOLCANOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• One of many train robberies. Flown by Poe Dameron!
• The only usage of the knowledge:drilling skill for a non-dirty purpose.
• The total annihilation of Laramus-A.
• Hit and run on a Sienar convoy trading with the Hutts in Republic space.
• A stunning and completely over-the-top victory at the SNSB Space Race.

Weaponry

• CEC AG-1G Quad Laser Cannon (Top Turret)
• CEC AG-1G Quad Laser Cannon (Bottom Turret)
• Heavy Ion Cannon (Right Pylon)
• Heavy Laser Cannon (Left Pylon)

Repairs & Modifications

• Made spaceworthy - Zhu Yan
• Repaired fuel intake manifold - Zhu Yan
• Installation of super-duper illegal .7x hyperdrive - Moergog
• Installation of military-grade CEC sublight engine, max space speed 101 MGLT - Moergog
• Repair and refit of pylon-mounted Ion Cannon - Zhu Yan, Reddie

Idiosyncracies

• The controls are beyond-responsive, requiring a slight hand or firm overcompensation to fly safely at anything less than 50% throttle.
• No pre-flight check computer. Yan pulled it out and forgot where he put it.
• Inertial compensators are stuck on .98 setting.
• One escape pod is missing. In its place is a stack of crates that Yan hasn't opened.
• Top speeds of 115MGLT in space and 165MGLT in atmo are beyond what is possible for any other YT-2000 on the grid.

Trivia

• Zhu Yan has owned this ship for nearly five real-life years.