Crescent-class Transport Mark II

Hyrotii built the Crescent-class for wealthy young travellers who wanted to arrive quickly, and the Mark II takes that idea somewhere strange: it deletes the hyperdrive.

The base Crescent shipped with a Class 1 hyperdrive and high-speed ion drives, trading tonnage for speed and reaching roughly 950 km/h in atmosphere. The Mark II keeps the drives, removes the hyperdrive entirely, and spends the reclaimed volume on cargo space and a larger passenger lounge. What is left is a fast, comfortable, well-appointed 30-metre courier that cannot leave the system on its own. It must be carried, or refitted at the cost of the cargo space it was redesigned to gain.

That sounds like a defect and is better understood as a niche. Within a system a Mark II is genuinely quick and genuinely pleasant, and it reads as money - which is precisely why smugglers and confidence artists bought them second-hand. A luxury courier gets waved through checkpoints that would strip a freighter to the frame. The ship's real cargo capacity is its reputation, and the absence of a hyperdrive simply means somebody else arranges the long legs.

Everything else follows the same trade. Shielding is moderate rather than good, armament is a single light laser cannon, and the hull is built light. A Crescent Mark II survives by being fast, by being somewhere else, and by looking like it belongs.

(Assumption: sources conflict on length - the class page gives 30 metres while the Adventurer, itself a Mark II, is listed at 21; the class figure is used. The Adventurer is also listed with a Class 2 hyperdrive, contradicting both class pages' statement that the Mark II shipped without one, which may be a later refit. Crew, armament and passenger figures are the base Crescent-class's, as no Mark-II-specific numbers are recorded.)