In the lawless expanse between star systems, the Murasaki Corporation has found that relying on luck is a poor defense against piracy, so they’ve put their best minds to work developing a fleet of starfighters to defend their shipping interests. Since the pirates preying on them had so far been using whatever they could cobble together from spare parts, the first defensive force off the line was the Suntetsu intercept fighter. A small, single-seat design, it’s armed with a pair of belly-mounted rapid-recharge light blaster cannons, side-mounted single-shot missile tubes, and rear-mounted chaff dispensers. Its primary assets, however, are speed and manouverability. The pilots learn quickly that they need to keep their flight mechanics happy, since it doesn’t have much more armor than a can of pop.

The top view gives you a good view of the overall hull shape. I’d long considered making a spacecraft with a split nose, based loosely on Zam’s speeder from SW: AOTC, but I’d always pictured them being long and skinny. I had three pairs of the silver/purple wedge pieces from the Green Goblin set sitting around, and I’d finally decided to put them to use, and after tinkering around with them for a while I realized they’d be perfect for the split-nose idea. I briefly considered using a bubble canopy, but instead opted for the sleek look of the 4×10 canopy, and when extending the hull a bit I decided the wedges blended nicely into a tapered tail. I’d already thrown conventional aeronautics out the window, so I started playing around with contrasting angles, and this is the result.

I’ve noticed that some fighter canopies cover large instrument bays, so rather than pushing the pilot up as far as he could go, I put him way in the back and filled up the forward portion as much as I could.