With the success of the
Eterne as an export model starship,
Hypermarine Astronautic's increasingly questionable business portfolio came under more scrutiny. It appeared that not only were they cooking their own books, but cooking other corporations books as well. This was hiding that even though their newest venture in the
Eterne Starjets were quite lucrative, the state contracts to work on more military projects were hemorrhaging money. Exactly how this was possible was debated for some time among corporate lawyers, but ultimately the conclusion was the same, Hypermarine was on it's way out. Immediately
PAEN Systems snapped up their contracts, renegotiating them for a suitably higher price, and acquiring most of the technical knowledge used to design the
Heathen series space frames. The profitable division that was producing the Eterne, along with numerous other small civilian craft that were selling well abroad was spun off as the
Outland Conglomerate, taking with it the various small firms used to produce the various components of their craft.
In the final days of Hypermarine, their teams were busy putting the finishing touches on a series of new civilian starships, the one most touted being the
Celeste G900. A smaller brother to the
Eterne G750. The designs for these now filling the freshly minted catalogues of Outland.
The G900 comes equipped with the same Trans-Tunnel drive that gave the Eterne the ability to do
New Praetoria to
New York in 8 days, something unheard of outside of select Military craft, and the designs of
Virgin. The G900 carries only 3,000 passengers, a steep decline from the quintuple digit figure seen on the G750, however this is reflected on the price of the vessel itself, coming in at a mere 500,000,000Ë, compared to the Eternes eye watering 6,000,000,000Ë price tag.
Much like its bigger brother, the Celeste features VTOL capability with vectoring engines. Dubbed the 'X666C Model', this engine functions similarly to X633 model, but in a more compact and efficient form.
The Celeste isn't expected to usurp the Eterne on popular Intergalactic flights, with that honor still falling to the larger vessel, however it's smaller size and efficiency makes it perfect for less well travelled routes that simply cannot support the Eterne. Cargo conversions are expected to prove popular as a way of quickly moving materials along lower volume trade routes, and as fast interstellar Nehellenium passenger flights.
(Note: It's 3:20am, and I am really tired. Will fix missed spelling errors come the morning)