Chaucer-class

Water Hauler

Water haulers are massive ships equipped with oversized arms and other equipment to harvest water from frozen chunks of rock and glaciers in Saturn's rings and other places in The Belt. This makes them invaluable to the economy to the Outer Planets, and most are owned by private corporations that send these ships back and forth to supply communities with the water they need to survive. The Chaucer-class are all former colony ships, most around a century old, that have been refurbished and sold to companies like Pur’n’Kleen and Krystal Kleer for the purpose of harvesting ice.

Ice from the Rings

Water is the most precious resource beyond Earth. These ships are usually based on efficiency and cost-effectiveness, which means they’ve been repurposed from old ships that were retired and about to be dismantled. The vast passenger quarters and cargo bays have been ripped out and replaced with huge ice bays and water storage tanks. The bulk of the ice is shipped in liquid form, but the ships also have the capability to melt down the ice and store it in tanks for customers who require liquid water.
In most cases, corporations want to keep their costs to a minimum and rely on engineers and officers to keep their ships running without falling apart. These ships almost always have a laundry list of problems that keep their engineers busy and creative. Each ship has a hanger bay for tereshuttles that are sometimes used during ice harvesting operations. They usually also have several Gleason-Type repair skiffs docked. The Chaucer-class is almost always unarmed and often relies on military escorts during dangerous times. They do have grapplers, but those are used for pulling in large chunks of ice. Metal plates are embedded in the ice , and the grapplers are then used to draw the ice into the cargo bay. They also carry at least one salvage and one towing drone, as well as a repair and resupply drone.

Power Generation

Fusion drive

Propulsion

Epstein Drive, Thrusters

Weapons & Armament

2x Grappers

Communication Tools & Systems

Wide and Narrow band communication antenna

Sensors

RADAR, LADAR, Radio receptor, optical telescopes

Additional & auxiliary systems

Drones, Hangar Bay, Reduced Crew Requirements

Hangars & docked vessels

• 4x Tereshkova-type Shuttles
• 6x Gleason-Type Repair Skiffs
• 88x Drones

Used by

• Sommelier

Designation

Water Hauler

Length

750m

Complement / Crew

14 (55)

The Sommelier prior to its destruction by unknown Stealth Ships