The Reach · Vessel
A compact picket hull operating the antispinward edge of the coalition line. Reads her own board (no Nhál eyes aboard) — flies the network, which in Book 5 is a coin-flip. Affiliation ambiguous on page (calls "the line" for a steer; logs the Nhál long-anchor afterward — reads as coalition-aligned).
Designation
picket
What her era can carry. Kinetics baseline. Coil and rail accelerators, finite magazines, point defence, interceptors.
The era that fights a war. The boundary-weapon family is FOUNDED here — the lance descends from the coupling in The Quiet Mathematics aimed at a target's harmonic relationship — and is new, rare and barely understood at the close.
⚠ A ceiling, not a fit — what a hull of this class could carry in this era, derived from the capability ladder rather than stated for this ship. She may well carry less; she is never shown carrying more. Source: Era tier T4 — derived from the capability ladder for its era.
The record
A compact picket hull operating the antispinward edge of the coalition line. Reads her own board (no Nhál eyes aboard) — flies the network, which in Book 5 is a coin-flip. Affiliation ambiguous on page (calls "the line" for a steer; logs the Nhál long-anchor afterward — reads as coalition-aligned).
The chapter 11 save-by-the-dirty-method-of-the-measure: a picket nearly walked onto a lure by her own clean board, pulled off it only because the Nhál spent their eyes to reach her on the one channel that can't be made to lie. Survives chapter 11 whole; never learns Rae Ashford died aboard the Lodestar during her rescue.
The deliberate gut-punch: the picket the dirty method saved (chapter 11) is taken anyway by the thing the dirty method cannot touch — even the saves don't hold against the new order. Vinter and Imeth (both present at the chapter 11 save) feel it; Vinter names it on the page. (Resolves the affiliation open-item: a coalition-aligned picket that joined the coreward edge.)
Compiled from the canon file for this hull. Only sections that are settled canon are shown — drafting notes and anything belonging to an unpublished book are held back.
