Since our Traveller game has been centered around Schepehyrd lately, I thought it high time to do another spaceship - as much for practice as to give the poor Schepehyrdians a much needed trading craft.

The Jump Courier variant Marathon is meant to bridge the larger gaps of stars up to 3 parsecs apart, or to collect data on precipitation from jump and return to jumpspace less than an hour later, making it similar to the much later X-boat vessels in function - just at a much slower pace.

The Star Cluster variant Marathon carries 1/3d the jump fuel and 30% less operations endurance, but carries 3x as much cargo, and 2 extra low berths, allowing it to service trade routes between two adjacent star systems, or cargo runs within tight clusters of stars with enough potential profit to operate without subsidies. Getting to the cluster from the shipyards at Schepehyrd requires some temporary modifying of the cargo bays to allow it an extra jump or two - though the fuel temperatures and modifications required can make these ventures dangerous. Hughes is looking into a multiple jump 1 ferry that can safely carry these ships to the Serene Cluster and beyond, though the costs for such a project are prohibitive.

As their original Terran built Jump 2 craft start to age into disrepair and the Schepehyrd Alliance begins to slowly spread into the nearby star clusters, their more military Wolf and Rapture class vessels prove beneath the challenges of moving goods and people between the sparsely settled worlds of the Basset and Serene clusters.

While the Marathon's cargo and passenger complements aren't great, they're very inexpensive and completion of several a year easily accomplished against the backdrop of multi thousand ton warships being built for defense across the shipyard.

As with most Schepehyrdian ships of this age, most of the technology on board is only Tech Level 10, several years to a decade behind that of Neu Samara, with only the gravitics and thrusters being truly TL 11. While 1G acceleration doesn't exactly make the Marathon a hot hull, the thrusters Hughes created for this class are top notch when it comes to reliability, cutting overall ship maintenance overhead by up to 20%.

With the injection of small, low cost starships to Schepehyrdian's market, families and corporations besides the Council of Heads oligarchs can finally break their monopoly - Unfortunately at Jump 1, and with the Schepehyrdian blockade policy Earthwards, only internal Alliance trade is currently feasible - with most contracts, cargos, and offworld interests still dominated by Mackey, Rand, Nestle, Hughes and Rockefeller families - the dominant force driving the Alliance.