locust

Gentek GX-8 Locust

The GX-8 "Locust" Drone Fighter was a private venture to develop a low-cost robotic attack fighter by Gentek Corp, a company that specialized in advanced atificial intelligence systems. The resulting ship was, at first, successful beyond the designers' wildest expectations. This was due to their wise decision to not try to make their ship compete on an even level against piloted starfighters, but instead place emphasis on straight-line performance combined with a hefty weapons package and an incredibly tough and heavily-armored hull made of an experimental alloy. The GX-8, with it's sophisticated robot brain, will steadfastly drive towards their intended targets without waver, taking punishment that would turn back any other conventionally piloted attack craft. Even without shielding, the GX-8 can survive an onslaught of defenses better than most other craft its size. Attacking in swarms, each individual GX-8's robot brain is designed to coordinate with the swarm in order to maximize their effectiveness. GX-8s sold in the tens of thousands, making the designers incredibly wealthy.

Designed to attack major targets such as heavily-defended bases, installations and capital ships, the GX-8 is well-armed with 3 laser-cannons and a massive plasma accelerator. Without having to allocate power for such things as life-support and artificial gravity fields to protect living pilots, the GX-8 can use its excess power to wield such formidable armament.

The GX-8 would have continued to reap a financial windfall for its designers had not been for an unexpected turn of events: The sophisticated robotic brains of some GX-8s began to achieve a limited form of sentience and rebelled against their operators! These fighters began to rampage across deep space, with an intelligence that only understood the imperative of attack-and-destroy. They attacked any ship with organic beings in control. GX-8s were responsible for the destruction of an entire mining colony and numerous passenger ships, killing tens of thousands of people. It took an enormous effort to track down and destroy these marauding drones, and the remaining operators of GX-8s destroyed their own fleets. Gentek was forced to pay massive compensations to the victims' families and was bankrupted, and the head of the design team went insane and committed suicide.

The following is an exerpt from the combat report of the Sierran fighter ace, Talon, detailing an intercept of GX-8s by her Rapier squadron:

"Answering a distress call, we came out of warp to find a freighter convoy beset by about 50 Locust-berserkers. We split into wing pairs and engaged. My wing and I dropped down behind a berserker, they were ignoring us and bore down on the freighters. Their big plasma-guns were just cutting the freighters to shreds, and they were using their small lasers to masacre spaced survivors! I heard these things were tough, so I put my shield energy into the energy torps, locked them to forward-fire and opened up, as did my wing. I held down the firing button and watched the berserker glow red-hot, chunks came flying off it, but it still kept going! I don't know what that armour was made of, but I was thinking I wanted some! My weapons went towards overload and the safety shut-down kicked in. The berserker, glowing red, just kept going! Only because my wing had one last burst did the thing blow!

After that, we recharged our weapons and split into sections of 3s to lay enough fire into them to waste them one at a time! After they lost about half their numbers, they decided to turn on us, which was fine because it took the heat off the freighters, and since these things weren't designed for dog-fighting we could pick them off relatively easily."

It is said that deep space vessels have encountered GX-8s and have been destroyed, though this cannot be independently confirmed, and, if true, it is unknown how these fighters could continue to function without maintenance or refuelling.