Marauder Starjacker

The Marauder Starjacker was one of the two ore-raiding ships commissioned by the pirate captain Finhead Stonebone four thousand years before the rise of Palpatine's Empire. He used them to raid Ithullan Ore Haulers which were made from large Ithullan colossus wasps. For a time, Stonebone made a huge profit from raiding Ithullan Ore Haulers, though his actions angered Bogga the Hutt. The angry Hutt had Finhead Stonebone and his two ships captured by his mighty Enforcer One. Bogga then pressed Stonebone and his pirates into his service.

The Marauder Starjacker and her sister ship, the Stenness Raider began service as standard Byblos Drive Yards E-2 asteroid mining vehicles. They resemble insectosoid craft and are over one hundred metres long. E-2 mining ships are found all over the galaxy as they offer a cheap alternative to using costly tractor beams to drag asteroids. They have rugged claws which dig through solid rock and attach to an asteroid. Once they are connected, the ship's thruster jets are fired to move the asteroid to a specific location. An E-2 miner has plasma drills to cut through the useless rock, while a central suction tube draws material up into the E-2's filter system where valuable ores are stored in cargo bays. Each E-2 often has a command crew of 4, a bridge crew of 10 and over a hundred asteroid miners.

When Captain Stonebone set out raiding Ithullan Ore Haulers, he used E-2s. He destroyed a mining operation near Varl System and stole two E-2s. His engineers modified them for ore raiding. Plasma drills were moved to the front of the ships; three power generators to a single drill, and the prismatic drill crystals were modified to give a longer range. While the drills lacked laser cannons, they were powerful enough to rip through the wasps carapaces. For added speed, he replaced the motors with four Corellia StarDrive microthrusters and reinforced the digging claws with monomolecular slicers, making the claws capable of slicing through the Ithullan Ore Haulers' thick skin. Stonebone also removed the filtering system because he knew that his ships would only be drawing pure ore thoguh it increased the cargo space by a third. Finhead also had the mining stations removed, giving enough space for over a hundred raiders for boarding ships.

When attacking ore haulers, Finhead's tactic was that the raiding ships cut through the target's hull and expose the cargo holds to space. THis created a vacuum which drew the ore modules along with Wasp crew into the raiding ship's cargo hauls where his henchmen sorted out the loot.