CTS Fabriker

The CTS Fabriker is one of the CTS's 16 active Tahoro-class Star Ferries. Four kilometers long, and with its outriggers, two across, it is the largest Tahoro in the fleet.
The ship of the first 4 ever built, and the only one to still be in service. It has a particular focus on industrial production, almost as much a factory ship as it is a logistics vessel, and this is no accident. While it's 3 sister ships have been picked clean in orbit of Concordia Epsilon, the Fabriker became the factory ship it is today as a survival measure. The ship crafts its own replacement parts as it sails the stars, and nothing of the original vessel remains. To say it was built in 640 is something of a misnomer. 
Today, the ship uses its industrial capacity to compete with the very systems its transits through, receiving orders through the infranet, and queueing them in the foundries just in time to deliver the finished product. As a result, the Fabriker has less passenger and hanger space than other ships of its class. With reduced cargo space, the deployable cargo outriggers were deployed so often that the engineers stopped maintaining them. They have been out for so many centuries that the ship has built entire catamaran hulls - the Semimajor and Polaris neighborhoods, to be specific - all the way out there.

Demographics

Despite the extreme inequality aboard the Fabirker compared to other CTS vessels, it is one of the most ethnically diverse ships in the fleet. It contains a large Snowfaller, Yaoren, and even Kata population, among the other, more common races. It's upper decks are still plurality Concordian, but they make up less than a quarter of the whole ship's crew. Naturally, this horrifies Bellum*, and the Fabriker never stays at that port for long.

Government

The Fabriker is run as a business plutocracy. The ruling class of the ship is made up by private owners. The first and second generation of CTS vessels relied in part on private investment, but the Concordance would drop that practice by the third. Nonetheless, the Fabriker is run by its on-board owners. In a fluke of the first generation's chartering, the ship's crew reserved the right to buy out any private shareholders that did not live permanently on the vessel. While the Concordance still owns a stake in the ship, and installs a representative (the locals call them the Viceroy) aboard, they mostly leave the Fabriker to its own affairs. 
The owners of the ship, living in the upper decks off the profits of the ship's two industries, run the ship like a business. The Fabriker maximizes its profits at every turn, and in turn, runs the ship with as little regulation as possible. While a vessel must run with more central regulation than a planetary government, the Fabriker pushes that line as much as possible. When businesses aboard the vessel grow large enough, they often buy out a previous owner and join the ruling class. Legitimate law enforcement on the vessel is reserved to the passenger neighborhoods, factories, and cargo ports. Only in extreme situations, such as riots, assassinations, or hull-threatening terrorism, do the elite's police descend from the mid-decks. 
The working-class districts of the lower decks run a dual power model, filling in the cracks left by the upper decks with either local muscle or hired guns. The upper decks generally don't concern themselves with what happens in the lower decks, at least when there is no profit to be made. Where passengers and locals meet in the mid-decks, the private security of the upper decks and the ad-hoc police militias of the workers' decks clash with... interesting results.

Defences

The Fabriker retains the services of Geldkorps LLC, a mercenary company recently acquired by the Sundow Security Conglomerate. Their marine forces function as the Fabriker's elite riot police, and frequent the lower decks far more than the ships internal security forces. They also operate a small defense fleet consisting of one frigate, the Bisbass, and several smaller picket ships. 
Aside from the mercenary forces aboard, the Fabriker maintains a civil point-defense grid, like every other ship of its class. The autocannons have decent enough tracking software to give gunners a better idea of where to aim for distant targets, such as torpedoes or strike craft. Thankfully, the Fabriker hasn't been tested by combat in generations.

Industry & Trade

The key industry of the Fabriker, like every CTS vessel, is logistics and trade. Transit fees make up a majority of the ship's revenue, and for the owners, profit. But unlike most other ships in the fleet, the Fabriker, well, fabricates. It's mid-decks are dominated by the massive factories that build the replacement parts that the ancient ship burns through. When not buying raw material to rebuild the ship, its top-tier factories take orders from the systems it will be transiting through. While not competitive with whole planets' industries, the spaceship-specialized factories aboard the Fabriker consistently fill a niche across the galaxy.

Founding Date

640

Type

Caravan

Inhabitant Demonym

Fabrikers

Owning Organization

Concordance Transit System

Characters in Location

• Kingsmill "Kenny" Korelle