by Hilary Ayre
Painting by David Martin
Let's be clear. Star Vengeance! is one of the best vid dramas I've ever seen. The special effects are good enough to fool not only me, but my body guards, all of whom have seen action within the past year. Every living person /know lusts just a little after one or another of the heroes. And we all like the fight scenes. The climactic aerospace battle that closes the vid keeps us on the edge of our seats. I'm not the only one in the theater who forgot to breathe during it. In the Federated Sun's Luxury Lottery for this year, the first 100 copies of the private-viewing tapes are hot prizes in the preChristmas lottery; that month has twice as many subscribers as any other. It's a hit equal to the 28th Century Blood and Sand series. But it isn't real. In this, the 31st Century, you will never see these Mechs (Thank whatever Deity you please); these ships will never rend the air of Known Sphere planets. There are no Intelligent Avian Invaders. It has captured the imagination of tens of millions of people, but IT IS NOT REAL! AND BATTLETECHNOLOGY DOES NOT WANT YOU TO THINK WE THINK IT IS! But if they did exist .. if they did exist, what would they look like? We asked the special-effects holovid wizards at Megalo Vids Inc (a corporation registered in Oriente Province, Free Worlds League), the real stars of the Vid. Megalo Vids has given Battle Technology permission to reprint their design criteria. The use of these three ships is copyright by Megalo Vids. For those of us who have dreamed of StarLeague technology and an unlimited budget, here are the Falconhurst and the Shrike, the ships that nearly ended the careers of David Korzinski, Mech Ace, and his sweetheart Anna Mae Halas, Aerospace Adventuress, in the year's hottest drama... SRK-Class Shrike AerodyneThis is the ship that drops Avian Mechs on the unsuspecting pastoral planet of Lucerne early in the vid. One of these is taken over by Anna Mae and the 3rd Black Onyx Fighter Squadron at the climax of the film. Type: Aerodyne
FST-Falconhurst Armed JumpShipThis is the mother ship whose apperpance causes the destruction of the Marik Fleet in Stop Vengeance! until the Big White Ships of the Com Guards reinforce the Free Worlds League and Anna Mae's squadron saves the Inner Sphere from annihilation. Tonnage: 811,000 tons
The Shrike wing, led by Anna Mae Halas, is convinced they are following an Avian flight leader. She leads them to attack their own ship, the Falconhurst, in this climactic scene from Star Vengeance, reproduced by kind permission of Megalo Vids, The Inner Sphere's prime Producers of Entertaiment Back to BattleTechnology 12 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com |