UNH Resource Collector

Raw Material Collection

The Diligence-class military tug frame often licensed to civilian contractors and in high demand throughout the Higaaran Control Zone and adjacent territory. It mates cutting-edge high performance fusion thrusters to thruster turrets giving it excellent hauling and cargo maneuvering characteristics.

Diligences have a more heavily armored phased-disassembler array than more primitive resource collectors; housed inside the center of the ship and connecting directly to the payload. The ship runs its fusion torches at three times the intensity of the Providence from a hundred years ago; it much more rapidly breaks down asteroids into their component elements and shaves precious time off resourcing runs.

Unfortunately, while the Diligence has admirable versatility and adaptibility, it is still unarmed so it can be marketed in the civilian market. Design planners have also been lectured repeatedly that mass spent on guns and ammunition is mass that cannot be spent on improved carriage.

Notable characteristics include massive external coolant vents; the payload tank is usually filled with cool water refined from cometary ice by the carrier. This water is cycled through the fusion torch systems as coolant, then vented through armored hoses to the lower fins as superheated steam. In this fashion the tank doubles as coolant storage allowing the high-intensity fusion torch to run at higher speeds and eliminating the need for dedicated (and costly) cryogenic tanks. Recent resourcing activity is often given away by the clouds of ice crystals left by this process.

The line of after-market upgrades and modules adapted for the Diligence is extraordinary and sees constant expansion today, twenty years after the ship's introduction.