Venom

The Venom is the swiftest and most nimble of all the skimmercraft in the Drukhari arsenal, a slender dart of a vessel built to deliver a killing blow before the enemy is even aware a battle has begun. Where the larger Raider hauls a full complement of raiders to war, the Venom is a rapier rather than a cleaver, bearing only a small and hand-picked cadre of elite warriors trained to fight as a single, seamless unit. Now and again it carries a single passenger, a Commorrite noble either so convinced of their own supremacy that they scorn all bodyguards, or so paranoid they dare not travel with any.

For so light a craft the Venom bites with disproportionate venom, true to its name. It is customarily armed with twin splinter rifles bracketed to its fuselage and a heavier splinter cannon mounted atop its canopy, every round of which is a poisoned splinter that kills as surely by toxin as by impact. A single graceful pass can leave a whole squad convulsing in the dirt while the skimmer is already banking toward its next quarry.

Its true genius, though, is in evasion. Anti-gravitic emitters woven through the ribbing of its hull grant the Venom an agility that borders on the impossible, letting it juke and roll through a curtain of incoming fire as though the storm simply could not touch it, while a holographic flickerfield smears its outline into a blur that confounds enemy snipers and augur-arrays alike. Small wonder it is beloved of the highborn of the upper spires, who prize it for the running-down of prey, that most refined and vile of Commorrite sports.