by Jason Smith

Not every bounty hunted is a living being. On rare occasions, Boba Fett has been hired to retrieve property, more often then not, a ship. Slave III is a Mandal Motors Recovery Class Hauler that Fett has had docked in one of his bases for some time. Originally, designed to act as a deep space hauler and tug, the Recovery Class boasts six high capacity thrust engines, capable of pulling over 100 times it's own mass. It also possesses a capital scale tractor beam projector. Together, these enable the Recovery to retrieve and tractor vessels as large as a Corellian Corvette.

After Slave II was severely damaged, Fett returned to using Slave I. However, Soon the old ship proved to be but a shadow of it's former self. While considering what his next acquisition would be (Slave IV) he decided to use Slave III as his mobile base of operations.

With the extensive modifications that he had made, Slave III proved to be every bit as formidable as the past ships. Fett removed the towing clamp and added a primary drive engine in the main hull of the ship. Tweaking the six thrust engines he increased the maneuverability of Slave III tenfold. As not all ships that he hunts are lying dead in space waiting to be captured, Slave III boasts fore and aft pairs of ion cannons mounted near the lower stabalizer wings. Slave III's remaining armarment of cannon and torpedo tubes lay concealed with in the ship, lending to its casual appearance. Internally, Slave III contains the same sensor suites found in Slaves I and II, as well as two holding cages and a modified pursuit swoop.

The design of Slave III was based on the artwork of Feng Zhu, a concept artist on Star Wars ROTS. It was completely scratchbuilt from styrene (with the exception of 3 minor greeblies).

To me the ship looked a lot like Boba Fett's helmet, and seeing as how I couldn't find any actually references to what Slave III looked like. I decided that is what this build would be.

The main hull was constructed, as was the rest of the build, out of sheet styrene. I knew that I would be lighting this model, so I made sure to take that into consideration when planning the build.

The engines were constructed using a box construction for the housing and styrene coin collecting tubes for the engines themselves. After the tubes were cut, they were laminated with various layers of styrene to give the thickness and look they needed.

I had often wondered if it was possible to light a model with a MagLite. I deceided to use this build as a test. I decided that a AAA MagLite would probably work. In order to make things easier, I choose to make the flashlight the syand as well for the kit. The hole in the underside is where the light will be inserted. For the engines thrust nozzles I used the caps from some scented markers, cut down and shimmed to fit the interior of the coin tubes.

Image: Bottom

Image: The devil is in the details

Image: Pilot

Image: Rear detail

Image: Starboard side

Image: Top view