by John Douglass

The Nevermann is another result of a desperate Earth unable to field enough new ships to fulfill every wartime role and thus forced to commission and modify civilian vessels. Like the Interdictors, scouts were employed as patrol craft. Their smaller size and less extensive sensor equipment meant they were less than ideal in deep-space patrol, so were instead dispatched to asteroids and moons to perform virtually visual observation. Also like the Interdictors, Scouts were modified in spacedocks which were too small to garner a large government contract to manufacture new combat vessels, and were mostly equipped with whatever hardware was available. Such ships were often given one paint job after the initial fitting, and any equipemnt mounted or replaced after that was not painted to match.

The Neverman started as a shuttle. The aft-mounted engine section was completely removed and larger engines were combined with a rudimentary sensor package and as a unit mounted to the bottom of the ship where atmosphere foils had been. A light-duty weapon was added to the nose even though it would render the ship suerior in combat only to even smaller ships. Like the Interdictors, Scouts were expected to locate enemy vessels, report their position and keep them under observation, and definitely avoid confrontations. The Nevermann's captain, however, not content to follow those orders, once succeeded in crippling an enemy destroyer with a combination of superior acceleration, maneuverability, and markmanship. The event earned a publicity tour for him and a Smithsonian exhibition for his ship. Being thus earthbound for the next year of the war was thought by the military to be fitting punishment for having exceeded his orders.

I had fun with the Robert Robbins and thought to use "Value Engineering" to come up with the quintessential Interdictor. Succeeded, too, but the resulting ship had no width, no mass, and little interest. So I lopped-off the engine I'd had at the end of the fuselage and added engines to either side of the bottom-mounted sensor package, tying it all together at the end of the fuselage. Like the Interdictors, painting started with a Sandable Primer, followed by airbrushed black, then splotched-on FS Blue. This technique adds depth by keeping the hard-to-get-to places and edges of parts black. It also makes the color slightly darker and thus richer than an airbrushed blue would be. The last step is dry-brushing raised details with Intermediate Blue.

Image: Left/front view

Image: Right/front

Image: Looking down