Gunship

''The gunship accelerated. I couldn’t tell if it was communicating with the GrayCris intercept or not. Then Shuttle’s sensors picked up the energy signature that meant the gunship was powering up primary weapons. Oh yeah, they were communicating all right.'' (Exit Strategy)

A gunship is a class of spacecraft, along with explorers, transports, and shuttles. Unlike the other types, a gunship is meant primarily for combat. To quote Murderbot, "gunships don’t have any other purpose except to go fast and blow stuff up." (Exit Strategy) The use of gunships is controlled by treaties between corporations and non-corporate entities. It seems that gunships can vary in size; at one point, Murderbot envisions a giant gunship the size of a space station's transit ring, though it seems unlikely that such exist in reality. The company owns multiple gunships, which seem to be reasonably large vessels, with multiple compartments, a fair-sized crew, wormhole capability, shuttles, and sophisticated bot pilot systems.

In the Corporation Rim, large corporations can afford to operate multiple gunships to protect their interests, or to attack competitors. A single gunship is still a significant investment, however; the destruction (or even attempted destruction) of one gunship may be sufficient provocation for a corporation to go to war, even when other instances of sabotage or breaches of contract might instead be handled through solicitors.

In addition to open warfare, corporations use gunships to exercise pressure on each other. A gunship parked near another corporation's space station can indicate that its owner has a significant interest in the territory (although a single gunship is not necessarily a match for a large station's defences). A corporation may also use gunships to recover or transport important clients in risky situations.

In addition to direct combat, gunships may also become involved in information warfare; an opponent that feels it cannot attack a gunship head-on may instead attempt to hack it, or upload killware into its systems.

Armed vessels not specifically described as gunships also exist; for example, explorers may also be armed. Notably, Perihelion (a research transport) has a debris deflection system which is in effect a powerful ship-to-ship weapon; however, it does not like to openly admit that it is armed.