WF Ann Leckie (Patreon)

The WF Ann Leckie. One of the last spaceships to be built before The Silence. More advanced than many WF ships of its era. Built in conjunction with Swift Space, the Leckie was a fully immersive experience for the pilot. Neural Fields interfaced directly with the pilot's neural net, making them at one with the ship, putting all control at just a thought's distance and making all the ship sensors and pilots senses combine. Pilots of the Leckie described the experience as like 'hanging in space naked' or 'having a field of vision as big as the night sky'.

Due to its speed and range the Leckie became a trouble shooting ship for the UN initially. Despatched to points of conflict within the solar system, a team of diplomats on board to arbitrate disagreements or to smooth political flash points.

As the years passed and technology pushed humanity closer and closer to a society where scarcity was a thing of the past, the Leckie was used less to solve problems, and more as a governmental shuttle. For a time it was the UN Secretary General's personal ship, and then the Martian ambassador's. 

By the time the Golden Age was figured to have actually begun, the WF Leckie was privately owned by Mqaret Swann, the founder of The Guild of The Passerines. Known colloquially as The Sparrows, the guild was a cooperative society that had propagated throughout the solar system from its home on Saturn's moon Telesto. The Sparrows were a society based on science, logic, and complete equality. Every member of the guild voted on dozens of decisions each day that affected the running of the society. Its stability, prosperity, and the apparent happiness of its members, had made membership of the guild a tempting prospect for many in the outer solar system, and by 2270 it numbered over twenty million souls.