The I-Type cluster module is a command module that consists of a long, narrow hull surrounded by spherical gun drones. While not deployed, the drones stick magnetically around the length of the hull, resembling a bunch of grapes. When deploying, the I-Type creates a Nephelium field around the ship that allows the drones to move anywhere within the field, using the energy to quickly rotate and move in any angle or direction. While they must stay within the field, these drones have complete freedom of movement and can easily outmaneuver and out-dogfight even the best-tuned manned fighter craft. I-Type drone crews were known as the Sisterhood, because coordinating the dozens of drones when they can move and fire in any direction requires taking hajra, a Nephelium plant-based drug that allows each “Sister” to share sensory inputs with other Sisters in their battle stations’ pods through a telepathic link. Each sister who’s in these sensory deprivation pods controlling a drone can see and hear everything the drone can. This sensory inputs are automatically shared with the Sisters in other pods, for unmatched battlefield awareness and coordination. These drone crews were all-female because hajra has a high risk of causing psychosis in men, but a very low risk in women. The Sister Aces, the I-Type crew with by far the highest kill count in the entire Sisterhood, became a powerful recruitment tool for the Isan Free Navy and even became folk heroes among their Malleon allies.

The I-Type looks like an I with serifs. The cylindrical long section measures 300 yards long and 100 yards in diameter. The gun drones are about four yards in diameter, and each I-Type carries hundreds of them clustered together around the long section, ready to detach and deploy within a minute from the order to battle stations. The bar-shaped sections (the I’s serifs) at each end of the ship measure 120 yards from tip to tip, connected perpendicular to the long section. Everywhere on the ship, gravity points away from the long section’s central axis, so “down” in the bar sections means moving toward the bar’s tip. At the tip of each bar is a coupling, and I-Types typically stack at least a few O-Types or X-Types. The long section has its bridge at the front of the ship, with another coupling at the front that’s less commonly used, but occasionally proves useful for linking I-Types with other command modules to create huge Frankenstein ships. The engineering section is at the other end of the ship: While the engine is reasonably powerful, it can retract its mini-exhaust ports to expose another coupling, most commonly to attach a D-Type. The I-Type’s engine can then link up with the D-Type’s, with far more power for the ship’s movement or to channel through the Nephelium field to overcharge the drones’ movement speed and Nephelium-boosted gun power. In addition to the facilities common to any command section, the I-Type also has a hydroponics bay for growing the hajra plant next to the Nephelium drive, so that the Isan botanists can selectively expose the plant to Nephelium radiation, which is essential to growing the plant and customizing its precise effects. The armor protecting the long section of the I-Type is heavy and reinforced because a major hull breach would collapse the Nephelium field that moves and powers the drones, leaving them derelict.

I-Types are typically configured as light cruisers that can shred waves of enemy launch craft and threaten lightly armored enemy capital ships like the Wasp. The gun drone’s Nephelium-boosted semi-automatic cannon, which is housed internally and runs nearly the entire four yards through the drone’s center, fires shells with shaped explosive charges that can easily punch holes even at the strong points of small craft’s armor. Against lightly armored capital ships, sisters under the influence of hajra can focus fire on specific weak points, with the drone shells’ explosives sawing through the enemy hull. I-Type commanders studied Malleon suichodori formations and taught their drone crews to learn a miniature version of that “underwater dance.” This technique proved especially deadly against Wasps, where a sustained, coordinated series of drone cannonades can cleave through the lightly armored honeycomb section. Under histagal doctrine, the demands of the coming battle can range from attaching several X-Types at each of the bars’ couplings to further specialize the ship in fending off swarms of small enemy craft, all the way to attaching stacks of O-Types and a D-Type to create a fast-moving Wasp killer.