The Maverick is the primary scout ship for the C Quadrant Defenders. It is a lightly armed, two-deck vessel with a crew of three, designed to patrol a sector and provide basic reconnaissance. While the Maverick is not especially well armed, it does make up for it by having an oversized sensor array for its relatively small displacement. The bridge of the ship has a suite of consoles and recording equipment to record sensor data and parse it for retransmission back to command groups. There is a generally lopsided shape of the Maverick, saving as much weight as possible by keeping the lower deck only just big enough for the engine reactor and access ladder. The lower deck is also isolated from the upper deck by a central hatch, allowing the engineer to seal off the space and use it as an airlock, exiting through the forward facing hatch for in-flight repairs. The mission role of the Maverick was expected to be short duration recon excursions and speed, resulting in a distinct lack of amenities for the crew, along with other weight-saving measures.

The Maverick was later refit with a pair of gauss cannons replacing the double barrel machine gun turret as the primary armament. The refit version was known as the Maverick-G. The turret was moved to the rear of the vessel, displacing the sensor array to the top center of the hull. To better facilitate the use of the turret in a defensive role, the engineer was given a rear facing control station with an added window. For lateral visibility, the upper deck was shortened slightly, to put the engineer-turned-gunner a view through the emergency rescue hatch windows. The color scheme was changed from black with red striping to blue striping to allow differentiate the variants from a distance.