The Kimi are not a race or people, they are an organization founded by a man named Adriano dos Santos-Kimi. They started as the crew of his pirate sloop "The Golden Enterprise", some 75 years ago.

Starting as a low-level pirate band that plied its trade between the outer Solar System and the Asteroid Belt, from where they operated, they grew in strength, Now they have nothing to do with their founder. The name stuck among such bands. When small ship Star Drive was invented in 2979, these raiders emmigreated out beyond our reach.

They soon affilated and became a quasi-guerilla organization who called themselves "AstraNostra" ("Our Space"). They grew in strength and wealth by preying on the small stellar populations of several planets. Soon they changed to the "Stellar Committee for Enterprise, Protection, Terror, Reprisal and Extortion (SCEPTRE: We continue to call them Kimi to show that we still consider them low-grade scumbags) as they expanded into contraband and began to hire out for such criminal matters as kidnapping, murder, assassination and extortion for pay. At first, they acted only in the Underworld and really racked up the credits.

At this point, exceedingly wealthy, while still maintaining their pirates' trade, they started operating for themselves and became the scourge of the star lanes, carefully avoiding in-systems trafficking. Wealth could buy ships, technology and crews and the small unorganized pre-stellar civilizations, capable of very limited star travel and including the United PLanets, are quite vulnerable to a well-organized, well-funded body of criminals. It wasn't long before the Kimi decided to go into guerilla warfare against law enforcement. For the last 10 years they have been using their Terrorist arm to launch fast hit-and-run raids on planets. At that time they had some 86 ECM-equipped ships of all kinds. Some 6 years ago Space Patrol got wind of a planned attack/invasion by this group and, using advanced intelligence methods, had the Solar Guard, which is more suited to pitched battles, send out a small fleet and gave them a bloody nose in the Battle of Polaris IV* cutting their fleet by about 1/2, and they haven't forgotten. Since then, after remaining quiet for 3 years, building up their strength, they have set their para-military arm against the UPSS.

The Kimi depend on three kinds of ships for battle:

A Long Range Heavy Strike Fighter-Bomber called the "Rok". This is used to carry out hit-and-run attacks planetary targets, It is equipped with superb ECM, twelve 100 kiloton ordinance and is the ship that Vindicator pilots fly against most of the time. This ship is a flying-saucer shaped 4 man (pilot, navigator, ordinance operator and defense operator) craft of Algol design that was inteneded for use in the aborted Sol-Algol War of 2981. Of these ships, 8,000 were made and over 4,000 are unaccounted-for and believed dispersed by the defeated Algol rulers through sale to the outlaws both to harrass the victors of that war and make money. SCEPTRE also has many assorted support and raiding ships of all kinds including Aero-spatial Superiority and Ground Attack fighters and several carriers, the number of which is placed at 10 "pocket carriers" and 5 super carriers. *Actaully, "Polaris IV was the lead ship. The engagement was actually off Procyon VI. The confusion comes because more of the action centered around the lead ship than the planet.