SSV David
From FABT
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Production information | |
Manufacturer: |
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Class: |
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Operator(s): |
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Technical information | |
Length: |
100m |
Width: |
71m |
Height/depth: |
49m |
Max acceleration: |
53 kilometers per second |
Engine unit(s): |
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Shielding: |
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Hull: |
100cm of Titanium-A1 Light Armor |
Sensor systems: |
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Armament: |
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Crew: |
50 (planned) |
Usage | |
Commissioned: |
17 August 2152 CE (planned) |
Destroyed: |
15 August 2152 CE |
Role(s): |
Patrol/fast attack |
Fleet: |
First Fleet (planned) |
Commander(s): |
Captain Frederick Audry |
SSV David FA-4 (Fast Attack-4) was a Gargoyle-class corvette in the Alliance Navy. The fourth of three hundred Gargoyle-class corvettes drawn up and planned to be commissioned into the Alliance Navy, the David was intended to be assigned to the First Fleet upon being commissioned on the 2nd of November 2149 CE but was held back from service due to the already infamous reputation her other three sister ships had already earned. The David was thus held back for several years while Alliance technicians attempted to figure out a way to rectify the numerous design flaws the Gargoyle-class had: as a result, the David became a testbed for many new technologies the Alliance was trialing for its new fleet. As the Gargoyle-class was largely rushed out in order to build up the infant Alliance Navy quickly, many flaws in its designs were overlooked, making the ship not only notoriously unreliable, but also very unpopular among those who crewed them. Despite these glaring issues, only the David was pulled from service, having suffered a severe power surge when engineers were testing her engines, making her essentially non-spaceworthy.
Numerous attempts to improve the design were made, and by the 11th of August 2152 CE, she was finally declared ready to be commissioned. However, in the afternoon of the 15th of August, just two days before the ship was scheduled to be commissioned, a sudden rise in temperature was detected within the ship's fusion core during engine stress tests. Onboard engineering crews attempted to solve the issue, but the temperature continued to rise. Realizing what was happening, the engineering crew attempted to warn dock control, but it was too late. Within forty seconds, the fusion reactor suddenly detonated, obliterating the ship, severely damaging four other Davo-Hamish docks, killing hundreds of engineers and workers, and spreading radioactive material over a large distance before being dispersed harmlessly into space. The incident would be known as the SSV David Explosion. The ship was unrecoverable, with barely any of the ship left to recognize, while hundreds of workers or engineers had either been close enough to the explosion to be vaporized in the blast, or had been killed as a result of flying debris or radioactive contamination. Another Gargoyle-class vessel, the SSV Sullivan, had suffered significant damage to her superstructure, with numerous hull breaches created by exploding debris and one of her port thrusters had been sheared off, forcing the ship to undergo weeks of repairs to become spaceworthy again.
The destruction of the David was a painful reminder to the Alliance Navy of the inferiority of nuclear fusion reactors in comparison to the cleaner, more powerful and less dangerous element zero alternatives that their larger capital ships were already using. This factored into the decision to completely recall and decommission all nuclear fusion reactors across the entire Alliance fleet, including civilian starships, with their official replacement by eezo drive cores. Every Gargoyle-class ship was recalled and went through meticulous retrofit in order to phase out the nuclear fusion drive cores, but this process was interrupted by the First Contact War when the Alliance hastily rushed them back into service. The Gargoyle-class performed poorly during the conflict, with one captain morbidly noting that the only thing they were good for was as "nuclear kamikaze packages", as Kastanie Drescher would famously use her Gargoyle corvettes for this exact purpose to stall the turian fleet while her fleet disengaged at the First Battle of Shanxi: among these vessels to be sacrificed would be the Sullivan, the ship damaged in the original David explosion. As such, Alliance lessons learnt in the war led to more sophisticated and improved warship designs, and the superior Mermaid-class corvette would replace the Gargoyle-class after the war. Whenever the Gargoyle-class is mentioned in conversation, the David is often pointed to as an example of the vessel's shortcomings, and the fact they were ultimately just a ticking time bomb.
The ship was named for the biblical and historical figure of King David, the third monarch of the United Monarchy of Israel and Judah, and one of the most revered figures of Judaism, being one of the greatest Israeli rulers to have ever lived.