SSV Normandy SR-2
From FABT
SSV Normandy SR-2 (Stealth Reconnaissance-2), formerly named the CAW Normandy SR-2 during its service with Cerberus and as CAW Avenger SR-2 during its prototype phases, was a Normandy II-class heavy stealth frigate in the Cerberus Navy, and later the Alliance Navy. It was the head of its class, and the most advanced warship in the galaxy during its time of service until 2192 CE. Built as part of Project Avenger in absolute secrecy by Cord-Hislop Aerospace under contract to Cerberus, the ship was a reconstruction of the first Normandy, designed using stolen design schematics of the original ship. Built in tandem with Project Lazarus, the effort to resurrect the deceased Commander Shepard, the Normandy SR-2 was built from the ground up to be a significant improvement over her predecessor, being significantly larger, possessing an improved IES stealth system and Tantalus drive core, improved weaponry and defenses, expanded facilities and a built-in cyberwarfare AI suite: all of these improvements were made from lessons learnt from the original ship's demise, and in an effort to prepare it for its intended mission. The ship took two years of research and development and construction time to build, as well as an estimated 8.9 billion credits in spending to produce, making it the single most expensive investment ever made by Cerberus. Built at Minuteman Station, the ship was completed by July 2185 CE and underwent several stress tests and two shakedown runs by a skeleton crew before she was declared spaceworthy by Cord-Hislop flight testers. Initially named the Avenger due to her project name, Commander Shepard chose to rename the ship Normandy in honor of her predecessor and to christen her as the ship's official successor.
Commanded by Marcus L. Shepard, the ship served as his personal flagship and mobile operations center for the entirety of the Collector campaign, where its enhanced IES stealth and drive core proved their worth, outperforming the original ship in every way. The ship's conflicting assortment of facilities and weaponry made its ship class difficult to place, as it was the size of a destroyer, possessed the firepower of a cruiser (and later a dreadnought), but was classified as a heavy stealth frigate. Whilst maintaining the same design philosophy and profile of the original ship, it was significantly larger than the first Normandy, sporting more decks, a larger shuttle bay, and more "luxurious" elements designed for crew comfort that were absent on a ship designed for use in the military, making it an unusual blend between a warship and a luxury vessel. As the Collector campaign continued, massive improvements were made to the ship's defensive capabilities, such as the addition of Silaris armor, cyclonic/multicore shielding and, perhaps the ship's most impressive new feature, a ventral-mounted, retractable thanix cannon, powerful enough to single-handedly place the ship on par with a dreadnought in firepower: these three new improvements were made to the ship at Walker Station shortly before the ship was caught in a Collector trap over Eden Prime in which the cruiser Sarcophagus attacked the disabled Normandy and abducted its crew using a virus implanted in the Reaper IFF the ship's AI was trying to install. After this attack the Normandy Squad launched its assault on the Collector Base, with the Normandy destroying the Sarcophagus but incurring significant damage when a shockwave from the cruiser's detonating reactor caused it to crash into the Base. The ship was repaired in time for the squad to escape the Base following its reactor's destruction, barely escaping the galactic core as the Base detonated. Shortly after Shepard declared his and his crew's intention to leave Cerberus and shortly after went rogue: despite Cerberus attempts to recapture the ship, their improvements to the ship proved to be their downfall, as it eluded their capture time and time again. The ship would briefly dock at the Citadel where it was able to conduct repairs, where it also received a new red-and-black paintjob, shortly after taking part in an operation to overthrow and assassinate the Shadow Broker. Afterwards it took part in deploying the Normandy Squad to the Project asteroid to rescue Shepard during the Bahak Incident. Following the incident, Shepard chose to turn himself in to the Systems Alliance in order to avoid starting a war with the Batarian Hegemony, with much of the ship's former Cerberus crew leaving (with the exception of former Cerberus crew with Alliance backgrounds, who chose to return with Shepard and were also arrested) and Shepard handing in the Normandy.
The ship was impounded by the Alliance Navy at Arcturus Station and then later taken by a skeleton crew to a planet-side starship drydock in Greenland on Earth where it would be searched by the SIA for a month, stripped of any materials that could contain intelligence on Cerberus (although they were unable to discern EDI's true purpose). In January 2186 CE, David E. Anderson managed to have the ship placed under his command and assigned Major Kaidan Alenko as its commanding officer. Work began on commissioning the Normandy into the Alliance Navy, and for the next five months would see an extensive refit to bring it up to Alliance military protocol and standards, as well as incorporating a war room in order to prepare the ship for use as Anderson's flagship and a mobile command base for the imminent Reaper invasion: the ship was also repainted in Alliance Navy colors. The refits were not complete by the time the Reapers attacked Earth and the Reaper War began in June 2186 CE, and the crew of the ship performed emergency takeoff procedures by disembarking from the drydock without authorization, extracting Shepard from Vancouver-Seattle before breaking for orbit, escaping the planet before the Reapers fully occupied it. With Anderson remaining on Earth to lead the resistance and Shepard reassuming command of the Normandy, it retained its role as the flagship of the war effort, with Shepard later renamed Consul of the UGC upon the alliance's foundation. The Normandy took part in several operations across the war, and was heavily involved in the Second Morning War and Second War for Omega. Following the Treaty of Rannoch that allied the quarians and geth, bringing an end to the Second Morning War, the Normandy docked at a geth space station over Rannoch and underwent numerous upgrades, with the addition of directed energy turrets and, most notably, a cloaking device, making it the single most advanced and powerful warship in the galaxy. During the war, the Normandy would take part in numerous operations against its former operator, Cerberus, and also engaged its sister ship, the Deliverance. An attempt by Shepard's clone to steal the ship was made in early September, going as far as to hijack the vessel and make an attempt to leave the system, but a subsequent boarding attempt by the Normandy Squad managed to regain control of the ship, and the clone was killed in the process. The ship was later attacked again, this time by the Deliverance, who caught the ship by surprise, disabled it and managed to kill a significant portion of the crew before the Normandy Squad returned, forcing them to withdraw. The ship was restaffed with a mixture of UGC personnel, including turian, quarian, geth, salarian and asari navy staff, and the Normandy avenged the attack by catching the Deliverance in an ambush shortly after, killing the entire crew and capturing the ship to later use in a surprise assault on Cerberus headquarters.
The Normandy would spearhead the massive UGC assault on Earth at the end of the Reaper War, and took an active part in the Battle of Sol, as well as intermittently providing air support at the Battle of London. The ship was finally called in to evacuate wounded members of the Normandy Squad during the final charge to the Beam, although it was forced to leave Shepard behind, with Garrus Vakarian assuming tactical command in his absence. When the Crucible fired, the Normandy evacuated the system with the rest of the UGC fleet, but lagged behind when Garrus was initially unwilling to abandon his commander. This proved disastrous for the frigate, as it allowed the Crucible beam to catch up to the frigate in FTL, inflicting severe damage on its engines and causing it to initiate an emergency exit from FTL, where it subsequently crash-landed on Aite. The ship suffered significant damage from the crash: its port-side thruster assembly and engine canopy were torn away from impact, and its starboard engines were overloaded and shut down due to the Crucible beam. Its superstructure was buckled, with the ship's spine bent amidships, leading to multiple hull breaches and Decks 4-5 being inaccessible from the upper decks. The ship's thanix cannon and shield generator was destroyed, and its cloaking device damaged and defective. On top of this, pilot Jeff Moreau and the ship's AI, EDI, were both killed, the former from the crash and the latter from the Crucible's effect on synthetics. With the ship severely damaged and declared non-spaceworthy, an emergency locator beacon was deployed and the crew was forced to wait a week until rescue ships arrived. The asari cruiser ARW Lymest later arrived and retrieved the Normandy crew, leaving behind the ship but leaving behind a team of Alliance technicians to secure it and assess the damage. Agreeing that the ship would not be able to return to Earth under its own power, a task force of eight Alliance ships returned two weeks later and used gravity tethers and propulsion rockets to delicately collect the ship and bring it to orbit, where it was then placed and secured inside a Shaw-class recovery vehicle, the SSV Savickas, and transported back to Earth. Upon arrival it was taken to the Alpetragius Mothball Yard on Luna, where it was kept for three months while the Alliance Navy decided what to do with it. As the ship was in too poor of a condition to consider returning to active service, and the ship's state was beyond repair, as it required the ship to be completely gutted in order for it to be spaceworthy again, it was decided the ship was to be only partially restored and instead sold to the Reaper War Memorial Foundation for use as an exhibit in their Reaper War Museum. By the time this purchase was finalized in 2192 CE, the Alliance Navy no longer existed, having transitioned into the Systems Coalition Navy.
The ship was once again towed by a recovery vehicle, this time the CSV Reinhoudt, which towed it to starship construction facility on Mars, which the Reaper War Memorial Foundation rented to undergo the restoration process. Using redacted schematics released to them by the Coalition Navy, along with photos of the ship's interior that existed, they were able to restore the ship largely to its pre-war condition interior-wise, although the engines it was fitted with were non-functional and its drive core was a mockup, as the ship was never intended to fly ever again. Taking six months to complete, the Normandy was towed by the Reinhoudt to its final resting place on the Citadel at the Reaper War Museum in 2193 CE, permanently placed as an exhibit at the museum. It would remain there right up until 2253 CE, where it, and the rest of the museum, were destroyed and permanently lost with the rest of the Citadel at the Battle of Eos at the conclusion of the Dominion Civil War. A fake mockup of the ship was created post-war to replace the lost ship, now located at the new Reaper War Museum at Hyde Park, London on Earth, where it remains to this day. The ship itself would have a spiritual successor in the form of the RNS Revengeance in 2192 CE, and an official successor in the UMWS Normandy in 2260 CE.
The ship, like its predecessor, was named after the Battle of Normandy of the Second World War.