USM Valor

The USM Valor was a Destroyer-class warship of the Earth Defense Force, captained by Commander F. Cadigan. A fifth the size of the USG Ishimura, it carried formidable firepower and was emblematic of its class. Built at the Wanat Orbital Ship Yards in the Sol Sector and launched in 2488, the Valor was destroyed during Operation: WHITE LIGHT in the Aegis system, undone by the same Necromorph infection it had been sent to contain.

Operation: WHITE LIGHT#

In 2508 the Valor was deployed to support the effort to reclaim Marker 3A, an operation undertaken by EarthGov and spearheaded by Kendra Daniels, and traveled to the Aegis system to retrieve the artifact from the USG Ishimura. Because EarthGov could not determine the location of Aegis VII, the warship was instructed to move out of local scope range once in the system and wait for a signal from the Ishimura to confirm its position. When the ship managed to raise the Ishimura, thanks to the efforts of Isaac Clarke and Daniels, the Valor began making its way to the planet cracker and reported that it had recovered one of the Ishimura's escape pods.

That pod was Escape Pod 47, which the CEC operative Zach Hammond had used to contain and jettison the reanimated Aiden Chen. The Necromorph aboard it attacked the Marines, and Commander Cadigan was forced to mobilize all personnel against an infection that spread with terrible speed. The pilots and command crew were killed, an explosion tore through the ship, and the Valor lost control and listed headlong toward the Ishimura.

The crash#

The Valor crashed into the underside of the Ishimura, lodging itself in the planet cracker's Ore Storage Deck and causing incalculable damage to both ships. Cadigan's personnel fought the Necromorphs, many of them former crew, but with more creatures boarding from the Ishimura after the impact the battle was lost, and Cadigan presumably went down with the rest of his crew. The wreck demonstrated the durability of the larger ship, which survived the collision and continued to drift in the Aegis system.

Isaac Clarke boarded the Valor to retrieve its singularity core, which he needed to power a shuttle and escape the Ishimura. Fighting through the wreck, he encountered a new breed of Necromorph formed from the ship's Marines. Because the soldiers' suits carried built-in Stasis modules, the creatures they became could move many times faster than a regular Slasher, and they were called Twitchers. During the recovery, Zach Hammond was killed by Chen's Necromorph form, and pulling the core destabilized the Valor's engine through a catastrophic failure of fuel containment, causing further damage to the Ishimura. Isaac nonetheless retrieved the core, giving himself, Kendra Daniels, and Dr. Terrence Kyne a chance to escape aboard a surviving Executive Shuttle. Daniels later credited the Valor's role to her effort to reclaim the Marker, stating that her mission had succeeded even with the loss of Cadigan and his crew. As part of EarthGov's falsified account of the Ishimura's fate, the wreckage of the Valor was most likely disposed of to support the cover-up.

A warship of its class#

A fifth the size of the Ishimura, the Valor carried the firepower characteristic of an EDF Destroyer. Its armament consisted of a network of heavy cannon batteries arranged in pairs on the upper, lower, and bow sections of the hull, together with a torpedo and missile launch system. The ship also carried a single 12-megaton EURYDICE guided nuclear missile, held in its Torpedo Bay as part of a sterilization protocol and intended for use on the Ishimura should the Necromorph infection be present, presumably after the Marines secured the Marker. That warhead was destabilized when the Valor crashed.

Internally the Valor was organized for its Marine complement of at least sixty-four soldiers of the 3343rd Spaceborne, divided into Navigation, Weapons, and Engineering teams. The ship's main Armory held racks of Pulse Rifles and lockers of Advanced Soldier suits, with a shooting range where off-duty Marines practiced. The Barracks and Mess Hall housed and fed the crew, the Cargo Bay stored the ship's supplies and was where the fatal escape pod was brought aboard, and the Engine Room contained the singularity core and ShockPoint Drive that Isaac came to claim. A Briefing Room and an Infirmary completed the working spaces of a warship built to enforce EarthGov's will and to leave no witnesses behind.