UT-47 Kodiak Drop Shuttle

The UT-47 Kodiak Drop Shuttle was a personnel carrier capable of atmospheric flight and limited faster-than-light travel, used extensively by the Systems Alliance and Cerberus. Carried aboard the Normandy SR-2, it became Commander Shepard's primary means of reaching the surface during the campaign against the Collectors and the war against the Reapers.

Design and capabilities#

The Kodiak was an interplanetary craft operated by a pilot and a co-pilot and able to carry up to fourteen people in total, twelve of them packed into a cramped cargo space at full complement, along with a virtual intelligence. Alliance marines nicknamed it the "Combat Cockroach" for its durability and blunt appearance. It was a true contragravitic vehicle: its substantial element zero core counteracted the shuttle's mass entirely, leaving its small thrusters to handle only directional control. The arrangement was efficient but unforgiving, since a failure of the mass effect field would leave the craft, in the grim shipboard expression, a three-million-credit coffin.

In its standard configuration the Kodiak carried no weapons, trading that space for active masking, electronic countermeasures, and a robust kinetic barrier system. It was hardened against extremes of environment, tested in the sulfuric acid and searing temperatures of Venus and rated to land in hard vacuum, high pressure, and temperatures ranging from near absolute zero to over nine hundred degrees Celsius.

Service aboard the Normandy#

The Normandy SR-2 was nearly twice the mass of the original Normandy, which meant it could not easily land on the surfaces of most worlds and had to be provided with a shuttle for ground travel. The SR-2 kept a Kodiak in its hangar bay, and Shepard and the ground team used it for missions throughout the fight to stop the Collectors. During an operation against a batarian prison on Aratoht, undertaken at Admiral Hackett's request, Shepard and Dr. Amanda Kenson stole a prison Kodiak, painted black and red with a batarian logo, to make their escape, and further shuttles were used to evacuate staff from the facility afterward.

The A-model and the Reaper War#

By 2186 an upgraded variant, the UT-47A or A-model Kodiak, had entered service, and the refitted Normandy SR-2 carried two of them in its hangar. The A-model was armed with a pair of front-mounted mass accelerator cannons for striking enemy vehicles and structures, along with an internally stored heavy turret that could be deployed to lay down anti-infantry fire while the shuttle doors were open. It also carried an upgraded element zero core and prototype stealth technology derived from the Normandy's own systems, and was rated to one thousand atmospheres, in theory capable of withstanding a deep-sea dive. Systems Alliance forces used the type heavily during the Reaper invasion of Earth, deploying shuttles painted in Alliance blue and white to evacuate civilians from the fighting.