Normandy SR-2

The Normandy SR-2 was an advanced stealth frigate that served as the base of operations for Commander Shepard following the destruction of the original SSV Normandy. Built by Cerberus as the successor to the first ship and modeled on her design, the SR-2 carried Shepard and a hand-picked crew through the campaign against the Collectors and, after being turned over to the Systems Alliance, through the Reaper War of 2186.

Origins and construction#

The Normandy SR-2 first entered service in 2185 as the successor to the SSV Normandy SR-1, which had been destroyed in a surprise attack. The Illusive Man, leader of Cerberus, had the ship built for the newly revived Commander Shepard and a team assembled to stop the Collectors, who were carrying out a campaign of human abductions across the galaxy. Constructed at great expense in the Voyager Cluster, the SR-2 closely followed the design of the original, but differed in several key respects, the most significant being that she was almost twice the mass of her predecessor. Cerberus also built her with more crew-oriented comforts, adding civilian-grade accommodations, though her greater mass meant she could no longer land on every world and relied on a shuttle to reach the surface. Despite the changes, she retained the stealth characteristics that had made the first Normandy so effective.

Systems and armament#

Because she was based on the original specifications, the SR-2 shared many of her predecessor's advanced systems. Her stealth relied on storing heat within a network of lithium heatsinks deep in the hull, allowing her to travel undetected for hours or drift in passive observation for days, at the risk of eventually having to vent the accumulated heat before it could cook the crew. Her oversized Tantalus drive core, vertically oriented and three times the size of the original, generated the mass effect field that enabled faster-than-light travel and granted superior sublight speed and maneuverability. Power came from a nuclear fusion plant, and propulsion from four large antiproton thrusters whose exhaust burned at millions of degrees.

For armament she carried Javelin disruptor torpedoes, mounted on her engine joints, which fired on converging trajectories to magnify their space-time warp effects and could shred even a Collector vessel. Her defenses included kinetic barriers, ablative armor designed to boil away under directed energy weapons, and GARDIAN point-defense lasers against missiles and fighters. Over the course of her campaign against the Collectors she could be fitted with a range of upgrades, including the turian-developed Thanix cannon, Silaris heavy armor, and cyclonic barrier shielding. These improvements directly affected her survival on the approach to the Collector base, where every system left un-upgraded risked the loss of a crew member.

EDI#

The ship's artificial intelligence was EDI, short for Enhanced Defense Intelligence, represented by a holographic blue sphere at terminals throughout the vessel. She handled the Normandy's electronic warfare defenses and provided information on the ship and on Cerberus. Because of the danger posed by a rogue AI, she was given behavioral blocks and, at first, could not interface directly with the ship's systems. EDI served in part as the Illusive Man's eyes and ears aboard the ship, monitoring its listening devices, and was revealed to have been designed in part using technology recovered from the remains of the Reaper Sovereign, making her at least partly based on Reaper technology herself. She later devoted significant processing power to analyzing anti-Reaper algorithms.

The Reaper IFF and the Collectors#

To pass safely through the Omega 4 mass relay and reach the Collector base, the Normandy needed a piece of Reaper technology called the Reaper IFF, which Shepard's team recovered from a derelict Reaper. When the device was installed and activated, however, it transmitted the ship's location and locked up its systems, allowing the Collectors to ambush the Normandy and abduct most of her crew. With the ship in danger, Joker linked EDI directly into its main systems to fight off the attackers. Whether the captured crew survived depended on how quickly Shepard pursued them through the relay.

Service with the Systems Alliance#

By 2186 Shepard had defected from Cerberus and turned the Normandy SR-2 over to the Systems Alliance. Regarding the ship as their own, since it was based on the Alliance-designed original, they studied and modified her, repairing faults in the Cerberus construction, removing Cerberus equipment, and recommissioning her in Alliance colors as the SSV Normandy SR-2. She was in drydock when the Reapers attacked Earth, and EDI hacked the docking clamps so that Joker could fly to Shepard's rescue, picking up additional crew along the way. With Earth overrun, the ship became Shepard's mobile command center for the war, carrying the Commander across the galaxy to rally its forces under one banner and to recover and deliver the components of the Crucible.

During the final battle at Earth the Normandy was among the first warships into the fight, deploying Shepard and the ground team. When the Crucible released its energy, the ship was caught mid-jump in the resulting wave and forced to crash-land on an unknown world. The extent of the damage and the fate of those aboard varied with how thoroughly the galaxy's forces had been prepared and united for the final battle; in the most favorable outcomes the ship suffered only minor damage and was eventually seen taking flight once more.