Immediately after the start of the second Alien Invasion, the Seventh Squadron realized that the Armada was in no hurry to defend Federation territory and decided to develop a new line of ships to increase the ability of mobile cities to defend themselves. A destroyer was proposed as the type of the future defence ship, since it was durable enough to survive multiple hits from a Crystallid predator and was more mobile and affordable than any cruiser.

Since developing a ship from scratch would have taken an enormous amount of time and the Seventh Squadron had limited resources, it was decided to base the design on “Invincible” blueprints. Engineers replaced all the materials with modern ones, supplied iridium energy lines, and scientists developed a device called an “axion core”. The principle of its operation was not disclosed to the public, but one press release stated that this energy core could break the barrier between ordinary and dark matter, and was also capable of creating a vacuum break between axions. The next day, the document was removed at the request of the Federation Security Service due to “copyright infringement”.

In 4623, the project codenamed DB-7SAS-18-H-E11 saw the light of day. Testing of the ship’s combat capabilities was broadcast live.

The broadcast was curious for two reasons: firstly, the pilot painted the ship a couple of hours before the flight, tuning it to look like an eastern dragon and giving the ship a personal name 718-BASHE; and secondly, Enclave pirates decided to capture the ship for fun.

The destroyer was shooting AI-controlled combat drones to test the ship’s effectiveness in near combat conditions when the pirates entered the system. The pilot considered this a routine continuation of the tests and immediately fired at the new “targets”. The pirates were able to penetrate the destroyer’s shields, and one of their shots hit the wormhole generator. Suddenly, an electrical discharge ran through the ship, triggering an emergency launch of a wormhole that reached the enemy ship in a split second. A chain of charges ran between the pirates’ ships, severely damaging them and forcing them to try to retreat.

The unexpected behaviour of the modules forced the Seventh Squadron to spend a year refining the operation of the ship’s onboard systems and its unique capabilities. After that, mass assembly of “Bashe” ships began at the shipyards of Seventh Squadron and Blackwood corporation.