The heavily armored Silverback destroyer is designed both to protect allied ships by taking hits from enemy broadsides and to crush enemy armor with its mace-like weapon segment. It gets its name from its unusual honeycomb segment: Instead of having hangars that wrap all the way around each deck like the Feron carriers, it has a big “stripe” of heavy armor that covers about 40% of each deck (a 140 degree arc running vertically down the side of the ship), with the remaining 60% carrying wings of heavy bombers. When guarding a friendly ship or launching its bombers, the Silverback presents its armored side to the enemy for cover. Silverback crew members were very popular among the Feron because so many veterans had stories about a Malleon broadside having them dead to rights only for a Silverback to take the crucial hit. Even years after the war, coming into a Feron veterans’ bar with a silverback gorilla tattoo usually meant you wouldn’t have to pay for your own drinks.

The Silverback, 330 yards tall, follows the three-segment “totem pole” design, but with a large “stripe” of armor that runs from the command/engineering segment, down along the honeycomb segment, and all the way to where it meets the ship’s weapon. This stripe consists of multiple thick armor layers separated by Nephelium field generators designed to absorb some of the shock from hits to the armor and slow shells before they punch all the way through to breach the hull. The command section is large for the ship size to support the powerful engines needed for ramming attacks, similar in proportion to the Rhino. Because 140 degrees of each deck is blocked by armor, the Silverback has much fewer hangars for its size that other Feron ships. As a result, the Silverback carries only short-range, heavy bombers rather than a full range of support craft. These bombers are designed primarily to soften up a target in preparation for striking its hull with the Silverback’s weapon or for further damaging a target the Silverback already hit to create more hull breaches for allied ships’ boarding parties. Because the Silverback doesn’t have its own wings of fighters to protect its bombers from enemy fighters and gunships, it relies on closing the distance itself then sending the bombers on fast attack runs designed to drop payloads quickly then return to the Silverback for reloading. The Silverback’s weapon segment looks like a cross between a mace and a closed fist, with four sets of knuckle-like battering ram protrusions to smash and buckle enemy armor plating. Similar to the armor stripe, the weapon has layers of armor plates to protect the rest of the ship from damage when striking the enemy. The decks of the weapon segment are larger in circumference than the honeycomb or command segments, which allows small craft like the Silverback’s bombers to take cover behind the weapon then cut around it after the Silverback bashes into the enemy for a rapid follow-up. The Silverback’s engine has four medium exhaust ports.

The Silverback’s main combat roles are to run interference by blocking Malleon broadsides with its heavy armor and threaten heavily armored ships with its ram attack and bombers. It was generally used as a support ship for Wasps, its armor protecting the Wasp from the brunt of the broadsides to allow it to close distance to a capital ship like the Venture-class. This was especially important before the deployment of the Rhino later in the war. Like the Rhino, the Silverback has powerful engines to allow it to accelerate rapidly in a straight line. Its ramming attack is effective both in crushing heavy armor and in hitting enemy ships hard enough to send them into a spin. Whether the ram hits the enemy or forces it into evasive maneuvers, that ship won’t be able to use its broadsides effectively against a Wasp or have as much leeway to fend off an attack from the Wasp’s own stinger weapon. In larger battles, the Silverback is effective at executing fulgressus by assisting Wasps in breaking enemy formations, and it helps counter the Malleon’s suichodori by providing a shield that screens Feron ships from Malleon firing solutions so that they can escape Malleon traps and find new attack vectors.