The massive Monarch-class mothership is the Malleon’s ultimate orbital assault ship, built to support the Malleon’s fleet of planetside capital ships with devastating bombardment capabilities. Only one was ever commissioned, the namesake MIS Monarch, and it played a key role in the largest battles to recapture Feron-controlled planets and moons after the Malleon-Isan Allies began winning the War. The Monarch came to be known as “Eclipse” because, when it’s in position over a planetside battle, it’s so huge that it blots out the Engine Star. The Eclipse was the terror of Feron planetary forces: Many Feron veterans’ stories of their defeat start and end with day turning suddenly into night, ships falling from the sky as if pushed down by a mighty hand, and impacts so strong they felt like earthquakes.

The Eclipse consists of two D-shaped flat semicircular hulls each, with a 2-mile radius, connected by a central bridge, with large U-shaped notches cut away on either side of the bridge, resembling an ancient Greek notched shield. Each hull has a planet-facing side and a space-facing side. The planet-facing side is heavily armored and features the Eclipse’s orbital bombardment weapon systems. This weapon system consists of heavy-metal cores that use gravity to accelerate to devastating speeds. These range from precision rounds capable of eliminating single targets to bunker busters that create megaton-scale explosions at the point of impact, like nuclear bombs without the fallout. This side also is dotted with dozens of thrusters to keep the Eclipse in a stable orbit and launch it back into space. The space-facing side consists of docks and hangars to maintain an entire Malleon planetary invasion fleet, and it’s only lightly armed and armored because the Eclipse moves in only after the space-based ships secure the area. This side also contains eight massive engines for interplanetary travel. The U-shaped notches near the bridge each have still more hangars running along the inside surface of the “U”, with bubbles that assist planetside ships in transitioning to operating in atmosphere.

The Eclipse is both a fleet carrier and a superweapon in its own right. It served as the lynchpin of every campaign against major planet- and moon-based Feron strongholds. Once Malleon naval forces clear the space above a planetary battlefield, the Eclipse takes position in orbit and uses its heavy ordnance to batter enemy fortifications. Then, when it starts sending its planetside fleet down to the battlefield, it switches to medium-sized rounds capable of violently slamming enemy ships down to earth and precision rounds that can target enemy squads, vehicles, or even individual soldiers. While the slow-moving Eclipse travels from one planetside target to the next, it serves as a mobile base for the invasion fleet, where ships can head up to orbit for resupplies and repairs. It played a crucial role in ending the War once the Malleon turned the corner, because no matter how much the Feron dug in, the Eclipse could rain death on the Feron forces until it broke their resolve.