Honor of Pesht (Individual WarShip)

Honor of Pesht
Vessel Profile
TypeWarShip

History[edit]

Operating under the command of Tai-sho Olav Nansen in May 2788, the DCS Honor of Pesht was a WarShip and lead ship of the Draconis Combine task force which raided the Free Worlds League planet Helm, searching for a rumored stockpile of Star League Defense Force equipment.[1]

The Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery raiding party landed an all-BattleMech force on Helm, engaging the Free Worlds League Military militia forces on the planet and swiftly resorted to brutal measures in their pursuit of information on the location of the cache of SLDF equipment, including torture and mass executions amongst the civilian population. The militia on Helm resisted, launching raids and attacks against the DCMS forces, to which the DCMS responded by destroying the city of Freeport using one or more nuclear weapons.[1]

On the 28th of May 2788 Tai-sho Nansen reported to the Coordinator that he believed that the cache either didn't exist, or that it was so well hidden that it would be impossible for the DCMS forces to find before the FWLM dispatched a relief force capable of dislodging the DCMS forces. The Coordinated approved Nansen's request to withdraw, but ordered him to punish the planetary population. In accordance with the Coordinator's instruction, Nansen ordered the ships of his task force to enact the Ghost Rain protocol; this protocol called for the sustained orbital bombardment of Helm's major population centers using both the capital-grade weaponry on the various WarShips under his command and nuclear weapons, many of which were cobalt-jacketed, designed to salt the ground where they impacted, inflicting long-lasting ecological damage.[1]

The Ghost Rain protocol inflicted huge damage on Helm; the cities of Durandel, Freeport, Helmdown and Port Wayland were all destroyed - Freeport and Port Wayland using cobalt-jacketed nuclear weapons, the others using conventional weapons and airburst nuclear devices - killing approximately ten million people. It took three years for something resembling law and order to be restored on Helm, which had always been a cold, somewhat harsh world, and another fifteen years on top before life returned to something resembling what it had been prior to the DCMS raid - by which point a further sixty million people had died, either from the cold, starvation, or at the hands of their fellow citizens as people desperately fought to survive.[1]

Notes[edit]

Although the specific class of the Honor of Pesht isn't detailed within First Succession War (sourcebook), artwork depicting the bombardment of Helm depicts three WarShips involved in the bombardment - a Lola I-class destroyer, an Aegis-class heavy cruiser and a Samarkand II-class fighter carrier, making it likely - but not certain - that the Honor of Pesht was one of these three vessels;[2] furthermore, given that prior to the First Succession War, the Draconis Combine Admiralty used Samarkands as fleet flagships, it is also likely - but again, not certain - that the Honor of Pesht was the Samarkand II depicted in the artwork.[3]

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 First Succession War, pp. 7–8: "Ghost Rain"
  2. First Succession War, p. 4
  3. Field Report 2765: DCMS, p. 18: "Draconis Combine Admiralty"

Bibliography[edit]