Goddess of Battle

WARNING: badly written melodrama ahead. Skip to the end if you don't want to read it.

***

Sometimes you just get unlucky

"Hyper footprint! Multiple hyperfootprints, two light minutes out!"

Captain (JG) Yuki Nagato was out of her chair before the ATO had even finished her report. A few quick strides took her to the Lieutenant's station.

"Talk to me Lin."

"We've got multiple unidentified impeller signatures bearing one-eight-seven zero-zero-niner closing at 430G. Skip, they carried a lot of velocity over the alpha wall, I couldn't see friendlies doing that, and the accel's about right for Peep DNs."

"Or battlecruisers with a heavy pod load," Yuki finished for her, "chances we could evade them?"

"Not good Skipper, we could do it on our own, but with the convoy..."

Yuki looked up at the bridge holo-tank, at the seventeen green light codes representing the freighters of the fleet train in her care. Left to their own devices her "squadron" could outrun whoever was behind them with ease, but the merchies could barely manage 200G, even if they red-lined their compensators...

"Status change. CIC confirms hostile contacts. Their EW just went active, Havenite signatures."

Well that cut it. "Alright, sound battlestations. Comms, I need a general signal, all units."

"Hot mic Skipper."

Yuki leaned into the pickup on the Tactical Officer's station, "All units, this is the convoy commander. As you've probably already seen we've got hostile warships closing from astern. We're probably not their intended target, but we're directly between them and the primary so we probably don't get a choice in the matter.

"The convoy is to scatter and proceed on least time courses for the hyperlimit. All convoy escorts are to form on Athena and turn to engage the enemy. We'll buy what time we can. Nagato Clear."

"Skip," the quiet voice came from the ATO's station, "one of the out-system platforms got a good look up one of the Peep's kilt's. They're BCs, CIC thinks Warlord class."

"Which means they're towing pods. Well, at least we should be able to force them to flush them, maybe give the system picket a fighting chance."

***
END MELODRAMA

I'm no substitute for David Weber, but there's a little look at how battles in the Honorverse work.

It's always amused me greatly that Yuki's beret in the "Day of Saggitarius" episode of SHnY was white. In the Honor books the only people allowed to wear white berets in the Royal Manticoran Navy are those the Queen has seen fit to command one of her warships. Been meaning to draw some Harrington fanart for awhile and the oppertunity was too good to pass up.

This is probably the most ludicrously over-researched/over thought pic in this gallery. Props have to go to for doing a lot of the research-monkeying and putting up with me wanting to have long discussions about a fictional universe. There's generally good reason as to why everything in this pic is the way it is. Won't bore you with explinations, but I do want to mention the ships. The warships in Yuki's "squadron" make this a bit AU. They're all ships mentioned as being built for the RMN, but most either saw action after or were destroyed before this pic took place (late first war). The Light Cruiser (CL) HMS Athena was ambushed in the opening of the war by four battlecruisers (BC) and only survived through the good fortune that a friendly dreadnaught (DN) was close by at the time. A HMS Athena is also mentioned as being present at the Second Battle of Marsh, though whether she's the same hull is unknown. The Apollo class ships would probably have been scrapped by that stage. Reading down the list on Lt. (JG) Lin's console (which isn't really visible at this res):

HMS Amaterasu was another Apollo class CL assigned to the screen of Home Fleet. She would have been destroyed at the Battle of Manticore. The destroyer (DD) HMS Hawkwing was destoyed prior to this at the Battle of Selker Rift. Finally the other destroyer HMS Aria lived through the first war but was reduced to a drifting hulk at the Battle of Monica during the annexation effort in the Talbot Cluster.


Ok, I've ranted enough now.




The Honorverse and everything in it is (c) David Weber and BAEN
Yuki Nagato is (c) Nagaru Tanigawa and KyoAni