Mountbatten
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History
The Texas-class battleship SLS Mountbatten was one of the Star League Defense Force naval WarShips that survived the Hegemony Campaign to liberate Terra from the forces of Stefan Amaris and subsequently followed General Aleksandr Kerensky on the Exodus. The Mountbatten was commanded by Stephen McKenna, the SLDF officer who would become the founder of Clan Snow Raven.[1]
As at 3061 the Mountbatten had been subsumed into the Snow Raven touman and was serving as the CSR Mountbatten, one of five WarShips that made up the Storm Crow Naval Pursuit Star and one of the few Clan WarShips to have retained her SLDF name.[1]
The Storm Crow Naval Pursuit Star was responsible for the scourging of Galedon V, in which every major city on the planet was bombarded from orbit by Snow Raven WarShips a week after the population was given notice to flee;[2] this massively destructive act was retaliation for the perceived involvement of the Draconis Combine in the destruction of the Swift Wing Naval Assault Star at Ramora on the 5th of January 3069,[3] although later investigation subsequently placed the blame for the action on the hands of terrorists backed by the Word of Blake.[4][5]
Mountbatten was one of three vessels that took fleeing civilians from Galedon as isorla only to subsequently discover that the civilians had brought the Curse of Galedon with them - an Age of War bioweapon later identified as XCON-73 that had been unleashed accidentally during an earlier conflict on the planet. Not only were the civilians infected, but XCON-73 was also being carried through the ventilation systems on all three ships. The three infected ships - the Mountbatten, the CSR Nestling and the CSR Storm Crow - were declared as targets of a Trial of Annihilation by Star Admiral Troy McKenna, the senior officer amongst the uninfected vessels. The Nesting immediately vented her holds into space, killing all the civilians aboard, but McKenna's forces pressed the attack; the Captains of all three infected ships fought back, but McKenna's forces prevailed, disabling or destroying all three ships.[2]