Nelson (Individual Lola III-class WarShip)

This article is about the Wolf's Dragoons' WarShip. For other uses, see Nelson.

Nelson
Vessel Profile
Type	WarShip
Class	Lola III

History

The Lola III-class destroyer later known as the Nelson was a Star League Defense Force WarShip which survived the Amaris Civil War and followed General Aleksandr Kerensky onto Operation EXODUS. The Nelson also survived the Pentagon Civil War, becoming a part of the touman of Clan Widowmaker. Following the Absorption of Clan Widowmaker by Clan Wolf the Nelson and a number of other WarShips were placed in mothballs.

The Nelson remained in mothballs until Clan politicking led to the formation of Wolf's Dragoons, raised to perform a detailed reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering mission in the Inner Sphere in advance of a planned invasion. Clan Wolf equipped Wolf's Dragoons with the Nelson and a number of other WarShips in the belief that large mercenary units operating in the Inner sphere were likely to be equipped with WarShips, deploying the Nelson as the WDWS Nelson; the Nelson kept her original Widowmaker color scheme, which fortuitously matched the Wolf's Dragoons regimental color scheme.

Wolf's Dragoons swiftly learned that WarShips were effectively extinct in the Inner Sphere, at least in the armed forces of the Great Houses, and left the Nelson in mothballs in the Periphery until after Operation REVIVAL, the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere. In 3053, the decision was made to retrieve the Nelson and the other WarShips from the Bristol Cache in the Periphery, and a small task force under the command of Colonel Mackenzie Wolf, son of Jaime Wolf, was assigned to the recovery mission. The task force discovered when they arrived at the cache that brigands or looters had discovered the Nelson and the other vessels and were attempting to loot the ships, and responded to the Dragoon claim to the cache by firing on the task force. Several boarding parties were deployed to reclaim the vessels, but Mackenzie Wolf was killed during the operation to clear the Aegis-class heavy cruiser WDWS Alexander.

The Dragoons subsequently reactivated the Nelson and redeployed her to their holding on Outreach, where she formed a part of the Dragoon Naval Command, serving alongside a sister ship, the WDWS Darius, the WDWS Alexander, the Congress-class frigate WDWS Beowulf, the Sovetskii Soyuz-class heavy cruiser WDWS Athena and the Vincent Mk. 42-class corvette WDWS Mars.

When Blakist-backed mercenaries attacked the Dragoons on Outreach, killing Jaime Wolf and inflicting heavy damage in late 3067, the Dragoons assembled Task Force Vengeance from both Dragoon units and members of the Allied Mercenary Command and launched a retaliatory attack on Mars in the Sol system, assigning the Athena and Beowulf as escorts. The attack was a disaster, with both WarShips being destroyed by overwhelming Blakist defenses and the bulk of the transported units annihilated before making planetfall.

The Word of Blake responded to the attack on Mars with a counterattack against Outreach in force, deploying a task force escorted by a Black Lion-class battlecruiser, an Aegis, two Essex-class destroyers and two Lola IIIs; the Blakist naval forces destroyed the two Dragoon orbital stations, as well as the Darius and the Nelson, and deployed ground forces to assault the Dragoon forces still present on Outreach. General Maeve Wolf broke through the blockade with the Alexander and deployed Alpha Brigade on Outreach, only for the Blakists to respond with orbital and nuclear bombardments of the planet. Maeve Wolf ordered a retreat to Arc-Royal in the last week of December 3067; the Alexander covered the Dragoons' retreat, inflicting damage on two of the Blakist WarShips, but was destroyed during her valiant defense, leaving the Mars as the only remaining Dragoon WarShip still active in January 3068.

Bibliography

• AeroTech 2 Revised Edition
• Field Manual: Mercenaries, Revised
• Dawn of the Jihad
• Wolf Pack