Night Wing
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| Night Wing | |
|---|---|
| Vessel Profile | |
| Type | DropShip |
| Class | Carrier |
History
The Night Wing was a Carrier-class DropShip in service with Clan Snow Raven in the late thirty-first century. The CSR Night Wing was one of many vessels that had gathered in the Dante system in the Outworlds Alliance for a Clan Council following the Grand Council meeting held in March 3071 after the removal of ilKhan Garrett Sainze of Clan Fire Mandrill from office. The Clan Council meeting had been called in the knowledge that the Homeworld Clans were becoming increasingly vitriolic and hostile towards the Snow Ravens and the other clans with a presence in the Inner Sphere.[1]
The Clan Council had barely begun, with only a minority of the Snow Raven Bloodnamed in attendence, when the assembled Snow Raven ships came under attack. The first blow was a JumpShip which deliberately jumped on top of the Nightlord-class battleship CSR Snow Raven, fatally interpenetrating the two ships, with few surviving on the Snow Raven to be recovered later.[1] Initial reports obtained by the Outworlds Alliance media indicated that the Aegis-class heavy cruiser CSR Morning Violence had also been badly damaged in the same manner,[2] although the Morning Violence had actually been destroyed several years before during the opening of the Wars of Reaving.[3]
Before the other Snow Raven ships could begin responding, a second hostile JumpShip arrived and disgorged a trio of Pocket WarShips[1] - including at least one Union[2] - which proceeded to attack the Snow Raven vessels, destroying the Night Wing and her sister ship CSR Ebony Claw before being destroyed themselves in turn.[1]
The Snow Raven response didn't end there - the Snow Raven ships lashed out with extreme prejudice, destroying fourteen merchant JumpShips and more than a score of nearby DropShips[1] after the Lola III-class destroyer CSR Bloody Talon took command of the Raven forces and ordered them to fire at will. A transcript was recovered from one of those ships, a civilian agro-freighter named the Omniss Seed, detailing some of the attack and the desperate plea from the Omniss Seed, and which formed the basis of the media reporting of the incident.[2] The Bloody Talon had actually already been destroyed in 3068 during a trial for the Lum Shipyards, rendering the provenance of the transcript dubious.[3] The initial reports claimed that a Galaxy of Snow Raven forces had been destroyed during the attack, along speculation that saKhan Broderick Sukhanov had been killed.[4][5]
The heavy-handed reaction prompted outrage from the Outworlds Alliance Senate, whose outraged members called for the Snow Ravens to be removed outright from Alliance space. It took a year of effort from President Mitchell Avellar to restrain the Senate and bring the two groups back to the negotiating table, and the Snow Ravens' invidious position in the Clan Homeworlds left them with little choice but to agree to many of the new concessions levied on them during their negotiations with the Alliance.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Wars of Reaving, p. 64-65, "Machinations and Manipulations"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Jihad Hot Spots: 3072, p. 21-22, "Suicide Jump"
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wars of Reaving, p. 40, "Lamentations and the Raven"
- ↑ Jihad Hot Spots: 3072, p. 22, "Respond To This Article With Comments"
- ↑ Jihad: Final Reckoning, p. 49, "The Jihad In Review"