House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (25 page)

The Honorverse Companion

1921 PD

Letter from the Editor

For centuries, Jayne’s has been the recognized authority on the ships, equipment, and personnel of navies across the explored galaxy. We at Jayne’s have been proud to present the most accurate and comprehensive analyses of deployed military technology available. This is no mean task when one considers the sheer number of navies, breadth of technology, and volume of inhabited space. These difficulties are further compounded by the necessity of reliance on unclassified sources of information for the weapons, systems, and even hull features of combatants.

Due to the issues noted above as well as the constraints imposed by publication dates and production deadlines, some small errors are unavoidable. As our long-time readers are well aware, every new edition contains errata from the previous year as new information becomes available. Despite external appearances, units within a given class are rarely as homogeneous as the layman might imagine. Visual similarities across a class may conceal upgraded capabilities and shipyard inconsistencies and design changes can create vast differences between the first and last ship produced. Refits are common and ships still in service may not reflect the new realities of ships recently out of space-dock. Normally, these errors are minimal and we correct them without any additional commentary. Occasionally, however, significant errors creep in and we at Jayne’s feel an obligation to call these to the attention of our readers.

Covering the wars in the Haven Sector has proven to be a particular challenge for our group. Nothing spurs the development and change of military technology like war. Therefore, keeping track of the many and rapid changes in the deployed systems occasioned by operational necessities is particularly challenging. Given the remoteness of the Haven Sector and the exigencies of military secrecy, obtaining up-to-date and accurate information is often difficult.

Haven, especially the People’s Republic but even the newly restored Republic, has always kept information on its shipbuilding and warship classes classified. Hull numbers are randomized among classes and shipyards and are even subject to occasional changes throughout the life of the ship. This purposeful randomization of these identifiers serves to obscure their build numbers, as readers will recall from editorials in our 1907 PD annex.

By comparison, information on the Royal Manticoran Navy has always been easier to collect. Although not entirely an open book, their construction programs, especially prewar, have largely been a matter of public record, often resulting from vicious debates in their Parliament. Other than their newest construction, many of their warships were regularly docked at their major space stations prior to the outbreak of open hostilities and thus subject to physical observation. Since the beginning of active operations, the RMN has drawn a very deliberate veil of secrecy over its new designs and construction, but that was not the case prior to 1905. This earlier ease of access may, in fact, have led to a degree of complacency on the part of our researchers, who have discovered, to our chagrin, that the Royal Manticoran Navy was not above exploiting that complacency, resulting in our most notable error: the
Star Knight
-class heavy cruiser.

When the
Star Knight
was commissioned in 1893 PD, it was believed to be an unremarkable design, merely a modern extension of their older heavy cruiser classes. Its weaponry was a matter of public record and was noted in our 1896 edition. This belief remained unquestioned for some years. It was not until a small skirmish in a fourth-tier star system where a
Star Knight
clashed with a Havenite
Sultan
-class battlecruiser that anyone realized there was anything special about the class.

Far from an evolutionary design of known parentage, the S
tar Knight
was the first of a wave of revolutionary new Manticoran heavy cruisers. It was not only the first true two-deck heavy cruiser, it was also the first step taken by the Royal Manticoran Navy to build a heavy cruiser capable of surviving in the combat environment created by the rise of the laser head as the primary shipkiller.

Our failure to recognize this significant departure from established design philosophies stemmed from no mere clerical error. It was an intentional campaign of misdirection by the RMN to hide the capabilities of their new design. We at Jayne’s had become so accustomed to the public availability of information about new Manticoran designs that, with only a small dose of deception on their part, they were able to “hide in plain sight” a specification that bore little resemblance to the actual design information transmitted by requests for information from the public. The RMN had announced that they were mounting some experimental sensors and were therefore obscuring the upper sections of hull with a combination of smart paint and shrouding during port calls. While there were unconfirmed reports of a heavier-than-expected broadside, they were dismissed as inconsistent with known observations or even confirmation of a new sensor suite.

As a civilian publication,
Jayne’s
is limited to open source research, without the benefits of dedicated intelligence agencies of the Solarian League Navy. It would be a reasonable assumption that ONI has been aware of the true nature of the
Star Knight
for far longer than we have.

While perhaps not as extreme an error as the one we made on the
Star Knight
, the published data in our 1920 edition on the new
Nike
-class battlecruiser also appears to have been in error in one significant respect. Our artist’s conception of the class was correct in most respects. All reports that the
Nike
class carried a “larger than average” decoy system, however, significantly understated the issue. The new Mk20 “Keyhole” system appears to be far more than a simple decoy. From analysis of visual records, it appears to be virtually a parasite craft in its own right.

If the platform is indeed unmanned, it may well be more massive than even a light attack craft, and the obvious sensor and point defense installations indicate that it is far more than a simple decoy. Exactly why the RMN has decided to build a decoy and defensive installation so much larger than their previous platforms remains unclear, and the purpose of the array panels on the sides of the platform remains a mystery.

We at Jayne’s feel a responsibility to you, our readers, to provide information that is as accurate as possible. In the rare cases where later access to information establishes that our earlier analysis was incorrect, we feel it is our obligation to correct these analyses, even at the expense of admitting our fallibility. Our pledge of accuracy has always been the touchstone of our editorial policy. Our analysts continue to gather as much information as possible on these and other new warships to come out of the Haven Sector. We pledge to continue to work to provide the most accurate, up-to-date information for those whose lives depend on it.

Annette Konduru, Senior Editor

Jayne’s Information Group

April 17, 1921 PD