Author Topic: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra  (Read 2797 times)

Ran Felsner

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SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« on: 26 March 2013, 22:38:04 »
While perusing the Aerospace posts, I saw these two Cameron class ships mentioned.  I was wondering if anyone could provide a reference for these?  I can only come up with the Comstar names from Master and Minions(p208), with the StarSword being stripped for parts.

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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #1 on: 26 March 2013, 22:45:57 »
While perusing the Aerospace posts, I saw these two Cameron class ships mentioned.  I was wondering if anyone could provide a reference for these?  I can only come up with the Comstar names from Master and Minions(p208), with the StarSword being stripped for parts.
  I'm not sure if they were mentioned elsewhere before this, but they were name-checked in The Hunters, the second of the Twilight of the Clans novels.  Commodore Beresick mentions to Marshal Hasek-Davion that ComStar cannabilised Starsword to bring Electra back to operational status under the new name Invisible Truth.

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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #2 on: 26 March 2013, 23:47:35 »
Correct, that book is the only mention of those two ships. I'm not sure if it ever specifies if Lady Shandra or Electa becomes Invisible Truth, and which became Starsword.
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GreyWolfActual

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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #3 on: 27 March 2013, 17:55:45 »
Quote from: The Hunters page 121
"At one time, we had two Camerons: the Lady Shandra and the Electa. An early Explorer Corps mission found them lying ‘in mothballs’ in a deep Periphery system. We aren’t really sure why the Exodus fleet abandoned two perfectly good battle cruisers, but there they were.”
Morgan gave the Commodore a quizzical look, but said nothing. Beresick either failed to see the “you’re-not-telling-the-whole-story” arch of the Marshal’s eyebrows, or else he didn’t care if Morgan believed him or not. The man just kept right on talking.
“Once the ships were in our hands, we gave them an overhaul and rechristened them Invisible Truth and StarSword. Over the years, age, decay, wear and tear, just got to be a bit too much for the old girls. ComStar made the decision to cannibalize the StarSword in order to maintain the Truth.”
From this we can infer a couple things.

1: Given the parallel syntax, it is likely that the Electa was the cannibalized one.
2: Beresick's explanation about finding them is a load of bull.  That is further corroborated by the knowledge now that the SLDF left behind not only twelve active warships, but a good many others (including the whole Gabriel cache).
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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #4 on: 27 March 2013, 18:35:01 »
Beresick may not even have had the whole story. Comstar and WoB are not above lying to their own membership. Heck appaerantly Comstar even lied to its own Precentor Martial about its naval arm. If they hadn't Focht would have had a full breakdown of warships WoB had or might salvage that Comstar knew about before hand.
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GreyWolfActual

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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #5 on: 27 March 2013, 22:58:10 »
Well at the very least we know the Exodus did not abandon any warships on their journey.  So at the very least, that claim is untrue.  Whether or not Beresick knew it to be a lie or not is debatable, but I think that he knew it wasn't true.  The line about Morgan not believing him suggests that it was clear there was something odd about that story that wasn't believable.
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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #6 on: 28 March 2013, 10:43:10 »
Well, they clearly weren't "perfectly good battlecruisers" if ComStar had to cannibalize one to keep the other going. ;)

If I recall Masters & Minions correctly, Gregory Zwick, who was of course Beresick's deputy, made his name recovering a Naga from the Deep Periphery.  So perhaps what Morgan wasn't meant to know was the scope of ComStar's targeted WarShip recovery operations.  Beresick makes it sound as though they just stumbled on the two ships.

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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #7 on: 28 March 2013, 11:28:08 »
Well, they clearly weren't "perfectly good battlecruisers" if ComStar had to cannibalize one to keep the other going. ;)
Dunno. It makes some sense.
The Cameron-class's fluff makes it sound like a poorly designed ship. "Hangar queen" may not be the appropriate term ("Drydock Queen"?) but the vibe given is that the class is a tech's nightmare to maintain. Which doesn't strike me as the class of ship you'd take for the Exodus, and the first one to be laid off once you're starting to leave ships behind for whatever reason.
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Re: SLS Lady Chandra & SLS Electra
« Reply #8 on: 29 March 2013, 19:02:30 »
Dunno. It makes some sense.
The Cameron-class's fluff makes it sound like a poorly designed ship. "Hangar queen" may not be the appropriate term ("Drydock Queen"?) but the vibe given is that the class is a tech's nightmare to maintain. Which doesn't strike me as the class of ship you'd take for the Exodus, and the first one to be laid off once you're starting to leave ships behind for whatever reason.
The term would be "Building (Hull Number)" in the modern US Navy for ships that don't go underway much.

USS Seawolf (SSN-21) is known as "Building 21" because she's one of two boats that have parts that can support the much higher priority USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), and didn't make a lot of deployments from New London before she moved to the West Coast, and spent quite a bit of time in Puget Sound Navy Yard.
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