House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion

by David Weber

  While all RMN personnel are under the orders of the First Space Lord under the umbrella of Fleet Operations Command, the Admiralty has long understood that it cannot micromanage an interstellar war from the home system. The RMN generally follows the tradition of “mission type” orders, where a subordinate is given a mission and forces and is granted a great deal of discretion in how the mission is actually executed. Only on rare occasions (usually involving specific intelligence or policy concerns that a local commander may not know about) does the Admiralty override an officer on the spot.

  Second Space Lord

  Bureau of Planning (BuPlan)

  Admiral of the Green Patricia Givens

  The Second Space Lord reports to the First Space Lord and is responsible for operational planning and tactics. Everything from war plans to deployment patterns to doctrine are formulated by the Second Space Lord and her staff, working with the Strategy Board and other Space Lords as necessary.

  The Second Space Lord is the de facto head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, although most of the administrative duties of the job are delegated. ONI is the clearinghouse for all of the Navy’s intelligence operations, from intelligence gathered during routine naval operations to the human intelligence sources (spies) operating in enemy territory. The Criminal Investigation Division of ONI is its counterintelligence unit, working jointly with the Judge Advocate General’s office on internal cases where there may have been a foreign influence. ONI works closely with the Bureau of Planning, which is responsible for analyzing, developing, and disseminating operational and tactical doctrine. In other words, ONI is responsible for determining adversary doctrine, while BuPlan develops RMN (and, through its liaison with allied navies, Allied) doctrine.

  The other major commands that report to the Second Space Lord are Perimeter Security Command and Fortress Command. PSC maintains the huge system detection arrays, the network of reconnaissance platforms emplaced around the hyper limit as well as several Destroyer Squadrons to chase down possible contacts. Fortress Command is responsible for the network of fortresses, LACs, minefields and missile pods covering both the Manticore Wormhole Junction and its termini.

  Third Space Lord

  Bureau of Ships (BuShips)

  Vice Admiral of the Red Anton Toscarelli

  The Third Space Lord and BuShips oversee all construction and maintenance in association with the Second Lord’s fiscal directions. The space stations Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland are included in the Third Space Lord’s purview, as well as the dispersed yards in planetary orbit.

  Refit and Repair Command also reports to the Third Space Lord and oversees the shipyard portions of the stations, managing everything from routine maintenance to service life extension programs and major refits.

  Logistics Command and its operational formation, Fifth Fleet, are jointly tasked with maintaining, organizing, and deploying all units of the fleet train (even if they are detached and assigned to other numbered fleets) and with meeting the logistics requirements of the other operational fleets.

  Fourth Space Lord

  Bureau of Weapons (BuWeaps)

  Admiral of the Green Lady Sonja Hemphill, Baroness Low Delhi

  The Fourth Space Lord is in charge of all research and development, specifically that of weapon systems in association with the Second Lord’s fiscal directions.

  Over the years the Weapons Development Board has served as a clearinghouse for the Navy’s R&D efforts, with the specific tasking of creating weapons systems and technologies to offset the large and growing quantitative edge the People’s Navy enjoyed over the RMN. The WDB was responsible not only for the majority of the new technologies seen in the Fleet today, but also for creating the environment where this kind of research could be performed and thrive.

  In addition to the R&D side, BuWeaps is responsible for the construction and distribution of weapon systems, ordnance, and other consumables, working in concert with Logistics Command at BuShips.

  Fifth Space Lord

  Bureau of Personnel (BuPers)

  Admiral of the Green Sir Lucian Cortez

  The Fifth Space Lord is responsible for recruiting and manpower management, in association with the Third Lord’s directions. This task includes not only finding crew for new construction and assuring adequate rotation, but also managing the personnel transfers to Alliance navies and management of the Naval Reserve.

  BuPers is responsible for all aspects of a service member’s career, which includes payment, housing, benefits and ensuring he or she meets the requirements for promotion. During peacetime, a typical career path would include a mixture of shipboard and “shore” commands appropriate to the career path of the officer or enlisted member in question. In wartime, those plans often change as the critical need for manning of new construction and replacement of injured or captured crew continues.

  The Judge Advocate General’s office reports directly to the Fifth Space Lord in matters of Admiralty law as well as maritime law, covering legal services both for individual service members as well as for the Navy as a whole.

  Sixth Space Lord

  Bureau of Training (BuTrain)

  Vice Admiral of the Red Lord Sir Frederick Ormskirk, Earl Tanith Hill

  The Bureau of Training is responsible for training and education in association with the Third Space Lord and Fifth Space Lord. He also coordinates with the Second Space Lord on training syllabuses and doctrine. All of the academic units maintained by the Navy (Saganami Island Naval Academy, Advanced Tactical Center, Fleet Officer’s Candidate School and the War College) report to the Sixth Space Lord.

  Operational Training Command also reports to BuTrain. Prior to the capture of Trevor’s Star, units were frequently transferred to Second Fleet for their workup, especially the new pod superdreadnoughts, LACs and carriers. Currently, Operational Training Command is attached to Third Fleet, and all workup takes place in Trevor’s Star before assignment.

  Seventh Space Lord

  Bureau of Medicine (BuMed)

  Vice Admiral of the Red Sir Allen Mannock

  Surgeon General of the Star Kingdom

  The Seventh Space Lord is responsible for the health and medical treatment of all Fleet personnel, including management of all Fleet hospitals (such as Basingford Medical Center), in coordination with the Third Space Lord. Auxiliary hospital ships in RMN service are jointly managed between the Third and Seventh Space Lords.

  TACTICAL ORGANIZATION

  The largest static combat organizational unit in the RMN is the fleet. Fleets are established to meet a specific need, which can be anything from defense of the home system (Home Fleet) to attacking a specific objective (Sixth Fleet) to patrolling a specific area of responsibility (Tenth Fleet).

  Defense of the Manticore Home System was originally divided into two fleet districts, Manticore and Gryphon. Manticore was considered the senior fleet district, officially on the record as First Fleet, but always referred to simply as Home Fleet. Likewise, the much smaller Gryphon fleet district was officially Second Fleet.

  Flag officers were originally rotated between fleet districts on the basis of seniority, Admirals of the Red (Gryphon) being junior to Admirals of the Green (Manticore). This system allowed senior officers to rotate frequently between districts and kept the Navy from stagnating. When the Gryphon Fleet was officially disestablished by Samantha II in 1828, the division of seniority remained but was no longer tied directly to duty station. Additional fleets (such as Third Fleet for the original attack on Trevor’s Star) have been activated and deactivated as necessary over the years.

  Fleets can be temporarily or permanently subdivided into task forces to perform specific missions. No strict requirements on the size or nature of a task force exist, other than that it consist of the assets necessary to fulfill the mission, which could be an offensive operation, defense of a sector, reserve, etc. Each task force is assigned a two-digit number, typically abbreviated as “TF ##.” The first digit is the num
ber of the fleet, while the second differentiates between task forces from the same fleet, so “TF 31,” for example, refers to the first task force of Third Fleet. In addition, a task force can be broken into several task groups, identified by decimal points, as in TG 31.2.

  Squadrons in the RMN are permanent administrative units, not necessarily tactical units, although there is a distinct tendency for squadrons of cruisers and larger warships to be kept together as much as possible. Thus a Destroyer Squadron might consist of sixteen destroyers operating in four separate divisions of four ships each, deployed light-years apart on an as-needed basis. The fact that light units routinely need to be detached as escorts, scouts, couriers, etc., helps to explain why their unit organization is so much more flexible than that for larger units, which are not so likely to be detached.

  Cruisers fall into a special category as the medium combatant jack-of-all-trades. Cruisers very seldom operate as complete squadrons unless assigned to a task force or fleet organization, and, even there, the task force or fleet commanding officer has a distinct incentive to detach individual heavy cruisers or divisions of light cruisers for all sorts of tasks.

  Prior to 1902 PD, both heavy cruisers and battlecruisers were organized more according to their mission than their type. The two most common squadron sizes are eight-ship squadrons integrated into the screen and twelve-ship squadrons tasked for independent operations, though recent years have seen frequent changes in these sizes, often to match the smaller battle squadrons.

  Ships of the wall have historically been organized into eight-ship battle squadrons, a practice which was phased out in favor of a six-ship squadron during the Janacek Admiralty as a largely political maneuver, though (unlike most Janacek “reforms”) the practice has been maintained due to the increased tactical flexibility the smaller squadrons offer.

  Heroes of the Royal Manticoran Navy

  The official motto of the Royal Manticoran Navy is “The tradition lives,” but the motto of the Saganami Island Naval Academy is somewhat longer. Taken from a great pre-space political leader, it reads “In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill,” and was chosen to enshrine the lessons gleaned from the RMN’s three greatest heroes: Edward Saganami, Ellen D’Orville, and Quentin Saint-James.

  COMMODORE EDWARD SAGANAMI

  (1616–1672 PD)

  If any one individual might be said to represent the heart and soul of the Royal Manticoran Navy, that individual would be Edward Saganami. Born of yeoman parents on the planet of Gryphon eighty T-years prior to the Gryphon Uprising, Saganami was a typical Gryphon Highlander: stubborn and passionately loyal to the Crown. Admitted to the Navy, he excelled on the basis of sheer talent, determination, and energy and had risen to commodore’s rank by 1662 PD despite a complete lack of patronage or highly placed relatives. At that time, he was selected to command the successful punitive expedition against the Ranier System, whose piratical “navy” had been raiding commerce and infrastructure in the vicinity of the Hennesy Terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction.

  Having compelled the Ranierians’ capitulation, Saganami, after a brief stint lecturing at the Academy, was selected by Queen Adrienne to command the squadron dispatched to the Silesian Confederacy in late 1671 PD to suppress piratical attacks on Manticoran commerce. Later evidence conclusively demonstrated that the “pirates” were supplied with ships, men, and weapons by Manpower of Mesa and elements within the Silesian government itself. Manticore’s role as one of the original signatories of the Cherwell Convention (1651 PD), dedicated to the suppression of the interstellar genetic slave trade, explained Manpower’s enmity; the opportunity for profit and to prune back Manticoran influence explained the Silesian element; and the chronic disorder of the Confederacy (already sliding into “failed state” status) provided the opportunity for both adversaries.

  Those adversaries had anticipated neither the strength Queen Adrienne was prepared to commit nor the determination of its commander, however, and by April 1672 PD, Saganami’s augmented battlecruiser squadron had destroyed four major “pirate” bases, and in the process captured intelligence pointing towards the involvement of the Silesian government. In the face of his embarrassing success, the Silesian Navy quietly transferred several of its more powerful units to the “pirates,” who were also reinforced by additional Solarian-built cruisers and battlecruisers supplied by Manpower. In July 1672, at the Battle of Trautman’s Star, Saganami’s nine battlecruisers encountered nineteen “pirates.” The RMN lost two ships in action, with four more damaged. Only two enemy vessels, both heavily damaged, escaped destruction or capture, but Saganami’s own losses and damage reduced him to only three remaining battlecruisers. Until he could be reinforced, he was forced to suspend his offensive operations and revert to convoy escort, dispersing his remaining units for that purpose.

  On August 11, 1672 PD, the surviving “pirate” fleet, guided by intelligence provided by the Silesian government, ambushed a convoy personally escorted by Commodore Saganami in his flagship, HMS Nike, in the Carson System. Given the geometry of the encounter, Nike could readily have avoided action but the merchant vessels under her escort could not have. Rather than flee, Commodore Saganami accepted action at six-to-one odds in an effort to destroy or so cripple the “pirates” that they would be unable to overtake the merchantmen. In the ensuing engagement, HMS Nike was lost with all hands, but not before she had destroyed three destroyers and one battlecruiser outright. A second heavy cruiser was severely damaged and only a single hostile battlecruiser survived uninjured. As a result of their losses, the “pirates” were unable to capture or destroy a single merchant ship and their remaining forces, weakened by the cumulative losses Saganami’s squadron had inflicted, were easily defeated by the heavily reinforced fleet Queen Adrienne dispatched to avenge Saganami’s death.

  Posthumously awarded the very first Parliamentary Medal of Valor for the Battle of Carson, Commodore Edward Saganami, by his actions, established the tradition and the meter stick by which all subsequent Royal Manticoran Navy officers were to be judged.

  REAR ADMIRAL ELLEN D’ORVILLE

  (1650–1710 PD)

  The second member of the triad of iconic Royal Manticoran Navy heroes, Ellen D’Orville was born to one of the Star Kingdom’s most aristocratic families. After serving as a youthful lieutenant under Edward Saganami during his Silesian mission, D’Orville rose rapidly in rank, earning an enviable reputation as a tactician. In 1683, as commanding officer of the elderly light cruiser HMS Unconquered, Commander D’Orville intercepted and captured a four-ship convoy of slave ships, liberating approximately 24,000 genetic slaves. In 1687, Captain (acting Commodore) D’Orville was rotated to a teaching position at Saganami Island, the Royal Manticoran Navy’s Academy, where she lectured in tactics, helped to reorganize the Naval War College, and created the Advanced Tactical Course (the commanding officer’s course required for all starship captains of the RMN even today).

  Returned to fleet duty in 1700 PD and promoted to Rear Admiral of the Red in 1705, D’Orville was dispatched with a small but powerful squadron to the Ingeborg System in 1710, in response to a request from the Terre Haute System government. Terre Haute had received reports that the current Ingeborg regime was developing weaponized nanotech which it intended to employ against Terre Haute. D’Orville proceeded to Ingeborg, where the authorities initially denied any interest in nanotech research. D’Orville declined to believe them and pressed politely, but very firmly, for a face-to-face meeting with Ingeborg System President for Life Adrian Lipsky. After repeated attempts to delay, Lipsky agreed to meet with her aboard Ingeborg Alpha, the largest of the star system’s three artificial habitats.

  Unknown to D’Orville, the laboratory in which the weapon was being developed had lost containment, and the weapon had already contaminated and virtually depopulated the orbital habitat which had contained it, killing over 350,000 people. President for Life Lipsky, who had no intention
of admitting that fact to D’Orville (primarily for fear that the Solarian League might construe the development of an obviously genocidal weapon as a violation of the Eridani Edict), hoped to meet with D’Orville, convince her that Terre Haute’s fears had been misplaced, send her on her way, and then arrange a plausible “accident” to destroy the contaminated habitat and any evidence of his government’s actions.

  Unfortunately for Lipsky, Ingeborg Alpha had also been contaminated, although that fact became evident only after D’Orville and her security detachment had boarded the habitat to meet with the system president. Lipsky immediately attempted to flee the habitat, but was prevented by D’Orville, who took command of the frantic effort to rescue as many of Ingeborg Alpha’s two-million-plus inhabitants as possible. Although urged by her flag captain to evacuate herself, she remained personally on-station, using her own fleet personnel, small craft, and every available civilian Ingeborgian vessel to evacuate personnel from the path of the nano weapon while simultaneously coordinating the effort to contain and confine the contagion.

  Approximately two-thirds of Ingeborg Alpha’s personnel had been removed from the habitat when the nanotech breached the final firewall and containment failed. D’Orville’s final message to her flag captain was to destroy the entire habitat with a saturation nuclear strike to ensure the total destruction of the nano weapon. For her rescue of 1.4 million Ingeborgian civilians at the cost of her own life, Ellen D’Orville became the second recipient of the Parliamentary Medal of Valor.