The Masahiro Maru, or Justice, is the former Rheinland battleship RNC-Richtofen, which shared its namesake with Richtofen Station, a Kruger mining facility located in the Sigma-13 system that was destroyed by a Gas Miners Guild torpedo run in 614 as the 80 Year War raged across the system.
Six-hundred-and-sixty years after settlement, the 80 Year War was reaching its climax. Spurred on by initially rapid and crushing victories, in the 71 years after its original push into Sigma-13 had commenced, the Rheinland Military had been reduced to a weary shell of its former self, steadily ground down by the relentless guerilla warfare employed by the Gas Miners Guild.
The RNC-Richtofen was one of several new generation Rheinland battleships, lauded as a brilliant Rheinland technological advance over the battleships of the first wave of what was intended to be a swift and glorious conquest seven decades prior. Named so after Richtofen Station, it made the jump into the Sigma Systems in 655 to much fanfare, with one record of Rheinland media of the time describing its "illustrious voyage of a poetic infliction of vengeful justice on the intruders in the clouds," a bold claim which, due to circumstances not particularly favourable to the Rheinland effort, failed to materialise.
Guild combat reports described the first sighting of the Richtofen as disastrous for the irregular forces. The battleship had apparently been cutting a swift wake through the Crow Nebula, evidently in an offensive posture and most likely assigned to proactive search and destroy operations intended to re-seize the initiative that had been lost, and turn the tables in the system. A sizeable contingent of Guild ships was proceeding to make a buzz run on the Gas Miner Naha, one of many such runs conducted with the aim of slowly paving the way for an eventual operation to recapture the station. Its strategy was to send in a forward group to harass the Rheinland line and attempt to draw out the defenders in smaller, more manageable chunks to the rest of the paramilitary group waiting in ambush in the midst of the nebula safely outside of detection range of the main Rheinland force. This strategy varied in success, with fortune sometimes favouring the guerrillas and sometimes not, with the frustration of the defenders with these attacks on any given day mostly determining whether the bait would be bitten.
In an ironic twist of fate, it was the Rheinlanders who sprung such a trap on The Guild. A group of Valkyrie heavy fighters belonging to the Richtofen's contingent came across the Guild attack wing by chance. This wing turned and pursued these fighters, desperate to eliminate them before they could alert their comrades to the imminent raid. This proved to be folly. The Rheinland fighters successfully drew their pursuers into the waiting ambush, where they were savagely defeated by a combination of the Richtofen's own potent point defence weaponry and its supporting escort, with few survivors.
Despite its successful start to the war, as the conflict wound down, the Richtofen saw little further action of note until the mass Rheinland rally to the Yanagi Nebula in 660 A.S.. Weary and disjointed, the Rheinland forces were enacting a hurried and uncoordinated regrouping at the Yanagi, presenting Guild harassers the opportunity to strike at isolated targets in their chaotic retreat.
The Richtofen is one such ship that fell prey to this initiative. Caught out by the widespread lack of communication and coordination, the lumbering battleship was detected out of position and intercepted by a Guild wing, who, recognising the opportunity, swiftly alerted other Guild ships in the area to converge on the mighty prize. A three day engagement subsequently ensued, with cautious siege tactics ultimately culminating in the disabling of the mobile fortress. Of particular coincidence was the participation in this battle of veteran combatant Guildmember Sakayo Yasahiro, one of the few survivors of the initial catastrophy some five years prior, who joined the battle in its second day as a member of a reinforcement wing. Yasahiro, whose luck and skill saw him through to the ceasefire as a decorated ace, is on record as later describing his participation in the disabling of the Richtofen as his finest hour in the conflict, expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to avenge his fallen wingmates and secure justice for their memory, which has since become legend in Guild lore - leading to the chosen rechristening of the ship, simultaneously in his honour and as a mockery of the claims of the Rheinland media.
Disabled by non-critical damage, the Richtofen was left in a salvageable state, but considering the late stages of the war, and the effort to corral the remaining invading force in the Yanagi Cloud being absolute priority, no recovery attempts were made. Instead its location was recorded, then it was left adrift to be retrieved at a later date, with the crew abandoned to attempt to make their own escape or perish. This later date came in 675 A.S. as The Guild accelerated its salvage effort in anticipation of the construction of Helgoland Station and the beginning of ALG cleanup operations in the system. A two month search operation, using a combination of the ship's last known location, stellar cartography and old-fashioned grid searching, located the shipwreck, finding it in almost the exact same condition it had been left in 15 years prior.
As with most such recoveries, no heed was paid to the possessions of the crew, nor what remained of the them themselves, and all was unceremoniously discarded. The hulk was relocated to the proximity of the Sigma-19 jumphole and kept under guard while engineering crews conducted extravehicular temporary repairs, to prepare the hull for the jump through the hole. Once complete, this former jewel of the Rheinland Imperial Navy was carefully relocated to Sakhalin Shipyard under guard, where it was gradually restored and returned to service, under Guild colours, as the Masahiro Maru.
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