Bit of Analysis: HH Saganami Island series

[VhenRa]

I have no idea. Maybe. It certainly should be an issue.

Honestly, I think this is one respect in which Manticore has gone too far in the right direction- although their manpower crunch is very, very severe and is only going to get worse. While it's probably a good thing that battlecruisers can be operated with a crew of several hundred and superdreadnoughts with, say, 1000-1500... it is not such a smart idea to squeeze a cruiser complement down to three or four hundred.

Not if you're going to expect the cruiser to do the same things it used to do with twice as many people.

I agree. Superdreadnoughts and Battlecruisers are full up combat vessels, usually used to make whatever the Admiral wants to go away, go away. Cruisers? Cruisers in Manty service are used for patrol, peacekeeping, pirate hunting, ect ect... where you need bodies to fill various jobs.

[Kingmaker]

Doesn't this come up with the Roland-class DDs in another book, what with having absolutely no Marines aboard at all?

It does, but it turns out everything is fine because Manticoran ratings are all CQC experts and Solarian officers are all lobotomized.

Who was it who asked why genetic slavery in particular is a bad thing, and what makes it genetic anyhow?

I'd expect "genetic slavery" is view so dimly because of its association with genetic engineering. As to the "genetic" part, I think that's because the interstellar trade is primarily in slaves who have been genetically engineered for some purpose. Presumably, local sources are cheaper if you just want regular slaves. Shipping non-specialized labor across space can't be that cost-effective (even if you leave out the slavery bit).

[VhenRa]

Doesn't this come up with the Roland-class DDs in another book, what with having absolutely no Marines aboard at all?

It does, but it turns out everything is fine because Manticoran ratings are all CQC experts and Solarian officers are all lobotomized.

That and the Manties decided to bring every heavy weapon under the sun. Whats this thing called Pulse Rifles? Don't need those... issue everyone a Grav-Recoiless Rifle.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, right, now I remember what happened.

Shadow of Freedom in particular, if it is to be believed, proceeds to make yet another core Solarian institution out to be hamhanded and incompetent: the intervention battalions of the Office of Frontier Security, who are apparently such thugs that they can't manage a proper defense against well-armed guerillas or Manticoran naval infantry. The Solarian Marines are (off-screen, we never or seldom see them fight) indicated to be more competent, but it's still problematic.

If OFS intervention units are how factions within the League, like the megacorps, secure their interests, then they should be pretty tough cookies. Even given that OFS can no doubt recruit more goons from all sorts of random places throughout the galaxy, that's a problem. It is not safe to make the stormtroopers you rely on to oppress people need attrition tactics to deal with fairly basic, routine opposition, because sooner or later all that opposition will figure out that it can wear you down.

OFS seems to have almost nothing going for it militarily other than its willingness to bring orbital bombardment to a gunfight.

[VhenRa]

Oh, right, now I remember what happened.

Shadow of Freedom in particular, if it is to be believed, proceeds to make yet another core Solarian institution out to be hamhanded and incompetent: the intervention battalions of the Office of Frontier Security, who are apparently such thugs that they can't manage a proper defense against well-armed guerillas or Manticoran naval infantry. The Solarian Marines are (off-screen, we never or seldom see them fight) indicated to be more competent, but it's still problematic.

If OFS intervention units are how factions within the League, like the megacorps, secure their interests, then they should be pretty tough cookies. Even given that OFS can no doubt recruit more goons from all sorts of random places throughout the galaxy, that's a problem. It is not safe to make the stormtroopers you rely on to oppress people need attrition tactics to deal with fairly basic, routine opposition, because sooner or later all that opposition will figure out that it can wear you down.

OFS seems to have almost nothing going for it militarily other than its willingness to bring orbital bombardment to a gunfight.

That was a shipboard (well, stationboard) engagement mnd you. Those intervention battalions are planetary troops, IIRC. Probably open-field engagement planetary troops as well... considering as Cauldron of Ghosts shows, your plans for fighting inside the mega-towers any decent world has are to begin with orbital bombardment... and end with close air support.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, that's in terms of plans for fighting organized resistance inside mega-towers. I'm sure the OFS goon squads are suitable for busting heads against an isolated small group within a mega-tower. It's also noted that the usual counter to problems in a mega-tower is to cut off supplies of food, water, ventilation, and power to the building, which would normally work rather well but happens to fail in the particular context of Cauldron of Ghosts.

More generally, OFS has to be competent at urban warfare, for the same reason occupying armies do today: like it or not, most people live in cities on any developed world, even if they don't live in megascrapers.

[Kingmaker]

It sort of defies reason that the OFS troops would be so incompetent. If anything, I'd expect a reflection of the Frontier/Battle Fleet distinction, where the OFS is forced to make occasional contact with reality while the SLMC stays at home and grunts about how awesomely undefeatable it is.

Perhaps more to the point, it's not credible that the Intervention battalions can actually perform their job. If they were just some tinpot dictator's bully boys, their incompetence would be understandable, but they're the guys who get called in when shooting protesters isn't doing the trick. If it was just orbital strikes you wanted, why bother with the pack of incompetent thugs?

[Simon_Jester]

It sort of defies reason that the OFS troops would be so incompetent. If anything, I'd expect a reflection of the Frontier/Battle Fleet distinction, where the OFS is forced to make occasional contact with reality while the SLMC stays at home and grunts about how awesomely undefeatable it is.

This would be an amusing reflection on the real life US Marine Corps (which survived post-WWII as an institution separate from the army in large part because they successfully hyped up how badass they were to absurd extremes). However, it's not that simple because the Marine units are by definition responsible for providing security aboard SLN warships, including Frontier Fleet units. So the Battle/Frontier Fleet divide is replicated within the marine corps, presumably.

Also, while Honorverse space combat has changed enormously in the past generation, Honorverse ground combat seems to work pretty much the same way it always has. So the League's marine corps isn't suffering from the massive obsolescence problems that its navy is; if they ever knew what they were doing, continuing to do it that way will still work.

Perhaps more to the point, it's not credible that the Intervention battalions can actually perform their job. If they were just some tinpot dictator's bully boys, their incompetence would be understandable, but they're the guys who get called in when shooting protesters isn't doing the trick. If it was just orbital strikes you wanted, why bother with the pack of incompetent thugs?

To be fair, it's not quite that simple.

As the situation is portrayed in Shadow of Freedom, local guerillas can be very effective against "a tinpot dictator's bully-boys," but then do in fact get slaughtered going up against OFS. This is, however, in large part because OFS is willing to employ heavier, nastier weapons than the typical tinpot dictator has at their disposal (i.e. orbital bombardment with ~10-100 km/s kinetic impactors). They also have more power armor and so on.

The catch is that the guerillas still manage to inflict significant losses on OFS as I recall. And Manticoran naval infantry* can do it too, which is pretty alarming. It suggests that OFS relies very heavily on the superiority of their weapons technology, and is not effective when confronted with competent opposition that has equal weapons and good doctrine and tactics.

Then again, the 'bully-boys with too many heavy weapons' model is arguably an effective one for the role OFS is called on to play. Arguably, to do what OFS intervention units do, you want a force with a reputation for brutality and ferocity. Because that makes them more effective at putting down revolts. Insofar as this is bad for discipline and the tactical organization of the fighting unit, and knowing that most of your enemies are lightly armed guerillas, you might well say "so much the worse for discipline," and rely on superior firepower to make up the difference.

*"Naval infantry" meaning 'sailors with guns,' as opposed to 'specialists trained in shipboard combat.'

[Minischoles]

I think it's heavily implied in Shadow of Freedom that part of what makes OFS so scary isn't their standard ground troops, it's that they generally have better gear than anyone in the Verge can afford - modern pulsers, tri barrels, power armor etc - as well as having naval support. As the book shows there is pretty much nothing they can do on the ground when the kinetic bombardment starts - I imagine a similar pattern happens anywhere the Verge populations get uppity. OFS roll up with an intervention batallion in power armor and with a destroyer or two and just come down on them like a hammer.

Put them up against people who actually know what to do and without all their advantages and they're shit outta luck - they're bully boys for putting down underfunded/ill equipped rebellions, not elite troopers.

[Batman]

Mind you, the poor OFS sods on that space station were up against Manties with not only equivalent and possibly superior technology to their own-which is not usually something they have to deal with-,not just detailed information they shouldn't have had but actual access to the station's systems courtesy of the civilian administration thinking their side's gameplan was nuts and passively cooperating with the boarders.

[Kingmaker]

As the situation is portrayed in Shadow of Freedom, local guerillas can be very effective against "a tinpot dictator's bully-boys," but then do in fact get slaughtered going up against OFS. This is, however, in large part because OFS is willing to employ heavier, nastier weapons than the typical tinpot dictator has at their disposal (i.e. orbital bombardment with ~10-100 km/s kinetic impactors). They also have more power armor and so on.

That's sort of my point, though. OFS gendarmes are apparently scum who happen to have access orbital bombardment. The thing is, you'd think at some point, they'd run into a counterinsurgency scenario where 'nuke it from orbit' isn't an option, nor is leveling the place with heavy weapons fire. If nothing else, the megacorps holding the leash are going to be less than thrilled if you burn down their expensive corporate offices. So you'd expect they'd be able to muster at least basic competence. (I suppose the answer might be that you batphone the marines if you need something like that done. But if that's the case, why bother with the OFS? Frontier Fleet is the one doing the bombing anyway. Tell OFS to stay at home and send in the marines.)

But. They manage to be not merely defeated, but crushed, by a numerically inferior boarding party comprised primarily of naval ratings with no experience in foot combat. And while, yes, the Manticoran boarding party had a number of advantages, the sheer ineptitude the gendarmes display defies that excuse. I get that brutality is viewed as a virtue in the OFS, but brutality does not preclude competence. There are plenty of examples of quality fighting men that were pretty awful to any civilian population that had the misfortune to wind up in the same vicinity. And the OFS gendarmes don't even need to be elite, they just ought to be not total shit. If all you needed was thugs who could hold a big gun, they're available locally, and it's probably cheaper to send advisors and a shipload of weapons than a thousand of your own troops.

I guess the tl;dr is that the OFS gendarmes suck and it seems like they'd have been displaced in their role by someone more competent.

(As an aside, ground warfare in the Honorverse seems to be something of a sideshow; it appears to boil down to security, special operations, and counterinsurgency).

[Simon_Jester]

They have tanks and fighters built with their advanced technology, but yeah...

The widespread availability of clean dial-a-yield kinetic impactors and lasers from orbit makes it very hard to fight a planetary ground campaign unless you have space superiority... in which case your enemy loses quickly. Also, Honorverse weapons scale up to levels of power so high that you'd be out of your mind to use them in ground warfare under normal conditions, because of the blast radius they'd have on a planetary surface. The only things it makes sense to use are "dialed-down" versions using older, less powerful technology... which means that the basic nature and character of ground combat weapons hasn't changed in centuries.

[Ahriman238]

"At the moment, O my esteemed fellow conspirator, you have about sixty-two percent of the delegates in your vest pocket. And Nordbrandt's extremism's actually pushed about ten percent of that total into your corner, I'd estimate. But Tonkovic and Andre Yvernau—and Lababibi—have an iron lock on the other thirty-eight percent. They've got most of the Cluster's oligarchs, aside from the delegates you and Bernardus can deliver from the RTU planets, and Nordbrandt pushed about ten percent of them away from your side and into Tonkovic's pocket when she punched the economic warfare button. Most of them could care less what happens on Kornati . . . as long as it doesn't splash onto their own comfortable little preserves. But with her blowing up banks and shooting bankers, not to mention the local oligarchs, her particular version of destabilization threatens to spill over into other systems, and they're not about to sign on to anything that would, as they see it, hamper their existing political and law-enforcement machinery for dealing with neo-bolsheviks and anarchists on their own worlds. And, since it takes a two-thirds majority to vote out a draft Constitution, as long as she can hold on to the five or six percent of the delegates you still need, she can stonewall the entire process and try to extort concessions out of you. Out of us."

Situation at the convention after the bombings.

"But if Westman pisses off enough of your oligarchs—the ones you and Bernardus roped up and convinced to support the annexation in the first place—we're screwed. If he ever convinces enough of them that he and people who think like him can inflict serious damage on everything the Trade Union's managed to build up, a significant percentage of them—possibly an outright -majority—would switch over to Tonkovic's side in a heartbeat, and you know it. And if they do, they'll shift the balance drastically. Not just here at the Convention, either. If Rembrandt and San Miguel and the rest of the RTU planets start opposing annexation, instead of supporting it, it's going to fail."

Why Westman is more dangerous right now than Nordbrandt, he simply has more credibility.

"Yes, I was, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Khumalo rumbled. "But that was rather a different situation from this, as I hope you'll admit. Nordbrandt is a killer, a murderess on a mass scale. Dropping Marines onto Kornati, assuming the local planetary government invited us to do so, to hunt down a cold-blooded, calculating killer would be one thing. Dropping Marines onto Montana to go after one of its most prominent citizens, who's apparently well on his way to becoming some sort of folk hero—or antihero—and hasn't killed a a stray dog yet, much less members of the local parliament, would be another thing entirely."

Khumalo wanted to drop the Marines on Kornati, but Tonkovic was adamant that her people have got this and more than that, Dame Matsuko didn't want people to be meeting their new Manticoran overlords as stormtroopers kicking in doors. Now he argues against hunting down Westman using RMN assets, because it would inflame more tensions than it resolved.

"All reports from Split," her intelligence chief said, letting his eyes travel around the conference table, "indicate that, despite all the damage she's done, Nordbrandt's still operating effectively on a logistical shoestring. She's using civilian small arms and explosives, not military-grade weapons, and so far there's no indication she possesses sophisticated communications or antisurveillance gear. And, frankly, I think one reason she's launched this campaign of assassination against local landowners and industrialists is that she doesn't have the military wherewithal to take on really hard targets. She got away with her initial attack because of lengthy, meticulous preplanning and because no one saw it coming, and most of her successful bombing attacks since have been possible only because the local authorities are still gearing up to go after her and because she's chosen targets on the basis of their vulnerability, not their importance. She's going after the ones she can hit, not necessarily the ones she'd like to hit.

"Westman's a whole different breed of 'cat. He's obviously much better funded, and the Montanan government's managed to trace at least one purchase of Solarian coms and encryption software he made before going underground. They think he's acquired at least some off-world military supplies, as well. He's definitely used military-grade explosives in at least one strike, and according to our local Manticoran surveyors, the guerrillas he deployed for his first attack were armed with what appear to have been fairly modern Solly military small arms. In addition, his two operations to date have displayed an impressive degree of intelligence-gathering capacity and planning capability, and he's demonstrated he most certainly can hit hard targets.

Relative capabilities.

"I want Hexapuma."

Dame Matsuko wants to send a courier to Celebrant to divert Hexapuma from it's mission and send it to Kornati, on the basis that Terekhov is the third most senior officer in Talbott after Khumalo and his flag captain, with serious combat experience and the ability to walk the political minefield of outside intervention. But mostly because he'll show how serious Manticore takes this, and as an aside he can swing by Rembrandt on the way to pick up Van Dort.

Seventy-five light-years to Celebrant, he thought. Ten and half days for the rest of the universe, or a little over seven by Hexapuma's internal clocks. The downtime the voyage offered would be welcomed by everyone on board.

Distance and travel time from Nuncio to Celebrant.

Hexapuma's twelve days in Nuncio had been as productive as they had been hectically busy. Two ex-Peep pirate vessels destroyed or captured, Emerald Dawn retaken (even if she was going to require the lengthy services of a well equipped repair ship before she ever left Nuncio again), and the meticulous updating of the Navy's astrography on the Nuncio System. President Adolfsson's government and citizens had made their enthusiastic approval of Hexapuma's efforts on their behalf clear, and he and his crew could depart secure in the knowledge that this star system, at least, harbored no reservations about the desirability of inclusion in the Star Kingdom.

And the prize money for retaking Emerald Dawn—not to mention the head money for the "pirates" we killed or captured—doesn't particularly depress our people, either.

Do they still get prize money for it? And I guess they get bounties for the pirates.

Juras Divkovic slipped through the rainy shadows as quietly as the night breeze.

Unlike some of Agnes Nordbrandt's original recruits, Divkovic had never doubted there would be blood in the streets before it was all over. The whole system was so rotten, so riddled with corruption, grafters, self-seeking, dishonest politicians, all controlled by the filthy money of people like that traitor Tonkovic, that it couldn't be any other way. Some of Nordbrandt's initial supporters hadn't shared that hard awareness. They'd talked boldly enough about the "people in arms" and the "armed struggle," but they hadn't really meant it. They were theorists, effete -dilettantes—silly upperclass poseurs afraid, when it came right down to it, of getting a little blood on their hands. Or risking their own precious hides.

It was a good thing Nordbrandt had insisted on a cellular organization from the outset. Without it, he was certain, the whiners and fairweather "activists" would have sold the entire FAK leadership to the collaborationists running Kornati just to save their own asses. But they couldn't betray people they didn't know, and Nordbrandt had been smart enough to create two totally separate organizations. One composed of the big talkers with the testicles of timid gnats who could be counted on for financial contributions, political activism, agitation and demonstrations, but not for the Movement's real work. And a second, composed of people like Divkovic, who'd known from the outset what would have to be done and demonstrated their willingness to do it. The people who had begun building the infrastructure the FAK required years before the time had come for open conflict.

Nordbrandt sorted the fanatics from the moderates early on. Mostly the moderates have gone to ground and disassociated themselves from Nordbrandt.

Divkovic himself carried a pulse rifle, 'liberated' from the Rendulic police arsenal in one of the Movement's early attacks. Such weapons were too expensive for most civilians—only someone with the resources of the government could afford them—which was why most of his people were still armed with chemical-powered weapons. Just like most of their equipment, they had to make do with what they could get their hands on, and despite their revolutionary ardor, that put them at a severe disadvantage. Still, his old-fashioned, pure optic binoculars were enough to bring the lighted window on the fifth floor of the main administration building into sharp focus. He couldn't see much in the way of details, but the conference room blazed with light, despite the hour.

Tech-level, private individuals with pulsers are really rare on Kornati.

He watched what was supposed to have been a single, unified FAK strike team split into two sections and thought furiously. They might not be proceeding exactly as Intelligence had predicted, but they were here. Which meant news of the Treasury Department's emergency, secret meeting had leaked to them, exactly as the KNP had feared. That was fairly ugly confirmation that their own internal security procedures had been compromised, although the fact that the attack hadn't been canceled when the meeting was moved elsewhere and the trap was set in its place probably indicated the leak was somewhere on the Treasury side. And from one of the less senior day-workers, at that. Someone who hadn't been in the loop when the last-minute cancellation had been decided upon.

A secret meeting of Treasury officials was rescheduled and made a trap, confirmation that the FAK still has people in some high places, but this time they're going to get it.

Juras Divkovic cursed vilely as the multimillion-candlepower searchlights on top of the main administration building snapped to blinding, brilliant life. Their dazzling beams lanced out through the misty rain, slamming into his people's retinas like fists. The sudden shock effect was literally stunning, and his entire team froze.

"This is Captain Barto Jezic, National Police!" a hugely amplified voice crashed out. "You are under our guns! Surrender or die!"

Someone behind Divkovic whimpered, and the terrorist cell leader bared his teeth in a vicious snarl. His brain raced, trying to consider too many things at once. The bastards had known they were coming. That was the only way those lights could have been waiting in position. But he hadn't seen a sign of anyone on the way in. Did that mean his planned escape route was still clear? Or did it mean he simply hadn't seen whoever was prepared to block it? Or—

"You're running out of time!" the grayback's amplified voice roared. "Drop your weapons and surrender—now!"

Divkovic hesitated, wavering. It was, he suddenly discovered, far easier to be totally committed when it was a matter of killing someone else. The abrupt discovery that he was afraid to die filled him with a sudden, towering rage—a fury directed as much at his own previously unsuspected weakness as at the establishment thugs who'd ambushed him.

"What do we—?" the woman behind him began, and Divkovic's anger peaked. He whipped around towards her, lips parted to snarl his rage at her.

* * *

The sudden movement of the lead terrorist, the rise of his weapon, had inspired—or terrified—two of his followers. They flung themselves to the sides, going prone. And then Jezic saw the muzzle flashes of chemical-powered rifles as they opened fire on the searchlights.

There was no one on the building's roof. The lights were remotely controlled, although the terrorists had no way of knowing that. But opening fire at all was a fatal mistake. Under Able Zulu, the Rules of Engagement changed.

"Blue Team, Blue One!" Aranka Budak snapped over the com. "Take them!"

And the shoot-out.

"The attack itself was stopped dead, Mr. Vice President," she said. "There's no question that every one of the terrorists was killed. As to the other, well, the forensic people don't have a lot to work with. Apparently she was personally carrying one of the explosive charges they'd planned to use to level the garage on their way out."

"But you think it was actually her?" Rajkovic pressed.

"Mr. Vice President, I think there's a good chance of it," Basaricek replied after a momentary hesitation. "Again, I have to stress that forensics doesn't have much. But the information we had before the attack was that it was under the operational control of the man they called Icepick, but that Nordbrandt herself was in overall command. The fact that Secretary Grabovac was supposed to be there in person apparently made the meeting important enough for her to decide it justified her own presence. You know how she's insisted on that 'lead from the front' image from the beginning."

The presence of unidentifiable female human remains convinces the Kornati authorities that they got Nordbrandt herself. Well, the authorities themselves aren't convinced, but somebody talked to the press and well....

"NORDBRANDT DEAD?" "FAK TERRORIST FOUNDER KILLED!" "DEATH OF A MURDERER!"

Yeah. Spoiler: she's not dead.

He'd underestimated her. He'd sensed a certain capacity for violence in her, recognized her as a potentially lethal tool, but he'd never imagined she might prove this violent. Her first attack on the planetary parliament had been more than sufficiently -spectacular—in fact, he'd been astounded, upon his arrival here, to learn she'd managed to carry out such an operation successfully. But the ensuing pattern of assassinations, bombing attacks on exposed portions of the Kornatian infrastructure, and general mayhem were even more surprising, in a way. Either he'd significantly underestimated the size of her organization, or else Kornati's security forces were even more inept than he'd believed possible.

-snip-

More than half the bombings appeared to have targeted things like public transportation stations and power transmission lines. Those sorts of targets were both highly visible and extremely difficult for even the best trained, most experienced security forces to protect. Most of those attacks could very well have represented nothing more than opportunity targets. The massive fire touched off by the bombing attack on the petrochemical storage tanks at Kornati's fifth-largest refinery would have required more planning and faced more significant opposition from both public and private security forces, but most of the other industry-oriented attacks had been on smaller factories or branch offices of banking and investment firms. Again, widespread strikes on relatively lightly defended targets which had helped generate a public perception of some sort of terrorist tsunami.

What Nordbrandt has been up to in the month since the first bombing.

There were certain rules planets in the Verge knew better than to break, and one of them was that they never arrested and tried—far less thought about -imprisoning—-Gendarmerie intelligence agents. No Verge government could afford the retribution Frontier Security would visit upon anyone who dared embarrass OFS that way. Besides, if the police meant to arrest him, why not simply do so?

The unofficial rules. Verge worlds know full well that imprisoning or executing OFS agents, however reprehensible their deeds, is only going to lead to violent retaliation.

"On the other hand, I don't believe any of the newspaper articles I've read said that the government ever claimed you were. It's all been pure media speculation, with government spokesmen persistently cautioning people that there's no proof you're not alive."

"I know." Her grin was positively vicious. "That's one reason the entire idea appeals to me so much. The government can argue all it wants that it never tried to claim I was dead. But no one'll remember that, especially when I begin all my communiques announcing my continued existence with 'Despite the corrupt governing elite's terrified efforts to claim they had silenced my voice of opposition . . .'"

"I see," he repeated. She was right, and she was also demonstrating a rather more sophisticated grasp of effective propaganda and psych war than he'd really expected out of her. Which, he chided himself, had been foolish. She had, after all, been a successful Kornatian politician before the annexation vote destroyed her constituency. Of course, she remained fundamentally a lunatic, but she was clearly a lunatic with good tactical instincts, however poor her grasp of the strategic realities might prove in the end.

For now Nordbrandt is stepping down operations for a few weeks, until she's ready to announce her continued survival in style, with a mountain of corpses in the background.

"Unfortunately, it's still going to take them about sixty T-days to get here. Freighters aren't exactly speed demons, and we need our delivery boys to be so ordinary-looking they slide in under the authorities' radar." She looked disappointed at the thought of taking that long to get her hands on her previously unanticipated new toys, and he smiled crookedly. "Besides," he continued, "I imagine you'll be able to make good use of all that time. After all, we're going to have to figure out how to land—and hide, here on the planet—something on the order of a thousand tons of weapons, ammunition, and explosives."

That's some significant support.

[Simon_Jester]

Do they still get prize money for it? And I guess they get bounties for the pirates.

They do still get prize money for capturing a merchantman, although I'm not sure how it works if there are survivors with a reasonable claim to own the ship. That's an interesting wrinkle on the archaic concept. In the Age of Sail it was simple: if you captured a ship that made it yours, no question, hands down. If you captured a ship that had previously belonged to someone else and was then taken by foreigners or pirates, too bad for them, good news for you.

But the international community of the industrial age, and for that matter the 'Hyperspace Age' that all this takes place in, is a lot more lawful and organized and legalistic on the whole. It's hard to imagine the Manticoran government, if they should happen to capture a Solarian (or Manticoran) ship recently taken by pirates, seriously claiming to the firm that owns the ship that they're going to have to buy the ship back from the RMN so that RMN officers can get prize money. Certainly nothing like that would happen today.

The company (or just the group of investors) owning the ship would almost certainly respond to that by lawyering up and posing a challenge in the appropriate courts. Even if the case is tried in Manticore, it would go pretty far up the chain of the judiciary, and those Manticoran courts would face the reality that this sort of thing causes huge, needless harm to their reputation as a reputable commercial center.

Because from the point of view of the shipping firms, there's no difference between the RMN reselling a ship for prize money and pirates ransoming the ship for money. Either way, the firm would reasonably expect a civilized, disciplined navy to return the stolen property for free, just as the police will return my TV set for free if they recover it from a thief.

[Ahriman238]

Chief Marshal Trevor Bannister commanded the Montana Marshals Service, the police force with jurisdiction over the entire star system. Like their fellow Montanans, the marshals made something of a fetish out of appearing as calm and unhurried as was physically possible. Unfortunately, appearances could be deceiving, and the marshals had an enviable record for cracking even the most difficult of cases. Prior to the recent unpleasantness, Bannister and Westman had also been close friends. Which, Westman knew, wouldn't for a moment deter Bannister from hunting him, and all his men, down. The Chief Marshal had a well-earned reputation for integrity and stubbornness that was monumental even for a Montanan.

Montana Marshals, and Westman just happens to be best friends with his homeworld's top cop, Trevor Bannister.

Suttles wasn't a bad man; he just wasn't a very strong one, and the spin-masters and political handlers who'd gotten him elected weren't any better. For all practical purposes, the so-called "Suttles Administration" was little better than a committee whose nominal head would've had trouble deciding what color to paint his bedroom without first commissioning multiple popular opinion polls. It was unfortunate, in many ways, that Warren Suttles was President instead of Stephen Westman. Although, when it came right down to it, little though Bannister respected Suttles, the President's -policies—especially where the annexation issue was concerned—were far better for Montana's future than Westman's were.

And Warren Suttles, el presidente.

Warren Suttles clenched his jaw and managed—somehow—to keep himself from glowering at the man seated across his desk from him. If he'd thought for a minute that he could politically survive firing Bannister, he would've done it in a heartbeat. Or he liked to think he would have. The fact was, that he wasn't sure he would've had the nerve to do it even if it had been politically feasible. Which, of course, it wasn't. Trevor Bannister was an institution, the most successful, most hard driving, most dedicated, most decorated, most everything-in-the-damned-world Chief Marshal in the history of Montana. And he wasn't even impolite. It was just that he managed to make Warren Suttles feel like an idiot—or feel pretty confident Bannister thought he was an idiot—with apparent effortlessness.

They don't have the best professional relationship.

"You don't think this time he might be bluffing?"

"Mr. President, I've played a lot of poker with Steve Westman. One thing about him; he don't bluff worth a damn, and he never has. He's not bluffing this time."

"So you think he's actually planted explosives under the System Bank of Montana?"

"Yes, Sir. I do."

"And he'll actually set them off?"

"Don't see any other reason to've put them there."

The next hit, Westman calls and tells them to evac the planetary bank.

"All right, Chief Marshal. If you're convinced he's serious about it, and if you're also convinced he's somehow planted explosive charges in the bank service tunnels, why don't we send someone down to disarm them?"

"Mostly because Steve obviously thought of that, too. He warned us not to, and I'm pretty sure if we try something like that anyway, we'll just set them off early."

"Don't we have experts who specialize in disarming bombs and disposing of explosives?"

"We do. So does the Navy. I've talked to them. They say there's at least a dozen ways he could have rigged his charges to go off the instant anyone steps into those tunnels, assuming that's where the bombs are."

"They're not even willing to try?"

"Of course they are. Question is, are we willing to send them in?"

"Of course we are! How can you even think of not sending them?"

"First, because I'd just as soon not get them killed," Bannister said calmly. "And, second, because if we do get them killed, sending them in after Westman's taken such pains to warn us not to—to specifically tell us the charges'll detonate if we do—it'll be a mite difficult to convince the public he's the one responsible for their deaths."

Westman is really trying not to hurt anyone as long as he can. Question is whether Suttles will let him.

"He estimates, worst-case scenario, that we'll lose about two weeks worth of electronic records. Everything's backed up immediately on the Bank's secondary computer net, and twice a month a complete new backup's generated for the remote storage location in the New Swans. Unfortunately, Westman timed this to hit just before the bi-monthly backup, and the secondary computer net is in the Bank building's subcellars . . . which means they're even closer to the bombs—assuming they're really there—than the primary computers. 'Pears he's managed to cut the land line to the New Swans site to prevent any emergency dumps, too, and the Bank's security staff's already evacuated the building—my orders, Mr. President—so even if there was time, there's no access for physical downloads.

"Course, losing the records is only part of it. When those bombs go, they're gonna take the Bank's mainframes—all three of 'em—with them. According to the Secretary, we can probably reconstitute about eighty percent of the electronic records from hardcopy records and electronic records at secondary locations, but it'll take weeks—at best—to get the job done. I 'spect he's being overoptimistic in that estimate, Mr. President, 'cause just finding replacements for the Bank's central net's gonna be a real bear. But that's what he's going to tell you."

"And did he happen to mention what effect he expects that to have on the economy?"

"I don't think he has the least idea, Mr. President. I don't think anyone does. It's never happened before. I don't expect it to be good, and neither does he, but his feeling is that unless it sparks an outright panic—which, I think is unlikely—the effect should stop well short of the sort of panic-induced recession you referred to earlier."

Probable economic effects when the bank goes up.

"Mr. President, if I thought there was a chance in hell of disarming those bombs without setting them off, I'd personally lead our BDUs into those tunnels. I don't think there is. So I'm recommending we not get people killed in addition to the damage we're already going to take. The bombs are going off, Sir. Do we really want to get our own people killed, and assume the political consequences stemming from the electorate's view that we did it because we were too stupid to take Westman's word for what would happen?"

Suttles looked at him for several moments in silence. Then the System President inhaled deeply, planted his hands on his desktop, and shoved himself erect.

"All right, Chief Marshal," he sighed. "Let's get on into the Cabinet meeting. And, if you don't mind," he actually managed a smile, "let me at least pretend to listen to everyone else before I decide we're going to do things your way."

"Of course, Mr. President," Trevor Bannister said, and rose with considerably more genuine respect for his President than usual.

Be damned, he thought, following Suttles out of the office, might just be the man's got a spine, after all. Be nice if he had a brain to go with it, but who knows? It may turn out he's even got one of those if he ever decides to stand up on his hind legs and use it.

No team going in. Suttles proves himself just a bit in Bannister's eyes.

"According to reports I've received from certain people officially on the other side, our dear friend Bernardus is having steadily mounting problems holding the RTU-backed delegates for Alquezar. And if they come over to our side—"

He shrugged, his smile turning into something remarkably like a smirk.

"They haven't shown any signs of breaking with him yet," Lababibi pointed out.

"Not openly, no. But you know there have to be fissures under the surface, Samiha. They can't possibly be comfortable siding with lower-class cretins like Krietzmann, whatever Van Dort and Alquezar are demanding. It's only a matter of time before they start coming over, and when they do, Alquezar will have no choice but to accept the 'compromise' between Aleksandra's demands and my own, far more moderate position."

Andreiaux Yvernau, president of New Tuscany is in the CLP and more or less pulling a Giancola. He still sees the CLP's demands as an opening bargaining position and hopes to save the day at the eleventh hour with a compromise most of the CLP will accept, when the CUP will be willing to accept nearly any giving of ground. Labibibi is now with the CLP, reluctantly because that's what her constituency told her to do.

"You're not concerned about Baroness Medusa's warnings that our time isn't unlimited? Nor worried that if things stretch out that long the Star Kingdom may simply decide to walk away? To take the position that if we can't put our own house into order well enough to report out a draft Constitution after all this time, then obviously we're not really serious about joining the Star Kingdom at all?"

"I think there will probably be some internal, domestic pressure for the Star Kingdom to do that," Yvernau said calmly. "In this instance, however, I think Aleksandra is correct. The Queen of Manticore herself has committed her crown and prestige to the annexation. If she's actually told Medusa there's a time limit—if our beloved Provisional Governor hasn't simply manufactured the threat to push us along—I suspect her 'time limit' actually contains a large measure of bluff. She might want a Constitution hastened, and she might not be prepared to use force to suppress opposition to the annexation, but neither is she going to simply walk away and present to the galaxy at large the impression that she's abandoned us to Frontier Security."

The time limit is very real, by the way.

"The short version is that if the remains the KNP recovered had been those of a Manticoran citizen, the Major could easily have identified the victim. But because they're the remains of a Kornatian citizen, she doesn't have the base information she requires for a genetic determination. Apparently Nordbrandt never had a genetic scan—they're rarely performed by the current Kornatian medical establishment—and, so far as the KNP's been able to determine, no samples of her blood or tissue were retained by her physicians. Or else, as I suspect was the case, she and her organization saw to it that any samples which had been retained were properly disappeared when she decided to go underground.

"As for more mundane, not to say primitive, forensic techniques, apparently Ms. Nordbrandt hadn't previously suffered any physical injuries which would have left identifying markers in the rather, um . . . finely divided remains. The Kornatians do have her dental records; unfortunately, they didn't recover enough teeth for a positive ID.

"In short, according to Major Cateaux, the available material and records simply aren't enough to conclusively determine from the physical evidence whether or not the remains belong to Nordbrandt."

The obvious question "don't we have advanced forensics tech to determine whether the dead woman was Nordbrandt?" comes up and is dealt with. Manticorans have their DNA checked out and filed, not so much a thing in the Verge. And there's not enough for dental.

"And, to be honest, I think it's what President Tonkovic thinks is happening. She's still talking in terms of our providing 'technical' assistance—-reconnaissance and intelligence support and modern weapons for her own law enforcement and military personnel—rather than the actual insertion of our own troops. I, personally, don't plan on investing too much confidence in the notion that Nordbrandt's gone and the FAK is going—certainly not without additional evidence. But the possibility obviously exists. And if it happens to be true, it would free us to turn our primary attention to Mr. Westman and his Montana Independence Movement."

Ah Tonkovic, the eternal optimist.

"Well, the good news is that at least the Celebrants don't seem to be experiencing the problems that Nuncio was. We can pull out in good conscience without worrying about abandoning them to some outside threat. Or, at least, any known outside threat." He smiled thinly.

"True enough, Skipper," FitzGerald agreed. "I wish we'd had more than eight days in-system, though. Our astrogation database updates are just getting started, and I hate to stop now."

"It's a pain, but it's not the end of the universe," Terekhov said. "We had to take the first couple of days to introduce ourselves to the Celebrants. Frankly, I think that was time well spent—probably better than if we'd launched straight into the survey, when all's said, Ansten. The relationship between the people who live here and the Star Kingdom's more important than the coordinates of some minor system body."

Terekhov gets his marching orders, the Kitty prepares to leave Celebrants. They did have time to spend a few days rubbing elbows with the locals and starting their survey.

"First, a message to President Shaw's office. Inform them that we're under orders to depart as soon as possible for Spindle. This is only a heads-up for general information. I'll want to send him a personal message before we actually depart."

"Aye, Sir."

"Second, a message for the dispatch boat's skipper. Unless he has specific orders to continue on to some other system, I'll want him to return directly to Spindle. We'll upload our logs, including our reports on events in Nuncio, as well as any mail our people want to send ahead. The dispatch boat can shave three days, absolute, off our own arrival time, even assuming we don't have to lay over in Rembrandt while we wait for Mr. Van Dort."

"Aye, Sir," Nagchaudhuri repeated.

"Third, general broadcast to all our small craft and away duty and leave parties. All hands to repair onboard immediately."

Preparing to leave, recalling their detachments, sending the dispatch boat ahead with their report on Nuncio and making a courtesy call to tell the local president they're leaving early.

Stephen Westman couldn't have said whether he meant it as a prayer or a curse. He sat in his underground headquarters with Luis Palacios, staring at the news footage which had finally arrived from the Split System. That footage was over forty days old; the Talbott Cluster wasn't served by the fast commercial dispatch boats the interstellar news services used to tie more important bits of the galaxy together, and the news had crossed the hundred and twenty light-years between Split and Montana aboard a regular freighter. Which meant it had crossed slowly. Not that the delay in transit had made it any better.

It took over a month, but Westman heard how the resistance to Manticore is going on Kornati, and he is not happy.

Terekhov didn't mention the missiles he'd expended in Nuncio. Those expenditures couldn't have been made good out of Rembrandt stocks. Besides, his next stop was Spindle itself, where the station's service squadron would be able to supply any of his needs.

Still getting logistics into place, Terekhov can't get reloads just any "Manticoran" system. Well, I imagine it's even harder considering his is the only MDM-capable ship in Talbott right now.

"What both of you just said about Mr. Van Dort is perfectly accurate, as far as it goes. However, it would be more accurate to say he is the RTU. He was its founder, and he's still its largest stockholder. For most of the last sixty T-years, he's been Chairman of the Board of a four-system 'trade association' which is effectively a star nation in its own right. Mr. Van Dort resigned his position as Chairman specifically to organize the annexation vote. That, too, could be said to be his personal brainchild, although he isn't and never has been a politician as we would understand the term in the Star Kingdom. In short, although he's technically only one more private citizen here in the Cluster, he's an extremely influential and important private citizen."

Van Dort's status in Talbott.

"In the meantime, however, Captain Terekhov has decided it would be wise to assign him a personal aide. It's entirely possible such an assignment would never amount to being more than a personal go-for. It's also possible, however, that the individual assigned to him would find him or herself involved in significantly more important duties and responsibilities. Since this insistence of his on traveling without an entire stable of assistants seems to be an important part of his self-image, the Captain doesn't wish to make it obvious that he's trying to circumvent it. Accordingly, he's decided to assign a midshipman to the task. Someone junior enough to avoid triggering any automatic rejection of an official aide, but with sufficient personal background knowledge and experience to serve that function, anyway. Which is what brings me to the two of you."

He paused again, this time obviously waiting for them to say something. Helen glanced at Ragnhild, then looked back at the Exec.

"May I ask why it does, Sir?" she asked.

"You may. Ms. Pavletic and Mr. Sottmeister are the only two of our midshipmen with connections to our own merchant marine. Of the two, Ms. Pavletic's family's been more deeply involved for a longer time. Specifically, Pavletic, Tilliotson, and Ellett is one of the Star Kingdom's oldest shipping lines. This, I believe, would probably put her in the best position of any of our middies to 'talk shop' with Mr. Van Dort. Although I'm sure the Captain would prefer not to have to find a replacement pilot for Hawk-Papa-One, I'm afraid Mr. Van Dort takes precedence even over that.

"You, on the other hand, Ms. Zilwicki, are effectively the adopted daughter of Catherine Montaigne. You have personal, first-hand experience of how someone operating at the highest level of the Star Kingdom's politics goes about her business. Then there's your relationship to Queen Berry. And the fact that your father is one of the Star Kingdom's most effective, ah . . . intelligence operatives. Whereas Ms. Pavletic would be in a position to address the business side of Mr. Van Dort's responsibilities and achievements, you'd be in a better position to appreciate any political requirements he might have."

Assigning Van Dort an aide, though he makes a point of not hauling around a retinue or even a single assistant.

Why, oh why, she wondered, couldn't our problem-child star systems be closer to each other. Or to us, for that matter.

Split lay just over 60.6 LY from Spindle. Montana was 82.5 LY from Spindle, and over a hundred and twenty from Split. Even a warship like Hexapuma would require more than eight days to make the trip from Spindle to Split. Montana was the next best thing to twelve days away, and the trip from Montana to Split would require better than seventeen days. All of which made coordination between Spindle and what looked like being the Cluster's two true flashpoints a genuine, unmitigated pain in the ass. Just getting information back and forth, even using the speedy dispatch boats which routinely traveled in the riskier Theta Bands of hyper-space, took literally weeks. No matter what Rear Admiral Khumalo or Baroness Medusa decided to do, they could absolutely count on the fact that the information on which their decision was based was out of date.

Travel times between the three systems everyone's worried about.

"Aleksandra Tonkovic and her allies," the baroness continued levelly, "are playing with fire, and they either don't realize it or else won't admit it to themselves. Despite the situation in her own home system and in Montana, Tonkovic continues to hold out for a virtual guarantee of total local autonomy for all the systems in the Cluster. Not just in the sense of home rule, but in the sense of picking and choosing—and mostly rejecting, so far as I can tell—the provisions of the Star Kingdom's Constitution which they'll accept as binding upon them.

"My analysts—" she flashed a smile at O'Shaughnessy -"—-continue to assure me that much of her apparently total intransigence is a negotiating ploy. They may be right. But what I don't seem to be able to get her to believe is that Her Majesty has certain standards of her own, which any draft Constitution must meet to be acceptable. Tonkovic's proposals don't even come close. And the fact that she may intend at some unspecified future time to relax her demands in the hope of achieving a favorable compromise resolution is, unfortunately, largely lost on the Manticoran public and on the members of Parliament. She isn't merely polarizing the debate here in the Cluster; she's also polarizing it at home, in Manticore. And that, Bernardus, is something Queen Elizabeth does not need when she's in the middle of a war.

Tonkovic and the CLP's actual position, they should be able to choose what parts of the Manticoran Constitution should apply to them. Though they are apparently willing to make concessions, they want the other party to 'blink' first.

"The bottom line is this. I've been informed by Her Majesty's Government that if an acceptable draft Constitution isn't voted out of the Convention within the next five standard months, the Star Kingdom of Manticore will withdraw its decision to accept the Talbott Cluster's request to be admitted to the Star Kingdom. If the delegates to the Convention are unwilling or unable to produce a Constitution which will meet the test of acceptability by the Manticoran Parliament and provide the legal mechanisms for the swift, effective suppression of murderous criminals like Nordbrandt, the Star Kingdom will settle for Lynx and leave the rest of the Cluster to its own devices."

Elizabeth's hard deadline.

"What I mean, Bernardus, is that I believe she's convinced herself any hard time limit is my own invention, a ploy I came up with to pressure her into accepting Joachim's draft. I may be wrong, and I hope I am. But even if I'm not, she seems to be missing the point that the time limit I'm talking about is the last one the Government is prepared to accept. If the polarization she's creating here, and that's spilling over into domestic debate on this issue in the Star Kingdom, continues to grow stronger, official time limits will cease to matter. It will become politically impossible for the Crown to carry through the annexation, whatever the Queen's personal desires, in the face of powerfully opposed domestic opinion. That's one reason I believe it's essential for us to make the strongest possible effort to bring about at least a cease-fire on Montana and Kornati. If we can just stop the fighting and prevent further bloodshed, we ought to be able to put the brakes on at least some of the steadily growing domestic opposition to the annexation. And that, Bernardus, is why I need you. Badly."

And the actual deadline may be much sooner as the Manticoran public scratches their collective heads at the people of Talbott, who asked to be annexed but refuse to come together on a Constitution, and now they're slaughtering each other based on whether or not they actually want to join.

HMS Hexapuma accelerated steadily away from the planet of Flax once again. Her magazines had been topped up—in fact, they were at 110 percent of nominal wartime levels—and her crew was supremely confident of its ability, and its Captain's, to deal with any threat she might encounter.

Wouldn't have thought they'd have the room for that.

Admiral Gregoire Bourmont and Admiral Isidor Hegedusic, Monican System Navy, stood side-by-side in the space station gallery and watched reaction thrusters flare as the first of the long, lean ships slid gracefully to a stop relative to the station. Tractor beams reached out for her, nudging her bow hammerhead into the station's waiting space dock, and Hegedusic shook his head with a bemused expression.

Meanwhile, the Monicans have started to receive and refit their new BCs.

"No, Sir. But I was wondering if we might ask Mr. Levakonic if it would be possible to deploy some of his 'missile pods' to cover our more important installations. As I understand it, they're pretty much suited to indefinite deployment, as long as they can be serviced regularly, so it wouldn't be as if we were actually expending them. And I'd feel a lot better with some additional firepower to back us up."

And thinking about using pods for security, since most of their navy will be cycling through and training up on the new ships for months.

I wonder how Rajkovic and Basaricek are going to feel when they find out I'm alive after all? I'd love to see their faces. Then again, I'd love to see their reaction to the knowledge that I've been hiding right under their noses from the very beginning. They just don't seem to get it. Maybe they figure I have to have some big, elaborate command post to be effective? But that would be stupid. I can handle everything I need to handle with nothing more than one personal com and a couple of trustworthy runners. And that lets me disappear tracelessly into the capital's population—just one more poor, anonymous young widow, struggling to keep a roof over her head on the miserable social support payments the government makes available. And I actually collect the credit drafts, too. She grinned at the thought. Setting that up before I went underground wasn't easy, but it's paid off big time.

She shook her head, still bemused by the opposition's myopia. Maybe it was the fact that the people looking for her knew she'd always been relatively affluent. Her adoptive parents had been well enough off to send her to private schools and pay most of her tuition when she went off to college. Her parliamentary career had paid pretty well, too, not to mention the noneconomic perks that had gone with it. So maybe it simply never occurred to the people looking for her that she would quite cheerfully hide in plain sight simply by becoming poor.

Nordbrandt's clever disguise as a woman living in public housing and collecting welfare.

The first had been a delivery truck, parked—in the same parking space in which it had been parked every day for the last three weeks—outside the main city post office. Had anybody examined that truck on any day except today, they would have found it loaded with legitimate parcels and packages being delivered to the post office by the courier service whose name was painted on its sides. But last night the courier service employee, who belonged to one of Nordbrandt's cells, had loaded his vehicle with something else before he parked it, set the timer, locked it, and walked away. And the truck had simply sat there, waiting until mid-afternoon, when the post office would be most crowded.

-snip-

Another truck, from the same courier service, had been parked in a basement garage under the city's largest department store. Judging from the smoke and dust cloud, the bomb must have been even more successful than she'd hoped.

Then the third bomb detonated—the one in the stolen ambulance parked under the marquee of the Sadik Kozarcanic Army Hospital. She'd had her doubts about that one. There'd been a far higher chance that the team charged with placing the ambulance would be detected and intercepted, which would have alerted the authorities to the fact that an operation was underway. And even if they weren't, security remained too tight, despite the growing certainty she and the Movement had both been killed, for them to get the ambulance close enough to do the kind of structural damage they'd managed at the post office and department store. But she'd decided it was still worth the risk as a psychological blow. They hadn't attacked hospitals before. And, in fact, she had no intention of adding hospitals to the list. Not civilian hospitals, anyway. But there was no way for the government or the general public to know that, now was there?

The fourth bomb went off, but it was clear across the city, too far away for her to see it from here. Not that she needed to. The neat operational planning file in her head checked it off as sharp, harsh thunder rattled the one-sun's windows.

First Planetary Bank, she thought cheerfully. Again, they hadn't been able to get the bomb actually inside the building perimeter, and the Bank building itself was built more like a bunker than a commercial establishment. But, knowing they wouldn't be able to place the bomb as close as they wanted, she and Drazen Divkovic, Juras' brother, had put the bomb under a tanker truck. In theory, it contained fuel oil; in fact, Drazen had sealed the tank and filled it with natural gas, creating what was in effect a primitive fuel-air bomb.

-snip-

She looked out at the plumes of smoke one more time, then, shaking her head in obvious disbelief and horror, turned and headed back towards the stairwell. She wanted to get back to her apartment and its cheap, tiny HD in time to see if the news channels played her prerecorded message claiming responsibility for the bombing attack in the name of the FAK. And, just incidentally, informing the Kornatian public that she wasn't dead, after all.

She was halfway down the stairs when the fifth and final bomb of this attack exploded in yet a third delivery truck. That one was parked outside the Karlovac Metropolitan Museum, and she spared a moment to hope the museum's fire suppression systems would save most of its artworks. It was probably a little schizophrenic to hope one of her own attacks would be less than totally successful, but she couldn't help it.

Nordbrandt's announcement of her survival, hitting the post office, bank, metro art museum, a large department store and a military hospital.

[Simon_Jester]

Montana Marshals, and Westman just happens to be best friends with his homeworld's top cop, Trevor Bannister.

If there is a hidden oligarchy of a relative handful of families who own most of the wealth, it's no surprise that one of them got appointed to run law enforcement and one happens to be a very wealthy man.

Just because Montana seems all 'land of the free and home of the brave' doesn't mean it's immune to the same general economic pressures that have made many other Talbot Cluster nations into economic oligarchies...

Andreiaux Yvernau, president of New Tuscany is in the CLP and more or less pulling a Giancola. He still sees the CLP's demands as an opening bargaining position and hopes to save the day at the eleventh hour with a compromise most of the CLP will accept, when the CUP will be willing to accept nearly any giving of ground. Labibibi is now with the CLP, reluctantly because that's what her constituency told her to do.

The "Giancola maneuver" seems to be one of the handful of basic personas Weber has for politicians not aligned with Our Heroes: the idiot who keeps arrogantly assuming that he can win everything by just playing chicken hard enough, refusing to change his policies in light of a changing situation, and waiting for the other side to blink, and who brings down disaster upon his nation as a result.

Again, I personally find this somewhat ironic given that as far as I know he and most of his fans are Republicans... but that's not an Honorverse thing.

"And, to be honest, I think it's what President Tonkovic thinks is happening. She's still talking in terms of our providing 'technical' assistance—-reconnaissance and intelligence support and modern weapons for her own law enforcement and military personnel—rather than the actual insertion of our own troops. I, personally, don't plan on investing too much confidence in the notion that Nordbrandt's gone and the FAK is going—certainly not without additional evidence. But the possibility obviously exists. And if it happens to be true, it would free us to turn our primary attention to Mr. Westman and his Montana Independence Movement."

Ah Tonkovic, the eternal optimist.

On the other hand, as noted earlier, Westman's arguably a bigger threat to the peace process as a whole, even if Nordbrandt is killing (lots) more people.

Still getting logistics into place, Terekhov can't get reloads just any "Manticoran" system. Well, I imagine it's even harder considering his is the only MDM-capable ship in Talbott right now.

Unless there's a Roland around or something. I dunno.

HMS Hexapuma accelerated steadily away from the planet of Flax once again. Her magazines had been topped up—in fact, they were at 110 percent of nominal wartime levels—and her crew was supremely confident of its ability, and its Captain's, to deal with any threat she might encounter.

Wouldn't have thought they'd have the room for that.

Honestly, me neither. Under peacetime conditions it may make sense for ships to fly around without full missile loads, because that way more missiles can be kept at central depots and distributed to whoever needs them after a (low-intensity) fight with a (probably weak) enemy. But in wartime...? O_o

The only explanation I can think of is that the wartime allotment of missiles for a rear area is reduced to free up missiles for the front line. Or that space which would normally be devoted to other stores is instead being crammed with a few extra missiles.

[Batman]

I don't see how that's going to work. We're not talking about cans of beans and sausages and packages of band-aids you can tuck into a nook here or there, we're talking ICBM-size missiles. You'll be hard-pressed to find room for them outside the designated magazines, leave alone a way to get them INTO the magazines and thus the feeding queue.
I'm with Simon-110% wartime levels probably means '110% wartime levels for a unit parked at the ass end of nowhere' rather than 110% its actual magazine capacity.

And one or two of us Honorverse fans aren't not only not Republitards, we're not even real world americans.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, they're ICBM-sized missiles, but the ship has roughly ten times the tonnage and presumably ten times the volume of a WWII battleship. There may be some space on the belly or roof of the ship allocated to 'general stores' that is large enough to carry random unexpected cargoes a warship might conceivably need (say, a spare pinnace)... and which could conceivably fit some extra missiles.

[Batman]

I'll happily give you them having the storage for those missiles, even after the Great Resizing, those ships are 'big', at least by modern world standards. I'm mostly dubious about their ability to get them from 'wherever we found space for them' to the missile tubes.

[VhenRa]

I'll happily give you them having the storage for those missiles, even after the Great Resizing, those ships are 'big', at least by modern world standards. I'm mostly dubious about their ability to get them from 'wherever we found space for them' to the missile tubes.

These probably can't be moved to the missile tubes without an EVA and a couple tractors.

[Batman]

While this would probably work I seriously doubt it would be all that useful. When you need more missiles, you usually need them 15 seconds ago. Not in another half hour or so. What I'd be a lot more willing to accept would be those 'nominal' wartime levels having been specified by the High Ridge maladministration's Admiralty so they were way below actual magazine capacity...or even them realizing that yeah, maybe we should give those ships as many missiles as they can carry...but nobody bothered to tell them the Saganami-C's were basically undernourished battlecruisers and had a lot more magazine capacity than they ever bothered to find out.

[VhenRa]

While this would probably work I seriously doubt it would be all that useful. When you need more missiles, you usually need them 15 seconds ago. Not in another half hour or so. What I'd be a lot more willing to accept would be those 'nominal' wartime levels having been specified by the High Ridge maladministration's Admiralty so they were way below actual magazine capacity...or even them realizing that yeah, maybe we should give those ships as many missiles as they can carry...but nobody bothered to tell them the Saganami-C's were basically undernourished battlecruisers and had a lot more magazine capacity than they ever bothered to find out.

Its useful when doing long cruises out in the hinterlands, where the nearest ammo depot is weeks away, there are no missile coilers in the entire theatre and you might need to top up your ready magazines after a series of small anti-pirate engagements.

[darkjedi521]

I don't see how that's going to work. We're not talking about cans of beans and sausages and packages of band-aids you can tuck into a nook here or there, we're talking ICBM-size missiles. You'll be hard-pressed to find room for them outside the designated magazines, leave alone a way to get them INTO the magazines and thus the feeding queue.
I'm with Simon-110% wartime levels probably means '110% wartime levels for a unit parked at the ass end of nowhere' rather than 110% its actual magazine capacity.

And one or two of us Honorverse fans aren't not only not Republitards, we're not even real world americans.

Here's another thought for where 110% might have come from. It is conceivable that some of the magazine space is devoted to training units for use in drills, even for a ship about to deploy to combat. For a "you're not getting back to base any time soon" deployment its probably possible, but not desirable, to replace the training articles in the magazines with live warshots. And the training units were assumed to always be present when magazine capacity was determined so 100% capacity really means "drill/training supplies + all the live missiles we can fit".
Also possible that they packed it denser, reducing efficiency at feeding missiles from magazine into launchers or other tricks such as leaving tubes loaded to fit 1 extra salvo in the magazine.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll happily give you them having the storage for those missiles, even after the Great Resizing, those ships are 'big', at least by modern world standards. I'm mostly dubious about their ability to get them from 'wherever we found space for them' to the missile tubes.

These probably can't be moved to the missile tubes without an EVA and a couple tractors.

In On Basilisk Station they were wrestling missiles through the corridors to get them into the forward magazines, on a ship roughly one fifth Hexapuma's size. However, you may well still be right...

While this would probably work I seriously doubt it would be all that useful. When you need more missiles, you usually need them 15 seconds ago. Not in another half hour or so. What I'd be a lot more willing to accept would be those 'nominal' wartime levels having been specified by the High Ridge maladministration's Admiralty so they were way below actual magazine capacity...or even them realizing that yeah, maybe we should give those ships as many missiles as they can carry...but nobody bothered to tell them the Saganami-C's were basically undernourished battlecruisers and had a lot more magazine capacity than they ever bothered to find out.

That's quite plausible.

However, I would like to point out that a ship can still need to fight multiple engagements- while Honorverse ships often expend literally all their missiles in a single sharp engagement, that's not the only thing that can happen. Especially when (as is the case here) you confidently expect that your missiles have great technical superiority over anything that they might face.

The fear isn't that you will need the extra 10% of missiles in a single battle. The fear is that you'll be forced to fight three battles, using up a quarter of your missiles each time... which leaves you down to 25% of capacity. So if you go looking for a fourth fight, even against a puny opponent, you risk flat-out running out of ammunition. You can't pick that fight, you have to break off your patrol and spend weeks traveling back to a source of ammunition resupply.

Having 10% more shots rattling around in general stores where they can be transferred to the magazines after the first or second fight gives you slightly more endurance in that respect. You might be able to cruise a little longer, or fight a little harder in a single engagement.

[keeps reading, notes this is basically what VhenRa said. Oops]

[Mr Bean]

Something both of you are overlooking, missiles break.
Which means your maintenance people need to have
A. Someplace to work on them
B. A method to get the missiles there or access routes for the entire feed chain
C. Spare parts to fix missiles.

No I don't think a Saganami-C carries the parts to fix 250 missiles but it might for twenty or whatever honorverse bad missile rate is, if they have gotten to the magic .005% failure rate they might carry the spares to fix only .5% or less of the missiles but frankly as a station command I can think of 500 scenarios when I would want to get sneaky with equipment. Now I don't image they carry 100% of a missile in spares but a good 40% with stuff like spare engines/fusion plants being the things to bulky to keep as stores.