Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington

[Simon_Jester]

375 Gs of accel/decel for Grayson LACs, that will change a lot. Theisman gets decent mass readings at 92 million klicks, at least enough to ascertain none of the ships he can see are Manticoran cruisers.

Prior to the marriage of Grayson compensator designs to Manticoran industrial base, all LACs have this problem. Basically, the LAC is too small to mount an appropriately sized compensator for its tonnage, which caps its acceleration at a value well below what the same designer could achieve on a platform ten times the size- but big enough to fit in a proper compensator along with drive, reactor, weapons, and habitat space.

The Masadan battle plan is to have their ships hide behind Blackbird, which will engage with their Havenite missiles. Missiles that are both heavier and longer ranged, even if the Grayson Navy wasn't driving hard towards them, than Theisman has.

I would honestly expect that Havenite ground-launched missiles would be a variant of their capital ship missile; in a fixed installation there's really no reason NOT to go for the larger, bulkier missile, since it's going to be delivered by a large freighter to a mount that can be made arbitrarily large.

The "classic" missile defense plan. Honorverse ships networking their missile defenses to avoid duplication of effort. Oh yes, and apparently the missiles provided for Blackbird Base are bigger and meaner than any haven shipboard missiles, which raises some interesting questions as to why Haven provided them to the Masadans in the first place.

They can only be installed on a fixed base, so for one, the Havenites could just stand off and pound the base from long range with ballistic attacks. Having a base defended with modern weapons is desirable because even the modern, Haven-built ships in the Masadan fleet will need servicing and so on- and that's the one condition under which Grayson-built ships would actually have a chance of creeping up on Haven-built ships and killing them: when the Havenite ship is in drydock.

Bit of news to me, but maybe that's because I've gorwn accustomed to the sort of missile spam that's in the later books.

In this era, it simply isn't reliable to try and saturate defenses- a typical ship mounts more defensive mounts than missile launchers, and each defensive mount gets at least one shot off at at least one missile. Often more. This is why missile combat is usually indecisive in the first place.

True saturation has to wait until missile pods emerge, allowing a ship to throw scores, hundreds, or even thousands of missiles all at once, more than it could possibly launch at one time from onboard launch tubes.

So it seems Grayson doesn't have battle steel, which is both metallic and ceramic?

Existing ceramic-metal composite materials. "Battle steel" is a more advanced iteration of the same. The main material properties I'd expect:

High heat of vaporization- it takes a lot of energy to boil off a single cubic meter of hull armor material.
Highly refractory- that is, it keeps its structural strength when superheated.
Resistant to wear- can be exposed to corrosives (like oxygen, but also routine shipboard hazards like ozone), radiation, and normal space temperature cycles without losing structural strength. This is where titanium breaks down a bit- it reacts violently with oxygen, and can become very brittle under unfavorable conditions.

Most of the battle of Blackbird. As they say, pretty much a knife-fight, but one the Masadans went into with sensor lock on the enemy.

Also note the sheer brutality of energy weapon combat. Whereas it takes multiple salvoes of missiles to land even one hit on an enemy in the early novels, the first exchange of beam weapon fire results in massive damage to various ships. Grayson/Masadan ships are literally blown apart; Mantie ships made of futuristic supermaterials are merely badly damaged.

No marines on Grayson ships. Huh. Given that there are Masadan privateers who love to capture Graysons (particularly Grayson women) and take them home to be "saved" you'd think they might spring for some. But of course, there are no woman on GSN ships, and no Masadan privateer is likely to board one.

GSN ships mount nuclear-tipped missiles and giant automatic railguns that can rip your ship to pieces from a hundred thousand kilometers away, so boarding one is, yes, suicide. They only look weak because we're comparing them with something drastically more advanced. Moreover, Masada didn't have modern infantry weapons either (i.e. still using things we'd recognize in the 20th century and understand the operating principles of), so the Graysons weren't at a disadvantage until now.

The new Fearless has a lot more marines than the old one. Also, an underground base of 7,000 personnel? Constructing that unnoticed must have been a pain.

It helps when the enemy's entire ministry of industry is at the disposal of your secret ally, who can literally order mining and extraction operations to stay away from any place where they might spot you, and when you're doing all this construction hundreds of millions of kilometers from the enemy's home base.

Yet Williams had doubted, and in the nightmares which had haunted him since Jericho—and especially since the bitch's return—a fresh doubt had tormented him. Had his lack of Faith turned God's Heart from them? Had it been he who allowed Satan's bitch and her ships to thwart the Work?

Uh-huh. Don't think even self-righteous fundies think that way. Moving right along...

What, think their own lack of faith could make them personally responsible for God turning His face away from them? Sure they do. And since this guy was personally responsible not just for his own actions but for the whole Masadan fleet's activities, the things he feels like he might be responsible for are important.

Pinnace pulser fires 1,800,000 rpm, say what? Also, I noticed this in Mutineer's Moon and Honorverse short stories too, whenever Weber mentions plasma weapons he waxes rather poetic without a lot of the specific details he gives everything else.

Weber does not even try to know plasma physics. Also, I suspect that's combined fire from a lot of different barrels, but even so yes, Weber is putting way too many rounds downrange too fast there; that rate of fire is deeply counterproductive for a weapon designed to throw rounds at single fixed targets (or even to saturate a single fixed area).

The Masadan defenders went flat, rolling off into side passages wherever possible, and then the entire base leapt and convulsed again. This time each pinnace fired only a single missile, but those missiles' onboard radar took them straight into the airlocks their predecessors had blown open and down the passages inside them at eight thousand MPS. They carried no explosives, but their super-dense "warheads" struck the first sets of internal blast doors with the force of twenty-three and a half tons of old-style TNT apiece, and another two hundred odd Masadans died as the doors disintegrated in white-hot gas and murderous shrapnel.

And 23.5 kt kinetic impactors. Is it really a great idea to be using these things around people you're planning on rescuing?

Whoa whoa whoa.

23.5 TONS is not the same as 23.5 KILOTONS.

And in answer to your question, no, but if you know perfectly well that the hostages are being kept half a kilometer underground, or that the upper structures are a stupid place to put them, you can chance it. Here, it's more important to blow through all the dug-in lines of Masadan defenders before they can respond effectively, so that the troops can get into the heart of the base where the prisoners might plausibly be.

[Ahriman238]

I would honestly expect that Havenite ground-launched missiles would be a variant of their capital ship missile; in a fixed installation there's really no reason NOT to go for the larger, bulkier missile, since it's going to be delivered by a large freighter to a mount that can be made arbitrarily large.

Not just that, they're apparently bigger, with more endurance and better penaids, than any ship-carried Haven missile.

Existing ceramic-metal composite materials. "Battle steel" is a more advanced iteration of the same. The main material properties I'd expect:

High heat of vaporization- it takes a lot of energy to boil off a single cubic meter of hull armor material.
Highly refractory- that is, it keeps its structural strength when superheated.
Resistant to wear- can be exposed to corrosives (like oxygen, but also routine shipboard hazards like ozone), radiation, and normal space temperature cycles without losing structural strength. This is where titanium breaks down a bit- it reacts violently with oxygen, and can become very brittle under unfavorable conditions.

True enough, we already do something like that. Mind I am amused because "battle-steel" like "molycircs" also appear in most everything Weber, particularly Mutineer's Moon, where all ships are made from the stuff, and Armageddon Reef, where Merlin makes a sword (called Excalibur, naturally) from the stuff.

And now I have an image in my head of tiny Honorverse ships potting away at a planetoid covered in 100 kilometers of the same armor they've got.

GSN ships mount nuclear-tipped missiles and giant automatic railguns that can rip your ship to pieces from a hundred thousand kilometers away, so boarding one is, yes, suicide. They only look weak because we're comparing them with something drastically more advanced. Moreover, Masada didn't have modern infantry weapons either (i.e. still using things we'd recognize in the 20th century and understand the operating principles of), so the Graysons weren't at a disadvantage until now.

Yeah, I remember a fair few boarding actions over the series, but always on Merchantmen, sometimes in dock, or on pirates. And the latter and warships are generally after surrendering. I'm thinking boarding is not a great tactic against Honorverse warships.

Whoa whoa whoa.

23.5 TONS is not the same as 23.5 KILOTONS.

I know, I know. Chalk it up to being really tired at posting, or file it under "Ahriman's an IDIOT sometimes."

[Simon_Jester]

True enough, we already do something like that. Mind I am amused because "battle-steel" like "molycircs" also appear in most everything Weber, particularly Mutineer's Moon, where all ships are made from the stuff, and Armageddon Reef, where Merlin makes a sword (called Excalibur, naturally) from the stuff.

And now I have an image in my head of tiny Honorverse ships potting away at a planetoid covered in 100 kilometers of the same armor they've got.

Weber does tend to reuse the same terms for the same things across multiple settings, yes.

Yeah, I remember a fair few boarding actions over the series, but always on Merchantmen, sometimes in dock, or on pirates. And the latter and warships are generally after surrendering. I'm thinking boarding is not a great tactic against Honorverse warships.

Yep. Even the most pathetic shipboard weapons out there (GSN naval autocannon) could probably rip a WWII battleship to shreds in moments from hundreds of kilometers away; you just plain don't board a warship unless it's already surrendered, and if they start reneging on surrenders the way the Masadans at Blackbird do, you just stop bothering.

Only in an unusual case like this would it be worth the trouble to board a facility packed full of hostile infantry in the Honorverse.

[SMJB]

So we're finally going to get to the Haven vs. Masada bit soon? That's my favorite part of the book.

BTW, I believe battlesteel is a layered composite of metal, ceramic, carbon nanofiber, and...something... At least when used for armor. It was described in detail in one of the anthologies.

[Black Admiral]

Masadan treatment of captives. May not actually be that typical, though Promised Land seems to assume this is so, it is mentioned that Captain Williams took out a great deal of his doubts and frustration on the captives "punishing the servants of Satan" so God would once again look favorably on the Masadans and their crusade.

It does seem like Williams was taking it to extremes even by Masadan standards, since the Colonel Harris (who, as far as I can tell, is a Masadan native, not a Havenite Marine officer) commanding Blackbird Base's infantry complement dislikes Williams anyway and is disgusted by his treatment of the RMN prisoners. Same thing applies to the Masadans going suicide bomber on Major Ramirez's Marines; again, from Harris's comments, they wouldn't surrender even if ordered to (going by his remark that, "Anyone who's going to surrender already has. My talking to them won't change their minds").

[eyl]

No marines on Grayson ships. Huh. Given that there are Masadan privateers who love to capture Graysons (particularly Grayson women) and take them home to be "saved" you'd think they might spring for some. But of course, there are no woman on GSN ships, and no Masadan privateer is likely to board one.

Boarding of enemy warships in the Honerverse is only done if the ship is are disabled, it's made explicitly or implicitly clear that the boarding ship could destroy the other if they resist, or by subterfuge. Assuming the GSN is primarily a system defense force, they don't really need integral infantry complements - if a ship comes across a situation where they need one in the Grayson system, they can get a shipment of soldiers from Grayson in a few hours.

In book 4 or 5, it's mentioned that Grayson Army units are stationed on Grayson ships - it's unclear whether this was always a practise or if it applies only to the newer (post-Alliance) ship designs. This coincides with the GSN going to a more offensive stance as part of the Alliance.

Skin-suits as make-do battle armor, they'll stop a small caliber pulser, it's said.

It should be pointed out that this applies to Marine skinsuits. Navy skinsuits (as per book 4) aren't as hardy, they're more designed to be comfortable to wear for long periods.

Moonwalk your way to victory. Interesting that the enhanced musculature is cited as the big energy hog, even over the thrusters.

It doesn't say that the muscles are the biggest energy user, just a big one. The quote could also mean "the biggest energy user of what we can use here".

Seems Grayson has a death penalty then. You know, along with the torture and the trial by combat.

To be fair, torture does not seem to be officially condoned and trial by combat is considered an anachronism (apparently Burdette was the first one to invoke it in centuries).

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, trial by combat wasn't treated as a bad joke.

Realistically, if some MP in Britain invoked a medieval law that had never been repealed and tried to challenge the Prime Minister to a duel over the budget or something, he'd get treated as if he'd had a psychotic breakdown and security would escort him out of the chamber.

Even if technically the law is on his side, a law which hasn't been enforced for centuries and which is wildly at odds with the mores of modern society is... not really a law you should expect others to follow.

[Mr Bean]

On the other hand, trial by combat wasn't treated as a bad joke.

Realistically, if some MP in Britain invoked a medieval law that had never been repealed and tried to challenge the Prime Minister to a duel over the budget or something, he'd get treated as if he'd had a psychotic breakdown and security would escort him out of the chamber.

Even if technically the law is on his side, a law which hasn't been enforced for centuries and which is wildly at odds with the mores of modern society is... not really a law you should expect others to follow.

Keep in mind this medieval law had seen some use, more over it was by all accounts a constitutional provision not a simple medieval law. Trial by combat having been written into the Greyson charter so to speak it's not the same thing as in the Duchy of East London 1641 it was legal to beat a man to death as long as it was done with a duck.

As for why it was never removed simple, Greyson had not had a champion since Unification after the first major faith wars since the Champion was right hand fellow of the Protector which had been slowly edged out by the Steadholders over the next few hundred years.

[Terralthra]

On the other hand, trial by combat wasn't treated as a bad joke.

Realistically, if some MP in Britain invoked a medieval law that had never been repealed and tried to challenge the Prime Minister to a duel over the budget or something, he'd get treated as if he'd had a psychotic breakdown and security would escort him out of the chamber.

Even if technically the law is on his side, a law which hasn't been enforced for centuries and which is wildly at odds with the mores of modern society is... not really a law you should expect others to follow.

Keep in mind this medieval law had seen some use, more over it was by all accounts a constitutional provision not a simple medieval law. Trial by combat having been written into the Greyson charter so to speak it's not the same thing as in the Duchy of East London 1641 it was legal to beat a man to death as long as it was done with a duck.

As for why it was never removed simple, Greyson had not had a champion since Unification after the first major faith wars since the Champion was right hand fellow of the Protector which had been slowly edged out by the Steadholders over the next few hundred years.

Yeah, I imagine if someone had tried to claim the right of trial by combat before the Mayhew restoration, they would, in fact, have been laughed out of the chamber. It was Mayhew's restoration of the centuries-unused Constitution that let Burdette get away with claiming a right from that same outdated Constitution. Pretty sure he thinks that to himself at the time.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, it's very chancy to assert a 300-year-old constitutional privilege in general. In the Mayhew Restoration it works because Mayhew was intervening to prevent an imminent disaster which threatened to destroy Grayson civilization. The political aftereffects of him being the only one with the guts to tackle the problem carried him through- in essence, the Council of Steadholders had pretty much lost their political capital by completely failing to cope with the events of the 1902 war, from beginning to end.

That's an example of how to 'restore' an ancient constitution properly: take advantage of a crisis, and create a situation where any person with common sense knows they ought to support most of what you're doing, even if they take exception to you on some of the details.

By contrast, when Burdette, who by now is a known child-killer and terrorist who's literally echoing Masadan slogans ("This world is God's") in front of everyone, tries to use a 300-year-old privilege... not the same thing. The crisis in question is one of his own making and no one else's, and no one wants to be on his side.

Even if, technically, the law is on his side, this is the sort of legal situation that jury nullification attempts come out of- a case where the law is blatantly nonsensical, contradicts the higher principles of philosophy and meta-law, and where the defendant is personally loathesome.

Honestly, in a more realistic universe I'd have expected Mayhew to say "no, we are not ignorant savages, I will not grant you your barbarian ritual, submit to judgment as is proper." And have him get away with it.

[Mr Bean]

The thing is Simon Steadholders as is said many times during the series are the next best things to heads of state. Diplomatic immunity and all. Worse I believe it's mentioned in that chapter that he's ordered arrested under the Protectorate's authority in the old way. The method of removal is constitutional, the method of resisting said removal is also constitutional.

Well... space constitutional. But the same methods to remove a Steadholder were the same codes that can be used to resist it. As in article 2 second 5 you can remove steadholders if they are evil, article 2 section 6 but he can totally fight your champion if he believes god is on his side.

[Simon_Jester]

I recognize that it is in the Constitution. I understood this the first, second, third, and fourth times I found it out (some from reading the novels, some from having it pointed out to me).

My point is that this is exactly the kind of condition under which precedents are set that result in constitutional passages effectively going into lapse. Sort of like "well, we can get away with throwing this guy in prison if he's a really bad man," only it's the (to us) more justified "well, we can get away with abolishing trial by combat and ignoring a nominal 'right' to it because it's stupid and barbaric and the guy who wants a trial by single combat is a raging asshole idiot who even his own allies wish were out of the picture."

And I'm not saying this is constitutional under Grayson law, I get how that works. I'm saying this kind of situation is practically tailor-made for anyone who wishes they could get away with ignoring an inconvenient constitutional provision.

Sort of like how sometimes we talk about a hypothetical crime and say "no jury would convict her." Are we disputing that the law was broken? No. We are claiming that the apparent justice of the case would persuade a jury to be indifferent to the law. Is that a good thing? I'm not saying it is, but it does happen.

[eyl]

I recognize that it is in the Constitution. I understood this the first, second, third, and fourth times I found it out (some from reading the novels, some from having it pointed out to me).

My point is that this is exactly the kind of condition under which precedents are set that result in constitutional passages effectively going into lapse. Sort of like "well, we can get away with throwing this guy in prison if he's a really bad man," only it's the (to us) more justified "well, we can get away with abolishing trial by combat and ignoring a nominal 'right' to it because it's stupid and barbaric and the guy who wants a trial by single combat is a raging asshole idiot who even his own allies wish were out of the picture."

And I'm not saying this is constitutional under Grayson law, I get how that works. I'm saying this kind of situation is practically tailor-made for anyone who wishes they could get away with ignoring an inconvenient constitutional provision.

Sort of like how sometimes we talk about a hypothetical crime and say "no jury would convict her." Are we disputing that the law was broken? No. We are claiming that the apparent justice of the case would persuade a jury to be indifferent to the law. Is that a good thing? I'm not saying it is, but it does happen.

I think this was a case of timing more than anything else. As noted above, ten years before this wouldn't have worked. Ten years later, Mayhew probably would have denied him. But at that particular point, the Protector couldn't deny Burdette from exercising a Constitutional right without opening a precedent for Steadholders to argue that some of the other clauses of the Constitution - such as the ones Mayhew was reasserting - were likewise outmoded, undercutting his own position.

EDIT - it also depends whether Grayson jursiprudence allows a concept similiar to jury nullification; it may well be that it doesn't allow even stupid laws to be discarded except formally.

[Ahriman238]

Ten minutes later, she stood on her own bridge, watching the direct vision display as Apollo broke Blackbird orbit. The light cruiser's damage was hideously apparent in her mangled flanks, but she drove ahead at five hundred and two gravities, and Honor made herself look away. She'd done all she could to summon help, yet she knew, deep at the core of her, that if help were truly needed, it would arrive too late.

Sending Apollo, which lost half her crew, sidewalls and almost all weapons but retains drive home with the call for help and the wounded.

Metzinger was a good officer. She'd tell her if there were any problems. But with her own gravitic sensors down, Fearless could no longer receive FTL transmissions from the recon drones mounting guard against Thunder of God's return. Her ship was as one-eyed as she was, and without Troubadour's gravitics to do her seeing for her . . .

The major issue with Fearless is losing gravitics and so all long-range sensor capability except what's fed to her by Troubadour.

"But if you take us that high and we lose it, or pick up a harmonic—"

"I know, Charlie," Truman said even more firmly. "And I also know we've got all the squadron's wounded with us. But if you kill the interlocks, we can cut twenty-five, thirty hours—maybe even a little more—off our time."

Manticoran FTL with the safeties off.

Civilians—and too many junior officers—saw only the courtesies and deference, the godlike power bestowed upon the captain of a Queen's ship. They never saw the other side of the coin, the responsibility to keep going because your people needed you to and the agony of knowing misjudgment or carelessness could kill far more than just yourself. Or the infinitely worse agony of sentencing your own people to die because you had no choice. Because it was their duty to risk their lives, and it was yours to take them into death's teeth with you . . . or send them on ahead.

Eh, I just like that bit. It's very much appropriate for the characters to think of their casualties, and the responsibility.

She opened her eyes again. If the Lords of Admiralty chose to go by The Book, she would face a Board, certainly, possibly even a full Court, for recklessly hazarding her command. And even if she didn't, there were going to be captains who felt the risk was unjustifiable, for if she lost Apollo, no one in Manticore would even know that Honor needed help.

Potential board of Inquiry or even a court-martial for taking off the safeties.

Despite the front he maintained for his inner circle of Havenite officers, he himself had no hope at all that Manticore would back off because a single Havenite battlecruiser—especially the one who'd started the shooting in the first place—got in the way. And if he didn't believe it, how could he expect his crew to? There was an air of caged lightning aboard Thunder of God, and men did their duty without chatter and tried to believe they would somehow be among the survivors when it was finished.

Alfredo Yu, it seems, does not agree with the Council of Elders' opinion that claiming Thunder as a Haven BC would prevent a Manticore retaliation.

He folded his hands behind him and knew the full shock hadn't yet hit. Prolong made for long friendships and associations, and he'd known Raoul Courvosier all his life. He was twelve T-years younger than Raoul had been and he'd climbed the rank ladder faster, in no small part because of his birth, but there'd always been a closeness—personal, not just professional—between them. Lieutenant Courvosier had taught him astrogation on his midshipman's cruise, and he'd followed in Captain Courvosier's footsteps as senior tactical instructor at Saganami Island, and argued and planned strategy and deployment policies with Admiral Courvosier for years. Now, just like that, he was gone.

Hamish thinking on Courvosier's loss, some of the impact of prolong on personal relationships.

His ships had pulled out of Manticore orbit within fifteen minutes of receiving Apollo's squealed transmission, and he'd seen the cruiser's damage as she rendezvoused with Reliant to send Truman across. He still had only the sketchiest knowledge of events in Yeltsin, but one look at that mangled hull had told him it was bad. It was a miracle Apollo had remained hyper capable, and he'd wondered then what Truman would look like when she came aboard. Now he knew.

Interesting. Presumably they were already underway somewhere, given what we know about impeller start-up times.

"How high did you take her, Commander?"

"Too high. We bounced off the iota wall a day out of Yeltsin."

Despite himself, Alexander flinched. Dear God, she must have taken out all the interlocks. No ship had ever crossed into the iota bands and survived—no one even knew if a ship could survive there.

The hard hyper limit, until everyone manages to duplicate Mesan tech, anyways.

"Skipper, the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a shipyard."

The strangest things survive into the distant future.

She'd been madder than hell when she woke from her first sleep in fifty-three hours to discover Montoya and MacGuiness had slipped a mickey into her cocoa. For a while, Venizelos had thought not even the doctor's sworn oath that he could have had her back on her feet in less than fifteen minutes had Thunder of God turned up would keep her from brigging both of them. But it had also put her to sleep for over fifteen hours, and deep inside she must have realized how desperately she'd needed that rest.

The doctor and the Captain's steward conspiring to sedate her so she actually gets a little sleep.

Yu frowned at that, for the engineer was right. They were hauling all these men out to hostile environment bases, and there wasn't a single vac suit among them. That was unusually stupid even for Masadans, and he wondered why that fact hadn't occurred to him sooner.

Thunder used to ferry Masadan gropos to the outlying asteroid bases, or at least that's the pre-text for stuffing the ship full of Masadan soldiers.

"Com, contact Base Three and update our ETA."

"Aye, Sir," Lieutenant Hart, his Masadan com officer replied, and something about the man's response nudged at Manning. There was an odd note in his voice, one that went deeper than the background anxiety all of them were feeling, and the exec gave him a sharper glance.

Hart seemed unaware of his scrutiny. He leaned to his left to bring up his com laser software, and Manning's eyes suddenly went very still. There was an angular shape under the Masadan's tunic, and there shouldn't have been—especially not one the shape of an automatic pistol.

The exec made himself look away. He might be wrong about what that shape was, but he didn't think so. Of course, even if he wasn't, there could be another explanation for its presence. Hart might be overcompensating for his own anxieties, or it might be a simple case of aberration, a single man about to snap under the strain. That would have been terrifying enough in the close confines of the bridge, but Manning would have infinitely preferred it to what he knew had to be the truth.

He pressed a stud on his intercom panel.

"Captain speaking," a voice said, and Manning made himself sound very, very natural.

"Commander Manning, Sir. I just thought you'd like to know I'm having Base Three updated on the arrival of their bounty of troops."

* * *

Alfredo Yu's face froze at the word "bounty." His eyes snapped up to his companions' faces, and he saw exactly the same shock looking back at him. He couldn't think for a moment, only feel the pit of his stomach falling away into infinite distance, but then his brain began to work again.

"Understood, Mr. Manning. Commander Valentine and I have just been discussing the environmental requirements. Do you think you could drop by my cabin to go over them with us?"

"I'm afraid I can't get away just now, Sir." Manning's voice was steady, and Yu's jaw clenched in pain.

"Very well, George," he said. "Thank you for informing me."

"You're welcome, Sir," Manning said quietly, and the circuit clicked.

Good thing the Masadans are so disconnected from the prevailing culture (which somehow includes this, even thousands of years into the future) they don't recognize the reference to HMS Bounty. I was never sure if this code was something they prearranged before going on shooting leave, or if they came up with it on the spot, but Commander Manning gets huge points for smooth delivery in the face of nearly certain death.

Panic threatened, but he fought it back. At least George had been more alert than he had, yet his contingency plans had never contemplated having this many armed hostiles aboard. Barely a third of Thunder's regular crew were still Havenite; with all the Masadan soldiers packed aboard, they were outnumbered by over five-to-one.

Though it seems there were contingency plans made.

"Get to Major Bryan, Marlin. Tell him it's Condition Bounty."

Yu hated to send the corporal in person, but he had no choice. He'd managed to hang onto his original Marine officers and most of his noncoms, and every one of them had been briefed on Bounty, but almost half Thunder's enlisted Marines were Masadans, and they had the same personal com units as Yu's loyalists. If they were in on this (and they had to be) and one of them heard Marlin passing coded messages . . .

Huh. OK, I guess that settles it rather definitely as prearranged. Guess my memory fails me, but it still doesn't detract from Manning's awesomeness.

The cabin hatch opened behind him, and Yu froze for an instant, then turned his head sharply. A Masadan colonel stood in the opening, four armed men behind him, and his hand held a drawn autopistol.

"Don't you bother to knock on a superior officer's door, Colonel?" Yu snapped over his shoulder, sliding his own hand into his still open tunic.

"Captain Yu," the colonel said as if he hadn't spoken, "it is my duty to inform you that this ship is now und—"

Yu turned, and his pulser whined. Its darts were non-explosive, but it was also set on full auto, and the colonel's back erupted in a hideous crimson spray. He went down without even a scream, and the same hurricane of destruction swept through his troops. The bulkhead opposite the hatch vanished under a glistening coat of blood, someone in the passage shouted in horror, and Yu charged for the hatch.

Six Masadans stood in the passage, gaping at the carnage. Five of them grabbed frantically at their rifle slings as the captain appeared before them, pulser in hand; the sixth thought more quickly. He turned and ran even as Yu squeezed the trigger again, and his quickness saved his life. His companions soaked up Yu's fire just long enough for him to make it around a bend in the passage, and the captain swore savagely.

I know what you're thinking, but Yu's not some kind of psychopath or action hero. He's just been repressing the urge to shoot all the idiot Masadans for a long time now.

He jerked back into the cabin, lunging for the com panel beside his desk terminal, and slammed his thumb down on the all-hands button.

"Bounty Four-One!" his voice blared from every speaker in the ship. "I say again, Bounty Four-One!"

So much for subtlety, we get a full-ship broadcast telling all the Havenite crewman to sabotage the ship and run for the pods. Probably won't take long for the Masadans to figure out.

Major Joseph Bryan drew his sidearm, turned, and opened fire without a word. The eight Masadan soldiers in the armory with him were still staring at the intercom in puzzlement when they died, and only then did Bryan allow himself to curse. He'd wondered why the Masadan lieutenant had wanted to tour the armory; now he knew, but thirty years of professional soldiering as one of the People's Republic's conquistadors made him double-check. He bent over the Lieutenant's pulser-mangled body and ripped the blood-soaked tunic open, and his face hardened with bleak satisfaction as he found the pistol inside it.

"Can you let us see the armory?" Great prelude to a mutiny there.

" . . . again, Bounty Four-One!"

Lieutenant Mount jerked in shock as the words crackled from the speaker. For just one moment, he stared at it in disbelief, feeling the confusion of the Masadans about him, then reached for his control panel.

Lieutenant Commander Workman had never heard of "Bounty Four-One," but he knew what Sword Simonds intended to happen, and the sudden, apparently meaningless message could mean only one thing. His pistol bullet shattered the lieutenant's head before Mount reached the emergency shutdown switch.

Well, most of the Masadans aren't stupid.

Commander Manning didn't even twitch as Captain Yu's voice rolled from the com. He'd known it was coming, and he'd already accepted that he was trapped on the bridge. As soon as the Captain confirmed a Four-One condition, his right hand touched the underside of the command chair's arm rest. A small panel that didn't show on any engineering schematic slid open, and his index finger hooked up inside it even as Lieutenant Hart produced his pistol.

-snip-

"Out of the chair now!" he barked, and Manning shoved himself up with a contemptuous glare. The hidden panel slid shut once more as he stood, and the Masadan met his glare with a sneer of his own. "That's better, and now—"

"Lieutenant Hart!" It was the Masadan who'd taken over Maneuvering. "She won't answer the helm, Sir!"

-snip-

An alarm shrilled, then another, and another, and his head twisted around in disbelief as Tactical, Astrogation, and Communications all went down at once. Warning lights and crimson malfunction codes glared on every panel, and Manning smiled thinly.

"You seem to have a problem, Lieutenant," he said. "Maybe you peo—"

He never heard the crack of Hart's pistol.

Interesting little hidden control. Do you think they installed it a special on a loaner ship, or that every Haven warship has one? RIP Manning, you were a quiet badass to the end.

Captain Yu took a chance on the lift. He didn't have time to play safe, and Valentine and DeGeorge covered the passageway with drawn pulsers while he fed in his personal ID override and punched their destination.

Captain's override for the lifts. Not really surprising, especially if they invested any thought in this scenario as they seem to have.

Yu listened with only half his attention, for his eyes were locked on the lift position display. It blinked and changed steadily, and he started to feel a bit of hope, then punched the wall as the display suddenly froze and the lift stopped moving. DeGeorge looked up at the sound of his blow and raised an eyebrow even as he knotted Valentine's bandage.

"Bastards cut the power," Yu snapped.

"Just to the lifts, though." Valentine's voice was hoarse, but he raised a bloody hand to point at the status panel. The red light which should have indicated emergency power was dark, and his face twisted with more than pain. "Reactors're still up," he panted. "Means Joe didn't make shutdown."

"I know." Yu hoped Mount was still alive, but he had time to spare the lieutenant only a single, fleeting thought. He was already wrenching up the decksole to get at the emergency hatch.

Well that didn't last long.

His weapon burped, and its bundle of flechettes screamed down the boat bay gallery. A Masadan officer exploded across the armorplast bulkhead in blood and scraps of tissue, and his three rifle-armed men whirled towards the Major in terrified surprise.

The flechette gun burped again, and again, so quickly only one of the Masadans even had time to scream before the razor-edged disks ripped him apart, and the Havenite personnel they'd been holding at gunpoint hurled themselves to the deck. Another flechette gun coughed to Bryan's left, this time on full auto, and Masadan firearms crackled in reply. He heard the wailing keen of ricocheting bullets, but he was already walking his own fire into the Masadan reinforcements trying to force their way through the boat bay hatch.

His flechettes chewed them into screaming, writhing hamburger, and then Hadley tossed a boarding grenade from behind him. The fragmentation weapon went off like the hammer of God in the confines of the passage beyond, and suddenly no one else was trying to come through the hatch.

It sounds weird, but frag grenades and shotgun-like flechette guns are preferred for boarding actions. A small part of it is such weapons work well in confined quarters, but the larger part is that the dispersed, relatively low-velocity projectiles are considered less likely to damage something important than the high-speed rounds of a pulser or tri-barrel. To say nothing of plasma weapons.

"I've got thirty-two men, including Lieutenant Warden, Major." The cough of flechette guns and rattle of rifles came over the link with Young's voice. "We're taking heavy fire from One-Fifteen and One-Seventeen, and they've cut One-Sixteen at the lift, but I blew the Morgue before they got in."

The Morgue being power-armor storage, good idea not to let the mutineers in there.

Alfredo Yu glided headfirst down the inspection ladder, grasping an occasional rung to pull himself along while the counter-grav collar hooked to his belt supported him. DeGeorge's people had cached a dozen collars under each lift at Yu's orders before Thunder ever arrived in Endicott, and the captain blessed his foresight even as he cursed himself for letting Simonds sucker him this way.

Counter-grav collars allowing rapid descent in the dead lift shaft.

Unfortunately, that only gave him about seventy men. He was confident he could hold the bay—for now, at least—but his options were limited, and none of the naval officers had gotten through to him.

"Breathers distributed, Sir," Sergeant Towers reported, and Bryan grunted. One thing about the boat bay—its emergency and service lockers held an enormous number of breath masks. Their distribution meant the Masadans couldn't use the ventilators to asphyxiate or gas his men, and two engineering petty officers had disabled the emergency hatches, so they couldn't depressurize the gallery on them, either. The major had men holding the access corridor all the way to the blast doors, which gave him control of the lift shaft, but with power to the lifts cut, that was a limited advantage.

And breathing masks to prevent gassing or just asphyxiation. Another solid move that a lot of sci-fi would forget about.

"Orders, Sir?" Young asked quietly, and Bryan scowled. What he wanted to do was launch a counterattack, but he wouldn't get far with seventy men.

"For right now, we hold in position," he replied in a soft voice, "but have the pinnaces pre-flighted."

Pinnaces were faster than most small craft, and they were armed, though none of them carried external ordnance at the moment. But they were far slower than Thunder of God, their internal weapons were too light to significantly damage a warship like Thunder, and her weapons could swat them like flies. Young knew that as well as Bryan did, but he only nodded.

Working on an escape plan and hoping like hell everyone else is having a better time with their part.

"Sir! Major Bryan! The Captain's here!"

Bryan looked up in profound relief as Captain Yu crawled out of the lift doors. The Captain loped down the hall, followed by a small group of navy types, two of whom carried a half-conscious Commander Valentine.

Bryan snapped to attention and started to report, but Yu's raised hand stopped him. The Captain's dark eyes flitted over the assembled men, and his mouth tightened.

"This is it?" he asked in a low voice, and Bryan nodded. Yu looked as if he wanted to spit, but then he straightened and crossed to a control panel. He punched a security code into it and grunted in satisfaction.

Bryan followed him across and looked over his shoulder. The data on the small screen meant nothing to him, and he wouldn't have known how to access it, anyway, but it seemed to please the Captain.

"Well, that's one thing that worked," he muttered.

"Sir?" Bryan asked, and Yu gave him a grim smile.

"Commander Manning took out their bridge computers. Until they figure out how, they can't maneuver—and the entire tactical system is locked."

Not as good as throwing the reactor into emergency shutdown would have been, but it gives them a chance.

"What do you mean, you can't get into the boat bay?!" Sword Simonds shouted, and the army brigadier just stopped himself from licking his lips.

"We've tried, Sir, but they got too many men in there—Colonel Nesbit estimates at least three or four hundred."

"Bullshit! That's bullshit! There aren't six hundred of them aboard, and we've accounted for almost two thirds of them! You tell Nesbit to get his ass in there! That idiot Hart blew Manning away, and if Yu gets away from me, too—"

The sword's sentence faded off ominously, and the brigadier swallowed.

I don't think the Sword of God is having a very good day. 600 total Haven crew.

"I make it a hundred sixty, Sir," Bryan said heavily. Yu's face was stone, but his eyes showed his pain. That was less than twenty-seven percent of his Havenite crew, but there'd been no new arrivals in almost fifteen minutes, and the Masadans were bringing up flamethrowers as well as grenades and rifles. He raised his wrist com to his mouth.

And time to go to save the 160 survivors.

"They've what?!"

"They've launched pinnaces, Sir," the hapless officer repeated. "And . . . and there was an explosion in the boat bay right after they did," he added.

Sword Simonds swore savagely and restrained himself—somehow—from physically attacking the man, then wheeled on Lieutenant Hart.

"What's the status of the computers?"

"W-we're still trying to figure out what's wrong, Sir." Hart met the sword's eyes fearfully. "It looks like some sort of security lock-out, and—"

"Of course it is!" Simonds snarled.

"We can get around it eventually," the white-faced Hart promised. "It's only a matter of working through the command trees, unless . . ."

"Unless what?" Simonds demanded as the Lieutenant paused.

"Unless it's a hard-wired lock, Sir," Hart said in a tiny voice. "In that case, we'll have to trace the master circuits till we find it, and without Commander Valentine—"

"Don't make excuses!" Simonds screamed. "If you hadn't been so fast to shoot Manning down, we could have made him tell us what he did!"

"But, Sir, we don't know it was him! I mean—"

"Idiot!" The sword backhanded the lieutenant viciously, then whirled to the brigadier. "Put this man under arrest for treason against the Faith!"

Not a good day at all. Also, again with this equating any failure or screwing up with treason, and this by a man who only narrowly escaped death for his own failures.

Captain Yu sat in the copilot's flight couch, watching his beautiful ship fall away astern, and the bitter silence from the pinnace's passenger bay mirrored his own. Like him, the men back there felt enormous relief at their own survival, but it was tempered by shame. They'd left too many of their own behind, and knowing they'd had no choice made them feel no better at all.

A part of Alfredo Yu wished he hadn't made it out, for his shame cut far deeper than theirs. That was his ship back there, and the men aboard it were his men, and he'd failed them. He'd failed his government, too, but the People's Republic wasn't the sort of government that engendered personal loyalty, and not even the knowledge that the Navy would take vengeance upon him for his failure mattered beside his abandonment of his men. Yet he'd had no choice but to save as many as he could, and he knew it.

He sighed and punched up a chart of the system. Somewhere out there was a hiding place where he and his men could conceal themselves until the battle squadrons Ambassador Lacy had summoned arrived. All he had to do was find it.

And the few survivors have time to hide in the belt. Seems a good place to close for now. Really, I was quite impressed by the professionalism the Havenite crew showed throughout this crisis that came on them with zero warning. Thoughts?

[Black Admiral]

Interesting. Presumably they were already underway somewhere, given what we know about impeller start-up times.

White Haven's squadron were probably doing pre-deployment working-up exercises or something along that line.

Thunder used to ferry Masadan gropos to the outlying asteroid bases, or at least that's the pre-text for stuffing the ship full of Masadan soldiers.

Part of the reason I think Yu didn't notice - and I do suspect that this was deliberate on Simonds' part - is that he's come to expect the Masadans doing (to him) dumb things, so it didn't register until pointed out (I mean, Simonds presumably knows that Yu thinks he's a moron, and has enough smarts to play off that).

I know what you're thinking, but Yu's not some kind of psychopath or action hero. He's just been repressing the urge to shoot all the idiot Masadans for a long time now.

Not that he's the only one - if you'll recall, Theisman was mentally cursing the fact that Principality lacked Marines for him to set on certain personnel of Blackbird Base.

"Can you let us see the armory?" Great prelude to a mutiny there.

That would actually be easy enough to explain as professional curiosity; I mean, presumably at least some members of the Masadan army would be curious about the Havenite Marine Corps' gear. At least enough to make for a solid pretext to get into position for seizing the Havenites' main stores of infantry arms.

Not a good day at all. Also, again with this equating any failure or screwing up with treason, and this by a man who only narrowly escaped death for his own failures.

That's almost certainly exactly why Simonds is seriously losing it - he knows that if anything goes wrong, either he blames the shit out of someone else (bonus points if they're dead and can't defend themselves ("shot while attempting escape" covers a great many sins)), or the remainder of his life is liable to be exceptionally gruesome.

And the few survivors have time to hide in the belt. Seems a good place to close for now. Really, I was quite impressed by the professionalism the Havenite crew showed throughout this crisis that came on them with zero warning. Thoughts?

I think they did about the best they could, once the Masadan army units were aboard - and that wasn't something that Yu or any of Thunder's crew could do anything about. While Yu maybe should have figured out that Simonds was up to something sooner, it wouldn't be the first bit of irrational, pointless (from Yu's perspective) time-wasting Simonds has had Thunder engaging in, so it makes sense he wouldn't clue in sooner.

[Batman]

I think we may be a little predisposed to underestimate the Legislaturist Havenite Navy thanks to the stupidity of the Pierre/St. Just era navy, where officers like Yu and Theisman were rare and far between exceptions, when Parnell's navy was mainly hampered by their tech disadvantage (and a goodly amount of plot-mandated bad luck), not officer incompetence. Captain Coglin in OBS was competent enough, the only reason he ran when the premature native uprising happened when the smart thing would have been to simply sit it out and write the whole idea off was because he was ordered to by a panicky superior, and his intent was still to call the whole thing off, Honor just wouldn't let him. The only reason he lost in the end was Manticore's considerable hardware/software superiority (and he managed to batter Fearless into the next best thing to a dead hulk despite of it) which allowed the chase to continue for as long as it did, and the fact that Fearless had a patently insane armament mix by that time.
Yu, despite the interference of the Masadans, managed to pull off a picture-perfect ambush (within the limits geometry allowed) on the Grayson task force and Madrigal at First Yeltsin.
Theisman, knowing he's essentially dogmeat, nevertheless manages to land a crippling strike on Apollo with his lone destroyer.
Parnell himself, despite wandering into a picture perfect ambush facing vastly more powerful forces than he expected in Third Yeltsin, managed to still get half his forces out battered but alive (something that even Hamish Alexander finds remarkable)
The Havenite ploy to draw Admiral Parks forces out of Hancock worked and despite the ingenious planning by Honor and Admiral Sarnow, Manticore would have been forced to yield the system if it hadn't been for the fortuitious return of Danislav's dreadnoughts (and Haven would likely still have been able to seize the system, but not without accepting excessive losses).
And you can't possibly blame Pierre the lesser for coming out of hyper practically on to of a dreadnought. I mean what are the chances of that even with, well, it's the hyper limit, so that's where people go to hyper?
Prior to the New Order, the Havenite Navy actually seemed halfway competent. It's just that our sample base is heavily weighted in favour of the Stupid Havenite Navy.

[Terralthra]

His ships had pulled out of Manticore orbit within fifteen minutes of receiving Apollo's squealed transmission, and he'd seen the cruiser's damage as she rendezvoused with Reliant to send Truman across. He still had only the sketchiest knowledge of events in Yeltsin, but one look at that mangled hull had told him it was bad. It was a miracle Apollo had remained hyper capable, and he'd wondered then what Truman would look like when she came aboard. Now he knew.

Interesting. Presumably they were already underway somewhere, given what we know about impeller start-up times.

Hamish's BCs are attached to Home Fleet. Home Fleet keeps impeller nodes hot at all times (At All Costs).

Good thing the Masadans are so disconnected from the prevailing culture (which somehow includes this, even thousands of years into the future) they don't recognize the reference to HMS Bounty. I was never sure if this code was something they prearranged before going on shooting leave, or if they came up with it on the spot, but Commander Manning gets huge points for smooth delivery in the face of nearly certain death.

Yu later uses a numerical code (41) with a specific meaning (ship can not be retaken), so it's clearly pre-arranged.

And the few survivors have time to hide in the belt. Seems a good place to close for now. Really, I was quite impressed by the professionalism the Havenite crew showed throughout this crisis that came on them with zero warning. Thoughts?

Oh, definitely. Some of the Legislaturist Peeps are incompetent, but by and large, they are a space navy of war, with 50 years of conquest to show for it. They have the institutional experience and attrition of stupidity that implies.

[Ahriman238]

I think the pre-revolution Haven fleet had some problems, including a glut of officers riding their family names to flag rank which, to be fair, is true of the Manticorans as well. On the other hand, they did conquer much of their sector, they had no shortage of experienced personnel, and they had a fair number who joined to escape the Dole and the menial prole life, and clung to the service and it's traditions and mores with both hands.

Whoever kept coming up with Rube Goldberg covert missions like Basilisk, assassinating King Roger and to a much lesser extent this, they might not be too bright.

[Mr Bean]

Whoever kept coming up with Rube Goldberg covert missions like Basilisk, assassinating King Roger and to a much lesser extent this, they might not be too bright.

To be fair to Haven they did not do any of this in their previous conquests. It was only when it came time to deal with Manticore they kept screwing around trying to win by various coupes rather than simply blitzing Manticore and taking their licks. They kept trying to work the edges rather than hitting the heart.

[Batman]

We also don't know if and if so to which extent Mesan intervention figured into it. And once they did go 'screw it, let's brute force this thing' they were essentially defeated by plot device.

[Simon_Jester]

Good thing the Masadans are so disconnected from the prevailing culture (which somehow includes this, even thousands of years into the future) they don't recognize the reference to HMS Bounty. I was never sure if this code was something they prearranged before going on shooting leave, or if they came up with it on the spot, but Commander Manning gets huge points for smooth delivery in the face of nearly certain death.

I'm pretty sure it must have been prearranged; there is no way that's still pop-culture two thousand years later. It's sort of like how if I wanted to keep a message secret from average person today, I could do a lot worse than classical allusions- they're the mark of a highly educated person who has or makes time to learn about relatively trivial things, along with "big, important" things.

Not a good day at all. Also, again with this equating any failure or screwing up with treason, and this by a man who only narrowly escaped death for his own failures.

It is written, shit flows downhill.

Seriously, Masada is what I might loosely term a "highly stressed" culture. They are under intense pressure to accomplish a very difficult task (conquer another star system over interstellar distances), and have failed repeatedly. The situation is rapidly spiraling out of their control. And they have always been a tyranny of the theocrats- that's the main thing that distinguishes them from Grayson, which at least has a clearly defined secular government.

In that kind of environment, the only thing they know how to do in a crisis is double down on their existing cultural practices- so executing people who shirk in their duties gets escalated to "failure means you must have shirked, therefore you get executed."

And the few survivors have time to hide in the belt. Seems a good place to close for now. Really, I was quite impressed by the professionalism the Havenite crew showed throughout this crisis that came on them with zero warning. Thoughts?

Random covert betrayal stuff may not actually be entirely new to the PN as an institution. They've probably pulled stunts like the one with Masada many times before, using a proxy to conquer a target and then taking over the proxy from the inside. So the institutional awareness of how to fight a battle inside one's own ship, or someone else's, is definitely going to be there.

[Ahriman238]

Random covert betrayal stuff may not actually be entirely new to the PN as an institution. They've probably pulled stunts like the one with Masada many times before, using a proxy to conquer a target and then taking over the proxy from the inside. So the institutional awareness of how to fight a battle inside one's own ship, or someone else's, is definitely going to be there.

The inclusion of multiple mutiny plans and a hidden "disable all sensors/comm/navigation" button in the Captain's chair would seem to argue yes.

[Simon_Jester]

Whoever kept coming up with Rube Goldberg covert missions like Basilisk, assassinating King Roger and to a much lesser extent this, they might not be too bright.

To be fair to Haven they did not do any of this in their previous conquests. It was only when it came time to deal with Manticore they kept screwing around trying to win by various coupes rather than simply blitzing Manticore and taking their licks. They kept trying to work the edges rather than hitting the heart.

The other part of their problem is that they DID do a fair amount of infiltration and destabilization against their earlier opponents- assassinating or pressuring national leaders, sabotaging or ambushing their militaries with Q-ships. There are plenty of indications that Haven had a deep bag of 'dirty tricks' from its experience at knocking over single-system polities.

But many of those tricks didn't work so well (or at all) against Manticore, simply because Manticore had the muscle to resist effectively, and no one gimmick could guarantee a win against them.

[SMJB]

Bounty was always my favorite part of the second book, and I'm really enjoying this analysis, as well. For instance, I hadn't even considered why Masada is the way it is beyond "lol, fundy savages" before, but Simon Jester's "highly stressed culture" theory makes perfect sense.

[Simon_Jester]

Right. This also explains a lot of the questionable strategic decisions Masada makes. It's not just that they believe God will protect/save them from any truly irreversible disaster. They've lost wars before, more than once; they know they can be defeated.

Their problem is that in a crisis they really don't have a concept of doing anything other than "what we did before, only harder!"

For instance, my impression is that the previous Grayson-Masada space wars were pretty drawn out affairs, with ships and battles scattered widely throughout the system, rather than Masada just gunning straight for the heart of the Grayson infrastructure and defenses and risking getting attacked from two or three sides at once.

This would explain why Masada was so quick to adopt a strategy of nibbling around the edges in an indecisive way- because they are used to the idea that this is how you fight a war, and/or are afraid of getting their asses kicked by the Graysons if they try for a decisive blow.