Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

SF: discuss futuristic sci-fi series, ideas, and crossovers.

Moderator: NecronLord

Post Reply
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Ahriman238 wrote:Four EW drones pretending to be SDs under inadequate stealth, to get the Peeps looking the other way from the six SDs under stealth, including the podnoughts cheerfully loading every ship with as many pods as they can handle, now that it looks like they're going to get down to business.
My impression is that they fire the missiles from within Havenite single-drive missile range, give or take a few light-seconds. This may be because the long-range MDM pods have not been deployed to this station because the entire production run is being piled into Eighth Fleet's stockpiles for the offensive. Or it may be a deliberate decision not to give away the extreme range of RMN missile pods earlier than absolutely necessary, to avoid the risk of the Havenites being able to pull an effective counter out of their hats on short notice.
Yes, these are dialed down to normal-ish somewhat better than Haven accel.

That's a lot of fire control considering the salvo size, which I'll get to momentarily.
Of course, that's really the revolutionary design feature of the SD(P): the fire control, not the missile deployment system. We know you can program missiles for delayed activation, so in theory there's nothing stopping a pre-pod ship from dumping five or six tube-launches of missiles and firing them all at once... except that a pre-pod capital ship lacks the control capability to handle hundreds and hundreds of outgoing missiles at a time.
Though even they can have problems at the new ranges afforded by MDMs. Missile range have always been great enough for lightspeed com lag to be a problem, but it just became a major one.

Ghost Rider does almost as much for defense as offense, and since this is the program that developed MDMs that's saying something. Ten thousand out of thirteen thousand missiles spoofed by EW, even before other missile defenses come into play.
Of course, that's against missiles which are totally unfamiliar with every trick in the Ghost Rider playbook. They can be programmed to pay less attention to some of those ECM techniques, no doubt.
Yep.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

Missiles need a lot of clearance space, multiple km by the time they light up their drives.
THAT may help explain the role of the grav drivers!

The reason they're important isn't really the velocity boost they provide directly. It's that they allow the missile salvo to get far enough away from the launch platform that they can fire up their engines without killing each other, and do so much faster than would otherwise be possible.
There's that.

The missile salvos, pretty big to date, are only going to become insane with podnoughts. The LACs are death to light units, and can swarm damaged wallers and pull them down. The only question mark is when the Peeps get around to duplicating these, if they can, can Ghost Rider EW save them from their own medicine? So far after Elric, Treadway and Solway the answer is looking like "yes."
In the second round of the war, Haven has duplicated the SD(P) exactly, has created a LAC class powerful enough to at least blunt the effectiveness of Manticoran LAC strikes by shooting down the enemy LACs before they can close, and has done everything possible to incorporate Solarian EW technology into its own systems, along with various native Havenite improvements.

And they still have a massive disadvantage in terms of their ability to penetrate Manticoran missile defenses.

So yes, Ghost Rider may be the single most decisive evolution here, because it's the only one the Havenites can't duplicate within a few years of learning that it's possible. Building an SD(P) is trivial. Building a LAC powerful enough to neutralize the Shrike threat isn't that hard. Duplicating Ghost Rider's drones and ECM systems requires duplicating Manticore's micro-miniaturized fusion bottles, and that is a challenge.
Yes, Ghost Rider really is a massive, unprecedented leap in EW, even more than the MDMs.

McQueen knows Oscar is always listening, of course. 70 wallers in the Haven Capitol Fleet. In general the honorverse approaches space war from a very defensive mindset, offense is done with the ships left over after your vital systems are made secure. But in all things there comes a point where you're just being ridiculous and hampering your war effort.
Haven in particular is an example of this because it's outside of easy striking range of any Manticoran naval base- Barnett, by contrast, is not.

Also, the reason for this defensive-mindedness is that you can literally lose a war in an afternoon if an enemy raid takes out your industrial base and infrastructure. The Manticorans would have learned this after Oyster Bay if Haven had the technological means to keep fighting them effectively. So you have to provide defense forces capable of resisting any probable surprise attack. The defenders may not be able to counter a massive attack by a large battlefleet... but the time and effort required to amass such a fleet will give you some advance notice so you can shift reinforcements to cover the threatened area.
Right, anyone can pull a deep strike if they don't mind spending weeks in hyper and maybe winding up crippled and hundreds of light-years from any support or friendly facilities. Hence why the Alliance has eight fleets and is committing one to offensive action, or why Haven is doing the same with a double-sized Twelfth Fleet.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

I forgot what pacing problems this book has. So much happens, and so much is glanced over, or rushed, and yet parts still feel like padding. Last quiet update for a while as we get down to brass tacks right after.
She loved to teach.

She supposed that she shouldn't have been surprised by that. After all, one of the things she'd most enjoyed about her career was stretching the minds of junior officers, sharing with them the joy she'd found in mastering their shared profession. And, if she was honest, she took far more pleasure from the men and women she'd watched grow and blossom into the potential she'd seen in them from the outset than she did in all her medals and titles and prize money. They were what the future was all about, just as they were the ones who would have to do the fighting and the dying if the Star Kingdom was to have a future, and teaching them how much they could accomplish was one of the highest callings she could imagine.

Which had made her a natural at Saganami Island. Not only that, but the empathic sense she'd developed had given her a priceless gift: that of knowledge. Of knowing her students recognized how much they meant to her, how proud of them she was.
After a year at the Academy, Honor is almost ready for active duty and so will be leaving the classroom. While there she was a big hit, in no small part due to her towering reputation and empathic sense.

She would miss everything about Saganami Island, even if it was no longer quite the Academy she recalled. It was so much bigger, so much more bustling. The reality of the war which had been only a looming threat during her years here had fallen upon the Academy like a landslide and made it over into something faster and more furious, with a different, harder-edged dedication. In all too many ways, the wartime Academy had become an extension of the front lines, which was good, in some respects, she thought. She had stressed to her students that they were headed straight from their classrooms into a shooting war, and it was important they understand that. Yet along the way the "Saganami experience," she supposed she should call it, had lost something. Not of innocence, or of sleepiness. But of . . . assimilation. Of the way young men and women grew gradually into the Navy, and of the way the Navy accepted that transformation of civilians into itself.
That nameless je ne sais quoi lost in a wartime officer factory.

"No, Your Grace. It's not something you can brush off. You did an outstanding job with your classes, despite the many other charges on your time, and those dinner parties of yours were far above and beyond the call of duty. I don't believe anyone's ever before seen midshipmen actually fighting to get invited into an admiral's presence. More to the point, fourteen of the top fifteen scorers—and thirty-seven of the top fifty—in the first year Tactical curriculum were your students,."
Honor's success as a teacher.

"There's some truth in that, I suppose. But that's partly because you did such a good job of pointing . . . and partly because of how motivated they were. Both before you ever got your hands on them—we set a new record for middies who requested a single instructor—and after you had a chance to put your stamp on them." He chuckled again. "I understand you're not particularly fond of the nickname, but when the student body heard 'the Salamander' was going to be lecturing, the registrar's office was almost buried under transfer slips from people trying to get into your sections."
The Graysons alone must have kicked down the door on hearing a Steadholder, who is also the number two banana in their fleet and their greatest living naval hero, was going to be teaching a class.

She'd always hated the way some officers played the patronage game, and she'd always felt that such a system, by its very nature, was subject to serious abuse. Elvis Santino and Pavel Young were telling cases in point. But, then, she'd never really considered the possibility of having sufficient power to play it herself, and now, in the best tradition of rationalizers the galaxy over, she saw some advantages to it. Andrea Jaruwalski's career had been headed for the ash heap, and its salvage, which was certainly a plus for the Navy, stemmed entirely from the fact that Honor had made her own first investment in the patronage system. Perhaps those who'd played the game the way Hamish Alexander did (she scarcely even noticed the familiar little pang that name sent through her) had had a point all along. The nurturing of junior officers not because they were relatives—or the children of friends or relatives, or of people who could repay you with favors of their own—but because they were outstanding officers, truly was a form of payback. Not to any individual. Not even to the individual you took under your wing. It was payback to the Navy, and to the Star Kingdom at large.
Honor's feelings on patronage games, now that she's sitting on the other side of the desk.

"I wouldn't go that far, Sir. I do think the RMN suffers from a bit of, well, call it tunnel vision. There's definitely a sense of superiority, which is fair enough, I suppose, when we compare ourselves to the Peeps, or the thugs we keep running into in Silesia. We are better than they are. And, for that matter, we do have more experience than any of our allies as a deep-space force. But I do believe the Service needs to be more awake to the fact that there are other ways—some better, some worse—to do the same things."

"I agree entirely. And that's especially true now that we're running so many non-Manticoran officers through the Crusher. Not only do we need to be aware that we may have something to learn from them, but we damned well ought to be making sure we don't step on their toes by talking down to them. No doubt there will always be a certain inescapable edge of, um, institutional arrogance, perhaps. That's probably a healthy thing, and I imagine most of our allies will understand and accept it in the Alliance's senior partner. But bringing in Allied flag officers to help design and build the training programs was a stroke of genius, Your Grace. And building scenarios which require Manticoran officers to follow foreign doctrine and operate with Zanzibaran or Grayson or Alizonian hardware was another. I understand several of our aspiring COs found it a humbling experience, and forcing them to recognize that a lot of our supposed 'officer superiority' actually rests on the superiority of our hardware was a very good thing. Besides, we've already picked up several useful notions from the Graysons. I'll be very surprised if we don't pick up a few more from some of our other allies, as well . . . now that you've started us listening to them."
Honor's major lasting contribution to the ATC course is running potential officers through scenarios playing with Allied member's rules, doctrine and hardware. Hopefully it will help knock the "not invented here" attitude out of the next wave of starship captains.

"But I suppose the reason I asked was that I was wondering what your plans for the future are. Specifically, what your plans for returning to active duty might be."

"My plans?" Honor cocked an eyebrow. "I rather assumed that was up to the Bureau of Personnel, Sir," she said, and he shrugged.

"Your Grace, you're an admiral in the Queen's Navy, and a duchess. You're also an admiral in the Grayson Navy, and a steadholder. That means Grayson and the Star Kingdom can both make legitimate claims on your services, and we're both clever enough to want to claim them. But given your status, the decision of which of us actually gets you is going to be up to you, so I thought I'd just get my bid in early."
Honor has reached a point in her career where she has options as far as assignments, instead of accepting whatever the Admiralty hands down to her.

Faced with that discovery, LePic had wanted to resign his post and return to private life. But his superiors at StateSec would have wondered why he wanted out. They would have demanded answers, and the one answer he could never have given them was the truth, for if they were savage to their enemies, they were utterly merciless when their own fell into apostasy. Besides, even if he could have resigned and lived, that would have been the easy way out. A way to walk away from the consequences of his own actions, like the ancient Pilate, washing his hands and proclaiming his personal innocence. No, there'd been only one thing a decent man, which was what he'd always hoped he was, could do under the circumstances.
Denis LePic (Theisman's commissar) and his realization of what a monster the current regime is. Not that he can simply quit, StateSec would never allow it, nor would his conscience.

LePic stared at him. The Capital Fleet? They wanted Thomas Theisman to command the Capital Fleet? They had to be insane! That was the People's Navy's most sensitive post, the one naval command perpetually poised above the Committee of Public Safety's head like some megaton Sword of Damocles. The person who commanded it had to be totally trusted by the Committee, and Theisman was—

But then his thoughts slithered to a stop. Yes, Theisman had come to hate the Committee. But the Committee didn't know that. Oscar Saint-Just and StateSec didn't know that . . . because one Denis LePic had made a point of not telling them.

His shock began to fade a bit, and something very like awe replaced it.

My God, he thought. They're putting a loaded pulser into the hands of one of their most deadly enemies and then turning their backs on him, and they don't even know it!
Tom Theisman is pulled from Barnett and named commanding officer of the Capital Fleet. Pretty much precisely because Saint-Just knows he isn't a McQueen groupie and has no idea just how disaffected Theisman has become between Ransom's insanity and treatment of Honor, and Parnell's revelations.

"I won't lie to you, Denis. Even with me in command of the Capital Fleet, the odds against being able to accomplish anything other than getting ourselves and a lot of other people killed are high. The most likely outcome would be for StateSec to catch us and shoot us early on. Next most likely would be for us to try something and fail, in which case we either get killed in the fighting, arrested and shot afterward, or start a civil war that leaves the entire Republic wide open for the Manties. The least likely outcome would be for us to actually take out the Committee. On the other hand, the chance of managing that from the capital is a hell of a lot better than from here, and if we can . . ."

He let his voice trail off, and Denis LePic met his eyes in the cold and windy dark. Met and held them . . . and then nodded very slowly.
And yet it has to be done. Good luck, Tom and Denis.

"No," Saint-Just replied. "Rob is less convinced she's a danger. Or, rather, he's less convinced we can afford to get rid of her because of the danger she represents. He may even be right, and whether he is or not, he's still Chairman of the Committee . . . and my boss. So if he says we wait until we either know we don't need her or we find clear proof she's actively plotting, we wait. Especially since Bukato will have to go right along with her. Probably most of her other senior staffers, too, which makes it particularly imperative that we be certain the Manties are really on the run before we dislocate our command structure so severely. But I expect Bagration to pick right up where Scylla left off, and if it does, then I think we will have proof we don't need to hang onto a sword so sharp it's liable to cut our own heads off. Not when we've got other swords to choose from. And in that case, I expect Rob to green-light her removal."
No order to take down McQueen just yet, but Oscar is sharpening his knife and figuring one more major success and McQueen will have officially outlived her usefulness. He orders Fontein to start assembling a file with the 'evidence' they'll use to justify nailing her for treason.

"S says EF authorized to move by SJ," it said. Only that much, but Esther McQueen felt as if a pulser dart had just hit her in the belly.

She'd known it was coming. It had been obvious for months that Saint-Just's suspicion had overcome his belief that they needed her skills, but she'd believed Pierre was wiser than that . . . at least where the military situation was concerned.

-snip-

"You're welcome, Ma'am," Citizen Lieutenant Kevin Caminetti said, and the younger brother of Oscar Saint-Just's personal secretary tucked the memo board under his arm, saluted sharply, and marched out of Esther McQueen's office.
Ruh-roh. More on this next time. And Saint-Just didn't realize his secretary and McQueen's aide are siblings? Really?

She paused in her conversation and gave the Earl of Sydon a small, apologetic smile. Sydon was a jolly, well-fed man some people were foolish enough to take at face value and write off as a gregarious gadfly who regarded his position in the House of Lords as a bothersome inheritance. Honor, however, could taste the emotions of the keen brain behind his perpetually cheerful face and knew better. In fact, he was one of Duke Cromarty's strongest supporters, and while he truly was the bon vivant the rest of the world knew, he was also a very astute politician who found it advantageous to be taken lightly by the Government's opponents. And one who recognized a new duchess who was just as firmly behind the Cromarty Government as he was.
Earl Sydon, just a minor character but we don't really see Centrist leaders except Summervale and the Alexander brothers, even when Honor becomes a Centrist leader.

The air car hatch opened, and Elizabeth III stepped out with Ariel. The pad lights illuminated her clearly, and Honor heard Miranda's delighted, appreciative laugh beside her as they both saw Elizabeth's attire. It seemed Honor and her maid were no longer the only traditionally garbed Graysons at the party, and Honor felt herself chuckling evilly as she pictured the effect of Elizabeth's gown on those members of the Star Kingdom's social elite who had lifted their noses at her own failure to don the trousers, tail coat, and ruffled shirt of traditional Manticoran court dress on her visits to Mount Royal. She hadn't refused to wear it because she had any problem with the way it looked. Indeed, its elegantly severe lines would have suited her tall, slim figure far better than it did such plump unfortunates as Earl Sydon or poor Lady Zidaru. Instead, she'd worn Grayson attire as a way to emphasize her dual home worlds, and unlike the sticklers, Elizabeth had understood perfectly.

And now she'd chosen to attend Honor's party, on the grounds of what was also the Harrington Steading Embassy and hence legally Grayson soil, in Grayson attire herself. Her gown and vest were in the dusky blue and silver of the House of Winton, and very good they looked on her, too, Honor noted approvingly.
Elizabeth in Grayson attire, here contrasted with Manticoran unisex court dress: ruffled shirt, pants and coattails.

He brought his opened right hand, fingers spread, against his chest then raised it, folding its fingers down beside the thumb, drew it down the right side of his head from prick ear to muzzle, and then raised both hands before him and clasped them, right above left.

"My wife . . ." Miranda said, her attention fixed on the 'cat.

Nimitz's right hand moved again, as he extended his index finger and touched it to his chest.

" . . . and I . . ." Miranda said.

Again the 'cat's hands moved. Both of them opened in front of his body, palms facing him, and he drew them back towards his chest, his fingers closing in a slight grasping motion as they moved.

" . . . want . . ."

Hands moving again, while Elizabeth Winton's eyes began to blaze in disbelieving wonder. This time the fingers of both hands touched Nimitz's forehead, then swung out and down, opening fully as they reached the bottom of their motion, and the 'cat raised just his right hand to point directly at the Queen.

" . . . to teach you . . ."

His left hand rose, fingers spread, and his right thumb and index finger touched his left index finger, framing a little triangle like a flag.

" . . . and Leaf . . ."

Both hands moving again, this time to mime someone catching a ball or some other falling object.

" . . . Catcher . . ."

Right hand rising, index finger pointing left, and circling before his mouth.

" . . . to talk . . ."

Both hands moved once more, this time with all their fingers folded but their thumbs extended, right thumb down and left up, while the right circled in a clockwise motion above the left one.

" . . . to each other . . ."

He raised both hands, index fingers extended and pointing levelly outward before his chest, and brought them together three times.

" . . . like . . ."

His extended right index finger pointed downward directly in front of his right shoulder and then moved left, across his body, in a slight downward arc.

" . . . we . . ."

Miranda nodded and drew a deep breath, then looked directly at the Queen and repeated her translation quietly.

"He said, 'My wife and I want to teach you and Leaf Catcher to talk to each other like we do,' Your Majesty."
Unveiling of treecat sign language at this party.

"My God." Elizabeth's tears gleamed under the lights. "After four hundred years, you've finally proved once and for all that the 'cats are just as sentient as we are!"

"This is one thing you are not going to give me credit for, Your Majesty!" Honor said almost fiercely. "All I had to do with it was to be the person whose friend had his mental voice destroyed, whose mother was brilliant enough to come up with the notion, and whose money let her find and hire the equally brilliant linguist who actually made it all work. If you want to go feeling grateful to someone, you feel grateful to my mom and Dr. Arif and leave me out of it!"

Elizabeth blinked at her vehemence, then gave her a crooked grin.

"Yes, Ma'am," she murmured demurely, and Honor heard Andrew LaFollet and Ellen Shemais smothering almost identical laughter behind them. "You do realize, however," Elizabeth went on, "that whatever I may do or feel, the newsies are going to smother the 'faxes with headlines like 'Harrington Makes New Breakthrough in Interspecies Communication' or 'Salamander Strikes Again,' don't you?"

"Oh no they are not," Honor said roundly. "Not this time! And the reason they aren't, Your Majesty, is that in response to the earnest request of one of your loyal subjects, you are going to have Dr. Arif make her announcement from Mount Royal Palace, and Ariel is going to be the one who demonstrates his newfound loquaciousness for the newsies."

"What?" Elizabeth shook her head quickly. "I couldn't possibly take credit for something like this, Honor! Not when it's going to mean so much to everyone who's been adopted!"

"You won't. Dr. Arif and my mom will get the credit. I'm sure my name will be tucked away somewhere in the small print of Dr. Arif's first few monographs on the subject, but that will be then, when the initial excitement's worn off. All I want is for you to make the original announcement and buy me the time to get off-world before the newsies hit their stride. And frankly, Your Majesty, this is an excellent opportunity to make a little down payment on that debt you keep insisting the Star Kingdom owes me. I still think you're wrong about that, you understand, but I'm prepared to take shameless advantage of your wrongheadedness in this instance."
Honor's trying to duck credit for this revolution.

"They are, indeed," Elizabeth agreed, "and I'd appreciate it if you'd carry a message from me to Protector Benjamin when you return there."

"A message?"

"Yes. Please inform the Protector that I would consider it a great honor if he would do me the courtesy of extending an invitation from the Sword of Grayson to the Crown of Manticore for a state visit to his planet."

Someone—Honor thought it was Colonel Shemais—inhaled audibly behind them, and Honor herself almost stumbled in her surprise. The last state visit by a reigning Manticoran monarch to a foreign planet had been Roger III's visit to San Martin eight T-years before the Peeps took Trevor's Star. The Queen of Manticore was simply too busy, and too important to the Alliance, to go haring off on trips away from the security of her capital and the nerve center of her communications net.
The Queen is going to make a state visit to Grayson, to honor their allies and show how terribly unconcerned she is as news of Eighth Fleet's battles starts to trickle to the public.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

He vaulted up the ladder onto the bridge, and his eyes automatically darted to the main view screen. It was in tactical mode, and his blood ran cold as he saw the two battlecruisers. They were barely three million kilometers distant, and their icons radiated the vicious, strobing rays of radar and lidar while a warning signal warbled.

My God, he thought almost calmly, they've got us locked up for missile fire!
BCs stopping Theisman's flight.

"Yes, the Committee. Citizen Commissioner LePic and I are under orders to report directly to Citizen Chairman Pierre on our arrival."

Something changed in Shumate's eyes yet again—a flicker of something besides hate or suspicion, though Theisman wasn't prepared to hazard any guesses on what it was instead. She stared at him for perhaps three extra heart beats, then expelled her breath in a harsh, angry grunt.

"Citizen Chairman Pierre is dead," she told him flatly.

Theisman heard someone gasp behind him, and knew his own face had turned to stone. He hadn't liked Pierre. Indeed, he'd learned to loathe everything the man stood for. But Rob Pierre had been the Titan looming over the pygmies who served with him on the Committee of Public Safety. His had been the guiding hand behind the People's Republic since the Coup, and especially since Cordelia Ransom's death had removed the one true challenge to his power from within the Committee itself. He couldn't be dead!
That's not so good.

"Citizen Captain Shumate, I'm Denis LePic, Citizen Admiral Theisman's commissioner. This is terrible news! How did the Citizen Chairman die?"

"He didn't 'die,' Citizen Commissioner. He was murdered. Shot down like an animal by one of that bitch McQueen's staffers from the fucking Octagon!"

-snip-

"I don't have all the details, Sir," Shumate admitted. "As far as I know, no one does yet. But apparently that bi—" She stopped and made herself draw another deep breath. "Apparently McQueen," she went on after a moment, "had been plotting with her senior officers over at the Octagon for some time. No one knows why they moved when they did. It's obvious their plans weren't fully mature—which is probably all that saved any of the situation. But they'd still managed to put together one hell of an operation."

"What do you mean?"

"There were at least half a dozen assault teams. Every one of them was made up of Marines, and McQueen had insured that they had access to heavy weapons. Most of them had battle armor, and they went through the quick-reaction security forces like a tornado, starting with the Citizen Chairman's. One of their teams wiped out a platoon of Public Order Police, rolled right over three squads of the Chairman's Guard, and eliminated his entire StateSec protective detail in less than three minutes, and the Citizen Chairman was killed in the fighting. We think that was an accident. There are indications McQueen wanted him and as much of the Committee as she could capture alive, if only to try to force him to name her his 'successor.' But whatever their intentions, he was dead in the first five minutes. Citizen Secretary Downey, Citizen Secretary DuPres, and Citizen Secretary Farley were also killed or captured by the insurgents in the first half hour. As nearly as we can make out, Citizen Secretary Turner had thrown his lot in with McQueen. Apparently they intended to make themselves the core of a smaller Committee they could dominate while presenting the appearance that it was still a democratic body."

Shumate's expression didn't even flicker with the last sentence, and Theisman had to control his own face carefully. "Democratic body" was not a term he would have applied to the Committee of Public Safety, but perhaps she honestly believed it fitted. And whether she did or not, this was hardly the time to irritate her by calling her on it.

"The only one of their initial targets they didn't get was Citizen Secretary Saint-Just," Shumate went on, and this time her tone carried bleak satisfaction that her own chief had eluded McQueen's net. "I don't think they realized how good his security really was, but it was a hell of a shootout. His protection detail took ninety percent casualties, but they held until a heavy intervention battalion took the attackers in the rear."
What the hell, McQueen? You launch a military coup and the one guy you let slip the net is the head of the freaking secret police?

"And Capital Fleet?"

"Didn't make a move, for the most part," Shumate replied. Her distaste at having to do so was manifest, and she went right on, "Two SDs did look as if they might be about to intervene on McQueen's behalf, but Citizen Commodore Helft and his State Security squadron blew them out of space before they even got their wedges up." She smiled with bleak ferocity. "That took the starch out of any other bastards who might've been tempted to help the traitors!"
StateSec ships managed to sit on the Capital Fleet during the coup, and just blew the hell out of the only two ships powering up whoever they were going to support. Since they could have ordered them to stand down and then blown them up, that sounds a lot like the senseless murder of thousands of servicemen.

"The situation was pretty much deadlocked in Nouveau Paris by that time, though," Shumate went on more heavily. "The Citizen Chairman was dead, and McQueen had control of the Octagon. She probably had five or six thousand Marines and Navy regulars siding her, and she and Bukato had gotten control of the place's defensive grid. Worse, they had at least half a dozen members of the Committee in there with them, where they were effectively hostages. We tried to land intervention units on them, and the grid blew them away. Same thing for the air strikes we tried. And the whole time, McQueen was on the air to the rest of the Navy and Marine units in the system, claiming she was acting solely in self-defense against some sort of plot by the Chairman and Citizen Secretary Saint-Just to have her and her staff arrested and shot. Some of them were beginning to listen, too."
The late stage, with both McQueen and Saint-Just claiming to be the legitimate government. She really was acting in self-defense, but then, so was Saint-Just.

"McQueen and Bukato might've gotten control of the defensive grid, but they didn't know about the Citizen Secretary's final precaution. When it became obvious it was going to take us days to fight our way in, and with reports more and more Marine and Navy units were beginning to turn restless, he pressed the button."

"The button?" LePic asked. The citizen captain nodded, and LePic scowled. "What button?" he demanded with some asperity.

"The one to the kiloton-range warhead in the Octagon's basement, Sir," Shumate said flatly, and Theisman's belly knotted. "It took out the entire structure and three of the surrounding towers. Killed McQueen and every one of her traitors, too."

"And civilian casualties?" Theisman asked the question before he could stop himself, but at the last moment he managed to make it only a question.

"They were heavy," Shumate admitted. "We couldn't evacuate without giving away what was coming, and the traitors had to be stopped. The last estimate I heard put the total figure somewhere around one-point-three million."
And the end of this little drama, McQueen and her coterie taken out by a nuke hidden in their basement, along with over a million civilians. So where does this leave the People's Republic?

"So how much of the Committee is left, Citizen Captain?" he heard himself asking, and Shumate looked at him with some surprise.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I thought I'd made that clear. The only surviving member of the Committee is Citizen Secretary—only he's Citizen Chairman now, of course—Saint-Just."
At once Citizen-Chairman, Secretary of War and head of StateSec. All hail Oscar Saint-Just, dictator of Haven.

"To be honest, I didn't expect it either," Saint-Just said, and to Theisman's surprise, he seemed sincere, even a little bewildered. "Not out of the blue like this. I didn't trust her, of course. Never did. But we needed her abilities, and she'd turned the entire military situation around. Under the circumstances, I was prepared to take a few routine precautions, but neither the Citizen Chairman nor I had any intention of moving against her without much better cause than reports about her 'ambition,' and I was certain she knew it. It's obvious now, of course, that she was plotting all along. Incomplete as her plans clearly were, she still came within millimeters of success. In fact, if Rob hadn't been killed, I don't know if I could have—"

He stopped and waved a hand, looking away from the other two men, and Theisman felt a fresh stab of surprise, this time at Saint-Just's obvious pain over Pierre's death. Thomas Theisman had been prepared to grant the commander of State Security many qualities; the capacity for close personal friendship had not been one of them.
Oscar denies all responsibility in the making of this mess, perhaps even to himself. Whatever else they were, Rob and Oscar were friends and Saint-Just is really broken up over his friend's death.

"But what you have to understand right now is that the Octagon is gone, and so are two-thirds of the planning staffs, virtually all of its central records, and a huge chunk of the senior officers of the Navy. More of them were killed in the fighting even before that, several of them because they sided with McQueen. It's fortunate the Manties are on the run right now, and that Operation Bagration should keep them that way, because our command structure has been pretty well pulverized, and I don't dare rebuild it out of regulars until I've had time to be absolutely certain of their loyalties. I tell you this not because I'm certain of your loyalty, but so you'll understand what's happening and why."

He paused until Theisman nodded, then went on.

"As I say, I will retain the office of Secretary of War. I will also be creating a new general staff whose members will be drawn primarily from State Security. I realize they have only limited combat experience. Unfortunately, they're the only people whose loyalty I know I can trust, and that's going to have to be the overriding consideration, at least until we're sure the Manties have been whipped.

"But I'm not foolish enough to believe I can find fleet commanders among my SS officers. We saw entirely too much of how expensive 'on-the-job training' in that slot can be in the first year or so of the war. So instead, I'll have to rely on regulars, like yourself, for that job, but with their people's commissioners' 'pre-McQueen' powers restored and, probably, augmented. As you implied, it may cost us something in military efficiency, but I'm afraid I have no choice.
Saint-Just wants to build an all-StateSec general staff, in the meantime he's reinstating the older protocols wherein a naval commander needs permission from his People's Commissioner to use the bathroom. Also, they've lost a ton of military records in blowing up the Octagon.

"And of all the fleet commands, the one most critical to the security of the state is Capital Fleet, which brings me back to you and Citizen Commissioner LePic. Your first job will be to restore some semblance of order and morale. There's a great deal of resentment over the destruction of Sovereignty of the People and Equality. Understandable, I suppose, but something which has to go. And the fleet has to get itself back into shape to properly acknowledge and carry out orders which come down the chain of command—the new chain of command—from me. In addition, Capital Fleet has to be prepared for the possibility that McQueen may also have suborned fleet or task force commanders outside the Haven System. Commanders who may be headed here at this very moment with some or all of their commands to support her. That would be foolish of them, but that doesn't mean it won't happen, and I need a Capital Fleet which can deal with any such renegades. In short, it will be up to you to transform Capital Fleet from a force which is currently in a state of confusion and disarray into a disciplined fleet which will become the key to maintaining the state and its stability rather than a threat to the state. Do you understand that, Citizen Admiral?"
Capital Fleet needs to be whipped into shape to repel any McQueen loyalists coming to support her, without extending to them any freedom, trust or an apology for killing thousands of their number.

In the meantime, other StateSec officers had imposed martial law and clamped down on the capital system like steel. As quickly as possible, he would extend that same clampdown to all of the Republic's other core systems. And while all that was going on, he would end this damned war and find the time he needed to deal with the looming menace of the Navy. It was probable Bagration would do the job, exactly as he'd told McQueen it would. But he had more than one string to his bow, and he showed the very tips of his teeth in a feral smile. The first thing he'd done after the destruction of the Octagon, even before he'd sent dispatch boats to the other core systems to warn their StateSec garrisons, was to dispatch other couriers with orders to activate Operation Hassan. Slight as its chance of success might be, Hassan had just become even more important. If he could spread a little of the same internal disruption he had to deal with across the Allied camp, it ought to have a major beneficial impact on the course of the war.
StateSec martial law, both in the capital and throughout the Republic. Oscar is planning to end the war ASAP so he can focus on his internal enemies and clean house by removing any competent naval officer.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ahriman238 wrote:Right, anyone can pull a deep strike if they don't mind spending weeks in hyper and maybe winding up crippled and hundreds of light-years from any support or friendly facilities. Hence why the Alliance has eight fleets and is committing one to offensive action, or why Haven is doing the same with a double-sized Twelfth Fleet.
Although some of those 'fleets' may be administrative rear area commands with little or no heavy force at their disposal.
Ahriman238 wrote:Honor's success as a teacher.
Being moderately psychic really helps, IMO...

[grumbles about Honor cheating]
Ruh-roh. More on this next time. And Saint-Just didn't realize his secretary and McQueen's aide are siblings? Really?
It seems more likely that he decided this gave him a window into McQueen's affairs, rather than the other way around...
Ahriman238 wrote:What the hell, McQueen? You launch a military coup and the one guy you let slip the net is the head of the freaking secret police?
Not enough overkill.

"Oops."

Also, this story is covered in the short story Nightfall, so while it all happens offscreen in the mainline novel (GAAAAH), it is at least described in writing. Maybe we should put it in after Ashes of Victory?
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Terralthra
Requiescat in Pace
Posts: 4741
Joined: 2007-10-05 09:55pm
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Terralthra »

Worth noting that the Treecat Sign is more or less ASL signs without much knowledge of ASL grammar, syntax, or idioms. An ASL native would generally call it "SEE", for "Signed Exact English", or at least much more SEE-like than proper sign. This makes it slightly more efficient for English speakers with only basic sign knowledge, but much much less efficient for communicating between sign-fluent individuals.

It makes a certain amount of sense at first, since the signing creatures don't seem to need a language to communicate with each other, but less and less sense as the story progresses and more people are purporting to be fluent in sign.
VhenRa
Youngling
Posts: 147
Joined: 2011-09-20 06:39am

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by VhenRa »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Ahriman238 wrote:Right, anyone can pull a deep strike if they don't mind spending weeks in hyper and maybe winding up crippled and hundreds of light-years from any support or friendly facilities. Hence why the Alliance has eight fleets and is committing one to offensive action, or why Haven is doing the same with a double-sized Twelfth Fleet.
Although some of those 'fleets' may be administrative rear area commands with little or no heavy force at their disposal.
From what I understand, thats exactly it for the Manties. Some are administrative commands. I believe one of the fleets is the overall command structure any units assigned to commerce protection in Silesia belongs to. 5th Fleet is their logistics command. We know by the events of later books 9th Fleet is the RMN organizational setup for Silesia and 10th is it's analog in Talbott. 3rd Fleet being the defensive fleet for San Martin by this point all the way up to the Battle of Manticore. From what I know, 6th Fleet was actually dissolved after San Martin was taken. We have seen no sign of 4th and 7th Fleets either.
User avatar
Batman
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 16429
Joined: 2002-07-09 04:51am
Location: Seriously thinking about moving to Marvel because so much of the DCEU stinks

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Batman »

There's been real world fleets that had exactly zero actual ships assigned to them and it's not like the military has a problem calling a unit the 259th Whatever just because 200 of the preceding ones were never actually formed and the rest have long since been disbanded.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

It's time.



White Haven opens Buttercup by assaulting Barnett, scant weeks after Theisman left, but three years behind the original schedule when he was putting together Eighth Fleet.

Which freed Hamish Alexander to study his bland, uninformative plot and worry.

Well, uninformative from the enemy's side, he amended, for quite a few Allied icons burned on the display. First, there were the seventy-three superdreadnoughts and eleven dreadnoughts of his wall of battle. Then there were the traditional screening elements, already spreading out to assume missile defense positions. And last, there were the seventeen CLACs of Alice Truman's task group and their escorts—battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, with four attached dreadnoughts to give them a little extra weight—astern of the main formation. A blizzard of diamond chips erupted outward from the CLACs as he watched, and he smiled grimly as they began to shake down into formation even as they accelerated ahead of the main body. CIC had a tight lock on them when they launched, but their EW was already on-line

Eighth Fleet in it's final configuration for this campaign is actually a bit bigger than Haven's Capital Fleet. 73 SDs, including 37 SD(Ps) 15 DN and 17 CLACs with screen.

The citizen admiral clamped his hands behind him and took a slow, deliberate turn around the command balcony above the enormous war room. His outermost sensor shell was seventeen light-minutes from the primary, safely within the hyper limit to at least make hit-and-run raids on it difficult, but far enough out from the gravitational center of Barnett to give the enormous passive arrays a reach of almost two and a half light-weeks, over which they could expect to pick up the hyper transit of anything much bigger than a courier boat. That range put them nine light-minutes outside the planet Enki, and the actual range to the platform closest to the Manties was about thirteen light-minutes. Which meant it would be another—he checked the time—ten minutes and twenty-six seconds before he got a light-speed report from the sensors with the best look at whatever was coming at him. On the other hand, the inner-system arrays had more than enough reach to at least detect such a massive hyper translation. They'd picked up the faster-than-light ripple along the alpha wall as the Manties made transit, and they were picking up a confused clutch of impeller drive signatures now. But they were much too far away to see anything else, which meant Tracking's reports were going to be maddeningly vague until the Manties were a lot deeper in-system.
Barnett sensor network, pretty good range, 2.5 light-weeks. Unfortunately suffering from a lack of FTL communications means they can pick up a giant hyper footprint at range, but have to wait over ten minutes for any details. Meanwhile, White Haven's stealthed recon platforms are zipping in-system at tremendous velocity, not having crews to go splat puts them closer to missiles than ships as far as accel goes.

"CIC is calling it twenty-two of the wall, ten battleships—there could be a couple more of those hiding behind the wedge clutter—twenty to thirty battlecruisers, forty-six cruisers of all types, and thirty or forty destroyers. Looks like they've got forty to forty-five of their forts on-line, as well, and there's one hell of a lot of LACs swanning around in that mess. CIC figures it for a minimum of seven hundred."
Peep forces at Barnett, stripped down for Scylla. 22 SDs, 10 BBs, 20-30 BCs, 46 cruisers, 30-40 tin cans, 40-45 Forts each controlling dozens of pods, and 700 LACs. Or, about a thousand less than White Haven has.

The final—or currently "final"—version of the long-range missiles could reach 96,000 gravities of acceleration, four thousand more than the ones Alice Truman had deployed at Basilisk. That gave them a powered attack range from rest of almost fifty-one light-seconds at maximum acceleration. By stepping the drives down to 48,000 g, endurance could be tripled, however, and that upped the maximum powered envelope to well over three and a half light-minutes and a terminal velocity of .83 c. That was crowding the very limits of the fire control technology available even to the Royal Manticoran Navy, however.

But given that the maximum possible engagement range from rest for the enemy, even at low accel, was going to be on the order of less than thirty light-seconds in maximum accel mode, things were about to get very ugly for the Peeps.
96,000 G max accel for MDMs and 48,000 Gs in endurance mode, marginally faster than normal missiles. 3.5 light-minute powered range from rest for MDMs, or a sevenfold increase.

He still didn't understand their approach course, and his brain continued to pick at its apparent illogic like a tongue probing a sore tooth. No doubt they were coming in heavy with pods—he certainly would have been in their place!—but Manty SDs could pull a lot more than three hundred gees, even with full pod loads on tow. So why had they wasted so much time? And why hadn't they gone for a least-time course at whatever accel they were willing to use? The logical thing for them to have done would have been to translate into n-space on a heading which would have pinned Enki between them and Barnett. As it was, they'd not only come in too far out and too slowly, but they were actually approaching Enki's position to intercept at a shallow angle. At the moment, their icons and those of the mobile units positioned to intercept them weren't even on anything approaching a direct line with the blue dot that marked Enki's position.

It all looked and felt dreadfully unorthodox, which was enough to make Dimitri instantly suspicious, especially knowing that if that was Eighth Fleet out there, he was up against White Haven, who had systematically kicked the crap out of every Republican CO he'd ever faced. Which suggested there had to be some reason for the Manties' apparently inept and clumsy approach, except that try as he might, Dimitri couldn't come up with a single one that made any sort of sense. It was almost as if White Haven were intentionally making certain the defenders had plenty of time to concentrate their full forces to meet him, but that was ridiculous. Granted, Manty hardware was superior, but there were limits in all things. Not even Manties could be ballsy enough to deliberately throw away any chance of catching him before he could concentrate. Any flag officer worth his braid schemed furiously in search of some way to catch the defenders with their forces still spread out so he could engage and crush them in detail rather than facing all of them at once!
Credit to Dmitri, he can tell that something is obviously not kosher here. Unfortunately for his command, he cannot grasp that he's correct, White Haven is giving him time to concentrate his forces, specifically to spare himself the effort of chasing down any strays. Can't really blame Dmitri for habitually thinking of his forces as an effective military force rather than as targets though.

"Anything more on those unidentified bogies?" he asked.

"We still can't be positive, but it looks like most of them are missile pods, Sir. We're a bit more puzzled by some of the others, though. They're smaller than pods, but they seem to be bigger than individual missiles ought to be. About the size of a deep recon drone, actually."

"I see." The earl frowned, then shrugged. Missiles or drones, a saturation pattern of heavy warheads should take them out with proximity kills handily enough . . . and before they could do anything nasty.
Eighth Fleet easily sees the proto-Mistletoe stealthed mines, and Ham decides not to bother worrying about them.

The Peeps obviously didn't know it, but they'd been in his powered missile range for well over an hour, assuming he'd been willing to go for low-powered drive settings, but even with his RDs hovering just beyond the range of the Peeps' weapons, targeting solutions would have been very poor at sixty-five million kilometers . . . not to mention that flight time would have been the next best thing to nine minutes. That was plenty of time for an alert captain to roll ship and take the brunt of the incoming fire on his wedge, and even with Ghost Rider's EW goodies along for company, it might have given the defenders time to achieve effective point defense solutions.

Besides, there was no need to do any such thing. He still had over twelve minutes before he entered the Peeps' effective envelope, and each of his Harrington/Medusas could get off sixty six-pod salvos in that time. That was over a hundred and eleven thousand missiles from the SD(P)s alone, and they weren't alone, and he checked his plot one last time

Between the input from his drones and the long, unhurried time his fire control officers had been given to refine their data, his ships had tight locks on most of the Peep capital ships. Of course, "tight lock" at this sort of range didn't mean what it would have at lower ranges, and accuracy was going to suffer accordingly. On the other hand, the Peeps hadn't yet deployed a single decoy, and their jammers were only beginning to come on line. Which made sense, if they wanted to avoid putting too much time on their EW systems' clocks. Unfortunately, this time it was going to be fatal.

"Very well, Commander Haggerston," he said formally. "You may fire."
So they get less hits, on the other hand they get unholy missile spam at unprecedented ranges. The taxpayers would hate them if they weren't constantly winning, but that's less of a concern during the actual battles. Again with saving the decoys and jamming and general EW to the last minute to save on maintenance.


No one in the history of interstellar warfare had ever seen anything like the massive salvo coming in on his ships. Those missiles were turning out at least ninety-six thousand gravities, launched from pods and shipboard tubes which were themselves moving at over nine thousand kilometers per second, and that didn't even consider the initial velocity imparted to them by their launchers' grav drivers. A corner of Dimitri's brain wanted to believe the Manties had gone suddenly insane and thrown away their entire opening salvo at a range from which hits would be impossible. That the incredible acceleration those missiles were cranking meant they could not possibly have more than a minute of drive endurance. That they would be dead, unable to maneuver against his evading units, when they reached the ends of their runs.

But one thing the Earl of White Haven was not was insane. If he'd launched from that range, then his birds had the range to attack effectively . . . and none of Dimitri's did.

Funny enough, we saw him do exactly that fire off a missile salvo at ranges that would be ineffectual as a desperation move over a decade ago in-story.

It seemed to take forever, and he heard someone groan behind him as the Manty wall belched a second salvo, just as heavy as the first. Which was also impossible. That had to be the firepower of a full pod load out for every ship in White Haven's wall. He couldn't have still more of them in tow! But apparently no one had told the Manties what they could and couldn't do, and yet a third launch followed.
Over three hundred thousand missiles loosed at the Barnett defenders.

The first massive wave of missiles crashed over his wall, and his numb brain noted yet another difference from the norm. The tactical realities of towed pods meant each fleet had no real choice but to commit the full weight of its pods in the first salvo, because any that didn't fire in the first exchange were virtually certain to suffer proximity kills from the enemy's fire. They were normally concentrated on the enemy vessels for whom the firing fleet had the best firing solutions, as well, because firing at extreme range rather than waiting until the enemy had irradiated your weapons into uselessness meant even the best solutions were none too good.

All of that tended to result in massive overkill on a relatively low number of targets, but that wasn't happening this time. No, this time the Manties had allocated their fire with lethal precision. There were well over three thousand missiles in the first wave. Many of them were jammers or decoys, but many were not, and Hamish Alexander's fire plan had allocated a hundred and fifty laser heads to each Peep ship of the wall. His targets' hopelessly jammed and confused defenses stopped no more than ten percent of the incoming fire, and Havenite capital ships shuddered and heaved, belching atmosphere and debris and water vapor as massive, bomb-pumped lasers slammed into them. Hulls spat glowing splinters as massive armor yielded, and fresh, dreadful bursts of light pocked Citizen Admiral Dimitri's wall as fusion bottles began to fail.
150 missiles considered ample to destroy or mission kill an SD, even at extreme range with less than optimal firing solutions. Under the circumstances, with so many missiles and such a hostile EW environment, the Peeps only stop 10% of the missile massacre, and even that is probably a sign of how good missile defense has gotten since the war started.

But even as the SDs and DNs reeled and died under the pounding, a second, equally massive wave of missiles was on its way. This one ignored the surviving, mangled ships of the wall. Its missiles went for Dimitri's lighter, more fragile battleships and battlecruisers, even heavy and light cruisers. Fewer of them went after each target, but even a battleship could take no more than a handful of hits from such heavy laser heads . . . and none of them could begin to match the point defense capability of a ship of the wall.
Second salvo kills the BBs and screen.

The third wave bypassed the mobile units completely to swoop towards Enki's orbital defenses. They ignored the fortresses, but their conventional nuclear warheads detonated in a blinding, meticulously precise wall of plasma and fury that killed every unprotected satellite, missile pod, and drone in Enki orbit.
And the third kill the drones, pods and assorted unshielded sats.

And then, as if to cap the insanity, a tidal wave of LACs—well over fifteen hundred of them—erupted from stealth, already in energy range of the broken wreckage which had once been a fleet. They swept in, firing savagely, and a single pass reduced every unit of Dimitri's wall to drifting hulks . . . or worse. The LACs were at least close enough that his fortresses could fire on them, but their EW was almost as good as the capital ships, and they deployed shoals of jammers and decoys of their own. Even the missiles which got through to them seemed to detonate completely uselessly. It was as if the impossible little vessels' wedges had no throat or kilt to attack!

The LACs had obviously planned their approach maneuver very carefully. Their velocity relative to their victims had been very low, no more than fifteen hundred KPS, and their vector had been designed to cross the base track of Dimitri's wall at an angle that carried them away from his forts and his own LACs. A few squadrons of the latter were in position to at least try to intercept, but those who did vanished in vicious fireballs as hurricanes of lighter but still lethal missiles ripped into their faces. Then the Manty LACs—Esther McQueen's much derided "super LACs," Dimitri thought numbly—disappeared back into the invisibility of their stealth systems. And just to make certain they got away clean, that impossible Manty wall of battle blanketed the battle area with a solid cone of decoys and jammers which made it impossible for any of the surviving defenders to lock onto the fleet, elusive little targets.
And the LACs, having closed under stealth (another benefit of taking a slow approach) easily finish off the cripples and survivors before disappearing under stealth and the cover of a lot of EW missiles.

"It's a message from the Manties, Citizen Admiral," she said then. "It was addressed to Citizen Admiral Theisman. I guess they don't know he's not here." She was rambling, and her jaw tightened as she forced herself back under control. "It's from their commander, Citizen Admiral."

"White Haven?" The question came out almost incuriously, but that wasn't the way he felt, and his eyes narrowed at her nod. "What sort of message?"

"It came in in the clear, Citizen Admiral," she said, and held out a message board. He took it from her and punched the play button, and a man in the black-and-gold of a Manticoran admiral looked out of the holographic display at him. He was dark haired and broad shouldered . . . and his hard eyes were the coldest blue Alec Dimitri had ever seen.

"Admiral Theisman," the Manty said flatly, "I call upon you to surrender this system and your surviving units immediately. We have just demonstrated that we can and will destroy any and all armed units, ships or forts, in this system without exposing our own vessels to return fire. I take no pleasure in slaughtering men and women who cannot fight back. That will not prevent me from doing precisely that, however, if you refuse to surrender, for I have no intention of exposing my own people to needless casualties. You have five minutes to accept my terms and surrender your command. If you have not done so by the end of that time, my units will resume fire . . . and we both know what the result will be. I await your response. White Haven, out."

The display blanked. Dimitri stared at it for several seconds, his stocky body sagging around its bones. Then he handed the message board back to the com officer, squared his shoulders, turned to Sandra Connors, and made himself say the unthinkable.

"Ma'am," his quiet voice cut the silence like a knife, "I see no alternative." He inhaled deeply, then went on. "I request permission to surrender my command to the enemy."
After years as a thorn in the Alliance's side, Barnett surrenders within hours of White Haven's arrival. So begins the legend of the Invincible Eighth Fleet.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ahriman238 wrote:Peep forces at Barnett, stripped down for Scylla. 22 SDs, 10 BBs, 20-30 BCs, 46 cruisers, 30-40 tin cans, 40-45 Forts each controlling dozens of pods, and 700 LACs. Or, about a thousand less than White Haven has.
The raw tonnage of those forts would make them equivalent to one or more SDs apiece, maybe even two, assuming the Havenites could force Haven to accept combat with them. This defense force could put up a damn good fight without having to deal with the multiple-drive missile and super-LAC.
So they get less hits, on the other hand they get unholy missile spam at unprecedented ranges. The taxpayers would hate them if they weren't constantly winning, but that's less of a concern during the actual battles. Again with saving the decoys and jamming and general EW to the last minute to save on maintenance.
Also to keep the enemy from getting too good a look at your wartime electronic countermeasures; you don't want them figuring out counters to your best tricks without even having to come into missile range to do it.
Funny enough, we saw him do exactly that fire off a missile salvo at ranges that would be ineffectual as a desperation move over a decade ago in-story.
Very true now that you mention it. Of course, here White Haven has no reason to be desperate and Dmitri knows it.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Batman
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 16429
Joined: 2002-07-09 04:51am
Location: Seriously thinking about moving to Marvel because so much of the DCEU stinks

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Batman »

Also, last time Haven was desperate only insofar that he was desperate to save Honor and her people, his ships were never in any danger and the question wasn't if Thunder of God would wind up as scrap metal but simply when.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

To be fair, if White Haven were desperate and could somehow save his own command by firing off a sheaf of ballistic missile shots, I'm quite sure he'd do so.

The point is, the only time he'd ever do it is if it was actually a good plan, or at least the best plan he could come up with at the time. In this case, firing missiles whose engines would predictably burn out short of the target is not a good plan, it's a terrible plan.

So trained tactical reflexes tell the Havenite commander "he done screwed up," because White Haven just took an action that would never normally work.

But Dmitri is still smart enough to realize that White Haven would only do such a thing under circumstances where he's trying to invoke "if it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid." Which means he has to have some means of making the gigantic missile massacre actually work.

Hm. Thinking about it... Those hundred-thousand-missile salvoes imply roughly three thousand missiles per SD(P) in White Haven's command, per salvo. Granted that each of the prepod capital ships can carry a few hundred of the things, that's still pretty far in excess of what we've normally seen SD(P)s capable of handling. That's something like fifty six-pod clusters dumped out of each SD(P), and that is in turn 60% of a Medusa's total pod loadout according to later sources.

And supposedly Eighth Fleet fired three such salvoes.

Something ain't right.

Maybe Weber slipped up and forgot to account for the fact that the other half of Eighth Fleet's wall of battle consisted of pre-pod capital ships, and so overestimated the total pod loadout of the fleet by a factor of two. That'd explain it.

On the other hand, even one such monster launch would wipe out the fleet defending Barnett. Thirty thousand missiles directed at 22 1900-1910-vintage SDs really is enough to wipe out the entire force handily.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Terralthra
Requiescat in Pace
Posts: 4741
Joined: 2007-10-05 09:55pm
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Terralthra »

The "hundred thousand+" comment is referring to how much fire he could put out, not how much he actually put out. Later on, it describes each wave as being a more sedate "over 3,000" missiles.
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Well, someone tell Ahriman that, then, because he appears to think there were three separate hundred thousand missile salvoes. ;)
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
White Haven
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6360
Joined: 2004-05-17 03:14pm
Location: The North Remembers, When It Can Be Bothered

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by White Haven »

Besides, there was no need to do any such thing. He still had over twelve minutes before he entered the Peeps' effective envelope, and each of his Harrington/Medusas could get off sixty six-pod salvos in that time. That was over a hundred and eleven thousand missiles from the SD(P)s alone, and they weren't alone, and he checked his plot one last time.
110k+ missiles from SD(P)s dispersed over sixty salvos in twelve minutes, not in one launch unless they were to try to stack that many salvos and do a single godfist attack. Somehow I suspect that might strain even Ghost Rider control links at this point in time. Even if they did, it would take another twelve minutes rolling pods to duplicate it.
Image
Image
Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.

Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'

Fiction!: The Final War (Bolo/Lovecraft) (Ch 7 9/15/11), Living (D&D, Complete)Image
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

"This is all your fault, you know," he said, twitching a nod at the pandemonium rolling over the Harrington House lawn and generally wreaking havoc on the flower beds.

"Why? For bringing the 'cats home with me?"

"That, certainly. But that damned Frisbee is almost as bad," Mayhew growled. "Not just with the girls, either. The things are taking over the entire planet. It's more than a man's life is worth to wander through Austin Central Park after school these days!"
Honor and Nimitz have introduced the Frisbee to the children of Grayson. Cue harrumphing from conservatives.

At twenty-one months, Alexandra was perfectly happy to lie in her traveling cradle and listen to her mothers' voices, but Honor's goddaughter had recently celebrated her seventh birthday, and she obviously would have preferred being out with the Frisbee gang. Unfortunately, she was following in her oldest sister's tracks, and the sling on her right arm had her firmly sidelined. It was a clean break, and youthful resilience and quick heal would have the cast off in another week or so, but Grayson's conservatives had been appalled to learn that the Protector's youngest daughter had broken her arm climbing the tallest tree on the grounds of Protector's Palace.

Yet another dreadful lapse to write off to my "evil influence," she thought dryly, recalling how hard and skillfully Mueller had worked at making that point without ever coming out and saying it in so many words.
Really. A child got hurt playing, and that's your major talking point? Or that the Protector's daughter, at the age of seven, is not a perfect lady and it's somehow all Honor's fault despite hardly ever being around?

The ex-Peep who'd been Honor's first flag captain was now the second-in-command of the Protector's Own. Since Honor was its official CO, that made him the Protector's Own's de facto commander, and it was shaping up to be an even more important post than she'd originally anticipated. In addition to the ships of the Elysian Space Navy, Benjamin and Wesley Matthews had earmarked an entire squadron of the new SD(P)s for Yu's command. The first three had already run acceptance trials and were working up at this very moment, with two more due to be released by the yard for trials within the next week or so, and the "appropriate screening elements" Mayhew and Matthews had discussed were beginning to assemble. Not only that, but the first two CLACs were also on order from the Star Kingdom's home yards.
Alfredo Yu shall command the Protector's Own in Honor's absence, so effectively full-time. The PO will include the BCs Honor brought back from Hades, plus a squadron of podnoughts and a few CLACs.

"You people seem to be paying awful close attention to local politics," Benjamin commented, regarding the assembled officers thoughtfully, and Yu shrugged.

"Most of us either watched our home worlds' governments go down in flames or grew up watching Dolist managers and Legislaturalists deliver completely predictable 'honest votes,' Your Grace. Either of those experiences gives you a lively interest in the political process. Those of us whose native countries no longer exist are determined not to see it happen all over again, and those of us who grew up in the PRH are possibly even more fiercely attached to genuine free speech and free elections than they are."
Why all the ex-Peeps and Elysians are keeping such careful track of the polls.

"But that kind of ignore-the-facts approach works best when you're talking to people who already agree with you and choose to wear the same sort of blinkers," Rear Admiral Mercedes Brigham pointed out.

"Absolutely," Caslet agreed. "The people he actually needs to convince are going to be a lot more skeptical than his true-believers, Your Grace."

"Please, Captain Caslet!" Benjamin said with another chuckle. "Here on Grayson, we reserve that particular term for those idiots on Masada! Our own intolerant, bigoted, unthinking, doctrinaire reactionaries are properly referred to as 'conservative thinkers.' "

"Sorry, Your Grace." Caslet smiled. "I suppose that's one of those fine cultural distinctions we outsiders have trouble picking up on."
Mayhew jests, but I can actually see that and other phrases associated with the Faithful in the Civil War becoming sensitive areas.
"Leaving aside threats of domestic violence," Yu said, "I think Henri is right, Your Grace. I don't want to sound too optimistic—the last thing any of us need is to fall prey to overconfidence—but I genuinely believe the new LACs and missiles are going to win this war outright. And probably a lot sooner than anyone on either side would have believed possible. And if that happens, Mueller's going to look pretty damned stupid if he goes on insisting that joining the Alliance was a serious mistake for Grayson."

"Perhaps," Mayhew agreed. "On the other hand, it's part of my job to worry about what happens after the war, assuming you're right and we win the thing. It's clear that the need to face a common foe and build up our own military capabilities in concert with the rest of the Alliance has been a factor in the willingness of at least some Graysons to go along with the reform programs. They may not have liked the domestic changes, but they weren't prepared to rock the boat in the middle of a war. So if the pressure of fighting the war comes off, what happens to their support?"

"You'll probably lose some of your majority in the Steaders, and I imagine Chancellor Prestwick will suffer the defection of at least a few of the Keys, as well," Honor acknowledged. "But I doubt very much that you'll lose enough to turn the clock back, or even to slow the rate of change very much. And I think there's more domestic support for the 'special relationship' between Grayson and the Star Kingdom than Mueller realizes. Look how enthusiastically most Graysons seem to be responding to the announcement of the Queen's state visit!"
Chances for victory, and looking towards the political situation after the war. Oh Mayhew, if only you knew.

Hughes' murder had shaken the entire Mueller Guard. His fellow armsmen had taken a grim pride in the fact that he'd managed to kill three of his assailants, even though it was obvious he'd been completely surprised by the attack. But no one had the least idea what had prompted his murder. Officially, it had been written off as a botched robbery attempt, although no one really believed that for a moment. There was little random street crime on Grayson, and no street thug in his right mind would choose to rob an armed, trained armsman when there had to be less dangerous prey available.

Unfortunately, no one had been able to come up with any other explanation. Mueller's own suspicion was that Hughes had inadvertently discovered something and been killed before he could act on it or warn Mueller and his superiors. The steadholder knew he was probably overly suspicious. That, after all, was an occupational hazard of conspirators the galaxy over. But still . . .
Hughe's death and it's impact on Mueller and his armsmen.

"Certainly. Our logic is straightforward. Assuming, as we do, that the Sword does intend to suggest we merge with and be absorbed by the Star Kingdom, this visit would be the ideal time for Prestwick and the Protector to discuss their plan with Elizabeth and the Duke of Cromarty—in person, with no intermediaries who might leak details of their discussions' true nature. The fact that she's bringing along her foreign secretary, as well, only strengthens our suspicions, as the Earl of Gold Peak would be deeply involved in any negotiations on such a point. Would you agree so far?"
A coincidence for the conspirators, but an incredibly lucky one because in light of the story they fed Mueller before, Elizabeth's state visit so soon after San Martin elects to join the Star Kingdom does look suspicious.

Memory stones were an ancient tradition. Despite the relative primitiveness of Grayson's pre-Alliance tech base, the planet had maintained a presence in space for longer than the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore had existed. The systematic and steadily increasing exploitation of their star system's extraplanetary resources was all that had permitted the Graysons to sustain their population and industry, and the huge investment they'd made in relatively crude infrastructure had been instrumental in allowing them to upgrade their technical and industrial base so rapidly once they allied themselves with Manticore.

But there had always been a price for that effort. Mueller had no idea how many Graysons had died in space, whether in industrial accidents or in the wars with Masada, but the number had to be large. He knew that, and Grayson had developed its own traditions and customs for honoring their memory.

Memory stones were lumps of unrefined asteroid iron or rock, carried constantly on their persons for six days by those who wished to honor the memory of the dead in space. On each of those days, the bearer of a stone prayed briefly and meditated on the debt the living owed to all those who had been lost in space. On the seventh day, the day upon which the Tester had rested, the stones were laid to rest, as well, by being released in space on a trajectory which would drop them into the system primary. They would never actually reach Yeltsin's star, of course, for the furious energy radiating outward from the star would consume them and blow their particles outward, as the souls of the Tester's children were forever borne upward and illuminated throughout eternity by the living presence of God. It was a religious custom which every element of Grayson, from the most conservative to the most liberal, honored and treasured, and it had become even more meaningful to them since the current war's casualties had begun to roll in.
And this is what makes the Graysons who they are, their own culture and traditions besides just being religious fundies waving around copied Japanese swords. Generations of charging into space like lemmings to almost certain death to protect their home and build a future for their families. This is why they have that title, however serious or tongue-in-cheek, they've earned it. Glorious Kerbal Graysons.

Oh, and the plan is to put a recording device in a memory stone Mueller will publically present to the Queen. After they jettison it at the sun, the conspirators will be able to intercept it an acquire proof that the Protector intends to join Manticore more permanently. Well, they tell Mueller it's a recording device....

"No, I tell you! The potential return doesn't even come close to justifying the risk you're asking me to run!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, My Lord. I'm afraid, however, that I must insist."

"Insist?" Mueller half-rose, and Higgins stepped forward behind him, but neither Baird nor Kennedy as much as turned a hair.

"Insist," Baird repeated, his tone cool but inflexible.

-snip-

"It would be much simpler if you'd stop pretending so we could get back to the business at hand, My Lord," Baird said wearily. "We were under no illusions about your trustworthiness before, or we would never have placed Hughes in your service. And while some of our people were outraged by his murder, the rest of us had anticipated the possibility all along. As he did, when he volunteered. But that doesn't mean we can no longer work together . . . as long as you remember that we know exactly the sort of man with whom we're actually dealing."

"You placed Hughes in my service?" Mueller stared at Baird for a moment, then shook his head. "That's a lie! Some sort of clumsy trick! And even if it weren't, I never ordered anyone to kill him, you lunatic!"

"My Lord, you're the only one who could possibly have had a motive," Baird said with an air of weary patience.
Hughes' murderers got his button-cam and several days of footage, which they now use to blackmail Mueller, pretending that Hughes was their agent.

"Are you mad?" Mueller demanded, as shocked as his armsman and far too furious to feel frightened. "Don't you know the penalty for bringing a weapon into a steadholder's presence?!"
I'm guessing they don't give you cookies.

"First, My Lord," Baird said very precisely, "that presupposes that these are the only crimes of which we have evidence. In fact, they're not, nor was Hughes the only agent we've planted in . . . strategic spots, shall we say?" Mueller swallowed, and Baird smiled faintly. "We've been keeping an eye on you for quite some time. We're well aware of your activities and alliances—all of them, My Lord, from the beginning of your resistance to the 'Mayhew Restoration.' I trust you'll forgive me if I don't provide matching documentation of them right this moment, however. In this case—" he tapped the pocket which held the projector "—you obviously already identified and murdered our agent. We have no intention of giving you anything which might suggest the identities of our other agents to you. But we would have no compunction about sharing that information with the Sword if you forced our hand.

"Secondly, you assume we'd be afraid to admit our own complicity in your illegal campaign financing schemes." Baird allowed himself a small, cold smile. "Those schemes are the least of your worries, My Lord . . . and the greatest of ours. We have far less to lose than you even if we're arrested right alongside you. Which, by the way, would be rather more difficult for the Sword to accomplish than you appear to think. Surely you must realize that Mr. Kennedy and I have constructed in-depth covers rather than meet you under our own names and identities! Moreover, neither of us has ever appeared in Planetary Security's files. We have no records, and Security has no place to start in hunting us down. You, on the other hand, are just a little too prominent to elude their net, I think. And, finally, My Lord, we, unlike you, are truly ready to face arrest, trial, even conviction. If that should be our Test for serving God's will, then so be it."
This is a blatant bluff, but having produced a recording, they're in a position to pull it off.

At least they're only recorders, he told himself, trying to pretend he didn't know he was grasping at straws. Even if they're found, and tied to me, all the Sword would have would be an attempt to obtain privileged information. That's serious, but nowhere near evidence of complicity in murder! And I am a steadholder. And the leader of the Opposition. Under the circumstances, they probably wouldn't even want to go public with the charges.

The man who called himself Anthony Baird gazed into Samuel Mueller's eyes and watched the defiance run out of them like water.
Seriously Mueller, you used to be so much smarter than this.

Their active sensor suites were down for the same reason, but the Ghost Rider teams had provided the LACs with their own FTL recon drones. Their drives had a very short endurance compared to the all-up drones, but Tremaine had deployed them hours ago and let their base acceleration carry them inward without any drive power at all. They'd come ghosting in even more stealthily than the LACs themselves, and their very weak, directional gravitic transmissions had told Bad Penny's passive sensors exactly where to look.
LACs have recon drones too now. Right now Scotty's LAC wing has accelerated near max and cut their drives, sneaking past two layers of sensor arrays and a destroyer patrol, all to try a "Pearl Harbor" attack against ships orbiting wallers with inactive drives.

Citizen Commodore Gianna Ryan sat in her tipped-back command chair on the flag deck of PNS Rene d'Aiguillon, legs crossed, and nursed a cup of coffee. The MacGregor System was fairly important to the PRH. It had long served as a sentinel for Barnett's northeastern flank, but it also boasted a robust economy. The system population was over two billion, and despite decades of bureaucratic management, it was one of the few systems in the Republic which continued to generate a positive revenue flow every year.
The MacGregor system, populous and prosperous.

Despite that, MacGregor had never received a genuine deep-space sensor net (the financially-strapped PRH was parsimonious about emplacing those anywhere), and its picket force had been steadily reduced over the last several years. The lengthy stalemate on the Barnett front after the fall of Trevor's Star helped explain a lot of that, but so did Citizen Secretary McQueen's decision to reinforce Barnett so heavily. The strength Citizen Admiral Theisman had received had made a flexible, nodal defense practical, and Ryan's job was not to try to stave off the Allied Hordes all by herself. Her job was to fend off raiding squadrons and serve as a distant early warning post. If the Manties came after her in strength, she was supposed to avoid action but remain in-system, shadowing and harassing the intruders, if possible, but staying the hell away from a serious fight while she screamed for help from Barnett.
Not even moderately important systems can afford complete sensor nets.

MacGregor, along with the Owens, Mylar, and Slocum Systems, represented a valuable little cluster of prizes, and Barnett, at the center of the rough square they formed, was the lynchpin of their joint survival. Ryan was confident the PRH could survive even if it lost all four of them but as her staff intelligence officer had remarked the other day, "A system here, a system there . . . keep it up long enough, and pretty soon you're talking about some serious real estate, Citizen Commodore."
The local systems, and after Barnett White Haven can take them all with ease.

Tremaine's Nineteenth Wing led the assault, and he watched his Ferrets salvo their shipkillers. A deadly swarm of missiles streaked towards the sitting targets of the main Peep force, and the crest of that wave of destruction was heavily seeded with Dazzlers and Dragons' Teeth, two more selections from the LACs' arsenal of Ghost Rider systems. The downsized versions which could be crammed into a LAC-sized missile were far less individually capable than the versions capital missiles could carry, but they were nastier than anything any LAC had ever been able to deploy before.

The Dazzlers were an in-your-face, burn-out-your-sensors jammer of unprecedented power. They were burst emitters (no missile a LAC could carry could sustain such power loads for more than a few seconds), but before their EW warheads burned out, they produced savage strobes of jamming. They started going off like a cascade of prespace magnesium flares, beating down the fire control of any Peep ship which might manage to get her sensors on-line in the first place.

The Dragons' Teeth came behind them, and Tremaine smiled nastily as they flashed to life. Personally, he thought they might be the nastiest offensive EW system the LACs had been given, for each missile was basically a powerful decoy. As it headed for the enemy, it made itself look like a Ferret's entire missile load, roaring down in a concentrated salvo which had to draw heavy countermissile fire. Which, of course, meant the same countermissiles couldn't go after the real shipkillers.
Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth formally introduced.

Under normal circumstances, such light laser heads would have posed no threat to dreadnoughts. They could have hurt battleships, though it was unlikely they could have killed even a battleship outright, and enough of them could have crippled a battlecruiser easily enough. But dreadnoughts were simply superdreadnoughts writ small, with the same massive armoring scheme and active and passive defensive systems. Those missiles ought to have been mere fleabites to such vessels.

But the Manties had caught the deep-space equivalent of an anchored fleet. Her ships couldn't maneuver, their weapon systems were down, and the absence of wedges and sidewalls was fatal. The loss of their sidewalls was bad enough, but even that paled beside the consequences of their cold impeller nodes, for the wedges which should have protected their topsides and bellies were nonexistent. And the spine and belly of a ship of the wall was completely unarmored, because nothing could get to them to inflict damage in the first place . . . as long as its wedge was up. Which meant the designers could use all the mass devoted to its stupendous armor on its vulnerable flanks and even more vulnerable hammerheads.

And not a single one of those Manty missiles showed the least interest in attacking any of Gianna Ryan's ship's sides or hammerheads.
The lack of armor above and below a ship. Which is a little silly at least, the roof and floor of a wedge is hundreds of klicks away, so there's plenty or room for a laser head to get a good angle.

Tremaine's missiles streaked "across" and "under" the helpless Peep leviathans at ranges as short as five hundred kilometers, and as they crossed their targets, they detonated. Their lasers struck with lethal accuracy, knifing into hulls which might as well have been totally unarmored, and thin battle steel skins shattered under the transfer energy. Clouds of atmosphere and water vapor exploded from the hideous rents, and Tremaine's jaw clenched as he pictured the carnage aboard his targets. It was obvious no one had seen them coming, and that meant there'd been no time for the Peeps to set general quarters, evacuate atmosphere from the outer hull segments, insure internal hull integrity . . . get into their skin suits.

A wave of flame marched through the Peep formation, tearing its ships apart. Three dreadnoughts, five battleships, and at least a dozen battlecruisers and cruisers died under its pounding. One of the ships of the wall completely vanished as one of her fusion bottles failed, and the others were beaten into wreckage. Life pods spilled from their flanks, but not very many of them, Tremaine noted grimly.

Yet he had little attention to spare them. His Ferrets had expended their offensive missile loads. Under normal circumstances, it would have been time for them to break off and roll away from the Peeps. This time, though, they stayed tucked in tight, each Ferret squadron dropping back to form the apex of an inverted cone behind three squadrons of Shrike-Bs, as the entire formation smashed straight into the main Peep force.

Now it was the Shrikes' turn. Their missile loads were lighter than the Ferrets' had been, but there were far more of them, and they'd deliberately reserved their fire when the Ferrets launched. Now orders flashed across the wing command nets, from Audrey Pyne and Eugene Nordbrandt, and fresh squadron salvoes began to launch. Those salvoes were more scattered than the original, massive assault, but they were targeted with merciless precision upon the mangled survivors of the first strike, and the Peeps' confusion was now complete.
Note, LACs are a terrible menace to inactive ships, with 3 DN, 5 BB and many cruiser and BC casualties to the first attack.

Three of the ready duty battlecruisers, on the far side of her formation from the attacking LACs, had managed to get their wedges and walls on-line and even to roll ship before any missiles reached them. They, and the units of her so far unengaged destroyer screen, were the only relatively unscathed ships she still had, and she watched the battlecruisers accelerating out of their positions. Not that it was going to help them much. Even at maximum military power, they could never hope to stay with the Manties—not with the tremendous velocity advantage the LACs had brought with them. But at least they were accelerating to meet the enemy, she thought with forlorn pride, not simply panicking and trying to flee.
Peep response.

"Com! Order the picket destroyers to get out of here!" she heard herself snap. "Tell them they have to warn the rest of the fleet about these new LACs!"
Which is actually a responsible order, spread the word. Of course, the destroyers would probably start by warning Barnett...

Three hundred and twenty-four LACs, two hundred and fifty-two of them Shrike-Bs, slammed into the Peeps like the hammer of Thor. It was the opportunity of a LAC's lifetime, a virtually unopposed, energy-range run against capital ships who still didn't have wedges or sidewalls up, and the Shrikes' grasers began to fire. Dreadnoughts which had survived the missile storm staggered bodily as those impossible beams smashed into them. At least half the LACs were able to target their unarmored topsides and bellies, just as the missiles had . . . and with horrifically greater effect.

Other LACs found themselves shouldered aside by the crowding. Deprived of equally prestigious targets, they vented their fury on battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers, and beams which could disembowel dreadnoughts tore lighter units to pieces. It was a massacre, a nightmare vortex of ships ripping apart in mighty spasms of destruction, dotting the night skies of the planet MacGregor with their eye-tearing pyres, and the Shrikes and Ferrets slashed through the heart of the inferno like demons.

But it wasn't quite all one-sided, and Scotty Tremaine swore bitterly as he watched icons blink and flash on his plot. Even some of the ships which had been unable to bring their wedges up had managed to get at least a few of their weapons on-line. They were probably in local control and feeding only from the capacitor rings, but they struck back with the defiant gallantry of despair. Here and there a graser or laser got lucky and slammed its way through a LAC's sidewall or bow-wall. One actually scored a direct up-the-kilt hit on a Ferret that had its bow-wall, and not its sternwall, on-line.

Two of Tremaine's strike died, then a third. A fourth. Three more flashed the amber of serious damage, but they were through the Peep formation and streaking away, safe from further harm while their crews fought to make emergency repairs.
Battle of MacGregor. The LACs aren't going to get many more shots like this, and over time the Shrikes will become less important. But for now we have a mighty fleet destroyed for a few dozen casualties.

He sighed and scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, once more wishing Esther McQueen and Rob Pierre were still alive so he could strangle both of them with his bare hands. What in hell's name had those two idiots thought they were doing? To kill each other off and throw the PRH's entire command structure, civilian and military alike, into chaos at a moment like this?

He lowered his hands and made himself step back from the useless rage. Not only were its objects safely beyond his reach, but it was unfair to blame them for the exact timing of the clash between their mutually homicidal ambitions. They hadn't had any way to know the Manties were about to unveil a quantum leap in interstellar warfare. And, truth to tell, the timing probably wouldn't matter in the end. If the reports from MacGregor, Mylar, Slocum, Owens, and—especially!—Barnett were accurate, nothing was going to matter, because the Fleet was screwed. And the Republic with it.
White Haven took the rest of the "square" around Barnett, and word of Eighth Fleet has made it home to Haven.

Personally, Theisman suspected that the LACs were probably the one system the People's Navy had some hope of mastering, or at least offsetting. But the preliminary reports indicated that most of the survivors had actually found the LACs more psychologically devastating than the new missiles. The fleet little craft's maneuverability, high acceleration rates, massive short-range armament, and apparent near invulnerability to defensive fire were a completely new departure. Long-range missile duels had always been part of the naval mix, and especially in the last few years as both sides deployed the updated pod technology. The PN's personnel had been given time to adjust to that fact of life, and while they might intellectually recognize the threat of the Manticoran range advantage, it hadn't come at them completely cold, as it were. The LACs had, and word of the massacre of Citizen Commodore Ryan's picket force had sent a shudder of terror through the rest of the Navy. And, Theisman admitted, the thought of LACs which could actually kill ships of the wall, no matter how bizarre the circumstances which had made it possible, was terrifying. Such tiny, relatively inexpensive craft could be built in enormous numbers, and there were those who believed the Battle of MacGregor proved traditional capital ships had been rendered obsolete overnight.

Theisman didn't think so. Ryan had been caught completely unprepared for the attack. That was hardly her fault, and Theisman was honest enough to admit that the same thing probably would have happened to him under the same circumstances. Certainly the defensive plan Alex Dimitri had ridden down in flames at Barnett had been the product of Theisman's own planning sessions, although that (fortunately, perhaps) seemed to have escaped Oscar Saint-Just's attention. But the burned hand taught best, and it was unlikely the Manties would be able to repeat MacGregor's devastating, close-in run on ships of the wall with cold nodes. Which meant they would be unable to get any more of those perfect, lethal shots against the unarmored portions of their targets' hulls, which meant, in turn, that dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts would be as hard for them to kill in the future as they ought to have been at MacGregor. Besides, impressive as the new LACs were, enough old-fashioned light attack craft, operating purely defensively, should be able to considerably blunt their effectiveness. They couldn't possibly be as tough as the more panicky analysts suggested. Theisman was willing to concede that they obviously had something new in the way of sidewalls to go along with their EW, but it was also obvious that it had been possible to get through their defenses occasionally . . . and that they were no tougher than any other LAC when someone actually hit them. So if he could swamp them with old-style LACs and generate lots and lots of firing angles, he should be able to kill them. Or at least force them to operate far more circumspectly, which would be almost as good.
You forgot the way LACs appear out of nowhere and vanish back into stealth after striking. But yes, even clouds of old-style LACs will do a lot to blunt the advantage. I'm not sure just how panicked some analysts are or what they're saying, but I'm leaning more towards their being correct (sidewalls as strong as SDs) than Tom in this case.

But nothing the Navy had was going to offset the enormous range advantage of the new Manty missiles. Or their new rate of fire. Theisman might still be in the dark about how they'd achieved such a leap forward in range, but, unlike many of his fellow officers, he'd at least realized almost instantly how they must have managed to sustain such a heavy volume of fire. Of course, he'd had the advantage of long discussions with Warner Caslet about the citizen commander's sojourn aboard Honor Harrington's armed merchant cruiser in Silesia. Caslet had long since figured out how HMS Wayfarer must have been modified to produce the weight of missile fire he'd observed. It was unfortunate he and Shannon Foraker had been almost completely ignored by the people running the PRH's intelligence agencies on their return, though it had probably been inevitable, given the suspicion in which they were held over the loss of their ship and the fact that they had been prisoners of war, after all.

But if the Manties could put some sort of pod-dispensing system inside a freighter, there was no reason they couldn't do the same thing with a superdreadnought, and if anyone had bothered to listen to Caslet and Foraker, the PN might actually have figured out how to do the same thing. He doubted it had been easy, and he shuddered at the thought of all the design and redesign studies which must have been involved in restructuring a ship of the wall's internal anatomy so completely. But difficult was hardly the same thing as impossible, and the payoff for their efforts had been a handsome one. Not only did their ships dramatically outrange the People's Navy, but their rate of fire was devastatingly superior, as well. Which meant no Republican commander was going to survive to get into effective range of a Manticoran fleet no matter what he did.
Actually, the podnoughts will probably be the easiest part to duplicate, you could do it in a year or two. You just don't have a year or two.

McQueen had been right—again. They'd been waiting until they could build up a decisive strength, and they'd done so. No doubt they'd be at least a little cautious, for they couldn't afford heavy losses among their new units, but they had enough, concentrated in one spot, or at least on one front, to smash anything the PN put in their way. The only thing that could prevent them from cutting their way right through to the Haven System itself, and that in a matter of months, not years, would be ammunition constraints. The new weapons had to be in short supply, just like the ships equipped to fire them, but Theisman doubted that anyone like White Haven had been stupid enough to launch his offensive without an ample reserve of the new missiles. And, much as he hated to admit it, they were actually using less of the new birds than they had of the old. Their standoff range should be (and probably was) lowering accuracy, but the new EW missiles and drones more than compensated for that by blinding the active defenses. Which meant far more hits were getting through on a per-missile basis.
Even with the range, EW missiles are keeping the hit ratios pretty even with more conventional ranged missile duels. These fuckoff huge missile swarms eat a lot of ammo it's true, but as long as supplies hold up all the PBN can do is offer Hamish more targets.

Oscar Saint-Just watched Citizen Admiral Theisman enter his office with eyes which were beginning to show the strain a bit too clearly for his own taste. He was unhappily aware that he was retreating into a bunker mentality, hunkering down as the entire galaxy prepared to come crashing down on his head. There was altogether too much desperation in his thinking of late, and he knew it was pushing him towards ever more excessive responses, but he couldn't help it. Which only made it even worse. That sense of sliding helplessly down into a pit of quicksand could either paralyze a man or drive him into a mad, senseless effort to lash out at the universe, however uselessly, before it killed him, and the strain of trying to steer a course between those two extremes was grinding away at his stability.
Poor Oscar never wanted to lead the Republic, and knows he's coming apart from the strain. But there's no one else he can trust to do the job, not with Rob Pierre dead. Of course, that just makes him even more dangerous.

Theisman had already talked him out of executing Citizen Admiral Amanda Graveson and Citizen Vice Admiral Lawrence MacAfee, the previous CO of Capital Fleet and her second in command. Some of his senior StateSec officers had urged him to shoot both flag officers as an example to all the other senior officers who hadn't instantly declared their loyalty to the Committee when McQueen's coup started. But as Theisman had pointed out, neither Graveson nor MacAfee had moved to support McQueen, either, and there'd been more than enough confusion coming out of the capital, where personal orders from their direct superior, the Secretary of War, had been countermanded by the Secretary of Sate Security (who wasn't in their official chain of command at all), and no one had been able to reach the Citizen Chairman for confirmation of which Committee member they ought to be listening to. Under the circumstances, Theisman had argued, the only prudent course for a senior flag officer was to try to figure out who was really trying to stage the coup—McQueen or Saint-Just—before they jumped.

It had been, in some ways, a specious argument, in Saint-Just's opinion. But it had also contained at least a little truth, and Theisman had certainly been right to point out that shooting them could only make the rest of Capital Fleet's officers wonder who was next. Which, as the citizen admiral had rather dryly remarked, was unlikely to contribute to a calm and collected state of mind on their part. Or, as he carefully had not remarked, their ultimate loyalty to the man who'd ordered up the firing squads.

Saint-Just had been impressed, almost against his will, both by Theisman's reasonable tone and by the guts it had taken to stand up for his two subordinates when so much bloodlust hung in the air. And as he'd considered the other man's arguments, the new Citizen Chairman had come to the conclusion he might well be right. Even if he wasn't, the fact that everyone knew how seriously Saint-Just had considered shooting Graveson and MacAfee would make the point that future lack of loyalty would be fatal while the fact that he hadn't shot them in the end might help convince them the new master of the PRH wasn't a frothing-at-the-mouth madman after all.
The first time Theisman and Saint-Just butted head, over whether or not to shoot his predecessors for insufficient loyalty during the coup attempt when claim and counter-claim were being broadcast.

"If it were up to me, Sir, I'd leave them as far away from the Haven System as I could possibly get them. The capital has always been the true key to control of the Republic. Whatever their ambitions may or may not be, they can't accomplish anything against the Committee without first seizing control of Nouveau Paris. Which they can't do if they're somewhere down around Grendelsbane or somewhere else at the front. And they have demonstrated that they're one of our more effective command teams. Under the circumstances, my choice would be to pick them as the field commanders tasked with slowing down the new Manty offensive. I'm not certain which would be the more effective way to do that—whether it would be better to have them redouble their efforts in Bagration to try and draw Manty strength back down to Grendelsbane, or to take the time to pull them out of that area and transfer them clear across to meet White Haven head-on—but that's certainly the proper task for them."

"And if they succeed, they'll have more prestige than ever."

"True," Theisman acknowledged, cautiously relieved by the Citizen Chairman's reasonable tone. "On the other hand, if someone doesn't slow White Haven down, any ambitions on their part won't really matter a great deal, will they?" Saint-Just raised his eyebrows, and Theisman shrugged. "I realize I'm only in command of Capital Fleet, Sir, which restricts my information on the general war situation under the new security arrangements, but my read of the situation is that the Manties are blowing away anything that gets in their path. If my understanding is even partly correct—" in fact, it was completely correct, thanks to Denis LePic, but this wasn't the time to mention that "—nothing we currently have between them and Haven is going to be able to stop them. Twelfth Fleet, on the other hand, is our most powerful, best-trained, best-equipped formation. If it can't stop White Haven, then nothing else we have can do the trick, either, and if the Manties capture the capital, we lose the war."

He held his mental breath as he said it at last, but Saint-Just only nodded slowly.

"In addition, Sir," Theisman went on, deeply encouraged by the other's response (or lack thereof), "I think there's another point you ought to consider. So far, Twelfth Fleet has lost two task force commanders in action. There's no reason why it couldn't lose a third . . . or even a commander in chief. Especially with the new Manty weapons."


Theisman argues for not recalling Giscard and Tourville to have them shot for maybe complicity with McQueen. Of course, the best offer he can make that will appeal to Saint-Just is to throw them against Eighth Fleet so their inevitable deaths might accomplish something instead of killing whatever's left of naval morale.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ahriman238 wrote:Honor and Nimitz have introduced the Frisbee to the children of Grayson. Cue harrumphing from conservatives.
I don't think it's so much "conservatives" who are harumphing this time as "people who don't like getting clocked in the head by a frisbee."

It probably doesn't help that most public parks on Grayson are likely to be relatively cramped. I wouldn't let children play in a space on Grayson unless I'd sifted the soil for heavy metals and preferably put it under a dome. Which does not make for wide, spacious parks, and does make for frisbees sailing all over the place in a relatively small area.
Really. A child got hurt playing, and that's your major talking point? Or that the Protector's daughter, at the age of seven, is not a perfect lady and it's somehow all Honor's fault despite hardly ever being around?
In one speech of, probably, hundreds? Sure. Besides, Honor is the poster girl for the "modern woman" in Grayson culture whether she hangs around to create that image or not- she's a celebrity.
Oh, and the plan is to put a recording device in a memory stone Mueller will publically present to the Queen. After they jettison it at the sun, the conspirators will be able to intercept it an acquire proof that the Protector intends to join Manticore more permanently. Well, they tell Mueller it's a recording device....
For all we know, it is. It's just that that is not the primary function of the device. :D
This is a blatant bluff, but having produced a recording, they're in a position to pull it off.
Especially since Mueller knows he was an "un-indicted co-conspirator" in numerous other crimes, in particular Burdette's. This makes him extra-susceptible to blackmail. Even if he were showing his usual cagey behavior and political intelligence, at this point he'd be sweating bullets.
Seriously Mueller, you used to be so much smarter than this.
Yeah. Honestly, Weber should have used an entirely different steadholder for this role, one more biddable. That would let him keep Mueller around so they could actually have another round of "political strife on Grayson" in Book Ten or later. And it would make it easier to explain how in only five or six years, a sharp, clever schemer with a penchant for ass-covering turned into a soft, biddable lump.
The lack of armor above and below a ship. Which is a little silly at least, the roof and floor of a wedge is hundreds of klicks away, so there's plenty or room for a laser head to get a good angle.
Hm... no, not really, since the wedge roof and floor are also hundreds of kilometers wide. Any shot directed at the dorsal or ventral surfaces of the ship would have to pass obliquely through the sidewall, which would probably reduce its chance of hitting the target to practically nil. Even if it got through the sidewall it would hit the hull at a shallow angle, increasing the effective thickness of hull material it'd have to pass through to hurt anything by... oh, about a factor of two. Even 'unarmored' material might be an obstacle if you pile enough of it into the beam path.
Note, LACs are a terrible menace to inactive ships, with 3 DN, 5 BB and many cruiser and BC casualties to the first attack.
Reminds me of what late 19th-century torpedo boats were expected to be able to do if they got into a harbor to attack ships at anchor...
Theisman didn't think so. Ryan had been caught completely unprepared for the attack. That was hardly her fault, and Theisman was honest enough to admit that the same thing probably would have happened to him under the same circumstances... it was unlikely the Manties would be able to repeat MacGregor's devastating, close-in run on ships of the wall with cold nodes... dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts would be as hard for them to kill in the future as they ought to have been at MacGregor. Besides, impressive as the new LACs were, enough old-fashioned light attack craft, operating purely defensively, should be able to considerably blunt their effectiveness. They couldn't possibly be as tough as the more panicky analysts suggested... he should be able to kill them. Or at least force them to operate far more circumspectly, which would be almost as good.
You forgot the way LACs appear out of nowhere and vanish back into stealth after striking. But yes, even clouds of old-style LACs will do a lot to blunt the advantage. I'm not sure just how panicked some analysts are or what they're saying, but I'm leaning more towards their being correct (sidewalls as strong as SDs) than Tom in this case.
Although Theisman turns out to be basically right in the long haul, because spamming a more traditional LAC design is pretty much exactly how the Republic fleet counters the Manticoran LAC advantage in the second round of the war. They build SD-sized carriers that launch massive swarms of pared-down LACs which are basically designed solely to screen the fleet, get out there, and generate lots of firing angles to shoot missiles at enemy LAC attacks.

And none of this relies on any fundamentally new technology- if the Havenites had wanted to build CLACs in 1910 PD they could have done so, and could easily have built a LAC capable of serving the role described here... they just didn't bother, because while such a LAC would be useful for intercepting a hypothetical super-LAC, it would not be effective against full-up starships.

So while Theisman may be underestimating what it'd take to stop Manticoran LACs from being effective at antiship strike, he's not wrong in thinking that he CAN stop them from being effective, without Haven needing to invent any fundamentally new technologies.
Actually, the podnoughts will probably be the easiest part to duplicate, you could do it in a year or two. You just don't have a year or two.
Well, you could do it in a year or two, it'd probably take three or four to do it well, because you really do need to totally redesign your ship. It would be like building, oh, a donut-shaped car: you could do it, but it's totally unlike other cars structurally, so to give it good performance would take a lot of careful engineering.

But duplicating the functionality of the SD(P) does the Havenites absolutely no good- even less good than duplicating Manticoran LACs would- if they don't match the Manticoran missile range advantage.
Even with the range, EW missiles are keeping the hit ratios pretty even with more conventional ranged missile duels. These fuckoff huge missile swarms eat a lot of ammo it's true, but as long as supplies hold up all the PBN can do is offer Hamish more targets.
Although once the Havenites learn to respond effectively to Manticoran EW, the RMN's hit rates go sharply down. It's just that they haven't had time to adapt, and the new missiles' extreme range (plus LACs to finish off survivors) means that very few Havenite ships are escaping to give accurate reports on what Ghost Rider electronic countermeasures are capable of.
The first time Theisman and Saint-Just butted head, over whether or not to shoot his predecessors for insufficient loyalty during the coup attempt when claim and counter-claim were being broadcast.
Also the interesting point that a priori a naval officer would have no way of knowing it wasn't Saint-Just trying to stage a coup and McQueen trying to stop him.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

Terralthra wrote:The "hundred thousand+" comment is referring to how much fire he could put out, not how much he actually put out. Later on, it describes each wave as being a more sedate "over 3,000" missiles.
Whoops. Of course, that makes Dmitri's comment that no one has ever seen such a tide of missiles coming at him facetious.

I'm wondering if the accel figures are dodgy too. The MDMs have an edge of 3,000 Gs over OBS missiles in endurance mode, and 9,000 for max accel. Respectively 45 and 48 thousand, and 85 vs. 96 thousand Gs. Impressive sure, a bit lowball for three drives working together, but who knows how gravitic technology will scale? But when they stepped down the accel at Elric to imitate more ordinary missiles, they knocked just 750 Gs off the endurance accel. Of course the real benefit of MDMs has always been endurance, and it's possible this speed is just because the drives are overpowered and not that in max accel they're all working together. In fact, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
User avatar
Terralthra
Requiescat in Pace
Posts: 4741
Joined: 2007-10-05 09:55pm
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Terralthra »

Ahriman238 wrote:
Terralthra wrote:The "hundred thousand+" comment is referring to how much fire he could put out, not how much he actually put out. Later on, it describes each wave as being a more sedate "over 3,000" missiles.
Whoops. Of course, that makes Dmitri's comment that no one has ever seen such a tide of missiles coming at him facetious.
Well, 3k missiles is roughly a decent pod-loadout for White Haven's fleet. So he fires off all his pods...then he fires them all again. Then he fires them all again. That's how I interpreted the "tide" comment. A single wave of missiles, sure, we've seen waves that like that before, but this is wave after wave after wave. A tide.
Ahriman238 wrote:I'm wondering if the accel figures are dodgy too. The MDMs have an edge of 3,000 Gs over OBS missiles in endurance mode, and 9,000 for max accel. Respectively 45 and 48 thousand, and 85 vs. 96 thousand Gs. Impressive sure, a bit lowball for three drives working together, but who knows how gravitic technology will scale? But when they stepped down the accel at Elric to imitate more ordinary missiles, they knocked just 750 Gs off the endurance accel. Of course the real benefit of MDMs has always been endurance, and it's possible this speed is just because the drives are overpowered and not that in max accel they're all working together. In fact, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems.
The drives work in sequence, not all together. Think stages, not afterburners.
User avatar
Batman
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 16429
Joined: 2002-07-09 04:51am
Location: Seriously thinking about moving to Marvel because so much of the DCEU stinks

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Batman »

In later books they deliberately let the missiles coast between drive activations to increase range from incredible to ridiculous and I see no reason why the early MDMs would have worked any different. In fact I think they are repeatedly described as working in sequence throughout the rest of the series.
Besides, a 6/13 percent increase in acceleration would be pretty pathetic for a triple drive system working together.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

Hamish Alexander stood on Benjamin the Great's flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power.

At the moment, his plot was in astrographic configuration, showing him the stars between Trevor's Star and the Lovat System. Peep-held systems sprawled across it in a leprous red rash. That much remained the same. But a few changes had been introduced over the last two months, and his lips pursed thoughtfully as he regarded them.
Remember thou art mortal. Two months into Buttercup.

Lovat lay close to the center of the spherical volume of the PRH. Only forty-nine light-years from the Haven System, it was a major industrial node, which made it an important target in its own right. It was also one of the PRH's core systems, a daughter colony rather than one of its unruly conquests, whose local government had been one of the first to declare its support for the Committee of Public Safety following the Harris assassination. Yet for all its importance, it was so far behind the frontiers no prewar strategist had ever seriously contemplated the possibility of a major attack upon it.

But things change, and over the last four or five T-years most strategists, Allied and Peep alike, had come to regard Lovat as the penultimate stop on any advance to Nouveau Paris. Always well fortified, the system now bristled with defenses almost as tough as those protecting the capital system itself, not to mention a local defense fleet built around several squadrons of the wall.

All in all, Lovat was a formidable military obstacle, and after eleven years of war, it had come to seem hopelessly remote. Something, some people had joked, to make them grateful for prolong, since that was the only thing which gave them a chance of living long enough to see it taken.

But now, as White Haven gazed into the plot, a solid cone of green stars glowed amid the crimson traceries of Peep-held space. That cone's base rested on the systems of Sun-Yat, to the northwest, and Welladay, to the southeast, and its tip was the Tequila System—pointing straight at Lovat from a distance of barely 3.75 light-years.
Lovat, the last system between Eighth Fleet and Haven itself, now that the Tequila system has fallen. Lots of ratings wanted to have leave in Tequila, I'm sure.

His thoughts ranged back over the hectic, furiously paced series of actions which had brought them to this point. Secure in his technological and tactical superiority, he'd embraced the operational concept Truman and Honor had devised for Buttercup and split Eighth Fleet into independent, fast-moving, hard-hitting task forces. The main force, TF 81, built around a solid core of Harrington/Medusas, had hammered straight up the middle, smashing the defenses of one fortified system after another with missile bombardments to which the Peeps could make no reply. At the same time, lighter forces, each based around three or four CLACs and escorts, with one or two SD(P)s to keep an eye on things, had spread out from the main axis of advance. They'd slashed into more lightly held systems, ravaging the picket forces covering the flanks of the nodal task forces TF 81 had reduced to wreckage. Even when the Peeps detected the LACs on their way in, the fleet, lethal little craft invariably managed to accomplish their missions. Partly that was because those missions were carefully planned, but it was also because of the sheer tenacity and ability of the LAC crews. They'd taken losses along the way—much heavier losses than TF 81, in point of fact—but grievous as those casualties were among the small, tight knit communities of the LAC wings, they were minute compared to the cost a conventional advance through so many systems would have exacted.
Operations plan for Buttercup, while a solid core of wallers and podnoughts drove hard down the center conquering every hardpoint , 5-6 lighter divisions, a few carriers and escorts, handled the more minor bases.

Caparelli and the Allied Joint Chiefs were working furiously to dig up the conventional forces to hold what he'd taken, but the Peeps were growing more ambitious as he cut deeper and deeper into the PRH. They couldn't fight Eighth Fleet head-on, but they knew that, so they were concentrating on working around his flanks, striving to threaten his rear and cut his supply lines, instead. He had too few of the new ship types to detach any for rear area security, so they could at least hope to pounce on conventional ships of the wall. On the other hand, those "conventional" capital ships were well equipped with pods stuffed full of Ghost Rider missiles, which meant even the flank attacks were producing catastrophic Peep losses.

Nonetheless, it was a mathematical impossibility for the Alliance to adequately picket and garrison all of the systems in which Eighth Fleet had blitzed the defenses. Indeed, the Allies lacked the ground troops to occupy or even take the formal surrenders of all of the inhabited planets in the systems through which Eighth Fleet had rampaged. But that was all right. White Haven's units had smashed the defenses and orbital infrastructure in any system he wasn't prepared to occupy and then moved on, leaving them crippled and impotent behind him. They might still serve as support bases for the raiding squadrons trying to operate against his rear, but that was all they could do, and eventually the Alliance would get around to gathering them up in a neat, orderly sort of way.
Smart of the Peeps. If you can't win in a head-on fight, work the angles. Eighth Fleet has taken more systems than the Alliance could possibly hold or occupy, so for everything not strategically important they smash the infrastructure and industry along with the local defenders, than move on.

But however heady the moment, the time had finally come when he had no choice but to call a halt. Not a long one. No more than a few weeks—a month and a half; two months at the outside—while his mobile repair ships dealt with a growing litany of minor repairs and deferred maintenance requirements. While the missile colliers labored forward from Trevor's Star, to reload his SD(P)s' pods. While other freighters came forward with replacement LACs for his CLACs . . . and, in too many cases, replacement crews. The LACs had been worked hard, and he welcomed the opportunity to stand them down for a little much needed rest. And he was determined that he would not run his maintenance cycles too far into the red this time. This time he would be certain he had no need to stop and send a third of his combat power back to the yards!

But it wouldn't be a long pause, he promised himself. And when Eighth Fleet advanced once more, it would be as a single, concentrated force that would reduce the defenses of Lovat to splinters.

And from there, he thought, astounded even now that he dared to so much as contemplate the possibility, Haven and Nouveau Paris.
Learning from before, there shall be a brief musical interlude, perhaps a couple of months. Then Lovat, Haven and checkmate. Crushing Manticoran victory.

Of all the surprises he'd suffered since McQueen's death, few had matched the impact of discovering the true relationship between Giscard and Pritchart. Tourville had begun nursing some suspicions about Pritchart. Less because of anything she'd ever said or done, for she'd played her role to perfection, than because Giscard had shown just that little bit too much independence and freedom of maneuver in exercising his command authority. But not even he had dreamed the two of them were lovers. He'd thought it was something else, like his own pre-Cerberus relationship with Honeker. The possibility that the two of them were actual partners, working jointly to deceive StateSec's other spies, had been a total shock . . . and explained a great deal.
Tourville and Honeker are filled in on Giscard and Prichart's relationship, as long as they're all going to die anyways.

The Lovat System lay before them in all its glory. The space about the central star glittered with the icons of military and civilian shipyards, processing plants, deep-space factories, fortresses, minefields, old-style LACs, missile pods, and the serried squadrons of Twelfth Fleet. Against any normal enemy, that massive concentration of power would have been impregnable. Against what was going to come at them, probably in no more than a month or two, all it was likely to accomplish was to inflate the body count.

"I wish," Tourville said very quietly, even here, before people he trusted with his very life, "we could just surrender the damned place to White Haven." Eyes swiveled to him, and he twitched his shoulders uncomfortably. "I know. It goes against the grain. But, Jesus! It's not just what's waiting for us back on Haven. Think of all our people, sitting here in ships the Manties have just turned into nothing but targets. How many thousands of them are going to get killed just because Saint-Just is too frigging stubborn—or stupid—to realize it's over and surrender?!"
Yep, Giscard and Tourville are assigned to hold Lovat. Not that they could actually surrender.

"No, you do have a point. Unfortunately, there's no way to pull it off after Saint-Just stuck us with his fresh 'reinforcements.' " His smile was a sour grimace, and Tourville nodded. Twelfth Fleet now boasted two complete squadrons of StateSec SDs which no longer even pretended that their real job wasn't to watch Giscard's and Tourville's flagships.
StateSec has at least fourteen SDs, probably more than a few more. But there's a dozen sitting on Twelfth Fleet for this most crucial coming battle.

Of course, the security people had found ways to compensate for their exclusion, she thought, glancing up at the buildings fronting on Steadholder's Square. Even Austin Cathedral's towers had been taken over by Planetary Security SWAT teams, and there was at least one security man with a pulser, and another with a plasma rifle, and a third with a man-portable SAM launcher on every building top which offered a line of sight to the square. Not to mention the stingships drifting watchfully overhead, or the troopers waiting just out of sight in full battle armor with heavy weapons.

It was all very impressive, yet Honor suspected it was also unnecessary. Not that she'd even considered objecting. Assassination was a tactic which shocked the Grayson soul, as the public reaction to Lord Burdette's attempt to assassinate her had demonstrated, not to mention the planet-wide revulsion and horror produced by Reverend Hanks' death. But those murder attempts also demonstrated that it was not unheard of, and anything that protected the heads of state of both her star nations was a very good thing in Honor Harrington's eyes.
Security around the Protector and Queen for their public appearance. Again with Graysons don't like assassins, no Steadholder has been murdered since the Civil War. I really wonder if that isn't just because the Civil War started with a mass extermination of Steadholders, cowardly sneak attack etc.

"INS just broke a fresh story on the chaos in Nouveau Paris," she said, and grimaced. "I can't say I'm happy at the thought of a butcher like Saint-Just running the PRH single-handed, and I doubt the public at large is, either, when it thinks about it. But people also figure that the way he got there indicates there's a lot more opposition to the Committee than anyone thought . . . and that a general Peep collapse may be the fastest way to end the war. Besides, the same broadcast released the declassified portions of Earl White Haven's latest dispatches."
Morale is looking a lot better, news of the coup attempt and that Saint-Just is in charge now has finally filtered back to Manticore.

"This entire visit was a brilliant notion, Elizabeth, if you'll pardon my saying so. There are some on Grayson who'd managed to convince themselves, or perhaps it would be better to say comforted themselves with the notion, that you're actually just a mouthpiece. That the Star Kingdom isn't really run by anyone as silly and frivolous as a mere woman! Those people have built up this notion that some sort of male cabal is really hiding behind your throne, pulling the strings. Now that we Graysons have had a chance to see you in person, that idea is so obviously ludicrous that anyone who openly suggested such a thing would be laughed out of public life."
Yes, several diplomats did their best to subtly imply this, without saying anything that might come back to embarrass them, in their initial contacts with Grayson and Masada both. So if the idea persists the Manties really only have themselves to blame.

"And the timing is superb, Your Majesty," Prestwick put in. "Your arrival is associated in the public mind with the sudden turn in the course of the war. No one is foolish enough to attribute that turn to your visit. Not on an intellectual basis, at least. But the emotional impact has linked you and those victories indelibly in the impressions of our steaders. And quite a few of our steadholders, I suspect."
Always good to be able to play on the emotions of the public.

"If I'd felt certain one way or the other, I would have told you before this. There's just . . . something. Ariel and I discussed it while Benjamin was changing, and he can't nail it down any better than that. Of course, we're still learning to sign, but I don't think that was the problem. According to him—" she ran one hand gently down the 'cat's spine "—Mueller has a lot on his mind right now. He's nervous and angry, and more than a little scared about something, and he doesn't care for me at all. But whatever he's angry or scared about isn't associated with me. Or, rather, it isn't directly associated with me. I'm mixed up in it somewhere, but more as an additional thing for him to be scared about than because of any threat he poses to me." She shrugged and grinned crookedly. "It's just a little humbling to discover that the 'cats aren't quite as all-knowing as some of us had imagined. Ariel can pick up a lot from other people's emotions, but he can't establish direct links between those emotions and specific individuals or thoughts unless those links are very strong . . . and in the forefront of the other person's mind, at that."
Limits of treecat empathy.

Honor's eyes widened. Unlike any of the visiting Manticorans, she knew what was involved in investigating one of Grayson's Keys. It was hardly something the Sword would undertake lightly, both because of the evidentiary standards required to initiate such a move and the risk of political damage if it became known. But if Benjamin had issued a Sword finding of the probability that a Key was guilty of high treason, the only legal basis for a "black" investigation of a steadholder, then perhaps there was a very good reason for those bleak spikes of hatred she'd felt coming from him whenever Mueller's name was mentioned.

"One of the things we've been looking into is the huge amount of money he's spending," Rice went on. "We have strong evidence that he's funneling illegal campaign contributions to Opposition candidates in the upcoming elections. That's a serious offense, but it falls short of the Constitutional definition of treason. The Sword can preemptively remove a steadholder for treason, unless a two-thirds vote of the Keys overrides him. But for the misdemeanors and malfeasance we can actually prove, a full impeachment hearing, where it would take a two-thirds vote to remove him before he could face criminal charges, would be required. We'd like to avoid that, so we've been digging along several other lines, as well, though I feel confident we'll settle for impeachment in the end if we have to.
Some of the difficulties involved in investigating or prosecuting a Steadholder.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ahriman238 wrote:
Hamish Alexander stood on Benjamin the Great's flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power.

At the moment, his plot was in astrographic configuration, showing him the stars between Trevor's Star and the Lovat System. Peep-held systems sprawled across it in a leprous red rash. That much remained the same. But a few changes had been introduced over the last two months, and his lips pursed thoughtfully as he regarded them.
Remember thou art mortal. Two months into Buttercup.
Victory disease is a powerful thing. White Haven is doing his best to resist.
Lovat, the last system between Eighth Fleet and Haven itself, now that the Tequila system has fallen. Lots of ratings wanted to have leave in Tequila, I'm sure.
Actually the booze is terrible, the planet's named for the giant wandering cactus-monsters and sandworms. ;)
Smart of the Peeps. If you can't win in a head-on fight, work the angles. Eighth Fleet has taken more systems than the Alliance could possibly hold or occupy, so for everything not strategically important they smash the infrastructure and industry along with the local defenders, than move on.
The Havenite fleet also has less of a disadvantage when fighting RMN light units left behind to garrison the rear area, because those ships aren't MDM-capable. They may have overwhelming EW advantages, but at least the Havenite ships can get into weapons range without dying.

[Aivars Terekhov commands a cruiser caught by one such Havenite raid]
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Batman
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 16429
Joined: 2002-07-09 04:51am
Location: Seriously thinking about moving to Marvel because so much of the DCEU stinks

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Batman »

They still have pod MDMs but at least the Peeps are only hopelessly outranged for the initial salvo, and the standard ships probably aren't nearly as well equipped to handle those long-range engagements as the dedicated podlayers are.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
User avatar
Terralthra
Requiescat in Pace
Posts: 4741
Joined: 2007-10-05 09:55pm
Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Terralthra »

Ahriman238 wrote:
"No, you do have a point. Unfortunately, there's no way to pull it off after Saint-Just stuck us with his fresh 'reinforcements.' " His smile was a sour grimace, and Tourville nodded. Twelfth Fleet now boasted two complete squadrons of StateSec SDs which no longer even pretended that their real job wasn't to watch Giscard's and Tourville's flagships.
StateSec has at least fourteen SDs, probably more than a few more. But there's a dozen sitting on Twelfth Fleet for this most crucial coming battle.
TWO dozen. One squadron (remember that StateSec squadrons are oversize, so they can take on a Navy Battle Squadron with a hope of victory) for Tourville's flagship, one for Giscard's.
User avatar
Ahriman238
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4854
Joined: 2011-04-22 11:04pm
Location: Ocularis Terribus.

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

Post by Ahriman238 »

The Jamie Candless had proven all she'd hoped for, though she'd had precious little time to play with her new toy. Despite her eleven thousand two hundred-ton mass, Candless was almost as maneuverable as a pinnace, and Silverman's had gotten permission from the Navy to build in a next-to-last-generation military compensator. They never would have gotten it if they'd been building the ship for anyone else, but this time Honor had decided to go right ahead and trade on who she was, and the result was a ship which could crank close to seven hundred gravities. Without one of the lightweight fission piles used in the new LACs, Candless had precious little internal volume to spare, and her maximum designed passenger load was only eight, but she was also designed with the latest system-management AIs. In an emergency, Honor could have managed the entire runabout by herself from the flight deck, but she was too experienced a spacer try it except in an emergency. Besides, Alexander would have had a fit if she'd tried to take "his" boat away from him!
Honor's runabout, named for her fallen armsman.

Few people, even at the Admiralty, had counted on how rapidly and completely Eighth Fleet was going to break the Peeps' front or how deeply White Haven would cut. And even the handful of optimists who might have predicted anything of the sort had never expected the coup (or whatever it had been) which had brought Oscar Saint-Just to absolute power. Which meant none of them had counted on the number of military and foreign policy decisions the Alliance was going to have to make very, very soon. The fortuitous timing which had brought the two rulers universally regarded as the heart and soul of the Alliance into direct, face-to-face contact at such a moment could not be allowed to slip past unutilized, and that had turned Cromarty's and Gold Peak's "vacation" into an exhausting grind of meetings, conferences, and planning sessions.
For just a while, Grayson gets to be the site of all the decision-making.

That would keep everyone more or less happy. Unfortunately, it would also pack Queen Adrienne to the deckheads, so Benjamin had invited Elizabeth to make the trip as his guest aboard Grayson One, instead. The Grayson vessel was smaller than Queen Adrienne, and not quite so palatial, but she still had plenty of gold plating in the heads. And despite her smaller size, she actually had more room, since she wasn't going to be cluttered with secretaries, assistant secretaries, under-assistant secretaries, and special assistants to the assistant secretaries. Elizabeth and her Aunt Caitrin, who had accompanied her husband on the trip, had accepted the invitation. Although Duchess Winton-Henke had once been Elizabeth's regent and remained an important member of her inner circle of advisers, she no longer held official office and had been fervently grateful for the opportunity to escape the ministers' crushing workload for at least one afternoon. At this very moment, Honor felt certain, Benjamin and his guests were comfortably ensconced in one of Grayson One's luxurious salons enjoying themselves immensely. Elizabeth's cousin Calvin, alas, was not, for he was stuck aboard Queen Adrienne as his father's confidential secretary.
Group going to tour Blackbird, for a variety of personal and political reasons. The Queen and Protector on Grayson One (another Americanism) while the Manty PM and Foreign Secretary are on the Queen's yacht and Honor gets to play on her runabout.

Captain Gavin Bledsoe sat in his own command chair, watching the icons on his plot move steadily closer, and an odd, euphoric terror gripped him. He, too, saw the shell of light attack craft maintaining careful watch on Grayson One and Queen Adrienne, and he'd heard enough about the recently declassified craft to know how lethal they were. He didn't know any details about armament, power plants, or electronics; the Alliance wasn't in the habit of handing out that sort of information in the middle of a war. But he knew his ore freighter could never evade them if they came after him.
Some of the new-model LACs, I'd use Ferrets, escorting the VIPs.

The Manticoran oppressors of Masada had blathered away about their desire to bring their victims the "blessings" of more advanced technology. Their beguiling blandishments had deceived many into abandoning the stony resistance with which the true Faithful confronted their conquerors, and in his more charitable moments, Bledsoe had to admit that one could hardly blame those weaker souls for falling by the wayside. The Harlot's servants were patient, and careful to troll their lures before the most vulnerable. New medical science for the elderly and ill. The abomination of their "prolong" treatments to extend lives centuries beyond the natural span God had decreed for His children. New schools to teach the wonders of their soul-destroying technology . . . and brainwash the next generation into acceptance of their evil, secularized universe.

They swore no one would be compelled to accept any of their "gifts," but they lied. Oh, they never marched anyone in at gun point and forced them to partake, but even the best men were weak without the rod of God's discipline. The Manticorans and their Grayson puppets knew the true way to encompass the final destruction of the Faithful lay not through force of arms, which would only create martyrs and make weak men strong in God's service, but through seduction. Through slow, gradual erosion. Good men, men who should be pillars of the Faith, could be tempted by the offer of medicines to heal a sick wife . . . or the promise of centuries of life for a child. But with every step any individual took along the path of sin, all of God's Faithful were weakened.
A.... different perspective on the Masadan Occupation, one which sounds like it's going a lot better for Manticore than seven or eight years ago. Of course, by now the occupation has been in place over a decade.

The occupation of Masada had never been as all-pervasive as the occupiers no doubt wished it could have been. One simply could not land sufficient troops to garrison and patrol a planet of five or six billion people, which no doubt helped explain the occupiers' strategy of seduction. The orbital bases which gleamed in Masada's night skies, bristling with kinetic weapons and stuffed with battle-armored Marines who could be inserted directly from orbit to destroy any who came out in open opposition, were hardly the same thing as day-to-day contact with their subjugated victims. The fallen among the Faithful who willingly collaborated with their conquerors in the systematic desecration of God's ordained way of life were another matter. There were enough of them, and they knew their native world well enough, to establish an effective planet-wide police force, but they had been slow to emerge . . . at first, at least. By the time enough of them had sold their souls to the Harlot, the true core of the Faithful's strength had disappeared underground, where not even traitors could find it. Many of the Council of Elders' most critical records had been destroyed before the Manticorans could secure them, and men like Shackleton, who'd served the Council's intelligence services and the Office of the Inquisition well, had simply disappeared.
The underground, at least some Masadans are helping to police their fellows. Once again Masada is far more populous than Grayson, the wonder of living on a planet that isn't trying to kill you constantly.

Bledsoe didn't know who had originated the initial strategy. He supposed it must be the present Council of Elders. Although forced underground and compelled to conceal their identities, the Elders remained the legitimate government of Masada and the guardians of the Faithful. They also controlled the secret war chest the old Council had established, and they'd diverted those funds shrewdly, establishing true sons of the Faith in critical positions in the new Masadan industrial complex. None were in position to gain access to modern weapons. The occupiers were too smart to allow any weapons production in the Endicott System. But they were able to establish other useful contacts.
Apparently the underground have established a new Council of Elders they believe to be the legitimate government.

The occupiers' insistence on "building bridges" between Endicott and Yeltsin's Star had been enormously helpful in bringing that about. Denied any military industry, the yards in orbit around Masada had been turning out commercial designs, including the new asteroid extraction plants and freighters for both Yeltsin's Star and the nascent deep-space industry of Endicott. Bledsoe's own command was one of those freighters, a big, slow sublight ore hauler, with none of the greyhound leanness of a warship
With help, the Masadans are doing some civilian shipbuilding and industry.

It hadn't been particularly difficult to find a pretext for Bledsoe's ship to take a week or two off, nor had it been difficult for Bledsoe to quietly move beyond the reaches of the outer system of Yeltsin's Star to rendezvous with the equally surreptitious repair ship. Getting it out there had cost a fortune in fees and risk bonuses, but its Solarian technicians had done their job well, and when he returned to service, no one could possibly be blamed for not realizing he now carried two shipkiller missiles in concealed launchers just inside his outer skin plating.

They weren't proper missiles. For one thing, it would have been impossible to conceal an all-up naval missile tube and its grav drivers. And it would have been equally impossible to disguise a military-grade fire control and sensor suite. But that had been allowed for, and the missiles actually had more in common with recon drones than with conventional missiles. They were relatively slow (though with vastly more acceleration than any manned vessel), but they were also very stealthy, and they carried extremely sensitive homing systems. Their drone-style drives also had far more endurance than the drives missiles used, which gave them a very wide attack envelope. Of course, despite their stealth features and homing systems, they would have been virtually useless against a reasonably alert ship of war underway. But they weren't intended to attack alert warships, and they should prove quite adequate for their true purpose.
Two missiles inside a sublight asteroid hauler. Operation Hassan realized. Saint-Just cultivated these Masadan contacts so one day he could initiate a key assassination or bit of sabotage in the Yeltsin system. In this case, the missiles will home in on the beacons inside Elizabeth and Mayhew's gifted memory stones. Though, really, how and why Saint-Just would arrange those contacts after the last time Haven and Masada tried working together, I cannot say.

The final delay while they awaited the last piece of hardware had been infuriating, and Bledsoe suspected Donizetti had intentionally drawn it out—and exaggerated the difficulties he faced—to negotiate his fees upward, but it had been delivered at last. And Donizetti's ship had suffered an "accident" as it left Masadan orbit.
And the Solly weapons dealer who provided these won't be talking to anyone. Or providing the Masadans with more weapons for that matter. So wasteful.

"It was probably only a ripple in her wedge," he said. "Lord knows they work those boats hard enough for the nodes to flip an occasional surge. But just in case, put us on a vector to close for a closer look. And while Alf does that, Bob," he turned to the com officer, "pass his report and a copy of his data to the screen commander."
The escort detects launch in the flickering of the hauler's wedge, assume it's just one of those things that happens sometimes, but is going to check it out just in case.

She froze, staring at the HUD as another icon blinked briefly in it. No, not one icon. There'd been two . . . and they were an awful lot closer than Willis' original "ghost" had been. She blinked and frowned, trying to come up with any reasonable explanation, but there wasn't one.

She entered more commands, and her frown deepened as a vector back-plot appeared. It strobed rapidly, indicating that the computer considered it tentative, but it connected the ghosts she'd just seen with the ones Willis had reported, and her eyes narrowed as she saw the accel value the plot had assigned. If there actually was a physical object out there, then it had to be under a high acceleration to account for that great a displacement. But the accel figure was far too low for any sort of missile. Besides, at this ridiculously low range, any missile drive would have showed up like a deep-space flare! So it couldn't possibly—

Her plot flickered again. The ghosts were no stronger than before, but they'd continued to close, and Honor Harrington sucked in a shuddering breath as the tactical intuition she'd never been able to explain to anyone else realized what she was seeing.

Her right hand shifted on the stick, her second finger stabbing the button that accessed the screen's guard channel, and her voice rapped from every bridge speaker and com officer's earbug aboard every unit of the screen and both yachts.

"Vampire! Vampire! Inbound missiles, bearing zero-three-zero zero-zero-two from Grayson One!"
Good thing Honor is both suspicious and easily bored.

Honor's warning hit the screen and the yachts' crews like a thunderbolt. Had it come from anyone else, many of the officers involved would have discounted the absurd alarm. Even knowing who'd sounded it, disbelief held them all for precious seconds. But then trained reactions shook off the paralysis, and tac officers aboard the screening LACs swung their own sensors to the indicated bearing, searching frantically while point defense systems sprang from standby to ready status.

But they couldn't see the targets! There was nothing there . . . except . . .

"Well, Alf?" Lieutenant Hines snapped, and the tac officer shrugged.

"Skip, I can't find the bastards!" Willis said desperately. "I— Wait!" He stabbed a key, then swore savagely. "I thought I had it for a second, Skip, but it's too damned faint a signal—nothing but a frigging ghost! I can't get anything solid enough for a lock!"
Solly stealth systems, at least in this one case with a surprise launch from spitting distance, are good enough to baffle Manty point defense.

Low as their acceleration rates were compared to missiles, they were still much too high for any manned vessel to keep away from. Worse, they were coming in silent, with no active targeting emissions. That meant they were homers and, presumably, that they'd been homing from the moment of launch, but how could they be doing that?
We the audience know how, but Honor quickly concludes they're homing in on a signal because they have no active seekers and didn't reacquire on an LAC when it got in the way.

Countermissiles streaked out, but that only complicated the problem. The fantastically over-powered countermissiles were even less effective than their mother ships'. Worse, their wedges and emissions could be picked up . . . and blotted out even the feeble ghost returns Honor had managed to detect.

She started to bark an order, but the screen commander had already seen what she had, and his own order beat her to it. The countermissiles vanished from her plot as the LACs which had launched them sent the self-detonation commands, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she managed to find the missiles again.
Countermissiles ineffective, and the first time I can remember missiles self-destructing on command from their mother-ship, though they've always had the capability. Keeps them from flying into planets or into deep space.

They were closer, and her mouth dried as the time to attack range counter spun downward on her HUD. Some of the LACs were firing their own point defense clusters, though the range was long for those weapons, and even their grasers at their best-guess positions on the missiles, but they had virtually no chance of hitting them. Grayson One and Queen Adrienne were also responding, turning away from the threat and rolling ship in an effort to interpose their wedges. Neither yacht carried any armament, but both were equipped with comprehensive EW fits, and their electronic defenses sprang to life. Yet there was little for those defenses to defend against, for the silently pursuing killers radiated no active targeting systems to be jammed, and they seemed utterly oblivious to the efforts to confuse them with decoys.
Laser clusters and EW also way less effective against stealthy homing missiles.

Cromarty and Hodges seemed confused, but Prestwick and Earl Gold Peak were much quicker on the uptake. Fear flickered in their eyes, but they refused to panic, and the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary grabbed their colleagues and began hustling them down the passageway beyond the hatch. Ney grabbed Calvin Henke, the earl's son, by the collar and dragged him through the hatch behind them. Henke fought him for a moment, trying to break away and get the rest of the staffers out of the stateroom, but Ney was much stronger—and nastier—than Lord Henke. A three-fingered jab to the solar plexus did the job quite nicely, and he scooped the suddenly paralyzed nobleman up in a fireman's carry as he jogged down the passageway behind the ministers.

The life pod hatches sprang open as the ministers turned the final bend, and two of Ney's assistants were waiting. They threw their charges into the pods, slammed the hatches, and armed the eject sequence, and then they simply stood there, staring at Ney while their chests heaved with exertion.

He stared back, and his brain whirred. Part of him wanted to launch the pods now, but if those were laser heads and the people who'd launched them had anticipated such a move, the slow pods would be sitting ducks, despite their armor. Better to leave them where they were. A laser head would shred the unarmored yacht like tissue, but the small, well-armored life pods would have an excellent chance of surviving. Ney and his people, none of whom were in skinsuits, would not, but it was the best chance the men they were sworn to protect had. But if it was an old-fashioned contact nuke . . .

If it's a laser head, they've got a chance, Ney thought. Please, God—please let it be a laser head! he prayed, and bowed his head, waiting.
A moment's indecision. Launching the pods would make them more vulnerable to laser heads but save their lives against a nuke, leaving them in the pods with their own life support reverses the equation, a nuke would definitely kill them but they'd have better odds against the lasers.

The weapons pursuing the yachts were the best Solarian hardware money could buy, but they were special-use devices, not regular weapons of war, designed for ambush scenarios. The people who'd designed them for the Solarian League Navy had waxed poetic about the capabilities they would confer upon the SLN. The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run.

The SLN's rejection, however, had left the firm who'd designed them with a large R&D expenditure and no legal way to recoup it. Because the weapons incorporated the very latest SLN stealth technology, their sale to anyone but the SLN was an act of treason, but no one really worried about that. The firms who built and equipped the SLN's warships had gotten into the habit of ignoring the technology transfer prohibition clauses in their contracts centuries ago, and no one had ever gotten more than a slap on the wrist for it. So when Oscar Saint-Just's StateSec representatives on Old Earth went shopping, an obliging salesman pointed them straight at the rejected weapons.
The obvious reasons the SLN doesn't use these missiles, the homing beacon lets them get away with no active emissions, other wise they'd have to light up in the last minute or two of flight and probably lose surprise. But wait til you hear why Oscar wanted them.

Homing beacons had been surreptitiously placed aboard every capital ship of the People's Navy during refits. They were carefully hidden and did absolutely nothing . . . until they received the activation command. But once activated, they would radiate a target source which the weapon could track completely passively, without ever going active. That meant it could be launched even from a ship which couldn't actually see the target . . . and would remain no more than a ghost up to the instant of detonation. And what would work against rebellious units of the People's Navy would work just as well against a Manticoran target if only some way could be found to get an equivalent beacon aboard the intended victim.

Nothing the PRH had could pick the new weapons up unless its seekers went active. Saint-Just's technical people estimated that the Manties probably could detect them, but not even Manticoran technology would be able to localize them well enough to generate a targeting solution as long as they stayed silent.
Yep, every regular service waller has a remote-activated homing beacon and every StateSec waller stocks several of these missile to use as needed. Smart, but very, very cold. Oh, and this whole operation Oscar dreamed up, wanting only for a way to smuggle a homing beacon aboard a Manty ship.

Lady Harrington's runabout was accelerating madly, at a rate not even one of the new LACs could have matched, as she raced up on Grayson One's flank. The fleet little vessel rolled as it closed, turning the plane of its wedge perpendicular to Grayson One's, and he knew what she meant to do.

She was turning her own vessel into the sidewall Grayson One lacked, deliberately positioning herself to take the missile's attack herself.

If it was a contact nuke, she would probably survive, for her impeller wedge, though much smaller than Grayson One's, was just as impenetrable. But if the weapon was a laser head and detonated even slightly above or below her ship, it was virtually certain to kill her.

Yet either way, Grayson One would survive, and Sullivan closed his eyes to pray for the Steadholder.
Honor takes the missile meant for her Queen and Protector's ship, none of the LACs being close enough to do so.

A twenty-megaton warhead detonated less than fifty kilometers from her ship. For one fleeting instant, Jamie Candless was trapped in the very heart of a star, and Honor's canopy went black as the armorplast polarized. But even through her own visceral stab of terror, a corner of her mind exulted, for it was a standard nuke, not a laser head. And that meant there was a chance, if only—

The plasma wave came on the heels of the flash, ripping out across Grayson One's course. But Honor had anticipated that. Her order to turn away had snatched the vulnerable open throat of the yacht's wedge—and her own—away from the center of detonation. The true fury of the explosion wasted itself against Candless' belly stress band. Only its fringes reached out past the wedge, and generators shrieked in torment as the particle and radiation shielding which protected the throat of any impeller wedge took the shock. Those generators were designed to protect the ships which mounted them against normal space particles and debris at velocities of up to eighty percent of light-speed. Grayson One and Candless were moving far slower than that, at barely nine thousand KPS, but their shielding had never been expected to face the holocaust which suddenly erupted across their base course, and the demon howl of the generators and the scream of audible warnings filled the universe. Honor yanked on the stick, jerking Candless away from what she hoped was still the bearing to Grayson One, and her darkened flight deck was a trapped, madly heaving pocket of hell as she shot the rapids of nuclear destruction.

They weren't going to make it. She knew they weren't.

And then, suddenly, the generators stopped shrieking.

Her eyes darted over her HUD, and she drew a deep, shuddery breath. One of her antiparticle generators was gone and the other was damaged—she'd be going back to Grayson at a very low velocity—but she was alive, and so was Grayson One! She stared at the icon of the Protector's yacht, watching as the bigger ship's wedge flickered and went down. Grayson One was hurt, but her com link to the yacht's flight deck was still open, and the bridge crew's harsh, staccato reports told her all she needed to know. Hurt the ship might be, but she was intact . . . and so were her passengers!

But then, on the heels of her elation, a fist of shock struck, for there was only one golden icon on her HUD.
20 MT nuke versus civilian craft, a most miraculous rescue, the royals are safe. A significant part of the Centrist Government, however, is dead.

Michael Janvier, Baron High Ridge, was a tall, spindly man, with cold little eyes and a smile which always made Elizabeth think of a vulture or some other carrion eater. She knew much of her dislike for the man stemmed from her disgust at his isolationist, reactionary, power-seeking politics, and she usually tried to make herself be fairminded where he was concerned. Not today. Today she felt Ariel trembling on her shoulder, whiplashed between the grief he'd endured from his person's sense of loss and the exultation brimming within the cadaverous leader of the Conservative Association, and she wanted nothing more than to strangle him with her bare hands.

The women with him were another proposition entirely—physically, at least. Lady Elaine Descroix, who, with her cousin, the Earl of Gray Hill, headed the Progressive Party, was a small woman, barely a meter and a half tall, with dark hair and eyes and a sweet, smiling face. On first meeting her and her cousin, people tended to assume Gray Hill was the dominant partner, but astute political observers knew who truly called the shots for the Progressives. Many of those observers also felt Descroix was even more amoral than High Ridge, and she'd become increasingly desperate as the war dragged out and the Progressives' position in the House of Commons continued its steady erosion. That had never been a problem for High Ridge, of course, since the Conservative Association had no representation in the Commons.

Maria Turner, Countess New Kiev, was almost as tall as High Ridge, but she was a trim and shapely woman, with long, chestnut hair in a carefully sculpted, windswept style. Her blue eyes burned just as brightly as High Ridge's, and Elizabeth hardly needed Honor Harrington's empathic ability to taste her excitement, but at least New Kiev didn't radiate the aura of indecent anticipation High Ridge and Descroix projected so strongly.

That didn't make things any better, though, for what New Kiev lacked in personal ambition, she more than made up in ideological fervor. Elizabeth could conceive of very few people with whom New Kiev had less in common than High Ridge, but the last decade had thrown the two firmly together. Much as they disliked one another, and divergent as their ultimate goals might be, they both hated Allen Summervale's Centrists even more, and all three of her visitors were painfully aware of the disasters into which their parties had wandered since the outbreak of war. Elizabeth knew the three of them had already agreed on how they would carve up the government if they ever came to power, which spheres each party's policies would be allowed to dominate. It wouldn't last, of course. They were too fundamentally opposed on too many issues for any alliance to hold together for more than a T-year or two, but that didn't matter at this moment.


The Opposition leaders, only, they're no longer the Opposition.

"Let's get directly to the point, My Lord," she told him, her voice flat. "With Allen Summervale's death, his government has lost its majority in the Lords. You know it, and I know it. The nonaligned peers' support was held together in large part by his personal relationships with them. Lord Alexander, the Prime Minister's logical successor, does not command those same alliances, and without them, he can't form a government as required under the Constitution."

"True, Your Majesty," High Ridge murmured, and Elizabeth felt a subsonic snarl ripple through the long, slender body on her shoulder as Ariel tasted his emotions.

"This is not the moment for the Star Kingdom to be paralyzed by a power struggle, My Lord," she said bluntly. "I invited you, Lady Descroix, and Countess New Kiev here, as the acknowledged leaders of the Opposition, to request your support. As your Queen, I ask you to recognize the grave challenges—and opportunities—arising from the recent turn in the course of the war. I would like you to agree to form a coalition government, with Lord Alexander as Prime Minister, for the duration of the conflict."

"Your Majesty," High Ridge began, just a bit too quickly for it to be a spontaneous reaction to her request, "I'm very sorry, but—"

"It won't be for long," Elizabeth overrode him, but her eyes were on New Kiev. "The Admiralty and my civilian analysts all agree that at the present operational tempo, and in light of the decisive technological advantage our forces currently enjoy, the war will be over within another six months, nine at the outside. All I ask is that you support the present government and its policies long enough for this Kingdom and its people to grasp the victory within its reach."
A government (administration, for us parochial Americans) can be formed only by approval of a majority of Lords, and in the British system the PM's role does not automatically devolve to his number two man, in this case the Exchequer William Alexander (White Haven's little brother). Without those who backed the Centrists out of personal loyalty to Allen Summervale, then, their options are a coalition government to see the war to it's close, or simply hand the reigns of government over to these three. Guess what happens next?

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, but it would be impossible, as a matter of principle, for the Conservative Association to support a coalition cabinet under Lord Alexander."

"I see." Elizabeth's voice was chilled steel. She gazed at him for a long, silent moment, then shifted her icy eyes to Lady Descroix. "And the Progressives, Milady?"

"Oh, dear." Descroix sighed, then shook her head regretfully. "I truly wish we could oblige you, Your Majesty, but I'm afraid it's impossible. Simply impossible."

Elizabeth only nodded and switched her eyes to New Kiev. The countess winced, but her chin rose and she met the Queen's eyes squarely.

"Your Majesty, I'm afraid the Liberal Party would find it equally impossible to support Lord Alexander as Prime Minister."

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, and the temperature in the comfortable room seemed to drop perceptibly. New Kiev fidgeted ever so slightly, but High Ridge sat motionless, as if completely calm, under his Queen's basilisk gaze, and Lady Descroix only wrung her hands in her lap and concentrated on looking small and helpless.

"I have asked you, as is my right as your monarch, to accede to my wishes in the interests of the Star Kingdom's security," Elizabeth said coldly. "I have not asked you to abandon your principles. I have not asked you to embrace or pretend to embrace any ideology offensive to you or to your party members. My only concern is the continuity of leadership necessary to win the current war and establish a lasting peace. I ask you to rise above the pettiness of party politics—of all parties' politics, not just your own—and prove worthy of this moment in history."
Oh yeah, that'll happen. These people have been second banana for over a decade and hated every minute of it, leaving aside that New Kiev is the only one with a passing familiarity with principle.

"Very well," she said. "Let's lay all the cards on the table, shall we? I fully realize that the Conservative Association, the Progressive Party, and the Liberal Party between them possess sufficient votes in the Lords, in the absence of the nonaligned peers, to form a government. I also realize that the three of you control sufficient votes to prevent Lord Alexander from forming a government, despite the fact that the Centrists and Crown Loyalists hold a majority of over twenty percent in the House of Commons. And I know your reasons—your true reasons—for refusing to form a coalition government."

She paused, daring any one of them to deny her implication that all their talk of "principles" was a tissue of lies, but none of them seemed prepared to take up that particular challenge, and her lip curled ever so slightly.

"I am fully conversant," she went on with cold precision, "with the reality of partisan politics here in the Star Kingdom. I had hoped that you would prove capable of rising above that reality, if only briefly, at this critical moment, because at this instant, I cannot compel you to do so, and you know it. A protracted struggle between the Crown and a majority Opposition in the Lords could have disastrous consequences upon the war, and unlike you, I do not have the option of neglecting my responsibilities to this Star Kingdom and its people in order to play petty, ambitious, shortsighted, and stupid political games."
Centrists and Crown Loyalists are solid in the Commons, but we've entered an arena where the Commons are irrelevant. So here we go.

"I submit to you," Elizabeth continued, "that however firmly united you may be at this moment, your fundamental policies and principles are too basically opposed for that unity to last. You can, if you choose, use it at this moment to ignore my wishes, but you do so at your peril, for it will come to an end . . . and the Crown will still be here."

There was a moment of dead silence, and even High Ridge sounded slightly shaken when he broke it.

"Is that a threat, Your Majesty?" he asked almost incredulously.

"It is a reminder, My Lord. A reminder that the House of Winton knows its friends . . . and also those who are not its friends. We Wintons have long memories, Baron. If you truly wish to have me as an enemy, it can certainly be arranged, but I urge you to think very carefully first."

"Your Majesty, you can't simply threaten and browbeat peers of the realm!" High Ridge's voice was hot as his mask slipped for the first time. "We, too, have a legitimate role and function in the government of the Star Kingdom, and our collective judgment carries at least as much weight as that of a single individual, whoever she may be. You are our Queen. As your subjects, we are duty bound to listen to you and to weigh your views, but you are not a dictator, and we are not slaves! We will act as we deem best, in accordance with our interpretation of the domestic and foreign situation, and any breach between us and the Crown will not be of our making!"

"This interview is over," Elizabeth said, and stood, shaking with fury, too angry even to notice the incredulity in her guests eyes as she violated all the solemn protocol of the occasion. "I can't keep you from forming a government. Send me your list of ministers. I want it by noon tomorrow. I will act upon it immediately. But—" her eyes stabbed each of them in turn "—remember this day. You're right, My Lord. I'm not a dictator, and I refuse to act like one simply because of your own stupidity and arrogance. But I need not be a 'dictator' to deal with the likes of you, either, and the time will come when you—when all of you—will rue this day!"

And with that, she turned and stormed out of the salon.
Impotent fury, for now, anyway. And so we get a High Ridge Government. Baron High Ridge shall be the new PM, New Kiev the Exchequer. The Progressive leader Descroix gets to be Foreign Secretary, even Pavel Young's little brother Stefan gets to be Minister of Trade. Janacek, the First Space Lord who intentionally tried to cripple Roger IIIs military buildup, assigned only screwballs to Basilisk Stations etc. is back on the horse.

Duchess or no, she had never been a member of the Cromarty Government and had no official role in the formation of its successor. But Elizabeth had wanted her here, and so had Benjamin Mayhew, who was as aware of the critical importance of this moment as any Manticoran. His own situation on Grayson was much simpler, since his Constitution gave him the authority to simply select the individual of his choice as Chancellor and not even the Keys could tell him no. Elizabeth, unfortunately, did not enjoy a matching degree of authority. Her Prime Minister was required by law to control a majority vote in the House of Lords. It was part of the restrictions the original colonists had put in place to protect their own and their children's control of the Star Kingdom, and unlike many others of those restrictions, it survived intact. There had been past instances in which a Manticoran monarch had been compelled to accept a prime minister not of his or her choice, but they had not been happy ones. The Crown was too intimately involved in the day-to-day running of the Star Kingdom for a contest of wills between the monarch and the prime minister to be anything other than a potential disaster.
Mayhew can simply appoint a new Chancellor, the requirement of a majority specifically in the Lords is an ancient protection of the original colonist's privilege.

"The way they see it, they have to take this opportunity, which—as far as they're concerned—is a perfectly legitimate exercise of political power, to take control away from the Centrists and Crown Loyalists. They have no choice, assuming they want to repair the damage their base of popular support has suffered."

Honor quirked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed.

"The Opposition has shot itself in the foot repeatedly. In its prewar opposition to the naval buildup and the extension of the Alliance. In its refusal to vote out a formal declaration of war after Hancock Station. In the way it treated you, Your Grace. And in the way it reacted to McQueen's offensives." He snorted a bitter laugh of his own. "I almost felt sorry for them while we were making the final preparations for Hamish's offensive, because I knew they were cutting their own throats by accelerating their criticism of our military policy just when we were getting ready to squeeze the trigger. But the point is that they've adopted an entire succession of positions which turned out to be wrong. Or which the voters regarded as wrong, at any rate; I rather doubt that people like New Kiev or High Ridge would admit they really had been wrong even now.
So with popular support for the Opposition failing after years of their blunders, they're hoping that running things will let them repair the damage to their reputations? Or that they're unlikely to get another shot at this?

"Think about it, Your Grace. The Centrists and the Crown Loyalists, the two parties which have always been most supportive of the Crown, have fought the entire war despite the endless obstructionism of the Opposition, all of whom predicted that any war with Haven could end only in disaster. Now, having persevered in the face of that obstructionism, we're on the brink of achieving complete military victory. . . and just as we caught the blame for 'lack of preparedness' when McQueen uncorked her offensives, we're about to get the credit for winning the 'impossible' war.

"The Opposition has been terrified ever since Hamish kicked off Buttercup that Allen would call a general election as soon as the PRH surrendered. They figured, correctly, that their representation in the Commons would be devastated at the polls. And they also figured that with a crushing majority in the Commons, plus the full-blooded support of the Crown, plus the prestige of having been proved a great war leader, Allen would be in a position to rout all opposition in the Lords, as well. The Liberals were afraid their demands for social reform would get plowed under, and the Progressives and Conservatives were afraid Elizabeth and Allen would manage what every Winton since Elizabeth I has hoped to accomplish: finally break the House of Lord's monopoly on the initiation of finance bills and the right of consent for Crown appointments. So even though, ultimately, they can't stand one another, the Opposition parties see no choice but to cooperate and make damned sure no Centrists or Crown Loyalists are anywhere near the peace settlement when the Peeps actually surrender. That way they get credit for winning the war . . . and we don't. Not only that, but it lets them decide when to call the next general election, and you can be certain that they'll spend a year or two repairing fences by waving domestic policy carrots under the electorate's nose before they do."
The common fears that have let the Opposition cling together all these years despite having literally nothing else in common.

"You both know my father was killed in a grav-skiing accident. What you don't know is that the 'accident' was nothing of the sort. He was assassinated." Honor sucked in air, feeling as if someone had just punched her in the belly. "He was, in fact, murdered by certain Manticoran politicians opposed to his military policies . . . and effectively in the pay of the People's Republic of Haven," Elizabeth went on bleakly. "They hoped to put a teenaged Heir—me—on the throne and to control my choice of regent in order to . . . redirect Manticoran policy away from preparing to resist Peep aggression. That was the long-term goal. As for the short-term one—" she smiled mirthlessly "—you will no doubt recall that it was very shortly after my father's death that the Peeps moved in on Trevor's Star. I have no doubt they counted on the confusion engendered by Dad's death to paralyze any potential attempt on our part to prevent them from securing control of one terminus of the Junction."

"My God, Elizabeth!" Alexander was so shaken he forgot the titles he was usually so careful to use in his official relationship with the Queen. "If you knew that, why didn't you tell someone?!"

"I couldn't," Elizabeth said, her voice bleaker than ever, harrowed and brittle with old pain. "We weren't ready for open war, and any charge that the Legislaturalists had orchestrated Dad's murder might have led to just that. Even if it hadn't, the proof that Havenite agents had actually penetrated the highest levels of our own government and assassinated the King could only have led to massive witch-hunts which would have crippled us domestically when we had to be strong and united to support the military buildup. And that sort of bitter, denunciatory mutual suspicion would only have made it even easier for future Havenite agents to denounce the 'traitors' more loudly than anyone else in order to get themselves into positions of power here at home."

She closed her eyes briefly, her expression haggard and haunted, and her nostrils flared.

"I wanted them dead. God, how I wanted them dead! But Allen and Aunt Caitrin—especially Aunt Caitrin—convinced me that I couldn't have them arrested and tried. I even wanted to challenge them to duels and kill them with my own hands if I couldn't have them tried." She smiled crookedly at the sudden understanding on Honor's face, and nodded. "Which is why I sympathized so deeply with you over that bastard North Hollow, Honor," she admitted. "But the same things which made it impossible to try them made a duel even more impossible, and so I had to let them go. I had to let the men and women who'd murdered my father out of cold, self-serving ambition live."
Elizabeth IIIs tragic backstory, previously relayed in one of the short story anthologies. If she seems a little unreasonable on the topic of Haven sometimes, this is why.

"We may never prove it, but I'm convinced—I know—the Peeps were behind what happened at Yeltsin's Star. The Faithful may have been the actual triggermen, but it was the Peeps who got them the weapons . . . and probably the ones who suggested to the Faithful that they ought to 'convince' Mueller to smuggle the targeting beacons on board by giving them to me and Allen."

And Mueller's paid for it, too, Honor thought grimly.

The steadholder had been impeached, tried, and condemned to death in barely one week, and sentence had been carried out immediately. There had been no question who'd handed the memory stones to Elizabeth and Cromarty, and his fate had been sealed from the moment the beacon inside Elizabeth's stone had been discovered.
Mueller found out and executed off-screen like a chump. Elizabeth is right both that Saint-Just was behind Hassan and that no one will ever prove it.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Post Reply