The limitations of the Silesian Navy, and it's inability to defend freighters or deter piracy within it's borders. Silesia is essentially a failed state due to it's incredibly weak central government, not something you'd expect from a normally conservative author, but I do like that Haven and Silesia can be thought of as representing the two major US political parties and their ideals each taken to harmful extremes. And with major corruption thrown in, in both cases.The captain swore with silent venom. If only the Silesian Navy was worth a fart in a vac suit, it wouldn't matter. Two or three cruisers—hell, even a single destroyer!—deployed to cover the same volume would cause any pirate to seek safer pastures. But the Silesian Confederacy was more of a perpetually ongoing meltdown than a star nation. The feeble central government—such as it was—was forever plagued by breakaway secessionist movements. What ships it had were always desperately needed somewhere, and the raiders who infested its space always knew where that somewhere was and took themselves somewhere else. That had always been true; what had changed was that the Royal Manticoran Navy units which had traditionally protected the Star Kingdom's commerce in Silesia had been withdrawn for Manticore's war against the People's Republic of Haven, and there was no one at all to whom Harold Sukowski could turn for help.
A freighter has to carry shuttles, since nothing that big can land and unload it's cargo. These cargo haulers are far larger than the cutters and pinnaces the navy uses, for obvious reason.Sukowski watched his display and let a long sigh of relief ooze from his lungs as a small, green dot appeared upon it. The shuttle was one of Bonaventure's big, primary cargo haulers, with a drive as powerful as most light attack craft's. Unlike a LAC, it was totally unarmed, but it shot away at over four hundred gravities, slower than its pursuer but twice as fast as its mother ship. The pirates must be pissed to see the crew they'd hoped to make man their prize for them escaping, but Bonaventure and her shuttle were still outside their powered missile envelope, and there was no way they'd go chasing after a mere shuttle with a six-million-ton freighter to snap up. Besides, Sukowski thought bitterly, they'd no doubt planned for exactly this contingency. They'd have their own engineers aboard to manage Bonaventure's systems.
I'm also unreasonably amused that two thousand years into the future there's a ship named for a middling-obscure 12th Century Catholic philosopher and saint.
The considerable wealth of Manticore which sees 80% of the trade through the Galactic North (what on Old Earth is still known as the Haven Sector.) Only the Solarian League is a match for their education, technology or industrial output per man-hour. And even the League, though able to buy and sell them on absolute terms can't touch their per capita income.Caparelli clenched his jaw and reminded himself to move carefully. Klaus Hauptman was arrogant, opinionated, and ruthless . . . and the wealthiest single individual in the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Which was saying quite a bit. Despite its limitation to a single star system, the Star Kingdom was the third wealthiest star nation in a five-hundred-light-year sphere in absolute terms. In per capita terms, not even the Solarian League matched Manticore. A great deal of that was fortuitous, the result of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction which made the Manticore Binary System the crossroads of eighty percent of the long-haul commerce of its sector. But almost as much of its wealth stemmed from what the Star Kingdom had done with the opportunity that presented, for generations of monarchs and parliaments had reinvested the Junction's wealth with care. Outside the Solarian League, no one in the known galaxy could match the Manticoran tech base or output per man-hour, and Manticore's universities challenged those of Old Earth herself. And, Caparelli admitted, Klaus Hauptman and his father and grandfather had had a great deal to do with building the infrastructure which made that possible.
The imminent meltdown of the Silesian trade, a major moneymaker for Manticore."That was rude and confrontational. Nonetheless, there's also a kernel of truth in it. The war effort depends upon the strength of our economy. The shipping duties, transfer fees, and inventory taxes my colleagues and I pay are already three times what they were at the start of the war, and—" Caparelli opened his mouth, but Hauptman held up a hand. "Please. I'm not complaining about duties and taxes. We're at war with the second largest empire in known space, and someone has to pay the freight. My colleagues and I realize that. But you must realize that if losses continue climbing, we'll have no choice but to cut back or even entirely eliminate our shipping to Silesia. I leave it to you to estimate what that will mean for the Star Kingdom's revenues and war effort."
Caparelli's eyes narrowed, and Hauptman shook his head.
"That's not a threat; it's simply a fact of life. Insurance rates have already reached an all-time high, and they're still climbing; if they rise another twenty percent, we'll lose money on cargos which reach their destinations. And in addition to our financial losses, there's also the loss of life involved. Our people—my people, people who've worked for me for decades—are being killed, Sir Thomas."
Why Silesia is so lucrative despite the risks, and they get a lot of raw materials from the place too. But once again, there's a war on and the RMN doesn't have the time or resources to get even most of the very important things done. And given the choice between more wallers and more screen, the capital ships have building priority.Caparelli sat back with an unwilling sense of agreement, for Hauptman was right. The Confederacy's weak central government had always made it a risky place, but its worlds were huge markets for the Star Kingdom's industrial products, machinery, and civilian technology transfers, not to mention an important source of raw materials. And however much Caparelli might personally dislike Hauptman, the magnate had every right to demand the Navy's help. It was, after all, one of the Navy's primary missions to protect Manticoran commerce and citizens, and prior to the present war, the Royal Manticoran Navy had done just that in Silesia.
Unfortunately, it had required a major fleet presence. Not of battle squadrons—using ships of the wall against pirates would have been like swatting flies with a sledgehammer—but of light combatants. And the critical needs of the RMN's war against the People's Republic of Haven had drawn those lighter units off. They were desperately needed to screen the heavy squadrons and for the countless patrols and scouting and convoy escorts the Fleet required for its very survival. There were never enough cruisers and destroyers to go around, and the overriding need for capital ships diverted yard space from building them in the necessary numbers.
Because escorts are so limited, the RMN has been having Manty freighters form convoys moving between the various sectors of Silesia. So the pirates naturally pounce after ships peel off."The convoy system helps during transits between sectors, of course. We haven't lost a single ship that was under escort, and, believe me, my colleagues and I all appreciate that. But the raiders realize as well as we do that they can't attack the convoys. They also know simple astrographics require us to route over two-thirds of our vessels independently after they reach their destination sectors . . . and that the available escorts simply can't cover us when we do."
Caparelli nodded somberly. No one was losing any ships in the convoys covering transit between Silesia's nodal sector administration centers, but the pirates more than made up for that by snapping up merchantmen after they had to leave the convoys to proceed to the individual worlds of the Confederacy.
Timescale for the shutdown of the Silesian trade."I can ask no more than that, Sir Thomas," he said heavily. "I won't insult you by trying to insist on miracles, but the situation is very, very grave. I'm not certain we have another month . . . but I am certain we have no more than four, five at the most, before the cartels will be forced to suspend operations in Silesia."
So apparently you can get white hair and stress lines while on prolong, even while remaining otherwise fit.Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Thirteenth Earl of White Haven, wondered if he looked as weary as he felt. The earl was ninety T-years old, though in a pre-prolong society he would have been taken for no more than a very well preserved forty, and even that would have been only because of the white stranded through his black hair. But there were new lines around his ice-blue eyes, and he was only too well aware of his own fatigue.
Up til now in the series, the RMN has only ever lost to ambush. Whether Courvosier in Yeltsin, the convoys and pickets that got jumped at the start of the war, or even White Haven at Nightingale. So it bears some repeating that Haven is vast and powerful, and the only things keeping manticore competitive are their superior officer's corps, technological edge and seizing the strategic initiative early on and clutching it with both hands. And the wealth and advanced industry that lets them (barely) manage to keep up with Haven's vaster but far less efficient shipbuilding.The Star Kingdom—or, at least, the realistic part of it—had dreaded the inevitable war with the People's Republic for over fifty T-years, and the Navy (and Hamish Alexander) had spent those years preparing for it. Now that war was almost three years old . . . and proving just as brutal as he'd feared.
It wasn't that the Peeps were that good; it was just that they were so damned big. Despite the internal wounds the People's Republic had inflicted upon itself since Hereditary President Harris's assassination, despite its ramshackle economy and the pogroms which had cost the People's Navy its most experienced officers, despite even the indolence of the Republic's Dolists, it remained a juggernaut. Had its industrial plant been even half as efficient as the Star Kingdom's, the situation would have been hopeless. As it was, a combination of skill, determination, and more luck than any competent strategist would dare count on had allowed the RMN to hold its own so far.
Also a timeline note, though the last quarter of Flag in Exile emcopassed three days, the events of the book as a whoile, particularly Honor's working up of her fleet command are supposed to have taken a year( which doesn't really fit with the timeline of the wargames with the Manticoran squadron that then went off after Haven's diversion, but let's ignore that.) So this book begins a year after Flag, but three years after SVW/FoD, and eight years after Honor first assumed command of HMS Fearless in the very first book.
A bit on the situation on the front. Haven has dispatched their new star admiral, Esther McQueen, to hold Trevor's Star against White Haven, and she's managing a near-euqal exchange rate Manticore simply cannot afford.The truth was that he'd had a very "good" war to date. In the first year of operations, his Sixth Fleet had cut deep into the Republic, inflicting what would have been fatal losses for any smaller navy along the way. He and his fellow admirals had actually managed to equalize the daunting odds they'd faced at the start of the war, and taken no less than twenty-four star systems. But the second and third years had been different. The Peeps were back on balance, and Rob Pierre's Committee of Public Safety had initiated a reign of terror guaranteed to stiffen the spine of any Peep admiral. And if the destruction of the Legislaturalist dynasties which had ruled the old People's Republic had cost the PN its most experienced admirals, it had also destroyed the patronage system which had kept other officers from rising to the seniority their capabilities deserved. Now that the Legislaturalists were out of the way, some of those new admirals were proving very tough customers. Like Admiral Esther McQueen, the senior Peep officer at Trevor's Star.
White Haven grimaced at the view port. According to ONI, the people's commissioners the Committee of Public Safety had appointed to keep the People's Navy in line were the ones who really called the shots. If that was so, if political commissars truly were degrading the performance of officers like McQueen, White Haven could only be grateful. He'd begun getting a feel for the woman over the last few months, and he suspected he was a better strategist than she. But his edge, if in fact he had one, was far thinner than he would have liked, and she had ice water in her veins. She understood the strengths and weaknesses of her forces, knew her technology was more primitive and her officer corps less experienced, but she also knew sufficient numbers and an unflinching refusal to be bullied into mistakes could offset that. When one added the way Manticore's need to take Trevor's Star simplified the strategic equation for her, she was giving as good as she got. Losses had been very nearly even since she took over, and Manticore simply couldn't afford that. Not in a war that looked like it might well last for decades. And not, White Haven admitted, when every month increased the threat that the Republic would begin to figure out how to redress its technological and industrial disadvantages. If the Peeps ever reached a point where they could face the RMN from a position of qualitative equality, as well as quantitative superiority, the consequences would be disastrous.
The plan to take Trevor's Star, isolate it from surrounding bases then launch an attack while simuletaneously three-point-five squadrons from Home Fleet try a Wormhole blitz."Um." Admiral Caparelli nodded slowly, eyes still on the holographic star chart above his desk. White Haven's plan was no daring lightning stroke—except, perhaps, in its final stage—but the last ten months had been ample proof a lightning stroke wasn't going to work. In essence, the earl proposed to abandon the messy, inconclusive fighting of a direct approach and work around the perimeter of Trevor's Star. His plan called for crushing the systems which supported it one by one, simultaneously isolating his true objective and positioning himself to launch converging attacks upon it, and then bringing up Home Fleet itself in support. That part of the proposed operation was more than a bit daring—and risky. Three and a half full battle squadrons of Sir James Webster's Home Fleet could reach Trevor's Star from Manticore almost instantly via the Junction, despite the huge distance between the two systems. But the passage of that much tonnage would destabilize the Junction for over seventeen hours. If Home Fleet launched an attack and failed to achieve rapid and complete victory, half its total superdreadnought strength would be trapped, unable to retreat the way it had come.
That is admittedly a problem, but better to risk a scout then a large chunk of Home Fleet. Also, the only way to coordinate over these distances is to set a Zero Hour weeks in advance and move heaven and earth to meet it."Coordination," Caparelli murmured. "That's the real problem. How do we coordinate an operation like this over such distances?"
"Absolutely," White Haven agreed. "Theodosia and I have wracked our brains—and our staffs' brains—over that one, and we've been able to come up with only one possibility. We'll keep you as closely informed as we can by dispatch boat, but the transit delay's going to make actual coordination impossible. For it to work at all, we have to agree ahead of time when we'll make our move, and then Home Fleet is going to have to send a scout through to see if we've pulled it off."
"And if you haven't 'pulled it off'," Caparelli said frostily, "it's going to be a bit rough on whoever we send through from Manticore."
Some of Hauptman's political clout, losing the Silesian Trade would be a body blow to the Manticoran economy but not quite enough to derail the war effort."In absolute terms, we could survive even if we completely halted trade to Silesia," he said. "It wouldn't be pleasant, and Hauptman and the other cartels would scream bloody murder. Worse, they'd be justified. The disruption could literally ruin some of the smaller ones, and it wouldn't do the big fish like Hauptman and Dempsey any good, either. And I'm not sure what the political ramifications might be. I had a long talk with the First Lord yesterday, and she's already catching a lot of flak over this. You know her better than I do, but I got the impression she's under extreme pressure."
-snip-
"Add the fact that Hauptman's in bed with the Liberals and the Conservative Association, not to mention the Progressives, and we've really got a problem," the First Space Lord continued grimly. "If the Opposition decides to make a fight over the Navy's 'disinterest' in his problems, things could get messy. And that doesn't even consider the direct losses in import duties and transfer fees . . or lives."
"There's another point," White Haven said unwillingly, and Caparelli raised an eyebrow. "It's only a matter of time until someone like McQueen sees the possibilities," the earl explained. "If a bunch of pirates can hurt us this badly, think what would happen if the Peeps sent in a few squadrons of battlecruisers to help out. So far, we've kept them too far off balance to try anything like that, but, frankly, they're better able to cut light forces loose, given all those battleships they still have in reserve. And Silesia isn't the only place they could hurt us if they decided to get into commerce warfare in a big way."
Like Englang for most of it's "maritine empire" phase, Manticore depends on it's trade and is vulnerable to commerce warfare, to an extent.
Project Trojan Horse, which involved creating Q-ships and seeding them among supply convoys bound for the front to discourage Haven from hitting the convoys might be retasked to handle this situation. Also, Between 'Trojan Horse' and 'Gram' I'm now quite convinced that while Manticore uses a random-word generator for active military operation codenames, the same system does not apply to R&D.In essence, Hemphill proposed turning some of the RMN's standard Caravan-class freighters into armed merchant cruisers. The Caravans were big ships, over seven million tons, but they were slow and unarmored, with civilian-grade drives. Under normal circumstances, they'd be helpless against any proper warship, but Hemphill wanted to outfit them with the heaviest possible firepower and seed them into the Fleet Train convoys laboring to keep Sixth Fleet supplied. The idea was for them to look just like any other freighter until some unwary raider got close, at which point they were supposed to blow him out of space.
Personally, White Haven doubted the concept was workable in the long term. The Peeps had used Q-ships of their own to some effect against previous enemies, but the fundamental weakness of the tactic was that it was unlikely to work against a proper navy more than once or twice. Once an enemy figured out you were using them, he'd simply start blowing away anything that might be a Q-ship from the maximum possible range. Besides, the Peep Q-ships had been purpose built from the keel out. They'd been fitted with military-grade drives which had made them as fast as any warship their size, and their designs had incorporated internal armor, compartmentalization, and systems redundancy the Caravans completely lacked.
Now, however, Caparelli might have a point, because the raiders who plagued Silesian space didn't have proper warships . . . and they were no part of any proper navy. Most were independents, disposing of their plunder to "merchants"—fences, really—who bankrolled their operations and asked no embarrassing questions. Their ships tended to be lightly armed, and they normally operated in singletons, certainly not in groups of more than two or three. The normal unrest of the Confederacy, where star systems routinely attempted to secede from the central government, complicated things a bit, since the "liberation governments" were fond of issuing letters of marque and authorizing "privateers" to hit other people's commerce in the name of independence. Some of the privateers were heavily armed for their displacement, and a few were commanded by genuine patriots, willing to work together in small squadrons for their home system's cause. Even they, however, would tend to run from a properly handled Q-ship, and unlike operations against the Peeps, the strategy might become more effective, not less, once word of it got out. Pirates, after all, were in it for the money, and they were unlikely to risk losing the ships which represented their capital or settle for destroying potential prizes from stand-off ranges. Where a Peep commerce raider might be willing to accept the risk of encountering a Q-ship in order to simply destroy Manticoran shipping, a pirate would be looking to capture his victims and would be unlikely to hazard his ship against a merchant cruiser unless he anticipated a particularly luscious prize.
"It might help," the earl said after considering the notion carefully. "Unless we have an awful lot of them, they won't be able to destroy many raiders, of course. I'd have to say the effect would be more cosmetic than real in those terms, but the psychological impact could be worthwhile—both in Silesia and Parliament. But do we have any of them ready to commit? I thought we were still at least several months short of the target date."
The people who opposed the buildup (largely liberal) got smashed in elections after it turned out, yeah, we need to worry about Haven after all. Not that the electorate can dislodge or influence the Lords.The Liberals' longstanding opposition to the Star Kingdom's military expenditures as "alarmist and provocative" had dealt their entire platform a body blow when the People's Republic launched its sneak attack. Worse, the Liberals had joined the Conservative Association and Progressives in opposition to the Cromarty Government following the bungled coup which had destroyed the Republic's old leadership. They'd attempted to block a formal declaration of war in a bid to prevent active operations because they'd believed the regime arising from the chaos of the coup offered an opportunity for a negotiated settlement. Indeed, many of them, including Reginald Houseman, still felt a priceless opportunity had been squandered.
Neither Her Majesty nor the Duke of Cromarty, her Prime Minister, agreed. Nor, for that matter, did the electorate. The Liberals had taken a pounding in the last general election, with crippling consequences in the House of Commons. They remained a force to be reckoned with in the Lords, but even there they'd suffered defections to Cromarty's Centrists. The party faithful regarded those defecting opportunists with all the scorn such ideological traitors merited, but their loss was an inescapable reality, and the erosion of their power base had forced the Liberal leadership into even closer alliance with the Conservatives—a profoundly unnatural state of affairs made tolerable only because both parties, for their own reasons, remained bitterly and personally opposed to the current Government and all its minions.
Hauptman, who already had contacts in all the parties forming an 'everyone but the Centrists' opposition has been making hay as a deal-maker and valued support in these troubled times.Their alliance had, however, proved of considerable value to Klaus Hauptman. Always a shrewd investor, he'd spent years cementing personal (and, via judicious campaign contributions, financial) ties all across the political spectrum. Now that the Liberals and Conservatives had been driven together and regarded themselves as a beleaguered minority, his patronage was even more important to both parties. And while the Opposition was mainly aware of the clout it had lost, Hauptman knew Cromarty's crowd remained nervous about its thin majority in the Lords, and he'd learned to use his influence with the Liberals and Conservatives to considerable effect.
Hauptman's perspective on his and Honor's meeting in the first book.He clenched his jaw, memory replaying the incident while he let Houseman grapple with his own rage. Hauptman had gone out to Basilisk Station personally when Harrington's officious interference had become intolerable. He hadn't known at the time about any Peep plots or where it was all going to lead, but the woman had been costing him money, and her seizure of one of his vessels for carrying contraband had been exactly the sort of slap in the face he was least able to handle. And because it was, he'd gone out to smack her down. But it hadn't worked out that way. She'd actually defied him, as if she didn't even realize—or care—that he was Klaus Hauptman. She'd been careful to phrase it in officialese, hiding behind her precious uniform and her status as the station's acting commander, but she'd all but accused him of direct complicity in smuggling.
She'd punched his buttons. He admitted it, just as he admitted he really ought to have kept a closer eye on his factors' operations. But, damn it, how could he monitor something as vast as the Hauptman Cartel in that kind of detail? That was why he had factors, to see to the details he couldn't possibly deal with. And even if she'd been totally justified—she hadn't been, but even if she had—where did the daughter of a mere yeoman get off talking to him that way? She'd been a two-for-a-dollar commander, CO of a mere light cruiser he could have bought out of pocket change, so how dared she use that cold, cutting tone to him?
But she had dared, and in his rage he'd taken the gloves off. She hadn't known his cartel held a majority interest in her physician parents' medical partnership on Sphinx. All it should have required was an offhand mention of the possible consequences to her family if she forced him to defend himself and his good name through unofficial channels, but she'd not only refused to back down, she'd trumped his threat with a far more deadly one.
No one else had heard it. That was the sole redeeming facet of the entire affair, for it meant no one else knew she'd actually threatened to kill him if he ever dared to move against her parents in any way.
Despite his own deep, burning fury, Hauptman felt a chill even now at the memory of her ice-cold, almond eyes, for she'd meant it. He'd known it then, and three years ago she'd proven just how real the threat had been when she killed not one but two men, one a professional duelist, on the field of honor. If anything had been needed to tell him it would be advisable to move very cautiously against her, those two duels had done it.
In the year since the last book, Grayson has restored all the surviving SDs to fighting trim, and built 3 of their own more than replacing their losses. Glorious Kerbal Graysons!"I suppose they would," Houseman agreed sourly. "But what makes you think she'd accept even if they offered it to her? She's off playing tin god in Yeltsin. Why should she give up her position as the number two officer in their piddling little navy to accept something like this?"
"Because it is 'a piddling little navy'," Hauptman said. It wasn't, and only Houseman's bitter hatred for anything to do with the Yeltsin System could lead even him to suggest it was. The Grayson Space Navy had grown into a very respectable fleet, with a core of ten ex-Peep superdreadnoughts and its first three home-built ships of the wall. From the perspective of personal ambition, Harrington would be insane to resign her position as second in command of the explosively expanding GSN to resume her rank as a mere captain in the Manticoran Navy. But for all his own hatred of her, Hauptman understood her far better than Houseman did. Whatever else she might have become, Honor Harrington had been born a Manticoran, and she'd spent four decades building her career and reputation in the service of her Queen. She had both personal courage and an undeniable, deeply ingrained sense of duty, he admitted grudgingly, and that sense of duty could only be reinforced by her inevitable desire to justify herself by reclaiming a place in the Navy from which she'd been banished by her enemies. Oh no. If she was offered the job, she'd take it, though it would never do to tell Houseman the real reasons she would.
So High Ridge can 'release' his party memebers to vote what he tells them to, thus releasing him from any reponsibility to the position. Huh."I've already spoken to Baron High Ridge," Hauptman admitted. "He's not happy about it, and he refuses to commit the Conservatives to officially support Harrington for the slot, but he has agreed to release them to vote their own consciences." Houseman's eyes narrowed, and then he nodded slowly, for both of them knew "releasing them to vote their consciences" was no more than a diplomatic fiction to allow High Ridge to maintain his official opposition while effectively instructing his followers to support the move. "As for the Progressives," Hauptman went on, "Earl Gray Hill and Lady Descroix have agreed to abstain in any vote. But none of them will actually put Harrington forward. That's why it's so important that you and your family speak to New Kiev about it."
Yes, It's the old Uriah Gambit (otherwise known as "send your rival on a suicide mission.") and should Honor manage to not die bravely protecting Hauptman's interests, she will have saved him millions of dollars or more.He gave the younger man's shoulder a squeeze, then nodded and walked back towards the bar with his empty whiskey glass. He needed a fresh drink to take the taste of pandering to Houseman's prejudices out of his mouth—in fact, it might not be a bad idea to wash his hands, as well—but it had been worth it. Four armed merchantmen were unlikely to make much difference in the grand scale of things, but it was just possible they would, and they were far more likely to do so with someone like Harrington in command.
Of course, as he'd been at some pains to point out to Houseman, it was even more likely that she'd get herself killed before she could accomplish anything. That would be a pity, but there was at least a chance that she'd do some good.
And the bottom line, he told himself as he handed his glass to the bar keep with a smile, was that whether she managed to stop the pirates or the pirates managed to kill her, he still came out ahead.
High Admiral Wesley Matthews gave honor a Colt 1911 as a birthday present and she's been taking it to the range ever since. Confirmation of 2 KPS muzzle-velocity figure for a pulser from waay back when. Still no idea how big the darts are. Oh, and a 'focused grav wall' like a wedge that vaporizes bullets.Any semi-automatic pistol was a technological antique, but this one was more so than most. In point of fact, its design was over two thousand T-years old, for it was an exact replica of what had once been known as a "Model 1911A1" firing a ".45 ACP" cartridge. It was quite a handful, with an unloaded weight of just under 1.3 kilograms in Grayson's 1.17 standard gravities, and the recoil was formidable. Its antiquity didn't make it any less noisy, either, and despite their ear protectors, more than one of the armsmen on the neighboring firing lanes winced as the 11.43-millimeter slug rumbled down range at a mere 275 MPS. That was a paltry velocity, even beside the auto-loaders to which the Grayson tech base had been limited before the Yeltsin System joined the Alliance, much less the 2,000-plus MPS at which a modern pulser punched out its darts, but the massive fifteen-gram bullet still reached the end of its twenty-five-meter journey with formidable kinetic energy. The jacketed slug exploded through the equally anachronistic paper target's "X" ring in a shower of small, white fragments, then vanished in a fiery flash as it plowed into the focused grav wall "backstop" and vaporized.
And here's the retcon for Honor's performance in FoD that upsets people so much. She had an uncle involved with the SCA who taught her how to fire 20th Century firearms."My mom's older brother. He came out from Beowulf to visit us for about a year when I was, oh, twelve T-years old, and he belongs to the Society for Creative Anachronisms. They're a weird group that enjoys recreating the past the way it ought to have been. Uncle Jacques' own favorite period was the second-century Ante Diaspora—uh, that would be the twentieth-century," she added, since Grayson still used the ancient Gregorian calendar "—and he was Planetary Reserve Grand Pistol Champion that year. He's just as handsome as Mother is beautiful, too, and I adored him." She rolled her eyes with a grin. "I followed him around like a love-struck puppy, which must have been maddening, but he never showed it. Instead, he taught me to shoot what he called real guns, and"—she chuckled—"Nimitz didn't like the muzzle blast then, either."
The Queen has White Haven stress that Honor is being asked to rreturn to active duty, and that she will never try to make it an order, in respect for all Honor has done."We are, and so is the Admiralty," White Haven replied in that same, quiet voice. "What you've done here, not merely as Steadholder Harrington but as an officer of the Grayson Navy, has been a tremendous accomplishment, and that's why Her Majesty has asked me to request that you accept recall. She's also charged me to inform you that she will not—now or ever—attempt to command you to do so. The Star Kingdom has treated you very badly—"
Why White Haven thinks she should take the job, despite being shuffled off to a sideshow with a Hemphill-designed ship. Also, the House of Lords have to confirm flag officers."As I say, we're not certain why they did it. Partly, I suppose, it's because however much they hate you, they have to realize how good you are. Another factor may be what happened in the last general election. They took a real beating at the polls, and the way they've treated you was one of the hot-button emotional issues, so perhaps they see this as a way to recover some lost ground without giving you the kind of command you truly deserve. And they may have even less savory motives. Let's be honest; the odds against your achieving much with only four Q-ships are high, however good you are, so they may see this as a chance to set you up for a failure they can use to justify the way they've treated you in the past."
Honor nodded slowly, following his logic, and an icy core of anger burned within her pleasure at the thought of getting back into Manticoran uniform again at last.
"Under most circumstances," White Haven said levelly, "I'd advise against accepting, because if they are counting on the odds against you, they've got a point. But these aren't most circumstances, and whoever's orchestrating their strategy is a shrewd customer. Since the Opposition itself has suggested you, the Admiralty has almost no choice but to offer you the slot. If it doesn't, or if you turn it down, the Opposition will be able to say you had your chance and rejected it. In the long run, that probably wouldn't be enough to keep you from returning to the Queen's service eventually, but it would probably delay your recall for at least another full T-year, possibly longer, and it would certainly make your final return much more difficult.
"On the other hand, if you do accept the command, you probably won't have to hold it for more than six to eight months. By that time, the war situation will probably have changed enough to free up the light forces we need for Silesia. Even if it hasn't, enough additional Q-ships will be available to make a real dent in our problems there. In either case, once you're back on active duty for any reason, the Admiralty will be free to assign you to other duties, as it sees fit, after a suitable interval. Given the fact that the Lords have to confirm promotions out of the zone, it will probably still be impossible to jump you to the rank you've demonstrated you're ready to handle, but that won't keep the Admiralty from giving you the acting authority you deserve."
Can it really be called authentic Grayson cuisine if the chef is restricted to ingredients that won't kill all the off-worlders? Ah well, if he's been Honor's chef for a while he's dealt with those restrictions for some time too."Thank you. And now," she stood, "if you and Captain Henke would join me for supper, my chef would love to introduce you both to authentic Grayson cuisine."
Protector Benjamin is not above a little rubbing people's nose in their own mess. Some of the authority a Steadholder has that a Mantie aristo does not.To her immense embarrassment, Protector Benjamin had insisted upon an amplification of the Queen's Bench writ which had recognized that Captain Harrington and Steadholder Lady Harrington were two distinct people who happened to live in the same body. He'd been unwilling to settle for a mere extension of the original writ authorizing the presence of Honor's armsmen and granting them diplomatic immunity. Instead, he'd insisted on—demanded, really—a formal, permanent recognition of Honor's split legal personality. Captain Harrington would, of course, be subject to all the rules and regulations of the Articles of War, but Steadholder Harrington was a visiting head of government who, like her bodyguards, enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Honor had wanted to let that writ, and all its potential complications, quietly lapse, but Benjamin had been adamant. He'd flatly refused to release her from her duties in Harrington unless the writ was both continued and extended in scope, and that was the way it was.
Officially, his insistence stemmed from the Grayson requirement that any steadholder must be accompanied by his (or, in Honor's case, her) armsmen. Since the Articles of War forbade armed foreign nationals in a Queen's ship, satisfying Grayson law had required a modification of Manticoran law to permit Andrew LaFollet and his subordinates to retain their weapons. That was the official reason; in fact, most of Benjamin's stubborn intransigence had come from his determination to rub the House of Lords' collective nose in Honor's status. For all the diplomats involved in negotiating the conditions Benjamin had specified, she thought, it was hardly a diplomatic move. Whether the Star Kingdom's peerage chose to admit it or not, a steadholder wielded a direct, personal authority the most autocratic Manticoran noble had never dreamed of possessing. Within her steading, Honor's word, quite literally, was law, so long as none of her decrees violated the planetary constitution. More than that, she held the power of High, Middle, and Low Justice—a power she'd executed a T-year before as Protector Benjamin's champion when she killed the treasonous Steadholder Burdette in single combat.
No doubt her enemies privately wrote that all off as the barbaric posturing of a backward planet, but Benjamin's stubbornness had seen to it that they couldn't do so publicly. They might have expelled Countess Harrington from the House of Lords, but they would have no choice but to treat Steadholder Harrington with dignity and respect. And, to top it off, her steadholdership gave her precedence over every one of the nobles who'd voted to boot her out. Of the House of Lords' entire membership, only the Grand Duke of Manticore, Grand Duchess of Sphinx, and Grand Duke of Gryphon outranked Steadholder Harrington, and they'd all supported her.
I'd be remiss if I didn't comment on the fact that MacGuiness was beached along with Honor, and served as majordomo of Harrington House. Oh, and Honor's mess dress includes the Star of Grayson (and all foreign medals) and now her family sword, claimed from Burdette by right of conquest. The image of the Manticoran uniform we see with a katana at the side is.... interesting.She drew a deep breath and stood. Her mess dress uniform seemed horridly pretentious to her, but she'd been given no choice about that either. She was only a captain here to assume a rather modest command, but the protocolists had decreed that until she formally resumed active duty with the RMN, Admiral Georgides, Vulcan's commander, must receive her as Steadholder Harrington, and that meant a full state dinner. She made a mental note to wring Benjamin IX's neck the next time she saw him, then sighed in resignation and turned to face MacGuiness.
Her steward was back in RMN uniform as well, and looked insufferably pleased about it. He'd never said so, but she knew how bitter he'd been over what the Navy had done to her, and, unlike her, he looked forward to the state dinner as a moment of vindication. She considered speaking sternly to him about it, but not for long. MacGuiness was more than old enough to be her father, and there were times he chose to regard her with fond indulgence rather than the instant obedience her rank should have imposed. No doubt he'd listen with perfect attentiveness and respect to anything she had to say . . . and then go right on gloating.
He met her eyes blandly, and she raised her arms to let him buckle her sword belt. Mess dress required the archaic sidearm, which she'd always thought rather ridiculous, but this was one point on which she found herself in agreement with MacGuiness and the Protector. Instead of the light, useless dress sword most Manticoran officers wore, the blade MacGuiness had just belted about her waist was lethally functional. Up until fourteen months ago, it had been the Burdette Sword; now the eight-hundred-year-old weapon was the Harrington Sword, and she settled it on her left hip as MacGuiness stood back.
Genesis of the podnought (formally SD(P)) concept. The after quarter or third, and for the Invincible- class 70%, of the ship is hollow and stuffed full of missile pods on 6 rails leading right out a rear hatch. Given just a minute, Wayfarer can trail a cloud of 30 missile pods, each with 10 SD-scale missiles. Given 90 seconds, Wayfarer can throw back any SD's missile broadside times ten. Give them just five minutes to roll pods and they'll match half a squadron of the wall. From here on out, missile overkill is the rule ,and the greatest limits are finding fire-control computer support for all of them."This is one of the main rails, Milady," he said, his voice now completely serious. "There are six of them, equally spaced around the circumference of the hold, and we've incorporated cross rails every two hundred meters. You'll be able to launch six pods in each salvo, and if you lose a section of any rail, you'll be able to route the pods up or down to the next cross link and still have access to that rail's load out."
-snip-
Wayfarer's Number One Hold had been reconfigured solely to carry missile pods. Its size gave her room for literally hundreds of them, and judicious modification to her stern meant she could do something no regular warship could. A superdreadnought might tractor as many as ten or twelve pods inside her impeller wedge to deploy when she needed them. Smaller warships, with tighter, less powerful wedges, were forced to tow them astern, where they degraded acceleration rates and were also vulnerable to proximity "soft kills," since they were outside the towing ship's sidewalls. Wayfarer, however, lacked the traditional stern chasers which normally crammed the aft section of a warship to capacity. Her limited after beam, compared to a warship, had created some problems, but a little ingenuity on Schubert's part had allowed Vulcan to extend Number One Hold almost to the stern plate. That meant her repositioned cargo doors could be used to dump cargo directly out the after aspect of her impeller wedge—which couldn't be closed with a sidewall anyway—and her ejector rails would allow her to launch ten-missile pods in salvos of six at the rate of one salvo every twelve seconds. In effect, she could put an additional three hundred missiles per minute into space.
Put it another way:
Right. Here."Where is your missilegod now?"
Oh, and I'd actually forgotten they had cross-rails so taking out a rail wouldn't shut out all the pods on it. So that's moderately important.
David Weber tells us why Manticore or haven doesn't just throw all their ships straight at the opposing side's central planet, because everyone is aware of the capability to do so, so important systems tend to heavily fortified with a fleet presence, and militaries focus more on defense, attacking only with what ships re left over when they feel reasonably secure. You could theoretically shake loose a big enough formation to do just that, but you'd expose yourself in a major way, and the battle would be a bloodbath unprecedented in space naval history.Given the distances involved in interstellar warfare, launching some sort of lightning thrust to an enemy's vital nerve center—like the Haven System—usually meant uncovering your own strategic center. If you had sufficiently overwhelming strength, you might be able to protect your own critical areas while simultaneously attacking his, but in a serious war, that was seldom the case. Armchair strategists forgot that when they demanded to know why a navy bothered to fight for intervening systems. Ships could move freely through the immensity of space and, with judicious routing, avoid interception short of their target, so why not simply do it? The People's Republic, after all, had carried out dozens of such strokes in its fifty-odd years of conquest.
But the Peeps had been able to do that only because their opponents' navies had been too small to mount serious defenses. The RMN, however, was large enough to give even the People's Navy pause, and in a war between serious opponents both sides knew their fleets could strike straight for the other's core systems. Because of that, neither was willing to uncover its own vitals. Instead, they maintained fleets and fortifications they hoped were capable of protecting those areas and conducted offensive operations only with what was left over—which meant their own offensive forces were seldom powerful enough to execute the daring stroke the amateurs thirsted for. That was why they wound up fighting for star systems between their home systems and the enemy's. The systems targeted were normally chosen for their own inherent value, but the true object was to compel the enemy to fight to hold them . . . and give yourself the chance to whittle away at his strength until he could no longer simultaneously protect himself and attack your own strategic center. That was precisely why Admiral White Haven and Sixth Fleet were so intent on taking Trevor's Star. Not only would it eliminate a threat to the Manticore System and greatly simplify the Alliance's logistic problems, but fighting as far forward as possible in Havenite space would keep the Peeps on the defensive which, hopefully, would force them to fight on the Alliance's terms . . . and preclude any temptation they might feel to attempt a "daring stroke" of their own. They'd already tried that twice, once in the war's opening phases, and again in Yeltsin barely a year ago, and no one in the Alliance wanted them to feel tempted to try a third time.
It wasn't the fastest way to win a war, and Honor would have loved to launch the sort of attack the armchair warriors advocated. Unfortunately, you could only get away with that against an opponent who let you, and whatever else one might say about the Peeps, they'd been in the conquering business too long to let that happen. That meant the destruction of their fleet—and thus their ability to sustain offensive or defensive operations—was the only workable strategic goal. The more quickly and decisively the Manticoran Alliance could achieve that destruction, the less of its own people it would lose along the way, and Honor was in favor of anything—even if it was suggested by Horrible Hemphill—which could speed that process up.
One reason why Hemphill, despire having brilliant ideas doesn't get far. I can speak from personal experience here, dealing with people who take any sign that you're willing to be reasonable or compromise as a sign of weakness and double down on their position is a pain. Also, that focus on material warfare again. Hemphill is only to happy to trade a pair of LACs for a cruiser, or a cruiser for the opportunity to send the enemy on an expensive technical wild goose chase.The problem was that Hemphill had fought so hard for changes that she seemed to see any new concept as desirable simply because it was new. Worse, for all her talk of new weapons, she was firmly wedded to the concept of material warfare . . . which was simply another term for the very sort of attrition Honor wanted to break free of. Hemphill's ideal was to wade straight into the enemy, hopefully equipped with superior weapons, and simply keep smashing until something gave. Sometimes that was the only option, but officers like Honor and White Haven were appalled by the body counts the jeune ecole was prepared to accept.
What was really needed, Honor often thought, was someone who could fuse the tenets of the competing philosophies. Admiral White Haven had accomplished some of that with his insistence that there was room for new weapons but that those weapons must be carefully evaluated and fitted into classic concepts. He and a handful of other senior officers—like Sir James Webster, Mark Sarnow, Theodosia Kuzak, and Sebastian D'Orville—had made a start in that direction, but every time they gave a centimeter, Hemphill and her fellows thought they saw the opposition crumbling and charged to the attack, demanding still more and quicker change.
Wayfarer is still a converted merchie, not a warship built from the begining to look like a freighter. That means civilian grade impellers, no armor. But she does get a backu fusion plant and SD-scale energy mounts, apparently triple the firepower of a BCs, or so I understand Sirius' armament to have been.The Peep Q-ships like the one Honor had tangled with had been purpose built from the keel out. In effect, they were warships disguised as merchantmen, with military-grade impellers, sidewalls, and compensators to match their armament. Under normal circumstances, they could expect to hold their own against even a battlecruiser, because they'd been built with the toughness to absorb heavy damage and remain in action.
That was the biggest weakness of Trojan Horse, for the Caravan class were true merchantmen—big, slow, bumbling freighters, without armor, without military-grade drives, without internal compartmentalization or a warship's sophisticated damage control remotes. Their hulls were the flattened, double-ended spindles of any impeller drive vessel, but they'd been laid out to maximize cargo-handling efficiency, without a warship's "hammer head" ends, where the hull flared back out to mount powerful chase armaments. They'd also been built with only one power plant apiece which, like many of their vital systems, was deliberately placed close to the skins of their hulls to facilitate access for maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, that also exposed it to hostile fire, and though Vulcan had added a second fusion plant deep inside Wayfarer's hull, no one in her right mind would ever consider her a "proper" warship.
But the undeniably fertile imagination of Hemphill's allies in BuShips had given her Q-ships some advantages the Peeps had never thought of. For one thing, their energy batteries would come as a major surprise to anyone unfortunate enough to enter their range. The Peeps' Q-ships had settled for projectors heavy enough to deal with cruisers and battlecruisers, but Hemphill had taken advantage of a bottleneck in the superdreadnought building schedule. Weapons production had gotten well ahead of hull construction, so Hemphill had convinced the Admiralty to skim off some of the completed lasers and grasers sitting around in storage. Wayfarer had barely half the energy mounts of her Peep counterparts, but the ones she did have were at least three times as powerful. If she ever got close enough to shoot anyone with those massive beams, her target was going to know it had been kissed.
20 SD-scale broadside missile tubes, light for an SD and maybe a DN (less tubes, but larger missiles) but plenty big enough for any other ship that's likely to end up staring down them. Also, since this is going to be a six to eight month cruise without resupply, they've allowed for a lot of magazine space and spare parts.Nor would any raider enjoy taking her on in missile combat. Since the Trojans were intended as armed cruisers, Hemphill had convinced the Admiralty to go whole hog and delete all cargo carrying capacity, aside from a generous allowance for spares and other maintenance items. Even after cramming in all the additional life support Wayfarer's Marines and weapons crews would require, that left the designers an enormous cubage—after all, a Caravan massed 7.35 megatons—and they'd shown a devious inventiveness. They'd provided magazine space for a stupendous ammunition supply for her twenty broadside missile tubes, which, like her energy weapons, were as heavy as one would normally find in a Gryphon-class SD. It made sense to give a vessel which might be called upon to operate outside the logistic pipeline for extended periods as much ammunition stowage as possible,
Now that Hemphill and BuShips have had a few years to tinker with the Grayson-style compensators, they've increased acceleration by another quarter, making for about a 133% increase since the series began. Haven intelligence is quite a ways short of the mark.But the new LACs the Star Kingdom had been laying down over the last four T-years (also, Honor admitted, as one of Hemphill's brainstorms) were a whole new breed. BuShips had made enormous strides in inertial compensator design, building on the original research Grayson had undertaken when no one would tell them how compensators worked. Denied the advantage of everyone else's knowledge—or the limitations of everyone else's assumptions—Grayson's Office of Shipbuilding had innocently followed up a concept everyone else "knew" wouldn't work and opened the door to an entirely new level of compensator efficiency. BuShips hadn't thought of it first, but the Star Kingdom's shipbuilders had an immense store of technical expertise, and they were improving upon Grayson's groundwork steadily. Honor's last Manticoran ship, the battlecruiser Nike, was barely four years old, and she'd been fitted with what was then the newest and best Manticoran compensator, based on the original Grayson research. Ships now on the drawing board would be equipped with compensators which increased Nike's level of efficiency by an additional twenty-five percent . . . and Wayfarer's LACs already had them. Fitted with more powerful impellers to match, they could pull over six hundred gravities of acceleration, and that made them the fastest sublight ships in space—for the moment.
They also mounted much heavier sidewalls and semi-decent energy armaments to back up their missile cells. They'd given up something in terms of total throw weight to squeeze all that in, but they were faster, tougher, and far more dangerous within the energy envelope, and even at long range, their new launchers—using the same technology as the missile pods—let them throw missiles which were individually much heavier and more capable.
Naturally Hemphill used the new compensators to give her prized LAC swarms a 600 G (about 6 KPS2) accel, and they've upgraded the sidwalls, missiles and energy wepaons to make an LAC the match of a destroyer or frigate from a third-rate navy. I consider these the second-gen LACs, even htough Hemphill's been working on them in the background for a while.
Wayfarer carries a dozen of the new LACs, the first FTL carrier since, well, Thunder of God already did it, but with considerably less capability and style.More to the point, perhaps, most pirates weren't proper warships, either. A single one of the new LACs was as heavily armed as a typical raider, and Wayfarer had been reconfigured to carry six of them in each of her modified cargo holds. Anywhere except in a grav wave, she could multiply her force level by dropping no less than twelve modern and, for their size, powerful parasite warships into the engagement.
Wayfarer does have sidewalls, which a freighter wouldn't necessarily, and they were able to upgrade the rad-shields that can somewhat dull lasers and allow for higher speeds in hyper. But again, nowhere close to a warship. I like the LAC comparison, Wayfarer can dish it out like no one before, but she can't take it.Her biggest weakness was that it had been impossible to upgrade her drive without literally tearing her apart and starting over. She'd been built originally as a fleet collier and equipped with light sidewalls, which had been upgraded as far as possible, and Vulcan had also managed to upgrade the radiation shielding inside those sidewalls, but in many ways, she was a LAC on the grand scale. She could knock the stuffing out of most opponents, especially if she took them by surprise, but she was hopelessly incapable of absorbing much damage of her own.
