Bit of Analysis: HH Saganami Island series

[Esquire]

Actually, looking at the relevant passage in Echoes of Honor, I stand by my idea.

HMS Glorioso had been just a fraction of a second too slow reconfiguring from sails to wedge, and HMS Vixen had run right up her backside. Fortunately, perhaps, the second destroyer had gotten her wedge up quickly, for it had come on-line one bare instant before Glorioso's had, but without building to full power. Which meant that only Glorioso's after nodes had blown. The resultant explosion had vaporized two-thirds of her after impeller room, and Reynaud had no desire at all to think about how many people it must have killed when it went, but it hadn't destroyed her hull or her compensator, and the fail-safes had blown in time to save her forward impellers. Momentum, coupled with instantaneous and brilliant evasive action on Vixen's part, had been just sufficient to carry her clear of an outright collision, and two of her sisters had speared her with tractors and dragged her bodily out of the way of Vixen's next astern.

Glorioso has its after nodes blown up, but the two destroyers remain close enough that direct hull-to-hull collision was a real threat. That collision is avoided by impeller-drive evasive maneuvers, which obviously wouldn't have been possible if simply having the drive active within another wedge area was enough to destroy both ships' nodes. Admittedly it's unclear what caused the problem in the first place - whether there was wedge-on-wedge contact or not, I mean - but Glorioso's evasion doesn't make any sense if two impeller drives can't be used in the same volume, unless the ship's helmsman is quick enough to switch to reaction engines in what can't possible have been more than a second. I haven't tried to draw it out, admittedly, but with the kind of volumes and times we're dealing with here I doubt there's a conceivable vector that would get Glorioso clear of Vixen's path without bringing its forward impellers into the same volume as Vixen's.

[Terralthra]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

At the time of the wedge-interaction, Glorioso and Vixen were both exiting the terminus, meaning both were at very minimal velocity. During the transition, one uses sails (which do not create a wedge), which create a small amount of acceleration within the terminus and only within the terminus. The ships in question are exiting at what, 17 second intervals, if I recall correctly? So Glorioso sails out of the terminus and makes 17 seconds of headway at transit velocity, then Vixen transits behind her. Each of them start bringing up their wedges up within seconds of transition, but Glorioso is slower on the button than Vixen, meaning that that Glorioso's wedge comes up just after Vixen's wedge comes up, but before Vixen's wedge was at full power. So Vixen starts accelerating to be just a little faster than Glorioso, enough to overtake and close the safety gap between them (remember that White Haven ordered the transitions to take place at minimal intervals, not minimal safe intervals) as Glorioso's wedge comes online. Intersecting volume, kaboom.

It can't, however, have been a band-on-band collision, because the basic geometry of the wedge precludes that from happening in a stern chase: the bands in front are way wider and deeper than the bands in rear (yellow is stress bands, orange is sidewall):


If it was band-on-band interaction that caused the blow-out, the ships would have physically collided before the bands touched, because they were literally one-behind-the-other, on vectors that are identical in direction and separated only by magnitude, and that difference itself is slight. Collision would be a risk because they're one-behind-the-other, on vectors that are identical in direction and separated by magnitude.

With Glorioso's wedge down, she can't maneuvre out of Vixen's way, and Vixen had to turn and accelerate away from Glorioso on the bounce in order to keep from further volume intersection with Glorioso's forward wedge, and from chopping off any of Glorioso's hull with the stress band during the turn.

[Esquire]

D'oh! I somehow read Vixen dodging as Glorioso dodging. Mea culpa, and thanks for the explanation.

And I was imagining the two ships being at different rotations on the same line, so the wedges might be able to touch before the ships ran into each other. Assuming the angle isn't really huge - I don't think we're ever told what it is.

[Terralthra]

Simon, would you rather talk about Aegis here, or in the other thread?

[Simon_Jester]

Terralthra, now that I think about it, the other thread might be a better choice. There's more detailed discussion there.
__________________

As regards the wedge-wedge interaction issue, one point worth considering is that there may be "fringe" effects from the wedges that extend well beyond the 'focused planes of gravity' we usually think of when Weber talks about wedges. Especially when an impeller drive is still engaging and tuning itself up.

This helps explain why nobody really wants to put ships' wedges in very close proximity to one another- it's not just a safety margin issue, it's that if you try to bring the dorsal wedge of Ship A within a few kilometers (or a few dozen, or a few hundred) of the ventral wedge of Ship B, the two impeller wedges will start to interfere. And even if this isn't enough to physically blow apart the impeller node generators, it could easily be enough to impose nasty wear and tear on the nodes, the kind that results in hundreds or thousands of hours being taken off their component life, and might destroy them outright if they're not in good shape.

Yet a third point (which I imagine Weber is entirely ignorant of since he seems to know about as much general relativity as the average layman, but is true in real life) is this: Gravitational forces are NOT subject to what physicists call 'linear superposition.' The whole is not always exactly equal to the sum of its parts.

If you have a red beam of light and a blue beam of light, or a magnetic field pointing 'up' and a magnetic field pointing 'right' or something like that... they don't interact. Both things (beams, fields, whatever) can occupy the same space at the same time, exerting their respective influence on any matter in the zone of effect. There is no tendency for them to cancel each other out or reinforce each other's effects, at least not on the macroscopic scale. They just sort of... coexist, each doing its own thing, and if those things happen to work in the same direction, then the whole of the effect equals the sum of its parts.

Linear superposition is a very important concept in physics, because it's all that makes a lot of systems even remotely manageable.

[Details are details, I won't ramble about, say, the way that diffraction works in light waves]

But the physics of general relativity do NOT guarantee that linear superposition will apply to gravity. In fact, they don't, except as a good approximation for weak gravitational fields (e.g. the ones exerted by the Earth or Sun in our solar system).

So two impeller wedge bands in close proximity, or (worse yet) projected by entirely different impeller drives that occupy the same space, might NOT just give you two impeller wedges. They might instead give you no impeller wedge, or two vaguely wedge-shaped things that don't actually create any acceleration whatsoever. Or mutual interference causing the impeller nodes of the respective ships to shriek like a hexapuma with its tail caught in a rock crusher and start progressively tearing themselves apart.

So, having the wedges even close to one another might be a Bad Idea.

[Ahriman238]

There were several possible explanations for why someone might have opted to approach a star system from well above the ecliptic, but aside from gross astrogational error, very few of those explanations would have applied to merchant shipping. Most of a merchant ship's likely destinations in any star system lay in the plane of the system's ecliptic, so translating into hyper in that plane and on the same side of the system as the destination in question required the shortest normal-space flight to reach it. Then, too, crossing a star's hyper limit from significantly above or below the plane of the ecliptic also imposed greater wear and tear—which equated to higher maintenance and replacement costs—on a freighter's hyper generator and alpha nodes. That was true for warships, too, of course . . . but maintenance costs ran a poor second to tactical considerations where they were concerned.

The most likely reason for a polar approach by a warship or a squadron of warships would be to avoid any nasty little surprises a defender might have attempted to arrange on a more conventional approach vector. The fact that it also gave better sensor coverage of the entire system (or, at least, of the entire ecliptic) wasn't anything to sneer at, either. A defender could still hide on the far side of the system's central star, or in the shadow of one or more of its planets or even moons, but it got harder against someone looking down—or up—from system north or south.

Crossing hyper-limits is easier at the system ecliptic, but a polar translation gives you a much better view while screaming to any defenders that the newcomers are warships.

The good news, such as it was and what there was of it, was that the missile pods deployed about his ships contained all-up Mark 23s, not the Mark 16s which normally lived in Hexapuma's magazines. The Mark 16's laser heads produced greater destructive power than almost anything else below the wall of battle, but they'd never been intended to take on superdreadnought armor. They could inflict a lot of superficial damage, possibly even cripple the heavier ship's sensor suites or rip up the vulnerable nodes of its impeller rings, but good as they were, they had far too little punch to actually stop a waller.

But the Mark 23 was a very different proposition, he thought grimly. His control links were still too badly damaged to manage more than a few dozen pods simultaneously. Certainly he couldn't come close to matching the multi-thousand-missile salvos the Manticoran Alliance and the Republic of Haven had become accustomed to throwing at one another! But he could still fire almost four hundred attack birds in a single launch, and if those were Solly dreadnoughts or superdreadnoughts, they were in for an extraordinarily unpleasant surprise when three badly mauled cruisers and a single destroyer opened fire on them with that many capital missiles from well outside their own engagement range.

Firepower of the Mk 16 MDM, and the standard Mk 23 pod-missile. Ships sensors, weapons, and impeller nodes by necessity extend beyond the ship's armor and so are vulnerable even to the weaponry of far smaller ships, but it seems Mk 16 can't really penetrate capital ship armor and savage the innards.

"Sir, we're being hailed!" Nagchaudhuri said suddenly, spinning his chair to face his captain. "It's FTL, Sir!"

Terekhov twitched upright in his own chair. If the unknowns were transmitting using FTL grav-pulses, then they damned well weren't Sollies! In fact, if they were transmitting FTL, the only people they could be were—

So it seems the Sollies don't have FTL comm at this point. Huh.

"May I assume you've already written up your reports on this . . . incident?" Khumalo asked after several more moments.

"Yes, Sir. I have."

"Good. Let me have them now then, if you would. I should have ample time to review them, since my astrogator makes it roughly seven and a half hours for us to reach your current position. At that time, please be prepared to come aboard Hercules."

Being that it takes hours to maneuver at sublight, Khumalo is going to take his time reading Terekhov's report before doing saying or doing anything drastic.

His scratch-built force was even more lopsided and ill-balanced than Terekhov's "squadron" had been. Aside from Hercules—which, for all her impressively massive tonnage was still one of the only two or three sadly obsolescent Samothrace-class ships lingering on in commission as little more than depot ships on distant stations—it consisted solely of the light cruisers Devastation and Intrepid, and the three destroyers Victorious, Ironside, and Domino. Aside from Victorious, not a one of them was less than twenty T-years old, although that still made them considerably more modern and lethal than anything Monica had possessed before the sudden and mysterious infusion of modern battlecruisers.

The other four "superdreadnought-range" hyper footprints had belonged to the ammunition ships Petard and Holocaust and the repair ships Ericsson and White. Terekhov was relieved to see all of them, but especially the two repair ships, given the state of his own command.

Consider these representative of the sort of ship the Admiralty has been sending to Talbott to date. I think there are three ships under 20 mentioned in the whole region, which may have only a handful of habitable systems but covers twice the volume of space as Silesia. Oh, and 4 million ton SD/freighter-sized ammunition and repair ships.

HMS Hercules' forward boat bay was considerably larger than Hexapuma's, and it seemed oddly quiet as Terekhov swam the personnel tube from his pinnace, then swung himself into the boat bay's regulation one standard gravity.

It seems strange to me that they still use a zero-G jetway to transfer personnel from a pinnace. Then again, the pinnace belongs to the Kitty so there may not be room to land inside the boat bay. Or possibly it's just not worth the headache of depressurizing and repressurizing the whole bay to bring a handful of people onboard.

"Thank you, Ma'am." Terekhov was unusually aware of the white beret which marked Saunders as the commander of a hyper-capable unit of the Royal Manticoran Navy. His own matching beret was tucked neatly under one of his epaulets, since courtesy precluded his wearing it aboard another captain's command, and he wondered if he was so aware of Saunders' because the odds were so good that he himself would never again be permitted to wear it.

I don't think it's been mentioned again since the very first book, but it's considered rude for a starship captain to wear their beret aboard someone else's ship. Jamming it under an epaulet sounds awkward. I wonder if the other officers from the Nasty Kitty uncover aboard a different ship?

"President Tyler," Khumalo said, looking into the com pickup at his terminal, "I apologize for not getting back to you more promptly. As you know, the current one-way transmission lag to Eroica Station is well over forty minutes. Given that inevitable delay in our communications loop, I judged it would be wiser to speak directly to Captain Terekhov and hear his version of the unfortunate events here in Monica in person before speaking to you again."

-snip-

"Obviously, I am deeply distressed by the loss of life, both Monican and Manticoran," Khumalo continued gravely. "The destruction of so many ships, and so much damage to the public property of the Union, are also deeply distressing to me. And I must inform you that Captain Terekhov, by his own admission to me in his formal reports, acknowledges that his actions were completely unauthorized by any higher authority."

The rear admiral shook his head, his expression solemn.

"I have carefully considered your requests that I disavow his actions, remove him from his command, formally apologize to your government for his actions, and agree to submit this entire tragic affair to the investigation and arbitration of the Office of Frontier Security. And I am certain my Queen could desire very few things more than a speedy, just, and fair resolution to all of the myriad questions, accusations, and claims and counter-claims arising from events here in Monica."

Khumalo's eyes glanced sideways at Terekhov's masklike, impassive features, then went back to the pickup.

"Unfortunately, Mr. President," he said, "while all of that is true, I am also of the opinion that what my Queen would even more strongly desire is for you and your government to explain to her why you have been directly assisting efforts to recruit, support, encourage, and arm terrorist organizations engaged in active campaigns of assassination, murder, and destruction against the citizens of other sovereign star nations who have requested membership in the Star Kingdom of Manticore. I am further of the opinion that she would argue that my first responsibility is to protect those citizens from future attack and determine precisely who supplied those responsible for the attacks already carried out with the several tons of modern Solarian weapons Captain Terekhov confiscated in the Split System. Moreover, I fear Her Majesty is unlikely to repose the most lively possible confidence in the impartiality of any investigation by the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security, and that she would be most displeased if the two surviving battlecruisers obviously provided to you by Solarian interests should mysteriously disappear before that investigation could be completed to everyone's satisfaction."

Terekhov felt his jaw trying to drop and restrained it firmly.

"Obviously, at this great distance from Manticore, I cannot know for certain what Her Majesty will ultimately decide when she considers these weighty matters," Khumalo continued. "It is my judgment, however, as the senior officer present of the Queen's Navy, that until I do know what her decision is, it is my duty and responsibility to maintain the status quo in this star system pending the arrival of the substantial reinforcements I have requested from Home Fleet, which will undoubtedly arrive with dispatches directly from Manticore. At that time, should my Queen instruct me to comply with your requests, I will, of course, be only too happy to do so. Until that time, however, I must unreservedly endorse Captain Terekhov's actions and inform you that I concur entirely in his conclusions and have every intention of continuing the policy and the military stance he has adopted since the unfortunate engagement with your naval units.

"It is my earnest hope that this entire situation can be resolved as amicably as possible, between the diplomatic representatives of two civilized star nations, with no further loss of life or damage to property, public or private. If, however, you should choose—as is your undoubted right—to use the military force remaining under your command against any unit of the Royal Manticoran Navy, or should I have any reason to believe you are taking steps to destroy, conceal, or remove evidence from Eroica Station, I will not hesitate to act precisely as Captain Terekhov has already informed you he would act."

Augustus Khumalo gazed directly into the pickup, and his deep voice was very level.

"The decision, Mr. President, is up to you. I trust you will choose wisely."

We already know from the end of SoS that Khumalo backed Terekhov when he arrived, but since Weber bothered to include this scene and Khumalo being awesome in this book, how could I deny it to this thread?

Personally, Michelle would just as soon not get anyone killed, herself included, and she'd been extremely tempted to steer Brangeard towards one of the Hermes buoys seeded around the perimeter of Trevor's Star. As yet, however, there was no indication the Havenites were aware of that particular adaptation of Manticore's superior FTL communications technology. The system was still on the Official Secrets List but she'd come very close to telling Brangeard about it on the theory that the message she carried was far more important than preserving the secret of the Hermes buoy's existence. Always assuming, of course, that it really was still a secret.

I can definitely say that Haven doesn't know about Hermes yet, though I'm not sure it's an impressive enough achievement to warrant all the secrecy.

The fact that the entire star system had been declared closed military space gave any of its defenders the legal right to shoot first and try to identify the bodies—if any—afterwards, although she rather doubted any Manticoran squadron commander was likely to do anything of the sort.

-snip-

"Excuse me," the extremely suspicious looking woman in the uniform of a Royal Manticoran Navy captain of the list said from the smallish com screen on Comet's command deck, "but you're going to have to do a bit better than that, Captain . . . Brangeard, was it? There are proper channels for diplomatic exchanges. Ones that don't let Havenite dispatch boats into sensor range of sensitive installations. So I recommend you try a bit harder to convince me not to open fire."

Legal nature and sensitivity of San Martino space.


-snip Henke telling Honor all about the peace summit-

Michelle Henke gazed at the young man on the other side of her desk. She'd had her doubts when Honor had recommended young Archer as her new flag lieutenant. Of course, part of that was because she'd wondered whether she'd even need a new flag lieutenant.

Getting just a bit ahead of yourself going ahead and interviewing candidates when the Admiralty hasn't even told you it's going to find you a command, aren't you, girl? she reflected. On the other hand, it's not like good flag lieutenants are a-dime-a-dozen, either. And even an admiral who doesn't have a command needs a good aide.

Indeed they weren't, and indeed she did. And it wasn't many lieutenants who were likely to gain the recommendation of someone like Honor Harrington without ever having served directly under her.

"He's been through hell, Mike," she remembered Honor saying, reaching up to touch Nimitz's ears. "His efficiency reports are top-notch, and I know Captain Cruickshank thought the world of him. He 'tastes' a lot like another Tim Meares, to be honest. But there's a lot of pain locked up inside him at the moment, too. I think part of its probably survivor's guilt." Those almond-shaped eyes had bored into Michelle's. "Almost like he did something wrong surviving when his ship didn't. Sound familiar?"

Mike's new flag lieutenant, Gervais Archer. Also formerly of Eighth Fleet, personally recommended by Honor. He's also kind of traumatized and plagued by survivor's guilt over the loss of his Star Knight-class ship, the Necromancer at Solon, as in a way is Mike Henke herself. But by now traumatized officers are practically a Talbott tradition.

His full name is Gervais Winton Erwin Neville Archer, and from his first four initials most people have taken to calling him 'Gwen.' A male Gwen serving a female admiral named Mike, how fun names in the future shall be.

"That's a cat, Ma'am," Billingsley told her. "Not a treecat, a cat—an Old Earth cat. It's called a 'Maine Coon.' "

-snip-

"Yes, Ma'am. I call him 'Dicey.' "

" 'Dicey,' " Michelle replied with long-suffering resignation. "Of course."

Billingsley continued to look as if butter would not melt in his mouth, but the name was a dead giveaway of how his new pet had really come into his possession, Michelle thought, looking at the enormous cat. It was the first terrestrial cat she'd ever seen who looked like he probably came close to matching Nimitz's mass. Not only that, but 'Dicey' was a good twenty centimeters shorter overall than Nimitz, and although he was definitely a long hair, he was nowhere near as fluffy as a treecat, which made him substantially bulkier. One ear had a notch that looked like someone else had taken a bite out of it, and a scar across the back of his burly neck left a visible furrow in his fur. There were a couple of more of those on the left side of his face, as well, she noticed. Obviously, he'd been to the wars, yet there was something about him that reminded her irresistibly of Billingsley himself, now that she thought about it. A certain endearing disreputability, perhaps.

Meet Billingsley, Henke's new steward she picked up in the Haven POW camp, he's almost as much a character as Harkness. And his technically illegal pet, Dicey.

"You do realize how many regulations there are against having a pet on board one of her Majesty's starships?" she inquired out loud after a moment.

"Regulations, Ma'am?" Billingsley repeated blankly, as if he'd never heard the word before.

Michelle started to open her mouth again, then gave up. A wise woman knew when to cut her losses, and she didn't begin to have the time it would take to make a dent in Billingsley's bland innocence. Besides, she didn't have the heart for it.

"As long as you understand that I'm not going to put any pressure on anyone to allow you to bring that beast along on our next deployment," she said, trying womanfully to sound firm.

See?

Admiralty House's latest expansion project had been authorized less than a month after the High Ridge Government took office. The previous one had been completed—on time and under budget—just over a T-year before that by a subsidiary of the Hauptman Cartel. Obviously, an administration which had based its domestic policies so firmly on the time-honored, well-tested device of the support-buying boondoggle couldn't have such a potentially lucrative avenue for . . . creative capital flow sitting around unutilized, however. So another expansion had promptly been authorized . . . despite the fact that the Janacek Admiralty had been so busily downsizing the Navy. This one was going to add another forty floors when it was finished sometime in the next few months, and Michelle didn't like to think about how much it had contributed to the bottom line of Apex Industrial Group.

They've been working for over five years to add another forty floors to the Admiralty House super-scraper. They actually do need the room with the renewed conflict, not that the people who authorized the project could ever envision that. No it was mostly a way to arrange for millions of Manty dollars to find their way back to one of High Ridge's primary contributors. Even after the fall of the HRG, nobody is going to prison over that little deal.

"Admiral Gold Peak!"

Cortez was a smallish man who wore the uniform of an admiral of the green. In many ways, he looked more like a successful schoolteacher, or perhaps a bank bureaucrat, than a naval officer, despite the uniform. And in many ways, Michelle supposed, he was a bureaucrat. But he was a very important bureaucrat—the Royal Manticoran Navy's Fifth Space Lord and the commanding officer of the Bureau of Personnel. It was his job to meet the unending appetite of the frantically expanding, brutally overworked Navy, and no one—including Michelle—quite knew how he had done that so well, for so long. Under the prewar system of rotating senior officers regularly through fleet commands and then back to desk jobs in order to see to it that they stayed operationally current, Cortez would have been replaced in his present position long since. No one in her right mind was going to suggest replacing him under wartime conditions, however.

It's been a very long time since we checked in with Sir Lucian Cortez (okay, it was the last book, a long time since the main series though) I presume he was also given the boot by the Janacek Admiralty. The man was their personnel wizard throughout the first war, with an uncanny ability to slot the right officers into the right assignment. Which probably owes a lot to his amazing memory and his personally knowing the face, name, history and relationships both good and bad of every serving command level (Lt. Cmndr and higher) officer in the service.

It seems during the war they suspended the usual rule of rotating fleet and staff admirals every couple of years.

"For fairly obvious reasons, Milady, there weren't any paroles during the last war, and I'm afraid we've never set up the proper channels between us and the Repulic since the fall of the Committee of Public Safety, either. An oversight we ought to have rectified long since, once we were rid of StateSec. Unfortunately, it would appear the previous government had other things on its mind, such as it was and what there was of it, and we've been just a bit busy ourselves since Baron High Ridge's . . . departure. So, frankly, we've been going around in circles over in the JAG's office, trying to decide how to handle your case."

-snip-

"There was a minority opinion," Roach told her when Cortez nodded for him to resume, "that the exact wording of your parole technically disqualifies you from active service anywhere until you've been properly exchanged, on the basis that allowing you to serve somewhere besides directly against Haven would still free up another officer for that service. That's a very strict interpretation of the Deneb Accords, however, and it's one the Star Kingdom has never formally accepted. It was also, frankly, an interpretation that Admiral Cortez didn't much care for, so I was asked to do some additional research, probably because I'm currently the executive officer over at the Charleston Center for Admiralty Law."

-snip-

"Like any good lawyer, I went looking for the precedents most favorable to my client's case—the stronger and more specific the better—and I found what I was looking for in a decision from the old Greenbriar-Chanticleer War. In 1843, they agreed to submit a dispute over officers' paroles for Solarian League binding arbitration. The decision of the arbitrator was that any legally paroled officer could be utilized for any duty in which he or she was not personally and directly engaged against the enemy who had paroled him or her. Staff, logistic, and medical services assignments for any unit directly committed against the enemy who had paroled him or her were held to be unlawful, but service in another astrographic area, or against another opponent, was specifically held to be a lawful employment of paroled officers. In other words, Milady, as long as you aren't actively shooting at the Peeps or helping someone else do the same thing, the Admiralty can send you anywhere it wants."

"Which is exactly what he told us, in considerably more detail, when he wrote the final decision that we can legally and honorably employ you in either Silesia or the Talbott Cluster, even if that does let us send some other rear admiral to go beat on Haven in your place," Cortez said. "And, frankly, it's a damned good thing we can, too, under the circumstances."

Terms of Mike's parole and what that means for her professionally. Not having done prisoner exchanges in the last war, they don't really have a protocol set up. Anyways, off to Talbott she goes.

"You may not be aware that the first wave of our emergency superdreadnought construction programs will be commissioning over the next several months," he said, and Michelle's eyes narrowed. He saw it, and snorted. "I see you weren't. Good. They've worked some not so minor miracles in the shipyards—and, to be frank, cut some corners in ways we would never have accepted in peacetime—to telescope construction times, and we're substantially ahead of schedule on most of the ships. We've done our best to conceal the extent to which that's true, and we sincerely hope Haven hasn't picked up on it yet, either. But, to be perfectly honest, that's one reason everyone here at Admiralty House heaved such a huge sigh of relief when Her Majesty agreed to meet with Pritchart and Theisman. Obviously, we'll all be delighted if some sort of peace settlement emerges from this summit. But, frankly, even if nothing at all comes of it in that regard, we should be able to string the talks out for at least a couple of months, even after Her Majesty and Pritchart reach Torch.

The first of the new SD hulls laid after Thunderbolt will be finishing soon.

Given the situation vis-a-vis the League, we have no choice but to continue to tweak our recruiting, training, and building programs whenever and wherever we can, despite the summit and any respite it might offer on the Haven front. And despite all of the advances in automation and reductions in manpower requirements, crewing that much new construction is stretching our personnel strength right to the breaking point. For example, most of the new superdreadnoughts are close enough to completion at this point that we're already assembling cadre and assigning them to their new ships. Fortunately, we've been able to decommission many of the old-style ships of the wall we were forced to put back into service after Grendelsbane, and that's freed up a lot of trained manpower. And we've recovered from Janacek and High Ridge's build-down. But we're still short of all the people we need, and the situation is even worse for our lighter units. Like—" he gave her a sharp, level look "—the new battlecruisers."

He paused, and Michelle nodded. The most urgent priorities of the new war emergency construction programs had focused on producing as many ships of the wall, pod-laying superdreadnoughts like Honor's Imperator, as was physically possible. It couldn't have been any other way, given the overwhelming primacy the new "podnoughts" had attained. Because of that emphasis, lighter ships, like cruisers and destroyers, had been assigned a much lower building priority. Large numbers had been projected, and, indeed, laid down, but only after the needs of the superdreadnought-building programs had already been met. And only after additional dispersed yards in which to do the laying down could be thrown together, as well. As a result, construction had been much slower to begin on those smaller, lighter units.

On the other hand, it took much less time to build a destroyer or a cruiser—or even one of the new battlecruisers—than it did to build a ship of the wall. Which meant there'd been time to refine their designs and get classes like the new Nike-class battlecruisers and Roland-class destroyers into the pipeline. And it also meant that, despite their later start, truly enormous numbers of brand-new ships "below the wall" were already in the process of working up for service. But although the adoption of such vastly increased automation meant the once vast gulf between the absolute numbers of noncommissioned and enlisted personnel required by a superdreadnought and a mere battlecruiser had shrunk substantially, a battlecruiser still required almost as many officers as a superdreadnought. And while the new LACs might free up large numbers of starships which might once have been tied down on picket, patrol, or anti-piracy system security, each of them required its own slice of officers and enlisted, as well, which, in turn, put an even greater strain on the available supply of trained personnel.

Strains on their personnel pool. BCs require almost as many officers as SDs, and automation hasn't really changed that. Large numbers of smaller ships are coming into service, but the podnoughts have building priority and even among lighter units, anything that can't throw around MDMs is pretty much a tertiary concern.

"Here's what we have in mind, Milady," Cortez said, leaning forward and folding his hands on his desk blotter. "Initially, we'd earmarked somewhere around two thirds of the new cruisers and battlecruisers for Admiral Sarnow's command in Silesia. That, unfortunately, was before the situation in Talbott blew up in our faces. So now it looks as if we're basically going to be reversing the proportions we'd originally projected and sending two thirds of them to Talbott, instead. Including you, Admiral."

What's happening to all the new light units, originally most were bound to Silesia, but since they still don't know how big a splash events in Monica will make with the League or what fresh hell Manpower, Jessyk, OFS or Kalokainos might start, now two thirds of the new ships are going to Talbott.

"But the fact is that we've known from the beginning that we couldn't permanently leave Vice Admiral O'Malley in Talbott, for a lot of reasons. Among them, the fact that he's just about due for his third star. Another is that we have a task group of Invictus-class SD(P)s waiting for him when he gets it. So, as soon as possible, we need to recall him to the Lynx Terminus and get Admiral Blaine's screening units back to the rest of his task force. But we're going to need someone to replace O'Malley in Talbott proper, and we're going to be recalling the pod battlecruisers we borrowed from Grayson when we deployed him in the first place. We're replacing them with the 106th, and we're replacing him with you . . . Vice Admiral Gold Peak."

Michelle stiffened in her chair, and Cortez's smile grew broader.

"You were already on the list before Solon," he told her. "In fact, the promotion board had acted before Ajax was lost, although the paperwork was still being processed. And then things got a little complicated when we thought you were dead, of course. That's been straightened out, however, and some of those factors other than your combat skills are coming into play here, as well. For one thing, it's been decided Admiral Khumalo will also be promoted. In fact, he's already been notified of his promotion to vice admiral. His date of rank precedes your own, so he'll still be senior to you, and he'll be staying on as the Talbott Station commander."

Her promotion, and I wonder if the Admiralty will institute a "presumed dead- no longer dead" form between this and Honor's little comeback. Anyways, Mike will have the same rank as Khumalo but he's senior. Seems a bunch of Grayson BC(P)s went to sit on Lynx with O'Malley.

"I know this doesn't constitute much warning," Cortez continued. "And I'm afraid you aren't going to have time to assemble your own staff. For that matter, you're not going to have time to properly work up your new squadron, either. From the last report I received, I'm not even sure all of your ships will have completed their acceptance trials before you have to depart. I've done my best to pull together as strong a team for you as I could, however."

He took a document viewer from his desk drawer and passed it across to her. She keyed it and pursed her lips thoughtfully as she scanned the information. She didn't recognize many of the names, but she did recognize some of them.

"Captain Lecter became available almost as unexpectedly as you did, Milady," Cortez said. "At least a half-dozen flag officers requested her services, but I felt she'd fit best as your chief of staff."

State of Mike's new command, and beginning a block of her new staff. Cynthia Lecter was Henke's first XO after Honor was effectively banished to Grayson and will now be her chief of staff.

"I don't believe you've ever served with Commander Adenauer," Cortez continued, "but she's compiled a very impressive record."

Michelle nodded again. As far as she was aware, she'd never even met Commander Dominica Adenauer, much less served with her, but the bare synopsis of the combat record appended to the file Cortez had handed her was impressive. Not every skilled tactical officer worked out well as a squadron operations officer, but at first glance, at least, Adenauer looked promising. And Cortez did have that knack for putting the right officer into the right slot.

Ops will be Commander Dominica Adenauer.

"I know Commander Casterlin," Michelle said, looking up from the document. "Not as well as I'd like to, under the circumstances, but what I do know about him, I like. I don't know anything about Edwards, though."

"He's young," Cortez replied. "In fact, he just made lieutenant commander about two months ago, but I was impressed when I interviewed him. And he's just finished a stint with BuWeaps as one of Admiral Hemphill's assistants. He's too junior to hold down the ops officer's slot, and even if he wasn't, he's a communications specialist, not a tac officer. That's why Adenauer got Operations and Edwards got Communications. But he's been hands-on with both laser head development and the new command and control systems, and I think you—and Commander Adenauer—will find his familiarity with the admiral's newest toys very useful."

Her staff communications officer just got off a stint as one Hemphill's flying monkeys working on the new and much nastier laser heads for MDMs. Also Cortez personally interviews officers, not really surprising he has to get to know them somehow.

"I'm still trying to find you a good logistics officer, and I still need a staff EW expert for you. Edwards' experience could probably be helpful in that area, as well, but, again, it's not something he's really trained for. Hopefully, I'll have both Logistics and Electronic Warfare covered by the end of the day. Obviously, all of these are suggestions at this point, and if you do have any serious reservations or objections to my nominations, we'll do everything we can to accommodate you. I'm afraid, however, that time's so short we may not have a lot of flex."

"Understood, My Lord," Michelle said in a voice that sounded more cheerful than she actually felt. The Manticoran tradition had always been that BuPers tried hard to meet any flag officer's reasonable requests for staffers, and no squadron or task force commander was ever happy to find herself stuck with someone else's choices for her own staff officers. She couldn't pretend she was exactly delighted to find herself in that position, but she suspected that quite a few other flag officers were finding themselves in very similar circumstances at the moment.

No EW or logistics officer yet, Personnel normally bows to a flag officer or captain's wishes as much as practical, but practical means one thing in peacetime and something else while there's shooting going on.

"That's what I meant when I said you might even be pulling out for Talbott before all of your ships have completed their acceptance trials. You do remember what I said about the shipyards cutting corners to streamline production, don't you? Well, one of the things we've dispensed with is the full spectrum of acceptance trials and pre-trial testing."

Michelle's eyes widened in the first real alarm she'd felt since entering Cortez's office, and he shrugged.

"Milady, we're between the proverbial rock and the hard place, and we've simply had no choice but to make some . . . accommodations. I won't pretend anyone's delighted by it, but we've tried to compensate by putting even more emphasis on quality control in the construction process. So far, we haven't had any major component failures, but I'd be misleading you if I didn't admit we have had some minor to even moderately severe problems which had to be worked out using on-board resources after a ship left the yard. I hope that won't be the case where your squadron is concerned, but I can't guarantee it. And if we have to deploy you with builder's reps still on board, we will. So, in answer to the question I'm sure you were about to ask, your deployment date is one T-week from today."

No acceptance trials in the new construction, part of that rush to the finish line. It hasn't caused any serious problems (read: fatalities) yet but there have been some moderate inconveniences as Important Shit broke down and had to be fixed without the benefit of a yard.

So far as the galaxy at large was aware, the planet Mesa was simply an outlaw world, home to ruthless and corrupt corporations from throughout the Solarian League's huge volume. Not a member of the League itself, Mesa nonetheless had lucrative contacts with many League worlds, which protected it and its "outlaw" owners from Solarian intervention. And, of course, the worst of the outlaws in question was none other than Manpower Incorporated, the galaxy's leading producer of genetic slaves, which had been founded by Leonard Detweiler the better part of six hundred T-years before. There were others, some of them equally disreputable and "evil" by other peoples' standards, but Manpower was clearly the standardbearer for Mesa's incredibly wealthy—and thoroughly corrupt—elite. And Manpower, equally clearly, was ruthlessly determined to protect its economic interests at any cost. Any and all of its political contacts, objectives, and strategies were obviously subordinated to that purpose.

The extensive contacts developed by Manpower, Jessyk and other Mesan transtellar corporations to ensure Mesa gains the full benefits of League protection without ever signing up, surrendering their sovereignty or heeding Solly law. In fact, to the League at large Mesa is essentially a corporate-run tax shelter.

Which was where the "onion" came in. Although Albrecht himself had often thought it would have been more appropriate to describe Manpower as the stage magician's left hand, moving in dramatic passes to fix the audience's attention upon it while his right hand performed the critical manipulation the Alignment wanted no one else to notice.

The onion. Working to a plan six hundred years old, every part of the scheme is heavily compartmentalized and there are over a dozen layers of inclusion in the Mesan Alignment. The more trusted you are by the Alignment, the more crumbs you're fed, and you need to be halfway through before learning the Mesan Alignment exists, and very deep in before you learn their true objectives.

Manpower and its genetic slaves remained, in fact, immensely profitable, but these days that was actually only a happy secondary benefit of Manpower's existence. In fact, as the Alignment fully recognized, genetic slavery had long since ceased to be a truly competitive way to supply labor forces, except under highly specialized circumstances. Fortunately many of its customers failed to grasp that same point, and Manpower's marketing department went to considerable lengths to encourage that failure of understanding wherever possible. And, possibly even more fortunately, other aspects of genetic slavery, particularly those associated with the vices to which humanity had always been prey, made rather more economic sense.

As has been said, slave labor makes little economic sense, even assuming Manpower can provide highly skilled technicians. Sex slavery, on the other hand continues to be a huge revenue generator.

First, Manpower and its genetic research facilities provided the perfect cover for the experimentation and development which were the true focus of the Mesan Alignment and its goals. Second, the need to protect Manpower explained why Mesa, although not a member of the League itself, was so heavily plugged into the League's political and economic structures. Third, the perversions to which genetic slavery pandered provided ready-made "hooks" by which Manpower's proprietors could . . . influence decisionmakers throughout the League and beyond. Fourth, the nature of the slave trade itself turned Manpower—and thus, by extension, all of Mesa's ruling corporations—into obvious criminals, with an instinctive imperative to maintain the current system as it was so that they could continue to feed in its comfortably corrupt depths, which distracted anyone from considering the possibility that Mesa might actually want to change the current system, instead. And, fifth, it provided a ready-made excuse—or plausible cover, at least—for almost any covert operation the Alignment might undertake if details of that operation should stray into sight.

The many benefits Manpower Incorporated provides to the Alignment beyond the merely financial. By providing influence, and a good reason for them to have influence, to carry out covert operations, without anyone wondering what their ultimate goals are. And, of course, letting them play Legos with the human genome as much as they like, trying out all sorts of combinations on disposable people before using the successes to enhance the people that matter.

It would no doubt have helped, in some ways, at least, if Leonard Detweiler had fully worked out his grand concept before establishing Manpower. No one could think of everything, unfortunately, and one thing Mesa's geneticists still hadn't been able to produce was prescience. Besides, he'd been provoked. His Detweiler Consortium had first settled Mesa in 1460 PD, migrating to its new home from Beowulf following the discovery of the Visigoth System's wormhole junction six T-years earlier. The Mesa System itself had first been surveyed in 1398, but until the astrogators discovered that it was home to one of the two secondary termini of the Visigoth Wormhole, it had been too far out in the back of beyond to attract development.

That changed when the Visigoth Wormhole survey was completed, and Detweiler had acquired the development rights from the system's original surveyors. The fact that the planet Mesa, despite having quite a nice climate, also possessed a biosystem poorly suited to terrestrial physiology helped lower the price, given the expenses involved in terraforming. But Detweiler hadn't intended to terraform Mesa. Instead, he'd opted to "mesaform" the colonists through genetic engineering. That decision had been inevitable in light of Detweiler's condemnation of the "illogical, ignorant, unthinking, hysterical, Frankenstein fear" of the genetic modification of human beings which had hardened into almost instinctual repugnance over the five hundred T-years between Old Earth's Final War and his departure for Mesa. Still, however inevitable it might have been, it had not been popular with the Beowulf medical establishment of the time. Worse, the fact that Visigoth was barely sixty light-years from Beowulf had guaranteed that Mesa and Beowulf would remain close enough together (despite the hundreds of light-years between them through normal-space) to be a continuous irritant to one another, and Beowulf's unceasing condemnation of Detweiler's faith in the genetic perfectability of humanity had infuriated him. It was, after all, the entire reason he and those members of the Beowulf genetic establishment who shared his views had left Beowulf in the first place.

History of Mesa, which apparently is one terminus of the Visigoth Wormhole, while Visigoth itself is a short distance from Beowulf. And I see the original Detweiler believed in Pantropy i.e. GEing life to suit a planet rather than terraforming the planet to suit terrestrial life.

It was quite clear that Leonard's decision to rename the Detweiler Consortium "Manpower, Incorporated," had been intended as a thumb in the eye to the entire Beowulf establishment, and that thumb had landed exactly where he'd aimed it. And if Beowulf had been . . . upset by the Detweiler Consortium's practice of wholesale genetic modification of colonists to suit hostile environments like Mesa, it was infuriated when Manpower began producing "indentured servants" genetically designed for specific environments or specific tasks. At first, periods of indenturement on Mesa itself had been limited to no more than twenty-five T-years, although even after completing their indentures, the "genetic clients" had been denied the franchise and generally treated as second-class citizens. As they became an increasing percentage of the planetary population, however, the planetary constitution had been modified to make "indenturement" a lifelong condition. Technically, Mesa and Manpower continued to insist that there were no such things as "slaves," only "indentured servants," but while that distinction might offer at least some useful smokescreen for Mesa's allies and paid mouthpieces in places like the Solarian League's Assembly, it was meaningless to the institution's opponents.

The hostility between Beowulf and Mesa had grown unspeakably bitter over the past four and a half centuries, and the anti-slavery Cherwell Convention which had been created by Beowulf had produced enormous headaches for Manpower, Mesa, and the Mesan Alignment. That was unfortunate, and it had posed some significant problems for the Alignment's overall strategy. The ferocity with which the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven harassed Manpower's operations, for example, had clearly presented a long-term threat. While both of those star nations combined constituted little more than a flyspeck compared to the Solarian League, their loathing for genetic slavery had made them implacable foes, and the Republic of Haven's vibrant economy and steady expansion had caused the Alignment considerable anxiety. Haven had been colonized over a hundred and fifty T-years before Mesa, and while it had lacked the enormous financial "nest egg" Leonard Detweiler had brought with him to Mesa, it had created a powerful, self-fueling economic base which promised to do nothing but continue to grow. And that had made the Haven Quadrant loom large in the Alignment's thinking, especially following the discovery of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction in 1585.

It was the Manticoran Junction and the way it moved the entire Haven Quadrant to within shouting distance of the Sol System itself which had made a pair of insignificant, far off neobarb star nations a matter of major concern to the Alignment. Their direct connection to the League ran through the Beowulf System, and both the Republic and the Star Kingdom had fully imbibed the Beowulfan attitudes towards genetic slavery.

More history and why the Mesans manipulated Haven's politics, pushing things like the increasing dole and TCA that lead to the self-destructive People's Republic.

The thing that makes it so damned irritating, Albrecht reflected, is that everything else is going so well. In a lot of ways, Manticore and Haven shouldn't matter a fart in a windstorm, given their limited size and how far away they are. Unfortunately, not only are they both likely to grow nothing but bigger and stronger if we don't take steps, but the wormhole network gives Manticore the ability to reach almost any part of the Solarian League quickly, in theory, at least. And they aren't really that damned far away from us, either. Talbott is bad enough in normal-space terms, but the entire Manty home fleet is only sixty light-years—and two junction transits—away from Mesa by way of Beowulf. And the Manties keep right on introducing new pieces of hardware at the most inconvenient times. Not to mention pushing the damned Havenites into following their lead!

I really think you have no one to blame but yourselves. Manticore wouldn't be such a threat if they hadn't had to develop wunderwaffen to survive the war with Haven, which you turned expansionist in the first place!

The official demise of the Detweiler line had been part of the strategy designed to divert the galaxy's—and especially Beowulf's—attention from Leonard Detweiler's determination to uplift human genetics in general. The Detweilers had been too strongly and fiercely devoted to that goal for too long, and the apparent—and spectacular—assassination of the "last" Detweiler heir by greedy elements on the Manpower Incorporated board of directors had punctuated the fact that the increasingly criminal Mesans no longer shared that lofty aspiration. It had also served to get Leonard's descendants safely beneath anyone else's radar, of course, but its most useful function had been to help explain and justify Mesa's switch to the full-bore exploitation of genetic slavery by Manpower. The steady, ongoing improvement of the alignment's own genomes had been buried under Manpower's R&D programs and camouflaged as little more than surface improvements in physical beauty.

But whatever the rest of humanity might have thought, the Detweiler line was far from extinct. In fact, the Detweiler genome was one of the—if not the—most improved within the entire Alignment. And Albrecht Detweiler's "sons" were also his genetic clones. Bardasano, for one, he felt certain, had figured that out, despite how closely held a secret it was supposed to be.

Leonard Detweiler and his heirs were very passionate in their transhumanistic beliefs, so they had to stage an end to the family to disguise the fact that they still have transhumanism-related goals. Detweiler's sons are his clones and they've been augmented to the max over the centuries.

[Mr Bean]

The augments to the Detweiler clan have been hinted at and mentioned. I've always wanted to put them together at some point because the internal monologue breadcrumbs indicate something like a Transhuman Captain America level augment. All around better in all areas after testing gene combos over millions of samples over hundreds of years. It's mentioned at one point that even without Prolong that a Detweiler can expect a multi-century life span and they have no idea how long the current Detweiler will live with Prolong added on top.

[Simon_Jester]

Crossing hyper-limits is easier at the system ecliptic, but a polar translation gives you a much better view while screaming to any defenders that the newcomers are warships.

Well, a priori it shouldn't make a difference, but in practice if it is much easier to enter near the ecliptic, then defenders won't be in position to take advantage of the opportunity to 'hide behind' planets or stars from the point of view of an observer in a polar position.

One drawback is that if you make a polar approach in the MDM era you are more likely to end up in range of a greater proportion of the system defense forces at once.

So it seems the Sollies don't have FTL comm at this point. Huh.

Or, if they do, Terekhov doesn't know about it- and honestly if the RMN can keep it a secret the SLN should be able to do the same, although with their political structure that's not a foregone conclusion.

Being that it takes hours to maneuver at sublight, Khumalo is going to take his time reading Terekhov's report before doing saying or doing anything drastic.

Classy. This kind of thing is why I think Khumalo is a basically OK commander- he makes the right calls consistently, even if he's out of his depth in a political-diplomatic mess like the one he was in earlier.

Consider these representative of the sort of ship the Admiralty has been sending to Talbott to date. I think there are three ships under 20 mentioned in the whole region, which may have only a handful of habitable systems but covers twice the volume of space as Silesia. Oh, and 4 million ton SD/freighter-sized ammunition and repair ships.

Of course, any ship under 20 is modern enough to really belong in a warfighting fleet, while even an 1840-era capital ship design like the Samothraces is plenty of ship for any probable threat in the Talbott Cluster. Likewise an 1850s-era destroyer or light cruiser.

The biggest need in Talbott isn't modernity, it's numbers... but the RMN does not have numbers to spare. Their reserve fleet of aging and probably-should-decommission warships would have been mobilized during the war, large numbers of them lost in battle... and the remainder are now uneconomical to crew due to the Janacek build-down.

HMS Hercules' forward boat bay was considerably larger than Hexapuma's, and it seemed oddly quiet as Terekhov swam the personnel tube from his pinnace, then swung himself into the boat bay's regulation one standard gravity.

It seems strange to me that they still use a zero-G jetway to transfer personnel from a pinnace. Then again, the pinnace belongs to the Kitty so there may not be room to land inside the boat bay. Or possibly it's just not worth the headache of depressurizing and repressurizing the whole bay to bring a handful of people onboard.

It may be a leftover

Alternatively, having a zero-G jetway may be preferable to the alternative of having both the small craft's artificial gravity and the boat bay's artificial gravity active at the same time, overlapping slightly, creating a 'wall' of two-gravity acceleration where they meet. Good way to fall on your face and break your nose, that.

In fact, there would be good reasons to have NO artificial gravity in the part of the boat bay the small craft physically occupy during flight operations; it'd make takeoff and landing safer. So while the interior of the pinnace has artificial gravity from its onboard generator, the space outside it doesn't... hence the jetway.

I don't think it's been mentioned again since the very first book, but it's considered rude for a starship captain to wear their beret aboard someone else's ship. Jamming it under an epaulet sounds awkward. I wonder if the other officers from the Nasty Kitty uncover aboard a different ship?

The beret may be very thin, I dunno. Also, I doubt they do, because they have the black berets of normal service. It's the captain's white beret that's the problem because there can be only one captain aboard a given ship.

I can definitely say that Haven doesn't know about Hermes yet, though I'm not sure it's an impressive enough achievement to warrant all the secrecy.

Remember, Henke doesn't know the Havenites know about Apollo- assuming she herself knows, which is likely despite wartime classification.

However, it's not that big a logical jump from knowing the Hermes buoys exist to being able to locate one and measure its size. And if you know the size of a Hermes buoy, and that size is small... well, the possibility of something like an Apollo control missile suggests itself.

There's also the risk that once they know it exists, raiding destroyers from a Havenite squadron might try to swoop in and capture a Hermes buoy themselves... and from there be able to reverse-engineer the secret of highly miniaturized, high-bandwidth FTL communications.

It's been a very long time since we checked in with Sir Lucian Cortez (okay, it was the last book, a long time since the main series though) I presume he was also given the boot by the Janacek Admiralty.

Yeah, because Honor had to argue with a Janacek appointee when she wanted to get suitable personnel for her deployment to Sidemore.

Strains on their personnel pool. BCs require almost as many officers as SDs, and automation hasn't really changed that. Large numbers of smaller ships are coming into service, but the podnoughts have building priority and even among lighter units, anything that can't throw around MDMs is pretty much a tertiary concern.

They really should be able to put LACs in charge of noncommissioned officers... well, maybe not, since things like navigation and tactics are taught to officers and not ratings.

What's happening to all the new light units, originally most were bound to Silesia, but since they still don't know how big a splash events in Monica will make with the League or what fresh hell Manpower, Jessyk, OFS or Kalokainos might start, now two thirds of the new ships are going to Talbott.

Yeah. More powerful ships aren't really going to matter in Silesia where any random light cruiser can manage most of the opposition. But... well, Monica would have been a very different battle if there'd been three or four Saganami-Cs present and not just Hexapuma.

No acceptance trials in the new construction, part of that rush to the finish line. It hasn't caused any serious problems (read: fatalities) yet but there have been some moderate inconveniences as Important Shit broke down and had to be fixed without the benefit of a yard.

Well, less acceptance trials; it would be sheer folly to not have any at all. One quick spin to make sure everything actually works, then you can go straight into shakedown and trying frantically to tune all the sensitive electronics to work properly.

History of Mesa, which apparently is one terminus of the Visigoth Wormhole, while Visigoth itself is a short distance from Beowulf. And I see the original Detweiler believed in Pantropy i.e. GEing life to suit a planet rather than terraforming the planet to suit terrestrial life.

At least when that's the more convenient option, I guess.

[VhenRa]

I swear I have seen actual real berets put under epaulettes.

[Darth Nostril]

You mean like this?

[Beowulf]

You mean like this?

Was about to mention that. Berets are fairly thin, so it's fairly easy to just roll it up and shove under the left epaulette.


Another instance. Every one of the military personnel in that pic have their berets shoved under the left epaulette. It's kinda hard to see on the leftmost woman, since there's a hand on her shoulder, but close inspection shows fabric of a different color under the hand.

[VhenRa]

Yeah, that looks about what I saw.

[Ahriman238]

"Welcome aboard, Admiral," Captain of the List Victoria Armstrong said as Michelle stepped across the decksole line that marked the official boundary between Her Majesty's Space Station Hephaestus and HMS Artemis, which had just become her flagship.

Mike's flagship is the Artemis, and by her goddess name (and confirmed halfway through the chapter) a Nike-class BC.

"Thank you, Captain," she told her brand new flag captain . . . whom she'd never met before in her life.

Armstrong was on the tall side, somewhere between Michelle and Honor for height, with a strong face, dark green eyes, and chestnut hair, She was young for her rank, even after a half T-century of naval expansion and twenty-plus years of war—just over twenty-five T-years younger than Michelle, in fact—and no one would ever consider her beautiful, or even exceptionally pretty. But there was character in that face, and intelligence, and the green eyes looked lively.

And Artemis' captain, because we don't have enough new characters to keep track of.

It was indeed much quieter once the lift doors had closed behind them, and Michelle's nostrils flared as she inhaled the new-ship smell. There was nothing else quite like it. The environmental plants aboard the Navy's warships were extremely efficient at filtering out the more objectionable aromas a starship's closed environment generated so effortlessly. But there was a difference between air that was inoffensively clean and air that carried that indefinable perfume of newness. Before Michelle's Uncle Roger had begun his military buildup in response to the People's Republic of Haven's remorseless expansionism, some naval personnel had served their entire careers without smelling that perfume more than once. Some of them had never smelled it at all, for that matter.

The extremely efficient air filters still can't duplicate the new ship smell.

Four people had been waiting for her there, and all four of them came to attention as she appeared.

"Rule Number One," she said pleasantly. "Unless we're trying to impress some foreign potentate or convince some newsy we're really earning our lordly salaries, we all have better things to do than spend our time bowing and scraping before my towering presence."

"Yes, Milady," a trim blonde at least twelve or thirteen centimeters shorter than Michelle replied.

"Rule Number Two," Michelle continued, reaching out to shake the smaller woman's hand. "It's 'Ma'am,' not 'Milady,' unless the aforementioned foreign potentate or newsy is present."

Mike Henke's rules for her staff.

Just filling in that Armstrong's exec is Ron Larson, and Artemis' tac officer is Wilton Diego.

"Admiral Caparelli, Earl White Haven, and Baron Grantville have made that perfectly clear to me," she continued after a moment. "No one wants a shooting incident with the League. God knows the last thing we need is a war with the Sollies. But the Constitutional Convention in Spindle has ratified the Cluster's new constitution and enacted all of the amendments Her Majesty requested. That means the citizens represented by that convention are now Manticoran citizens, ladies and gentlemen, and they will be defended by Her Majesty's Navy as such."

Again the Constitutional Convention has delivered and for once I don't mind major events passing unseen, probably because once you get past the CLP's wish to maintain their own laws and social conventions, quibbling over the details of annexation would be very, very tedious.

"Our second military responsibility will be to provide support, as directed by Vice Admiral Khumalo, if, as, and when requested by Baroness Medusa or any of the planetary governments in the Quadrant. Despite the ratification, there are strong indications that the terrorist campaign in the Split System is still with us. They've been pruned back drastically, and they've become increasingly irrelevant, but those are some very angry people. The terrorists themselves—especially their leadership and central cadre—are probably even angrier than they were, now that the constitution's been ratified by their parliament, and that's scarcely likely to make people who've already picked up guns behave themselves. On the other hand, I expect much of the anger that drove anyone outside that central cadre to begin fading once the new civil rights provisions of the constitution work their way down to the grassroots level. And, frankly, I expect the upturn the entire Quadrant's economy is going to experience in the very near future will go even further towards eroding support for Nordbrandt and her FAK lunatics among anyone in the general population who was prepared to see them as some sort of freedom fighters or liberation movement instead of cold-blooded murderers. That, however, is going to take some time, and I'm sure Her Majesty would prefer for us to arrange things so that no more of her new subjects get killed by these idiots in the meantime than we can possibly avoid."

Just because the annexation has gone through doesn't mean the terrorism has ended, but support will hopefully wither with the massive economic upturn they're expecting.

"Our third responsibility is going to be the fulfillment of our role as Baroness Medusa's and Vice Admiral Khumalo's primary fire brigade. The good news is that we're going to see a steady increase in light units in the Cluster. Plans are already afoot to forward deploy enough LACs to provide at least one LAC group to each system in the Quadrant to provide basic security against piracy and backup for local customs efforts in light of the increase in traffic we're expecting in the area. It's going to take a while to get all of that moving, especially with the call for LAC carriers for Eighth Fleet and system defense closer to home, but as soon as the CLACs can be freed up, they'll start moving forward. In the meantime, it's going to be up to our available starships to cover the most exposed systems.

"That's almost certainly going to lead to a certain inevitable dispersal of force, but it can't be helped for the immediate future. For that matter, despite all the Navy's experience in commerce protection and system defense, we've never before been responsible for the security of a single star nation spread out over this large a volume of space, so we're making some of this up as we go. That's going to pinch our toes harder than just about anyone else's in the immediate future, but at least everyone knows it, which is why the Admiralty's trying so hard to give us the tools we'll need . . . and why we're expecting at least two full flotillas of the new Roland-class ships, as well as additional Saganami-Cs and Nikes. The Agamemnons are going to be going to Home Fleet, Third Fleet, and—especially—Eighth Fleet, but we'll be getting the Nikes in compensation."

Disposition of forces heading for Talbott. Including the plan to give each Talbott planet an LAC group (I assume they mean wing) for system defense against pirates and customs. It seems they're getting a lot of the Saganami-Cs and Nikes presumably because the main war with Haven has ceased for the time being. Holding back the BC(P)s which are most useful in a fleet engagement makes sense, as one of the classes most needed if (when) things with Haven get hot again, plus the Agamemnons don't really have marines to handle a lot of the secondary duties ships will have in Talbott. What I don't understand is why they're getting two flotillas of the Rolands, a ship that has no use outside of providing extra MDMs in fleet engagements.

"Unless present plans change—and Lord knows they're entirely likely to do just that—we'll be seeing a total of at least two and probably three squadrons of Nikes in the Cluster within the next few months. And, also unless present plans change, those squadrons will be integrated into a new fleet, designated Tenth Fleet. My understanding is that Vice Admiral Khumalo will remain Talbott Station SO, and that the entire Cluster will be integrated into that station. Tenth Fleet will be his primary naval component, and Artemis will become Tenth Fleet's flagship when it's formally activated."

For organizational purposes, all Talbott Station ships will comprise Manticore's Tenth Fleet, which will begin around a core of 18 Nikes. Presumably Sarnow's Silesian command is the Ninth. Mike Henke will command Tenth Fleet, though she will be subordinate to Khumalo as the commander of Talbott Station.

"In addition to the purely military dimensions of our duties in Talbott," she continued, "there are the diplomatic dimensions. At the moment, unfortunately, our military and diplomatic responsibilities are rather . . . intimately interwoven, one might say. Not only that, but the entire Quadrant is in a transitional stage. We're still going to be involved in what are essentially diplomatic missions, even though officially all of the ratifying star systems are now member systems of the Star Empire of Manticore."

She wondered for a moment if those last four words sounded as bizarre to the others as they still did to her.

"It's going to take some time for them to settle into their new relationships with one another and with us," she went on. "While that's happening, we're still going to be acting much more in the role of someone refereeing disputes between independent entities. At the same time, however, we have to act in a fashion which clearly indicates that as far as we're concerned, the annexation is an accomplished fact. And it's just as important we indicate that to the star systems—and the navies—of anyone who hasn't ratified the new constitution. I'm thinking in particular of systems like New Tuscany, but that also applies to the Office of Frontier Security and to the Solarian League in general.

Talbott hasn't magically gotten easier, nor has the political situation greatly simplified since the new Constitution either. If anything, things are a bit more complex now that the political leadership of the Cluster isn't divided into two opposing camps.

"And, of course, in our copious free time, we'll be doing all those other little things navies do. Chasing down pirates, interdicting the slave trade and generally making ourselves pains where those bastards on Mesa are concerned, updating charts, surveying for dangers to navigation, rendering assistance to ships in distress, disaster relief, and anything else that comes along.

And ancillary naval duties, most of which we've seen before but I like seeing them laid out.

It had no option but to use reaction drive, since Artemis was still wedded to HMSS Hephaestus by the entire complex tapestry of personnel and equipment tubes and current traffic control regulations prohibited the use of even small craft impellers until the small craft in question was at least five hundred kilometers clear of the space station. That was many times the pinnace's impeller wedge's threat perimeter, but no one was inclined to take any chances with the Star Kingdom's premier orbital industrial node. For that matter, inbound small craft (and larger vessels) were now required to shift to thrusters while still ten thousand kilometers out.

No impeller wedges around Hephastus even a 1 km pinnace wedge.

Michelle could remember when Hephaestus had been little more than twenty kilometers in length, but those days were long gone. The ungainly, lumpy conglomeration of cargo platforms, personnel sections, heavy fabrication modules, and associated shipyards, all clustered around the station's central spine, now stretched for over a hundred and ten kilometers along its main axis. Something better than three quarters of a million people—not including ship crews and other transients—lived and worked aboard the station these days, and the hectic pace of its activity had to be experienced to be believed. Vulcan, in orbit around Sphinx, was almost as large, and just as busy. Weyland, the smallest of the Star Kingdom's space stations, orbited Gryphon, and was actually the busiest of the three, given the amount of highly classified research and development which was carried out there.

Manticore's three shipyards and the way they, or at least the first two, have grown. Hephaestus is now 110 km across.

The Royal Astrogation Control Service's tugs were the only type of ship which was allowed that close to a space station under impeller drive. They were also the only ships, aside from warships of Her Majesty's Navy, which were permitted to enter or leave planetary orbit under impellers. Manticoran registered and crewed merchant traffic could approach to within ten thousand kilometers of Manticore, Sphinx, or Gryphon under impellers, if their ACS certification was current. Even they were required to have reduced their closing velocity to a maximum of no more than fifty thousand KPS while still two light-minutes out, however, and no one was allowed to use impeller drive outbound until they were at least ten thousand kilometers clear of their parking orbital radius. No one else's merchant vessels—not even those of such close allies as Grayson—were allowed to approach within two and a half light-minutes without first having gone to reaction drive, however, and there had been absolutely no exceptions to that policy since the attack on Honor.

The rules for making and leaving orbit have changed since Manticore learned that 'Haven' has a quick and dirty means of compulsion/brainwashing, as yet undetectable, probably imagining the sheer havoc and loos of life a lone gunman could cause just by having a helmsman's hand slip uncontrollably and wrecking a lot of ships and stations. To say nothing of trying to find out what would happen if a 4 million ton freighter hit atmosphere (I doubt it'd survive to the ground) doing any kind of significant fraction of c.

Actually, for a star nation whose preposterous wealth was so heavily based upon its merchant marine, there were usually remarkably few hyper-capable ships anywhere near Manticore or Sphinx, even under normal conditions. It made far more sense for cargoes bound in or out of the Manticore System to take advantage of the stupendous warehousing and service platforms associated with the Junction itself. It was much more time and cost effective, even for ships which weren't using the Junction—and there were some of those, headed for more local destinations—to use its facilities, which were undoubtedly the biggest, most efficient, and most capable in the entire galaxy. The ships and cargo shuttles which plied back and forth between the Junction and the star system's planets were far smaller than the leviathans which traveled between stars, and they were a far more efficient way for most shipments to complete the final transition to their destinations.

Lot of orbiting warehousing and such around the Junction.

It was those freight-haulers who were complaining most vociferously about ACS' new rules and attitude, according to Grimm. After all, before a shuttle pilot or, even more, the astrogators and helmsmen aboard one of the bigger, short-haul freighters were certified for planetary approach, they had to clear dozens of certifications, background checks, and routine physical and mental evaluations, and all of those certifications and evaluations had to be kept current, as well. Given all of that, some of them seemed to deeply resent the fact that they were no longer trusted to make those approaches under impeller drive. And some of the owners of those vessels clearly resented the way the new requirement to have two fully certified planetary approach pilots on the bridge at all times was increasing their overhead.

And just what the ACS certification letting you shave a couple hours off approach actually means.

There never had been enough tugs, of course, and the situation was even worse now. Traditionally, three ready-duty tugs had been assigned to each of Manticore's space stations. Actually, there'd been seven—enough to keep three continually on call, three more at standby as backups, and one down for mantenance or overhaul. Despite the wear and tear on their impeller nodes, the trio of ready-duty tugs' nodes were always hot, ready for instant use. And, despite their relatively diminutive size, they had hugely powerful wedges, as well as gargantuan tractors. One of them could easily handle the unpowered mass of two, or even three, superdreadnoughts if it had to. And the reason their nodes were always hot was that one of their responsibilities was to maintain a safety watch over the space stations. Even without some sort of esoteric mind control to create a deliberate collision, there was always the possibility of an accidental collision as ships maneuvered under thrusters to dock with the station. So whenever a ship approached or departed from Hephaestus, Vulcan, or Weyland, one of the duty tugs was ready to intervene. And they were always ready to pounce on any random bits of space debris, as well.

Only the most experienced captains and helmsmen were allowed to command the ACS tugs, and they'd always used the "two-man" rule, for reasons Michelle had always found self-evident. But these days, with all of the new, additional restrictions, the demand for their services had risen astronomically.

Manticoran space tugs.

"Good!" Hemphill's smile got considerably broader, and she leaned back in her chair and swung it at a slight angle to the round table so that she could face Michelle squarely.

"Bill is good, very good," she said. "I really wanted to go on hanging onto him, but I couldn't justify it. Or, rather, I couldn't justify doing that to him. He's been with BuWeaps ever since he was an ensign—as Vice Admiral Adcock's flag lieutenant, originally—and he's way overdue for a rotation. In fact, he's at the point where he needs a shipboard deployment in his File 210 if he doesn't want to get stuck dirt-side permanently. Besides, I know how badly he's wanted one for years, even if he didn't exactly sit around crying about it. And, as I say, he's always been very good at whatever we've asked him to do."

Edwards (Mike's comm officer) was Jonas Adcock's flag lieutenant before working on the newest laser heads with Hemphill. And he apparently put a lot of man-hours into Apollo too.

"Our initial projections were based on trying to install the new transceivers in each MDM," Halstead continued. "Originally, we saw no other option, and doing things that way would have made each MDM an individual unit, independent of any other missile, which seemed to offer us the most tactical flexibility and would have meant we could fire them from standard MDM launchers and the Mark 15 and Mark 17 pods. Unfortunately, putting independent links in each bird would have required us to remove one entire drive stage because of volume constraints. That would still have been worthwhile, given the increased accuracy and penetration ability we anticipated, but the development team's feeling was that we would be giving away too much range performance."

Fully briefing Henke on Apollo, before Honor had told all her squadron commanders it was in the works, but it amounted too "the tech boffins are trying to give us FTL control over missiles, but first we'll need a new Keyhole platform with FTL comm." Apparently they could fit a comm in each missile but only by giving up a drive and it would have less range and bandwidth. I suspect the Apollo missile is only so massive because it needs to control eight other missiles.

"This is the system-defense variant, the Mark 23-D, for the moment, although it's probably going to end up redesignated the Mark 25. It's basically an elongated Mark 23 to accommodate both a fourth impeller drive and longer lasing rods with more powerful grav focusing to push the directed yield still higher. Aside from the grav units and laser rods, this is all off-the-shelf hardware, so production shouldn't be a problem, although at the moment the ship-launched system has priority.

The system defense version, or the attack bird as they're having some serious teething problems and production bottlenecks with the control missile, Mk. 23-F. The E-variant is the standard control missile. And now Manticore is just showing off with four-drive missiles.

She touched the stud again, and the display blanked. Then she turned her command chair, once again admiring the magnificent spaciousness of Artemis' flag deck, and moved her attention to the huge tactical plot. Normally, that was configured into a schematic representation of the volume about the ship, spangled with the light codes of tactical icons, but at the moment, it was configured for direct visual from the optical heads spotted about the huge battlecruiser's hull, instead, and Michelle watched as Artemis' bow thrusters awoke. She felt the faint vibration transmitted through the ship's two and a half million tons of battle steel, armor, and weapons, and the big ship began to back slowly and smoothly out of the docking arms.

Apparently there are optical sensor heads (i.e. telescopic cameras) dotting the hulls of honorverse ships.

Michelle didn't know whether or not the Admiralty intended to completely scrap the squadron reorganization plan the Janacek Admiralty had put into place. There were some advantages to the six-ship squadron format Janacek had adopted, much though it galled Michelle to admit that anything that ham-fisted idiot had done could possibly have any beneficial consequences. Fortunately for her blood pressure, if not for the Star Kingdom's wellbeing, there weren't very many instances in which she had to. But even though the smaller-sized squadrons offered at least some additional tactical flexibility, they also required twenty-five percent more admirals—and admirals' staffs—for the same number of ships. Personally, Michelle suspected that had been part of the attraction for Janacek and his partisans. After all, it had provided so many more flag slots into which he could plug sycophants, despite the way he'd downsized the fleet. Those of his cronies who hadn't been removed by the Havenites in the course of Operation Thunderbolt (she supposed any cloud had to have at least some silver lining) had been ruthlessly purged by the White Haven Admiralty, yet that had left a tiny problem. Finding that many competent admirals was a not so minor concern in a navy expanding as rapidly and hugely as the present Royal Manticoran Navy. Just as even the new, highly automated designs still needed complete bridge crews, complete engineering officer complements, admirals still needed staffs, and there simply weren't that many experienced staff officers to go around.

We're still on six-ship squadrons, though Mike's squadron has eight BCs. and we know the reduced squadron size was a way of concealing how much they were building down the fleet, but the opportunity for new politically-sensitive or connected admirals may well have been a part of Janacek's considerations.

At least Artemis, Romulus, and Theseus were the only ones still docked at one of the stations, so you didn't have to worry about tug availability, she reminded herself.

I guess the Nikes aren't all named for goddesses or even gods, just references to antiquity. In fact, skipping ahead a bit the rest of her squadron has Perseus, Horatius, Penelope, Daedalus, and Jason.

Not that most other navies would consider them "battlecruisers," I suppose, she told herself. At two and a half million tons, the new Nike-class ships were closing in on the size of the old battleships no one had built for the last fifty or sixty T-years, and some navies—like the Sollies, she thought sourly—still defined ship types by tonnage brackets which had become obsolete even before the First Havenite War. But even though the Nikes were the next best thing to half again the size of her dead Ajax, Artemis was capable of almost seven hundred gravities' acceleration at maximum military power. And her magazines were crammed with over six thousand Mark 16 dual-drive missiles.

I don't care how big she is, she's still a battlecruiser, though, Michelle thought. It's the function, the doctrine, that counts, not just tonnage. And by that meter stick, she's a battlecruiser, all right. One from the dark side of Hell, maybe, but still a battlecruiser. And I've got eight of her.

Nikes carry 6,000 MDMs standard, same model as Hexapuma. And even they can pull 'almost' 700 Gs. A lot of navies, particularly the SLN, categorize ships by tonnage but to Manticore it's the mission that matters and so the Nikes totally aren't battleships.

Edwards input the command that triggered Artemis' transponder, identifying her to the mostly-completed forts and the two squadrons of Home Fleet ships of the wall holding station here.

Defenses around the Lynx Terminus.

"Michael Oversteegen?" Blaine frowned. "Last I heard, he was a captain." He sounded a bit plaintive, and Michelle chuckled.

"And I was a rear admiral up until a week ago," she said. "I'm afraid they're going to be pushing a lot of us up quickly, with all the new construction coming out of the yards. But my point, Sir, was that they've given Michael the 108th. And assuming he makes his deployment schedule, he should be following along behind me within a couple of months or so. And the first squadron of Rolands is about ready to start working up. In fact, it may already have begun the process."

Looks like Oversteegen is coming to Talbott, as one of Mike's squadron commanders. Is there truly no part of space where I can escape that drawl?

One of the Manticoran Alliance's most telling advantages was Ghost Rider, the highly developed—and constantly evolving—family of FTL recon and EW platforms. Deployed in a shell around a single ship, squadron, or task force, they gave an Alliance CO a degree of situational awareness no one else could match. Alliance starships could simply see farther, faster, and better than anyone else, and their recon platforms could deliver their take in real-time or near real-time, which no one else—not even the Republic of Haven—could do.

But there were still drawbacks. It was still entirely possible to detect the impeller signatures of a potentially hostile force and not have a recon platform in position to run and find out who the newcomers were. Even if a tactical officer had very good reason to believe the newcomers in question cherished ill intentions, she still had to get one of her platforms into position to look them over from relatively close range before she could be positive of that. Or, for that matter, before she could be positive that what she was seeing were really starships and not electronic warfare drones pretending to be starships. And it was generally considered to be a good idea to have that sort of information in hand before one sent an entire salvo of attack missiles screaming in on what might, after all, turn out to be a neutral merchant convoy.

Ghost Rider, and they've now hit on the idea of sending a few Apollo pods' worth of missiles to distant targets, on the idea that they can get there tons faster than any recon platform and still provide FTL sensor data.

The shroud-jettisoning maneuver had been programmed into the missiles before launch. Unlike any previous attack missile, the Mark 23s in an Apollo pod were fitted with protective shrouds intended to shield their sensors from the particle erosion of extended ballistic flight profiles at relativistic speeds. Most missiles didn't really need anything of the sort, since their impeller wedges incorporated particle screening. They were capable of maintaining a separate particle screen—briefly, at least—as long as they retained on-board power, even after the wedge went down, but that screening was far less efficient than a starship's particle screens. For the most part, that hadn't mattered, since any ballistic component of a "standard" attack profile was going to be brief, at best. But with Apollo, very long-range attacks, with lengthy ballistic components built into them, had suddenly become feasible. That capability, however, would be of limited usefulness if particle erosion had blinded the missiles before they ever got a chance to see their targets.

One modification made to the standard Mk 23 MDM since Apollo is adding a physical sensor shield to protect the sensors during long runs without power. Normally the impeller drive provides particle shielding, but with Apollo they can control the missiles at enough range to make long coasting periods practical. Now that I think of it, I wonder if instead of programming missiles to self-destruct after traveling a certain distance, they just tell it to blow with the final failure of onboard sensors? Without those, it's not going to hurt anyone you want them to hit.

"We're due to dine with Baroness Medusa and Mr. Van Dort this evening, Milady," Khumalo said. "At that time, I have no doubt that she and Mr. O'Shaughnessy—and Commander Chandler, my intelligence officer—will be as eager as I am to hear everything you can tell us about the situation at home and this proposed summit meeting between Her Majesty and Pritchart. And I'm also confident that the baroness and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will have a rather more detailed briefing for you on the political side of events here in the Cluster. I mean, Quadrant."

His lips twitched sourly but briefly as he corrected himself, and Michelle smiled. No doubt the change in nomenclature was going to take some getting used to for everyone involved, but as she'd warned her own staff, it was important. Words had power of their own, and remembering to get it right was one way of helping to assure everyone out here in Talbott that they'd done the right thing when they requested annexation by the Star Kingdom.

Meeting with Khumalo, and later Dame Matsuko and Van Dort. Oh, and it's now the Talbott Quadrant.

The Star Kingdom of Manticore had been in existence for four hundred and fifty years, during which it had evolved and grown into its own unique identity and galactic position. It was incredibly wealthy, especially for a star nation with such a small population, but the point was that its population was small by the standards of any multisystem star nation. It was also politically stable, with a system which—despite its occasional blemishes, like the disastrous High Ridge Government, and monumentally nasty political infighting—enshrined the rule of law. Manticorans were no more likely to be candidates for sainthood than anyone else, and there were those—like High Ridge, Janacek, her own Cousin Freddy, or the Earls of North Hollow—who were perfectly willing to evade or even outright break the law in pursuit of their own ends. But when they got caught, they were just as accountable in the eyes of the law as anyone else, and the Star Kingdom enshrined both transparency and accountability in government. It also enshrined the orderly, legal exchange of power, even between the most bitter of political enemies, through the electoral process, and it possessed a highly educated, politically active electorate.

That was why the notion of adding more than a dozen additional star systems whose individual average populations at least matched that of the Manticore Binary System had been dismaying to Michelle, in many respects. Especially given how poor—and poorly educated (by Manticoran standards, at least)—all of those prospective new citizens were. Some Manticorans had been nervous enough about admitting San Martin, the inhabited world of Trevor's Star, to the Star Kingdom, and San Martin had been an entirely different kettle of fish, despite its years as a Havenite "protectorate" under the People's Republic. Its population was still that of a first-rank star nation, with decent educational, medical, and industrial bases, and it had always been Manticore's immediate astrographic neighbor. Manticorans and San Martinos had known each other for a long, long time; they'd known how one another's governments and societies worked, and shared many more similarities than they had differences. But the Talbott Cluster was typical of the Verge, that vast belt of sparsely settled, economically depressed, technically backward star systems which surrounded the slowly but inexorably expanding sphere of the Solarian League.

Michelle, like many people in the Star Kingdom, had found the idea of adding that many voters with absolutely no experience in the Star Kingdom's political traditions alarming. Some of those alarmed souls had been none too shy about calling the Talbotters "neobarbs," which Michelle, despite her own concerns, had found decidedly ironic, given the fact that Sollies routinely applied that pejorative to the same citizens of the Star Kingdom who were now using it about someone else. Yet even those who would never have dreamed of using that particular term, and who were prepared to accept that their new fellow citizens would have the best intentions in the universe, had to wonder if those new citizens would have time to absorb the instruction manual before they tried to take over the air car's controls. And, of course, there was always the concern—the legitimate concern, in Michelle's view—of what destination a bunch of voters from outside the Manticoran tradition might choose for all of them.

A lot of people on Manticore are concerned about all this new territory, and having effectively become a minority overnight, particularly as your average Talbott or Silesian citizen is kind of poorly educated compared to the average voter and has zero experience with the Manticoran political system.

Instead of adding all of those systems, and all of those voters, directly to the Star Kingdom, the Flax Constitutional Convention had recognized that the sheer distance between the planets of the Cluster—not to mention the entire Cluster's distance from the Manticore Binary System—would have made that sort of close, seamless integration impossible. So the convention had proposed a more federal model for the new "Star Empire of Manticore."

The Talbott Quadrant was a political unit consisting of the sixteen Cluster star systems which had ratified the proposed constitution. It would have its own local Parliament, and after a certain degree of bloody infighting, it had been agreed that that Parliament would be located here on Flax, in the planetary capital of Thimble. And when it came to electing that Parliament's members, the Quadrant franchise would, at the insistence of Prime Minister Grantville's government (and Queen Elizabeth III), be granted on the same terms and conditions as the Star Kingdom's franchise, which had probably had quite a bit to do with New Tuscany's decision to go home and play with its own marbles.

The Quadrant and the Star Kingdom (which some people were already beginning to refer to as "the Old Star Kingdom," even though Trevor's Star and the Lynx System had scarcely been charter members of the original Star Kingdom) would both be units of a new realm known as the Star Empire of Manticore. Both would recognize Queen Elizabeth of Manticore as Empress, and both would send representatives to a new Imperial Parliament, which would be located on the planet of Manticore. An imperial governor would be appointed (and there'd never been any real doubt about who that would be) as the Empress' direct representative and viceroy here in the Quadrant. The armed forces, economic policy, and foreign policy of the Empire would be established and unified under the new imperial government. The imperial currency would be the existing Manticoran dollar, no internal economic trade barriers would be tolerated, and the citizens of the Talbott Quadrant and of the Star Kingdom would pay both local taxes and imperial taxes. The fundamental citizens' rights of the Star Kingdom would be extended to every citizen of the Talbott Quadrant, although the Quadrant's member planets were free to extend additional, purely local citizens' rights, if they so chose. The new imperial judiciary would be based upon the Star Kingdom's existing constitutional law, and its justices would be drawn, initially, at least, from the Star Kingdom, although the new constitution contained specific provisions for integrating justices from outside the Old Star Kingdom as quickly as possible, and local constitutional traditions within the Quadrant would be tolerated so long as they did not conflict with imperial ones. And every citizen of the Quadrant and the Old Star Kingdom would hold imperial citizenship.

A federal system, though they're calling the federal parliament, judiciary etc. 'imperial.' The franchise and legal system will be based on Manticoran law and standards, they all use the Manty dollar. And a distinct Talbott parliament.

Although the Star Kingdom of Manticore had always eschewed any sort of progressive income tax except under the most dire of emergency conditions, the Old Star Kingdom had agreed (not without a certain degree of domestic protest) that imperial taxation would be progressive at the federal level—that is, the degree of the imperial tax bill to be footed by each subunit of the Empire would be based upon that subunit's proportional share of the entire Empire's gross product. Everyone was perfectly well aware that that particular provision meant the Old Star Kingdom would be footing the lion's share of the imperial treasury's bills for the foreseeable future. In return for accepting that provision, however, the Star Kingdom had won agreement to a phased-in representation within the Imperial Parliament.

For the first fifteen years of the Empire's existence, the Star Kingdom would elect seventy-five percent of the Imperial Parliament's membership, and all other subunits of the Empire would elect the other twenty-five percent. For the next fifteen years, the Star Kingdom would elect sixty percent of Parliament's members. And for the next twenty-five years, the Star Kingdom would elect fifty percent. Thereafter, membership in the Imperial House of Commons would be directly proportional to each subunit's population. The theory was that that fifty-five T-years of dominance by the established political system of the Old Star Kingdom would give the citizens of the Quadrant time to master the instruction manual. It would also give them time for the stupendous potential industrial and economic power of the Quadrant to be developed. At the same time, the gradual phasing in of full parliamentary representation for the Quadrant (and, presumably, for the Silesian systems, as well, when it was their turn) would reassure the citizens of the Old Star Kingdom that Manticore wasn't going to find itself suddenly haring off in some totally bizarre direction. And the fact that the Imperial Constitution guaranteed local autonomy to each recognized subunit of the Empire ought to preserve the individual identities of the various worlds and societies which had agreed to unite under the imperial framework.

Since one of the Star Kingdom's basic citizens' rights was access to the prolong therapies, the fifty-five-T-year ramp up to full representation in the Imperial Parliament wasn't going to be quite the hardship for most of the Talbott Cluster's citizens that it might have been once upon a time. True, it would hit some member systems harder than others (which had required some serious horse trading at the Constitutional Convention), because their poverty-stricken economies hadn't already made prolong available. That meant any of their citizens more than twenty-five T-years old would never receive it . . . and that a sizable portion of their present electorate would die of old age, even with modern medical care, before the Quadrant received its full representation. No arrangement could be perfect, however, and the Star Kingdom had pledged to put those systems first on the list to receive the prolong therapies, while the Constitutional Convention had pledged some very hefty financial incentives to bring their economies up to the standards of their neighbors as quickly as possible.

And a graduated income tax, the thing no self-respecting Manty voter would stand for, taxing the wealthier Old Kingdom citizens more. But in exchange they get 55 years f guaranteed political dominance of the Imperial Parliament. And they're discussing using much the same system for Silesia.

"As Captain Terekhov discovered during his brief tour with us before he went trotting off to Monica," Khumalo's smile was quirky, "the new influx of merchant shipping being attracted into the Quadrant by the Lynx Terminus is attracting pirates right along with it. We need to make it clear that this isn't going to be a healthy place for them to operate. That's going to get easier when those light attack craft everyone keeps promising me actually get here, of course. A couple of squadrons of LACs will keep just about any pirate I can imagine out of the star system they're patrolling, at any rate. And having 'their' LAC groups assigned to each new member system will help them realize we're really serious about integrating them into a Cluster-wide security system.

"At the same time, there are threats LACs alone aren't going to be able to deter, and we have to be aware of other potential flash points, whether with OFS or with one of the other single-system star nations out here. Her Majesty has made it quite clear that we're supposed to convince the locals that the Star Empire is going to be a good neighbor. I think she's right that, over time, quite a few more of the local star systems are going to recognize a good thing when they see it and seek admission to the Quadrant. That's for the future, though. For right now, it's our job to make it plain to them that while we're perfectly willing to assist them in dealing with mutual problems—like piracy—we aren't using that assistance as a way to wedge our foot into their doors so we can gobble them up more easily.

Like OFS does all the time? Yeah I can see that. With increased trade comes increased piracy.

"It's evident that Yvernau and those who think like him decided the citizens' rights provisions of the new constitution would upset their self-serving little applecart on New Tuscany. They aren't prepared to have that happen, so they opted out of the annexation. But one of the reasons they did that was because they figure they'll share in any general economic improvement in the Cluster due to simple proximity, and that our mere presence will protect them from Frontier Security whether that's what we're setting out to do, or not."

"I know that's what Yvernau thought, and I suppose I can't really dispute O'Shaughnessy's belief that quite a few of his fellow oligarchs think the same way," Khumalo said. It was obvious to Michelle that he was discussing the situation with Shoupe, and the fact that she seemed comfortable maintaining a contrary viewpoint—and that he wasn't hammering her for it—said good things about their working relationship, in her opinion.

"But even if that's what Yvernau and some of the others think," the vice admiral continued, "it's not what all of them think. Some of them are royally pissed that the Convention didn't do things Yvernau's way in the first place. Quite a few of them blame us—well, Baroness Medusa, at least—just as much as they do Alquezar and Van Dort. And for a lot of the others, the danger the example of the Quadrant and the Star Empire poses is going to far outweigh any trade advantages or protection against OFS. Nordbrandt's terror campaign against her own oligarchs on Kornati scares the stuffing out of that crew. What they're going to see is that their own lower class is going to be watching the example of what's happening to their counterparts here in the Quadrant. Which isn't exactly likely to contribute to the oligarchs' efforts to keep the lid screwed down."

"Which means exactly what for us, Sir?" Michelle asked, and he snorted.

New Tuscany opted out, largely because they didn't like the idea of universal suffrage, but there's a lot going on there, including terror of some kind of proletariat uprising. Joaquin Alquezar of Dresden, who led the CUP at the convention is the TQ Prime Minister, and he's named Bernardus Van Dort a special minister with no particular department or fixed job, more a roving trouble-shooter with cabinet-level authority.

"Even if my concerns prove totally unfounded," the Talbott Station CO continued, "and, to be honest, nothing would please me more than to see exactly that happen, New Tuscany is still going to be one of our more potentially sensitive concerns. The disappearance of the various protective tariffs and other trade barriers here in the Quadrant is going to have a significant impact on local shipping patterns, and New Tuscany is probably going to be one of the major outside players in those patterns, at least in local terms. We're going to have to be careful about how we handle New Tuscan-registry merchant vessels, and I won't be a bit surprised if we encounter all kinds of customs disputes. So we're going to require at least some naval presence permanently in the vicinity of New Tuscany, Marian, Scarlet, and Pequod."

Increased trade within the Quadrant, and the sensitivity of New Tuscany and New Tuscan-flagged merchants.

[Batman]

The Rolands would be of limited utility against modern Havenite forces which have full-up MDM-capable capital ships, whereas in the Talbott Quadrant, they outrange and to an extent outgun everything they're likely to meet. Yes, they're moderately useless outside fleet engagements, but in fleet engagements, at least against the Sollies, they're effectively invulnerable. I think they were the cheapest (and least impacting the war with Haven) way to get more MDM capable ships to Talbott.

[Simon_Jester]

The Rolands would be of limited utility against modern Havenite forces which have full-up MDM-capable capital ships, whereas in the Talbott Quadrant, they outrange and to an extent outgun everything they're likely to meet.

I'd disagree about the limited utility. Offensively, Rolands would mostly be used as part of a raiding force, escorting Nikes or Agamemnons against a Havenite system that didn't actually have a significant capital ship force.

Defensively, well, much like the Invictus and Agamemnon (and, as I recall, Sovereign of Space) classes... they have lots of broadside room for countermissile defenses. So at least they can screen the battleline, in addition to delivering some nasty MDM salvoes if the engagement range closes to where the Mark 16 can be used.

Yes, they're moderately useless outside fleet engagements, but in fleet engagements, at least against the Sollies, they're effectively invulnerable.

Well yes, but they lack both the magazine capacity and the missile penetrating power to seriously threaten a capital ship in a fleet engagement. A Roland could plausibly hope to handle a lone SLN battlecruiser, but it'd shoot itself dry before accomplishing much more in my opinion.

And sending twelve Rolands with a total tonnage comparable to that of a Nike which has greater magazine capacity and defensive durability than all twelve Rolands combined...

Well, insofar as the Rolands are there as fleet escorts, it's simply because they desperately need the Saganami-Cs (and any older-type ships they can whistle up) for generalized patrol missions.

I think they were the cheapest (and least impacting the war with Haven) way to get more MDM capable ships to Talbott.

Arguably so.

The extremely efficient air filters still can't duplicate the new ship smell.

My theory is that it's residual carcinogenic lubricants used by the machinists when they cut all that metal into shape.

Disposition of forces heading for Talbott. Including the plan to give each Talbott planet an LAC group (I assume they mean wing) for system defense against pirates and customs. It seems they're getting a lot of the Saganami-Cs and Nikes presumably because the main war with Haven has ceased for the time being.

Also because, well, those are the ships that are most useful in this context. Ship for ship they're cheaper, and eight million tons of Saganami-Cs and Rolands can spread out to cover a lot more space than eight million tons of SD(P).

Meanwhile, the Nikes are essentially "pocket battleships" upgraded technologically to be equal or superior to 'normal' capital ships as far as anyone outside the immediate Manticore-Haven War is concerned. While their Mark 16s might have to be launched in vast numbers to bring down a capital ship, one on one they could DO that.

So that makes a good force mix. I might throw in a few BC(P)s loaded with Mark 23s, but their role would be to accompany the wall of Nikes and hand off pods to their fire control, not to operate independently.

What I don't understand is why they're getting two flotillas of the Rolands, a ship that has no use outside of providing extra MDMs in fleet engagements.

Because it's the only destroyer class the RMN has under production?

To send more of any other ship class, they'd have to either crew mothballed ships (when the manpower could just as easily man whole squadrons of Rolands).

Or pull older ships off of other patrol routes to send to the Talbott Cluster... in which case the new Rolands would probably be needed providing frontline security over there. Oops.

Or resume production of a ship like the Wolfhound-class that isn't MDM-capable... but that would probably be even more expensive and use building capacity that really should be dedicated to ships likely to make a difference in combat against Haven.

Manticore's three shipyards and the way they, or at least the first two, have grown. Hephaestus is now 110 km across.

Well, long. It's heavily implied to be a lot narrower than it is long.

The rules for making and leaving orbit have changed since Manticore learned that 'Haven' has a quick and dirty means of compulsion/brainwashing, as yet undetectable, probably imagining the sheer havoc and loos of life a lone gunman could cause just by having a helmsman's hand slip uncontrollably and wrecking a lot of ships and stations. To say nothing of trying to find out what would happen if a 4 million ton freighter hit atmosphere (I doubt it'd survive to the ground) doing any kind of significant fraction of c.

Or, for that matter, an impeller wedge ramming a planet- a large ship in low orbit has a wedge big enough that if activated in a low planetary orbit it might hit the ground all by itself.

The system defense version, or the attack bird as they're having some serious teething problems and production bottlenecks with the control missile, Mk. 23-F. The E-variant is the standard control missile. And now Manticore is just showing off with four-drive missiles.

Well then, my question is, why didn't they show up at the Battle of Manticore.

Nikes carry 6,000 MDMs standard, same model as Hexapuma. And even they can pull 'almost' 700 Gs. A lot of navies, particularly the SLN, categorize ships by tonnage but to Manticore it's the mission that matters and so the Nikes totally aren't battleships.

Since they can't form wall against SD(P)s effectively, I presume...

Ghost Rider, and they've now hit on the idea of sending a few Apollo pods' worth of missiles to distant targets, on the idea that they can get there tons faster than any recon platform and still provide FTL sensor data.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone on the receiving end of such a... ah, reconaissance-in-force*... well. From their point of view you just fired a few dozen screaming relativistic thermonuclear death meteors in their direction without even knowing who they were.

*Have you read Drake and Flint's Belisarius series? It's not SF that would need or benefit from analysis on this site, but I think it's amusing.

[Mr Bean]

I disagree with both of you about what the Rolands are there for, let us copy/paste the handy stats (Thanks Ahriman238)

Roland-class Destroyer

Mass: 188,560 tons
Dimensions: unknown
Max Acceleration: 780 G
Normal Acceleration: 590 G
Broadside: 5 lasers, 10 counter missile tubes, 13 point defense
Chase: 6 missile tubes, 2 grasers, 2 point defense
Number Built: unknown (at least 12)

The littlest MDM-hurler. Technically a cruiser, called a destroyer to get approval under the Janacek Admiralty. Has a radical departure in forgoing broadside missile armament in favor of shoehorning six launchers into each hammerhead. These fire Mk 16 dual-drive MDMs, with 18 seconds between shots, and they have room for 250 missiles in their magazines. On the plus, the lack of broadside armament let them cram in more missile defense than any similar-sized ship has in the vein of an Invictus, including counter missile tubes that fire off-bore and can help cover the front and rear arcs. And they actually shrank the crew size even further from the Wolfhounds to 62 officers and ratings. The energy armament is largely an afterthought, the idea being that it should be able to outrun anything but an MDM barrage (which they've prepared it for as best as possible) or another destroyer which it can hopefully engage competitively at beam ranges. The shallow magazines are an ongoing source of concern, but with so few MDM capable ships, the Rolands have easily taken the lion's share of small-unit production in the new war.

About half the Rolands are named for Arthurian knights, though there's also a Saladin and Barbarossa (both previous names of Peep battlecruisers) an Ivanhoe and Roland itself still keeping to an overall knightly theme, and two standouts; Tornado and Yamamoto Date.

The problem with Rolands is, naturally, that they are designed purely as fleet escorts and heavy combatants, able to handle intense short-duration missile combat, and contribute meaningfully to a fleet-scale MDM fight both offensively and defensively, but not so much the long cruises, escort missions and bush-beating of traditional light units.

The Roland's are dual purpose as they provide excellent defensive additions in fleet combat while traditional destroyers sit there and hope not to get shot on accident the Roland's add lots of counter missiles and the Mark 16's. However as noted they have exactly zero endurance with only 250 missiles onboard and only two grasers forward (Even if I'm guessing it's Grayson style with massive oversized battle cruiser level weaponry) .

They are like the Frigates of Torch a LAC built on Destroyer sizing like the Torches build giant Shrike's and call them Frigates. Except instead of Shrikes the Roland's are Ferrets. Which to my mind makes them perfect for penny packet deployments. No Roland sails alone in other words. Yes 250 missiles is a tiny amount but what about three Roland's working together? That's 750 for a total salvo size of 18-36 (Depends on if they can fire fore and aft at the same time) which is dependable and because they are Mark 16 while they are not great against Haven... against anything Battle Cruiser or smaller they will clean up. AND they can handle towed pods AND they can go FTL AND crew size is small enough each Roland is worth 2.3 pre war Destroyer's in raw crew size.

Which means what you have here is a great escort vessel for friendly space. Put a trio of Roland in each one of Talbott Quadrant backed up by system defense LAC's and you have a Pirate proof defense since you have defense in depth with the LAC's and the Roland's can pop into Hyper and follow a convoy out then double back. Or out and out ride along with them if you wanted to keep up a rotation going with little three Roland ship deployments play escort to Talbott Quadrant shipping. The Roland on accident has the markings of an excellent system defender. And I'm guessing it's about the perfect size to put loaner officer's from the Quadrant in and train them up to Manty standards because it's just big enough you can slide one or two officers in there or one or two crewman make them welcome and force them to pull their weight by simple ship size. Even with a ship of less than hundred people if I remember these things are as I said FTL LAC's and should be operated as such.

Operate them as a group at all times. 250 missiles is tiny but 1000 is a lot when it's coming from four point sources. And the missile defenses is going to be a lot better than an equivalent size Battlecrusier.

[Batman]

The Rolands would be of limited utility against modern Havenite forces which have full-up MDM-capable capital ships, whereas in the Talbott Quadrant, they outrange and to an extent outgun everything they're likely to meet.

I'd disagree about the limited utility. Offensively, Rolands would mostly be used as part of a raiding force, escorting Nikes or Agamemnons against a Havenite system that didn't actually have a significant capital ship force.
Defensively, well, much like the Invictus and Agamemnon (and, as I recall, Sovereign of Space) classes... they have lots of broadside room for countermissile defenses. So at least they can screen the battleline, in addition to delivering some nasty MDM salvoes if the engagement range closes to where the Mark 16 can be used.

Hence why I said 'limited', not 'no'. You have DDM capable destroyers that aren't going to make much in the way of difference against an enemy that has SD(P)s (and at that point in the narrative, significantly outnumbers you in capital ships). Do you send them to a front where they'll be marginally useful to offensive operations that essentially aren't happening anyway, or do you send them to a theater that's got the potential to massively bolster your nation's economic strength mid-to-long term while being effectively invulnerable?

Yes, they're moderately useless outside fleet engagements, but in fleet engagements, at least against the Sollies, they're effectively invulnerable.

Well yes, but they lack both the magazine capacity and the missile penetrating power to seriously threaten a capital ship in a fleet engagement. A Roland could plausibly hope to handle a lone SLN battlecruiser, but it'd shoot itself dry before accomplishing much more in my opinion.

Given the events in 'Shadows of Freedom' I'd say it could do so twice but yes, you're probably right. But what else should they have done? At least the Rolands have a significant range advantage and sufficient firepower to take on battlecruisers when they likely wouldn't have made much in the way of difference against Haven's forces.

And sending twelve Rolands with a total tonnage comparable to that of a Nike which has greater magazine capacity and defensive durability than all twelve Rolands combined...

...means those 12 Rolands can be in 12 places at once while the Nike could not, and still be confident they could either beat the snot out of anything coming their way or if not, run away and holler for reinforcements.

[Simon_Jester]

Hence why I said 'limited', not 'no'. You have DDM capable destroyers that aren't going to make much in the way of difference against an enemy that has SD(P)s (and at that point in the narrative, significantly outnumbers you in capital ships). Do you send them to a front where they'll be marginally useful to offensive operations that essentially aren't happening anyway, or do you send them to a theater that's got the potential to massively bolster your nation's economic strength mid-to-long term while being effectively invulnerable?

Point of information: Manticore was actively stepping up offensive operations during this period, particularly raiding operations for which MDM-capable battlecruisers escorted by Saganami-Cs or Rolands would be used.

Of course, there is a certain serious risk to be taken when flying into a system with its own defense pods that have three-stage missiles when your ship only carries two. I'm not sure Manticoran raiding doctrine has fully considered this, though they do seem to have at least honored the threat.

Given the events in 'Shadows of Freedom' I'd say it could do so twice but yes, you're probably right. But what else should they have done? At least the Rolands have a significant range advantage and sufficient firepower to take on battlecruisers when they likely wouldn't have made much in the way of difference against Haven's forces.

I'll wait on the analysis thread for that since I can't remember. I'm trying to base their performance on the Battle of Monica and observing that a Roland has roughly one third of Hexapuma's long range weight of fire- so presumably, at Monica, it would have taken about three Rolands to do Hexapuma's job of knocking out one of three battlecruisers during the approach.

That said, this calculation might change if you uprate the Mark 16's warhead, sacrificing some hit probability to make it a more effective battlecruiser-killer and dreadnought-scarrer.

Then again, when you get right down to it, isolated battlecruisers aren't really the threat you'd be worried about from the SLN, it's when they send sixteen at once that you have cause to worry. And you'd need a pretty significant concentration of Rolands to overcome that.

And sending twelve Rolands with a total tonnage comparable to that of a Nike which has greater magazine capacity and defensive durability than all twelve Rolands combined...

...means those 12 Rolands can be in 12 places at once while the Nike could not, and still be confident they could either beat the snot out of anything coming their way or if not, run away and holler for reinforcements.

Yes, but that is not a fleet warfare function, not even against hypothetical SLN attackers.

That's Rolands being useful for picketing operations and so on. At which point the contention "Rolands aren't useful outside a fleet operation, why bother sending them" sort of collapses... but then, that was my point all along.

[VhenRa]

The Roland's are dual purpose as they provide excellent defensive additions in fleet combat while traditional destroyers sit there and hope not to get shot on accident the Roland's add lots of counter missiles and the Mark 16's. However as noted they have exactly zero endurance with only 250 missiles onboard and only two grasers forward (Even if I'm guessing it's Grayson style with massive oversized battle cruiser level weaponry) .

They are like the Frigates of Torch a LAC built on Destroyer sizing like the Torches build giant Shrike's and call them Frigates. Except instead of Shrikes the Roland's are Ferrets. Which to my mind makes them perfect for penny packet deployments. No Roland sails alone in other words. Yes 250 missiles is a tiny amount but what about three Roland's working together? That's 750 for a total salvo size of 18-36 (Depends on if they can fire fore and aft at the same time) which is dependable and because they are Mark 16 while they are not great against Haven... against anything Battle Cruiser or smaller they will clean up. AND they can handle towed pods AND they can go FTL AND crew size is small enough each Roland is worth 2.3 pre war Destroyer's in raw crew size.

Yeah, they can fire forward and aft and yes, those spinal grasers are CA-grade.

Given the events in 'Shadows of Freedom' I'd say it could do so twice but yes, you're probably right. But what else should they have done? At least the Rolands have a significant range advantage and sufficient firepower to take on battlecruisers when they likely wouldn't have made much in the way of difference against Haven's forces.

I'll wait on the analysis thread for that since I can't remember. I'm trying to base their performance on the Battle of Monica and observing that a Roland has roughly one third of Hexapuma's long range weight of fire- so presumably, at Monica, it would have taken about three Rolands to do Hexapuma's job of knocking out one of three battlecruisers during the approach.

That said, this calculation might change if you uprate the Mark 16's warhead, sacrificing some hit probability to make it a more effective battlecruiser-killer and dreadnought-scarrer.

Then again, when you get right down to it, isolated battlecruisers aren't really the threat you'd be worried about from the SLN, it's when they send sixteen at once that you have cause to worry. And you'd need a pretty significant concentration of Rolands to overcome that.

The ones in Shadow of Freedom mount the Mark 16-G missile, with a 40 megaton warhead (as opposed to the ones in Shadow of Saganami with a 15 Megaton warhead) along with improved grav lensing and modified laser-heads. Said to be roughly equivalent warhead to a 1917 Manty capital missile (which also implies their current capital missiles have improved warheads too).

[Simon_Jester]

No Roland sails alone in other words. Yes 250 missiles is a tiny amount but what about three Roland's working together? That's 750 for a total salvo size of 18-36 (Depends on if they can fire fore and aft at the same time) which is dependable and because they are Mark 16 while they are not great against Haven... against anything Battle Cruiser or smaller they will clean up. AND they can handle towed pods AND they can go FTL AND crew size is small enough each Roland is worth 2.3 pre war Destroyer's in raw crew size.

Which means what you have here is a great escort vessel for friendly space. Put a trio of Roland in each one of Talbott Quadrant backed up by system defense LAC's and you have a Pirate proof defense since you have defense in depth with the LAC's and the Roland's can pop into Hyper and follow a convoy out then double back.

Yes- and the combined fire of three Rolands is equivalent to that of one Saganami-C, which weighs less, has greater depth of fire in its magazines (thirty full double broadsides rather than twenty). Although it also accelerates slower and has more crew than the three Rolands, say 100-150 more people.

Of course, the Rolands can split up in a pinch, but if you're using a LAC swarm to cover the system you've got that angle covered already.

Again, it's relevant to use a metric from the Battle of Monica: a Saganami-C fired roughly half its missile complement (~500-600 missiles) at three SLN battlecruisers and blew up one of them. The same group of three Rolands could do the same thing, but they'd be essentially out of missiles and have to use their greater acceleration to avoid combat at that point. Then again, they'd probably have mauled the crap out of the battlecruisers structurally and at least caused enough damage to make them easy prey for SUPER LAC ATTACK.

Operate them as a group at all times. 250 missiles is tiny but 1000 is a lot when it's coming from four point sources. And the missile defenses is going to be a lot better than an equivalent size Battlecrusier.

Largely true, although the effectiveness of countermissiles from platform A at defending platform B is a bit... uncertain. In most major fleet actions we've seen, the incoming missile salvo was directed at the capital ships, which were incidentally the ships firing most of the countermissiles.

Clearly countermissiles have meaningful area defense capability, as opposed to laser clusters that only defend a point, hence the name. But one wonders how much performance they sacrifice when engaging a crossing target.

Especially in light of the fact that when you measure relative velocities, the countermissile is basically sprinting frantically to get into a position where the oncoming car will smack into it, because the countermissile's drive has far less delta-v and is going far slower at burnout than the missile.

That's reasonably practical for things coming straight down your throat, but for engaging a crossing target with any meaningful separation it's tricky.

[Ahriman238]

"And this, Admiral Gold Peak, is Prime Minister Alquezar," Lady Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, and Her Majesty Elizabeth III's Imperial Governor for the Talbott Quadrant, said. "Prime Minister, Countess Gold Peak."

Joaquin Alquezar, who led the CUP at the Convention, is now Talbott PM.

"Well, of course, Bernardus," Alquezar said to him. "Now that I've been able to secure my grip on power, it's time for my megalomania to begin coming to the surface, isn't it?"

"Only if you really like being chased around Thimble by assassins," the fair-haired man said. "Trust me—I'm sure I can find a dozen or so of them if I really need to."

"Admiral Gold Peak, allow me to introduce Special Minister Bernardus Van Dort." Medusa shook her head, and her tone took on just an edge of tolerant resignation as she waved gracefully at the newcomer.

And Bernardus Van Dort is a "Special Minister" which essentially means he was given cabinet-level authority but no fixed job so he can act as Alquezar's fireman. Krietzman from Dresden is there too, as Minister of War and remember Lababibi? The Spindle oligarch president who was reluctantly forced into the CLP by the people she represented? She got the Quadrant Exchequer.

"All right, Lieutenant," she said. "You want to know why Van Scheldt and I don't like each other? Try this on for size." She folded her arms in front of her, standing hip-shot, her blue eyes glittering, and looked up at him. "I'm twenty-six T-years old, and I only received my very first prolong treatments when I went to work for Minister Krietzmann last year. If I'd been three T-months older, I'd have been too old for even the first-generation treatment . . . just like my parents. Just like my two older brothers and my three older sisters. Just like all but six of my cousins and every one of my aunts and uncles. But not Mr. Van Scheldt. Oh, no! He's from Rembrandt! He got it just because of where he was born, who his parents were, what planet he came from—just like you did, Lieutenant. And so did his parents, and all of his sisters and brothers. Just like they got decent medical care and a balanced diet."

Her eyes were no longer merely glittering. They blazed, now, and her voice was far harsher than her accent alone could ever have explained.

"We don't like Frontier Security on Dresden any more than anyone else in the Cluster. And, sure, everything we've heard about Manticore suggests we'll get a better deal out of your Star Kingdom than we ever would out of OFS. But we know all about being ignored, Lieutenant Archer, and most of us on Dresden don't have any illusions. I doubt the Star Kingdom is going to gouge us the way Frontier Security, the League, and the Rembrandt Trade Union have, but most of us take all those 'economic incentives' the Convention promised us with a very large grain of salt. We'd like to think at least some of our neighbors were sincere about it, but we're not stupid enough to believe in altruism or the tooth fairy. And if any of us might've been tempted to, there are enough Paul Van Scheldts in the Cluster to teach us better. His family was deeply invested in Dresden even before the Annexation, you know. They hold majority interests in three of our major construction companies, and they could care less about the people who work for them. About the building site injuries, or the long-term health problems, or providing their employees' families—their children, at least, for God's sake!—with access to prolong.""All right, Lieutenant," she said. "You want to know why Van Scheldt and I don't like each other? Try this on for size." She folded her arms in front of her, standing hip-shot, her blue eyes glittering, and looked up at him. "I'm twenty-six T-years old, and I only received my very first prolong treatments when I went to work for Minister Krietzmann last year. If I'd been three T-months older, I'd have been too old for even the first-generation treatment . . . just like my parents. Just like my two older brothers and my three older sisters. Just like all but six of my cousins and every one of my aunts and uncles. But not Mr. Van Scheldt. Oh, no! He's from Rembrandt! He got it just because of where he was born, who his parents were, what planet he came from—just like you did, Lieutenant. And so did his parents, and all of his sisters and brothers. Just like they got decent medical care and a balanced diet."

Her eyes were no longer merely glittering. They blazed, now, and her voice was far harsher than her accent alone could ever have explained.

"We don't like Frontier Security on Dresden any more than anyone else in the Cluster. And, sure, everything we've heard about Manticore suggests we'll get a better deal out of your Star Kingdom than we ever would out of OFS. But we know all about being ignored, Lieutenant Archer, and most of us on Dresden don't have any illusions. I doubt the Star Kingdom is going to gouge us the way Frontier Security, the League, and the Rembrandt Trade Union have, but most of us take all those 'economic incentives' the Convention promised us with a very large grain of salt. We'd like to think at least some of our neighbors were sincere about it, but we're not stupid enough to believe in altruism or the tooth fairy. And if any of us might've been tempted to, there are enough Paul Van Scheldts in the Cluster to teach us better. His family was deeply invested in Dresden even before the Annexation, you know. They hold majority interests in three of our major construction companies, and they could care less about the people who work for them. About the building site injuries, or the long-term health problems, or providing their employees' families—their children, at least, for God's sake!—with access to prolong."

I bet there's a lot of history like this waiting in the background for Manticorans to stick their feet in.

"There's quite a lot of truth to that, I think, though, Henri," Van Dort said quietly. "What happened in Monica—and what was happening on Montana and Kornati—reminded everyone OFS is still out there. And most of them think Verrochio and Hongbo would just love another shot at the Cluster."

"Do people really think that's likely, Minister?" Michelle asked.

" 'Bernardus,' please, Milady," he replied, then grimaced. "And in answer to your question, yes, there are quite a few people here in the Quadrant who think that's very likely, if Verrochio can figure out a new approach."

Nobody thinks things are over just yet.

"Short of that, I'd guess the cease-fire is going to last for a minimum of several months. It's going to take that long just to get all of the messages setting it up sent back and forth. Then Beth—I mean, Her Majesty—and Pritchart are going to have to get to Torch for the actual summit. It's over a month's voyage for Pritchart, one way, and I doubt anyone is going to be willing to give up without spending at least a month or two proving to the other side—and to the galaxy at large—that however unreasonable the other fellows may be being, we're doing our dead level best to bring all this bloodshed to an end. And then you've got the voyage time home for Pritchart. Considering all of that, I'd say five T-months wouldn't be at all out of the question."

"That's about what Gregor I have been estimating from this end," Baroness Medusa said with a nod.

"And if it does last that long, what does it mean for us here in Talbott?" Krietzmann asked.

"The main thing it would mean, Henri," Khumalo said, "is that the majority of the emergency war program construction will have time to come into service. And that, in turn, means the Admiralty's plans to beef up our naval presence here in the Quadrant could proceed without worrying about diversions to meet unanticipated needs on the main front. Which means Vice Admiral Gold Peak's new fleet's order of battle would come forward more or less as scheduled, and that we ought to see the first light attack craft squadrons being deployed within the next month or so."

Of course, we all know the peace talks with Haven don't go forward, but it seems they're getting LACs for the local systems soon.

"In the long run, I think the LACs are going to be even more useful here in the Quadrant than Tenth Fleet. I doubt any Solly with Frontier Security or Frontier Fleet would consider them any sort of threat, so they aren't going to have any deterrence value for someone like Verrochio. That's what Tenth Fleet is for. But once we get two or three squadrons of them deployed to every one of the Quadrant's systems, we'll pretty much have knocked piracy on its head. And, to be honest, the LACs are going to be the best means for gradually integrating the personnel of the local system navies into the RMN."

"I certainly agree with that," Van Dort said firmly. "No pirate in his right mind is going to cross swords with a modern Manticoran LAC. Or, at least, not after the word gets around about what happens to the first couple of them to try it. And the LAC squadrons and their personnel are going to be seen by the locals as 'theirs' in a way hyper-capable ships aren't. They'll be the local police force, not the Navy that comes swinging through the vicinity to check on things every so often. And integrating local personnel into their complements is going to be the best way to start getting our people trained up on modern naval technology, as well."

All of which is important, deterring piracy and training up the locals in modern equipment so Talbotters can be included in the RMN. Each LAC detachment comes with it's own simulators for training. Another major plus is freeing up ships from long patrol routes to concentrate against future threats.

So far, the main conclusion they'd been able to draw was that until more of Tenth Fleet's starships and the first of the LAC squadrons got forward, it was simply physically impossible for Michelle's ships to be everywhere they needed to be. Which was why she was due to leave Spindle the day after tomorrow and proceed with the squadron's first division to Tillerman. That would put her in position to pay a "courtesy call" on Monica about the time that Hexapuma and Warlock completed their repairs and O'Malley was withdrawing his Home Fleet battlecruisers from the system. At the same time, Commodore Onasis would split up her second division, and the individual ships would begin a sweep through the Quadrant's systems as visual reassurance of the Royal Navy's presence. Which, unfortunately, was about all Michelle could actually offer them until the rest of the Quadrant's assigned units put in their appearance.

I thought they were scrapping Warlock? Planned deployments which may or may not matter because this is the scene where they hear about the breakdown in diplomacy, the assassination of Webster and the attempt on Berry.

"I'm not too happy about what I'm hearing about New Tuscany, though." She grimaced. "Everyone warned me the New Tuscans were going to be a problem, but I'd really have preferred for them to be wrong about that. Unfortunately, I don't think they are. And, to be frank, I can't begin to get my head wrapped around wherever it is these people are coming from. They were the ones who decided to opt out of the Quadrant, but you wouldn't know that to listen to their trade representatives. Just yesterday one of them spent the entire afternoon in Minister Lababibi's office complaining about the fact that New Tuscany isn't going to be getting any of the tax incentives Beth is offering to people who invest in the Quadrant." Michelle shook her head. "Apparently, this guy was ranting and raving about how 'unfair' and 'discriminatory' that is! And if that's the way 'politics' work, Mom, I still don't want to get any deeper into them than I have to!

Fun, and what do tax incentives matter if you aren't paying taxes to Manticore in the first place?

"You think it may have been a rogue operation?" Khumalo said with a frown.

"I think it's possible," Michelle said, still slowly, her eyes slitted in thought. "I know the People's Republic was fond of assassinations." Her jaw tightened as she recalled the murder of her father and her brother. "And I know Pritchart was a resistance fighter who's supposed to have carried out several assassinations personally. But I don't think she would have wanted to do anything to jeopardize her meeting with Elizabeth. Not as seriously as she talked to me when she issued the invitation. Which doesn't mean someone else in the present Havenite government or covert agencies, maybe someone who's nostalgic for 'the good old days' and doesn't want the shooting to stop, couldn't have done this without Pritchart's approval."

"Actually," Medusa said thoughtfully, "that comes closer than anything that's occurred to me yet to making sense of any explanation for why Haven might have been behind this."

"Maybe." Khumalo clearly felt that "Because they're Peeps" was sufficient explanation for just about anything Haven might decide to do. Which, Michelle reflected, probably summed up the attitude of a majority of Manticorans. After so many years of war, after the forged diplomatic correspondence, after the "sneak attack" of Operation Thunderbolt, there must be very little the average woman-in-the-street would put past the Machiavellian and malevolent Peeps.

In the next book Honor will say something like "We've been at war or preparing for war with Haven all my life, that's not easy to lay aside. A lot of your people have the same problem." Which really reminds me of the Cold War. And reminds me that even for the man on the street it makes perfect sense to distrust Haven, which has a history of political assassination that survived multiple regimes and definitely lied about their reasons for going back to war, so far as anyone knows.

As Baroness Medusa had pointed out in Webster's case, if it hadn't been for the similarity between the technique used against Honor and the technique used against him, Manpower would probably have been the first suspect on everyone's list, however stupid it might have been of them to carry out such an attack right in the middle of Chicago. And the same logic went double, or even triple, where an attack on Torch was concerned. No one else in the entire galaxy could have had a more logical motive to attempt to destabilize Torch. But Manpower, and to a lesser extent the other outlaw corporations based on Mesa and allied with Manpower, obviously had all the motives there were. The notion of an independent star system inhabited almost exclusively by ex-genetic slaves, its government heavily influenced (if not outright dominated) by the "reformed" terrorists of the anti-slavery Audubon Ballroom, could not be reassuring to Manpower or any corporate crony bedfellow. Add in the fact that the planet of Torch itself had been taken away from Manpower by force (and that several hundred of its more senior on-planet employees had been massacred, most of them in particularly hideous fashion, in the process), and Manpower's reasons for attempting to kill Berry—and Ruth, and anyone else on the planet they could get to—became screamingly obvious.

So one possible explanation was to assign both attacks to Manpower. Except, of course, for the unfortunate fact that the only people who had previously employed the same technique were Havenites. Whatever Pritchart might have said, no one else had any motive for that attack. Certainly Manpower hadn't had any reason to go after Honor at that time. For that matter, as far as Michelle could see, Manpower probably would have had every reason not to assassinate her. Manpower was at least as unfond of Manticore and Haven—separately and together—as they were of it, and the notion of eliminating someone who was doing that much damage to Haven could scarcely have appealed to Manpower's board of directors.

And again they assume the first attempt on Honor was Haven, and so these assassinations must be Haven because no one else has shown such a capability. It's completely logical given all they know but so frustrating because they still think of Mesa and Manpower as corporations rather than a rival state or even a conspiracy hell-bent on galactic domination.

His (Reginald Houseman's) career and his influence alike had taken a powerful nosedive after that embarrassing little incident at Yeltsin's Star, although there were still members of his Liberal Party (such of it as survived, after its disastrous alliance with the Conservative Association in the High Ridge government) who continued to support him as a victim of "the Salamander's" notoriously brutal and vicious temperament. They were, however, noticeably thinner on the ground than they once had been. Perhaps that owed something to the fact that Houseman had accepted the position of Second Lord of Admiralty in the Janacek Admiralty. At the time, it had probably seemed like a good idea, since it had restored him to the first ranks of political power in the Star Kingdom and finally allowed him to do something about the "bloated and ridiculously over expensive" state of the Navy which he had decried for decades.

Unfortunately, it also meant he had been personally and directly responsible for planning and carrying out the Navy's deliberate build-down. Unlike Janacek, who had committed suicide when the enormity of his failure became obvious at the opening of the current war, Houseman had opted for the less drastic option of resigning his office in disgrace. And despite the investigation which had led directly to formal charges of corruption, malfeasance, bribery, and half a dozen other criminal activities on the part of Baron High Ridge, a dozen of his personal aides, eleven senior members of the Conservative Association in the House of Lords (including the current Earl of North Hollow), two Liberal Party peers, three unaligned peers, seventeen members of the Progressive Party's representation in the House of Commons, and over two dozen prominent members of the Manticoran business community, it appeared Houseman had at least not been guilty of any outright violations of the law.

Because of that, he had been able to retire into the safer, if far less prestigious (or remunerative), fields of academia.

Reginald Houseman, and what's new with him. Seems he resigned from public office and was never convicted of any wrongdoing in the witch-hunts following the HRG's collapse.

His sister, Jacqueline, had never been formally associated with the High Ridge Government, although her longtime position as one of Countess New Kiev's unofficial financial advisers had still managed to bring her into the outer radius of fallout when that government collapsed. Fortunately for New Kiev (and Jacqueline), New Kiev had probably been the only member of High Ridge's cabinet and inner circle who hadn't been personally party to any of his criminal activities.

Michelle found it difficult to believe the countess hadn't known anything about what was going on, however. Nor was she the only one. That very point had been raised quite broadly in the Star Kingdom's newsfaxes, and it had undoubtedly contributed to her disintegrating Liberal Party's decision to "regretfully accept her resignation" as its leader with indecent haste. Whether she'd actually known or not, she damned well ought to have known, in Michelle's opinion, but it truly did appear that her main offense (legally speaking, at least) had been terminal political stupidity. And it had been terminal. Her retirement as the Liberal Party's official leader had been followed by her virtual retirement from the House of Lords, as well, and it seemed obvious her political career was over. For that matter, despite the speed with which it had dumped her and sought to disassociate itself from the High Ridge "excesses," New Kiev's Liberal Party, which had been dominated by its aristocratic wing from its very inception, was also deceased for all intents and purposes. The new Liberal Party which had emerged under the leadership of the Honorable Catherine Montaigne, the ex-Countess of the Tor, was a very different—and much brawnier and less couth—creature than anything with which New Kiev had ever been associated, and the majority of its strength came from Montaigne's bloc in the House of Commons.

As well as New Kiev and the Liberal Party.

Fortunately—and this was the cause of Michelle's surprise—Frazier Houseman gave every appearance of being just as capable as an officer in Her Majesty's Navy as Michael Oversteegen was. Whether or not their mutual competence could overcome the inevitable political antipathy between them was another question, of course.

We found a good and competent Houseman serving in the fleet. Still a political liberal though, which doesn't generally square with Our Heroes in (Centrist) Uniform. But eh, Oversteegen already proved that good officers aren't necessarily Centrists.

, "Admiral O'Malley's recall gives even more point to the necessity of getting someone out in the region of Monica to replace him ASAP."

"Agreed, Jerome. Agreed," Michelle said, nodding. "In fact, I think you and I are going to have to expedite the First Division's departure. I'm thinking now that we need to pay a 'courtesy visit' to Monica as quickly as possible, and then establish ourselves—or at least a couple of our ships—permanently at Tillerman. Where the main change is going to be necessary is in our original plans for Shulamit."

She swivelled her eyes back to Onassis.

"Instead of splitting your division up and sending it out to touch base with the various systems here in the Quadrant, I think we're going to need to keep you right here at Spindle, concentrated."

Marching orders for Tenth Fleet for now, half to go to Monica, half to stay concentrated at the Quadrant capital.

Terekhov released O'Malley's hand and looked around the battlecruiser's boat bay. He'd always thought "Black Rose" was an unusually poetic name for a Manticoran battlecruiser, but he'd always rather liked it, too. And the reason O'Malley's flagship wore that name was that it—like the name of Terekhov's own heavy cruiser—was listed on the RMN's List of Honor, one of the names to be kept permanently in commission.

Another Honor List name, Black Rose originally the ship of the third of Manticore's trinity of naval heroes, Quentin Saint-James. Around this time Terekhov is getting ready to take the Kitty home where they'll get into spacedock less than a day before the Battle of Manticore.

"That's all true enough, Ben," Daniel said. "On the other hand, there are a few straws in the wind. For example, it sounds like they've managed to improve the accuracy of their MDMs by a hell of a lot. And I'm inclined to think—mind you, I haven't had a chance yet for any sort of rigorous analysis of what information we do have—that the Havenites' missile defenses' effectiveness must've been reduced rather significantly, as well. Unless Harrington was reinforced a lot more powerfully than any of our admittedly limited sources have suggested, then the Manties' announced kills represent an awfully high ratio for the number of hulls they could have committed to the operation."

And the Mesans have heard about Lovat, though they aren't quite positive what Manticore's done to up the effectiveness of MDMs so much. IN keeping with the 'onion' we have a second Mesan Ominous Council, Dettweiler and his three cloned sons Ben (ops, politics and general heir to the hidden empire stuff), Daniel (R&D) and Everett (Biosciences). For purposes of mental convenience, I simply call them Hughie, Louie and Dewey.

But there's not really any choice, he told himself. It's only sixty light-years from Beowulf to Mesa via the Visigoth Wormhole. That's only five days for a streak boat. We can't possibly justify not using that advantage at a time like this, so I guess I'll just have to hope the wheels don't come off.

Message time from Manticore to Mesa, via the Manty and Mesan wormholes. 12 LY/day for their upgraded 'streak' hyperdrive.

"Having said that, however," Daniel continued, "I'd have to say this sounds an awful lot like it's another example of their damned FTL capability."

He grimaced sourly. He felt fairly confident that his research people had finally figured out essentially what Manticore was doing, but duplicating the ability to create grav-pulses along the hyper-space alpha wall in anything but the crudest possible fashion wasn't a particularly simple proposition. It was going to take a lot of basic research to figure out how they were doing it, and even longer to duplicate their hardware, given that the Alignment, unlike the Republic of Haven, hadn't been able to lay its hands on any working examples of the technology.

Okay, now I'm just at a loss. The Mesans are so plugged into the Solly R&D and tech-companies they've been able to string many discoveries in unrelated or casually related fields together to produce things like the streak drive. If anyone in or known to the League has FTL comm, Mesa shouldn't be far behind. Yet we know the Peeps original FTL comms were Solly-built based on data the Peeps provided, and that was years ago.

[Terralthra]

The repairs to Warlock are just to scrape together enough alpha nodes and support capability to get her through the junction, so she can be scrapped at Hephaestus. We know, because we see her along with Hexapuma during the fleet honors when they arrive at the junction on the Manticoran end.

More thoughts in the morning.

[Mr Bean]

Okay, now I'm just at a loss. The Mesans are so plugged into the Solly R&D and tech-companies they've been able to string many discoveries in unrelated or casually related fields together to produce things like the streak drive. If anyone in or known to the League has FTL comm, Mesa shouldn't be far behind. Yet we know the Peeps original FTL comms were Solly-built based on data the Peeps provided, and that was years ago.

Solarian space is big, it could be as simple as the Peep's picked a megafirm the Alignment had no hooks in or the information is being restricted to so top secret that any FTL installs are black box affairs that melt themselves down if you try and open them. It's quite possible to build something that is designed to be used, operated but not maintained only swapped out.

Also note the Peep's are also still pretty far behind Manticore. Transmission rates are still in the twitter size not Manticore audio/video.

[VhenRa]

Actually... thats explicitly alot of Manty tech is when you don't have the codes/correct method needed to open them. You fail to use them, you open it up... it melts itself down, because screw you enemy R&D. From memory anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

I thought they were scrapping Warlock? Planned deployments which may or may not matter because this is the scene where they hear about the breakdown in diplomacy, the assassination of Webster and the attempt on Berry.

Maybe they were able to get Warlock to move under her own power such that it was considered more economical to have her go back to a centralized fleet base for scrapping, rather than being broken up in place? That assumes there is ANY such facility in Talbott, of course.

Reginald Houseman, and what's new with him. Seems he resigned from public office and was never convicted of any wrongdoing in the witch-hunts following the HRG's collapse.

Also, confirmation that allying with the High Ridge Government was disastrous for the Liberals, which is no surprise because it created a large "leave in disgust" faction within the party, followed by an internecine struggle between the old party machine (New Kiev's, inherited from her father) and the disgusted people (led by Montaigne, perhaps among others).

And the Mesans have heard about Lovat, though they aren't quite positive what Manticore's done to up the effectiveness of MDMs so much. IN keeping with the 'onion' we have a second Mesan Ominous Council, Dettweiler and his three cloned sons Ben (ops, politics and general heir to the hidden empire stuff), Daniel (R&D) and Everett (Biosciences). For purposes of mental convenience, I simply call them Hughie, Louie and Dewey.

They're actually named alphabetically: A (Albrecht), B, C, D, and E. There's a Colin Detweiler. Also a Franklin and a Gervais, who I don't know if we've met.

Message time from Manticore to Mesa, via the Manty and Mesan wormholes. 12 LY/day for their upgraded 'streak' hyperdrive.

In other words, just short of 4400c, which is a sharp increase over typical warship speeds (~2000-2500c) or maximum courier boat speeds (~3500c)

Okay, now I'm just at a loss. The Mesans are so plugged into the Solly R&D and tech-companies they've been able to string many discoveries in unrelated or casually related fields together to produce things like the streak drive. If anyone in or known to the League has FTL comm, Mesa shouldn't be far behind. Yet we know the Peeps original FTL comms were Solly-built based on data the Peeps provided, and that was years ago.

...Uh, are you sure about that? Because the Solarian companies show no sign of having deployed this hardware themselves.

Also, the Mesans have been doing things that no one else even thinks are practical. So it's not just that they're plugged into Solarian military R&D, though that explains some projects like their Cataphract extended range missile. But the mind control nanites? The streak and spider drives? Those aren't remotely related to any technology the League has even heard of.

Much like Manticore, the Alignment has had a 'black' research program running for decades if not centuries, pursuing fundamentally new and exotic technological concepts. They haven't accomplished all the same things Manticore has, they have a different palette of secret weapons, but they clearly have advances that must be credited to them alone, not to cobbling together projects that somebody else thought of.