It would appear that Haven tried to take Baselisk using a manufactured uprising to let their fleet- which just happened to be in the area- show up and rescue the planet from the war between the Stilties and the Imperialist Manties who were enslaving the people(- and who didn't have forces in the area that could resist a RHN fleet or task force before it took effective control of the orbitals and installed a puppet government.
Why? Because they could position it just that way to the SL which was the only other actual military/polictial force that could have gotten involved and Haven needed the fig leaf of being a savior to the indigenous population of Baselisk (and all those Havnite merchants etc).
The question is whether it was needed. On the one hand, the SLN hasn't so much as twitched to date. On the other, this is a system within two near-enough instantaneous jumps of a League core system, owned by a state with good propaganda links to the League, so perhaps they were a bit more given to tapdancing than previously.
Ideally they get all of home fleet to show up in Basilisk and then jump them there, where they don't have the support of fixed defenses. Next stop, Manticore.
Indeed. Not easy to orchestrate and certainly not going to catch all of Home Fleet, but ultimately you need to fight a big enough chunk of Home Fleet to tilt the balance somewhere other than Manticore.
If you can do that, that's probably the war-winning engagement.
Basilisk was, even though disputed in the government, a part of the Star Kingdom. If Haven invaded it, it could have caused a war. It might not and Haven was betting it wouldn't, but the RMN could have decided to fight back there and then. It could also decide to fortify its position on the Basilisk terminus so Haven wouldn't, thus keeping the option open to sending sorties out of it.
Indeed. Haven was hoping Manticore would surrender the system but in practice I don't think it was going to happen. Remember that the balance of power in the lords is between the Crown Loyalists and the Conservatives; the Liberals (the one party likely to sanction 'giving up' the system) are influential but unlikely to be able to force decisions past the other two, and without a parliamentary majority the RMN will listen to the admiralty and the crown, and probably don't have to get explicit parliamentary sanction for what is essentially a
defensive action.
That's only if they manage to catch her. Honor is more than willing to run when faced with overwhelming force and no ability to affect the outcome (or surrender if running isn't possible - though her being in a treaty compliant POW camp takes her off the board almost as surely as killing her would)
She might still get mousetrapped and taken out by the slightly higher acceleration PRN DDs - but that's hardly a given.
I suspect there's no need to "catch" her at all.
Fearless spent months sat within weapons range of a ship with several times her firepower, fat, dumb and gormless. If directive #1 for Coglin had been to turn the picket into an expanding cloud of debris, there's bugger all
Fearless could have done about it. That would have involved a Q-ship blowing away a sovereign warship in front of god and everybody (which I assume is why it wasn't), which would shoot the 'good guys' concept in the head pretty thoroughly, but the chance of
Fearless going from a parking orbit to surviving unexpected rapid fire from the
Sirius' full armament is essentially zero, no matter how good Cardones is.
For that matter, on a "screw being the good guys, take the system", approach, if Sirius had instead headed to make transit and at the appropriate point interdicted the terminus (probably blowing away Basilisk Control in the process), then the ability to send out a Case Zulu warning is pretty much eliminated.
Sirius isn't the most devastating warship in service but it's more than capable of holding the terminus against the Basilisk Picket for any reasonable period of time, and no merchant ship is going to voluntarily fly through its energy envelope to try and make transit.
At which point you can park whatever PN forces you like on the Junction, without a peep getting through to Manticore. Obviously you can't stop people escaping through hyper (though that takes a fair while to reach Manticore!) but more to the point people will have noticed that Basilisk-Manticore transits have stopped almost immediately and after an hour, tops, are likely to send someone through to see what's going on.
