ThinksMarkedly wrote:tlb wrote:And why do you insist Maddock is from Darius? I would expect him to be limited to the spider corps, if true.
And yet he knew about them.So maybe she does know something about Darius, a la Chekhov's Gun; but we have no evidence that either MAN officer were FROM Darius.
No, but Maddock knew about the MAN in the first place and its ships. So that's effectively a distinction without a difference: what matters is that he had seen the spider ship designs if not the ships themselves, and was aware that the MAN was gearing up to take on the entire Galaxy. He was aware that the MAN was a new navy too.
I see the text as being less clear than you've been projecting it.
Yes Captain Gowan Maddock belongs to the Mesan Alignment Navy.
"Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers" [ToF]
"the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too." [ToF]
But that seems to be it. He only appears almost exclusively in that one book, and the only mention of Darius in ToF is the Detweilers discussing whether to move someone else there -- so no direct evidence that Maddock knew of the place.
The one other mention of Maddock is in TeiF where he's identified by his cover as a Captain Maddock of the Mesan System Navy; and that is only to say he was Commander Jessica Milliken's boss[1]; and had died in the Battle of Torch.
Unless there's a more explicit reference I missed about what those new MAN ships were Maddock could be referring to the Cataphract equipped SD(P)s we know Galton was building[2]. Sure, we know they wouldn't actually be able to "tear the ass" off the RMN, GSN, IAN, or PRN but Maddock might not know that -- and they would be able to wreck anybody else's navy.
And my prior post already touched on the fact that Mesan Alignment Navy doesn't necessarily have to mean 'of Darius'.
So I'm unconvinced that Maddock is from or even knows of Darius or knows of the existence of the spider drive.
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[1] And it doesn't appear Milliken, despite being Maddock's second in command was actually in the Mesan Alignment Navy. She's identified in ToF as being "ostensibly one of Manpower's liaisons with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"; whereas Maddock's entry does call out that he's "Mesan Alignment Navy; ostensibly Manpower's liaison with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"
[2] The ones that the got only a passing mention as being part of the mobile defending forces when the Grand Fleet showed up later at Galton.