(Spoiler!) What's Next for the Honorverse?(Spoiler Warning!)

PeterZ wrote:The Aueen also fixed the Solarian League's funding limitations. The new League will contain the majority or close to it the majority of former SL member systems. Unless the SEM is large enough to give the New SL pause, there may be enough support to build a powerful enough navy to take out the SEM.

The SL basically funded the SLN out of the spare change the core worlds had under the cushions. It was stated at some point that the SLN was not close to the where the majority of what the SL's income funded. So the SLN pretty much got all the stuff they thought they really needed. It just turned out they were wrong as to what they needed.

The RMN is still a singe system navy. While the SKM has good source of income and has the highest per capita GSP, David has mentioned that it DOES NOT have the highest GSP of the various systems. So there are core worlds that could, by themselves, build a comparable navy if they decided it was needed. Since there were something like 1700? members of the SL it would be trivial for the SL to build a navy that could crush the RMN like a bug once hey have a few years of R&D.

If they were motivated to go do that...

kzt wrote:It was stated to have about 20 billion people. I doubt lynx is huge.

PeterZ wrote:Silesia is.

kzt wrote:Not part of the SEM.

They are subject to the SEM as possessions. Not that OFS protectorate status, but true subjects of Imperial governance. They just don't have representation, just as Isreal /Judaea was part of the Roman Empire but had no representation in the Senate.

kzt wrote:

PeterZ wrote:The Aueen also fixed the Solarian League's funding limitations. The new League will contain the majority or close to it the majority of former SL member systems. Unless the SEM is large enough to give the New SL pause, there may be enough support to build a powerful enough navy to take out the SEM.

The SL basically funded the SLN out of the spare change the core worlds had under the cushions. It was stated at some point that the SLN was not close to the where the majority of what the SL's income funded. So the SLN pretty much got all the stuff they thought they really needed. It just turned out they were wrong as to what they needed.

The RMN is still a singe system navy. While the SKM has good source of income and has the highest per capita GSP, David has mentioned that it DOES NOT have the highest GSP of the various systems. So there are core worlds that could, by themselves, build a comparable navy if they decided it was needed. Since there were something like 1700? members of the SL it would be trivial for the SL to build a navy that could crush the RMN like a bug once hey have a few years of R&D.

If they were motivated to go do that...

Have you read the book yet?

ldwechsler wrote:
Victor went to the Haven School for Agents...or whatever it is called. Remember his line about being the fourth highest ever in resistance to pain?

A lot of folks won't be in the next arc. We have that now. We didn't have Ginger and Wanderman for more than a few books. In this last one, we didn't have Helen Paolo or Terekhov.

Having a few around in the next arc would be nice but I would guess most with just more or less disappear. Perhaps covered with a sentence or two or not.

One of the ways to search for Darius or something that the MAlign uses as a base would be to track freighters linked to systems known to be in association with the MAlign. Technodyne has links to new weapons development. They have been linked to working with the MAlign in Talbott and so perhaps also other ops like Torch.

Beginning there agents/researchers can track the travels of freighters linked to Technodyne around the galaxy. Later after a better picture is developed, the SEM can begin to focus on freighters with unaccountable gaps in their travels. Talking to the crews of those freighters linked to systems suspected of MAlign sympathies (associated with Technodyne and related star systems). Just talk to them in setting where treecats can unobtrusively use their lie detection abilities to refine where these freighters spend their unaccounted for time.

The process will take a long time. I can see Firebrand, Fire Watch and Indy begin a company providing for imports into smaller Verge and Fringe systems. They can supply valuable products like Montana Beef and Mobius mutton and lamb at very competitive prices as well as locally controlled products of questionable legality. Nothing totally black, but gray enough to make their enterprise shady at best. This is pretty much what Firebrand did for a living. Indy spent his youth selling to the black/gray market. They are very well suited for this sort of search.

This firm then spends their time looking for more transport cubage to connect their suppiers to buyers around the galaxy. In the process they develop a comprehensive understanding of just which shippers go where at any given time.

The only hope of discovering the MAlign is if they are active outside Darius. If they retreat and disappear, they will not be found. So, assuming finding them is possible, the SEM has to try and track ships connecting the MAlign with their associated star systems.

PeterZ wrote:The only hope of discovering the MAlign is if they are active outside Darius. If they retreat and disappear, they will not be found. So, assuming finding them is possible, the SEM has to try and track ships connecting the MAlign with their associated star systems.

The only problem with that approach is that there are no "associated star systems" to start tracking from; The Renaissance Factor isn't known to be associated with the MAlign and publicly is opposed to everything Mesa and the MAlign were known for.

The only link that might be traceable is the Jessyk Combine ships that have been using the two "known" termini of the Felix WHJ. One of those ships might have the entry vector for the Darius terminus in their computers or captain's private diary.

Alternatively, at some distant point in the future, a Mannerheim warship might run afoul of a GA ship and not be able to strip the Darius and Twins termini vectors before capture or surrender.

Weird Harold wrote:

PeterZ wrote:The only hope of discovering the MAlign is if they are active outside Darius. If they retreat and disappear, they will not be found. So, assuming finding them is possible, the SEM has to try and track ships connecting the MAlign with their associated star systems.

The only problem with that approach is that there are no "associated star systems" to start tracking from; The Renaissance Factor isn't known to be associated with the MAlign and publicly is opposed to everything Mesa and the MAlign were known for.

The only link that might be traceable is the Jessyk Combine ships that have been using the two "known" termini of the Felix WHJ. One of those ships might have the entry vector for the Darius terminus in their computers or captain's private diary.

Alternatively, at some distant point in the future, a Mannerheim warship might run afoul of a GA ship and not be able to strip the Darius and Twins termini vectors before capture or surrender.

That won't do much of anything. Darius is not a hidden planet in that no one knows where it is. It simply pretends to be a quiet planet so it is not noticed.

The leaders may play games to keep ships away if they don't belong but there isn't much there that would identify it...except of course for the huge orbital sign that says "Worst Guys in the Galaxy Here."

PeterZ wrote:The only hope of discovering the MAlign is if they are active outside Darius. If they retreat and disappear, they will not be found. So, assuming finding them is possible, the SEM has to try and track ships connecting the MAlign with their associated star systems.

Weird Harold wrote:The only problem with that approach is that there are no "associated star systems" to start tracking from; The Renaissance Factor isn't known to be associated with the MAlign and publicly is opposed to everything Mesa and the MAlign were known for.

The only link that might be traceable is the Jessyk Combine ships that have been using the two "known" termini of the Felix WHJ. One of those ships might have the entry vector for the Darius terminus in their computers or captain's private diary.

Alternatively, at some distant point in the future, a Mannerheim warship might run afoul of a GA ship and not be able to strip the Darius and Twins termini vectors before capture or surrender.

ldwechsler wrote:That won't do much of anything. Darius is not a hidden planet in that no one knows where it is. It simply pretends to be a quiet planet so it is not noticed.

The leaders may play games to keep ships away if they don't belong but there isn't much there that would identify it...except of course for the huge orbital sign that says "Worst Guys in the Galaxy Here."

We do suspect Technodyne as having links to the MAlign. Their finger prints were all over the Monica operation. Their improved weapons keep coming up quite quickly. Those donkey variants with impellar wedges were produced in significant numbers inside 1 year of BoM. Not an impossible achievement, but improbable enough that one should suspect someone had researched it much longer than 1 year.

So begin with ships that routinely ship Technodyne shipments. Find out which systems do business with Technodyne and research ship movements from those nations. Spread out from there and map those movements.

Ask the crews of those ships questions about where they went. Especially during times their movements cannot be corroborated. The crews will lie. So ask about possible destination or regions. If they lied about where they stated they went, you know where they weren't. Knowing enough locations of where they weren't provides more accurate idea of where they were.

As I said the process will take a long time and require many folks asking those questions. The folks asking those questions must be seen as legitimately asking them. Well, legitimately for the cover of the questioner. Gray market importers/exporters are best.

I keep looking at this and shaking my head.

First, the Felix junction has four remote termini. One leads to Darius, one to The Twins and then to Torch, and the other two lead ... somewhere unspecified (unless RFC has specified one in UH.) Mannerheim is in the process of gaining sole rights to Felix, and then plans to open up the junction to trade with those two unspecified termini. At least, that was the plan the last time we have information.

If there is a substantial amount of traffic going through the junction, it will not be safe to use it for clandestine traffic to or from Darius. What this means is that the Felix-Darius hyper bridge isn't going to be very useful if Mannerheim does manage to get legal control of Felix and opens it up for commerce.

Darius does not have a significant amount of trade with the rest of the Honorverse. What they have is a small navy, consisting of Ghosts, Sharks and Leonard Detweiler class SDs. They also have a large number of small streak-drive equipped ships that are engaged in various nefarious activities. To put it another way, the only activity that can possibly be tracked is those small ships, and then only if someone manages to correlate emission signatures as the ships change their identity from one port to the next. Always assuming that the MAlign doesn't have something up their sleeve to mask emission signatures.

I suspect that trying to trace the MAlign's C&C loop isn't going to be all that easy, especially if they set it up so that a raft of unsuspecting merchant ships were equipped with clandestine store-and-forward units. The only ships going to or from Darius then would be shuttles between Darius and several carefully selected planets where the intelligence crop could be harvested and shipped onward.

Granted, it's slow, but it will get messages from one point to the next reliably, and it doesn't give anyone anomalous ship traffic to analyze or possibly trace.

JohnRoth wrote:I keep looking at this and shaking my head.

First, the Felix junction has four remote termini. One leads to Darius, one to The Twins and then to Torch, and the other two lead ... somewhere unspecified (unless RFC has specified one in UH.) Mannerheim is in the process of gaining sole rights to Felix, and then plans to open up the junction to trade with those two unspecified termini. At least, that was the plan the last time we have information.

If there is a substantial amount of traffic going through the junction, it will not be safe to use it for clandestine traffic to or from Darius. What this means is that the Felix-Darius hyper bridge isn't going to be very useful if Mannerheim does manage to get legal control of Felix and opens it up for commerce.

Darius does not have a significant amount of trade with the rest of the Honorverse. What they have is a small navy, consisting of Ghosts, Sharks and Leonard Detweiler class SDs. They also have a large number of small streak-drive equipped ships that are engaged in various nefarious activities. To put it another way, the only activity that can possibly be tracked is those small ships, and then only if someone manages to correlate emission signatures as the ships change their identity from one port to the next. Always assuming that the MAlign doesn't have something up their sleeve to mask emission signatures.

I suspect that trying to trace the MAlign's C&C loop isn't going to be all that easy, especially if they set it up so that a raft of unsuspecting merchant ships were equipped with clandestine store-and-forward units. The only ships going to or from Darius then would be shuttles between Darius and several carefully selected planets where the intelligence crop could be harvested and shipped onward.

Granted, it's slow, but it will get messages from one point to the next reliably, and it doesn't give anyone anomalous ship traffic to analyze or possibly trace.

If the MAlign were wise, they would reduce as much traffic as possible out of Darius. I suspect that they won't and will be discovered.

PeterZ wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:
The only hope of discovering the MAlign is if they are active outside Darius. If they retreat and disappear, they will not be found. So, assuming finding them is possible, the SEM has to try and track ships connecting the MAlign with their associated star systems.

Not necessarily. If you remember back when they were investigating the torch wormhole. The lead scientist, their leading wormhole expert, did not go through the wormhole on the ship that ended up getting destroyed. He also noticed some odd behavior of the wormhole. That he could not explain. One would have to expect that he has continued to try and figure out that unique characteristic (which as we know is because the system at the other end had two separate wormholes (not one with multiple routes) and a ship traveling through one caused the unique effect in the other. One could use him, to identify that behavior, giving the hint that the other end was in fact occupied (ships traveling through the other worm hole) coupled with the attack on Torch might generate some interest leading to the MA.

You also have a future where tree cats are a lot more common in association with senior navel and diplomatic personnel. One might think that they just might encounter either Mannerheim navel personnel (after all it was a Mannerheim navel ship that destroyed the ship investigating the worm whole) or a senior person in the RF that might be enough to kick off the final search and destroy.