Honorverse ramblings and musings

Dauntless wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:What do you think would happen if a Stilty walked into the Manticoran Embassy on Medusa and told somebody at the desk that they wanted to enlist in the RMN? Would they be allowed to?

as i recall the medusans are only iron age, possibly earlier.

while there has been some interaction, i am doubtful that they fully grasp the concept of leaving the planet, let alone going to another star system.

that said if they can pass the tests and use human designed equipment, then i don't see why not.

Bill Woods wrote:

Dauntless wrote: as i recall the medusans are only iron age, possibly earlier.

while there has been some interaction, i am doubtful that they fully grasp the concept of leaving the planet, let alone going to another star system.

that said if they can pass the tests and use human designed equipment, then i don't see why not.

They've been occupied by and trading with the Manties for decades. Despite the restrictions on their technological development, some of them ought to have a pretty good idea of basic astrography.

cthia wrote:At All Costs

"So which way do we go, Madam President?"

Eloise really wished she could surrender. This was probably one of the hardest questions posed to her in her life. Making the decision drove her to tears.

Would anyone care to share their thoughts, had Eloise gone ahead and just surrendered?

cthia wrote:At All Costs

"So which way do we go, Madam President?"

Eloise really wished she could surrender. This was probably one of the hardest questions posed to her in her life. Making the decision drove her to tears.

Would anyone care to share their thoughts, had Eloise gone ahead and just surrendered?

roseandheather wrote:Thank God she didn't, and I mean that heart and soul.

Thank God she didn't.

Surrender then would have meant no chance - none at all, not a year or ten years or a hundred years down the road - for an equitable peace. Conquered nations only stay conquered for as long as the conquerors can keep the boot on their necks.

I've spoken about this before, but Manticore could not have kept the boot on Haven for long. Haven had more star systems, more building capacity, much more space to work with, and Shannon Foraker. How long before Haven rearmed, as Germany did in the twenty-year period between the Treaty of Versailles and the fall of Poland? How much of the Royal Navy would have been tied up just trying to police the thousands of cubic light-years of space Haven occupied?

And what of the Alignment? What if Elizabeth had gotten what she wanted - unconditional surrender at missile point, and Nouveau Paris leveled to the ground in blood and fire? What then, of the aftermath of Oyster Bay? Of Filareta's Folly? What of Talbott, and the Battle of Monica? What if Manticore really had tied up half its navy in trying to police Haven, when those ships would have been so badly needed elsewhere?

No. Only equitable peace ensures lasting peace. A conquered Haven would have been an angry Haven. Eloise resurrected one government from the ashes of history - do you honestly think she couldn't resurrect the same from a conquered nation? Or that she wouldn't try? No one, not even Eloise Pritchart, is so honorable as to surrender their nation's future under a so-called flag of truce when it might still be saved. And no one, especially not Eloise Pritchart, is so unforgivably stupid and remiss in her duty as to not fight for that survival with everything she has, no matter what terms the surrender might have called for. And when Haven had rearmed, what then? Another decades-long slugging match, until one or both of them were so bloody, so beaten, so ruined, so broken they could never stand again, in all the coming centuries?

So I say again - thank God she did not surrender. Thank God she chose Beatrice, and Thunderbolt, for all it cost her and those she loved. Thank God she placed her trust in Thomas Theisman. Thank God for Eloise Pritchart's steel spine, unflinching dedication to duty, unfathomable courage, foresight, and vision.

I say again - thank God.

Javier Giscard's tactical officers didn't realize at first what they faced. In fact, most of them never did realize.

The Manty missiles ignored their decoys almost contemptuously, and those peculiar clumps of MDMs maneuvered with a precision no missile-defense officer had ever seen before. It was almost as if each clump were a single missile, one which bored in through the defensive shield of the task group's electronic warfare as if it didn't exist.

Counter-missiles began to fire, and something else very peculiar happened. The EW platforms seeded throughout the Manticoran salvo didn't come up simultaneously, or in groups, the way they ought to have. Instead, they came up individually, singly, almost as if they could actually see the counter-missiles and adjust their own sequences.

Dragon's Teeth activated at precisely the right moment to draw the maximum number of counter-missiles into attacking the false targets. Dazzlers blasted the onboard sensors of other counter-missiles . . . just as the attack missiles behind them arced upward, or dove downward, to drive straight through the gap the Dazzlers had burned in the defensive envelope.

Not all the defensive missiles could be blinded or evaded, of course. There were simply too many of them. But their effectiveness was slashed.

The twelve superdreadnoughts of Task Force 82 had rolled quadruple patterns before they launched. Two hundred and eighty-eight Apollo pods had launched nineteen hundred attack missiles and four hundred EW platforms, along with two hundred and eighty-eight control missiles.

Javier Giscard's counter-missiles stopped only three hundred of the attack birds. His desperate point defense clusters, in the single volley each of them got, killed another four hundred.

Twelve hundred got through.

* * *

Damage alarms screamed on Sovereign of Space's command deck and flag bridge. The huge ship shuddered and bucked as not one, or two, but scores of Manticoran missiles ripped straight through the heart of the task group's missile defenses. Armor splintered, atmosphere spewed into space, weapons mounts and point defense clusters were blasted into shattered wreckage, and the drum roll of destruction went on and on and on.

All of Judah Yanakov's fire had been concentrated on only two ships. Partly, that was because no one had really known how effective Apollo would prove against live opposition, and partly it had been because superdreadnoughts were simply so inconceivably tough. Killing targets that rugged was hard, and Honor and Yanakov had been determined to do as much damage with the first salvo, before the enemy had any chance to adjust to the new threat, as they could.

They did.

"Well done, Theo," Honor Alexander-Harrington said.

Lieutenant Commander Kgari had dropped TF 81, Eighth Fleet's leading task force, into normal-space barely forty thousand kilometers outside the Lovat System's hyper limit. That was extraordinarily precise astrogation, and Kgari smiled in appreciation of the well-deserved praise.

Honor smiled back, but her true attention was focused on the huge flag bridge tactical display. She watched alertly, waiting for CIC to post any major changes, but the only differences from Skirmisher's last upload were insignificant.

Honor glanced at the date/time display and smiled sadly. If Illescue was on schedule, her daughter would be born in almost exactly eight minutes. Katherine Allison Miranda Alexander-Harrington. She sampled the name silently...

cthia wrote:Can anyone remember if it has been determined approximately how many Apollo missiles will mission kill or destroy an SD?

Duckk wrote:

Quick hyper in and out. I'll be missing for a while. But before I go... I'm rereading At All Costs at my friends request. I can't believe Giscard. Kzt thinks Kuzak was on crack? lol Well, Giscard must have been her supplier and he was doing his own supply. How did he or anyone else not suspect anything? It was the Salamander! Absolutely no ones skin was crawling?

He had less than 9 minutes to figure out what 8th Fleet did. It was an entirely new system, which he had not even heard the slightest whisper, nor had any metric with which to measure its effectiveness by. Even brilliant people need time to analyze the situation when the status quo changes drastically.

And even if he did figure things out, what the hell was he supposed to do? He was inside her missile range and inside the hyper limit. There's no order he could give that would have prevented the destruction of his command short of striking his wedges. Doing that would have been tantamount to completely surrendering the system without firing a single shot in its defense.

Chapter 57

Just over eight thousand LACs were based on Forge and the system's orbital platforms. A permanent covering force of three battle squadrons—admittedly, of pre-pod types, but still a total of twenty-four superdreadnoughts—was assigned, and the system was liberally blanketed with system defense missile pods. In the last six months, Lovat had also received not just one Moriarty platform, but three, the second pair to serve solely as backups for the first.

"Admiral, Admiral Giovanni's platforms confirm that one of the superdreadnoughts matches the emissions signature of the ship that got away at Solon," Marius Gozzi said.

"So," Javier Giscard said softly, "'the Salamander' is back."

He shook his head with more than a trace of sadness. Eloise had tried to hide her despair in her last letter to him, but he knew her too well. When Elizabeth Winton had accepted her offer of the summit, it had been like watching the sun come out. And when whatever the hell had happened on Old Earth and Torch crushed any prospect of a negotiated settlement, it had been like watching a late blizzard bury the frozen blossoms of a murdered spring.

And so do they, he thought grimly, watching that outnumbered force go to military power. Not that it was going to do it a great deal of good. Its six superdreadnoughts were thoroughly outgunned by the sixteen SD(P)s and four CLACs in each of his three intercepting forces; the inner-system's missile pods were far more numerous than they'd been at Solon; and he'd been able to plot his own translations much more closely. Unlike Solon, these Manties would be unable to avoid entering the effective missile envelope of at least one of his intercepting forces.

They shouldn't have sent you out with so few ships, Your Grace, he told the light code of HMS Imperator.

"Hyper footprint!"

Javier Giscard's head snapped up at the unanticipated announcement. Commander Thackeray was bent over her console, fingers flying as she massaged the contact, and then she looked up, her face taut.

"Admiral, we've got eighteen superdreadnoughts or CLACs, well outside the hyper limit, directly astern of us. Range five-three-point-nine million kilometers. Velocity relative to Lovat two-point-five-zero-one thousand KPS. They—"

She broke off for just a moment, looking back down at her plot, then cleared her throat.

"Update, Sir. It's twelve SD(P)s and six carriers. The carriers just launched full LAC complements."

Giscard nodded, and hoped he looked calmer than he felt.

So she did set up her own mousetrap, by God, he thought. I wondered if she would, after what we did to her at Solon. And it looks like they've reinforced their Eighth Fleet more heavily than NavInt predicted.

He frowned down at the plot, his mind busy. The twelve superdreadnoughts behind him probably had the edge in total combat power, despite his numerical advantage, and the LACs they were deploying would be more effective in the missile-defense role. But they didn't have a big enough advantage, and their astrogation had been off. He was about to get hurt, but it was unlikely that they could have destroyed any of his wallers before he ran out of their effective range even if their astrogation had been perfect, and it hadn't been. They had him trapped deep enough inside the hyper limit that he couldn't avoid action, but they'd made their own alpha translation 2.8 light-minutes outside the limit. At that range, even Manty MDM accuracy was going to be significantly degraded, and he was too far ahead of them, with too great an advantage in base velocity, for them to overtake him.

And Harrington was still in front of him, driving steadily deeper into the waiting defensive missiles.

"Start rolling pods, Selma," he told his ops officer. "Fire Plan Gamma."

The outer-system FTL platforms reported the arrival of Admiral Yanakov's Task Force 82 to Alessandra Giovanni almost as quickly as Selma Thackeray reported it to Javier Giscard.

Despite a brief, instinctive panic reaction, Giovanni quickly reached the same conclusions Giscard had, and her smile was much more unpleasant than his expression had been.

So the great "Salamander" can fuck up just like the rest of us mere mortals, she thought. Pity about that.

"Range from Forge?" she asked.

"Still one-one-point-two light-minutes, Ma'am," MacNaughton replied. "Roughly another thirty-six minutes to missile range for Moriarty."

"Thank you," she said, and turned back to the outer-system plot as the multi-drive missiles began to launch.

The range was almost fifty-four million kilometers, and Bogey Two was running away from TF 82 at a relative velocity of more than four thousand KPS. Missile flight time was over eight minutes, and as Giscard had demonstrated at Solon, even Manticoran accuracy at that range was going to be poor.

Except . . .

* * *

"Sir, there's something . . . odd about the Manties' launch," Thackeray said.

"What do you mean, 'odd'?" Giscard asked sharply.

"Their attack birds are coming in . . . well, 'clumped' is the only word I can think of for it, Sir. They aren't spreading out in a proper dispersion pattern."

"What?"

"Aye, aye, Your Grace," Lieutenant Brantley acknowledged, and the eight CLACs of Alice Truman's reinforced carrier squadron launched almost nine hundred LACs as Alistair McKeon's BatRon 61 headed in-system, screened by fifteen Manticoran and Grayson BC(P)s and HMS Nike under the overall command of Rear Admiral Erasmus Miller. Michelle Henke would have had the command, except that the terms of her parole precluded her from serving against the Republic. So she'd been sent to Talbott, where Honor knew she would prove enormously useful, and Michael Oversteegen, promoted to Rear Admiral, had been given her squadron. But much as Honor approved of Oversteegen's demonstrated capability, he was junior to Miller. And the Grayson rear admiral was more than merely competent in his own right, she reminded herself.