tlb wrote:
The Detweiler Plan is for the Renaissance Association to achieve dominance in the galaxy; not for forces from Darius to go on a campaign of conquest. If that plan fails, then overt military action might result; but until failure is evident any force projection from Darius will be covert and intended to soften opposition to the RA.
Now it is true that both the Malign Plan and the spider drive warships are fragile. The plan is fragile because if it ever became known for whom the RA is fronting, then general revulsion and the RA's military inferiority would prevent success. The spider drive warships are fragile because their only defense against energy beam weapons is stealth.
The plan is already on shaky ground because Manticore and Haven are united and the new Solarian Union should not fragment to the point that core worlds will begin looking for another association to join.
I realize the author isn't likely to do anything like that scenario. Just venting about dancing around options if the Alignment was going to throw off the cloak and just crush opposition.
Consider the options of Manticore if the Alignment does put spider ships like the LDs etc in close enough to be inside the massed RMN fleet and uses it's existing stealth weapons systems to destroy most of what is in the volume that contains Manticore's (and the other two inhabited planets) reestablished stations and manufactureing. You put your mouthpiece in a spider drive ship (or several, nobody can "see" them anyway) just outside the hyper limit and one of them is what broadcasts the surrender demand the same time as a remote deployed by spider next to Manticore does the same thing. Give them an hour (or less) for the Queen to surrender or the government will be decapitated- . No surrender, the government becomes an expanding ball of plasma along with the city (Queen and Government in there) and just what exactly will the Home Fleet etc do if they can't determine where the attacking force is located?
Yeah, difficult. If Queen surrenders, they will be ordered to stand down etc. No surrender, your command authority devolves to local authority- probably commander of Home Fleet -Harrington is going to be at Grayson which is having it's own problmes. Surrrender and stand down or ....not good.
Alignment calls occupation force out of hyper with the clear admonishment that any interference will result on severe responce on the surrender forces and planetside targets.
So, it isn't a drive-by, it's Blitzkrieg and your in Paris but nobody is comming to help...not now, not next month, not next year, not ever.
I would be a despiration move on the part of the Alignment but still available if they find the Plan is truly in the crapper. Or they can try an even lower profile than before Oyster Bay and run their pupeteer plans to help the RA and just set things back by a couple of hundred years while they build the RA into a replacement of the SL "as it was meant to be".
Just think how many books that could be.....
