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

What's next?

Nothing.

JohnRoth wrote: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.

The "Mannerheim is trying to gain legal control of the Felix junction" tale is the cover story used by the Mannerheim SDF to explain to SDF personnel who aren't also Alignment members why their ships are hanging round the area so much. Of course Mannerheim's leadership and some of the SDF officers are full members of the Alignment. Given this I'm sure the attempts to gain legal control can be spun out for as many years as necessary.

No doubt vital records were stored on one of those Sol System space installations that nasty Harrington person demolished, and they'll have to look somewhere else for copies, etc, etc.

I think that doing the tracing using Technodyne's traffic as the starting point is the best starting point even if a bit far fetched. At least there is a known connection with the Alignment there. As for Mannerheim, that would be better, except no one is aware of the connection to start looking.

Another thought occurs to me... it could be that Darius is located by accident by someone not using a wormhole. So far, at least, wormholes have led to someplace in the explored galaxy having a reach of between 200 and 900 lightyears. You can go from Manticore to Sol without using wormholes, for example... or from Manticore to the Andermani empire. You could send out naval squadrons to do mapping expeditions and maybe search by process of elimination. Kind of a cumbersome process, I suppose, since the galaxy is a big place. But your search would focus on the sectors that are known to have human habitation since it is improbable that a wormhole is going to take you so far out of human sectors as to be completely isolated beyond hope of discovery and there is still lots of space within human sectors that remains unexplored.

Another perhaps better project would be to systematicly redo that old Axelrod study that led to the discovery of the Manticore junction. Anytime you happen across a star that displays characteristics that indicate the presence of a wormhole, send out an exploratory ship properly equiped to look... accompanied by a protective escort, of course.

Mannerheim's wormhole junction might be a secret, but I bet Mannerheim's star demonstrates the characteristics the imply a wormhole's presence. Once that star is examined, anybody with the capability for doing so could locate the junction.


Don

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The odds are that any traffic from Darius involves ships that don't formally exist outside of that traffic, though they might well have the ID of actual ships. Or otherwise will be very difficult to trace. Somehow I doubt you are going to get the active cooperation of the people who are working with the MA to get uncooked records etc.


So let's say you find an uncharted developed system. What's next? You are going to do what?

I predict you'll go to make contact and never ever leave.

n7axw wrote:I think that doing the tracing using Technodyne's traffic as the starting point is the best starting point even if a bit far fetched. At least there is a known connection with the Alignment there. As for Mannerheim, that would be better, except no one is aware of the connection to start looking.

Another thought occurs to me... it could be that Darius is located by accident by someone not using a wormhole. So far, at least, wormholes have led to someplace in the explored galaxy having a reach of between 200 and 900 lightyears. You can go from Manticore to Sol without using wormholes, for example... or from Manticore to the Andermani empire. You could send out naval squadrons to do mapping expeditions and maybe search by process of elimination. Kind of a cumbersome process, I suppose, since the galaxy is a big place. But your search would focus on the sectors that are known to have human habitation since it is improbable that a wormhole is going to take you so far out of human sectors as to be completely isolated beyond hope of discovery and there is still lots of space within human sectors that remains unexplored.

Another perhaps better project would be to systematicly redo that old Axelrod study that led to the discovery of the Manticore junction. Anytime you happen across a star that displays characteristics that indicate the presence of a wormhole, send out an exploratory ship properly equiped to look... accompanied by a protective escort, of course.

Mannerheim's wormhole junction might be a secret, but I bet Mannerheim's star demonstrates the characteristics the imply a wormhole's presence. Once that star is examined, anybody with the capability for doing so could locate the junction.


Don

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The Felix junction is not in the Mannerheim system. It's in the Felix system, which is 10 ly from Mannerheim, is claimed by four different companies, and is well known to be pretty worthless.

The wormhole signature in Felix is probably pretty faint or it would have been discovered. Most of the wormholes discovered in the stories have been stumbled across, more or less by accident. If you could discover them by remote telescopic examination, pretty much all of them would already have been discovered. The Torch wormhole, for example, was discovered by tracing from Felix through The Twins, not by examining Congo.

JohnRoth wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think that doing the tracing using Technodyne's traffic as the starting point is the best starting point even if a bit far fetched. At least there is a known connection with the Alignment there. As for Mannerheim, that would be better, except no one is aware of the connection to start looking.

Another thought occurs to me... it could be that Darius is located by accident by someone not using a wormhole. So far, at least, wormholes have led to someplace in the explored galaxy having a reach of between 200 and 900 lightyears. You can go from Manticore to Sol without using wormholes, for example... or from Manticore to the Andermani empire. You could send out naval squadrons to do mapping expeditions and maybe search by process of elimination. Kind of a cumbersome process, I suppose, since the galaxy is a big place. But your search would focus on the sectors that are known to have human habitation since it is improbable that a wormhole is going to take you so far out of human sectors as to be completely isolated beyond hope of discovery and there is still lots of space within human sectors that remains unexplored.

Another perhaps better project would be to systematicly redo that old Axelrod study that led to the discovery of the Manticore junction. Anytime you happen across a star that displays characteristics that indicate the presence of a wormhole, send out an exploratory ship properly equiped to look... accompanied by a protective escort, of course.

Mannerheim's wormhole junction might be a secret, but I bet Mannerheim's star demonstrates the characteristics the imply a wormhole's presence. Once that star is examined, anybody with the capability for doing so could locate the junction.


Don

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The Felix junction is not in the Mannerheim system. It's in the Felix system, which is 10 ly from Mannerheim, is claimed by four different companies, and is well known to be pretty worthless.

The wormhole signature in Felix is probably pretty faint or it would have been discovered. Most of the wormholes discovered in the stories have been stumbled across, more or less by accident. If you could discover them by remote telescopic examination, pretty much all of them would already have been discovered. The Torch wormhole, for example, was discovered by tracing from Felix through The Twins, not by examining Congo.

I don't think that any of this invalidates my basic point. What Axelrod was doing was systematically looking for wormholes based on characteristics common to stars that had wormholes. The way the story is told in the Manticore's Ascendant series is that their study suggested that Manticore's star displayed those characteristics and, in Call to Arms, they were able to confirm their suspicion with sensor data. That was the reason for Axelrod's attack on Manticore. They had discovered other wormholes with the same procedure. There was nothing haphazard about it. They weren't "stumbling" across anything. Redoing the study with the more refined theory and better equipment along with including more stars could turn out very fruitful indeed. And, who knows? They might discover the path to Darius.

As for Congo, yes, it was discovered from the other side. That does not suggest that Congo's star doesn't demonstrate those characteristics. Had it not, it would have been impossible to detect the wormhole or chart the passage through it from the Congo side.

Don

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n7axw wrote:As for Congo, yes, it was discovered from the other side. That does not suggest that Congo's star doesn't demonstrate those characteristics. Had it not, it would have been impossible to detect the wormhole or chart the passage through it from the Congo side.

They only looked because of the rumors.

JohnRoth wrote:
The Felix junction is not in the Mannerheim system. It's in the Felix system, which is 10 ly from Mannerheim, is claimed by four different companies, and is well known to be pretty worthless.

The wormhole signature in Felix is probably pretty faint or it would have been discovered. Most of the wormholes discovered in the stories have been stumbled across, more or less by accident. If you could discover them by remote telescopic examination, pretty much all of them would already have been discovered. The Torch wormhole, for example, was discovered by tracing from Felix through The Twins, not by examining Congo.

n7axw wrote:
I don't think that any of this invalidates my basic point. What Axelrod was doing was systematically looking for wormholes based on characteristics common to stars that had wormholes. The way the story is told in the Manticore's Ascendant series is that their study suggested that Manticore's star displayed those characteristics and, in Call to Arms, they were able to confirm their suspicion with sensor data. That was the reason for Axelrod's attack on Manticore. They had discovered other wormholes with the same procedure. There was nothing haphazard about it. They weren't "stumbling" across anything. Redoing the study with the more refined theory and better equipment along with including more stars could turn out very fruitful indeed. And, who knows? They might discover the path to Darius.

As for Congo, yes, it was discovered from the other side. That does not suggest that Congo's star doesn't demonstrate those characteristics. Had it not, it would have been impossible to detect the wormhole or chart the passage through it from the Congo side.

Don
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I am not sure that the discoverers of the wormhole made the the findings public. It may be that the failure to submit results of a survey may trigger a review of the searches where the survey team searched. That's possible, but more likely the submission was falsified with internally consistent data signifying not wormholes.

I return the to the freighter networks supporting Darius. Darius cannot turn into a heavily industrialized system supporting 30-40 billion people in 20-25 years without external help. I seem to recall its population of 4-6 billion. That means that this current generation of adults has to immediately begin having and raising 6-7 children each. Not going to happen without devoting a massive amount of resources to child rearing. Resources that cannot be used to build up their navy. Assuming the population expansion is sllower, Darius still has to invest in their internal economy in addition to building their war machine. Otherwise, the population will begin to lose enthusiasm after decades of sacrifice and productivity suffers.

The other RF nations can build a more traditional navy while they build up their alliances. Darius still needs to have materials imports and exports and if they don't use the Felix temrinus, more and more people will find out Darius' location in the galaxy. Perhaps that's not too great a risk to run, I don't know. What I do know is that streak drive freighters that fully utilize their speed WILL leave tell-tale clues that something is not kosher about that ship. Non-streak drive freighters that ONLY serve between RF and Darius will also be providing clues to dilligent researchers.

Finally, if the MAlign is patient enough to wait 1-2 prolong genrations to proceed with their end game, that gives Manticore a long time to secure their political, economic and military position as the dominant polity of the galaxy. The MAlign could completely withdraw their presence from galactic affairs. No one would discover them until they decided to venture forth. The RF may or may not be able to secure their portion off the Grand Detweiler Plan. Darius would complete it's development as a massively developed single system polity. As individually powerful as that would be, the Grand Alliance would have built up their Fringe, Verge and ex-Protectorate associates into neigh Old Core World powerhouses. Even assuming the RF succeeds in luring the majority of the Core and Shell world systems into their alliance, the Grand Alliance will have gathered in many more developing systems. those systems can support a much larger increases of population and increases in economic output.

Bottom line is the MAlign can't wait behind Darius' current invisibility. They have to risk exposure and trade with their alliance or face almost certain defeat eventually. I suspect that Honor and ONI suspect some wort of hidden base similar to Bolt Hole. They need to hide weapons systems that succeeded in trashing the Manticoran Home System. So they need a Bolt Hole and that Bolt Hole needs to communicate and trade with the rest of the MAlign in the galaxy.

PeterZ wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
The Felix junction is not in the Mannerheim system. It's in the Felix system, which is 10 ly from Mannerheim, is claimed by four different companies, and is well known to be pretty worthless.

The wormhole signature in Felix is probably pretty faint or it would have been discovered. Most of the wormholes discovered in the stories have been stumbled across, more or less by accident. If you could discover them by remote telescopic examination, pretty much all of them would already have been discovered. The Torch wormhole, for example, was discovered by tracing from Felix through The Twins, not by examining Congo.

n7axw wrote:
I don't think that any of this invalidates my basic point. What Axelrod was doing was systematically looking for wormholes based on characteristics common to stars that had wormholes. The way the story is told in the Manticore's Ascendant series is that their study suggested that Manticore's star displayed those characteristics and, in Call to Arms, they were able to confirm their suspicion with sensor data. That was the reason for Axelrod's attack on Manticore. They had discovered other wormholes with the same procedure. There was nothing haphazard about it. They weren't "stumbling" across anything. Redoing the study with the more refined theory and better equipment along with including more stars could turn out very fruitful indeed. And, who knows? They might discover the path to Darius.

As for Congo, yes, it was discovered from the other side. That does not suggest that Congo's star doesn't demonstrate those characteristics. Had it not, it would have been impossible to detect the wormhole or chart the passage through it from the Congo side.

Don
-

I am not sure that the discoverers of the wormhole made the the findings public. It may be that the failure to submit results of a survey may trigger a review of the searches where the survey team searched. That's possible, but more likely the submission was falsified with internally consistent data signifying not wormholes.

I return the to the freighter networks supporting Darius. Darius cannot turn into a heavily industrialized system supporting 30-40 billion people in 20-25 years without external help. I seem to recall its population of 4-6 billion. That means that this current generation of adults has to immediately begin having and raising 6-7 children each. Not going to happen without devoting a massive amount of resources to child rearing. Resources that cannot be used to build up their navy. Assuming the population expansion is sllower, Darius still has to invest in their internal economy in addition to building their war machine. Otherwise, the population will begin to lose enthusiasm after decades of sacrifice and productivity suffers.

The other RF nations can build a more traditional navy while they build up their alliances. Darius still needs to have materials imports and exports and if they don't use the Felix temrinus, more and more people will find out Darius' location in the galaxy. Perhaps that's not too great a risk to run, I don't know. What I do know is that streak drive freighters that fully utilize their speed WILL leave tell-tale clues that something is not kosher about that ship. Non-streak drive freighters that ONLY serve between RF and Darius will also be providing clues to dilligent researchers.

Finally, if the MAlign is patient enough to wait 1-2 prolong genrations to proceed with their end game, that gives Manticore a long time to secure their political, economic and military position as the dominant polity of the galaxy. The MAlign could completely withdraw their presence from galactic affairs. No one would discover them until they decided to venture forth. The RF may or may not be able to secure their portion off the Grand Detweiler Plan. Darius would complete it's development as a massively developed single system polity. As individually powerful as that would be, the Grand Alliance would have built up their Fringe, Verge and ex-Protectorate associates into neigh Old Core World powerhouses. Even assuming the RF succeeds in luring the majority of the Core and Shell world systems into their alliance, the Grand Alliance will have gathered in many more developing systems. those systems can support a much larger increases of population and increases in economic output.

Bottom line is the MAlign can't wait behind Darius' current invisibility. They have to risk exposure and trade with their alliance or face almost certain defeat eventually. I suspect that Honor and ONI suspect some wort of hidden base similar to Bolt Hole. They need to hide weapons systems that succeeded in trashing the Manticoran Home System. So they need a Bolt Hole and that Bolt Hole needs to communicate and trade with the rest of the MAlign in the galaxy.

I am sure that everyone involved with the GA inc. Beowulf understands that the ships that carried out OB were produced in a bolthole somewhere. That seems obvious unless you are a Solly and believe that they came out of the Andronomica galaxy... if you've thought about it at all.

Don

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n7axw wrote:
I am sure that everyone involved with the GA inc. Beowulf understands that the ships that carried out OB were produced in a bolthole somewhere. That seems obvious unless you are a Solly and believe that they came out of the Andronomica galaxy... if you've thought about it at all.

Don

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My sincere apologies for flogging a deceased equine....repeatedly.