Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoilers?)

SYED wrote:The Felix junction is said to have four terminii. One is definitly to Darius. Then there is the twins anomaly. The comment about a terminii to the haven quadrant, was made kind of vaguely. The impression I got was the terminii leading to torch was seperate from the potential haven quadrant. While torch is not that far from haven, it seems to me, it is just too far to be included in that quadrant. Erewhon is their neighbor and there was never any mention of them being in the haven quadrant..
The HQ likely has been claimed in total by the republic.

How old is the torch system? I could see the evil haven guys going after it for the potential revenue, and it was never a league member. And they are known for their anti slavery standing. So torch likely was discover, founded or develop some time after the war had officially began.

on 4/14/2014 RFC wrote:There were three primary reasons for the decision to colonize Congo:

(1) The security of the wormhole had to be safeguarded at any cost, and that meant keeping anyone else from discovering and exploring it. Given the fact that it was in such close proximity to Erewhon, that it was a star system which was likely to have a life-bearing planet, that exploration would undoubtedly get around to checking that out as soon as Erewhon had the opportunity, and that it is now to check stars' gravitic profiles for possible wormholes, the only way to prevent someone else from exploring the wormhole was to secure ownership of the star system for themselves.

(2) Once they surveyed the system themselves, they recognized the pharmaceutical cornucopia that Congo/Verdant Vista represented. They also realized that anyone else who surveyed the system was likely to recognize the same thing, which meant that anyone else who surveyed the system (and somehow missed spotting the wormhole) was extremely likely to colonize/claim the planet because of its inherent value. By establishing their own claim to it ASAP, they preempted that outcome.

(3) By securing control of the system, they also secured the right to police and control all traffic into and out of the system. That put them in the strongest position to ensure (A) that no one had the opportunity to discover anything about wormholes that they weren't supposed to discover and (B) to manage the system's traffic control in a way which would preclude someone from "stumbling across" a Mesan Alignment ship transiting the wormhole.

They could have used a different front organization to seize control of the star system. They chose not to because every additional layer they worked through offered an additional opportunity for something to slip through the cracks and (more importantly) because Mesa was so repugnant to most of the galaxy and such a pariah that legitimate shipping was extremely unlikely to come anywhere near a Mesa-claimed star system. That was another major factor in controlling access to the wormhole junction and the possibility of a genuinely neutral observer seeing something he shouldn't see.

Now, it can certainly be argued that the decision worked out . . . poorly, but to be fair that was because of circumstances beyond the Alignment's control, including a rogue Havenite intelligence officer and a Manticoran aristocrat willing to kick over the traces and pursue a policy he could be pretty sure wasn't going to make his own government happy. And, of course, the turn the war took with the introduction of the MDM and (especially) Apollo hadn't happened yet when they made their decision about how to proceed in Verdant Vista's case.

Annachie wrote:Felix is conected to Darius and the twins, and via the twins to Torch.

The other two haven't been revealed yet.


Side note, did we ever discuss the twins being a Felix-Torch wormhole route that had a star drift into it and break it?

Annachie wrote:Felix is conected to Darius and the twins, and via the twins to Torch.

The other two haven't been revealed yet.

Annachie wrote:Felix is conected to Darius and the twins, and via the twins to Torch.

The other two haven't been revealed yet.


Side note, did we ever discuss the twins being a Felix-Torch wormhole route that had a star drift into it and break it?

SYED wrote:Do you remember which book mentioned that Jessyk ships using the two non malign terminii? That would imply the unknown one and the one believed to go to the HQ. That seems risky, as haven is known as anti slavery..

Torch of Freedom
Chapter Fifty wrote:Obviously, no one had ever predicted that any such thing [The Twins] was possible. In fact, the Alignment had literally stumbled across it in the course of surveying the wormhole junction associated with the Felix System, where Trajan's task force was currently exercising. Not that the galaxy at large had any idea of that junction's existence, either. It had been discovered initially by a survey expedition backed by the "Jessyk Combine" and operating (very surreptitiously) out of Mannerheim under direct orders from the Alignment. Jessyk never shared survey information with anyone unless there was an excellent reason for it to do so, and in this case the Alignment had decided there was an excellent reason not to broadcast the Combine's discovery.

Felix was an uninhabited star system little more than ten light-years from Mannerheim. The dim K2-class star was brighter than SGC-902-36-G, and it did have one marginally habitable planet, although that was about the best anyone was ever likely to say about it. ...

SYED wrote:I am putting forth the idea, the terminii might be linked to Felix, as there has been mentions of Mesan activities and influence in and near the confederacy. Too much just to be the Malignement messing with the manties, the mesans want this region weak. It would explain why it was a mess for so long. It would be a way to ensure the security of the terminii, if the local power was ineffective.