A question about the destruction of Admiral Filareta

lyonheart wrote:Given the far better data Honor had, I expected her to launch FEWER missiles per target because she was trying to conserve them, and since the Spindle post battle analysis indicated only 100-125 were needed to kill BF SD's, I expect HA-H to use only 200 each as her maximum [60% overkill] so only 85,400 total, which because of the short range could have been full power shots and not Apollo's to boot.

Nobody in the past few books has been acting as though the fact they have no spare missiles, replacement nodes, new drone reactor parts, or for that matter any replacement parts is anything they should be concerned with.

kzt wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Given the far better data Honor had, I expected her to launch FEWER missiles per target because she was trying to conserve them, and since the Spindle post battle analysis indicated only 100-125 were needed to kill BF SD's, I expect HA-H to use only 200 each as her maximum [60% overkill] so only 85,400 total, which because of the short range could have been full power shots and not Apollo's to boot.

Nobody in the past few books has been acting as though the fact they have no spare missiles, replacement nodes, new drone reactor parts, or for that matter any replacement parts is anything they should be concerned with.

I would be very surprised if the system defense missiles aren't Apollos.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I would be very surprised if the system defense missiles aren't Apollos.

They are four-stage Apollos.

HB of CJ wrote:To Duckk and maybe Potato; some clarifications. No, I did not read the author's explanations. Nor have I read all the excellent answers already given on this thread. I do not have the physical time to spend doing this.

What I tried to say was that based upon what I read in that excellent book, (and based upon nothing else) I came away with a frown regarding the events during and after the explosion on the Sollie bridge and Honor then shooting back.

Again, I have not read the author's explanations. It is not that big of deal. I'm sure others could bring other non consistencies to light. The Sollies could/should have self destructed their salvo. Honor could/should have held her fire.

Think of all the human life not taken and all the Manti missiles saved. I found it kinda out of character for the flavor and theme of the books. Not counting all the old Sollie ships that would have still been intact.

HB of CJ (old coot) Just me. I love this forum!

I think David said it best in A Rising Thunder, where he has Thomas Theisman (treecat name established in Mission of Honor as Dreams of Peace) respond to Honor.

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 24 wrote:“I could have just taken the fire,” Honor replied flatly. “Look at how few people we lost anyway! I could’ve waited to be sure—”
“Oh, stop it!” Thomas Theisman snapped, and Honor’s head snapped around in surprise at the genuine anger in his voice.
“No, you could not have ‘just taken the fire’!” the Republic’s secretary of war told her sharply. “And if you had done something that stupid, you’d deserve to be broken for it!”
“But—”
“Don’t you ‘but’ me! You didn’t know—you couldn’t know—if they’d come up with some kind of fire-control fix we’d never heard of before. You had no right, not one shred of a moral justification, to risk the lives of personnel under your command just because somebody on the other side had done something suicidal! Your responsibility is to your people, not theirs! It’s your job to neutralize an enemy before he kills them, and you’d damned well better do it if you’re going to be worthy of the uniform you wear!”
His brown eyes blazed, and she tasted the white-hot fury, the total sincerity, behind them.
“That’s your responsibility, Admiral Harrington, and you lived up to it! You reacted to the threat you knew about, the one you saw, and I was right there on that flag bridge with you. It took those missiles three minutes to reach us, and you had a Hermes buoy sitting right off his flagship’s bow. There was plenty of time for him to get on the com and tell you the launch was a mistake, if he hadn’t meant to launch it! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe he did that, now, did he? Not only that, but thirteen-second lag or not, the rest of his damned fleet was firing full broadsides at you on its heels! I understand that realizing you gave the order to kill that many people has to make you sick to your stomach. It makes me want to puke, and I didn’t have to give it. But the only ones responsible for what happened to Filareta and the people under his command are whoever arranged to get him sent here and—assuming there’s any basis to all this speculation in the first place—whoever got to his tac officer. Not you; not me—them!”
She looked around the conference room and saw the agreement in every other face. More than that, she tasted the agreement, and her brain knew they were right. Maybe someday she’d be able to accept that as easily as they did. But even if that day came, she would never be free of the soul-deep regret she felt.

Italics are the author's, boldface text is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:To Duckk and maybe Potato; some clarifications. No, I did not read the author's explanations. Nor have I read all the excellent answers already given on this thread. I do not have the physical time to spend doing this.

What I tried to say was that based upon what I read in that excellent book, (and based upon nothing else) I came away with a frown regarding the events during and after the explosion on the Sollie bridge and Honor then shooting back.

Again, I have not read the author's explanations. It is not that big of deal. I'm sure others could bring other non consistencies to light. The Sollies could/should have self destructed their salvo. Honor could/should have held her fire.

Think of all the human life not taken and all the Manti missiles saved. I found it kinda out of character for the flavor and theme of the books. Not counting all the old Sollie ships that would have still been intact.

HB of CJ (old coot) Just me. I love this forum!

I think David said it best in A Rising Thunder, where he has Thomas Theisman (treecat name established in Mission of Honor as Dreams of Peace) respond to Honor.

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 24 wrote:“I could have just taken the fire,” Honor replied flatly. “Look at how few people we lost anyway! I could’ve waited to be sure—”
“Oh, stop it!” Thomas Theisman snapped, and Honor’s head snapped around in surprise at the genuine anger in his voice.
“No, you could not have ‘just taken the fire’!” the Republic’s secretary of war told her sharply. “And if you had done something that stupid, you’d deserve to be broken for it!”
“But—”
“Don’t you ‘but’ me! You didn’t know—you couldn’t know—if they’d come up with some kind of fire-control fix we’d never heard of before. You had no right, not one shred of a moral justification, to risk the lives of personnel under your command just because somebody on the other side had done something suicidal! Your responsibility is to your people, not theirs! It’s your job to neutralize an enemy before he kills them, and you’d damned well better do it if you’re going to be worthy of the uniform you wear!”
His brown eyes blazed, and she tasted the white-hot fury, the total sincerity, behind them.
“That’s your responsibility, Admiral Harrington, and you lived up to it! You reacted to the threat you knew about, the one you saw, and I was right there on that flag bridge with you. It took those missiles three minutes to reach us, and you had a Hermes buoy sitting right off his flagship’s bow. There was plenty of time for him to get on the com and tell you the launch was a mistake, if he hadn’t meant to launch it! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe he did that, now, did he? Not only that, but thirteen-second lag or not, the rest of his damned fleet was firing full broadsides at you on its heels! I understand that realizing you gave the order to kill that many people has to make you sick to your stomach. It makes me want to puke, and I didn’t have to give it. But the only ones responsible for what happened to Filareta and the people under his command are whoever arranged to get him sent here and—assuming there’s any basis to all this speculation in the first place—whoever got to his tac officer. Not you; not me—them!”
She looked around the conference room and saw the agreement in every other face. More than that, she tasted the agreement, and her brain knew they were right. Maybe someday she’d be able to accept that as easily as they did. But even if that day came, she would never be free of the soul-deep regret she felt.

Italics are the author's, boldface text is my emphasis.

RFC's summary in ART is the best I have read as to her actions.

Actually Honor didn't know what the Sollie missiles were capable of.
IIRC Manticore had already been hit with new missile types during the Yawata Strike.
No one in the GA fleet knew if the MA had provided Filareta with them or possibly other types of missiles.
She could not take the chance, so she had to return fire.

About those surviving Sollie SD's...

Filererata isn't a fool, and his fleet isn't all in one "flat" wall in space. It's set in formations, and some of those ships are behind others, the rear guard so to say.

Here's my thought, analgously. Let's say "infantry wise", you have 7 fellows thought to be uber-super soldiers standing in front of you, and suddenly ba-bang, they are all dead. Do you try to fire at something or drop your musket and put your hands in the air?

Back to the future... Others in the forum have surmised that the GA fireplan wasn't about to waste missiles on a second salvo. Given that at Spindle 48 SD's surrendered after a third of their number got wiped, it's a reasonable assumption that the GA launched one huge, well controlled salvo to take out as much of "Raging Justice" as was immediately in front of them.

AKA, Manticoran spacial coordinate wise, let's assume that Haven's formations didn't even fire any of their pods. [I'd have to reread to see if there's any textev to support that assumption, though...]; after all those would be headed systemward and even with a self destruct, not a great idea to have all that high speed debris headed planetward. So maybe just the formations and some of the SD pods defending Sphinx fired.

Now then, chronologically, you're an SD commander of one of the ships in the ships towards the rear of the Sollie formations, and every ship in front of you just got smashed but your tac folks see that none of the ships behind them fired... what do you do?

I'm thinking that you order your bridge crew to drop the wedge, and tell them each to hurry down to their quarters to get clean uniforms put on some new underwear so as to not be made ashamed in front of their mamas, when a few Manticoran midshipmen and women arrive accompanied by Marines in armor of course (no need to waste the time of even a lieutenant, right?, the SD's are that outclassed) to accept your surrender, though I might be a tad low on who accepted the surrenders. I think HH was home in time for dinner.

Hi, me, resurrecting a partially dead thread again, sorry. Just thought of a tactical wrinkle/plot twist not taken...

What if while Honor was talking they'd Mistletoe'd all of Filerata's pods using some of the GR drones? Something like "Admiral F., here's what I got, (what she already listed) and just to make sure you know I'm not bluffing..."

To her comms folks: "Signal all Solarian ships, my video 3. 2. 1..." and FTL moments later, ka boom, no more Solarian pods.

Filereta turns to surrender, the ops officer does the MAlign designed "fire all option" with no pods, then blows up Filerata & flag crew and.... Then what?

SharkHunter wrote:Hi, me, resurrecting a partially dead thread again, sorry. Just thought of a tactical wrinkle/plot twist not taken...

What if while Honor was talking they'd Mistletoe'd all of Filerata's pods using some of the GR drones? Something like "Admiral F., here's what I got, (what she already listed) and just to make sure you know I'm not bluffing..."

To her comms folks: "Signal all Solarian ships, my video 3. 2. 1..." and FTL moments later, ka boom, no more Solarian pods.

Filereta turns to surrender, the ops officer does the MAlign designed "fire all option" with no pods, then blows up Filerata & flag crew and.... Then what?

A good piece of confusion aboard that ship and the remainder of the SLN fleet; hurried verification of the basics (flag bridge gone, Filareta gone, pods gone) between the next in command and the flag captain; communications resume, probably followed by surrender.

Unless the shock of the pods going boom made someone start firing broadsides in shock and panic, in which case things go pretty much historically.

JeffEngel wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Hi, me, resurrecting a partially dead thread again, sorry. Just thought of a tactical wrinkle/plot twist not taken...

What if while Honor was talking they'd Mistletoe'd all of Filerata's pods using some of the GR drones? Something like "Admiral F., here's what I got, (what she already listed) and just to make sure you know I'm not bluffing..."

To her comms folks: "Signal all Solarian ships, my video 3. 2. 1..." and FTL moments later, ka boom, no more Solarian pods.

Filereta turns to surrender, the ops officer does the MAlign designed "fire all option" with no pods, then blows up Filerata & flag crew and.... Then what?

A good piece of confusion aboard that ship and the remainder of the SLN fleet; hurried verification of the basics (flag bridge gone, Filareta gone, pods gone) between the next in command and the flag captain; communications resume, probably followed by surrender.

Unless the shock of the pods going boom made someone start firing broadsides in shock and panic, in which case things go pretty much historically.

Except that Filareta doesn't give the order to destroy the pods, and it was that order that appeared to be the trigger for the nanotech to cause the pods to launch. What Filareta does do is order the COMM officer to order all chips to strike their wedges, and the ops officer never has a reason to go near his panel. So now what?