Attacking Darius:

cthia wrote:I was responding to the idea of errant drones. Rogue warships would certainly be the responsibility of the RMN. Fire on your rogue ships or we fire on the planet. In case of drones, they can be ordered to head out of the system. Something, anything to take them out of play. Or, military targets on the planet will take the heat.

Mistletoe!

They don't know it's there until it's too late.

Whoever fired it probably had only that one round (whoever had control of the weapons will have dispersed them as widely as possible) and will have destroyed whatever they were using to control it. It's the high tech equivalent of the roadside IED. There's not much an occupation force can do about it other than atrocities.

cthia wrote:Thus far, the MA has ignored all of the Galaxy's rules of war. I doubt the MA even cares about the Deneb Accords, so being a POW in that camp is not recommended. You will probably be tortured then airlocked. And I shudder to think about the sheer brutality and inhumanity of their torture techniques.

They don't care about the Cherwell Convention.

They don't scare about the Edict.

They have no common decency.

But note that if they take this route they invite the first warship that finds Darius to c-frac the planet itself. And I don't think anybody stands a chance against a surprise c-frac MDM that has the final stage available for terminal maneuvers.

Sure, some won't survive the ballistic phase at that kind of speed, but many will--and if the aim is good even if the missile is fried on the way in it will still be deadly. Just the drive alone of a three-stage missile hits with roughly 10% of the energy of the dinosaur killer. C-frac puts that more like 30%. And if it's coming in ballistic there's no wedge to betray it, it can only be detected lightspeed. Radar picks it up less than one second before impact. Only an active sensor shell has any hope of seeing it in time.

I don't think the MAlign wants to take the gloves off like that.

Jonathan_S wrote:I tend to doubt those defenses would be ground launched anti-ship missiles, or even CMs -- their enormous wedges would be far too locally destructing all on their own. So presumably, while I didn't notice an explicit statement that those defenses are energy mounts that seems a reasonable supposition. But then they presumably are able to operate without subjecting the Palace and surrounding area to a giant ball of plasma blowback.

They are probably lasers rather than grasers. You aren't going to be shooting at heavy armor, lasers should be adequate against anything that flies.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
They are probably lasers rather than grasers. You aren't going to be shooting at heavy armor, lasers should be adequate against anything that flies.

'Laser" in the Honorverse means x-ray laser. Which is also strongly absorbed by the atmosphere. So you'd ave do some sort of very unusual real laser.

There are no slaves on Darius. Textev in TEIF establishes that it's entire population is composed of Alignment members numbering about 4 billion. I would imagine that includes alphas, betas and so on down the chain of stratification.

To double check text evidence, go to the first encounter with Zach McBryde on page 166 of 688(23%) in my e pub edition which bn uses on its nooks.

Don

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n7axw wrote:There are no slaves on Darius. Textev in TEIF establishes that it's entire population is composed of Alignment members numbering about 4 billion. I would imagine that includes alphas, betas and so on down the chain of stratification.

To double check text evidence, go to the first encounter with Zach McBryde on page 166 of 688(23%) in my e pub edition which bn uses on its nooks.

Don

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They are not 'slaves'. But they are not free either.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:There are no slaves on Darius. Textev in TEIF establishes that it's entire population is composed of Alignment members numbering about 4 billion. I would imagine that includes alphas, betas and so on down the chain of stratification.

To double check text evidence, go to the first encounter with Zach McBryde on page 166 of 688(23%) in my e pub edition which bn uses on its nooks.

Don

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They are not 'slaves'. But they are not free either.

A Shoutout to Jeff Foxworthy—

You just might be a slave if...

1. If you are made to work for the Man every night and day until you drop dead.

2. If you have a very short lifespan as many slaves throughout history.

3. If you were "bred" to be the best that you can be. As slaves in history were often bred to be the healthiest, and the most valuable by being bred with a certain qualification of slave. Like breeding horses.

4. If you are not free to leave.

5. If you are not allowed to vote?

6. If you are not represented by government.

7. If you can not rise to the top of the food chain, or get rich.

8. If you do not have access to the best medicine.

9. If only some of you are allowed inside the Master's house. (The fact that these slaves may all be allowed a better choice of food does not change the fact that they are slaves.)

10. If you are brainwashed into thinking you really got it good.

11. If you are segregated. Alphas Only

12. If the only reason you don't have to sit at the back of the bus is because there are only cattle on the bus.

13. If you are born, raised, and die in the same place.

14. If there is a whole group of people who look down on you.

15. If it is illegal to marry them.

16. If you are executed if you get out of line.

17. If you are killed because you look the Alpha-male in the eye and say the wrong thing.

18. If you are killed as an exercise because the Master don't like how you were born.

19. If someone like Jeremy X established an underground railroad leading up "North."


Then you just might be a slave.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Thus far, the MA has ignored all of the Galaxy's rules of war. I doubt the MA even cares about the Deneb Accords, so being a POW in that camp is not recommended. You will probably be tortured then airlocked. And I shudder to think about the sheer brutality and inhumanity of their torture techniques.

They don't care about the Cherwell Convention.

They don't scare about the Edict.

They have no common decency.

But note that if they take this route they invite the first warship that finds Darius to c-frac the planet itself. And I don't think anybody stands a chance against a surprise c-frac MDM that has the final stage available for terminal maneuvers.

Sure, some won't survive the ballistic phase at that kind of speed, but many will--and if the aim is good even if the missile is fried on the way in it will still be deadly. Just the drive alone of a three-stage missile hits with roughly 10% of the energy of the dinosaur killer. C-frac puts that more like 30%. And if it's coming in ballistic there's no wedge to betray it, it can only be detected lightspeed. Radar picks it up less than one second before impact. Only an active sensor shell has any hope of seeing it in time.

I don't think the MAlign wants to take the gloves off like that.

I discussed this upstream. It is part of the MA throwing the slaves under the bus. They certainly do invite the whole of the GA to show that they are no better than anyone else that they would kill a planet of slaves. That they will stoop to the MA's level. Honor won't allow that to happen on her watch. It certainly would not be for the Honor of the Queen. As I said upstream, this may be an exploitable weakness of the GA.

cthia wrote:Yeah, energy weapons as the Palace's only defenses is an assumption of mine, but it seems reasonable for the reasons you mention. We talked way too much about the destructiveness of wedges in the atmosphere.

However, another reason I mentioned the nasty effect of grasers in the atmosphere is that I don't think they should be readily used without pause, instead of just for emergency situations of dire circumstances. So, Palace defenses might include conventional missiles for attacking belligerents in the atmosphere, in case they get by the Palace's sting ships. Because with energy weapons there is the chance of missing the target and destroying something else.

Although, if grasers are used against ships in the atmosphere, I would imagine that even a near hit would bring the air breather down. "Shit, we just flew into a jet wash!"

Well, we've seen small wedges used in the atmosphere - the impeller head SAM that shot down Honor's pinnace on Grayson. (IIRC there are similarly small, short ranged, impeller missiles for anti-armor work) But there's a pretty big difference between a little man portable missiles with a wedge probably measured in meters and an full up anti-ship missile with a wedge measured in km. (And as far as I know shuttles and pinnaces don't operate their wedged in atmosphere -- and I believe they're the same order of magnitude in size as an anti-ship missile or CM)

However I would assume that the palace defenses would include those small impeller head SAMs for atmospheric targets -- so it wouldn't be purely energy mounts; even if the anti-ship weapons are.

[Though while I was looking for the description of the ground attack missiles from Peep assault shuttles I did stumble across this in the description of the defenses of Hades -- "There wasn't a single manned fortress in the entire star system. Shoals of mines—old-fashioned "contact" nukes designed to kill small craft as well as the laser buoys designed to shoot LACs and starships, and both seemingly thick enough to walk across—surrounded the planet and its moons, seeded with more sophisticated and modern energy platforms for good measure, and he suspected there were ground-based missiles on the planet, at least, if not on the moons." So it seems maybe you can mount anti-ship missiles on a planet, not just on an airless moon ]

I had the impression that people like the Houdini evacuees are effectively sequestered from the general non-starling population of Darius and from any information about Mesa or their former lives.
That non-starline population is presented as slaves who don't know they are slaves, probably because they have no comparison to any other arrangement in their lives. They are often well technically educated for their general to specific jobs and are being fed a deep and consistent backstory and information of how they are working to protect the planet from forces who have an unreasoning determination to destroy it and their civilization. I have said before the Alignment looks like it is organized along a cast system and there is a vast set of differences between how the Star Lines and the non-starlines live and work.
It has sounded like none of the non-starline population gets to do anything on a hyper capable ship other than perhaps build and maintain them in yards. No clear if that under-population gets prolong. Not clear how they view the people who are above them in the social order of Darius.
That fun little tweek introduced at the end of TEIF where McBride is being recruited clearly doesn't include any of the "general population" as these people are portrayed as working very clandestinely in military planning and strategy portions of the planet were a lot of information that you would NOT want the non-slaves to know about is being worked with.

Would the general population rise against the leadership of Darius? Not without a lot of information and being able to avoid the kind of security something like the Alignment would have put in place. The possibility that the Alignment keeps a very close watch on anything that could be considered thoughts of discontent and move too quickly and quietly eliminate the perceived individual is very high. Industrial accidents, medical problems, just cull them and slot in the next person.