Uncompromising Honor, snippet #1

cthia wrote:
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SPECIAL COMMUNIQUE FROM THE ADMIRALTY
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Alright. This is the time to check the gut and fess up. I became very aware of all of you die hard captured Solly junk fans and I studied and tracked your behavior across many threads and I know, I KNOW, that many of you are fanatic in your love for all things captured. Which leads me to the meaning of this emergency communique. I know that there are many of you still holding on and holding out. You simply can't let go of those captured Solly ships, those floating, hulking, mindless, spiritless pieces of junk. Therefore, I hardly believe that all of you have given up every single ghost. SO! I'll give you exactly 24 hours! That should afford you plenty moments of silence to reflect and forget. Then, remove the — stolen is such a strong word — misappropriated captured Solly ships from under your beds, closets, basements and from under your very special hand-sewn fluffy pink pillows and send them to the breakers, now! BECAUSE GODDAMMIT!...

IF ANOTHER SOB COMES IN HERE WITH SOME LAME ASS IDEA ABOUT HOW TO USE A SOLLY SD I'M GONNA BEND HIM OVER PULL DOWN HIS LITTLE PINK PANTIES TAKE ME ONE OF THOSE WORTHLESS PIECES OF JUNK AND GREASE HER UP REAL GOOD WITH SOME WD-40 STAND HER UP ON END AND SHOVE IT UP HIS CANDY ASS!"

Admiralty out!

Does it mean we can't play interplanetary darts with them after they 've been stripped after all then?

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:Thank you!

I wonder why Honor/Shannon thinks it might be necessary to upgrade defences against wormhole-based assaults. Ten thousand Chekhov's cannons, eh?

Because she thinks the answer to this would be a resounding yes, in their mind.

munroburton wrote:I don't see the relevance. Bolthole itself does not have a wormhole terminus. On top of that, the other end of the wormhole to Calvin is deep inside Haven territory and thus probably even further away from the Alignment.

It's well established that Manticore already has massive defenses at its Junction. The firepower there is more than sufficent to defeat multiple maximum-mass transits via more than one termini. An upgrade to graser mines would be nice, but hardly essential.

Waitaminute! I seem to be confused here. Will someone help turn the turtle back over off of his back please?

Bolthole does have a wormhole. Refuge has a wormhole. Isn't Bolthole located there?

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:I don't see the relevance. Bolthole itself does not have a wormhole terminus. On top of that, the other end of the wormhole to Calvin is deep inside Haven territory and thus probably even further away from the Alignment.

It's well established that Manticore already has massive defenses at its Junction. The firepower there is more than sufficent to defeat multiple maximum-mass transits via more than one termini. An upgrade to graser mines would be nice, but hardly essential.

Waitaminute! I seem to be confused here. Will someone help turn the turtle back over off of his back please?

Bolthole does have a wormhole. Refuge has a wormhole. Isn't Bolthole located there?

Nope.

runsforcelery wrote:No one in Nouveau Paris had ever expected to discover a wormhole terminus less than seventy light-years from the Haven System, associated with the planetless, barren M3 dwarf listed solely as J-156-18(L).

The discovery had been a distinct shock for the survey crew which detected the J-156-18(L) Terminus in 1879 PD literally by accident. Their ship hadn’t even been supposed to visit the thoroughly useless star. Indeed, her skipper had stopped off en route to the far more promising J-193-18(L) System to let his crew train on a star about which everything was already known . . . only to discover that not quite “everything” had been known after all.

J-156-18(L) was useless as a home for mankind, but there’d been vast excitement in Nouveau Paris when the wormhole was reported. A crew of proper hyper-physicists had been dispatched immediately and quickly discovered that it was one terminus of a 583.8-LY warp bridge . . . and that its other terminus was the KCR-126-04 System.

KCR-126-04.

That news must have struck the Legislaturalists as one of the bleakest bad jokes in the entire universe, because that star system — also known as the Calvin System — lay at the heart of one of the great tragedies of pre-Warshawski sail history, and a more useless piece of real estate would have been impossible to imagine.

<Massive Snip>

No one knew how she’d come to her final resting place, 14.4 LY from her original destination, in the L5 Lagrange point between the second planet of the KCR-126-06 system and its solitary moon, but they did know it must have been the stuff of legends.

The wormhole connects J-156-18(L) to KCR-126-04(aka Calvin System).

Bolthole/Refuge/Sanctuary is KCR-126-06, ~15 light years away from KCR-126-04. No wormhole at Bolthole.

munroburton wrote:I don't see the relevance. Bolthole itself does not have a wormhole terminus. On top of that, the other end of the wormhole to Calvin is deep inside Haven territory and thus probably even further away from the Alignment.

It's well established that Manticore already has massive defenses at its Junction. The firepower there is more than sufficent to defeat multiple maximum-mass transits via more than one termini. An upgrade to graser mines would be nice, but hardly essential.

cthia wrote:Waitaminute! I seem to be confused here. Will someone help turn the turtle back over off of his back please?

Bolthole does have a wormhole. Refuge has a wormhole. Isn't Bolthole located there?

munroburton wrote:Nope.

runsforcelery wrote:No one in Nouveau Paris had ever expected to discover a wormhole terminus less than seventy light-years from the Haven System, associated with the planetless, barren M3 dwarf listed solely as J-156-18(L).

The discovery had been a distinct shock for the survey crew which detected the J-156-18(L) Terminus in 1879 PD literally by accident. Their ship hadn’t even been supposed to visit the thoroughly useless star. Indeed, her skipper had stopped off en route to the far more promising J-193-18(L) System to let his crew train on a star about which everything was already known . . . only to discover that not quite “everything” had been known after all.

J-156-18(L) was useless as a home for mankind, but there’d been vast excitement in Nouveau Paris when the wormhole was reported. A crew of proper hyper-physicists had been dispatched immediately and quickly discovered that it was one terminus of a 583.8-LY warp bridge . . . and that its other terminus was the KCR-126-04 System.

KCR-126-04.

That news must have struck the Legislaturalists as one of the bleakest bad jokes in the entire universe, because that star system — also known as the Calvin System — lay at the heart of one of the great tragedies of pre-Warshawski sail history, and a more useless piece of real estate would have been impossible to imagine.

<Massive Snip>

No one knew how she’d come to her final resting place, 14.4 LY from her original destination, in the L5 Lagrange point between the second planet of the KCR-126-06 system and its solitary moon, but they did know it must have been the stuff of legends.

The wormhole connects J-156-18(L) to KCR-126-04(aka Calvin System).

Bolthole/Refuge/Sanctuary is KCR-126-06, ~15 light years away from KCR-126-04. No wormhole at Bolthole.

That's from the original Dark Fall snippets, which have been superseded because of massive continuity problems.

Uncompromising Honor, Snippet 1 wrote:Still, Bolthole’s location did explain why the Legislaturalists had selected it as a site for their secret naval base once the system more or less fell into the People’s Republic’s lap. And as a Gryphon Highlander — not to mention someone who’d married a Grayson — Angela Clayton had a better idea than most of what it had taken for the people of the planet Sanctuary to survive until Haven’s survey crew rediscovered their existence at the end of the J-156-18(L)-KCR-126-06 warp bridge.

Note the last words.

Just to recap the differences: the original Dark Fall had Calvin 395 ly from Sol. The expedition was in a cold sleep ship traveling at 70% of light speed that left Sol 40 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been found by early hyper-space survey crews.

The new Dark Fall has Calvin at 105 ly from Sol. The expedition is in a generation ship traveling at 50% of light speed and left Sol 150 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been spotted by advanced telescopic observation.

The wormhole terminus is probably in the Sanctuary system, although there are other ways of reading the Uncompromising Honor snippet.

To put it politely, nothing from that first set of snippets can be trusted.

Update: added the launch times.

munroburton wrote:I don't see the relevance. Bolthole itself does not have a wormhole terminus. On top of that, the other end of the wormhole to Calvin is deep inside Haven territory and thus probably even further away from the Alignment.

It's well established that Manticore already has massive defenses at its Junction. The firepower there is more than sufficent to defeat multiple maximum-mass transits via more than one termini. An upgrade to graser mines would be nice, but hardly essential.

cthia wrote:Waitaminute! I seem to be confused here. Will someone help turn the turtle back over off of his back please?

Bolthole does have a wormhole. Refuge has a wormhole. Isn't Bolthole located there?

munroburton wrote:Nope.

runsforcelery wrote:No one in Nouveau Paris had ever expected to discover a wormhole terminus less than seventy light-years from the Haven System, associated with the planetless, barren M3 dwarf listed solely as J-156-18(L).

The discovery had been a distinct shock for the survey crew which detected the J-156-18(L) Terminus in 1879 PD literally by accident. Their ship hadn’t even been supposed to visit the thoroughly useless star. Indeed, her skipper had stopped off en route to the far more promising J-193-18(L) System to let his crew train on a star about which everything was already known . . . only to discover that not quite “everything” had been known after all.

J-156-18(L) was useless as a home for mankind, but there’d been vast excitement in Nouveau Paris when the wormhole was reported. A crew of proper hyper-physicists had been dispatched immediately and quickly discovered that it was one terminus of a 583.8-LY warp bridge . . . and that its other terminus was the KCR-126-04 System.

KCR-126-04.

That news must have struck the Legislaturalists as one of the bleakest bad jokes in the entire universe, because that star system — also known as the Calvin System — lay at the heart of one of the great tragedies of pre-Warshawski sail history, and a more useless piece of real estate would have been impossible to imagine.

<Massive Snip>

No one knew how she’d come to her final resting place, 14.4 LY from her original destination, in the L5 Lagrange point between the second planet of the KCR-126-06 system and its solitary moon, but they did know it must have been the stuff of legends.

The wormhole connects J-156-18(L) to KCR-126-04(aka Calvin System).

Bolthole/Refuge/Sanctuary is KCR-126-06, ~15 light years away from KCR-126-04. No wormhole at Bolthole.

JohnRoth wrote:That's from the original Dark Fall snippets, which have been superseded because of massive continuity problems.

Uncompromising Honor, Snippet 1 wrote:Still, Bolthole’s location did explain why the Legislaturalists had selected it as a site for their secret naval base once the system more or less fell into the People’s Republic’s lap. And as a Gryphon Highlander — not to mention someone who’d married a Grayson — Angela Clayton had a better idea than most of what it had taken for the people of the planet Sanctuary to survive until Haven’s survey crew rediscovered their existence at the end of the J-156-18(L)-KCR-126-06 warp bridge.

JohnRoth wrote:Note the last words.

Just to recap the differences: the original Dark Fall had Calvin 395 ly from Sol. The expedition was in a cold sleep ship traveling at 70% of light speed that left Sol 40 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been found by early hyper-space survey crews.

The new Dark Fall has Calvin at 105 ly from Sol. The expedition is in a generation ship traveling at 50% of light speed and left Sol 150 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been spotted by advanced telescopic observation.

The wormhole terminus is probably in the Sanctuary system, although there are other ways of reading the Uncompromising Honor snippet.

To put it politely, nothing from that first set of snippets can be trusted.

Update: added the launch times.

Thank you JohnRoth. I thought I remembered reading that somewhere, and got the same thing out of it regarding the feeling there was an accompanying wormhole. ISTR other details as well, of the Legislaturalists originally seeing dollar signs of having a similar setup like the Manticorans, only to find out that the wormhole led to a desert of a planet -- so, no cigar.

And of course it follows, that IF Bolthole does have a wormhole junction, then I'd like to definitely reenter my thought upstream that those grasers surgically removed from the Solly ships will definitely be bound for Bolthole. At least in part.

JohnRoth wrote:That's from the original Dark Fall snippets, which have been superseded because of massive continuity problems.

Uncompromising Honor, Snippet 1 wrote:Still, Bolthole’s location did explain why the Legislaturalists had selected it as a site for their secret naval base once the system more or less fell into the People’s Republic’s lap. And as a Gryphon Highlander — not to mention someone who’d married a Grayson — Angela Clayton had a better idea than most of what it had taken for the people of the planet Sanctuary to survive until Haven’s survey crew rediscovered their existence at the end of the J-156-18(L)-KCR-126-06 warp bridge.

Note the last words.

Just to recap the differences: the original Dark Fall had Calvin 395 ly from Sol. The expedition was in a cold sleep ship traveling at 70% of light speed that left Sol 40 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been found by early hyper-space survey crews.

The new Dark Fall has Calvin at 105 ly from Sol. The expedition is in a generation ship traveling at 50% of light speed and left Sol 150 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been spotted by advanced telescopic observation.

The wormhole terminus is probably in the Sanctuary system, although there are other ways of reading the Uncompromising Honor snippet.

To put it politely, nothing from that first set of snippets can be trusted.

Update: added the launch times.

I'll defer the matter until the book comes out, then.

However... I have to point out that with its new position much closer to Sol, that wormhole bridge should have been a tempting shortcut for Haven's diplomats to Earth and perhaps even an avenue by which to import Solly technology - especially if that tech was being worked on at Bolthole.

105 LY from Sol would actually put Bolthole in League space - making it extremely valuable for shipping purposes, especially after the failed attempt on Basilisk resulted in Havenite shipping being banned from the MWJ.

Perhaps the PRH did not want to risk a jurisdictional conflict with OFS over Bolthole.

JohnRoth wrote:That's from the original Dark Fall snippets, which have been superseded because of massive continuity problems.

Uncompromising Honor, Snippet 1 wrote:Still, Bolthole’s location did explain why the Legislaturalists had selected it as a site for their secret naval base once the system more or less fell into the People’s Republic’s lap. And as a Gryphon Highlander — not to mention someone who’d married a Grayson — Angela Clayton had a better idea than most of what it had taken for the people of the planet Sanctuary to survive until Haven’s survey crew rediscovered their existence at the end of the J-156-18(L)-KCR-126-06 warp bridge.

Note the last words.

Just to recap the differences: the original Dark Fall had Calvin 395 ly from Sol. The expedition was in a cold sleep ship traveling at 70% of light speed that left Sol 40 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been found by early hyper-space survey crews.

The new Dark Fall has Calvin at 105 ly from Sol. The expedition is in a generation ship traveling at 50% of light speed and left Sol 150 years after the Beowulf expedition. The system had been spotted by advanced telescopic observation.

The wormhole terminus is probably in the Sanctuary system, although there are other ways of reading the Uncompromising Honor snippet.

To put it politely, nothing from that first set of snippets can be trusted.

Update: added the launch times.

munroburton wrote:I'll defer the matter until the book comes out, then.

However... I have to point out that with its new position much closer to Sol, that wormhole bridge should have been a tempting shortcut for Haven's diplomats to Earth and perhaps even an avenue by which to import Solly technology - especially if that tech was being worked on at Bolthole.

105 LY from Sol would actually put Bolthole in League space - making it extremely valuable for shipping purposes, especially after the failed attempt on Basilisk resulted in Havenite shipping being banned from the MWJ.

Perhaps the PRH did not want to risk a jurisdictional conflict with OFS over Bolthole.

Um, no. Calvin has moved. The obvious continuation is that they're going to reconstruct the ship somehow and continue on since the Calvin system is uninhabitable. Sanctuary/Refuge/Bolthole is somewhere farther on, possibly where the first set of snippets puts it.

The big difference here is that, as you point out, the wormhole does not go to Calvin because there's no way the Legislaturalists would have not immediately put a terminus just outside the Core into use. The wormhole either goes directly to Bolthole or another system near it.

JohnRoth wrote:
The big difference here is that, as you point out, the wormhole does not go to Calvin because there's no way the Legislaturalists would have not immediately put a terminus just outside the Core into use. The wormhole either goes directly to Bolthole or another system near it.

It's kind of hard to move several hundred LY is a STL ship that is already worn out.

Was it the legisturists or the revolutionary government that found them?

JohnRoth wrote:
The big difference here is that, as you point out, the wormhole does not go to Calvin because there's no way the Legislaturalists would have not immediately put a terminus just outside the Core into use. The wormhole either goes directly to Bolthole or another system near it.

Right, We have stories of SL merchants swanning around in space for months to deliver high tech weapons to Haven, not to mention the fact that the Legislaturalists wanted the Manty junction for the economic implications of the junction alone. Adding this bridge, so close to the inner league, to the wormhole network, would be a big economic boon to the PRN. Ships from Earth would go to Beowulf, then double jump to Trevor's star, cross PRH space to the new wormhole, then back to the league, just to save time. And such ships would stop at PRH worlds along the way, buying and selling goods and services.

Even if the area was completely barren of other, prosperous worlds, a wormhole so close to the SL core would still be a boon to the PRN's economy. There should be no reason why they would not use it.

JohnRoth wrote:
Um, no. Calvin has moved. The obvious continuation is that they're going to reconstruct the ship somehow and continue on since the Calvin system is uninhabitable. Sanctuary/Refuge/Bolthole is somewhere farther on, possibly where the first set of snippets puts it.

The big difference here is that, as you point out, the wormhole does not go to Calvin because there's no way the Legislaturalists would have not immediately put a terminus just outside the Core into use. The wormhole either goes directly to Bolthole or another system near it.

They made it "just over 201 LY" in "four hundred and two years" at "fifty percent of light-speed" to get from Sol to KCR-126-04 (aka Calvin). [Not the 105 LY you originally said]

Their deceleration is such that they apparently slow down from 50% c in something over 1.5 years. That implies an average deceleration of about 0.35g - though I assume the rocket equation applies so it took them longer to build up to cruise than it takes them to stop. (Even with insane efficiency figure at least twice as long)

Though there's still a minor discrepancy in the numbers.
201 LY in 402 years at 50% c doesn't allow time for boost and counter boost after turnover; that should have added 4-5 years to that 402.
Still it's minor enough mismatch, maybe they were a hair faster than 0.5 c. (Or maybe RFC will tweak the time to just approximately 400 years)



Figuring out how much further they could make it requires some assumptions. Because I don't have data to calculate otherwise I'll assume that they can refuel back to what they had leaving Sol, that the 'hotel' load for 400 years was a negligible consumption of fuel, and so they wouldn't be able to boost to much, if any, higher cruise velocity (and still have the fuel to stop). Further I'll assume that the average speed is still exactly 50% c (despite the shorter flight).

If all that is true then with the remaining 75 years of operational life the most they can extend their range from Sol is another 43.1 LY (continue straight line outwards) for a max possibly of 244.1 LY away [75 years shiptime = 86.25 Earth time] (But we're still far short of the 395 LY of the problematic 1st draft)

If the updated novella keeps the terminus in the KCR-126-04 system then even 201 LY from Sol is too close to expect that Haven wouldn't have grabbed the economic benefits. (Manticore is IIRC out around 500 LY from Sol)