Uncompromising Honor chatter

cthia wrote:So, four of the Mandarins were arrested and I suppose will be extradited and given a free ride back to the Haven sector to stand trial for their crimes. I was expecting them to be questioned and one or more of them to drop dead. Was it Kolokoltsov who kept asking where Omusupe was to be found? For a minute there, I thought she'd gotten ghost. Recalled by the MA just in the nick of time. I was also looking for the same from Audrey O'Hanrahan.

Perhaps when the Manties question them, someone will drop dead and the nanites will be found.

It was Agata Wodoslawski (of the Treasury) who was absent when the other four were arrested. IMHO, if she was an Alignment agent, her handler had her killed.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

cthia wrote:So, four of the Mandarins were arrested and I suppose will be extradited and given a free ride back to the Haven sector to stand trial for their crimes. I was expecting them to be questioned and one or more of them to drop dead. Was it Kolokoltsov who kept asking where Omusupe was to be found? For a minute there, I thought she'd gotten ghost. Recalled by the MA just in the nick of time. I was also looking for the same from Audrey O'Hanrahan.

Perhaps when the Manties question them, someone will drop dead and the nanites will be found.

It was Agata Wodoslawski (of the Treasury) who was absent when the other four were arrested. IMHO, if she was an Alignment agent, her handler had her killed.

Thanks.

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Honor speaking . . .

“Despite what Palace Security and the Queen’s Own may have told you Mister Harahap, I’m not really a ‘highly competent interrogator,’” she said after she and Nimitz were settled.

No? Well, you sure are a highly competent people person, milady. LOL

****** *

Of that very esteemed group of people who died, they all had treecat bodyguards. I know they weren't bonded, so there's no chance the 'cats will die from a broken bond. I'm just gathering wool, but I wonder what the level of pain is from the lost of a possible friend. After all, there should be oodles of all-around empathy found in an empathic species.

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UH wrote:“Theseus authorizes us as number one in the departure queue, Ma’am,” Lieutenant O’Reilly announced.

“Thank you, Wanda,” Commander Kaplan replied and glanced at Hosea Simpkins, her Grayson-born astrogator. “Take us in, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Simpkins replied, and Kaplan leaned back in her command chair as HMS Tristram nosed into the Visigoth Terminus.

I wonder if Hosea feels as…strange about taking astro control data from Theseus as I do? she wondered, watching Master Chief Andrew Dawson ease her destroyer delicately into the terminus’s complex gravitic tides. Not that Countess Gold Peak had any choice about it, I suppose.

Am I incorrect that the MA could have assassinated anyone they wanted to if they had gotten someone in position at any of the terminii giving astro control data? Rather, fatal astro control data?

The battle between Grand Fleet and the Sol system reminded me of the days when my much taller sister, at the time, would lick my ice cream and hold me off with her much longer arms.

I didn't expect the tactics of attacking the home system of man's birth to be so simple. All Honor had to do was hurl missiles and pop back into hyper. Hurl missiles and pop back into hyper. Surely the Sol system will rethink its system defense strategy. About Ganymede, I would have expected there to be a Ganymede 1, 2, 3 . . .

The absolute slap in the face was Honor allowing the SLN to concentrate its forces. She was totally unconcerned about giving them the time they needed to form a strategy, to recall any and every piece of hardware, software and tupperware (LOL), and form up however they wanted to. She gave them plenty of time to concentrate and formulate a strategy. The mighty Solarian League if bullies were shown to be afraid when the real fight came to them.

Sending her missiles right through the collective defenses of Ganymede and the supporting active ships simply to destroy the Reserve Fleet was sheer disdain for anything Solarian made. I'd sure like to know what form of system defense the Sol system will eventually become. It seems like the SKM could have attacked the Sol system soon as Apollo was developed.

cthia wrote:My views are also derived from the knowledge of how a business works. Long ago I wondered where Leonard got the small fortune that was surely needed to kick things off, and support it until dividends elsewhere began to pay off. I know the slaves and a lot of what was going on behind the scenes at Mesa, went a long way towards funding his delusions of grandeur. But I assume he sought help from outside parties. Financially viable outside parties, who became shareholders. Shareholders implies a Board of Directors who looks out for their investment, by looking out for the company. Yatta yatta yatta. Board of Directors are not normally founders, for obvious reasons not only surrounding a conflict of interest. Perhaps I got it completely switched at birth about the roles of the LRPB and the General Strategy Board. And perhaps the General Strategy Board is the Board of Directors. Though "General" throws me off. And as I said, "Long Range Planning" is exactly the definition of a Board of Directors.

Torch of Freedom, chapter 5 wrote:The Board was responsible not simply for overseeing the careful, continually ongoing development of the genomes under its care, but also for providing the Alignment with the tactical abilities its strategies and operations required.

We have agreed that the LRPB is not a board of directors for the Mesan Alignment, but what if it was the board of directors for Manpower Incorporated? Then a board of geneticists would make sense and Jack's statement quoted above is not about micromanagement, but is instead the hidden agenda that was concealed by slave development. We know that Manpower used its genetic experimentation to develop the "star" lines of Alpha, Beta and Gamma; in addition to the specialty slave lines. Presumably the LRPB, as transplanted to Darius, will continue the experimentation; but solely to improve the existing lines.

cthia wrote:Regarding the decision not to implement an emergency evacuation of the VIPs aboard the habitats because no one else could be. I don't agree that those important people shouldn't have been whisked out of harm's way, even though the bulk of everyone else could not be evacuated in time. Regardless of their imminent survivors guilt, these people were way too important to the SKM. And they had a duty to stay alive. The lost of Caparelli or Pat Givens alone could cost lives in the future.

BTW, the amount of reactor mass I burned shedding tears in UH is unfathomable. While reading UH, I should have had a supply ship following me around.

I think they just got the threat assessment wrong. In a normal attack being in transit is riskier than staying put in a high security area of a giant habitat. And Beowulf had carefully separated the military shipyards and heavy industry (that are valid targets - but also riskier from an industrial accident standpoint) from the habitats where most people lived and where the meetings were taking place. So this isn't even like Maticore's Hephaestus which is a legal military target.

Evacuating is only safer if you can ensure the evacuation craft are at least well inside the atmosphere, if not already on the ground, when the missiles start to fly.

They didn't plan on super giant nuclear explosions smuggled into the heart of the station. So like I said, they got the threat assessment wrong.

cthia wrote:I can't help but wonder how the Duke knew it was safe to enter the system. I know she was armed, but if Honor was delayed for whatever reason, the Duke of Cromarty may have been captured or destroyed if she'd been the one who found herself literally on top of that first group of SL BCs. Of course, the way it worked out, those BCs were glad Honor made them scuttle, considering the piles of excrement found everywhere aboard flag bridge. LOL

Nitpick. Those were SLN CAs, not BC.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Your Grace, we have what look like eight Solly heavy cruisers at seven-point-eight million kilometers,” Captain Rafe Cardones said. “Closing velocity about thirty-five thousand KPS. Not sure from their vectors what they’re doing out here, but we’re right on top of them. They’ve just brought up their sidewalls.”

Given that closing velocity the SLN heavy cruisers were withing missile range. The 7.5 million km range from rest of their missiles is improved to 13.8 million thanks to the 35,000 kps base velocity they'd carry towards their targets.

So it turns out that if DoC had popped out there instead they could have engaged her. On the other hand 8 heavy cruisers against a modified Aggie BC(P), with Keyhole I and pods is likely to end quite badly for the cruisers. The current Royal Yacht has defenses and teach (just doesn't carry as many pods as the non-yacht version)

OTOH the DoC transitioned a full light minute beyond the hyper limit, and presumably not especially near anything. Even if the Sol system had still be hostile it'd take a major intervention from Murphy to have had her appear within range of anything that could threaten her in the half hour or less it'd take to be ready to hyper out.

So it probably wasn't that dangerous to barrel into the system without confirmation that Honor's fleet had arrived first and secured most everything beyond local planetary orbital space.

cthia wrote:I think you're correct about Silver Bullet. It is probably the entire package, including the ability to remain powered far longer via solar charging of the capacitors, and additional programming. I incorrectly assimilated the passage to mean the grasers weren't ready for deployment. Yet I knew they'd already been used. Thanks.

That's basically my understanding too. It sounds quite similar to the grayer torp except for the extended loiter time (thanks to those deployable, yet still somehow stealthy, solar panels). Though it may have upgraded grav sensors to sniff out the FTL transmissions of its prey. (They're described as "the exquisitely sensitive gravitic sensors in its carefully designed nose section") That description doesn't preclude those same exquisitely sensitive sensor being on the normal torp; but I'd bet against that being true.

So basically take the grazer torp and make the hardware and software mods necessary to, over long endurance missions, sniff out and get close to Mycroft relays - then on command or signal kill them.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think they just got the threat assessment wrong. In a normal attack being in transit is riskier than staying put in a high security area of a giant habitat. And Beowulf had carefully separated the military shipyards and heavy industry (that are valid targets - but also riskier from an industrial accident standpoint) from the habitats where most people lived and where the meetings were taking place. So this isn't even like Maticore's Hephaestus which is a legal military target.

Evacuating is only safer if you can ensure the evacuation craft are at least well inside the atmosphere, if not already on the ground, when the missiles start to fly.

They didn't plan on super giant nuclear explosions smuggled into the heart of the station. So like I said, they got the threat assessment wrong.

Yes, but there was still time after they eventually figured things out. The MA made a point by exploding the bombs in an exact timeframe. Two habitats preceded theirs first. It didn't take rocket scientists. Ten minutes apart, and the habitats have emergency escape pods. They were afraid of causing a panic, but no one had no know where they were headed or why they were carrying on so quickly.

UH wrote:“I know,” Caddell-Markham said softly. “Believe me, I know. They couldn’t have realized we’d be here when they set this up, but we are, and there’s no way to get us off in less than thirty or forty minutes, either.

But there was a way. The emergency pods, no?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think they just got the threat assessment wrong. In a normal attack being in transit is riskier than staying put in a high security area of a giant habitat. And Beowulf had carefully separated the military shipyards and heavy industry (that are valid targets - but also riskier from an industrial accident standpoint) from the habitats where most people lived where the meetings were taking place. So this isn't even like Maticore's Hephaestus which is a legal military target.

Evacuating is only safer if you can ensure the evacuation craft are at least well inside the atmosphere, if not already on the ground, when the missiles start to fly.

They didn't plan on super giant nuclear explosions smuggled into the heart of the station. So like I said, they got the threat assessment wrong.

Yes, but there was still time after they eventually figured things out. The MA made a point by exploding the bombs in an exact timeframe. Two habitats preceded theirs first. It didn't take rocket scientists. Ten minutes apart, and the habitats have emergency escape pods. They were afraid of causing a panic, but no one had no know where they were headed or why they were carrying on so quickly.

UH wrote:“I know,” Caddell-Markham said softly. “Believe me, I know. They couldn’t have realized we’d be here when they set this up, but we are, and there’s no way to get us off in less than thirty or forty minutes, either.

But there was a way. The emergency pods, no?

These stations aren't warships - and even warships don't have emergency pods near the people whose stations are deeply buried in the hull.

Remember these stations have the population of a very large city, and have gone centuries without major accidents. Certainly never anything that required evacutation of more than localized areas of the station. They just aren't designed for quick evacuation to the planet.

There may be some pods, near the surface of the station, though it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't and all departures, even in an emergency had to be by shuttle, pinnace, or ship. But even with high speed transit it probably takes half an hour to get from many sections of the station to a pod or landing bay. So I really don't think there was time from when the first bomb blew until the last one did to get the key Manticoran personal from their secure meeting area to an evacuation point - not even if they started running for it the instant they knew the bomb exploded.

In fact, taking a quick look, the book makes specifically makes the point that you could have emergency pods as deep as the meeting center even if the stations had been built with them (implying that they don't have pods)

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Neither of them commented on the fact that the conference attendees on Beowulf Alpha with him were at the very heart of the massive platform. Anything capable of housing that many million people was enormous, and it had been built in layers, like a vast onion. Despite the best planning possible, that put…kinks into its internal transit systems where lift tubes were truncated at transfer stations. Normally, those kinks were little more than excuses for irritated profanity as traffic stacked up during rush hours, but they could have more serious repercussions. It would have required at least forty-five minutes for anyone in the George Benton Center just to reach the station’s outer hab zones, for example. Nor was it remotely practical to build emergency escape pods that could reach that deep; the necessary access trunking made it simply impossible.
Of course, prior to Hypatia, no one would have expected them to be necessary even if they’d been practical.

So specifically it takes longer (at least 45 minutes) to get to a spot you can leave the station than the attendees have. And my reading is that Beowulf Alpha doesn't have emergency pods because no one expected them to ever be necessary.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think they just got the threat assessment wrong. In a normal attack being in transit is riskier than staying put in a high security area of a giant habitat. And Beowulf had carefully separated the military shipyards and heavy industry (that are valid targets - but also riskier from an industrial accident standpoint) from the habitats where most people lived where the meetings were taking place. So this isn't even like Maticore's Hephaestus which is a legal military target.

Evacuating is only safer if you can ensure the evacuation craft are at least well inside the atmosphere, if not already on the ground, when the missiles start to fly.

They didn't plan on super giant nuclear explosions smuggled into the heart of the station. So like I said, they got the threat assessment wrong.

Yes, but there was still time after they eventually figured things out. The MA made a point by exploding the bombs in an exact timeframe. Two habitats preceded theirs first. It didn't take rocket scientists. Ten minutes apart, and the habitats have emergency escape pods. They were afraid of causing a panic, but no one had no know where they were headed or why they were carrying on so quickly.

UH wrote:“I know,” Caddell-Markham said softly. “Believe me, I know. They couldn’t have realized we’d be here when they set this up, but we are, and there’s no way to get us off in less than thirty or forty minutes, either.

But there was a way. The emergency pods, no?

Jonathan_S wrote:These stations aren't warships - and even warships don't have emergency pods near the people whose stations are deeply buried in the hull.

Remember these stations have the population of a very large city, and have gone centuries without major accidents. Certainly never anything that required evacutation of more than localized areas of the station. They just aren't designed for quick evacuation to the planet.

There may be some pods, near the surface of the station, though it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't and all departures, even in an emergency had to be by shuttle, pinnace, or ship. But even with high speed transit it probably takes half an hour to get from many sections of the station to a pod or landing bay. So I really don't think there was time from when the first bomb blew until the last one did to get the key Manticoran personal from their secure meeting area to an evacuation point - not even if they started running for it the instant they knew the bomb exploded.

In fact, taking a quick look, the book makes specifically makes the point that you could have emergency pods as deep as the meeting center even if the stations had been built with them (implying that they don't have pods)

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Neither of them commented on the fact that the conference attendees on Beowulf Alpha with him were at the very heart of the massive platform. Anything capable of housing that many million people was enormous, and it had been built in layers, like a vast onion. Despite the best planning possible, that put…kinks into its internal transit systems where lift tubes were truncated at transfer stations. Normally, those kinks were little more than excuses for irritated profanity as traffic stacked up during rush hours, but they could have more serious repercussions. It would have required at least forty-five minutes for anyone in the George Benton Center just to reach the station’s outer hab zones, for example. Nor was it remotely practical to build emergency escape pods that could reach that deep; the necessary access trunking made it simply impossible.
Of course, prior to Hypatia, no one would have expected them to be necessary even if they’d been practical.

So specifically it takes longer (at least 45 minutes) to get to a spot you can leave the station than the attendees have. And my reading is that Beowulf Alpha doesn't have emergency pods because no one expected them to ever be necessary.

Thanks Jonathan. I should have been able to figure that one out for myself. Ten minutes is just so little time anyway. And I think textev included the kicker between the lines. The MA knew there was no way in hell they'd evacuate anyone in ten minutes and would end up panicking everyone and making it worse. Let them die decently.

What kept nagging at me is Hypatia, I think that's the incident in question. Where the idiot tried to take the little girl's place in the pod. But even then, though I can't rightly recall, they must have had much more time. From that incident, I thought they'd all have pods. Limited, but still have them. I think I'm just not ready to accept those deaths.

Also, I kept thinking about the consequences of someone really really important being on the habitat, like Beth herself. She wouldn't be able to get off. And it seems odd that she should never visit a habitat. But she shouldn't.

cthia wrote:Thanks Jonathan. I should have been able to figure that one out for myself. Ten minutes is just so little time anyway. And I think textev included the kicker between the lines. The MA knew there was no way in hell they'd evacuate anyone in ten minutes and would end up panicking everyone and making it worse. Let them die decently.

What kept nagging at me is Hypatia, I think that's the incident in question. Where the idiot tried to take the little girl's place in the pod. But even then, though I can't rightly recall, they must have had much more time. From that incident, I thought they'd all have pods. Limited, but still have them. I think I'm just not ready to accept those deaths.

Also, I kept thinking about the consequences of someone really really important being on the habitat, like Beth herself. She wouldn't be able to get off. And it seems odd that she should never visit a habitat. But she shouldn't.

BTW at Hypatia that happened while waiting to board a piloted shuttle -- one that had been making repeated runs between the station and the planet. I wasn't able to find any mention of life, emergency, or escape pods at Hypatia; all the evacuation was handled by (overworked) small craft apparently loading people from normal landing bays.

As for never visiting a habitat; maybe. OTOH we don't keep the US President from visiting cities where it would take over half an hour for his motorcade to extract him (or get to an area where Marine One could pick him up and then fly clear of the blast zone). And today's cities are almost as vulnerable to big nukes as habitats.

On the other hands, to be fair
1) Nukes, even big ones, are way more plentiful in the Honorverse than they are here today and
2) Honorverse cities, with their giant plascrete towers, are ludicrously more nuke resistant than 21st century cities -- so Beth would be safer from a giant nuke while visiting Beowulf City than she would have been visiting Beowulf Alpha.

If your crew is good enough you can ‘land’ a helicopter almost anywhere.
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