Killer Terminii?

Torch of Freedom wrote: He'd been honest enough when he stressed how uncommon it was—these days, at least—for ships to be lost during wormhole surveys. Statistically, the odds were very much against anything of the sort having happened to Harvest Joy. On the other hand, though, there was a reason he'd deliberately avoided getting into any details concerning the disasters that could happen to survey ships. However unlikely they might be, they could happen, and some of them were . . . gruesome. The fate of the Dublin and her crew was still something no one involved in survey work wanted to contemplate or talk about, even a century and a half later.
And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

War of Honor wrote:hich mean Harvest Joy could pass safely through the hyper-space interface which had destroyed the probes . . . probably. Whether or not she would survive whatever lay on the other side of it was another matter, of course. After all, there were all of those deliciously terrifying, venerable legends about the rogue wormholes whose termini deposited doomed travelers directly into the heart of a black hole or some other suitably lethal destination. Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again.

And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Torch of Freedom wrote: He'd been honest enough when he stressed how uncommon it was—these days, at least—for ships to be lost during wormhole surveys. Statistically, the odds were very much against anything of the sort having happened to Harvest Joy. On the other hand, though, there was a reason he'd deliberately avoided getting into any details concerning the disasters that could happen to survey ships. However unlikely they might be, they could happen, and some of them were . . . gruesome. The fate of the Dublin and her crew was still something no one involved in survey work wanted to contemplate or talk about, even a century and a half later.
And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

But that seems somewhat in contrast to what was said in War of Honor just before Harvest Joy's transit to what turned out to be the Lynx termini of the Manticoran Junction.

War of Honor wrote:hich mean Harvest Joy could pass safely through the hyper-space interface which had destroyed the probes . . . probably. Whether or not she would survive whatever lay on the other side of it was another matter, of course. After all, there were all of those deliciously terrifying, venerable legends about the rogue wormholes whose termini deposited doomed travelers directly into the heart of a black hole or some other suitably lethal destination. Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again.

Ok, maybe Captain Zachary was being pedantic, and there was at least wormhole that a survey ship hadn't come back from, but no one sent a warship. But given that she's reassuring herself before her survey ship make a first jump that seems unlikely to me...

And with less than 200 known first surveys, I don't think she'd forget the one or two that went disastrously...

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Ok, maybe Captain Zachary was being pedantic, and there was at least wormhole that a survey ship hadn't come back from, but no one sent a warship. But given that she's reassuring herself before her survey ship make a first jump that seems unlikely to me...

And with less than 200 known first surveys, I don't think she'd forget the one or two that went disastrously...

There are plenty of ways to make a killer terminus without blackholes. A dense asteroid field, or a proto-planet or star are options - of course grav turbulance in the wormhole is another.

But since no one knows what happens to a ship that enters a wormhole and doesn't return, it could simply be the wormhole deposited the ship 10,000 light years away and the signature of the return locus was too faint to find. Simply no way home.

Patentmike wrote:

And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.

I am not so sure. We have lots of talk, Cachat et al about Mesa's overt use of Verdant Vista making no sense. At some point, Verdant Vista as an anchor for the wormhole will come up.

I speculate, based on really thin textev, that the Alignment learned something from the Torch Wormhole that led them to the Streak Drive. Someone in Naval Intelligence is going to do a search that draws the correlation and voila, the wormhole becomes the focus of much scrutiny.

By the way, the really thin textev is the difference in the Torch Wormhole's profile (gravity wave profile?) from the previously utilized types.

Patentmike

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 5 wrote:"When it comes right down to it, Zack," Jack pointed out after a moment, "you're actually probably in a better position than me to estimate whether or not the Ballroom—or anyone else, for that matter—picked up a hint about the wormhole. I know your department was involved in at least some of the original research for the initial survey, and I also know we're still working on trying to figure out the hyper mechanics involved in the damned thing. In fact, I'd assumed you were still in the loop on that end of things."
A rising inflection and an arched eyebrow turned the last sentence into a question, and Zachariah nodded briefly.
"I'm still in the loop, generally speaking, but it's not like the astrophysics are still a central concern of our shop. We settled most of the military implications decades ago. I'm sure someone else's still working on the theory behind it full time, but we've pretty much mined out the military concerns."
"I don't doubt it, what I meant was that I'm pretty sure you'll hear sooner than I would if anybody comes sniffing around from the Verdant Vista side."