what is an Eradani Edict what is not?

Very few free-standing buildings are hardened to withstand a KEW carrying even one kiloton scale energy. That would appear likely to drive the roof and upper floors into the basement, with "bad things" happening to everyone and everything between, but significantly limit the damage outside the building.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Vince wrote:I suggest reading Expanding upon the Eridani Edict. Essentially, the use of human shields by the side being called to surrender does not automatically make the actions of the side that is demanding the surrender a violation of the Eridani Edict, the side being called on to surrender has the responsibility NOT to attempt the use of human shielding in an attempt to prevent military action against it.

I never said, or thought, that what Terekhov did was an edict violation, or even illegal. But there appeared to be other legal, but lower collateral damage options available.


We know that the "Damocles" strike package that was launched itself contained six M412 kinetic perpetrators. I'm assuming that all 6 could have been launched at lower accelerating with only a few seconds between them. Meaning that hitting the tower with a sequenced strike of 6 individually less powerful perpetrators should have taken less than an extra 60 seconds.


Now if there had been a clear time element, where those few extra seconds would make a difference then the faster option is clearly the best one, regardless of the local damage inflicted. For example, if Yucel and her doomed Gendarmes could have improvised off some kind of Warneki like spiteful devastation given a few seconds to trigger it; then denying them that time is worth it.

Or if those towers were evacuated and he was simply causing additional economic damage that also changes the decision points.


But since we, as readers, weren't let in on whatever caused Terekhov to pick a single 67k ton kinetic explosion out of the full range of legal options, it came off (again, to me) as unnecessary overkill. (And to be clear, he may well have had compelling reasons for picking that, reasons I'd even agree with. My complaint, primarily, was that those reasons weren't make clear to me)

The Solarian's knew Terekhov's reputation from Monica:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 30 wrote:“Good evening, Commander Watson.” A blond haired, bearded Manticoran officer replaced Mon-tella on his display. The Manty wore a commodore’s insignia, and his blue eyes were remarkably cold. “I am Sir Aivars Terekhov, Royal Manticoran Navy.”
Every Solarian officer in the Madras Sector knew that name, and Watson felt a solid lump of ice materialize in the pit of his stomach as he recognized it and remembered a star system named Monica.

Terekhov to the resistance on Mobius:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 31 wrote:“Yes, I have.” Terekhov’s eyes were fiery blue ice. “We haven’t seen any imagery about the orbital strikes, though. Do you have a casualty estimate from them?”
His tone was calm, almost conversational, but his expression wasn’t.
“Best guess is somewhere around four hundred and fifty thousand,” Blanchard said.

Approximately 450,000 people already murdered by Yucel's, Yardley's and Lombroso's orders. And they were murdered. There is no way that the Mobius resistance had that many fighters. Add to that mass hangings, including children:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 31 wrote:As Terekhov and Pope watched, the image on one of the secondary visual displays CIC had tied into their air-breathing recon platforms changed, and Terekhov’s blue eyes were colder than arctic ice as he saw the line of bodies hanging from an obviously prefabricated, mass-produced gallows. There must have been twenty-five of them, he thought as the platform zoomed in on them, and not all of those bodies had belonged to adults.

Yucel's terms to Terekhov (and she knew who she was talking to):

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 31 wrote:Yucel felt her lips twist in anger. Terekhov. The same son-of-a-bitch who’d shot up the Monica System and started this whole frigging nightmare. She should’ve guessed.

***Snip***

“All right,” she said. “Those are your terms. Well, here are mine. You stay the hell off this planet. You put one shuttle down here, one frigging Marine, and I start shooting prisoners. I’ve got over thirty thousand of them in the stadium. You’re welcome to take a look for yourself. And I’ve got two companies of gendarmes over there. I can kill every fucking person in that stadium in five minutes flat, and if you try any shit like landing on this planet, I swear to God I will!”

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

Since Yucel was willing to start shooting 30,000 prisoners with an estimated time to completion (not to start but to finish killing prisoners) of 5 minutes if Terekhov "tri[ed] any shit", and if Terekhov had allowed her the time to contact the guards at the stadium and give the orders to start shooting all 30,000 prisoners, I have to believe your objections to the use of the level of force would be:

Why didn't Terekhov use enough force to take Yucel out completely and immediately, thereby preventing the massacre of 30,000 more people? Especially when she was already responsible for the deaths of somewhere on the close order of half a million people, most of whom had to be civilian non-combatants?

What may be an Eradani Edict or not is rather moot when the shooting actually starts. When that happens all bets are off. If you win the battle or war then you can sweep any "inconsistencies" under the rug.

If you lose the battle or war, then it does not matter either since you are probably dead.

History paints with a big brush ... but only the victors do the painting. HB of CJ (old coot) Lt.Cm. In combat, anything goes. You have the quick and you have the non living. Nothing else matters at that time.

Yep...I will probably have nightmares again tonight, but that is the price of freedom.

Lord Skimper wrote:I was just watching a Stargate episode where they supposedly gate through a local star/sun and cause it to shift to the infrared.

In my opinion, "Red Sky" was *the* worst!!! episode of the series. Leaking plutonium into the star was only the beginning....

(Did I add enough emphasis?)

kzt wrote:Very few free-standing buildings are hardened to withstand a KEW carrying even one kiloton scale energy. That would appear likely to drive the roof and upper floors into the basement, with "bad things" happening to everyone and everything between, but significantly limit the damage outside the building.

Actually when it comes to Honorverse Cermacrete buildings that does not appear to be the case given the amount of punishment that the various towers took in "Cauldron of Ghosts"

Vince wrote:Since Yucel was willing to start shooting 30,000 prisoners with an estimated time to completion (not to start but to finish killing prisoners) of 5 minutes if Terekhov "tri[ed] any shit", and if Terekhov had allowed her the time to contact the guards at the stadium and give the orders to start shooting all 30,000 prisoners, I have to believe your objections to the use of the level of force would be:

Why didn't Terekhov use enough force to take Yucel out completely and immediately, thereby preventing the massacre of 30,000 more people? Especially when she was already responsible for the deaths of somewhere on the close order of half a million people, most of whom had to be civilian non-combatants?

Ok, I'm embarassed to admit I hadn't gone back and reread all the relivant passage. I was going from memory and the part that Weird Harold quoted; I'd totally forgotten the threat to begin executions.

That obviously does put time pressure on Terekhov. But I still don't know that increasing the changes of saving 30,000 is worth potentially killing far more than that in the surrounding towers.

Now I don't actually know how many people the "majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel" were, but he leveled 3 square blocks. Mobius's towers shouldn't be as big or densely populated as those of Noveu Paris; but for point of reference when Saint-Just set off the 26% smaller 50 kton nuclear demolition charge in the Octagon subbasement it killed 1.3 million civilians in the surrounding towers!


Would a 6 or 12 perpetrator sequenced strike over 30 - 60 seconds have really given Yucel time to get on the horn and order the executions?

HB of CJ wrote:What may be an Eradani Edict or not is rather moot when the shooting actually starts. When that happens all bets are off. If you win the battle or war then you can sweep any "inconsistencies" under the rug.

If you lose the battle or war, then it does not matter either since you are probably dead.

History paints with a big brush ... but only the victors do the painting. HB of CJ (old coot) Lt.Cm. In combat, anything goes. You have the quick and you have the non living. Nothing else matters at that time.

Yep...I will probably have nightmares again tonight, but that is the price of freedom.

That's only true if there are no 3rd parties strong enough to intervene regardless of who won the war.

Yes, if the GA and the League go to war and one side goes insane and starts committing Edict violations there's nobody else out there big enough to enforce the edict's penalties on either side.

But if two smaller powers get into a genocide fest you can bet that Manticore and/or Haven would be able to divert enough modern wallers to make it fatally clear to everyone involved just how utterly beyond the pale that behavior was.

Grashtel wrote:Actually when it comes to Honorverse Cermacrete buildings that does not appear to be the case given the amount of punishment that the various towers took in "Cauldron of Ghosts"

That attack was run by morons. I'm sure a megaton range KEW would also have done a fine job of destroying the building too, if you didn't really care about the city...

Nothing physical and stand up to the wedge, and the wedge projects ahead of the object it is driving. So the wedge strikes the roof first. Hence the wedge of the KEW destroys the structural integrity of the roof (and probably a floor or two below this), then the KEW slams into what is essentially a very, very heavy mixture of dust and solid Ceramacrete in free fall. The energy of the KEW tuning to plasma is going to add a rather large amount of velocity to the falling debris.

I'd suggest not bing in that building -especially not on the upper floors - it will be bad.

Jonathan_S wrote:Ok, I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't gone back and reread all the relevant passage. I was going from memory and the part that Weird Harold quoted; I'd totally forgotten the threat to begin executions.

One of the points in quoting that passage is to show that Commodore Terekhov did NOT use indiscriminate levels of force. He (or his tactical department) probably calculated the amount of yield carefully to have exactly the force

Jonathan_S wrote:Now I don't actually know how many people the "majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel" were, but he leveled 3 square blocks. ...

The entire city of Hiroshima was leveled by a bomb with a yield of about a quarter of Terekhov's KEW; Obviously, he was dealing with much stronger construction. His purpose was to decapitate all opposition, and he accomplished that purpose with one KEW.

He could very probably have used the entire load of KEW penetrators instead, but that would have potentially run him short of ammo if there were other centers of resistance stupid enough to defy him. In fact, he definitely would have had to target three separate towers to decapitate the Transstellar and the corrupt government. He would have needed to destroy pretty much the same amount of real estate to crush the oppressors in any case.

RFC didn't see fit to disclose every factor that went into the decision to use a 67Kt, but he did see fit to contrast that setting with the KEWs used by OFS and the Gendarmerie. I think the rule of "don't second guess the commander on the scene" probably applies.

kzt wrote:That attack was run by morons. I'm sure a megaton range KEW would also have done a fine job of destroying the building too, if you didn't really care about the city...

IIRC they USED a megaton range KEW in CoG. It didn't destroy the city because Towers built for Seccies were tougher than normal residential towers: the relevant description is up thread.

kzt wrote:Nothing physical and stand up to the wedge, and the wedge projects ahead of the object it is driving. So the wedge strikes the roof first. Hence the wedge of the KEW destroys the structural integrity of the roof (and probably a floor or two below this), ...

Where do you get that idea? We have a couple of graphic descriptions of the effect of a KEW on almost a floor by floor basis. There is NO mention of damage from a wedge anywhere that I can recall.

Anti-armor and anti-aircraft rounds are explicitly stated as using a wedge, expressly because wedges can destroy any physical object. Yet in CoG they just couldn't find a solution to the problem of the very strong building. Funny about that.

Then again, they explicitly mention the vehicles armed with plasma cannon, and then mention how destructive man portable plasma weapons are against this type of construction. Therefore, since they were trying to destroy the building they never mentioned the plasma cannon again either.

CoG is not exactly my most favorite book for these sorts of issues.