Bad Wormholes?

The GA doesn't have a squadron of anything to park off the Torch wormhole. It is POSSIBLE that Torch might put a ship there as part of training for the crews but it would have to be a small one. IF they were significatly concerned they might put something like an old DD there with pods using the current Manticore Lite equipment from Erwhon.

Of course the POSSIBILITY occurs to me that they could use one of those captured former State Security ships they were given by the Mayan Admiral- that then also invites someone who reports the situation back to the Alignment to mention it and the add-on scuttling charges could come into play.

Torch could also use some variety of work platform and station it near the wormhole to continue studying it. It would be wise (from the reader's point of view) that said platform be armed but that would not be high on the research agenda to tie in targeting sensors and fire controls to anything that could hit a ship comming through the wormhole IF THAT SHOULD HAPPEN.

As the information being generated in Caldron and the arrival of whomever with the SDs in the Mesa system gets back to Manticore/Haven/Torch and others, it is entierly possible that Ruth or someone elce is going to revisit the odd fact that although there was NO RECORDS for the Torch wormholes investigation in the surviving Manpower databases on Verdant Vista, Manpower knew it was there. That -eventually- should bring on the thought that is it quite likely some sort of cover-up on Manpower's part (and so on the Alignment's part) and THINGS SHOULD BE DONE to secure what could be a very dangerous back door to the system. At the moment, however, many of the people who seem to pick up on this type of thing in the books are very busy.

Bigade XO, I agree with you that the wormhole should be covered with at a minimum a long endurance navigational beacon that will send news to torch, and then to the rest of the interested galaxy if anyone uses the wormhole.

MaxxQ wrote:

n7axw wrote: Still it has bothered me a bit that the GA has left Torch uncovered, especially given Harvest Joy's disapearance because they have to know that if anyone comes through that wormhole it will be unfriendly bad guys.

Don

Why? Who says "they have to know" that anyone coming through "will be unfriendly bad guys?"

They don't know why Havest Joy disappeared. They don't even know if Harvest joy has even been destroyed. They know nothing [/Sgt. Shultz].

The only people who know what happened to Harvest Joy are the people that captured/destroyed her, and the readers.

As far as in-universe characters are concerned, Harvest Joy is later than normal returning from surveying a WH. It's a cause for concern for the possibly lost ship and crew (possibly due to spacial anomalies), but nothing to get their knickers in a bunch over... yet.

Even if something *does* come through, they're still not going to know right away whether they're friendlies or not. There's going to be some confusion for a few minutes, or at least until whatever comes through starts firing missiles or whatever.

Edit: There's also the possibility that the ship coming through might be a friendly ship coming to get parts to repair a broken Harvest Joy that can't go back through the wormhole because the wormhole-travel-widget broke. One can't just assume that because a ship comes through where another that was expected didn't that it's a "bad guy".

n7axw wrote:
Hi MaxxQ,

Kinda hazardous for me to argue with BuNine...

BUT...

Here is the argument that occurs to me. Torch is not just any ole place in the galaxy. Prior to its liberation, it was in the possession of Mesa which would mean that Mesa also knew about the wormhole. It is only a very short jump from there to presuming that Mesa explored the wormhole.

So looking at the situation from a security standpoint, Harvest Joy's disappearance would have to be suspicious at the very least. As I already acknowledged in my previous post, the wormhole or some other natural phenomena could have eaten the ship. But if you are concerned for Torch's security, you can't assume that what ate Harvest Joy (possibly unfriendly bad guys) wouldn't come through to eat Torch as well.

That same completely justified suspicion means that Torch should be covered to make the exit to the Torch side of the wormhole as thoroughly unpleasant for whoever comes through as it was for Harvest Joy going the other way, presuming, of course, as I think you have to, that bad guys were responsible for Torch's disappearance.

So how about a squadron of Sag-Cs and a few hundred pods? I'm not insisting that anything that comes through be smashed INSTANTLY. But I am insisting that it get its wedge down and heave to for inspection and to explain itself PDQ.

Don

Good thinking up to a point. There are really three possibilities on the table: killer wormhole, enemy action, some other mischief is keeping Harvest Joy from returning. Good intelligence work would keep all three possibilities on the table until they get enough information to confirm or disconfirm them.

The other piece, though is overkill. There's no reason for a force that strong as a picket. A squadron of LACs would do as well for anything other than a simultaneous transit by a bunch of SDs. While Manticore's and Greyson's forces are stretched to the limit, Haven has a lot of units, many of which aren't really considered front line any more, but which are perfectly capable of detecting a transit, asking for identification, firing missiles and controlling pods. Heck, given the documented level of paranoia in Crown of Slaves, Erewhon might be persuaded to supply a picket.

Brigade XO wrote:The GA doesn't have a squadron of anything to park off the Torch wormhole. It is POSSIBLE that Torch might put a ship there as part of training for the crews but it would have to be a small one. IF they were significatly concerned they might put something like an old DD there with pods using the current Manticore Lite equipment from Erwhon.

Of course the POSSIBILITY occurs to me that they could use one of those captured former State Security ships they were given by the Mayan Admiral- that then also invites someone who reports the situation back to the Alignment to mention it and the add-on scuttling charges could come into play.

Torch could also use some variety of work platform and station it near the wormhole to continue studying it. It would be wise (from the reader's point of view) that said platform be armed but that would not be high on the research agenda to tie in targeting sensors and fire controls to anything that could hit a ship comming through the wormhole IF THAT SHOULD HAPPEN.

As the information being generated in Caldron and the arrival of whomever with the SDs in the Mesa system gets back to Manticore/Haven/Torch and others, it is entierly possible that Ruth or someone elce is going to revisit the odd fact that although there was NO RECORDS for the Torch wormholes investigation in the surviving Manpower databases on Verdant Vista, Manpower knew it was there. That -eventually- should bring on the thought that is it quite likely some sort of cover-up on Manpower's part (and so on the Alignment's part) and THINGS SHOULD BE DONE to secure what could be a very dangerous back door to the system. At the moment, however, many of the people who seem to pick up on this type of thing in the books are very busy.

One more time.

#1. Torch military is run by Thandi Palane.
Torch intelligence is run [Unofficially? Puhleeze!] by Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki (who is a starship engineer, BTW).

#2. Those scuttling charges were gone from those ships before anyone other than a survey crew and a bomb squad went on board. They are NOT an issue, and have not been since the ships were captured.

#3. How would Torch know the charges were there? Why would they expect that the first scans that didn't find anything like that were wrong? Please refer to #1 above. To this group, paranoia is an art form.

dreamrider

We were told that the former State Security ships had some sort self destruct device installed during the refit to upgrade and repair them by the yard doing the work. If not actually in a yard, then by the people doing the work.

The subject was then dropped in the books. I believe the Alighment contact was killed in the fight so even though he knew about the ability to destroy the ships remotely, he wasn't in a position to tell any one.

We have NOT YET seen ANYTHING about those gifted ships actually being used by Torch except that they could be used as training platforms. They are substantially larger than anything Torch had or even now has (since we don't have any information of warships beyond the frigates they are operating. They have ORDERED one or more DD sized ship from Erwhon but don't have anything the size of the SS ships. Those would take a massive amount of their existing naval crews to operate, particularly as a warship. Torch is very short on experienced officers and sr. NCOs of the type they would need to operate any of the SS ships They COULD be used for training, probably are, but not to send out as full combat units. Park one near the wormhole and conduct your training….and lock some segment of the sensors and tactical systems plus weapons on the wormhole "just in case". Sure, they could do that. At very least it would provide long term scan information about the wormhole.

We don't know exactly what the scuttling device(s) was. It COULD have been a bomb (in each ship) that would have taken out a system like the containment for the reactor(s) of each ship. It COULD have been a software routine that did what Sharon did to the State Sec ships in her "Oops" routine. It doesn't even need to be particularly large, it just needs to work when the proper signal is received.

Now, I presume that those ships have all sorts of shielding to prevent "random" or deliberate signals to go either way through the hulls. That means that there is going to have to be something that connects the ships sensors and/or communications to something that will carry the signal to wherever (and whatever) the self destruct device is.
Being that the Alignment MIGHT have wanted to just blow the ships after they compleated the Torch mission, they would have optimized whatever the communications were to cut through the shielding.

If one or more SS ship was lost in the attack, so much the better. Then - when they show up for their "payment" (beyond the upgrades, resupply and weapons they received) just blow them when they are at a meeting point and they are not at action stations with shields down.

I will wait till there is some mention of the finding (and deactivating) of the devices OR one or more gets used before I assume that anybody connected with Torch found them.

The lady who was the MAN controller and also a Mesa navy officer was on the ship and agreed to surrender the squadron. Everything after that is conjectural. So we know pretty much nothing about what happened after that. Based on CoG we can probably assume that the MAN officer didn't have a frank, heart to heart talk with the Torch leadership, but other then that I have no idea what David is planning, and neither do you.

I can think of tricks that would make it virtually impossible to find a destruct charge without effectively disassembling the ship, like a shaped charge inside the fusion reactor mounting cradle, which you can only see after dismounting the reactor. Somehow I doubt they often do this outside a shipyard.

my money is that any force sent to torch via the wormholer would most likly be a mannerheim fleet. if torch has a big enough LAC fleet they could deal with the war ships.

SYED wrote:my money is that any force sent to torch via the wormholer would most likly be a mannerheim fleet. if torch has a big enough LAC fleet they could deal with the war ships.

As far as we know at this point, Torch has no LAC force. Subject to correction, but even LAC crews need substantial training. Witness everything that we saw of the career of HMS Minotaur and Commander P. Tremain.

dreamrider

Mannerheim is also not the SLN. They have not spent the last 50 years embedded in amber. It's clear that the MAN has been watching the RMN and RHN far more closely than the SLN, so it's not very likely that anything Torch can come up with is going to be something that the MAN does not already know about and have a conceptual plan to counter it.

This doesn't mean said plan will work, but they won't be shocked by some unexpected capability.

In addition the capabilities of the Mannerheim and MAN ships are pretty much completely unknown to anyone. I would be totally shocked if they were not significantly more effective at missile defense then the SLN, but beyond that I have no idea.

kzt wrote:The lady who was the MAN controller and also a Mesa navy officer was on the ship and agreed to surrender the squadron. Everything after that is conjectural. So we know pretty much nothing about what happened after that. Based on CoG we can probably assume that the MAN officer didn't have a frank, heart to heart talk with the Torch leadership, but other then that I have no idea what David is planning, and neither do you.

I can think of tricks that would make it virtually impossible to find a destruct charge without effectively disassembling the ship, like a shaped charge inside the fusion reactor mounting cradle, which you can only see after dismounting the reactor. Somehow I doubt they often do this outside a shipyard.

True enough, friend kzt, but IIRC from Cauldron of Ghosts, those ex-Havenite ships were being sent to Haven for re-furbishment/upgrades before entering the RTN..which also gives the Torches time to recruit and train crews.

And between the overhaul and naturally suspicious streak of the ex-slaves of anything connected to Manpower...I think the odds are high that the charges have been found.

But I could be wrong--author's preogative.

And I do think they'll keep an eye on it anyway. Remember Kare and Wix are still alive and well and have a vested interest in finding out what happened to their shipmates and friends on the Harvest Joy.

We shall see...eventually.