Oops

Theemile wrote:

Random statesec ship wrote:...

It's quite easy to enforce lazy behavior...

cthia wrote:Keep in mind, that as Tac officer, Shannon has a lot of command clearance. She has to. Tac officers must be able to coordinate fleet-wide tactical munitions coordination. There were commands given by Honor, I think, to "tie in with CIC on the other ships and coordinate our attack." I'm sure CIC could be bypassed altogether, with the Tac officer clearance Shannon had - together with total systems knowledge. Plus, Shannon is a nerd. She knows the 'puters better than the SOB that designed them!

As far as what she actually did, I personally would not speculate that it had anything to do with the reactors. What Shannon did caused instantaneous destruction. Reactor failure takes time - even when all safeguards are removed - before reactor overload. And they wouldn't go together in a choreographed explosion. And there'd be warnings. And at least one engineer would have been in place to eject the core, saving that ship.

From what I remember of the passage, I don't think the scuttling charges are the answer either. Scuttling charges take a bit of time to destroy a ship as well, compared to the instantaneous, almost simultaneous destruction of all ships.

Theemile speculated commanded-missile explosions. That's a better fit of the evidence.

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Kytheros wrote:

cthia wrote:Keep in mind, that as Tac officer, Shannon has a lot of command clearance. She has to. Tac officers must be able to coordinate fleet-wide tactical munitions coordination. There were commands given by Honor, I think, to "tie in with CIC on the other ships and coordinate our attack." I'm sure CIC could be bypassed altogether, with the Tac officer clearance Shannon had - together with total systems knowledge. Plus, Shannon is a nerd. She knows the 'puters better than the SOB that designed them!

As far as what she actually did, I personally would not speculate that it had anything to do with the reactors. What Shannon did caused instantaneous destruction. Reactor failure takes time - even when all safeguards are removed - before reactor overload. And they wouldn't go together in a choreographed explosion. And there'd be warnings. And at least one engineer would have been in place to eject the core, saving that ship.

From what I remember of the passage, I don't think the scuttling charges are the answer either. Scuttling charges take a bit of time to destroy a ship as well, compared to the instantaneous, almost simultaneous destruction of all ships.

Theemile speculated commanded-missile explosions. That's a better fit of the evidence.

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Nope, they were superdreadnoughts. Way too big for ejectable cores. Only the smallest warships can viably have ejectable cores, otherwise, you're leaving your reactors way more exposed and unprotected than they need to be.

Frankly, I'm not sure Rolands are small enough, and lightly armored enough to have ejectable cores, if they are, they're at the upper end of where ejectable cores are viable on warships. As far back as Short Victorious War, a battlecruiser was definitely way too big for ejectable cores. I don't remember if Star Knights had ejectable cores, but I don't think they did.

Also, with the fusion reactors, all you really need to do is screw up the containment field generators, and their backups, and then boom! Remember, the fuel is forced into fusion and held under extreme pressures by a gravity pinch mechanism. Of course, the reactor containment is doubtless something that gets heavily overengineered.
Also, there was a degree of delay between Foraker pushing the execute button and the SS SDs going up beyond transmission lag, exactly how long I'm not sure.


That said ... I think using the missiles is unlikely. I expect that they have failsafes with physical interlocks that would prevent either/both the missile warhead and impeller drives from initiating until they had been launched and were clear of the ship.


And thus ... we're at the self-destruct or blowing the reactors. Either or both is possible. And, frankly, there probably wouldn't be much way to tell, seeing as the self-destruct is probably a large nuke (or more than one, depending), and would blow containment on the reactors as well.

But the one ship exploded, a delay, then all the other ships went almost simultaneously. Which points to some sort of possible cascade effect.

Duckk wrote:

But the one ship exploded, a delay, then all the other ships went almost simultaneously. Which points to some sort of possible cascade effect.

Where are you getting that? Nothing in the events point to that.

"Citizen Admiral, I have a com request from Citizen Admiral Heemskerk," Citizen Lieutenant Fraiser announced, and Lester Tourville looked up from the tactical exercise on Shannon Foraker's plot with a sudden chill. His raised hand interrupted his conversation with Foraker and Yuri Bogdanovich, and he turned to his com officer.

"Did the Citizen Admiral say what he wants?" he asked in a voice whose apparent calmness astonished him.

"No, Citizen Admiral," Fraiser said, then cleared his throat. "But a StateSec courier boat did enter the system about forty-five minutes ago," he offered.

"I see. Thank you." Tourville nodded to Fraiser and looked back at Bogdanovich and Foraker. "I'm afraid I'll have to take this call," he said. "We'll get back to this later."

"Of course, Citizen Admiral," Bogdanovich said quietly, and Foraker nodded. But then the tac officer inhaled sharply, and Tourville glanced back at her.

"Alphand's sidewalls just came up, Citizen Admiral," she said. "So did DuChesnois' and Lavalette's. In fact, it looks like Citizen Admiral Heemskerk's entire squadron has just cleared for action."

"I see," Tourville repeated, and managed a smile. "It would seem the Citizen Admiral's message is more urgent than I'd anticipated." He looked across the flag bridge at Everard Honeker, and saw the matching awareness in his people's commissioner's eyes, but Honeker said nothing. There was nothing, after all, that anyone could say.

Foraker was tapping keys at her console, no doubt refining her data, as if it were going to make any difference. Even if Tourville had been tempted to resist the order he knew Heemskerk was about to give, it would have been futile. With Heemskerk's squadron already at full battle readiness, it would have been an act of suicide to even begin bringing up his flagship's own sidewalls or weapon systems.

"I'll take it at my command chair, Harrison," he told the com officer. After all, there was no point trying to conceal the bad news from any of his staff.

"Aye, Citizen Admiral," Fraiser said quietly, and Tourville crossed to the admiral's chair. He settled himself into it, then touched the com stud on its arm. The display before him came alive with the stern, jowly face of Citizen Rear Admiral Alasdair Heemskerk, State Security Naval Forces, and Tourville made himself smile.

"Good afternoon, Citizen Admiral. What can I do for you?" he inquired.

"Citizen Admiral Tourville," Heemskerk replied in a flat, formal voice, "I must request and require you to join me aboard my flagship immediately, pursuant to the orders of Citizen Chairman Saint-Just."

"Are we going somewhere?" Tourville's heart thundered, and he discovered his palms were sweating heavily. Odd. The terror of combat had never hit him this hard.

"We will be returning to Nouveau Paris," Heemskerk told him unflinchingly, "there to consider the degree of your complicity in Citizen Secretary McQ—"

His voice and image cut off, and Tourville blinked. What the—?

"Jesus Christ!" someone yelped, and Tourville spun his chair in the direction of the shout, then froze, staring in disbelief at the main visual display.

Twelve glaring spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of deep space. They were huge, and so hellishly brilliant it hurt to look at them even with the display's automatic filters. And even as he stared at them, he saw another ripple of glaring light, much further away. It was impossible to make out any details of the second eruption, but it appeared to be on the approximate bearing of Javier Giscard's flagship . . . and the StateSec battle squadron which had been assigned to ride herd on him.

Lester Tourville wrenched his eyes back to the fading balls of plasma which had been the ships of Citizen Rear Admiral Heemskerk's squadron. The silence on his flag bridge was total, like the silence a microphone picked up in hard vacuum, and he swallowed hard.

And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from the console from which she had just sent a perfectly innocent-seeming computer code over the tactical net to one of the countless ops plans she'd downloaded to the units of Twelfth Fleet over the last thirty-two T-months.

"Oops," she said.

cthia wrote:An aside:
* I'm in burnout mode. I'm scheduled to get married soon. Originally it was supposed to be in May. Then it was moved to June. Then late August. Then back to May. Then back to late August - when most people can get the vacation time. And the cost of this thing is soaring. I pledged to pay for it all myself. And it's approaching a quarter mil in cost - flying everyone to the Canaries, wardrobe, catering. Etc., etc. I don't mind the cost, but are weddings supposed to be this stressful?! Gees!

So, I am a burnout right now. And this time of year in the Civil Engineering business is taxing. Busy, busy busy. Building Projects!

At the end of my days now, I am crawling. Then, I have to help my fiancée with new logistics, a task of which she seems to have endless surges of energy from an unlimited reservoir. So, my apologies for everything.

Any advice from you already married victims other than, bridge - leap?

Kytheros wrote:Frankly, I'm not sure Rolands are small enough, and lightly armored enough to have ejectable cores, if they are, they're at the upper end of where ejectable cores are viable on warships. As far back as Short Victorious War, a battlecruiser was definitely way too big for ejectable cores. I don't remember if Star Knights had ejectable cores, but I don't think they did.

Short Victorious War: Ch6 wrote:As in most merchantmen, fusion rooms in destroyers and light cruisers—and some smaller heavy cruisers—were designed with blow-out bulkheads to permit them to jettison malfunctioning reactors as an emergency last resort. But larger warships couldn't do that, unless their designers deliberately made their power plants more vulnerable than they had to.