Torch Navy

I was rereading Torch of Freedom where Albrecht Detweiler was taking to his "son" Benjamin about their "State Security" clients using Solarian battlecruiser , especially about the suicide charges hidden away in them and that a Mesan ship with the proper codes could detonate them.

After the battle the surviving cruisers were to be incorporated into Torch's fledlging navy, but I always wondered that after refitting that those charges are still hidden away somewhere in the bowels of the ships where if they could still be detonated if Detweiler and company could find a way to get to them.

Yup, and the author has declined to comment on if they are gonna be found IIRC. Its quite possible that the charges will be spotted while the ships are being refitted unless they are very well hidden though, Torch has more than its fair share of professional paranoids.

Grashtel wrote:Yup, and the author has declined to comment on if they are gonna be found IIRC. Its quite possible that the charges will be spotted while the ships are being refitted unless they are very well hidden though, Torch has more than its fair share of professional paranoids.

Well yes, and StateSec exiles were wide-eyed, trusting sorts?

The charges had to be hidden well enough that months or years of work there by people who did not regard their sponsors as fully trustworthy did not reveal them. Torch's own refitting may make for a higher level of scrutiny, and if Torch clues in to the likely plans the Alignment had for the PNE (plausible at least), the suspicion will crank up.

On the other hand - doing all that checking out will take time, time spent by Torch's very limited supply of naval engineers - who don't overlap with their professional paranoids with the likely sole exception of Anton Zilwicki, who really does not have time on his hands. And that yard time with a tiny cadre of key personnel poking around for things that may not exist throughout huge warships means that much less time those ships can be used for training, defending Torch, glaring at the wormhole the other paranoids - apparently very generous with other people's resources - insist must be massively defended, or going forth and liberating slaves and slapping Manpower around.

Some risks will have to be taken. It's reasonable to hope Torch will be aware of them, but it's another thing to suppose they can or should devote the resources to close every one of them.

JeffEngel wrote:

Grashtel wrote:Yup, and the author has declined to comment on if they are gonna be found IIRC. Its quite possible that the charges will be spotted while the ships are being refitted unless they are very well hidden though, Torch has more than its fair share of professional paranoids.

Well yes, and StateSec exiles were wide-eyed, trusting sorts?

The charges had to be hidden well enough that months or years of work there by people who did not regard their sponsors as fully trustworthy did not reveal them. Torch's own refitting may make for a higher level of scrutiny, and if Torch clues in to the likely plans the Alignment had for the PNE (plausible at least), the suspicion will crank up.

On the other hand - doing all that checking out will take time, time spent by Torch's very limited supply of naval engineers - who don't overlap with their professional paranoids with the likely sole exception of Anton Zilwicki, who really does not have time on his hands. And that yard time with a tiny cadre of key personnel poking around for things that may not exist throughout huge warships means that much less time those ships can be used for training, defending Torch, glaring at the wormhole the other paranoids - apparently very generous with other people's resources - insist must be massively defended, or going forth and liberating slaves and slapping Manpower around.

Some risks will have to be taken. It's reasonable to hope Torch will be aware of them, but it's another thing to suppose they can or should devote the resources to close every one of them.

IIRC, and I'm pretty sure I do, those ships were going to go back to Haven for refurbishment and upgrades in the Haven Yards. And I suspect that those folks will also be examining them closely, along with the paranoids of Torch.

And while it is possible that the self-destruct systems are extremely cleverly hidden, the MAlignment still had to put them sonewhere they could access, and between the Haven Yard dogs and the Torch inspectors, I suspect the odds are that they would have been found...

Unless RFC decides that they were not. The Power of Plot is a force beyond all others.

We shall see, eventually.

Grashtel wrote:Yup, and the author has declined to comment on if they are gonna be found IIRC. Its quite possible that the charges will be spotted while the ships are being refitted unless they are very well hidden though, Torch has more than its fair share of professional paranoids.

JeffEngel wrote:Well yes, and StateSec exiles were wide-eyed, trusting sorts?

The charges had to be hidden well enough that months or years of work there by people who did not regard their sponsors as fully trustworthy did not reveal them. Torch's own refitting may make for a higher level of scrutiny, and if Torch clues in to the likely plans the Alignment had for the PNE (plausible at least), the suspicion will crank up.

On the other hand - doing all that checking out will take time, time spent by Torch's very limited supply of naval engineers - who don't overlap with their professional paranoids with the likely sole exception of Anton Zilwicki, who really does not have time on his hands. And that yard time with a tiny cadre of key personnel poking around for things that may not exist throughout huge warships means that much less time those ships can be used for training, defending Torch, glaring at the wormhole the other paranoids - apparently very generous with other people's resources - insist must be massively defended, or going forth and liberating slaves and slapping Manpower around.

Some risks will have to be taken. It's reasonable to hope Torch will be aware of them, but it's another thing to suppose they can or should devote the resources to close every one of them.

Hutch wrote:IIRC, and I'm pretty sure I do, those ships were going to go back to Haven for refurbishment and upgrades in the Haven Yards. And I suspect that those folks will also be examining them closely, along with the paranoids of Torch.

And while it is possible that the self-destruct systems are extremely cleverly hidden, the MAlignment still had to put them sonewhere they could access, and between the Haven Yard dogs and the Torch inspectors, I suspect the odds are that they would have been found...

Unless RFC decides that they were not. The Power of Plot is a force beyond all others.

We shall see, eventually.

The inspection teams don't even need to find them all, on all the ships the first go around.
All they really need to do is to find one of them, on one of the ships. Then there's instantly a much higher level of scrutiny applied to everything.

Besides, it's possible, even likely, that whatever hidden self destruct mechanism is employed, is more in the nature of malicious code to utilize something that's supposed to be there - along the lines of what Foraker did.

IIRC Torch is not actually refitting the ships, the RHN is, as part of a probable military assistance deal.j

I think there's a decent possibility that the system containing the destruct charges might get removed or at minimum discovered as part of the upgrade process.

ericth wrote:I think there's a decent possibility that the system containing the destruct charges might get removed or at minimum discovered as part of the upgrade process.

The same would go, incidentally, for software-based suicide "charges".

In addition to being purely amusing, the possibility that the suicide devices could be removed without even being detected in the refit process would not be something the Alignment would have had to count on when they hid them from the PNE crews - that's nothing the PNE crews would have been doing, after all.

I am probably being incredibly dense here, but I keep seeing the initials IIRC popping up here and there. What does this mean? Or is it as much a deep dark secret as RFC's mind and future plot twists?

Caseyorourke wrote:I am probably being incredibly dense here, but I keep seeing the initials IIRC popping up here and there. What does this mean? Or is it as much a deep dark secret as RFC's mind and future plot twists?

IIRC: Abbreviation for If I Remember Correctly.