Mesa occupation

Weird Harold wrote:

Relax wrote:Why would that equipment not still be there on a slaver? As the Marianne proved, it acts as both cargo freighter and slaver. This means ultimately it is easy to reconfigure the inside. Means the gear for both operations is present.

It would be there. The problem with Marianne and other slavers is the other equipment and partitioning that simple cargo vessels don't have. The stuff RFC says can't be totally erased.

Relax wrote:That would be the gas system. How is that a problem?

Weird Harold wrote:

Relax wrote:That would be the gas system. How is that a problem?

It's more than the gas system.

There's the bulkhead between crew and slave areas with only one door -- welded in place, apparently, to prevent over-muscled slaves from ripping it out.

There's the "cargo ejection" doors that don't have safety interlocks to prevent them from dumping atmosphere (along with the slaves.)

It's all of the stuff the author says can't be removed without leaving traces/evidence sufficient to invoke the equipment clause.

Relax wrote:
UH, Just how do you think Shuttles get their goods transported onto them from a freighter currently? Hrmm?

Lets see how Honor "entered" Wayfarer in HAE. It sure as heck is not through an airlock.

"Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale. Work lights created pockets of glaring brilliance where parties of yard dogs labored on the final modifications, but there was no atmosphere to diffuse the light, and most of the stupendous alloy cavern was even blacker than the space beyond the hatch."

Cargo holds are airless but can be pressurized. Shuttles land in em, load up, and leave. Yes, they are able to pressurize/depressurize.

I do know this, a 1000 tons of cargo is an immense volume of goods simplicity is the name of the game.

A cargo bay is not a boat bay. A cargo shuttle, is not a pinnace, let alone a cutter for personnel transport. The former is vastly larger than the later.

Somtaaw wrote: My textev for that assumption is In Enemy Hands, Honor took a single pinnance across to the Prince Adrian, loaded with an entire air scrubber that took up 2/3 of the "passenger" space, and they had to move it from the storage area to where the pinnace was)

Brigade XO wrote:If you are loading starship size shipping contaners which are themselves set up to hook to the power, environmental and commuincations systems of the freighter you might want to be able to put pressure into the hold that and similar containers occupy as a redundancy against leaks/damage to any given container. However, if you are going to supply p/e/c to a given container, you are going to have it hooked up to monitoring equipment in several areas of the ship. That would be 1) environmental, engineering, communication, a module on the bridge and any dedicated monitoring/control position for cargo. In most cases you will probably be automaticaly monitoring all containers requiring "normal" enviornmental conditions so you can discover if something goes wrong. You really don't want those bulk continers of grain/flour etc to get outside the range of proper temperature, humidity, air quality. Such containers may or may not have actual airlocks to let crew inspect or at least access the container's own controls and equipment. You probably would not enter the container durring its entire shipment but if you need to repair something in the controls (or hook up some aux lines to compensate for internal (to the container) problem you will either do it in conjunction with such a lock or external fittings.

Relax wrote:

Somtaaw wrote: My textev for that assumption is In Enemy Hands, Honor took a single pinnance across to the Prince Adrian, loaded with an entire air scrubber that took up 2/3 of the "passenger" space, and they had to move it from the storage area to where the pinnace was)

You do realize that boat bays and pinnaces can both be open to vacuum and pressurized at will? Pinnace cockpit is behind a pressurized door. See SoSag. Kinda hard for IEH escape to happen without a pressurized boat bay. Bays large enough for multiple pinnaces the size of 747's. pressurizing/depressurizing these enormous volumes on a routine basis. Moving the scrubber in a pressure environment would work just fine or in a vacuum.

Don't know about you, but bays large enough for multiple 747 sized objects can fit thousands upon thousands of slaves who then get blown out into space.

Echoes of Honor, Chapter 18 wrote:"And come out of there, you worthless piece of—Ah ha!"
Scooter Smith sat back on his haunches with a triumphant grin as the recalcitrant tracking drive of the LAC's number three laser cluster finally yielded to his ministrations. He didn't know how the defective drive shaft had gotten past the myriad inspections which were supposed to spot such things, but that was less important than that it had. Well, that and the fact that its sub-spec materials had warped and jammed the cluster's training gears solid at a most inopportune moment during yesterday's exercises. It had also managed to splinter and deform itself sufficiently to resist all removal efforts with sullen stolidity for the better part of two hours, and they'd had to strip the entire unit down much further than he'd hoped, but they had it out now.
He tossed it to one of his techs and stood, rubbing the small of his back, then climbed down the side of the work stand.
One of the nicer things about HMS Minotaur's LAC bays was that someone had actually bothered to put some thought into servicing and ammunitioning requirements. Smith's last assignment had been as an assault shuttle section chief aboard HMS Leutzen, and, like every other shuttle maintenance specialist, it seemed as if he'd spent about a third of his on-duty time in a skinsuit or a hardsuit floating around in the zero-gee vacuum of a boat bay while he pulled hull maintenance on one or another of the small craft under his care. In most ways, Minotaur's LACs were simply small craft writ large, and he'd expected to face the same problem, only more so. And he was spending a good bit of time suited up . . . but nowhere near as much of it as he'd anticipated.
Whoever had designed Minotaur had taken extraordinary pains to enhance crew efficiency. Even after five months on board, Smith was still a bit awed by the degree of automation she incorporated. Traditionally, warships had embarked crews which were enormously larger than any merchant ship of equivalent tonnage would have boasted. That was largely because merchant ships tended to be nothing more than huge, hollow spaces into which to stuff cargo, whereas warships were packed full of weapons, ammunition, defensive and offensive electronic warfare systems, sidewall generators, back up fusion plants, bigger Warshawski sails, more powerful beta nodes, and scores of other things merchantmen simply didn't carry and hence had no reason to provide crews for. But it was also true that merchies relied far more heavily than warships on automated and remote systems to reduce manpower requirements still further.

In Enemy Hands, Chapters 28, 29 & 30 wrote:
Chapter 28

***Snip***

Well, there shouldn't be anyone down here, he told himself. This passage was normally used only to service the docking and umbilical arms of Boat Bay Four. If small craft operations had been underway, there would have been an excellent chance of running into someone, but there were no launch orders on the schedule Harkness had pulled out of the main computers. Even if there had been, they wouldn't have used Bay Four . . . unless Cordelia Ransom had decided for some reason that she had to make an all-up assault landing on StateSec's own prison planet.

***Snip***

Skip to Chapter 29

***Snip***

Another of Harkness' programs had locked all the lifts to Boat Bay Four—a fact the Peeps obviously had already discovered. So far, they were restricting themselves to the forward lift only, and since they couldn't use the lift car itself, they'd come down the shaft and tried to blow the doors into the gallery. They'd partially succeeded, and the explosion when they blew the doors had killed Chief Reilly, but the rest of McKeon's people had massacred the entire assault team before it could clear the shaft. The undamaged rear lift remained a threat, but McKeon had decided against blowing it himself. Honor might need it, and Sanko and Halburton made a pretty effective security measure. Anyone who tried to use it to attack the boat bay might get as far as opening the doors; he certainly wouldn't get any further.

***Snip***

"Ready to launch, Sir!"
McKeon turned at Geraldine Metcalf's shout. She stood just outside the docking tube to the bay's number two assault shuttle, and he waved acknowledgment. His tac officer swam down the tube while Anson Lethridge unlocked the docking arms. Then the shuttle's thrusters flared as Metcalf sent it drifting out of the bay, and McKeon took a moment to breathe a silent prayer that Harkness really had gotten the Peeps' weapons shut down.

***Snip***

Skip to Chapter 30

***Snip***

"Looks like they finally kicked my butt out, Sir," he said, and bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "But by the time they did, just about everything but life support got slagged right down to glass. Even if we don't make it, they're gonna be a long time trying to put this bucket of bolts back on-line."
"So they've got complete control of whatever's left?" McKeon asked.
"Just about, Sir. I don't think they can break my lock on that lift—" he pointed to the intact lift doors through which no attack had yet come "—and there's no software left down here in the bay itself. But give 'em another forty, fifty minutes, and they're gonna start getting some sensors and weapons back under manual control. And when they do—"
He broke off with a shrug, and McKeon nodded grimly.

***Snip***

"The lift! Someone's coming down the lift!"
McKeon whirled at the shout, and his heart leapt. If Harkness' lockout had held, that could only be the people who'd gone after Honor, and if it wasn't—
He beckoned, and Sanko and Halburton turned their plasma rifle back to the undamaged lift while Anson Lethridge dashed across the deck towards it with a grenade launcher. But then the lift stopped, the doors opened, and Lethridge froze. He stared into it, ugly face blanching, and then he hurled away his launcher and charged into it. McKeon followed on his heels, and the captain gasped in horror at what he saw.

***Snip***

It was her arm. Her left arm was shattered just above the elbow, and Lethridge's hands moved with desperate speed as he whipped his own belt around her upper arm, right at the armpit, and yanked the crude tourniquet tight. And then he and McKeon between them picked her horribly limp, blood-soaked body up and ran for the pinnace.

Mission of Honor, Chapter 43 wrote:The pinnace which docked with HMS Imperator’s forward boat bay was Duchess Harrington’s personal small craft. As such, it had priority over any other auxiliary assigned to her flagship, although it was just a bit unusual for even her pinnace to be accompanied—one might have said “escorted”—by a pair of Royal Manticoran Army trans-atmospheric sting ships.
The flight operations officer in charge of Imperator’s small craft movements didn’t seem surprised to see them, however. He simply acknowledged their presence and assigned them berthing slots on either side of Duchess Harrington’s craft.
But if he’d been warned what to expect, it quickly became evident that the boat bay officer of the deck (who, at this extremely late hour of Imperator’s shipboard day, was an extremely junior ensign with red hair, fair skin, and blue eyes, rejoicing in the name of Hieronymus Thistlewaite) hadn’t been. That young man had spotted the duchess’ arrival and mustered the proper side party for an admiral of her towering seniority. He looked just a bit nervous, since there were no older and wiser heads looking over his shoulder this time, but Ensign Thistlewaite seemed reasonably confident he had the situation under control.
Until, that was, Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette Winton, Grand Commander of the Order of King Roger, Grand Commander of the Order of Queen Elizabeth I, Grand Commander of the Order of the Golden Lion, Baroness of Crystal Pine, Baroness of White Sand, Countess of Tannerman, Countess of High Garnet, Grand Duchess of Basilisk, Princess Protector of the Realm, and, by God’s grace and the will of Parliament, Queen Elizabeth III of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, and Empress Elizabeth I of the Star Empire of Manticore, swung lithely out of the boarding tube at Duchess Harrington’s heels.
None of the side party had expected their monarch’s sudden arrival, and not even naval discipline was enough to hide their astonishment.
“Eighth Fleet, arri—” a voice began over the boat bay speakers, then chopped off abruptly as the petty officer behind it realized who else had just appeared aboard his ship.
The smooth efficiency of the side party’s formalities slithered to a halt, and Ensign Thistlewaite’s jaw dropped. Then it closed with an almost audible snap, his face turned a considerably darker red than his hair, and he stared appealingly at the duchess.
“Manticore, arriving!” the speakers said suddenly as the petty officer recovered abruptly, and the bosun’s pipes began to twitter again while three additional side boys came dashing up from somewhere.
“Permission to come aboard, Sir?” Elizabeth said gravely, managing not to smile, as the twitter of pipes came to an end. The first two bodyguards who’d emerged from the tube behind her, wearing the uniform of the Queen’s Own, appeared rather less amused than she obviously was, but Thistlewaite’s blue eyes looked back at her with desperate gratitude.
“Permission granted, Ma’am—I mean, Your Majesty!”
Honor hadn’t believed the young man could turn even redder, but she’d been wrong.
“Permission to come aboard, Sir?” she repeated as Elizabeth stepped past her.
“Permission granted, Your Grace.” Thistlewaite’s relief at getting back to something familiar was obvious as she returned his salute, and she smiled slightly.
“My apologies, Ensign,” she said. “We organized this on the fly, as it were, and we didn’t want the newsies getting word of Her Majesty’s visit. Apparently you didn’t get the word in time, either.”
“Uh, no, Ma’am,” he admitted, blushing a bit less blindingly.
“Well, it happens,” she said philosophically while another passel of armsmen and bodyguards appeared behind her and the Queen, then nodded to him and turned to Elizabeth. “This way, Your Majesty,” she said.
“Thank you, Admiral,” Elizabeth replied. She nodded and smiled to Thistlewaite in turn, then headed towards the lift banks at Honor’s side, accompanied by three Grayson armsmen, six members of the Queen’s Own, one plainclothes officer from Palace Security, and two treecats, who appeared inordinately amused by the two-legs’ antics as they rode their persons’ shoulders.