cthia wrote:At All Costs - Chapter 58"But I asked for them. It was my policy," she said softly. "My administration."
"Maybe it was. But the way we got here doesn't change where we are, or the options we've got. So, if we can't negotiate, and we can't surrender, what can we do except launch Beatrice? It's an 'all-costs' situation, Eloise, and thanks to your preliminary authorization and the forward redeployments we've already carried out, we can launch it far sooner than the Manties probably expect any response to this. And Beatrice Bravo was specifically designed to take out Eighth Fleet, as well. If we manage that, we knock out the only force we know is equipped with the new missiles, but even that's pretty much beside the point if the main op succeeds. That's really what it comes down to, now. If we wait, we lose; if we attack and I'm wrong about their deployment status, we lose; but if we attack and I'm right, we'll almost certainly win. It's that simple."
He looked into her eyes once again, still holding her hand.
"So which way do we go, Madam President?"
I've been hit over the head in the forums so much with a rolling pin trying to recondition my thinking on this area of disbelief that I thought I'd win by attrition due to the rising costs of lumber - to make the pins. However...
I
still maintain that the Manties should have known that the Havenites were going to roll the dice that way. Harrington really left them no choice.
Really, it is Psychology 100 (no need for 101). If you corner an animal that really doesn't want to fight, then you've effectively cut off its options and it is left with no choice. It's not only going to fight -- It's going to fight like hell! I really feel it's a no brainer.
I really find it difficult to believe that there aren't any highly intelligent AI programs in the Honorverse that can make predictions based on predefined cookie cutter algorithms. Criminal investigators in the Honorverse should have access to AI's that can easily spit out serial criminals' profiles - advising them of the exact type person to be on the lookout for.
The same in the Honorverse in the War Room, a threat response computer should have been able to predict the rolls of the dice by Haven just as a computer system (IIRC) gave Theisman the varying options of attacking the Manty Home system. It wouldn't be a substitute for old-fashioned gray matter, but a complement. Manticore didn't survive as long as they did with so many 'envious of the junction' navies wanting to take that brass teapot away from them, because they turned out Elvis Santinos in job lots. The Elvises are mostly dead. So Honor should not have been the only one with foresight enough to imagine a "Beatrice" is coming over the hyper wall. It was so obvious that little kids were pulling on the hem of their mother's dress trying to get their attention, "The Peeps are coming mom."
Given how limited Honorverse AI is, there's no plausible way that you could expect intelligent advice out of one that combines knowledge of politics, diplomacy, strategy, psychology, and economics. Not at that high level - extrapolating target choice from prior attacks is vastly easier. So no, there really shouldn't - barring vastly better computing than exists there - be an op-for political adviser in Admiralty House.
But yes, certainly planners able to put themselves in the other party's shoes well enough should have seen Beatrice as a possibility with better odds of being attempted than some wild outside chance.
I can see a couple basic reasons why that didn't happen. Both of them are about what you just don't
know on the other side.
First, Manticore had a lousy grasp of Havenite politics. They had little or no remaining human intelligence sources, and a lot of the conflicts there were either hidden inside the Cabinet or something you'd need an insider's grasp of the dynamics to appreciate. That the Pritchart Administration could not count on surviving, or on the Republic of Haven's Constitution surviving, what it would take to surrender, wasn't something Manticore could reasonably have realized with any confidence. If anyone thought it was an issue, that would have been just guesswork - that happened to be accurate, but still not justified. So, given a humbling technological disadvantage - again - they could have been counted on to surrender - again - just with Manticore making sure it stuck this time, and that a final, decisive, but livable treaty would have come of it.
Second, Beatrice assumed more Havenite SD(P)'s ready for use than Manticore's estimates provided, along with a plan that would neutralize Eighth Fleet if it were available at all. I'm sure someone is going to start yelling truisms about worst-case scenarios and Murphy's Law about now, but honestly - that Haven would have been willing to cut things elsewhere that close to the bone
and that it had the ships at all with trained crews would have been combining worst-case estimates in so extreme a fashion that using that level of caution as a policy would be to consign yourself to crippling fear all the time. It also meant a willingness to rest the war on a gamble that flew in the face of warfare formalism, the habits of twenty years, and the sort of care and rationalism that characterized the Pritchart Administration
and Theisman Admiralty. In effect, it requires betting on the Havenites doing something entirely out of character with resources they probably did not have at a risk they would not take for a result they could not count on.
Unfortunately, Pritchart and Theisman are flexible, they did have resources Manticore reasonably figured they did not, and given the domestic political situation, Beatrice was
less of a gamble than the alternatives.
And... rolling pin and rolling eyes time...
Sending all of the Apollo missiles away from the cover of the Home System first falls under the heading of a very bad idea - especially since you've cornered the wounded beast - showed him that you've developed a war changing weapon - AND knowing that you've left yourself with a Home Fleet with so many inadequate pre-pod designs!
Sure. I know that Manticore had obligations to other systems. I know that their concern was in keeping Haven off-balance. But as Theisman told Honor - your main concern is for your own people first - Home System. How can I protect you if I fall? And fall I almost did - Home System saved by a Salamander.
Manticore's had a bad, bad experience already with defense-mindededness with Icarus. They had another with complacency with Thunderbolt. They needed Apollo in use to keep Haven off-balance and - theoretically - stave off an enormous Havenite hammer falling on Trevor's Star, Grayson or - in their wildest nightmares - Manticore. Keeping them off-balance
was looking out for the safety of Manticore first, just indirectly - and, for all they knew or suspected, all the more effectively for it.
Maybe, at least just prior to the Battle of Manticore, they could reasonably have spared a small portion of Apollo-capable units for Home Fleet, or have kept that small force at the Junction for use on short notice at the far end of any terminus. But given the modest contribution made by McKeon's force in BoM - about what I figure they may have spared that way - it would not have made a huge difference anyway.
In retrospect, certainly some decisions would have made that go a lot better had they gone differently. But in retrospect, all sorts of things that were unlikely
given what was known or reasonably suspected at the time turn out to be sheer certainties, and likely things turn out to be entirely non-actual.
