Honorverse ramblings and musings

All four of Kuzak's CLACs had been killed, and of Truman's own eight, three had been destroyed, one was a drifting cripple without impellers, and the other four—including Chimera—were severely damaged. For all intents and purposes, Third Fleet had been as totally destroyed as Home Fleet.

cthia wrote:Is this simply a case of "for all the marbles," that explains why the CLACS are available targets? I thought a CLAC's tactical MO was to 'stop, drop and hyper.' And if already in-system, 'drop-n-scram.'

Or have I simply dropped a tactical thread?

cthia wrote:At All Costs

All four of Kuzak's CLACs had been killed, and of Truman's own eight, three had been destroyed, one was a drifting cripple without impellers, and the other four—including Chimera—were severely damaged. For all intents and purposes, Third Fleet had been as totally destroyed as Home Fleet.

Is this simply a case of "for all the marbles," that explains why the CLACS are available targets? I thought a CLAC's tactical MO was to 'stop, drop and hyper.' And if already in-system, 'drop-n-scram.'

Or have I simply dropped a tactical thread?

cthia wrote:...it seems that storyline would occasionally mention the busyness of smaller ships shuttling crew back aboard.

Shadow of Saganami
Chapter Fifty-four wrote:
HMS Hercules departed Flax orbit exactly eight hours and thirty-six minutes after Rear Admiral Khumalo's meeting with the Provisional Government.

It was unlikely that the elderly superdreadnought had ever taken such precipitous leave of a star system in her entire previous career. Captain Victoria Saunders had certainly never expected to do so, and she felt more than a little out of breath at the sheer whirlwind energy which Khumalo and Loretta Shoupe had brought to the task of getting her ship and every other hyper-capable RMN unit in the Spindle System underway.

Saunders stood beside the captain's chair on her command deck, hands folded behind her, and watched the master plot as Hercules, the light cruisers Devastation and Inspired, and the destroyers Victorious, Ironside, and Domino accelerated steadily away from Flax. Ericsson, her sister ship White, and the ammunition ships Petard and Holocaust followed in the warships' wakes, and Khumalo had commandeered five additional dispatch boats. It was, at best, a lopsided and ill-balanced "squadron," although Hercules certainly looked impressive as its flagship. Unless, of course, one knew all of the old ship's manifold weaknesses as well as Saunders did.

But she's still a damned superdreadnought, Khumalo's flag captain told herself. And we're still the Queen's Navy. And I will be damned if Augustus Khumalo hasn't actually remembered that.

...

"Excuse me, Ma'am."

Saunders turned towards the voice. It belonged to Commander Richard Gaunt, her executive officer.

"Yes, Dick?"

"The last of the personnel shuttles will be coming aboard in approximately ninety minutes, Ma'am," he said.

"Good, Dick. Good!" She smiled. "Do we have a headcount yet?"

"It looks like the shore patrol managed to round up just about everyone," he replied. "At last count we're about six warm bodies short, but for all I know, they could be aboard one of the other ships, given how frantic this entire departure's being."

"Tell me about it," she said feelingly, looking at the repeater plot that showed the ungainly gaggle of shuttles and pinnaces streaming after the squadron. It was unheard of for a Queen's ship to pull out so abruptly a sizable percentage of her company had to chase after her this way. But at least Hercules' acceleration rate was low enough the small craft wouldn't have much trouble overtaking her.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:...it seems that storyline would occasionally mention the busyness of smaller ships shuttling crew back aboard.

It does:

Shadow of Saganami
Chapter Fifty-four wrote:
HMS Hercules departed Flax orbit exactly eight hours and thirty-six minutes after Rear Admiral Khumalo's meeting with the Provisional Government.

It was unlikely that the elderly superdreadnought had ever taken such precipitous leave of a star system in her entire previous career. Captain Victoria Saunders had certainly never expected to do so, and she felt more than a little out of breath at the sheer whirlwind energy which Khumalo and Loretta Shoupe had brought to the task of getting her ship and every other hyper-capable RMN unit in the Spindle System underway.

Saunders stood beside the captain's chair on her command deck, hands folded behind her, and watched the master plot as Hercules, the light cruisers Devastation and Inspired, and the destroyers Victorious, Ironside, and Domino accelerated steadily away from Flax. Ericsson, her sister ship White, and the ammunition ships Petard and Holocaust followed in the warships' wakes, and Khumalo had commandeered five additional dispatch boats. It was, at best, a lopsided and ill-balanced "squadron," although Hercules certainly looked impressive as its flagship. Unless, of course, one knew all of the old ship's manifold weaknesses as well as Saunders did.

But she's still a damned superdreadnought, Khumalo's flag captain told herself. And we're still the Queen's Navy. And I will be damned if Augustus Khumalo hasn't actually remembered that.

...

"Excuse me, Ma'am."

Saunders turned towards the voice. It belonged to Commander Richard Gaunt, her executive officer.

"Yes, Dick?"

"The last of the personnel shuttles will be coming aboard in approximately ninety minutes, Ma'am," he said.

"Good, Dick. Good!" She smiled. "Do we have a headcount yet?"

"It looks like the shore patrol managed to round up just about everyone," he replied. "At last count we're about six warm bodies short, but for all I know, they could be aboard one of the other ships, given how frantic this entire departure's being."

"Tell me about it," she said feelingly, looking at the repeater plot that showed the ungainly gaggle of shuttles and pinnaces streaming after the squadron. It was unheard of for a Queen's ship to pull out so abruptly a sizable percentage of her company had to chase after her this way. But at least Hercules' acceleration rate was low enough the small craft wouldn't have much trouble overtaking her.

cthia wrote:Do forgive me, not only are their some peripheral titles I haven't read, but I'm yet to enjoy a formal reread of several of the mainline titles.

At any rate, while stuck here on At All Costs -- because that was as classic a case of the cavalry coming in the nick of time as any, that gives me Goosebumps every time -- I can't help but feel that McKeon could have done more with Apollo. It was as if Apollo had an Achilles heel in McKeon's hands. He couldn't kill but one ship at a time? McKeon, being somewhat of a Harrington appendage should have been more versant with Apollo. JMO.

<shrugs>

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Is this simply a case of "for all the marbles," that explains why the CLACS are available targets? I thought a CLAC's tactical MO was to 'stop, drop and hyper.' And if already in-system, 'drop-n-scram.'

Or have I simply dropped a tactical thread?

Remember how Kuzak took up smoking crack?

There were no good tactical decisions made by Kuzak this fight. Crack smoking is the obvious explanation, though the real answer is plot.

Honor Alexander-Harrington's eyes were brown ice as Theophile Kgari, in a virtuoso display of astrogation, dropped the massed superdreadnoughts of Eighth Fleet exactly where she'd told him to in a single jump right out of the center of the resonance zone.

She didn't look at the pathetic remnants of Third Fleet's icons. Didn't even glance at the other icons, representing Lester Tourville's task force. She had attention only for Genevieve Chin's superdreadnoughts, and her voice was a frozen soprano sword.

"Engage the enemy, Andrea," Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington said.

* * *

Genevieve Chin's heart began beating once again, and her instant instinct to break off eased a bit as the range registered. At almost seventy-three million kilometers, the new arrivals were well outside even MDMs' powered range. Besides, there were only thirty-eight of them—less than half her own strength, even if all of them were wallers and not carriers.

"Turn us around, Andrianna," she said. "It looks like we've got some fresh customers."

* * *

Eighth Fleet released the five thousand Apollo pods which had been tractored to its SD(P)s' hulls, then spent another three minutes rolling additional pods. In all, it deployed a total of 7,776, almost exactly half its total ammunition allotment, given the Andermani ships' lighter magazine capacity.

Then it fired.

* * *

"What the—?" Andrianna Spiropoulo looked at the tracking report in disbelief. That didn't make any sense at all!

"Ma'am," she said, turning to Admiral Chin, "the Manties have just fired."

"They've what?" Genevieve Chin looked up from a discussion with Nicodème Sabourin.

"They've fired, Ma'am," Spiropoulo repeated. "It doesn't make any sense. They're still at least seven million kilometers out of range!"

"That doesn't make any sense," Chin agreed, walking across to stare at the preposterous missile icons in the master display.

"Maybe they're trying to panic us, Admiral," Sabourin suggested. She looked at him, eyebrows rising in disbelief, and he shrugged. "I know it sounds silly, Ma'am, but I don't have any better suggestion. I mean, we've just hammered two entire Manty fleets into so much scrap metal, and these people are outnumbered by at least three-to-one. Maybe they figure this is the only way to distract us from finishing off the system."

"I suppose it's possible," Chin said slowly, watching the icons come. "But it doesn't seem like a Manty sort of thing to do. On the other hand, I don't see what else they could expect to accomplish."

cthia wrote:You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Let's use D'Orville's Home Fleet during either Battle of Manticore...

There are no crew members being recalled from ship leave. COs are always awaiting impellers but never crew members. "Captain, we still have 623 members of the crew en route."

While forever sitting in orbit around Manticore, is it inconceivable that key members of the crew will be afforded ship leave to visit the planet and loved ones? You wouldn't want to leave orbit without your "guns."