Honorverse ramblings and musings

Brigade XO wrote:The League Member Systems are going to come up on some hard choices. Not the least of these is the apparent inability of the SLN to clearly engage the GA (or just Manticore because the alliance with Have is so new) and the very real demonstration that the SLN is getting destroyed in wholesale batches each time "The League" (the buracracy in the form of the Mandarins and the SLN high command) sends off a force to punish or give a "lesson" to the neo-barbs like Raging Justice.

Recall that the SLN (both BF and FF) are the primary reason that peace more or less reigns inside the League and the systems are being protected both from naked military force by their neighbors (both physically and close in time by various wormholes) and from general piracy.

If the 800 lb gorilla is no longer as seen as being an effective force preventing other than purely business and political manipulation by parties w/i the League and it's edges, the Members are going to have to take steps to insure thier own safety- Which is where the RF is supposed to creep in and grow as points of stability and defense against warlordism and adventurism in the Verge and withing the League.

The Mandarins correctly see Beowulf as the 1st shift that would become an avalanche of systems leaving the League since the system isn't going to provide the protections and order that the Member Systems etc depend on for their own safety and ability to prosper.
If Beowulf "gets away with this", things go right into the crapper for the Mandarins.

The Mandarins don't appear to be aware of Maya's pending leaving (with it's own modern fleet and allies) but once that happens, it will surly happen that they will see and fear all sorts of other OFS controlled areas jumping ship. The OFS -as corrupt as they are- are probaly the best placed to carve out their own little kingdoms as they already have control and communication within those systems and still may have the local FF willing to answer to them. FF is a real question since IF they won't stay with the currently assigned OFS governors to "protect" those areas, then the wheels fall off for OFS' cart.

Probably a major question is how the SLN is going to shake out in this. That is the people (and ships) that survive being thrown into the slaugherhouse of taking on the GA are going to have to start wondering where this is going. Of particular note is going to be how long it takes both BF and FF (and not at the same time) to realize that if they don't attack the GA, the GA isn't going to come looking from them. Well, mostly not come looking. Out in the Verge on the side in the direction of Talbot, Basilisk and the swath between Manticore and Beowulf (like Idaho etc), Manticore and the GA isn't going to take any sniffing around by SLN kindly.
Right about the time SLN is starting to get tasked to defend League Members and their allied systems from each other's agression (military etc), the SLN is going to face a question of conscience and duty it is going to have a lot of trouble with. It is going to realize that it is in the throws of an impending Civil War with way too many sides to make any kind of clean choice. Do they now overtly crush systems wanting to leave the League and do they crush League systems who are now fighting between themselves. The ability to cow said system just with reputation or showing up for a "polite visit and quiet word" is loseing effectiveness fast.

cthia wrote:But do the majority of them view the League as impotent? They've been sheltered and cut off from reality for years, just as their League parent. If I were a League system governor, I'd claim descendence from Missouri. "Show me that you can defeat the Big Bad Bully permanently - they've suffered black-eyes before - then I'll jump ship. Until then, I ain't gonna be making no bed that I may have to lay in if you get your arse whipped. We been there, done that al-ready." It is us who have to live with the League's brand of "negative feedback" should you lose."

Something else I never got the chance to bring up. I was too busy dodging blows. LOL

Let's say the League disintegrates. There are still plenty of Solarians that detest anything Haven-sector neobarbaric. And now that their League has been broken apart, their loathing has become obsessively amped. What's stopping new polities from forming and inheriting most of the significant industrial capacity of the League and come a-calling down the road, and not too distant from a certain off-ramp from EXIT IV: Interstate-Vengeance? With a new and more efficient government.

A breakup within the League could serve to be just the thing they need. A trimming of the corrupt fat.

cthia wrote:I really cannot understand why the MAlign hasn't seriously targeted Honor Harrington for termination. They have the technology. The Salamander is the single most important strategic objective for any GA enemy. Eliminating Harrington would seriously hamper the GA's war waging ability. Anyone doubt that a significant portion of the GA's total offensive strength is wrapped up in Honor?

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I really cannot understand why the MAlign hasn't seriously targeted Honor Harrington for termination. They have the technology. The Salamander is the single most important strategic objective for any GA enemy. Eliminating Harrington would seriously hamper the GA's war waging ability. Anyone doubt that a significant portion of the GA's total offensive strength is wrapped up in Honor?

Yes, I do. "The graveyards are full of irreplaceable men."

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I really cannot understand why the MAlign hasn't seriously targeted Honor Harrington for termination. They have the technology. The Salamander is the single most important strategic objective for any GA enemy. Eliminating Harrington would seriously hamper the GA's war waging ability. Anyone doubt that a significant portion of the GA's total offensive strength is wrapped up in Honor?

Yes, I do. "The graveyards are full of irreplaceable men."

cthia wrote:I really cannot understand why the MAlign hasn't seriously targeted Honor Harrington for termination. They have the technology. The Salamander is the single most important strategic objective for any GA enemy. Eliminating Harrington would seriously hamper the GA's war waging ability. Anyone doubt that a significant portion of the GA's total offensive strength is wrapped up in Honor?

kzt wrote:Yes, I do. "The graveyards are full of irreplaceable men."

JeffEngel wrote:That. For that matter, Honor dead made quite a splash among the survivors after Ransom "executed" her. People got behind the LAC/CLAC and SD(P) concepts in some cases in some part in her memory. And whatever may have become of her, her peers and subordinates had learned a whole lot of dangerous things from her.

JeffEngel wrote:But apart from any of that, no, she's certainly not "the single most important strategic objective for any GA enemy." Planets such as Manticore, Nouveau Paris, Grayson, for instance, are rather more important. Their leaders certainly are. Grantville, Elizabeth Winton, Benjamin Mayhew, Eloise Pritchart aren't actually irreplaceable either, but their states participate the ways they do in no small part due to the specific personal qualities of those people, so things may well go differently without them.

The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

Until Spock teaches you that sometimes, the needs of the one, outweigh the needs of the few. Or the many.

JeffEngel wrote: Honor Alexander-Harrington is one astute and determined individual, with relevant skills and in an excellent place to exert useful influence within the GA. But among many billion people, there's only so far such qualities go. She doesn't fire laserheads from her eyes, she doesn't skip along grav waves naked, she does not violate the Eridani Edict when she puts her foot down.

JeffEngel wrote:And for that matter, the Alignment has made one serious attempt to kill her with every expectation that it would work, and not because they figured all those many billion other people would line up for extinction without her. They did it to mess with Manticoran-Havenite relations, with a side order of satisfaction for smacking someone who'd given Manpower some trouble often enough. When it comes to people who've really harmed the Alignment's prospects though, she's not in the same league as Zilwicki or Cachat. The worst she's been for them so far has been a worrisome conduit Zilwicki and Cachat have had into Manticore's halls of power, in addition to Cathy Montaigne.