zuluwiz wrote:If somebody held a gun to my head and told me I just HAD to use That Damn Weapon in a story, my way would be to finagle a message into Sollie Intelligence (Warning: Oxymoron Detected!) that the Manties were planning to recommission all the captured Sollie SDs, equipping them with very long-range Grav Lances. This must be done subtly, (without any visible smirking), maybe through the auspices of some Beowulfan "League faithful". Then sit back and watch the ISLN jump through flaming hoops to try and figure out a countermeasure for a weapon that does not exist. THAT is the way I would use That Damn Weapon in a story (with a gun to my head). And yes, we do want the Sollies thinking that there are people on Beowulf who want to remain in the League, and are willing to pass information to the League secretly. That's how you deceive the opposition in a war.
This is exactly the plot of "Running Blind" by Desmond Bagley, a cold-war novel in which an agent is set up to lose a classified device to the Russians -- a device that looks like a secret weapon but doesn't do anything -- with the objective of tying up Russian R&D trying to answer a nonexistent question. Good read, like much of Bagley's work.
