Spoilers! Is anyone else feeling....

WeirdlyWired wrote: Ok several books ago I came to the conclusion that I really need flip charts to keep all the action in all the books properly synched. alas, I'm far too lazy and disorganized to do that. So, with the [much-beaten-to-death] lack of advancement in the timeline, Did Beowulf and Manticore have the 6 months needed to fully deploy Mycroft, or at least sufficient to stop the SLN attack? I've managed to read only the few chapters posted on Baen'ssite, so forgive my POV.

Who knows. The whole idea that you can develop, engineer, test, go to low rate manufacturing, complete operational test and evaluation, and go to full manufacturing and do combat deployment in 6 months is absurd. Particularly when all the test systems you have just got blown up and the entire system dependent on enormous masses of software that needs to interact with equipment that doesn't exist at the start.

I thought I was the only one who felt disappointed. For the whole book to end a few days after mike took mesa? its been a few days since i read SoV, but i still don't care if I read the last one or not....that opinion may change but geez really???

WeirdlyWired wrote:"... So when Mycroft starts firing off Solon-style salvos, the Sollies are forced to immediately flush their pods at the only targets they can see... "

Ok several books ago I came to the conclusion that I really need flip charts to keep all the action in all the books properly synched. alas, I'm far too lazy and disorganized to do that. So, with the [much-beaten-to-death] lack of advancement in the timeline, Did Beowulf and Manticore have the 6 months needed to fully deploy Mycroft, or at least sufficient to stop the SLN attack? I've managed to read only the few chapters posted on Baen'ssite, so forgive my POV.

Short answer is that we don't know because we don't know if when SLN did/will hit Beowulf.

ART chapter 33 updates us on the timeline saying

A Rising Thunder: Ch 33 wrote:“I agree that once Mycroft’s up and running, especially, anybody who goes after Beowulf is going to get bloodied in a hurry,” she said now. “I guess my main concerns are that, like the terminus picket, Mycroft isn’t a visible deterrent, especially since we’re keeping it so completely under wraps till it’s actually up and running, and, secondly, that it isn’t up and running yet and won’t be for at least another couple of months. Maybe longer.”

February 1922 PD - Oyster Bay
April - May 1922 PD - SoV Ch 44 - "“Abernathy says that in the wake of Filareta’s attack on the Manties’ home system, they’re concerned by potential SLN action against Beowulf" [Maya sector briefing]
June 1922 PD - ART Ch14+ - Operation Raging Justice
July 1922 PD - ART Ch 32 - League Assembly votes to investigate Beowulf
July 1922 PD (or later) ART Ch 33 - 'couple months more' quote above.
August 1922 PD - SoV Ch 59 "It doesn’t look like deciding to investigate Beowulf’s ‘treason’ was such a wonderful idea after all." [but then goes on to talk about opinion poll results in the Core around Beowulf's succession] then after talking about the standoff with Tsang has "“Are you suggesting we send task forces to pound them into submission?” Quartermain asked. “Doesn’t seem to’ve worked out very well in Beowulf’s case, does it?”"
August 1922 PD - SoV Ch 68 - Givens mentions to Barregos that Mycroft is still being installed at Beowulf.


Having gone back through the timeline I'm now convinced that whatever the not "wonderful idea" and "pounding" failure that was discussed back in July has to do with political issues and Tsang's confrontation the previous month and not any follow-up military action around Beowulf. There's no way Admiral Givens wouldn't have mentioned such an attack when she visited Maya in August; especially since she specifically brought up the progress of the Mycroft installations there.

So we'd expect the fully array to be online at Beowulf by October or November, based on the ART chapter 33 info. We've seen some activity at late as October, but I think that was all the Mesa stuff. So there might be room to squeeze in a SLN action against Beowulf before Mycroft is fully installed that we just haven't heard about yet - but it's looking tight.


Also you don't really need the entire array in place for it to begin being effective. If an attacker ended up within range of the portion that's already been installed they're in for a world of hurt. And if the attacker comes fairly close to the minimum distance transit it seems to me a defensive planner might have risked asymmetrically weighing a partial Mycroft installation towards covering that. (And if they took a longer route at least that gives your mobile defenders additional time and defensive depth)


So this is a very long way of saying it doesn't look like it's happened yet, but is't been long enough that I'd now be surprised if the SLN, to their pain, didn't run into at least a partial Mycroft deployment.

July 1922 PD - ART Ch 32 - League Assembly votes to investigate Beowulf.

Why would a need to install Mycroft in the Beowulf system be perceived at all prior to the League Assembly vote?

If the decision to deploy Mycroft was not made until after the vote then it could be December/January 1922/23 PD before the full deployment is complete, irrespective of the "at least a couple of months more. Maybe longer." statement made in ART.

There is no need for mycroft period.
Just park one Invictus BatRon outside the hyper limit.

George J. Smith wrote:July 1922 PD - ART Ch 32 - League Assembly votes to investigate Beowulf.

Why would a need to install Mycroft in the Beowulf system be perceived at all prior to the League Assembly vote?

If the decision to deploy Mycroft was not made until after the vote then it could be December/January 1922/23 PD before the full deployment is complete, irrespective of the "at least a couple of months more. Maybe longer." statement made in ART.

You could make an argument for beginning the install a month earlier; right after the standoff between Tsang's Battlefleet detachment, the Beowulf SDF, and the RMN. At that point it's hardly a stretch that Beowulf might come under direct attack from the SLN.

But the one thing I didn't find searching through the books and RFCs posts was the claim it would take 6 months to install Mycroft. The only timeline statement I stumbled across was that "couple months" statement from ART that you seem to dismiss.
So even if the install didn't start until July when that conversation happened I didn't find anything to contradict that conversation's claim that Mycroft should be installed by October or so.

Jonathan_S wrote:The only timeline statement I stumbled across was that "couple months" statement from ART that you seem to dismiss.

That bit of info on Mycroft come at Roger and Rivka's wedding reception on or about July 15 1922 PD. Two months would put completion on or about 15 September 1922 PD

Everyone seems to forget the most exact bit of timeline info which come one day later:

A Rising Thunder
Chapter Thirty-four wrote: The two weeks of scheduled debate on Tyrone Reid’s motion had been the ugliest Hadley could remember ever having seen. ...

“Honorable Delegates, the vote has been called on motion AD-1002-07-02-22, to impanel a special commission to investigate the alleged treason of the system government of Beowulf in aiding and abetting an enemy of the Solarian League. All debate having been completed, the Chair now calls the vote.”
...
“The vote is eight thousand seven hundred and twelve in favor, two thousand nine hundred and three opposed. The motion is carried.”

...

“The Chair recognizes the Honorable Delegate from Beowulf,” she announced.
Hadley didn’t bother to stand as her image replaced the Speaker’s. She simply sat there, looking out of the display as a silence settled over the thousands of delegates.
...
Instead, as the leader of Beowulf’s delegation, acting on the instructions of my star system’s legally elected government, I hereby announce that Beowulf will hold a system-wide plebiscite two T-months from today to determine whether or not the Beowulf system shall withdraw from the Solarian League.”

(Severely clipped at ellipses. Bold type is mine.)

1: motion AD-1002-07-02-22 dates the motion to investigate Beowulf at 02 July 1922 PD.

2: Two weeks debate puts the Vote to investigate at 16 July 1922 PD

3: "Two months from today" schedules the plebiscite for 16 September 1922 PD.

4: Mycroft will become fully operational one day before the Plebiscite -- barring delays. Mycroft should be at least partially operational if even one Mycroft relay is completed and in place before the plebiscite. (pods won't be the delay if any. Any podlayer can dump its entire load of Apollo pods in a matter of minutes.

Jonathan_S wrote:So even if the install didn't start until July when that conversation happened I didn't find anything to contradict that conversation's claim that Mycroft should be installed by October or so.

Any action at Beowulf is scheduled for on or about 16 September 1922 PD, including a fully operational Mycroft installation. Any scene dated October 1922 is just waiting for the information on the results to trickle around the Honorverse.

Star Knight wrote:There is no need for mycroft period.
Just park one Invictus BatRon outside the hyper limit.

That goes back to the issue of Manticore "pressuring" the Beowulf Plebiscite. We all know Beowulf is going to secede - Beowulf already knows, Manticore already knows. And the results of the plebiscite wouldn't change if the entire Manticorian Navy, Army, and Marines showed up (Actually Beowulf would just have a planetary wide Family Reunion).

Manticore just wants to make sure there is ZERO chance that any idiot outside observer can find any tiny proof of Manticorian influence. So they will pull everything that says "Manticore" on it (including the Manticore Hard Rock Café T-shirts) way out of the system.

Mea maxima culpa. My original memory of the timeline for deployment of Mycroft was in error. 2 months or better as opposed to my recollection of about 6 months. Beowulf's executive decision to avoid the perception of Manticore coercion of the referendum vote, and the original quote of HH happens the day of Beowulf's secession from the league. as I said only first 19 chapters are up on Baen, all I read.

PS thanks for the flip chart.

Wasn't there an Author's comment earlier that there were 10,000 casualties related to whatever happens at Beowulf? No I have not read Shadow of Victory yet.

Somehow I think someone would have mentioned that if it had occured in SOV.