Theemile wrote:Brigade XO wrote:The SLN Admiral, moving to effectivly seize the Sigma Draconus Terminus was amazed and annoyed that the BSDF even attempted to stop her....even to the extent of telling her that Beowulf would not allow her to use the terminus.
Clearly the SLN did not consider the BSDF SD's a serious threat. She even told the BSDF commander that, that she would NOT impede the SLN Task Forces with the Beowulf ships. Then, of course the RMN Fleet dropped their stealth and surprized the hell out of the the SLN. At that moment, the SLN Admiral had the very queasy feeling that just perhaps the BSDF SDs were perhaps a LOT more than she "knew" and the Manticor fleet not only massivly changed the numbers deployed against there but the tech advantage just displayed promised a lot more in the way of nasty surprises should she continue with her mission. At that point, she had to consider that she might not survive to get close enough to the wormhole to make a transit and even if she did, there probably wasn't going to be a lot left to take through the wormhole.
How in the hell could she even consider a hostile transit through what was probably the best known defended terminus in Human Space? Did the SLN have ANY information about what Manticore had waiting there?
Which, on the face of it is rediculous. All the SLN had to do was send a db through to Manticore and back with above average sensors and it should be appearent that the junction defenses were not horribly compromised, as the SLN would have needed for a successful assult. An exact count of the platforms and their scans is not necessary.
The SLN had a dispatch boat covered as INS that was already in Manticore:
A Rising Thunder, Chapter 20 wrote:Trudeau shook his head in disgust. When he and the rest of DB 17025’s crew had been designated for this operation, he’d thought it was a particularly . . . ill-advised notion. He’d even said so—tactfully, of course—although no one had paid him any attention. Which just went to show that brainpower wasn’t necessarily a requirement for high rank. They were a miserable dispatch boat, for God’s sake! Even assuming Junction ACS would be willing to let anyone make transit through the Junction at a time like this, a dipshit little courier boat wasn’t going to be very high in the queue. Which completely overlooked the fact that DB 17025 was a Solarian vessel. Of course, the geniuses who’d come up with this had probably done it before they realized the Manties were closing every wormhole terminus they could reach against Solarian traffic, but still . . .
On the other hand, we’re not just any Solarian dispatch boat, he reflected.
“Stay on it, Brynach,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to start taking calls from somebody, so lean on them. Remind them about our INS credentials.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lacharn nodded, although he had even more reservations about their orders’ basic assumptions than Trudeau. One of his sisters worked for the Ministry of Education and Information, which meant he knew exactly how the “independent reportage” of the Solarian media worked, and in his opinion, Solarian newsies were the very last people the Manties ought to be allowing to use the Junction. For that matter, the Interstellar News Service Corporation had never been high on the Manties’ list of favorite people—something to do with INS’ “accommodations” with the People’s Republic of Haven’s Office of Public Information. Still, it might work, he supposed, since—unlike the League—the Manties actually gave at least a little more than pure lip service to the concept of a free and independent press.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.
It was the arrival of that dispatch boat from Manticore to Beowulf via the Manticore Wormhole Junction (with a really good look at the intact Junction defenses) that was the signal for Tsang's forces to get underway:
A Rising Thunder, Chapter 23 wrote:Fleet Admiral Imogene Tsang sat up as the attention signal on her bedside communicator chimed. She raked hair out of her eyes, glanced at the time display, and grimaced. She’d been down for less than three hours, her eyes felt dry and scratchy, and the throbbing ache behind her forehead suggested that last pair of tequila sunrises might have been just a bit too much.
The com chimed again, and she stabbed the voice-only key with a vicious forefinger.
“What?” she snapped.
“Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am,” Admiral Pierre Takeuchi said quickly, “but the dispatch boat just came through the terminus.”
“It did?” Tsang turned sideways, sitting on the edge of her bed and planting her feet on the decksole. “How long ago?”
“Just over three minutes, Ma’am.” She sensed Takeuchi’s unseen shrug. “It took Lieutenant Trudeau, the dispatch boat’s skipper, a couple of minutes to spot Ranger and for Ranger to relay to us.”
“Understood.” Tsang felt a spike of irritation she knew was completely irrational (and probably owed at least a little of its strength to her headache). There was no way this Trudeau could have known where TF 11.6 was located relative to the Beowulf Terminus before he actually arrived. And it wasn’t as if the slight extra delay was going to make any difference to Tsang’s movements.
She’d deliberately held the task force ten million kilometers clear of the terminus. It was inconvenient as hell, and it was going to take the better part of an hour to reach the terminus with a zero-zero velocity and make transit, but it had the benefit of keeping her far enough out to avoid offending Beowulfan sensibilities any worse than she had to. She’d considered deploying recon platforms and communications relays closer to the terminus, where she could cut down on any confusion on the part of the incoming courier boat. That would have been pretty blatant, though. It would undoubtedly have undone her efforts to placate Beowulf’s ire, and it wasn’t as if the Beowulfers were going to sneak up on her and attack!
***Snip***
It was actually twenty-five minutes later, not twenty, when Tsang, headache banished by a quick squirt from her preferred morning-after inhaler, stepped onto SLNS Adrienne Warshawski’s flag deck. Not that the extra five minutes really mattered. A quick glance at the readiness display showed that Warshawski’s impeller nodes were still fifteen minutes from full readiness.
“Where are we, Pierre?” she asked brusquely.
“We should be able to get moving in another fifteen or twenty minutes, Ma’am,” he replied, twitching his head in the direction of the display Tsang had already consulted. “Franz transmitted the preparatory order for Arbela twenty minutes ago, and all tactical crews have acknowledged. And Sherwood’s copied Lieutenant Trudeau’s transmission to your console if you want to view it personally.”
“I’ll take a look at it in a minute,” she said. “Unless there’s something in it you think would affect Arbela?”
“No, Ma’am.” Takeuchi grimaced. “All he knows is that the system was reported under attack. Well, that and he did confirm that assuming the Manty traffic-control people were giving accurate time chops, they really do have FTL com capability.”
“Marvelous,” Tsang said sourly. It wasn’t that much of a surprise by now, but the confirmation emphasized the Manties’ tech capabilities unpleasantly. Especially now, when Operation Arbela had moved from a future probability to a present certainty.
“All right,” she went on a moment later. “I’ll take a look at Truman’s message. Meanwhile I think you and Franz should probably get on the net and touch base with our squadron commanders. Be sure we’re not looking at any unanticipated delays.”
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis. Blue text is a typo that sneaked through the editing process (
Truman should be Trudeau, Vice Admiral Alice Truman doesn't show up until Admiral Holmon-Sanders <Beowul> and Admiral Tsang <SLN> exchange ultimatums--about 5 pages later in the same chapter).
