Eagleeye wrote:runsforcelery wrote:“I can’t compel you to do anything without killing more of your ships, Admiral,” she said flatly, “and between the two of us, I think enough people have already died today. So here’s my proposition. You take your surviving ships, and you get the hell out of Hypatia. I’m sure the Hypatians will take care of rescuing all your surviving personnel, assuming they can stop trying to save the civilians — the children — the Solarian League is willing to murder to make a political statement. If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. You’ve got ten minutes to make up your mind. If you decide to stay, then I suppose you and I will find out how many more of your battlecruisers I can take out, one-by-one, until you — or your successor — finally figure out where I really am and manage to return fire. Of course, even when you do, my defenses are designed to stand up to Manticoran missile fire, aren’t they? And, trust me, I’m one hell of a lot faster than anything you’ve got. You can’t find me, you can’t hit me, you can’t catch me, and you damned well can’t outrun me.
“So you make up your mind, Admiral Yountz. You tell me what you’re going to do and whether or not I’m going have to start killing more Sollies today after all.
If I had to put my 2 cents on a wager, I'd guess we see a second example of how a certain Captain Amanda Belloc, CO of HMS Madelyn Hoffman, prefers to handle a situation ... At least it's a similar style.
Where was she last mentioned? I had thought vaguely of Abigail here.
'designed to stand up to Manticore missile fire' reminds me of the old American standard that a battleship's armor should be effective against that ship's guns. That was a fine standard, though it led to a number of evaluations that the Montana class (that was not built) was disappointing in terms of its performance vs its displacement and cost.
Astute readers will recall that the illustrious author has a minor degree of interest in the history of American warships, somewhat like my interest in the American Presidential administrations of 1845-1861.
