Weird Harold wrote:n7axw wrote:You do have evidence of a Solly attack on Beowulf being planned at the end of ART.A Rising Thunder
(The very last scene) wrote: “You mean Kingsford and Bernard are thinking in terms of pouncing on Beowulf—coming straight in across the hyper limit and going flat out for the planet—before any Manty forces at the terminus can intervene?”
“I think that’s about the only thing they could be thinking of,” al-Fanudahi said. “I don’t know if it would work, but assuming Beowulf hasn’t been completely surrounded by new and nasty missile pods, a big enough force of superdreadnoughts, especially with enough of the new Technodyne missile pods, probably could fight its way in through the BSDF and the fixed defenses. And once they controlled the planetary orbitals, they’d be justified under interstellar law in demanding the system’s surrender.”
“And exactly where in this fascinating analysis of yours do the Manty superdreadnoughts come in?” Teague inquired politely. “You know, the ones over at the terminus? The ones who are going to come right back over to Beowulf and kick our sorry asses out of the star system?”
“Oh, those superdreadnoughts?” Al-Fanudahi smiled crookedly at her. “Well, I suppose the idea would be that once the system government surrendered to us, we’d announce special emergency elections—called at the insistence of the Beowulfan public, of course—in light of the existing Board of Directors’ high-handed and probably treasonous actions. And no doubt that new, legitimate system government would denounce the previous system government’s decision to even consider seceding from the Solarian League. Obviously, it would be incumbent upon us to recognize the new, legitimate—I did mention that it would be legitimate, didn’t I?—system government’s position. And, equally obviously, Manticore would be on very thin ice when it came to denying the legitimacy of that new system government, given their desire to avoid the puppet-master image. So the logic, I imagine, is that since what Manticore really needs is control of the Beowulf Terminus, the Manties would recognize a fait accompli when they saw it and let us have the Beowulf System back.”
“And if the Manties don’t roll over that way?”
“In that case, I would imagine, our fleet commander negotiates a withdrawal from the star system. Probably on the grounds that the orders which sent him there in the first place had misread the true sentiments of the Beowulfers. Now that he’s had the opportunity to observe firsthand that the decision to secede enjoys genuine popular support, of course he’s prepared to acknowledge that and retire from the lists. Of course, if Manticore is so unreasonable as to deny a negotiated, peaceful withdrawal with no further combat, our commander can’t be held responsible for any collateral damage that might befall the system infrastructure—and population, unfortunately—in the course of an unprovoked Manticoran attack upon his peaceably departing forces.”
(bold mine)n7axw wrote:What we don't know is how that was carried out or even if it was carried out. But it is not unreasonable to assume that it did or to speculate on the outcome.
That scene is about a impending request for an intelligence assessment and speculation about just what might be planned. We don't actually know that the attack was planned or scrubbed in favor of the "commerce raiding" depicted in the snippets.
Given the rumor of 10 million civilian deaths, I would guess that the speculation in the texev above is pretty close to the actual plan -- especially the bit about "peacefully departing forces."
We still have the ROE issue. Despite both being members of the GA, the RMN does not necessarily have freedom of navigation within the SD system. This is definitely something that should be addressed in SOPs and operational plans. And it takes hours from entering N-space to 0-0 intercept with a planet's orbit. Is an arrogant BF admiral going to burn at 5% of compensator max to 0-0 before RMN units can respond, or is he going to run in expecting to scare the bejeebers out of any 5th rate SDF admiral tasked with keeping The Real Navy out of its back yard? Especially if the thinking at the Admiralty is Manticore won't dare respond to the threat "given their desire to avoid the puppet-master image."
If they cause your missiles to impact into the planet, that's on them.