Honorverse ramblings and musings

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:An object can enter the throat and travel the length of a ship exiting out of the kilt??????

Say what? Did I read that right? Or is the spiked eggnog still taking effect?

Why would that be surprising? It's unlikely, given how narrow the space between the two wedges is (I think it's a couple dozen kilometers?), but hardly unthinkable; Especially not when we're talking about a civvie ship that isn't doing evasive maneuvers.

It was doing evasive maneuvers. He was the first to detect the projectiles and maneuvered to interpose his belly bands. It was then that the torp entered and exited from a completed different vector. But evenso, I never would have bet on it being possible.

If the wedge is shut down, that tunnel ought to be able to be used for evacuation. Right out the rear!

::shrug?::

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Refuge is a very poor example. They had no idea that anyone else even existed in the galaxy, ...

Refuge was just recently colonized by religious dissidents from Haven. Sometime after Eloise Pritchard became president.

Refugeans may reject all the rest of the galaxy, but they know it's there.

I was under the impression that textev stated that they had lost most of their history. Even who they were, let alone where they came from, or whether anyone else existed until the Peeps came a callin'. No time to read right now. I'm still in VOLUNTEER mode for the hollies.

drothgery wrote:

cthia wrote:Is it just me, or does the author seem to delight in killing innocent kids?

It's more that kids aren't going to be in the story unless it's one of
1) A child of a main character OR
2) An actual main character in a YA-focused story OR
3) People who something bad is going to happen to in order demonstrate just how evil the bad guys are.

Nope. Kids aren't safe at all in the Honorverse.

Collateral damage of the Gamma Center fall out killed over three hundred children that had been caught in the blast.

and then there's...

"He looked at the tattered, flaming wreckage where fourteen-year-old Peter and nine-year-old Georgina MacRory had just died and inhaled sharply."

And each time hurts me just as bad as the Mueller School Dome catastrophe. Perhaps this Weber SCI-FI is a bit too emotional for me.

SoV wrote:It was unlikely anyone here in the city of Thimble had any designs upon her life, but she was Steadholder Owens’ oldest daughter. That made her an important political chip, whether for Grayson’s internal politics or its relationship with the Star Kingdom, and there was always a chance someone would seek to cash that chip in. It was Gutierrez’ job to be certain that didn’t happen, and he was a man who took his duty seriously. Not to mention the very personal reasons he’d had to keep Abigail Hearns alive ever since a bloody, brutal day on a planet called Refuge in a star system called Tiberian. Mateo Gutierrez wasn’t a man who found it easy to show emotions—or so he fondly believed—but he hadn’t left the Marines and transferred to the Owens Guard on a whim.

Never considered that Abigail Hearns could become a pawn to sever the Manicore Grayson Alliance. Though I did wonder if the MAlign might not swing their 'turning A against B' bag of tricks against Manticore and Grayson.

SoV Ch. 25 wrote:
“That’s what it looks like,” Detweiler confirmed heavily. “Everything went to hell so quickly I doubt anyone’ll ever put the narrative together—not completely. But Jack may’ve gotten a bad case of second thoughts. One of the Gamma Center scientists—an alpha-line named Simões—suffered some kind of breakdown after his clone daughter was culled. It was a high-risk genome, so he should’ve been prepared, but he wasn’t. Unfortunately, his superiors felt he was essential to the project he was working on, so Isabel assigned Jack to ride herd on him.” Detweiler’s lips twitched in bitter amusement. “Apparently, instead of Jack keeping him in line, Simões pulled Jack out of line.”

“Jack always did have too much empathy,” Chernyshev said. “That was what made him so effective managing assets when he was in the field.”

The human element is responsible for Simoes being able to do the same thing to the man riding herd on him, Jack Mcbryde, as Haven's Commanding officers were able to do to the Citizen Commissioners riding herd on them.

Why? Because disloyalty and indifference to your own cadre of officers who are loyal to you, pisses them off royally.

Which is why Honor being effectively, for all intents and purposes, banished to Grayson could have gone South of South.

An enemy divided against itself cannot stand.

SoV wrote:Barregos nodded again. Admiral Alexander Chapman was the Erewhon Space Navy’s senior uniformed officer, and Glenn Horton was his and Roszak’s local interface with the Erewhonese yards building the Maya Sector Defense Force. Of course, the MSDF didn’t officially exist, but that was perfectly all right with Orville Barregos, since the ships in it didn’t officially exist yet, either.

And, he reminded himself, it won’t be so very long before the Maya Sector Defense Force becomes the Mayan Navy. And won’t that frost some chops in Old Chicago?

This brings me right back to my failing to understand why Sphinx doesn't have its own navy. They are the other twin in the Manticore Binary System, the richest system in the galaxy. They should be able to afford their own navy.

cthia wrote:

SoV wrote:Barregos nodded again. Admiral Alexander Chapman was the Erewhon Space Navy’s senior uniformed officer, and Glenn Horton was his and Roszak’s local interface with the Erewhonese yards building the Maya Sector Defense Force. Of course, the MSDF didn’t officially exist, but that was perfectly all right with Orville Barregos, since the ships in it didn’t officially exist yet, either.

And, he reminded himself, it won’t be so very long before the Maya Sector Defense Force becomes the Mayan Navy. And won’t that frost some chops in Old Chicago?

This brings me right back to my failing to understand why Sphinx doesn't have its own navy. They are the other twin in the Manticore Binary System, the richest system in the galaxy. They should be able to afford their own navy.

They do have their own navy. And sod does Gryphon.

It's called the Royal Manticoran Navy.

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:An object can enter the throat and travel the length of a ship exiting out of the kilt??????

Say what? Did I read that right? Or is the spiked eggnog still taking effect?

Why would that be surprising? It's unlikely, given how narrow the space between the two wedges is (I think it's a couple dozen kilometers?), but hardly unthinkable; Especially not when we're talking about a civvie ship that isn't doing evasive maneuvers.

The infodump on wedge geometry says an SD’s kilt is 40km tall. And the ship itself is what, under 100 meters tall?

Lots of room for an object to sail between the wedge planes without hitting the ship. Now kind you, that same post says the SD’s throat is 190km tall. So the majority of material scooped up would impact the inside of one of the 2 wedge inclined planes. (And object vector might angle it into a wedge or sidewall. And the wedge is 300km wide so lots of volume in that 300x40km box that isn’t starship. (The sidewalls create a tunnel about 20km wide inside that 300km but that only matters if the objects path actually intersects them)

Mind you warships tend to use the hammerhead PDLCs to blast any objects too large for the rad and particle shielding to handle, and probably sanitize a reasonable sized zone around the current vector in case they need to make an emergency maneuver.

cthia wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Refuge was just recently colonized by religious dissidents from Haven. Sometime after Eloise Pritchard became president.

Refugeans may reject all the rest of the galaxy, but they know it's there.

I was under the impression that textev stated that they had lost most of their history. Even who they were, let alone where they came from, or whether anyone else existed until the Peeps came a callin'. No time to read right now. I'm still in VOLUNTEER mode for the hollies.

I think you’re getting Refuge (visited by Oversteigan and Miss Herns in one of the anthologies) over in ththe general direction of Erewhon with Sanctualty (aka Bolthole)

cthia wrote:

SoV wrote:Barregos nodded again. Admiral Alexander Chapman was the Erewhon Space Navy’s senior uniformed officer, and Glenn Horton was his and Roszak’s local interface with the Erewhonese yards building the Maya Sector Defense Force. Of course, the MSDF didn’t officially exist, but that was perfectly all right with Orville Barregos, since the ships in it didn’t officially exist yet, either.

And, he reminded himself, it won’t be so very long before the Maya Sector Defense Force becomes the Mayan Navy. And won’t that frost some chops in Old Chicago?

This brings me right back to my failing to understand why Sphinx doesn't have its own navy. They are the other twin in the Manticore Binary System, the richest system in the galaxy. They should be able to afford their own navy.

Vince wrote:They do have their own navy. And sod does Gryphon.

It's called the Royal Manticoran Navy.

Fat good it's going to do them parked and deployed around Manticore orbit when the amount of tonnage comes acallin' like what Tourville brought along and they decide to make a beeline straight for Sphinx. Which, as I said before, seems it would be too much distraction for Honor, family being there.

Which the SLN could still do. Hyper in, go straight for and kill Sphinx and make it hurt, being the bullies they are.