In regards to the conflict with the Solarian League

Just wrapped up Shadow of Victory and the final chapters that involve Henke and Tourville turning up in Mesa with over 50 Wallers and hundreds of other ships...

Why didn't they simply head to Sol and end the conflict with the Solarian League?

I mean, I get it from the story perspective. If Mike didn't turn up in Mesa, Zilwiki, Cachet, and the rest would have been killed.

But at this point it's painfully obvious there's nothing in the Solarian inventory that can stand up to anything in Manticore's arsenal, and Oyster Bay left a gaping hole in their war capability. With the League already hitting the Alliance's home system...it makes little sense to me why the Empress wouldn't be roaring into the cradle of mankind, seizing the orbital infrastructure, and forcing the Mandarins to sign on the dotted line.

Throughout the series it's hammered that the League is vast and with enough time, the tech imbalance will smooth out and how the Alliance has to be swift and deal a knockout blow as fast as possible. Yet the last several books have seen the Empire skittering around the fringes of the Verge stepping on the Alignment's brushfires while picking off piecemeal Frontier Fleet divisions in a contradiction to their stated war goal aims.

I get that Mesa is home to the Alignment and they are the true enemy, but several characters remark about not wanting to kill the SLN in job lots. Yet nobody is actually talking about punching the League in the throat.

Manticore holds the economic leverage over the League, and they can use that leverage to break the League and the worst of the Transtellars, so it can't be fear that seizing Sol will somehow galvanize the League into cohesion. And the best way to avoid having to kill everything in the SLN's inventory would be to get the Mandarins to sign on the dotted line as quickly as possible. Send in a few divisions of Destroyers to blow up the Reserve (Not that that wouldn't simply be a waste of ammunition, considering but the psychological blow would also break the League)...

It just feels like this war could have been dealt with several books ago and left the Alliance more free to deal with the real threat of the Alignment.

The Grand Alliance has been trying to de-escalate the situation; or, barring that, to pry the League apart along its extant fractional lines. Showing up as conquerors of the birthplace of humanity is quite liable to do the exact opposite.

Even excluding that, Mike Henke is the commander of Tenth Fleet. Her assigned operational area is the Talbott Sector. Her actions to date have been to secure her theatre, pursuant to the strategic guidelines from the Strategy Board. She has no more business going all the way to Sol - the long way - and leaving her AO buck naked, any more than Admiral Nimitz unilaterally deciding to take USPACFLT from the Pacific to assist the D-Day landings.

Potato wrote:The Grand Alliance has been trying to de-escalate the situation; or, barring that, to pry the League apart along its extant fractional lines. Showing up as conquerors of the birthplace of humanity is quite liable to do the exact opposite.

De-escalation seems moot now that a formal state of war exists between the two powers. And prying the League apart would be far easier in accordance to a peace treaty at this point. They've got Maya to begin the cascade of "Independent Movements" (I guarantee other Sector Governors will take a cue from Maya even from a cold start and rampant corruption), and that's not even taking the Renaissance Factor into account.

The point about Henke is well founded, but she's been reinforced with Tourville and she had no problem leaving her operational area with 300+ ships (50 of which are Wallers) to kick Mesa's teeth in. Just strikes me she could have put that force to better use - or rather I ought to say a better overall target.

Rust wrote:

Potato wrote:The Grand Alliance has been trying to de-escalate the situation; or, barring that, to pry the League apart along its extant fractional lines. Showing up as conquerors of the birthplace of humanity is quite liable to do the exact opposite.

De-escalation seems moot now that a formal state of war exists between the two powers. And prying the League apart would be far easier in accordance to a peace treaty at this point. They've got Maya to begin the cascade of "Independent Movements" (I guarantee other Sector Governors will take a cue from Maya even from a cold start and rampant corruption), and that's not even taking the Renaissance Factor into account.

The point about Henke is well founded, but she's been reinforced with Tourville and she had no problem leaving her operational area with 300+ ships (50 of which are Wallers) to kick Mesa's teeth in. Just strikes me she could have put that force to better use - or rather I ought to say a better overall target.

Rather than let this go wandering on, here's the actual situation.

The GA has decided not to attack Sol directly, for the reason that Potato stated: there is too much possibility that it will cause the SL planets to fall in line behind the Mandarins instead of causing the League to fragment. This is Word of God (i.e. the Author).

From what RFC has said, and from the snippets posted so far, that situation is going to change radically in Uncompromising Honor because Operation Buccaneer is going to violate the Eradani Edict and the Deneb Accords wholesale.

That, in turn, will change the political situation to where Grand Fleet can attack Sol and expect the repercussions to be positive.

Rust wrote:Just wrapped up Shadow of Victory and the final chapters that involve Henke and Tourville turning up in Mesa with over 50 Wallers and hundreds of other ships...

Why didn't they simply head to Sol and end the conflict with the Solarian League?

I mean, I get it from the story perspective. If Mike didn't turn up in Mesa, Zilwiki, Cachet, and the rest would have been killed.

But at this point it's painfully obvious there's nothing in the Solarian inventory that can stand up to anything in Manticore's arsenal, and Oyster Bay left a gaping hole in their war capability. With the League already hitting the Alliance's home system...it makes little sense to me why the Empress wouldn't be roaring into the cradle of mankind, seizing the orbital infrastructure, and forcing the Mandarins to sign on the dotted line.

Throughout the series it's hammered that the League is vast and with enough time, the tech imbalance will smooth out and how the Alliance has to be swift and deal a knockout blow as fast as possible. Yet the last several books have seen the Empire skittering around the fringes of the Verge stepping on the Alignment's brushfires while picking off piecemeal Frontier Fleet divisions in a contradiction to their stated war goal aims.

I get that Mesa is home to the Alignment and they are the true enemy, but several characters remark about not wanting to kill the SLN in job lots. Yet nobody is actually talking about punching the League in the throat.

Manticore holds the economic leverage over the League, and they can use that leverage to break the League and the worst of the Transtellars, so it can't be fear that seizing Sol will somehow galvanize the League into cohesion. And the best way to avoid having to kill everything in the SLN's inventory would be to get the Mandarins to sign on the dotted line as quickly as possible. Send in a few divisions of Destroyers to blow up the Reserve (Not that that wouldn't simply be a waste of ammunition, considering but the psychological blow would also break the League)...

It just feels like this war could have been dealt with several books ago and left the Alliance more free to deal with the real threat of the Alignment.

The problem with going against MAlign is that they have no idea where to go beyond Mesa. MAlign has kept its real secret very hidden.

And it is quite possible that the leaders of the GA do not fully realize YET that the purpose of MAlign is to take down the League, not Haven or Manticore.

I don't know how many, if any, of those remaining on Mesa know where the leadership is hiding.

ldwechsler wrote:I don't know how many, if any, of those remaining on Mesa know where the leadership is hiding.

I would bet that a first approximation is Zero. They all left early or were the people pushing the button. There might be some people left who might be able to eventually point them to the entrance to the meat grinder that is the terminus, but nobody who knows where in space Darius is still on Mesa. 3 can keep a secret if 3 are dead.

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:I don't know how many, if any, of those remaining on Mesa know where the leadership is hiding.

I would bet that a first approximation is Zero. They all left early or were the people pushing the button. There might be some people left who might be able to eventually point them to the entrance to the meat grinder that is the terminus, but nobody who knows where in space Darius is still on Mesa. 3 can keep a secret if 3 are dead.

Sorry, The MAlign is certainly out to crush both of Beowulf's potential allies:Haven and Manticore, the only 3 nations particularly enforcing the Cherwell conventions on genetic slavery. (1)Weaken both the SLN and Manticore between Oyster Bay and Operation Raging Justice. (2) Have Haven and the league go down hands around each others' throats. Then go after Beowulf and humiliate them by revealing that "The Detweillers Won" and their stupid ban on gengeneering failed. (3) Then watch as the league unravels and gets picked off piecemeal by the Renaissance Factor. But, no its just not going as planned.

Michelle does not even know that Black Victor and Zilwicki of the Spaceways Et Cie even tok a second trip to Mesa. Indeed, Zilwicki took the luxury yacht to Trevor's Star, to beg Honor to send someone, anyone to try to save Victor (et cie), only to read Honor's copy of Mike's letter stating her intention. So her going there was not a rescue mission.

Michelle's Duty station is Spindle. She went to Meyers to take the war to the League by shutting down that sector and destroying all FF units there to prevent another attack on the Quadrant. She also went looking for evidence of the MAlign. All she found were hints and whispers of maybe, possibly, but definitely the Mesan Transtellars were involved.

So still seeking proof positive to wave at the Mandarins to, yes, try to find a diplomatic way to end the war. She had justification to take independent action by assaulting Mesa. She had NO justification taking the battle straight to Earth. That Strategic decision had to be made by those (admittedly extremely few) in pay grades above hers. She is, after all, Still under Kumhalo's command.

Remember their communication loop may be much faster than The League's, it is still not FTL. Indeed it is still the speed of courrier ship.

The Alignment doesn't care about the Chartwell Convention. At best it has created losses in the ancillary profit making operations of Manpower and it's related companies which were run as cover for the genetics research operations the Alignment had.

Mesa is depicted as having been esentialy a cover misdirection and eventualy as a scapegoat and decoy to hide the real mission of the Alignment. You want to kill people who are genetic slavers? Fine, The Alignment doesn't consider themselves slavers. They are the improved version of humanity. They don't have slaves, they have lesser workers who are in their engineerd place in the structure of the Alignment humanity. They have LAWS about that.

The Alignment wants to shatter the League to allow for the controled (more or less) restructure everthing with the Alignment in control. At this point, Haven and Manticore are obstructions to that in as far as they are going to seriously delay the plan vs the time-frame that it was running on. So Haven and Manticore, who have selfishly managed not to either take each other over and then get destroyed by the league shortly before shatters, need to be broken. How many of them die in that process is if little concern to the Alignment. Except for possibly some imbeded Alpha or Gamma line agents/family lines, they are just so many normals who are of little more use than tools. Expendable tools. You don't even need any of them for breeding, you can harvest the DNA of any you think might have usefull traits and use it to grow your own engineerd tools (it's so easy) and dispence with the individuals who might continue to cause trouble. Medical sample of Honor Harrington, probably was a piece of cake to get a cell out of a lab, if you think you wanted a bit of her. And that son of her's all that uterine replicator work, one tiny cell- see, easy. If you want them.

Brigade XO wrote:The Alignment doesn't care about the Chartwell Convention. At best it has created losses in the ancillary profit making operations of Manpower and it's related companies which were run as cover for the genetics research operations the Alignment had.

Mesa is depicted as having been esentialy a cover misdirection and eventualy as a scapegoat and decoy to hide the real mission of the Alignment. You want to kill people who are genetic slavers? Fine, The Alignment doesn't consider themselves slavers. They are the improved version of humanity. They don't have slaves, they have lesser workers who are in their engineerd place in the structure of the Alignment humanity. They have LAWS about that.

The Alignment wants to shatter the League to allow for the controled (more or less) restructure everthing with the Alignment in control. At this point, Haven and Manticore are obstructions to that in as far as they are going to seriously delay the plan vs the time-frame that it was running on. So Haven and Manticore, who have selfishly managed not to either take each other over and then get destroyed by the league shortly before shatters, need to be broken. How many of them die in that process is if little concern to the Alignment. Except for possibly some imbeded Alpha or Gamma line agents/family lines, they are just so many normals who are of little more use than tools. Expendable tools. You don't even need any of them for breeding, you can harvest the DNA of any you think might have usefull traits and use it to grow your own engineerd tools (it's so easy) and dispence with the individuals who might continue to cause trouble. Medical sample of Honor Harrington, probably was a piece of cake to get a cell out of a lab, if you think you wanted a bit of her. And that son of her's all that uterine replicator work, one tiny cell- see, easy. If you want them.

I don't know they would be that interested. They believe that they alone know the right path. They don't know about her son's abilities at all. As for her, they probably assume she's very lucky.

And she is a great tool to take down the League which is their main goal.

Brigade XO wrote: (snip)
The Alignment doesn't consider themselves slavers. They are the improved version of humanity. They don't have slaves, they have lesser workers who are in their engineerd place in the structure of the Alignment humanity. They have LAWS about that. (snip}

Sorry, on the road to Daruis, Our intrepid sojourner reads that the native inhabitants of arius are indeed genetic slaves. The only ones in existence to be actually treated according to both the spirit and letter of the law, and raised in complete ignorance of their status as slaves. They may not be dealers in white or any other shade of slavery, but the slave caste is a very integral part of the Detweiller plan.

ldwechsler wrote:I don't know they would be that interested. They believe that they alone know the right path. They don't know about her son's abilities at all. As for her, they probably assume she's very lucky.

And she is a great tool to take down the League which is their main goal.

Oh but if planning department caught a whiff of feral humans developing telepathy, there would be a capture order issued post haste.