The Battle of Darius - What would you say?

JohnRoth wrote:

SYED wrote:Could the alignment sustain a relationship with Darius if they say loose Felix to the alliance? The distances involved would limit secrecy and viability. Sure it would be an asset but in a different form.

The Mesan part of the Mesan Alliance has no need to talk to Darius, while the MAlign (the Onion) is located on Darius.

Losing the Felix junction would certainly affect coordination. However, I recently heard one of General (and President) Eisenhower's aphorisms: "What is urgent is seldom important, what is important is seldom urgent."

Once the Detweiler kids get over their emotional snit fit, they're going to be going back into long-term mode.

Yes, Houdini literally removed Mesa from the Mesan Alignment.

SPOILER:




Michelle already sent someone to seize the Daruis WHJ, since it was not on the original Lacoon 2 list. Won't affect anything except for MAN ships going through, which won't happen anyway. They have no idea that the Renaissance factor is part of the MAlign. Nor do they know of Kolokainos Shipping's involvement.

Now that the war is over, Lacoon 2 and the seizure of the Daruis WHJ is "uncertain." My guess is regardless the rest of the WHJ status seized, Michelle will maintail control of Dariys until she departs Mesan space.

Someone mention Darius being secured, do we know what happened to the force at the twins? It is said the region it is in is very empty, so eventually the picket force needs to get more consumables. They either hope to get aid the long way round, or make the journey themselves. Eventually torch will attempt the crossing again,

Due to the twins, I can see the kingdom of torch claiming Darius, with aid from the alliance. A connection into the league itself is always valuable. So while attempting to survey the other terminii, they would recieve a good income.

As part of the obscuring of Darius, it is said to be owned by four different companies. Want to bet they are those corrupt corps that pillage the verge?

They are elements of the Manerheim navy.

SYED wrote:Someone mention Darius being secured, do we know what happened to the force at the twins? It is said the region it is in is very empty, so eventually the picket force needs to get more consumables. They either hope to get aid the long way round, or make the journey themselves. Eventually torch will attempt the crossing again,

Due to the twins, I can see the kingdom of torch claiming Darius, with aid from the alliance. A connection into the league itself is always valuable. So while attempting to survey the other terminii, they would recieve a good income.

As part of the obscuring of Darius, it is said to be owned by four different companies. Want to bet they are those corrupt corps that pillage the verge?

We seem to have wandered into the twilight zone.

Michelle undoubtedly took over the VISIGOTH wormhole junction, which has two remote termini: one at Mesa, the other at Ghatotkacha (Epsilon Virgo) in Gupta Sector (ToF p 352 bottom). Securing the fast route back to Manticore seems like a very worthwhile military objective, at least to me. (Visigoth to Beowulf is only 60 ly; Mesa to Lynx is over twice as far.)

It's the FELIX whj that's 10 ly from Mannerheim. That has four remote termini: one at Darius, one at the Twins, and two unknown (at least before UH.)

At this point, the whole Mannerheim connection is unknown to the GA. That includes Felix, The Twins, the Mannerheim task force at The Twins, the name Darius itself and the link to Darius.

All of that is to be part of the next story arc, assuming RFC is ever going to write it.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
What happens when the BSC with treecat assistance starts checking all the freighters that could have delivered the bombs? Those computer cores should be very interesting indeed...

Since MAlign isn't run by utter incompetents the freighters aren't likely to yield much. If Haven could keep Bolthole a secret for years MAlign isn't going to leave sensitive data on disposable black ops ships.

Slneezy wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
What happens when the BSC with treecat assistance starts checking all the freighters that could have delivered the bombs? Those computer cores should be very interesting indeed...

Since MAlign isn't run by utter incompetents the freighters aren't likely to yield much. If Haven could keep Bolthole a secret for years MAlign isn't going to leave sensitive data on disposable black ops ships.

From the last couple of books, it appears that most traffic to Darius is transshipped - probably several times. The actual ships that travel to Darius are only used in the last leg of a long series of hub and spoke transshipments. By this time, Darius has probably swapped to a different set of pre-planned transship points than was used prior to the fall of Mesa and Houdini, so as Manticore and party roll up Manpower and it's empire looking for leads, Darius will be operating elsewhere, and it's direct shipping will be impossible to simply trip over.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
What happens when the BSC with treecat assistance starts checking all the freighters that could have delivered the bombs? Those computer cores should be very interesting indeed...

Slneezy wrote:Since MAlign isn't run by utter incompetents the freighters aren't likely to yield much. If Haven could keep Bolthole a secret for years MAlign isn't going to leave sensitive data on disposable black ops ships.

Theemile wrote:
From the last couple of books, it appears that most traffic to Darius is transshipped - probably several times. The actual ships that travel to Darius are only used in the last leg of a long series of hub and spoke transshipments. By this time, Darius has probably swapped to a different set of pre-planned transship points than was used prior to the fall of Mesa and Houdini, so as Manticore and party roll up Manpower and it's empire looking for leads, Darius will be operating elsewhere, and it's direct shipping will be impossible to simply trip over.

Yup. It's fun thinking about how they might do that.

One possibility is that they have componentized transshipment modules that can be broken down, shipped somewhere else and reassembled at the new location. There are a lot of red dwarfs that are pretty useless for anything scattered around.

JohnRoth wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
What happens when the BSC with treecat assistance starts checking all the freighters that could have delivered the bombs? Those computer cores should be very interesting indeed...

Slneezy wrote:Since MAlign isn't run by utter incompetents the freighters aren't likely to yield much. If Haven could keep Bolthole a secret for years MAlign isn't going to leave sensitive data on disposable black ops ships.

Theemile wrote:
From the last couple of books, it appears that most traffic to Darius is transshipped - probably several times. The actual ships that travel to Darius are only used in the last leg of a long series of hub and spoke transshipments. By this time, Darius has probably swapped to a different set of pre-planned transship points than was used prior to the fall of Mesa and Houdini, so as Manticore and party roll up Manpower and it's empire looking for leads, Darius will be operating elsewhere, and it's direct shipping will be impossible to simply trip over.

Yup. It's fun thinking about how they might do that.

One possibility is that they have componentized transshipment modules that can be broken down, shipped somewhere else and reassembled at the new location. There are a lot of red dwarfs that are pretty useless for anything scattered around.

No Doubt- It's been mentioned several times that some small stations are built out of standard modules made specifically for that purpose. It's very likely that the last set of transship points were designed to be, and subsequently were, dismantled and moved elsewhere, just like you said.

I can just see the Torch assault group poping into a totally uninhabited star system right on top of their target, only to find ... nothing....

"Darn it, 15 different ship manifests pin-point a station here - where did it go!"

An empty station, save for the 15MT nuke waiting patiently for someone to open the door to the control room...

kzt wrote:An empty station, save for the 15MT nuke waiting patiently for someone to open the door to the control room...

[Boarding Lieutenant] "Sarge, what did you see on the whisker camera?"
[Sargent] "...weird - The room is empty with the exception of a grav pallet full of bottles of "Nuke" brand Soda Water."