Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoilers?)

Weird Harold, I just wanted to thank you for your well-thought out and informational post.

Weird Harold wrote:Interesting idea. I don't know of any information about Felix that conflicts with your theory.

We know that Felix has four Termini.

We know it was discovered by a Jessyk Combine survey, ca. 200 years ago and Darius was located and surveyed through the FWHJ

We know that one leads to Darius and one to the Twins (which in turn leads to Torch through the second Twin.

We know, IIRC, that the Jessyk Combine uses the other two termini sparingly; we are never told where those termini lead.

We know Jessyk Combine transports slaves to corrupt and venal buyers in Silesia.

We know, IIRC, that Edward Saganami was killed by Manpower minions while protecting a convoy. This could be evidence of MAlign commerce raiding that early? We know that the MAlign is blamed for Haven's decline into Legislaturalist/Dolist Conquistadores -- also about 200 years ago, IIRC.

A shortcut from MAlign Space to Silesia starting from around 200 years ago, along with a "backdoor into the Haven Sector" at Torch, could easily account for many of the known problems/incidents in Silesia.

Weird Harold wrote:

SYED wrote:I am putting forth the idea, the terminii might be linked to Felix, as there has been mentions of Mesan activities and influence in and near the confederacy. Too much just to be the Malignement messing with the manties, the mesans want this region weak. It would explain why it was a mess for so long. It would be a way to ensure the security of the terminii, if the local power was ineffective.

Interesting idea. I don't know of any information about Felix that conflicts with your theory.

We know that Felix has four Termini.

We know it was discovered by a Jessyk Combine survey, ca. 200 years ago and Darius was located and surveyed through the FWHJ

We know that one leads to Darius and one to the Twins (which in turn leads to Torch through the second Twin.

We know, IIRC, that the Jessyk Combine uses the other two termini sparingly; we are never told where those termini lead.

We know Jessyk Combine transports slaves to corrupt and venal buyers in Silesia.

We know, IIRC, that Edward Saganami was killed by Manpower minions while protecting a convoy. This could be evidence of MAlign commerce raiding that early? We know that the MAlign is blamed for Haven's decline into Legislaturalist/Dolist Conquistadores -- also about 200 years ago, IIRC.

A shortcut from MAlign Space to Silesia starting from around 200 years ago, along with a "backdoor into the Haven Sector" at Torch, could easily account for many of the known problems/incidents in Silesia.

Nice summary. And a link in that direction would be two back doors to the Haven Quadrent, which includes Silesia and the Andies (Solarian naming conventions being sooooo precise. )

The Malign would have been training their agents and working up methods; I wonder if they inspired the rebels in Silesia? Wasn't there a mention in text that about a third of the Confederacy at any given time was in revolt?(hence, privateers and pirates; hence, Manticoran emphasis on commerce protection in Silesia).

You're putting the People's Republic a bit early-- istr they got the Havenite constitution amended @1770's? So, sure, the Malign were there messing around before that. Setting up covert agents, local alpha lines---becoming policy wonks.

New Sollie battlecruisers in Silesia--no doubt supplied by Technodyne; weren't some of them captured by Saganami as prizes? No mention of any trouble with the League from that, but I would guess it pushes the "Manties are just pain in the ass neo-barbs" attitude further in the SLN. Especially since the pirates (ie., Sollie mercs or even FF covert ops) lost.

I don't think the Malign was "commerce raiding" anyone; the piracy stemmed a lot from the greediest of the Sillie oligarchs, too. But there was a sort of sidenote mention of New Hamburg, a slave-holder system nearby; and more importantly, that in the past, Manpower mercs were raiding planets (like the Mfecane) for slaves. They supposedly don't do it anymore, and istr the Andies convinced New Hamburg not to do any more raiding, either.

He doesn't go into it, but did rfc ever call New Hamburg or Hakim (slave holders outside Mesa) "rogue regimes" or outlaws ? --even though they are, by Cherwell Convention signatories. Most of the outrage seems to be pointed at Mesa and Manpower. Systems that keep it in-system are probably more prevalent than we realize, because they haven't been important enough to be tum te tummed or factored into the plot.

Also, the Sollie public worships the concept of "self-determination", so if folks want to live in slave societies, the Solarian public just doesn't care. After all, they're just Verge neo-barbs anyway, so what do you expect? It's why they set up OFS in the first place, to straighten them out!

Regards,

Rob

You mean other than when they assassinated the entire government when they started being a actual government?

Eagleeye wrote:How fast can a squadron of two of BCs (or Shrike-LACs, to put the most challenging benchmark in your way), tasked with watching over a terminus, destroy a SD which comes through that terminus? Can a SD, relying only on its armor, survive an attack long enough, that a 2nd one can come through, before the 1st one is destroyed or mission killed?

If that's the case - that could be a chance, if you're ruthless and/or desperately enough. Put some voluntaries (or some war criminals with death sentences) aboard such vessels and send them through the Torch-end of the terminus in as tight a sequence as technical possible - and send your own regular vessels through only after a big enough number of the deathtraps went through. The guardians should still be occupied with destroying the deathtraps while your own warships can reestablish their fighting capability after the transit ...

I admit, you should've got knowledge beforehand about the theoretical survivability of the passage through other ways, while the Alignment/RF remains in the dark about that - but if you're reasonable sure about that minor fact, you could (I say again: could) try it that way.

I doubt you can push enough through to swamp the defenders.

I'm thinking that perhaps the answer to such an attack comes from the Antares novels of Michael McCollum. They had foldpoints, akin to the warp points of the Starfire novels. The aliens pull off an attack by sending through a huge antimatter bomb--the kaboom temporarily blinded all the defenders.

They used antimatter so it wouldn't leave behind a charged plasma cloud but that's not an issue here--the objective is not to be able to shoot promptly, but to get out of the wormhole enough to be able to bring up the wedge.

Send through a few "ships" that are nothing but the hardware for wormhole transit plus a huge fusion bomb. (Yes, you need a crew. The crew isn't actually winching up sails or the like--which means the crew doesn't actually have to be on the ship. Queue up three bombs and then a special ship--basically an inside-out SD(P). There are no doors to roll pods, they're just pushed off as fast as they can be. It's not something you would normally use as the pods are incredibly vulnerable and until they're away it's defenses will be blocked. It's carrying crew that use a radio link to send the bomb ships through.

An h-bomb of a small ship size isn't actually going to take out the defenders but it's going to make it awfully hard for them to see. The plasma cloud will play havoc with anything other than gravitic sensors--and the SD(P) won't be using any gravitic tech until the missiles light off.

kzt wrote:You mean other than when they assassinated the entire government when they started being a actual government?

Who assassinated whom, when, where?

[/quote]Nice summary. And a link in that direction would be two back doors to the Haven Quadrent, which includes Silesia and the Andies (Solarian naming conventions being sooooo precise. )

The Malign would have been training their agents and working up methods; I wonder if they inspired the rebels in Silesia? Wasn't there a mention in text that about a third of the Confederacy at any given time was in revolt?(hence, privateers and pirates; hence, Manticoran emphasis on commerce protection in Silesia).

You're putting the People's Republic a bit early-- istr they got the Havenite constitution amended @1770's? So, sure, the Malign were there messing around before that. Setting up covert agents, local alpha lines---becoming policy wonks.

New Sollie battlecruisers in Silesia--no doubt supplied by Technodyne; weren't some of them captured by Saganami as prizes? No mention of any trouble with the League from that, but I would guess it pushes the "Manties are just pain in the ass neo-barbs" attitude further in the SLN. Especially since the pirates (ie., Sollie mercs or even FF covert ops) lost.

I don't think the Malign was "commerce raiding" anyone; the piracy stemmed a lot from the greediest of the Sillie oligarchs, too. But there was a sort of sidenote mention of New Hamburg, a slave-holder system nearby; and more importantly, that in the past, Manpower mercs were raiding planets (like the Mfecane) for slaves. They supposedly don't do it anymore, and istr the Andies convinced New Hamburg not to do any more raiding, either.

He doesn't go into it, but did rfc ever call New Hamburg or Hakim (slave holders outside Mesa) "rogue regimes" or outlaws ? --even though they are, by Cherwell Convention signatories. Most of the outrage seems to be pointed at Mesa and Manpower. Systems that keep it in-system are probably more prevalent than we realize, because they haven't been important enough to be tum te tummed or factored into the plot.

Also, the Sollie public worships the concept of "self-determination", so if folks want to live in slave societies, the Solarian public just doesn't care. After all, they're just Verge neo-barbs anyway, so what do you expect? It's why they set up OFS in the first place, to straighten them out!

Regards,

Rob[/quote]

Rob, I am digging deep but if I recall I believe the MAlign was encouraging the commerce raiding on the part of the Sillies and supplying them ships in an attempt to make it so costly for Manticore to ship in the region they would pull out. Encouraging commerce raiding by the Sillies was the MAlign hoping to prevent Manticore influence from spreading in the region.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

kzt wrote:You mean other than when they assassinated the entire government when they started being a actual government?

Who assassinated whom, when, where?

It's been a while, and the book is at home. It was suggested it was Manpower. The new president decided that she would actually govern the Confederacy in an intelligent, non-corupt and non-partisan fashion as a real nation and was apparently replacing the corrupt officials with ones who were not. In the process lots of Mesan toes got stepped on, and one night pretty much the entire government got assassinated by 'parties unknown'.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Eagleeye wrote:How fast can a squadron of two of BCs (or Shrike-LACs, to put the most challenging benchmark in your way), tasked with watching over a terminus, destroy a SD which comes through that terminus? Can a SD, relying only on its armor, survive an attack long enough, that a 2nd one can come through, before the 1st one is destroyed or mission killed?

If that's the case - that could be a chance, if you're ruthless and/or desperately enough. Put some voluntaries (or some war criminals with death sentences) aboard such vessels and send them through the Torch-end of the terminus in as tight a sequence as technical possible - and send your own regular vessels through only after a big enough number of the deathtraps went through. The guardians should still be occupied with destroying the deathtraps while your own warships can reestablish their fighting capability after the transit ...

I admit, you should've got knowledge beforehand about the theoretical survivability of the passage through other ways, while the Alignment/RF remains in the dark about that - but if you're reasonable sure about that minor fact, you could (I say again: could) try it that way.

I doubt you can push enough through to swamp the defenders.

I'm thinking that perhaps the answer to such an attack comes from the Antares novels of Michael McCollum. They had foldpoints, akin to the warp points of the Starfire novels. The aliens pull off an attack by sending through a huge antimatter bomb--the kaboom temporarily blinded all the defenders.

They used antimatter so it wouldn't leave behind a charged plasma cloud but that's not an issue here--the objective is not to be able to shoot promptly, but to get out of the wormhole enough to be able to bring up the wedge.

Send through a few "ships" that are nothing but the hardware for wormhole transit plus a huge fusion bomb. (Yes, you need a crew. The crew isn't actually winching up sails or the like--which means the crew doesn't actually have to be on the ship. Queue up three bombs and then a special ship--basically an inside-out SD(P). There are no doors to roll pods, they're just pushed off as fast as they can be. It's not something you would normally use as the pods are incredibly vulnerable and until they're away it's defenses will be blocked. It's carrying crew that use a radio link to send the bomb ships through.

An h-bomb of a small ship size isn't actually going to take out the defenders but it's going to make it awfully hard for them to see. The plasma cloud will play havoc with anything other than gravitic sensors--and the SD(P) won't be using any gravitic tech until the missiles light off.

The important point for a wormhole assault is the time in the emergence lane - which I believe can be as long as 8 or so minutes (for the Manticoran junction) depending on the power of the wormhole. During this time, the attacking ship can not bring up it's wedge, fire it's missiles, or bring up sidewalls.

Energy weapon equipped Defenders will be sitting about 2 light seconds (~600K km) from the wormhole, so the defenders will be outside the range a graser can penetrate the defender's sidewalls, but their grasers can easily hit the undefended attackers.

MDMs allow Forts or Control link heavy defenders to sit 10 or so light seconds away from the lane and control salvos of missiles (which will explode outside the lane and have the standoff range to cover the entire lane with their beams.) from far outside the range an attacker can respond.

To date, the best solution mentioned has been target saturation - throw so any small ships through at once that some have to get survive the emergence lane and escape to hyperspace. It's not so much an assault as a mission to identify the locus of the far end.

Theemile wrote:To date, the best solution mentioned has been target saturation - throw so any small ships through at once that some have to get survive the emergence lane and escape to hyperspace. It's not so much an assault as a mission to identify the locus of the far end.

Heck of a lot of lives to waste though merely to identify the wormhole's terminus.

My thought (which I've shared before) is that someone will discover that all known "killer" wormholes have certain characteristics, observable from the outside, lacking in the Torch wormhole. At that point someone will put 2 and 2 together and realize that the Mesan Alignment has a "Bolthole" and that it's somehow connected to the Torch wormhole.

A Question followed by a Daft idea and another question:

Why can't a ship's computer be programmed to raise aft sails based on velocity? The foresail would be raised by remote from Astro Control, (or another ship), once shipboard sensors determine there is sufficient velocity from the foresail the aft wedge would be reconfigured and the aft sail raised.

If that could be made possible, and I see no reason why a computer could not be so programmed, a large ship full of the most powerful explosives in the Honorverse could be sent through.

When the defenders open fire on the ship with their grazers the ship blows up. Now would the explosion be big enough to reach the defenders ships, or at least fry the sensors long enough for another ship to go through after?

I know there would be a problem with maybe the 2nd ship ramming the 1st if there weren't any defenders and the 1st ship was not destroyed, but could the computers also be programmed to reconfigure sails and accelerate after returning to normal space once the ship passes through the wormhole?