Maldorian wrote:If the Alignement planned to attack Heaven, too, means that they know the location of Bolthole?
No, it doesn’t. In fact, that was one of the arguments against hitting Haven. Recall that the original concern was Haven even more than Manticore. Of course, that was back in the day. The
Peoples Republic of Haven was their creation to cripple/defang Haven, but there was always an Oyster Bay option for going after Haven, although the exact weapons tech was in a state of flux as options changed and evolved. The war against Manticore drove their hand, however. They had seen, recognized, and worked to create the same fracture lines in the
League that Barregos had seen, but the League wasn’t “ripe” yet when the Havenite wars drove naval tech in the Haven Sector to unacceptable levels and made Manticore a far greater military and moral threat to their plans. At that point, they needed to knock Manticore out of the equation, but lacked the resources (yet — remember that their hand was being forced, timing wise) to do so on their own. They were
looking for Bolthole but had not found it, so they decided to make a virtue out of necessity and attempted to
cripple Manticore so badly, when the SKM’s back was to the Solarian wall, that any self respecting conquistador would
have to take the opportunity to climb back off the mat and finish it off. They had no idea where Bolthole was, and in the current iteration of their plan, they didn’t need to know ... yet.
BTW, it’s important to remember that they never
wanted to launch OB when they did. Manticore’s imminent victory over Haven, creating a counterweight for their plans that was
at least as dangerous to their strategy as pre-Legislaturalist Haven, pushed them into committing to the operation we’ll before their naval planners felt confident they had the forces to guarantee success. ,