Jonathan_S wrote:Jonathan_S wrote:Hyperspace doesn't belong to anybody - League space is a series of non-connected normal space bubbles a light hour or so large around each League star system. So sailing from Beowulf to Mesa doesn't enter any League system's territorial space (as long as they enter hyper before moving too far from the Manticoran owned terminus in "international waters" towards the Beowulf system's hyper limit.
But more importantly you can't effectively monitor who is passing by in hyper so unless the League had lookouts at the Beowulf terminus they wouldn't know the Manticore was sending a fleet until they got news that Mesa had been occupied. (And even then to get the news in time to warn Mesa those observers would have to have a dispatch boat waiting on standby)
The League might be pissed off afterwards - even though no law or treaty was broken - but I can't see them being aware in time to warn Mesa or intervene to prevent its occupation. (Sending Frontier Fleet to try to kick Manticore out afterwards is a possibility though -- but I don't know that that risk is higher because they approach through Beowulf rather than coming the long way)
munroburton wrote:You are correct about the legalities. So what? It's still a foreign force of warships which popped into the core of the League. If China sent an aircraft carrier anywhere near continental USA waters, you can bet the house that there'd be a reaction, even if they remained in international waters and quickly went somewhere else.
As for monitoring the Beowulf terminus, there's a good chance in-system media would spot such a transit. If they do, there's nothing stopping them from passing the news on to Sol and elsewhere. Visigoth is quite close to Beowulf and has a wormhole linking directly to Mesa, so...
Can a hyperspace attack leaving from Beowulf reach Mesa before the news of their transit into Beowulf reaches Visigoth/Sol?
I don't think so. Not unless Beowulf Astro control and the rest of their government is complict. And if Beowulf was willing or able to take such action, they could have dealt with Mesa at some point too. That this never happened suggests to me Beowulf was probably constrained by its League membership.
That leaves the hyperspace route from Manticore, which whilst it prevents initial League interference(as long as there isn't a Raging Justice-like leak at Manticore's end), does take an enormous amount of time.
I do wonder how many freighters Tourville's Second Fleet needed for their deployment to near Sidemore.
Jonathan_S wrote:But why would the observers know where the Manticoran force is heading? Are you saying Mesa was ready to evacuate every time Manticore sent a large detachment of ships to Beowulf?
Once the ships slip into hyper they could be going anywhere. Or heck since you can't see any signal of a departure they could be hanging around in stealth out by the terminus. You shouldn't need much of a cover story to explain where they "really" are going and then they show up at Mesa.
Basically I don't see possession of the Lynx terminus making a Manticoran invasion of Mesa substantially more likely. If provoked to the point they felt it necessary they could have done it one way or another decades ago. So finding it shouldn't have triggered a panic reaction from the MAlign. (Though obviously the possibility of using patsies to steal a look at Manticore's new military toys would be very tempting - and I'm sure the MAlign didn't expect their fingerprints to be found after their plot went off; they had patsies to take that fall)
I regret that you don't, because Albrecht sure did, and so did I.
Mesan transtellars were deeply in bed with many of the more corrupt governments in and around the Talbott sector. That is the precise reason that they had the leverage that they used with Monica and, later, with New Tuscany. Manticore doesn't
like Mesan transstellars. They haven't had a lot of contact with them in their sphere because everybody on Mesa
knows that Manticore doesn't like their transstellars. Remember, Manticore doesn't like
Solarian transstellars (and chops them off at the ankle in the Star Kingdom), far less the Mesan variety. So as soon as star systems in the vicinity start making noises about signing up with the SKM, all kinds of Mesan cockroaches are likely to be scurrying out from under overturned rocks. And Manticore is likely to do something about it.
Prior to Manticore's involvement in Talbott, there were a bunch of light years between Landing and the developed tentacles of Mesa. That entire cushion went away when Manticore's turf was extended to turf already claimed by Mesan entities, at least by influence, investment, bribery, and manipulation.
In addition, prior to the discovery of the Lynx Terminus, any Manticoran fleet with a reasonable turnaround time would have had to go at least as far as Beowulf by way of the Beowulf Terminus, and there is no way on God's green earth that the RMN could conceivably have sent a large enough strikeforce through the Beowulf Terminus without its being noticed. And the only reason for them to send a strikeforce through the Beowulf Terminus would be because it was intended to operate somewhere within Solarian space. And that would have sounded warning bells all over the entire League, and those warning bells would certainly have gone off at Mesa, as well. Especially since the Manties had reasons to squash Mesa that didn't apply to anyone else. With the acquisition of Lynx, they could move something like five hundred light-years closer
without anyone knowing they had done so, given that the Lynx Terminus isn't actually associated with an inhabited star and that all traffic through it was controlled by the Manticoran military.
The point about the ability/inability of Manticore to intervene in Mesa prior to Roger Winton's buildup is also extremely valid. Manticore simply didn't have a big enough fleet to send that much of it away for that long a period of time because the fleet that it did have was fully occupied in commerce protection and associated operations in Silesia. That was sort of the point of Roger's analysis of the force levels and mix they required in the face of the growing Havenite threat. And once the Havenite threat was recognized in Manticore, there was even less probability of their sending a substantial portion of their navy clear to Mesa. In Edward Saganami's day, there was no other threat on the horizon, and even then they didn't send a significant portion of their
battle fleet off to Silesia until after Saganami had been killed and evidence had emerged that the Silesia in government (and Solarian interests) were directly involved in what had happened.
Even before open hostilities broke out between the SKM and the PRH, ships sent to Silesia were (1) nowhere near so far from Manticore as they would have been going after Mesa and (2) did not run the risk (indeed, the extremely
high risk, as in "virtual certainty") of drawing a massive Solarian response if Manticore suddenly started attacking Allied star systems (which for all of its deplorable involvement in the slave trade Mesa was) deep in the heart of Solarian territory. For example, I somehow doubt that the United States would fail to respond quite forcefully if the Chinese navy launched a massive airstrike on the cities of Canada and then moved in to install a new government. I could be wrong about that, but somehow I quite think so.
So quite aside from not having the ships to send, sending them would have been a high risk operation, especially before the revolution in war-fighting technology which Manticore and Haven had introduced.
Albrecht Detweiler knew about that revolution, and as such he also knew that the threat of a massive Solarian response
ought to have been far less worrisome to Manticore than it had been while the old paradigm still applied and all of those superdreadnoughts gave the Solarian League a crushing strategic and tactical superiority.
So Albrecht was worried about a whole big bunch of things that suddenly acquiring Manticore as a neighbor was likely to bring to the surface. (1) He was afraid that Mesan operations in and around the Talbott Sector would come to Manticore's attention. (2) He was afraid that when that happened, Manticore would take . . . energetic action to deal with them. (3) The more that Manticore became directly engaged with Mesa (especially since
at the time Lynx became a factor Haven was apparently a
non-factor, which meant that Manticore was likely to be a lot less distracted than it might have been otherwise), the more likely it became that something the Alignment didn't want known would intrude into the light. (4) If Manticore decided that Mesa needed squashing, Manticore was in a position to do that and simultaneously provide the SLN with the sort of wake-up call which would cause the League to respond very cautiously to the "Manticoran provocation," which would very possibly have put paid to the long-term Alignment strategy of pitting the Solarian League against Manticore. (Well, actually, they had planned on pitting the League against
Haven, prior to Manticore's irritating insistence on surviving, but still . . . .)
Did he expect Manty battle squadrons in orbit around Mesa next Tuesday? No, he didn't. If he'd expected that, he would have activated Houdini at that time. He anticipated a more gradual process which he feared presented at least the possibility — maybe the
probability — that Manticore would
eventually become much more actively and aggressively involved against Mesa outside its own previous sphere of influence, which could very well
culminate in direct military action, launched through the Lynx Terminus (which would give it a much greater opportunity to arrive before even the most minimal Houdini could be executed).
The Lynx Terminus was (designedly) a significant astrographic game changer in a lot of ways, including the pretext it gave the League to claim that Manticore had become an imperialist, expansionist power. Its other major effect was to destabilize the Alignment's original game plan in a major way. Remember that the initial Alignment operation against Manticore was hidden in Monica behind a Solarian façade. When that operation failed, Crandall came into play as the second string to the Alignment's bow, which had already been maneuvered into position to support Monica's hopefully
successful bid to secure a Solarian-arbitrated claim to the Lynx Terminus. Since that hadn't worked, she was available for Plan B, and under Plan B, all that New Tuscany became was the mechanism by which Byng could be depended upon to provoke an incident with Manticore to involve Manticore in a shooting war with the League. And remember also that the point of getting Manticore involved in a shooting war with the League was less the destruction of Manticore (although that was a
highly desirable secondary objective) than it was the destabilization of the
League. So there were an awful lot of moving parts going on at this point, in a very short timeframe (given the time it takes to move between stars) and
all of it was hidden behind both Mesan and
Solarian transstellars, none of which directly involve the
government of Mesa, far less the Alignment of which (hopefully) Manticore remained blissfully unaware.
In short (although I realize that after the above word count "in short" may not be the very best way to describe it), Albrecht Detweiler had all sorts of extremely valid reasons to worry about the sudden proximity of Manticore to Mesa's "back garden" and the way in which that elevated the potential of a direct Manticoran punitive military response against
the Mesan government which was likely to lead to the discovery of the
Mason Alignment hidden behind the Mesan government.
