Battle of Spindle

Isilith wrote:Does the Battle of Spindle ( Mike vs crandall ) actually get described in any of the books? If so, which one? I can't seem to find, or remember at any rate, anything but off screen references to it.

Solarian counter-missile doctrine had never envisioned a salvo density like this. Traditional missile defense planning focused on identifying the attack missiles most likely to achieve hits and then targeting each of them with multiple counter-missile launches. But there wasn't going to be time for that in the face of such a ferocious closing velocity. In fact, there would be time for only a single CM launch before the MDMs screamed completely across their engagement envelope, and even taking full advantage of the additional fire control of the Aegis refits a third of Crandall's ships had received, her superdreadnoughts could produce less than two thousand counter-missiles per launch. That was approximately one CM for every 6.5 Mark 23s slicing towards them, which would have been hopelessly inadequate under any circumstances.
Now "inadequate" became "futile" as the control missiles activated their slaved electronic warfare platforms.
Missile defense officers stared in disbelief as their displays went berserk. Dragon's Teeth blossomed like seductive flowers, flooding Task Force 496's fire control with false targets. The number of threat sources doubled, then doubled yet again, and again, hopelessly swamping the Solarian systems' ability to discriminate the true threats from the counterfeit. The computers driving those systems, and the men and women behind those computers, did their best, but their best wasn't good enough.
The incredible horde of false signatures guaranteed the limited number of counter-missiles the Solarians could bring to bear would be effectively useless, but Michelle Henke and her officers had been unwilling to settle for that. Even as the Dragon's Teeth spawned, the Dazzler platforms spread across the front of the attack salvo activated in a carefully sequenced chain, ripping huge, blinding holes in Task Force 496's sensor coverage. The Dazzlers' exquisitely choreographed chaos reduced even the last ditch laser clusters of their targets' point defense systems to impotence.
Of the ninety-two hundred Mark 23 attack birds in Aivars Terekhov's Alpha launch, Sandra Crandall's task force managed to stop exactly one thousand and seven. The other 8,209 got through.
* * *
SLNS Joseph Buckley lurched indescribably as the Manticoran missiles detonated and x-ray lasers ripped at her massive armor.
Thick as that armor was, it was no match for the stilettos of focused radiation punching into it like brimstone awls. It shattered under the transfer energy as the lasers ripped deeper and deeper, and the huge ship bucked in agony.
Jacomina van Heutz clung to the arms of her command chair as her shock frame hammered her. The fleeting instant in which the Manticoran missiles could bring their lasers to bear against her ship's sidewalls as they penetrated the Solarian formation with a closing velocity which had climbed to seventy-three percent of light-speed was far too brief for any of Joseph Buckley's damage to register on merely human senses as individual hits. It was all delivered in one stroboscopic lightning bolt of devastation, too sudden and intense for even the ship's computers to register or sort out.
Those missile-born talons gouged and tore. Energy mounts and missile tubes, counter-missile launchers, radar arrays, point defense clusters, boat bays, gravitic sensors, impeller nodes—all of them shattered, exploding into tattered ruin in a single catastrophic moment, faster than a man could have blinked. In less time than it would have taken to cough, Sandra Crandall's flagship was transformed into a broken wreck, a splintered hulk, coasting onward under momentum alone, with three quarters of her crew wiped out of existence.
Nor did van Heutz' ship die alone. Her squadron mates Joseph Lister, Max Planck, and Joseph Hutton died with her. Like Buckley, Hutton at least avoided immediate and total destruction, but Lister and Planck were less fortunate. Lister shattered, breaking into three distinct pieces; Planck simply disappeared in a flash of white-hot fury.
Archimedes, Andreas Vesalius, Hipparchus, Leonardo da Vinci, Gregor Mendel, Marie Curie, Wilhelm Roëntgen, Alfred Wegener, Avicenna, al-Kawarizmi . . . every one of the Alpha launch's twenty-three targets—thirty-two percent of Crandall's total wall of battle—was reduced to splinters and wreckage in that single inconceivable, exquisitely synchronized explosion.

cthia wrote:Mike took her gloves off in this boxing match. She cheated -- just like her BFF in the ramblings thread. Go figure. LOL

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Mike took her gloves off in this boxing match. She cheated -- just like her BFF in the ramblings thread. Go figure. LOL

What cheat?

cthia wrote:Mike took her gloves off in this boxing match. She cheated -- just like her BFF in the ramblings thread. Go figure. LOL

tlb wrote:What cheat?

TFLYTSNBN wrote: Deploying a squadron of "mere" Saganami C heavy cruisers along with one geriatric DN to defend Spindle while covertly deploying a freighter full of Apollo pods is sneaky.

Not warning Adm Crandal that the Mark 23 missile is designed to ream Haven SDs which have far better missilr defenses and tougher armor than SLN SDs is decrptive.

Not warning Crandal that even without Keyhole 2 to provide FTL fire control, the Apollo control missiles effectively multiply the number of FC control channels by a factor of 8, and Saggy Cs have far more control channels than they ought to, is just plain diabolical.

Not warning Crandal that all of those recon drones provide FTL sensor readings effectively reduce the control time lag by 50% is just evil.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Mike took her gloves off in this boxing match. She cheated -- just like her BFF in the ramblings thread. Go figure. LOL

What cheat?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Deploying a squadron of "mere" Saganami C heavy cruisers along with one geriatric DN to defend Spindle while covertly deploying a freighter full of Apollo pods is sneaky.

Not warning Adm Crandal that the Mark 23 missile is designed to ream Haven SDs which have far better missilr defenses and tougher armor than SLN SDs is decrptive.

Not warning Crandal that even without Keyhole 2 to provide FTL fire control, the Apollo control missiles effectively multiply the number of FC control channels by a factor of 8, and Saggy Cs have far more control channels than they ought to, is just plain diabolical.

Not warning Crandal that all of those recon drones provide FTL sensor readings effectively reduce the control time lag by 50% is just evil.