Post League Eridani

GloriousRuse wrote:Since we don't have a copy of the Deneb Accords hanging around, we will have to extrapolate:

1. We have only Honor and Henke ever demanding cores as part of the surrender.

2. When Henke does it, it is a matter of some argument since it denies traditional rights - she wants it for some incriminating file if I remember right, the SLN of course eventually caves because they don't want to die, but not before pointing out that this violates all sorts of norms given the complete betrayal of the force it will end up being. Essentially making this demand is saying "If you won't help us kill your comrades by revealing every weapons spec and op plan you have, you don't get to surrender."

3. In earlier books, indeed all the way through the Haven Wars it is taken to be the norm that commanders are allowed to wipe their ships, and sometimes even scuttle them. Examples:

a) At 1st Manticore, Tourville is allowed to flush his ships despite being in an "untenable" position.

b) At Solon, when Henke is captured, she is admittedly abandoning a broken ship, yet the Havenites do not declare that it is still a lawful target after being clearly knocked out, just because they are going through ship purging.

c) When Honor is surrendering after being rendered hors-de-combat to the point where the Havenites are only holding off the kill so the captain will strike the wedge: "Commander Metcalf, jettison every FTL-equipped drone with a locked in self-destruct command, then purge the computers and instruct all hands to destroy classified equipment and material. Lieutenant Sanko, hail Bandit Ten. Inform her captain we surrender."

d) At no other surrender point in the series prior to dealing with the "Evil SLN" are captains denied the right to flush cores. It is an expected action. Some even get to scuttle their ships.

4) The accords being mostly built around Napoleonic era norms and conventions, the reasonable legal basis is that no uniformed officer would be forced against their will to provide information detrimental to their cause, a legal code that still continues to this day.

"We meet again, Admiral Tourville," she said, and her soprano voice was cold.
"Admiral Harrington," he replied. "This is a surprise. I thought you were about eight light-minutes away."
He gazed at her hard eyes, eyes like leveled missile tubes, and waited. The transmission lag for light-speed communications should have been eight minutes—sixteen minutes, for a two-way exchange—at that range, but she spoke again barely fifteen seconds after he finished.
"I am. I'm speaking to you over what we call a 'Hermes buoy.' It's an FTL relay with standard sub-light communication capability." The expression she produced was technically a smile, but it was one that belonged on something out of deep, dark oceanic depths.
"We have several of them deployed around the system. I simply plugged into the nearest one so that I could speak directly to you," she continued in that same, icy-cold voice. "I'm sure you observed my birds' terminal performance. I'm also sure you understand I have the capability to blow every single one of your remaining ships out of space from my present position. I hope you aren't going to make it necessary for me to do so."
Tourville looked at her, and knew that last statement wasn't really accurate. Knew a part of her—the part behind those frozen eyes, that icy voice—hoped he would make it necessary. But too many people had already died for him to kill still more out of sheer stupidity.
"No, Your Grace," he said quietly. "I won't make it necessary."
Another endless fifteen seconds dragged past. Then—
"I'm glad to hear that," she told him, "however my acceptance of your surrender is contingent upon the surrender of your ships—and their databases—in their present condition. Is that clearly understood, Admiral Tourville?"
He hovered on the brink of refusing, of declaring that he would scrub his databases, as was customary, before surrendering a ship. But then he looked into those icy eyes again, and the temptation vanished.
"It's . . . understood, Your Grace," he made himself say, and sat there tasting the bitter poison of defeat. Defeat made all the more poisonous by how close Beatrice had come to success . . . and how completely it had failed, in the end.
"Good," she said at last, after yet another fifteen-second delay. "Decelerate to zero relative to the system primary. You'll be boarded by prize officers once you do. In the meantime," she smiled again, that same terrifying smile, "my ships will remain here, where we can . . . keep an eye on things."

GloriousRuse wrote:Since we don't have a copy of the Deneb Accords hanging around, we will have to extrapolate:

1. We have only Honor and Henke ever demanding cores as part of the surrender.

2. When Henke does it, it is a matter of some argument since it denies traditional rights - she wants it for some incriminating file if I remember right, the SLN of course eventually caves because they don't want to die, but not before pointing out that this violates all sorts of norms given the complete betrayal of the force it will end up being. Essentially making this demand is saying "If you won't help us kill your comrades by revealing every weapons spec and op plan you have, you don't get to surrender."

GloriousRuse wrote:I stand corrected. Tourville does not get to flush his cores.

I guess the next question would be at what time does custom and intent (not forcing a betrayal of your honor) count as “criminal.”

I’m not sure if there was ever a codified rule about practicable breaches, for instance. If there was, it almost certainly followed the customary practice. While it was fine to demand the surrender of a city/fort that had been breached upon pain of sacking if refused, threatening it up front would be a violation of custom and therefore most likely “criminal” such as the times allowed.

Likewise, in an even more gentlemanly age, garrisons we’re allowed to march out with full honors and their freedom if they surrendered at a certain point. While you could certainly practically demand that the garrison surrender and become prisoners, and enforce it, and might still avoid a fight, you would be violating a custom which at the time had the weight of law.

Which begs the question; how strong was the wiping custom? Was it strong enough that in a napoleonic era it would have been assumed to have the force of law? Most surrender customs do, even prior to being codified in a modern legal system.

GloriousRuse wrote:Likewise, in an even more gentlemanly age, garrisons we’re allowed to march out with full honors and their freedom if they surrendered at a certain point. While you could certainly practically demand that the garrison surrender and become prisoners, and enforce it, and might still avoid a fight, you would be violating a custom which at the time had the weight of law.

tlb wrote:All you have to do is find a place where the computer cores were demanded to be left intact and the captain states that was an illegal request because of the Deneb Accords. I think the first time this demand is made is in Echoes of Honor, because she needs functioning war ships. I believe that is also where there is a discussion about the way purging the computer cores disables a ship.

tlb wrote:All you have to do is find a place where the computer cores were demanded to be left intact and the captain states that was an illegal request because of the Deneb Accords. I think the first time this demand is made is in Echoes of Honor, because she needs functioning war ships. I believe that is also where there is a discussion about the way purging the computer cores disables a ship.

Eyal wrote:Didn't she explicitly say she didn't consider the Havenites in question in EoH to be protected by the Deneb Accords?

chapter 13 wrote:"And how did the two of you end up at Inferno?" Honor asked after a moment.
"Oh, I've always been a troublemaker, Commodore," Benson said with a bitter smile, and reached out to lay a hand on Dessouix's shoulder. "Henri here can tell you that."
"Stop that," Dessouix said. His tone was forceful, and he enunciated each word slowly and carefully, as he if were determined to make his weirdly accented Standard English comprehensible. "It wasn't your fault, bien-aimée. I made my own decision, Harriet. All of us did."
"And I led all of you right into it," she said flatly. But then she inhaled sharply and shook her head. "Not but what he isn't right, Dame Honor. He's a stubborn man, my Henri."
"And you aren't?" Dessouix snorted with slightly less force.
"Not a man, at any rate," Benson observed with a slow, lurking smile. It was the first Honor had seen from the other woman, and it softened her stern face into something almost gentle.
"I'd noticed," Dessouix replied dryly, and Benson chuckled. Then she looked back at Honor.
"But you were asking how I wound up here. The answer's simple enough, I'm afraid—ugly, but simple. You see, neither InSec nor these new Black Leg, StateSec bastards have ever seen any reason to worry about little things like the Deneb Accords. We're not prisoners to them; we're property. They can do anything the hell they like to us, and none of their 'superior officers' are going to so much as slap their wrists. So if you're good looking and a Black Leg takes a hankering for you—"

chapter 14 wrote:"I didn't say that," Honor replied. "Captain Benson's given me some idea of how badly the Peeps have abused their prisoners, and I've had a little experience of the same sort myself, even before the Peeps grabbed me. But the fact that they've seen fit to violate the Deneb Accords doesn't absolve me, as a Manticoran officer, from my legal obligation to observe them. I almost forgot that once. And even though I felt then—and feel now—that I was completely justified on a personal level, it would have been a violation of my oath as an officer. I'm not going to let it happen again, Commodore Ramirez. Not on my watch."
"Then you are—" Ramirez began, but Honor interrupted.
"Let me finish, Commodore!" she said sharply, and he paused. "As I say, I must observe the Deneb Accords, but if I recall correctly, the Accords make specific provision for the punishment of those who violate them so long as due process is observed. I realize that most legal authorities interpret that as meaning that those accused of violations should be tried in civilian courts following the end of hostilities. We, however, find ourselves in a wartime situation . . . and I feel quite sure there are sufficient officers on Hell, drawn from any number of military organizations, for us to empanel a proper court-martial."
"Court-martial?" Ramirez repeated, and she nodded.
"Exactly. Please understand that any court empaneled under my authority will be just that: a court in which all the legal proprieties, including the rights of the accused, will be properly safeguarded. And assuming that guilty verdicts are returned, the sentences handed down will be those properly provided for in the relevant law codes. We will act as civilized human beings, and we will punish wrongdoing, not simply compound it with barbarisms of our own."

chapter 39 wrote:Gonsalves shrugged unhappily, and McKeon concealed a mental grimace. The fact that Gonsalves was right about the terms of the Uniform Code of Conduct didn't make him like it. Under the Manticoran Articles of War, forcible rape was a capital offense whether force was actually used or simply threatened, and given the situation here on Hell, any demand a Black Leg made had to be considered to be backed by the threat of force. Given his druthers, McKeon would hang Citizen Lieutenant Mangrum in a heartbeat and then go back to piss on his grave, but Honor had been right. They had to proceed under the basis of the Peeps' own rules. Otherwise Section Twenty-Seven of the Deneb Accords—which neither he nor Honor had any intention of infringing in any way, given their own experiences—would have prohibited any trial of enemy personnel in time or war. Subsection Forty-Two specifically provided for wartime trials of individuals for alleged violation of local laws (in this case the Peeps' own UCC, since Hell had been sovereign territory of the People's Republic of Haven at the time) predating their capture, but prohibited ex post facto trials under the municipal law of whoever captured them.

chapter 46 wrote:"Good." The right side of Harrington's mouth curled to bare her teeth in what might conceivably have been described—by someone other than Rachel Yang—as a smile. "Then there's just one more thing, Citizen Commodore. You will inform your captains that any effort to abandon ship, scuttle their vessels, or wreck their computer nets will also be considered justification for the use of lethal force. Your ships are our prizes, and they are StateSec vessels. As such, and in light of what State Security has done to the prisoners on this planet, neither they nor your personnel are protected in our eyes by the Deneb Accords. They would be wise to remember that."

GloriousRuse wrote:I stand corrected. Tourville does not get to flush his cores.

I guess the next question would be at what time does custom and intent (not forcing a betrayal of your honor) count as “criminal.”

I’m not sure if there was ever a codified rule about practicable breaches, for instance. If there was, it almost certainly followed the customary practice. While it was fine to demand the surrender of a city/fort that had been breached upon pain of sacking if refused, threatening it up front would be a violation of custom and therefore most likely “criminal” such as the times allowed.

Likewise, in an even more gentlemanly age, garrisons we’re allowed to march out with full honors and their freedom if they surrendered at a certain point. While you could certainly practically demand that the garrison surrender and become prisoners, and enforce it, and might still avoid a fight, you would be violating a custom which at the time had the weight of law.

Which begs the question; how strong was the wiping custom? Was it strong enough that in a napoleonic era it would have been assumed to have the force of law? Most surrender customs do, even prior to being codified in a modern legal system.

tlb wrote:All you have to do is find a place where the computer cores were demanded to be left intact and the captain states that was an illegal request because of the Deneb Accords. I think the first time this demand is made is in Echoes of Honor, because she needs functioning war ships. I believe that is also where there is a discussion about the way purging the computer cores disables a ship.

Sometimes custom is included when writing laws of war; but breaking custom involves a possible social stigma, not a criminal one (although there have been times and social classes where a social stigma was at least as bad).

PS. RFC discusses the rules of "practical breach" when explaining the Eridani Edict.

Nor did it change the fact that Honor had demanded the surrender of his intact databases as the price for sparing his surviving superdreadnoughts. She'd been within her rights to stipulate whatever terms she chose, under the rules of war, yet she'd known when she issued the demand that she was stepping beyond the customary usages of war. It was traditional—and generally expected—that any officer who surrendered his command would purge his computers first. And, she was forced to concede, she'd had Alistair McKeon do just that with his own data when she'd ordered him to surrender his ship to Tourville.

tlb wrote:I have found a definitive statement, where Honor is about to meet Tourville as a POW after the Battle of Manticore, in Mission of Honor, chapter 2:

Nor did it change the fact that Honor had demanded the surrender of his intact databases as the price for sparing his surviving superdreadnoughts. She'd been within her rights to stipulate whatever terms she chose, under the rules of war, yet she'd known when she issued the demand that she was stepping beyond the customary usages of war. It was traditional—and generally expected—that any officer who surrendered his command would purge his computers first. And, she was forced to concede, she'd had Alistair McKeon do just that with his own data when she'd ordered him to surrender his ship to Tourville.