Andermani Question

Peregrinator wrote:I seem to remember, in one of the main sequence books, Honor being escorted in the Andermani Empire and being surprised at the level of their ships' tech. Can anyone tell me which book this was (assuming my memory is even accurate)?

Peregrinator wrote:I seem to remember, in one of the main sequence books, Honor being escorted in the Andermani Empire and being surprised at the level of their ships' tech. Can anyone tell me which book this was (assuming my memory is even accurate)?

Joat42 wrote:That sounds like Honor Among Enemies chapter 42 when Honor is invited aboard an Andermani ship for dinner, but you also have the tidbit in War of Honor chapter 4 where Captain Bachfisch notes that after a handing over pirates to an Andermani ship, that ship accelerates away on it's compensators purported max safety limit and he draws the conclusion that they probably cracked the new compensators.

"At any rate," she continued after a moment, "we got good visuals on several of their ships. Admiral Bachfisch was right about their new battlecruisers, too. They have at least one pod-based design in service; we got confirming visual imagery on three of them."
"I wish I could say it was a surprise," Honor observed.
"You and I both, Your Grace," Brigham agreed. "But after seeing those strap-on pods of theirs, a surprise is one thing it isn't. As a matter of fact, I'd have been delighted if that were the only thing the drones had confirmed."
Honor crooked an eyebrow at her, and the chief of staff shrugged.
"They definitely have at least one SD(P) class in commission, Ma'am. We're not positive how many of them they have in Sachsen. For that matter, neither Captain Conagher's tac people nor George and I are prepared to give you any definitive estimate on their total ship strength in Sachsen. They'd clearly dispersed their units and gone to emissions control before we got far enough in-system to spot them all. But we picked up at least twenty superdreadnoughts, and the drones say that at least five of the twenty were SD(P)s."
"Darn," Honor said with a mildness which deceived neither Brigham nor herself.
"We didn't pick up any sign of CLACs," Brigham told her. "That doesn't prove anything, of course. And we did see an awfully high number of LAC drive signatures scattered around the system." She shrugged. "Call me paranoid, but to my suspicious mind, the existence of pod-based main combatants suggests that they have to have solved the problems of building something as simple as a LAC carrier."
"You're probably right," Honor agreed. "And if you are, then they're going to be a lot more dangerous. You know," she went on slowly, "I wonder if they really failed to spot the drones at all."
"You think they may have wanted us to know about their new hardware?" Brigham sounded skeptical, and it was Honor's turn to shrug.
"I think it's possible," she said. "Think about it. If they're still hoping to convince us to pull out without a fight, letting us know that they're going to be tougher opponents than we might have assumed would make sense. And they could kill two birds with one stone, in a way, if they deliberately failed to respond to our drones. First, they let us 'steal' the data they wanted us to have anyway. And second, by 'not noticing us' when we did, they lead us to assume that they can't crack our electronic warfare capabilities. Which could come as a very nasty surprise down the road if we didn't take the hint and withdraw from Silesia completely."
"You know, Your Grace, I'd just hate double- and triple-think situations like this."
"And you think I don't?" Honor smiled crookedly, then gave her head a little toss. "But at least we know a bit more than we did, whether the Andies wanted us to know it or not. And they know a bit more about what's going on than they did before we went to call on them. I'm sure that someone back at Admiralty House is going to be upset with me for 'consorting with the enemy,' but I can't help thinking that this is the first positive contact between us and the Andermani since the entire escalation in tensions began."