Alexrod

munroburton wrote:We've already been told, really. The League's Constitution did not permit such actions. Nothing happened to provide justification for OFS to move in either - now, if Axelrod had succeeded, that might be different.

Exactly, but creating an excuse had never been a problem. Which begs the question: why did Axelrod use the Volsungs instead of the OFS and Frontier Fleet? Didn't OFS exist then yet?

I think there are even one or two other known junctions within the League Core which the League doesn't directly control. If they never took these over, why would they bother with one 300 light years beyond their frontier?

We don't know when those were found. It's possible they are much more recent ones, with the League having grown enough to not need them.

They're probably also much closer to the opinion centres of the League, if not directly on a member system. It's not like a transstellar can set up its usual slash and burn operation on an already industrialised planet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:We've already been told, really. The League's Constitution did not permit such actions. Nothing happened to provide justification for OFS to move in either - now, if Axelrod had succeeded, that might be different.

Exactly, but creating an excuse had never been a problem. Which begs the question: why did Axelrod use the Volsungs instead of the OFS and Frontier Fleet? Didn't OFS exist then yet?

OFS wasn't rotten straightaway. It started out as a benevolent organisation which gradually got out of control without any oversight or accountability.

Believe it or not, there was a time when an OFS intervention would more likely have kicked the Volsungs out, restored the legitimate Manticoran government and then left them to it.

munroburton wrote:OFS wasn't rotten straightaway. It started out as a benevolent organisation which gradually got out of control without any oversight or accountability.

Believe it or not, there was a time when an OFS intervention would more likely have kicked the Volsungs out, restored the legitimate Manticoran government and then left them to it.

Agreed, so are ewe establishing that mid-1500s the OFS hadn't yet turned sufficiently rotten for Axelrod's purposes? Not enough to warrant a regime change for little apparent gain, 300 light-years beyond the edge of the Shell.

How about after the wormhole was discovered? Two squadrons of battleships enough to scare transstellars?

Or maybe we'll find out that the scandal was sufficiently big to cause Axelrod's demise and then no one wanted to be shown repeating its mistake.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:We've already been told, really. The League's Constitution did not permit such actions. Nothing happened to provide justification for OFS to move in either - now, if Axelrod had succeeded, that might be different.

Exactly, but creating an excuse had never been a problem. Which begs the question: why did Axelrod use the Volsungs instead of the OFS and Frontier Fleet? Didn't OFS exist then yet?

I think there are even one or two other known junctions within the League Core which the League doesn't directly control. If they never took these over, why would they bother with one 300 light years beyond their frontier?

We don't know when those were found. It's possible they are much more recent ones, with the League having grown enough to not need them.

They're probably also much closer to the opinion centres of the League, if not directly on a member system. It's not like a transstellar can set up its usual slash and burn operation on an already industrialised planet.

House of Steel says that Axelrod had access to the mountain of data from the numerous surveys and figured out they'd contain buried data about junctions. IINM, they knew the MWJ was special, and hence, the League should have known as well. I doubt the League would have known it's ultimate strategic value at the time, but should have known that it's one-of-a-kind nature was worth obtaining.

cthia wrote:snip
House of Steel says that Axelrod had access to the mountain of data from the numerous surveys and figured out they'd contain buried data about junctions. IINM, they knew the MWJ was special, and hence, the League should have known as well. I doubt the League would have known it's ultimate strategic value at the time, but should have known that it's one-of-a-kind nature was worth obtaining.

There is an assumption there I am not willing to concede. That Axelrod was sharing that data with League Bureaucrats - something I find very difficult to believe - that is information that would have been very closely held, not least because of a fear that if the bureaucrats had it, whey might just seize the MWJ for themselves and cut Axelrod out altogether.

The strategic importance of the junction was not as obvious back then because most of the termini were in largely undeveloped areas. The junction actually enabled colonization and development of these areas. More importantly, the SLN was not yet contemplating expanding it's territory by force.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:snip
House of Steel says that Axelrod had access to the mountain of data from the numerous surveys and figured out they'd contain buried data about junctions. IINM, they knew the MWJ was special, and hence, the League should have known as well. I doubt the League would have known it's ultimate strategic value at the time, but should have known that it's one-of-a-kind nature was worth obtaining.

There is an assumption there I am not willing to concede. That Axelrod was sharing that data with League Bureaucrats - something I find very difficult to believe - that is information that would have been very closely held, not least because of a fear that if the bureaucrats had it, whey might just seize the MWJ for themselves and cut Axelrod out altogether.

You certainly could be correct. I considered your view as well. I simply find it also unbelievable that the SL would not catch wind of one of its transstellars' attack on a star system with it's mercenary fleet. And - at that time a SL with morals, scruples and values - not demand an explanation.

fallsfromtrees wrote:There is an assumption there I am not willing to concede. That Axelrod was sharing that data with League Bureaucrats - something I find very difficult to believe - that is information that would have been very closely held, not least because of a fear that if the bureaucrats had it, whey might just seize the MWJ for themselves and cut Axelrod out altogether.

I'm positive they did not. The Manticore Ascendant books make it pretty clear that once Axelrod concluded the MWHJ was possibly there, they immediately initiated secrecy protocols. That means they shared information with as few people as they could get away with. And since we see Jeremiah Llyn operating as covert as possible, I doubt that many people got wind of what he was doing.

Sharing with the bureaucracy would mean almost certain leak to competitors. Axelrod would not take that chance.

That doesn't mean some competitors didn't know what Axelrod was up to, through regular industrial espionage. But either they were not in a position to act on that knowledge, they didn't care about wormholes, or they were simply waiting for Axelrod to knock off the Manticoran government before seizing it for themselves. So far, we haven't seen any other party in this conflict.

Finally, until the junction was surveyed and the termini determined, I don't think anyone could tell for sure it was a Junction in the first place. How would anyone know that it didn't lead further away from the League? It might have been a connection from the middle of nowhere to the far end of nowhere.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:There is an assumption there I am not willing to concede. That Axelrod was sharing that data with League Bureaucrats - something I find very difficult to believe - that is information that would have been very closely held, not least because of a fear that if the bureaucrats had it, whey might just seize the MWJ for themselves and cut Axelrod out altogether.

I'm positive they did not. The Manticore Ascendant books make it pretty clear that once Axelrod concluded the MWHJ was possibly there, they immediately initiated secrecy protocols. That means they shared information with as few people as they could get away with. And since we see Jeremiah Llyn operating as covert as possible, I doubt that many people got wind of what he was doing.

Sharing with the bureaucracy would mean almost certain leak to competitors. Axelrod would not take that chance.

That doesn't mean some competitors didn't know what Axelrod was up to, through regular industrial espionage. But either they were not in a position to act on that knowledge, they didn't care about wormholes, or they were simply waiting for Axelrod to knock off the Manticoran government before seizing it for themselves. So far, we haven't seen any other party in this conflict.

Finally, until the junction was surveyed and the termini determined, I don't think anyone could tell for sure it was a Junction in the first place. How would anyone know that it didn't lead further away from the League? It might have been a connection from the middle of nowhere to the far end of nowhere.

Yes and no. According to HoS, any termini found within League space belonged to the League, and Axelrod reported any they found there for a lucrative finder's fee. Here is a paragraph or two leading right into what I posted previously, which also supports my notion that Axelrod knew the MWJ was triple the fun.

House of Steel wrote:The various termini the search had uncovered within the territory of the Solarian League had, of course, been recognized as the League's property and duly reported to Old Terra for lucrative finder's fees, but those outside the League had enjoyed rather a different status in Axelrod's opinion—especially in cases where the recrunched data suggested the possibility of true junctions, with multiple termini.

Cases like, oh, the Manticore Binary System, for example.

cthia wrote:

House of Steel wrote:The various termini the search had uncovered within the territory of the Solarian League had, of course, been recognized as the League's property and duly reported to Old Terra for lucrative finder's fees, but those outside the League had enjoyed rather a different status in Axelrod's opinion—especially in cases where the recrunched data suggested the possibility of true junctions, with multiple termini.

Cases like, oh, the Manticore Binary System, for example.

Interesting. I think one of the few things we know about wormholes is that the closer they are to the primary, the less important they are (fewer termini or less distance covered). So knowing the junction was far from Manticore might have been sufficient to hint to Axelrod that it was important.

And they did send that merchant ship to scan some more.

My guess is that they measured the Resonance Zone. We know it's a shortened cone with a base on the primary's hyperlimit and tip at the wormhole's hyperlimit. So if you can measure the existence of the RZ, you know there's a wormhole. If you can determine three points not in a line on the edge of the RZ, you can calculate the geometry of the RZ and estimate how far the wormhole is. At 12 light-hours, Axelrod would indeed conclude it was important.