"Why are you still alive?"

To End in Fire, page 453 (54%) wrote:"This whole thing is outrageous. I'm an officer in the Mesan System Navy. I should be treated with at least a modicum of respect."

"What you are," Cachat said "is a member of the Mesan Alignment. And while I'm sure your story is interesting—we'll get to that soon enough—what really has me intrigued is something else."

He bent forward and planted his hands on his knees, bringing his face down to twenty-five centimeters from hers.

"Why are you still alive?"

We've talked about the fact that Milliken might know something and might be a source of information for Ruth in the next book.

But I've just realised two important details about her and Captain Maddock (her superior officer, who had died). In Torch of Freedom they're introduced as officers in the Mesan Alignment Navy:

Torch of Freedom, Ch. 44 wrote:Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. [...] And so, the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the "navy" everyone knew about, the MAN was deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.

And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.

Not the Galton System Navy, which is the organisation Adebayo used to introduce herself to Honor when they communicated at Galton. Now, this might get retconned later, as the two of them having been part of the Galton Navy, not the one out of Darius, but the portion I highlighted in bold tells me otherwise. That tells me that Maddock knew about the spider ships, which no one except the two Top Dogs at Galton did. He might have been more than a mere Captain in his real home organisation, but even a Rear Admiral out of Galton shouldn't have known about the spiders.

And he must have been thinking about spider ships. We do know Galton had squadrons of superdreadnoughts at this point and must have had battle cruisers for several decades so it doesn't match his musings about "carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers." Galton would have already produced an SD(P) by the time he'd have left, so those couldn't be "the ships we're going to have very shortly." Moreover, SD(P)s at Galton could definitely not trounce "just about anybody else," seeing as they'd been inspired by the the Havenite sector navies.

So my take is that he was definitely from the Darius-based MAN, not the Galton Navy. It's an assumption that Milliken would be too, but it's reasonable because she'd have questioned somewhat having been paired with an officer she'd never had known before in Galton. And even in the unlikely case she was from Galton, she'd have known Maddock wasn't and it's information she can still tell.

Then there's the second point: just why they were leading the PNiE into an attack on Torch. They were doing that because the Congo Wormhole led to The Twins, which led to Felix, which led to Darius. It's reasonable to assume they knew the real reason for the operation.

What this tells me is that that they knew of the existence of the MAN, the existence of the spider ships, probably of the plans for the Leonard Detweiler class ships, the location of Darius and Felix, the reason why the Congo Wormhole was different, and the involvement of Mannerheim (which in turn puts the whole RF into questoin).

Maddock is dead, but Milliken is alive and apparently slowly being turned by Ruth.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

To End in Fire, page 453 (54%) wrote:"This whole thing is outrageous. I'm an officer in the Mesan System Navy. I should be treated with at least a modicum of respect."

"What you are," Cachat said "is a member of the Mesan Alignment. And while I'm sure your story is interesting—we'll get to that soon enough—what really has me intrigued is something else."

He bent forward and planted his hands on his knees, bringing his face down to twenty-five centimeters from hers.

"Why are you still alive?"

We've talked about the fact that Milliken might know something and might be a source of information for Ruth in the next book.

But I've just realised two important details about her and Captain Maddock (her superior officer, who had died). In Torch of Freedom they're introduced as officers in the Mesan Alignment Navy:

Torch of Freedom, Ch. 44 wrote:Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. [...] And so, the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the "navy" everyone knew about, the MAN was deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.

And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.

Not the Galton System Navy, which is the organisation Adebayo used to introduce herself to Honor when they communicated at Galton. Now, this might get retconned later, as the two of them having been part of the Galton Navy, not the one out of Darius, but the portion I highlighted in bold tells me otherwise. That tells me that Maddock knew about the spider ships, which no one except the two Top Dogs at Galton did. He might have been more than a mere Captain in his real home organisation, but even a Rear Admiral out of Galton shouldn't have known about the spiders.

And he must have been thinking about spider ships. We do know Galton had squadrons of superdreadnoughts at this point and must have had battle cruisers for several decades so it doesn't match his musings about "carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers." Galton would have already produced an SD(P) by the time he'd have left, so those couldn't be "the ships we're going to have very shortly." Moreover, SD(P)s at Galton could definitely not trounce "just about anybody else," seeing as they'd been inspired by the the Havenite sector navies.

So my take is that he was definitely from the Darius-based MAN, not the Galton Navy. It's an assumption that Milliken would be too, but it's reasonable because she'd have questioned somewhat having been paired with an officer she'd never had known before in Galton. And even in the unlikely case she was from Galton, she'd have known Maddock wasn't and it's information she can still tell.

Then there's the second point: just why they were leading the PNiE into an attack on Torch. They were doing that because the Congo Wormhole led to The Twins, which led to Felix, which led to Darius. It's reasonable to assume they knew the real reason for the operation.

What this tells me is that that they knew of the existence of the MAN, the existence of the spider ships, probably of the plans for the Leonard Detweiler class ships, the location of Darius and Felix, the reason why the Congo Wormhole was different, and the involvement of Mannerheim (which in turn puts the whole RF into questoin).

Maddock is dead, but Milliken is alive and apparently slowly being turned by Ruth.

Thank you TM! That is the phucking passage I've been searching for that supports the fact that the LDs will be ready soon. Soon may be vague, but not that vague.

And shortly is even less vague.

There is no other ship that would fit that description of being in a league of its own. Fire and Brimstone.

Caveat: Anyone at Darius could have hailed from Galton but later recruited by the Onion. My argument in another thread is that there may have been critical personnel at Galton that were whisked away by a Houdini-like contingency plan when the shooting started. Which would have included actual Darius natives. As paranoid as the MA are, it just seemed unrealistic that they would have so few people riding herd over Galton. Very interesting thread and logic!

Also, there are levels of the Onion. And data is classified as a need to know basis on each level.

cthia wrote: Anyone at Darius could have hailed from Galton but later recruited by the Onion. My argument in another thread is that there may have been critical personnel at Galton that were whisked away by a Houdini-like contingency plan when the shooting started. Which would have included actual Darius natives. As paranoid as the MA are, it just seemed unrealistic that they would have so few people riding herd over Galton. Very interesting thread and logic!

Also, there are levels of the Onion. And data is classified as a need to know basis on each level.

Any such evacuation would have to occur before the Grand Alliance arrived at the system and flooded the area with recon drones. Also it could not be done in a way to arouse the suspicion of anyone that might survive the Grand Alliance attack. There is no mention of any such plan among the Detweilers or anyone that they met at Galton. So there is no evidence for or against that idea. I am not sure that the numbers of knowledgeable command staff that willingly committed suicide counts as a "few". Anyway this is a military command, so only the very top echelon really needs to know; the rest will just follow orders.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Torch of Freedom, Ch. 44 wrote:And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.

Let's unpick the qualifiers in that quote. First, it's using the Mesan System Navy as context for what their current ships can easily destroy. IIRC, that Navy had fewer than a hundred battlecruisers and promptly surrendered without firing a shot when Tenth Fleet appeared.

Second, it's not saying "anyone else, too", but rather "just about anybody else". The trouble is, it works either way. This was given in late 1921, just before the PNiE's attack on Congo and Galton was defeated in 1924.

If they're from Galton, that could refer to their modest wall of battle about to be augmented by the seventeen podlayers Honor didn't bother to seize. That is probably a force which rivals the Maya-aligned Erewhon, but falls well short of challenging the top five. It certainly would kick "just about anyone else's" ass, though.

And if they're from Darius, the references would be to the Sharks already in commission being capable of destroying the MSN, with the slowly-completing Detweilers not quite becoming unstoppable god-weapons either.

cthia wrote:And shortly is even less vague.

The third qualifier - it's still incredibly vague when we're discussing people with prolong participating in a centuries-long conspiracy which may not reach its conclusion within their extended lifetimes.

"Very shortly" could be a handful of weeks. Months. Years - up to five at the extreme? We're already looking at two and a half years between the battles of Second Congo and Galton.

cthia wrote:Thank you TM! That is the phucking passage I've been searching for that supports the fact that the LDs will be ready soon. Soon may be vague, but not that vague.

That's the passage I'd use to prove the exact opposite.

If he's referring to the MAN that has spider ships, like I am arguing he is, then you have to take the previous paragraph too, the one that says this particular navy had nothing bigger than a light cruiser until moderately recently. That means it didn't have any construction capabilities until recently. They certainly do now and we also now know that they could just import people and knowledge from Galton, so they would have bootstrapped that industry much more quickly than anyone else.

But there's still a time delay and there's definitely a volume issue too. That supports my assertions that the MAN can't have multiple squadrons of LDs until late in the 1920s, at least, possibly well into the 1930s. Those are huge ships and will probably take at least 3 years to build each, after they pick up the build rate. The first iterations are more likely going to take 4 to 6 years.

And shortly is even less vague.

No, that's pretty vague. "In 17 months" is less vague.

From what we've heard since, "shortly" meant somewhere between 18 to 36 months. This musing happened in mid-1921 and we know that those LDs weren't ready by late that same year. And that's just the first ships that would be launched.

There is no other ship that would fit that description of being in a league of its own. Fire and Brimstone.

I agree, which is why I think that's why Maddock knew about spider ships and the LD class. He wasn't thinking about the SD(P)s that the Galton Navy had recently commissioned.

Caveat: Anyone at Darius could have hailed from Galton but later recruited by the Onion. My argument in another thread is that there may have been critical personnel at Galton that were whisked away by a Houdini-like contingency plan when the shooting started. Which would have included actual Darius natives. As paranoid as the MA are, it just seemed unrealistic that they would have so few people riding herd over Galton. Very interesting thread and logic!

Also, there are levels of the Onion. And data is classified as a need to know basis on each level.

Agreed, Darius could easily have recruited people from Galton. As tlb said, it had to have happened before Honor arrived, though.

Though people disappearing from Galton and given that the GA knows people were evacuated from Mesa could be yet another clue that there is another hideaway besides Galton.

Anyway, what's your opinion about Jessica Milliken knowing the yellow brick road to Darius?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Anyway, what's your opinion about Jessica Milliken knowing the yellow brick road to Darius?

If she's from Darius, then she must know roughly where it is simply by knowing the names of the most luminous stars in its night skies(unless the Darians renamed all the stars they could see).

I'm not so certain that she would be aware of the yellow brick road, assuming that means the wormhole connections beyond Congo's terminus. She could know that the wormhole termini there is why the PNiE was tasked to attack the system, but none of the details beyond that. No Mannerheim. No Twins, no Felix. Just Darius and probably the LDs there.

You know, it could get really interesting the first time Ruth brings up Galton to Milliken. "So... ready to go home?"

Then it becomes obvious that Milliken had never been to Galton before, indeed, had never even heard of its existence...

munroburton wrote:If she's from Darius, then she must know roughly where it is simply by knowing the names of the most luminous stars in its night skies(unless the Darians renamed all the stars they could see).

Sounds like a very simple OpSec measure, so I'm sure the MAlign did it.

But if she's MAN, she must have served aboard a warship that was in the Darius system, which means navigation would have fixed their position. Moreover, if she transited through the wormhole and wormholes are usually a couple of light-hours from the hyperlimit, they'd have needed to navigate too. So there's a good chance she knows the rough galactic location of Darius, but that's not what I was thinking of.

I'm not so certain that she would be aware of the yellow brick road, assuming that means the wormhole connections beyond Congo's terminus. She could know that the wormhole termini there is why the PNiE was tasked to attack the system, but none of the details beyond that. No Mannerheim. No Twins, no Felix. Just Darius and probably the LDs there.

I disagree. She'd have transited through the Felix-Darius wormhole, which meant she knew that much. And because she'd have been in Felix, she'd have seen the MSDF ships that were there to protect the Junction too.

Her own trip from Darius or Felix to wherever she met with the PNiE had to have included layovers, so she'd know the rough distance on the first leg. And unlike the Houdini people, she wasn't a mere passenger.

You know, it could get really interesting the first time Ruth brings up Galton to Milliken. "So... ready to go home?"

Then it becomes obvious that Milliken had never been to Galton before, indeed, had never even heard of its existence...

I was going to say Galton's existence isn't necessarily a secret from MAN personnel, but then I remembered that Gail Weiss was tasked to come up with a defence posture for it but only knew it as "System Alpha."

Here's what I think the timeline was:

~1700 PD Galton system is surveyed and the MAlign buys off the discovery. They begin a new phase of the Detweiler Plan which involves building up of military power, with the eventual goal of causing galactic chaos while they pit Haven against the Solarian League. Around the same time, they influence DuQuesne and the Republic of Haven reorganises into the People's Republic of Haven (1700 PD).

~1730 PD Felix wormhole is discovered and the Darius terminus is surveyed. MAlign sets it up as a fallback position. With two hidden systems, they decide to increase Galton's militaristic bent and keep Darius more "pacifist." Early forms of Alamo Contingency are created in case Galton is discovered, but there is no plan to intentionally sacrifice it.

~1900 PD Streak drive research bears fruit on Mesa and Galton puts it into production.

1905 PD First Manticore-Haven war breaks out.

~1910 PD Spider drive research makes a breakthrough, roughly at the same time as MAlign observers get hints of what happened during Operation Icarus and the Manticore technological edge (Project Gram, Project Anzio). MAlign decides to not send the spider drive research to Galton and instead move it to Darius. At this time, Darius would have had a large industrial base, but little shipbuilding. This is the time of the "handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers."

1913 PD Operation Buttercup effectively wins the First Manticore-Haven War. MAlign begins construction of SD(P)s at Galton and doubles down on spider research on Mesa and Darius. The Darius Navy becomes the effective Mesan Alignment Navy. First spider ships are constructed, such as the Ghosts.

1916 PD Sharks laid down, as scale prototypes of spider-drive warships.

1920 PD Leonard Detweiler-class ships laid down. Second Manticore-Haven War is in full progress. Huge missile count battles are exchanged, which starts to give worry to MAN military planners.

The important conjecture in that timeline is that Darius and the MAN wouldn't have been the main MAlign military arm until the spider drive breakthrough. Until that point, Galton was supposed to be causing the chaos called for in the Detweiler Plan, which is why it wasn't meant to be sacrificed. That would explain why the MAN was a small force up until a few years before the events of Torch of Freedom, with just a few destroyers and light cruisers.

Without Galton, that didn't really make sense. Why would the MAlign not invest in shipbuilding? If the Detweiler Plan needed chaos beyond what a PRH-SL war would cause, they needed those ships. Waiting to invest on shipbuilding because the war was still decades away seems risky to me, now in hindsight. It would be much better to have invested, have the necessary know-how developed or stolen from Technodyne, and have suitably trained military forces. Not at the scale where the Plan needed it, but ready to scale to that level within a few years, should the PRH or SL kick things off early.

I still think that Galton is a retcon and only conceived of since UH came out in 2018, but it's one I can get behind to explain why the MAN was so unprepared.

What I wonder is why the Alignment doesn't (we haven't been told they have) any hyper-capable warships at least at a slight edge beyond the best of the SL though perhaps with upgrade of most recent builds including Streak Drive?
The Mesa Space Force has (well had, they are all stood down) perhaps Technodyne built warships but they are not MAN
To this point most of what we have seen being used by the Alignment fall into roughly a couple of sets of ships being used (beyond the Ghosts/Sharks and soon to be LDs). 1) A) Freighters of various configurations which may or may not have been outfitted to haul slaves but mostly are run through various (and intricate) cut-outs to be gunrunners, move stuff around and serve as clandestine parts of the communications web. These may be openly or clandestinely armed.
1 B- Freighters part of Jeyssic.(spelling) or other transtellars who are only about one layer removed from the Alignment but who's operators/sr crew actually know little more than they are involved in things which are often highly illegal and exceptionally dangerous but are really only sure that the people (unknown) to whom they answer will kill them in a heartbeat if they either screw up or even think of "getting out of the business".

2) Some variant of mercenaries hired to do jobs but are ultimately disposable as needed.
3) Private fleet of Streak Drive and other hyper capable couriers or yachts for moving agents around and greasing the skids of plans.
4) Freighters moving goods specifically for the Alignment, most recently to or from Darius and other places but have "civilian" MAL crew.
5) Members of the Mannerheim SDF who are Alignment members and, while running typically good current version of "SL TECH) warships, are mostly just guarding the Fexli wormhole system and not yet engaged against any other navy.

NOTHING on actual Alignment built hyper-capable warships.

Sure, we saw those "SLN" cruisers that were involved in one attempt a screwing with torch but not really clear if that wasn't something like the Monica deal or other systems which have been co-opted by agents of the Alignment but other than getting paid really well do do bad things, are not actual Alignment personal. Cats paws, at best.

And why doesn't the Alignment have any sort of ongoing upgrade replacement system of top-of the-tech ships comming out of their own shipyards if they were going to be eventualy puppet-mastering the management of the post Detweiler End Game of taking over human space? Do they plan to eventualy just take over the surviving hyper capable warships in the human space with clones substituted for the crews---once they have killed off anybody who objects to the comming Alignment Universe while the Alpha Lines rule all from just out of reach of any "normals" or malcontents?

Or are the LD's actually gigantic seeding ships that will be spreading pods of generic control nanites to all inhabited worlds and anybody who even thinks about "doing something" against the new overloads will just die----painfull and lingering death- in as public a place as possible.

We are missing something quite large here.

Brigade XO wrote:What I wonder is why the Alignment doesn't (we haven't been told they have) any hyper-capable warships at least at a slight edge beyond the best of the SL though perhaps with upgrade of most recent builds including Streak Drive?

The Alignment certainly did. There's no reason to think the Sharks weren't streak-capable and the LDs will most likely be too.

Assuming the streak drive technology existed at Galton, then their newest warships almost certainly had that too.

None of which has been relevant to the story so far, so it might simply not have been told.

The Mesa Space Force has (well had, they are all stood down) perhaps Technodyne built warships but they are not MAN

The MSN was deliberately a joke. They did not have streak drive, that's for sure.

And why doesn't the Alignment have any sort of ongoing upgrade replacement system of top-of the-tech ships comming out of their own shipyards if they were going to be eventualy puppet-mastering the management of the post Detweiler End Game of taking over human space?

We don't know that they don't. We don't know what the shipyards in Darius are building, besides the LDs.

They're probably focusing on what's priority, which are warships and couriers. Aside from a few fast freighters (which are effectively Navy Auxiliary ships), there's no need to upgrade or build more freighters.

Or are the LD's actually gigantic seeding ships that will be spreading pods of generic control nanites to all inhabited worlds and anybody who even thinks about "doing something" against the new overloads will just die----painfull and lingering death- in as public a place as possible.

We are missing something quite large here.

I'm not following you at all. Why would something be missing? What's the objective that can't be fulfilled?