Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

Brigade XO wrote:
The next question is how much-if any- Alignment etc is included in the Mannerheim ships beyond perhaps the ability to use Cataprhacts (that they "got from Technodyine").

One problem is the Mannerheim society is officially anti-genetic uplift - and at least 75% of the people are not in on the joke. The part of the government and military that is in in with the Malign is an outsized percentage compared to the gen pop. How that is going to work longterm (with the part of the gen pop and the military that is not part of the "joke") is beyond me, and worth a story on it's own.

Honestly, I would have rather seen that than another random Slavic themed Verge planet shaking off OFS.

Brigade XO wrote:since they have the wormhole bridge that leads - to interesting places. That way Galton lies......

tlb wrote:It is my understanding that Mannerheim guards a wormhole that leads to Darius, not Galton.

Galton was interesting because it does not have access to a wormhole, which made it possible to triangulate its position based on the delivery of Cataphracts.

Theemile wrote:The Felix system wormhole, (10 ly from Mannerheim) has 4 termini, Darius, the Twins..., and 2 others. Mannerheim also has a hyper bridge to the Warner system. So any of them could be... on the "way" to Galton, which we really don't know where it is other than out in the verge somewhere.

counting the twins, Mannerheim alone holds 6 wormhole legs - that's potentially very valuable.

Given that Galton was found by routing analysis of traffic that was NOT using any wormhole; that seems highly unlikely.

Theemile wrote:The Felix system wormhole, (10 ly from Mannerheim) has 4 termini, Darius, the Twins..., and 2 others. Mannerheim also has a hyper bridge to the Warner system. So any of them could be... on the "way" to Galton, which we really don't know where it is other than out in the verge somewhere.

counting the twins, Mannerheim alone holds 6 wormhole legs - that's potentially very valuable.

We do know the way to Galton. It's 200 light-years via hyperspace from Mannerheim, in an unspecified direction (we know it must be in the general direction of the Hole in the Wall, but that doesn't help us pinpoint it).

The other end of the Mannerheim warp bridge is Warner, which is a League Core system, so it's not the way to Galton. And it was founded before the Felix Junction was discovered, so it can't be any of them either.

Theemile wrote:One problem is the Mannerheim society is officially anti-genetic uplift - and at least 75% of the people are not in on the joke. The part of the government and military that is in in with the Malign is an outsized percentage compared to the gen pop. How that is going to work longterm (with the part of the gen pop and the military that is not part of the "joke") is beyond me, and worth a story on it's own.

Honestly, I would have rather seen that than another random Slavic themed Verge planet shaking off OFS.

They're anti-genetic slavery, not against uplift because no one is talking about uplift. Polling about that is like polling whether we should build domes on Mars or the Moon or build underground: it's a topic most people won't have thought of and won't have an opinion on. However, it can be a poisoned topic now because of the GA's revelations about the Alignment's purposes, though can also be redeemed by the actions on the new Mesa.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:One problem is the Mannerheim society is officially anti-genetic uplift - and at least 75% of the people are not in on the joke. The part of the government and military that is in in with the Malign is an outsized percentage compared to the gen pop. How that is going to work longterm (with the part of the gen pop and the military that is not part of the "joke") is beyond me, and worth a story on it's own.

Honestly, I would have rather seen that than another random Slavic themed Verge planet shaking off OFS.

They're anti-genetic slavery, not against uplift because no one is talking about uplift. Polling about that is like polling whether we should build domes on Mars or the Moon or build underground: it's a topic most people won't have thought of and won't have an opinion on. However, it can be a poisoned topic now because of the GA's revelations about the Alignment's purposes, though can also be redeemed by the actions on the new Mesa.

The General Honorverse populace is still recoiling at the horrors unleashed by genetic warfare in the last Earth war, and the Beowulf code is still the base that many people feel safe as far as Genetic uplift. that is slowly changing, but the general sentiment is still there.

Theemile wrote:The General Honorverse populace is still recoiling at the horrors unleashed by genetic warfare in the last Earth war, and the Beowulf code is still the base that many people feel safe as far as Genetic uplift. that is slowly changing, but the general sentiment is still there.

I'd argue that the polling could also bias the answer. If the question is "would you accept incremental relaxation of the Beowulf Code to allow improvements to quality of life?" most people might answer "yes."

But you've got a point that there's a historic memory that is still living... and was kept alive by Manpower. If Manpower hadn't come along and made genetic slaves, the 1000+ years since the Final Wars might have faded enough that these incremental updates would not only have been allowed by now, they might have been commonplace!

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:The General Honorverse populace is still recoiling at the horrors unleashed by genetic warfare in the last Earth war, and the Beowulf code is still the base that many people feel safe as far as Genetic uplift. that is slowly changing, but the general sentiment is still there.

I'd argue that the polling could also bias the answer. If the question is "would you accept incremental relaxation of the Beowulf Code to allow improvements to quality of life?" most people might answer "yes."

But you've got a point that there's a historic memory that is still living... and was kept alive by Manpower. If Manpower hadn't come along and made genetic slaves, the 1000+ years since the Final Wars might have faded enough that these incremental updates would not only have been allowed by now, they might have been commonplace!

Well David has been mentioning this for the entire series, and the difference in the Mannerhiem population was specifically called out.

tlb wrote:Galton was interesting because it does not have access to a wormhole, which made it possible to triangulate its position based on the delivery of Cataphracts.

I was Galton as an example of what you can find by going places.

TEIF ran all over the place. They found Galton by running down shipments of materials from Hole-in-the-Wall that ended up being used in the attempted genocide at Torch. Ruth & company were tracking shipments and TRAFFIC which used the Mannerheim-Warner bridge.....and there is something squirrelly that they noticed in the nominal "round trip" times of the Jessyk Combine ships they had reason to follow up on. They get to the Mannerheim end of the bridge and go....?where? exactly? We can guess (because we have more information) but Transtellars don't just run ships on what could be considered a short shuttle route without something in it for them- like profit. Even if these are "small" ships, they cycled through that base Jessyk base like they were on an ongoing loop BUT to where?
No I have not gone back and reread the section...but Ruth & co have noticed that there is a pattern, but that so far the pattern doesn't make any sense given the timing they have access to from the base/system information. Where did they go when they spent apparently X to Y amount of time on that "route" when there isn't anything that anyone knows about that should be interesting to a merchant ship (even one from something shifty as Jessyk) in a radius of Z at the nominal usually hyperspace causing speed of that type of ship.
Ok, that leads to a lot of guesswork and probably nobody wants to ask Warner nor Mannerheim (this is a "secret intelligence operation") any specific question and nobody involved has any reason to expect either system to just turn over interstellar traffic of the systems and wormhole bridge without asking a lot of angry questions about why it's is needed.
A challenge in all this is that to send a ship or ships to any star within Z radius of that other end of the bridge also should scream BE VERY VERY QUITE when you do it because there may be an unfriendly welcoming committee there. I don't know, how about a mixed Task force of the Mannerheim SDF "exercising" with a few Spiders hanging near what would be "normal" approach vectors on a system---just to be murderous of something. This is the Alignment and Felix is a serious secrete.

Theemile wrote:Well David has been mentioning this for the entire series, and the difference in the Mannerhiem population was specifically called out.

Are you sure it was on uplift? I do distinctly remember the population of all the RF member systems being against slavery and in general supportive of the Cherwell Convention, thus anti-Manpower.

Brigade XO wrote:I was Galton as an example of what you can find by going places.

Right, they had three data points: the delivery of the Cataphract missiles to the PNiE for the attempted genocide of Torch, the delivery of the Cataphract missiles to Filareta (which could not have come from Mesa!), and the slaver ships that used the Warner-Mannerheim Warp Bridge.

Any one of them wouldn't have given enough information. Any two of them would at best describe thick tubes around two arcs. All three together allowed the GA intel services to limit the search to a zone that was actually searchable. This is even despite the slavers all going in random directions out of Mannerheim and randomising their delays a little.

Ok, that leads to a lot of guesswork and probably nobody wants to ask Warner nor Mannerheim (this is a "secret intelligence operation") any specific question and nobody involved has any reason to expect either system to just turn over interstellar traffic of the systems and wormhole bridge without asking a lot of angry questions about why it's is needed.

Warner is an SL Core System but unlikely to be in on the take. Mannerheim, at the time, wasn't even the Mannerheim Republic. The Mannerheim Association didn't have traffic control over its wormhole, so there was no reason to go bother Mannerheim with questions. There was no reason to suspect them.

A challenge in all this is that to send a ship or ships to any star within Z radius of that other end of the bridge also should scream BE VERY VERY QUITE when you do it because there may be an unfriendly welcoming committee there. I don't know, how about a mixed Task force of the Mannerheim SDF "exercising" with a few Spiders hanging near what would be "normal" approach vectors on a system---just to be murderous of something. This is the Alignment and Felix is a serious secrete.

Which they did. The GA scouting forces were not detected at all. The first clue Galton had of being detected was when Honor crossed the hyperwall with 250 superdreadnoughts.