Concepts: Today's similarities and differences to the HV

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:And why do you insist Maddock is from Darius? I would expect him to be limited to the spider corps, if true.

And yet he knew about them.

So maybe she does know something about Darius, a la Chekhov's Gun; but we have no evidence that either MAN officer were FROM Darius.

No, but Maddock knew about the MAN in the first place and its ships. So that's effectively a distinction without a difference: what matters is that he had seen the spider ship designs if not the ships themselves, and was aware that the MAN was gearing up to take on the entire Galaxy. He was aware that the MAN was a new navy too.

I see the text as being less clear than you've been projecting it.

Yes Captain Gowan Maddock belongs to the Mesan Alignment Navy.
"Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers" [ToF]
"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." [ToF]

But that seems to be it. He only appears almost exclusively in that one book, and the only mention of Darius in ToF is the Detweilers discussing whether to move someone else there -- so no direct evidence that Maddock knew of the place.
The one other mention of Maddock is in TeiF where he's identified by his cover as a Captain Maddock of the Mesan System Navy; and that is only to say he was Commander Jessica Milliken's boss[1]; and had died in the Battle of Torch.

Unless there's a more explicit reference I missed about what those new MAN ships were Maddock could be referring to the Cataphract equipped SD(P)s we know Galton was building[2]. Sure, we know they wouldn't actually be able to "tear the ass" off the RMN, GSN, IAN, or PRN but Maddock might not know that -- and they would be able to wreck anybody else's navy.

And my prior post already touched on the fact that Mesan Alignment Navy doesn't necessarily have to mean 'of Darius'.

So I'm unconvinced that Maddock is from or even knows of Darius or knows of the existence of the spider drive.

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[1] And it doesn't appear Milliken, despite being Maddock's second in command was actually in the Mesan Alignment Navy. She's identified in ToF as being "ostensibly one of Manpower's liaisons with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"; whereas Maddock's entry does call out that he's "Mesan Alignment Navy; ostensibly Manpower's liaison with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"

[2] The ones that the got only a passing mention as being part of the mobile defending forces when the Grand Fleet showed up later at Galton.

tlb wrote:And why do you insist Maddock is from Darius? I would expect him to be limited to the spider corps, if true.

So maybe she does know something about Darius, a la Chekhov's Gun; but we have no evidence that either MAN officer were FROM Darius.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And yet he knew about them.

No, but Maddock knew about the MAN in the first place and its ships. So that's effectively a distinction without a difference: what matters is that he had seen the spider ship designs if not the ships themselves, and was aware that the MAN was gearing up to take on the entire Galaxy. He was aware that the MAN was a new navy too.

Jonathan_S wrote:I see the text as being less clear than you've been projecting it.

Yes Captain Gowan Maddock belongs to the Mesan Alignment Navy.
"Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers" [ToF]
"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." [ToF]

But that seems to be it. He only appears almost exclusively in that one book, and the only mention of Darius in ToF is the Detweilers discussing whether to move someone else there -- so no direct evidence that Maddock knew of the place.
The one other mention of Maddock is in TeiF where he's identified by his cover as a Captain Maddock of the Mesan System Navy; and that is only to say he was Commander Jessica Milliken's boss[1]; and had died in the Battle of Torch.

Unless there's a more explicit reference I missed about what those new MAN ships were Maddock could be referring to the Cataphract equipped SD(P)s we know Galton was building[2]. Sure, we know they wouldn't actually be able to "tear the ass" off the RMN, GSN, IAN, or PRN but Maddock might not know that -- and they would be able to wreck anybody else's navy.

And my prior post already touched on the fact that Mesan Alignment Navy doesn't necessarily have to mean 'of Darius'.

So I'm unconvinced that Maddock is from or even knows of Darius or knows of the existence of the spider drive.

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[1] And it doesn't appear Milliken, despite being Maddock's second in command was actually in the Mesan Alignment Navy. She's identified in ToF as being "ostensibly one of Manpower's liaisons with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"; whereas Maddock's entry does call out that he's "Mesan Alignment Navy; ostensibly Manpower's liaison with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"

[2] The ones that the got only a passing mention as being part of the mobile defending forces when the Grand Fleet showed up later at Galton.

I think the difficulty is that we read Maddock's musings in ToF and as far as we know at that point the only hidden fortress that the Malign possesses is Darius and we know that Darius is sending a fleet to attack Manticore and Grayson. Then when Galton is finally introduced in TEiF, we think of it as a retcon; without considering how that would change our previous conceptions. So we had twelve years to harden our thoughts. I am now convinced that Galton is NOT a retcon, At All Costs was published 20 years ago and the author has had plenty of time to decide how he was going to rearrange the timeline after Honor survives the first Battle of Manticore. Perhaps Galton was originally something Honor's children were going to find.

tlb wrote:Okay, there is a specific point that could only represent Darius, if he specifically indicated that they were spider drive ships. So did he specifically indicate that they were spider drive ships? Or did he just mention a fleet that would put the MSN to shame (which could just be Galton)?

He didn't think about spiders specifically, but he was thinking of:

a) a navy called "Mesan Alignment Navy"
b) the newest navy
c) that had only a few, carefully hidden destroyers and cruisers up to recently
d) that would soon be able to take on anyone

None of the above applies to the Galton Navy, which must have existed for a couple of decades, had definitely already had SDs by the time he left, and I doubt he'd think that navy could take on the Haven Sector powers.

The last point is the crucial one. Most senior officers at Galton should be aware that they were at best matching the technology of the Haven Sector. For him to think that his navy could take on anyone, it would mean a technological advance that didn't seem to be in evidence at Galton - something that Gail 5 years later would concur. The alternative would be that Galton sent him to take on an ally of the Haven Sector powers without knowledge of the tech advances there... and to command with an ex-PN force that had been defeated by said advances 5 years prior. He simply couldn't command ("advise") the PNiE forces without knowing how Haven had lost the war with Operation Buttercup, because those ex-StateSec forces wouldn't listen to him.

Jonathan_S wrote:Unless there's a more explicit reference I missed about what those new MAN ships were Maddock could be referring to the Cataphract equipped SD(P)s we know Galton was building[2]. Sure, we know they wouldn't actually be able to "tear the ass" off the RMN, GSN, IAN, or PRN but Maddock might not know that -- and they would be able to wreck anybody else's navy.

Strictly speaking, yes, but see what I've just posted above. The Galton Navy doesn't seem to be the type to self-delude on this. Be misled by their puppeteers, sure, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The fact that they were going to get Cataphract-equipped SD(P)s indicates they were not yet even on par with the Haven Sector navies and Maddock should have known this. Even if he thought otherwise, he'd be disabused of the notion by the ex-StateSec people he'd be interacting with, so Galton had better have sent him with full knowledge.

Plus the industrial capacity: one system 200 light-years beyond the end of nowhere could not hope to out-produce the single richest system outside the League or the largest polity after the League, both of which had been on war-footing for over a decade.

The best I can give you is that he thought the SEM and the RoH would destroy each other by the time the war ended, that Grayson wasn't an issue (single system), and he wasn't aware of the IAN sharing those advances. Nor that the Maya Sector Detachment was getting upgrades from Erewhon, which is again a big intel faux pas because the detachment had already intervened on behalf of Torch once - if there was anyone he needed current intel on, it would be those. Yes, they missed how far along those ships were (because Roszak was feeding misleading intel in the first place) and that they'd intervene, but the fact that there was a pipeline in place from Erewhon to Maya to SLN should be known to him.

You'd need too much going wrong here and ignoring all the signs pointing to the MAN from Darius.

[1] And it doesn't appear Milliken, despite being Maddock's second in command was actually in the Mesan Alignment Navy. She's identified in ToF as being "ostensibly one of Manpower's liaisons with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"; whereas Maddock's entry does call out that he's "Mesan Alignment Navy; ostensibly Manpower's liaison with the People's Navy in Exile, covered as an officer in the Mesa System Navy"

Good point, but she did seem to be an actual naval officer, not a spook. She didn't have suicide nanites, unlike spooks.

tlb wrote:Okay, there is a specific point that could only represent Darius, if he specifically indicated that they were spider drive ships. So did he specifically indicate that they were spider drive ships? Or did he just mention a fleet that would put the MSN to shame (which could just be Galton)?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:He didn't think about spiders specifically, but he was thinking of:

a) a navy called "Mesan Alignment Navy"
b) the newest navy
c) that had only a few, carefully hidden destroyers and cruisers up to recently
d) that would soon be able to take on anyone

None of the above applies to the Galton Navy, which must have existed for a couple of decades, had definitely already had SDs by the time he left, and I doubt he'd think that navy could take on the Haven Sector powers.

The last point is the crucial one. Most senior officers at Galton should be aware that they were at best matching the technology of the Haven Sector. For him to think that his navy could take on anyone, it would mean a technological advance that didn't seem to be in evidence at Galton - something that Gail 5 years later would concur. The alternative would be that Galton sent him to take on an ally of the Haven Sector powers without knowledge of the tech advances there... and to command with an ex-PN force that had been defeated by said advances 5 years prior. He simply couldn't command ("advise") the PNiE forces without knowing how Haven had lost the war with Operation Buttercup, because those ex-StateSec forces wouldn't listen to him.

He never expected that the PNiE would succeed in their counter-revolution, but it did not matter to him. He was only advising them through the attack on Torch, which was the price they paid for the support from the Malign. After that he would depart and instead of attacking Haven (as they thought), their ships would be destroyed to eliminate the witnesses. Without the help of weapons better than the SLN normally had, the Solarian ships would have lost to Maddock's force and he would have succeeded, which was the only concern he had.

We now know that the people of Galton thought that they were the ones that had executed Oyster Bay. Perhaps he had the same misconception, based on knowledge of the 3s-graser. All we really know is that this is what he thought:

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.

What is "soon" to a enhanced person with prolong, within their lifetime (compared to a six century conspiracy)?