Honorverse ramblings and musings

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:
Stephanie's bio always chokes me up. You can certainly see who passed a lot of DNA down to Honor. Again those strong female characters I O SO dearly love. Stephanie was a female version of Stephen Hawkins. Stephanie Harrington. Same initials anyways. It's odd that Stephanie's birth planet was a world within the Solarian League. Those original Meyerdahl modifications, it seems, were particularly successful and produced a fair share of very capable humans with some very high IQ's. Yet, where are they within the League? Surely they didn't all move to Sphinx.

Smart people in the League may be:
1) Not interested in League politics. It's not like it's that interesting. The elected people are placeholders, and it takes a very strange breed of wonk to care about bureaucrats.
2) Bureaucrats themselves. Hey, it's one of the reins of power in the League, plenty to do, competition for place. And for all the corruption, if you do want to do formal public service at the League level - that DOES SOMETHING - it's your option. Plenty of the people doing those jobs may even be doing good jobs well and honorably. For all its faults, the League hasn't yet collapsed into a savage tumult of cannibalistic rape gangs, and distance from that is a rough-and-ready measure of successful government. The general direction is bad; the ability to respond to changing circumstances sucks; the vulnerability to being played is fatal. But apart from that....
3) Science! Yes, Manticore does great stuff when it comes to killing people in space and not being killed by other people in space. And interstellar transport and law too. Otherwise, there aren't many fields in which the leaders aren't somewhere in the League. It is, after all, huge, so simple math would tend to deliver that result. Also, being huge has meant that it hasn't had to worry (before) about Making People Dead Tech, so all that creativity and energy can go into stuff other than Making People Dead Tech and its application.
4) Similarly, business. People tend to like things; things come from money by way of other people; smart people who apply their smarts to it can do it well. And they do. Even in the League, a lot of them are doing it honestly, I'm sure, or reasonably so.
5) Oh yeah, the entirety of the humanities. It's a golden age of science and the arts, when the centuries of peace under Pax Terra have birthed wonders and delights... until a livable error in political science, time, and machinations brought it to an end.

Don't knock Solarians. They're no stupider than anyone else or less virtuous. It's just that they have a concentration of blindspots in their thinking and accumulation of their vicious individuals right where it is going to bring the League down - and that happens to be right where we the readers see them.

Can't disagree with anything you've said Jeff. Very insightful post.

However. I'm not challenging Solarian IQ in general. In fact, I'm certain the IQ of a gerbil can be found in other than a Solarian forest.

Just not in the navy.

cthia wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Don't knock Solarians. They're no stupider than anyone else or less virtuous. It's just that they have a concentration of blindspots in their thinking and accumulation of their vicious individuals right where it is going to bring the League down - and that happens to be right where we the readers see them.

Can't disagree with anything you've said Jeff. Very insightful post.

However. I'm not challenging Solarian IQ in general. In fact, I'm certain the IQ of a gerbil can be found in other than a Solarian forest.

Just not in the navy.

The SLN's had a few problems that way. For one, tactical skills have had neither practice nor use: no one in the SLN gets a work-out with them, no one gets ahead with them. They get ahead with good politicking and advantages of birth - much like a Janacek Admiralty. For centuries. With no such thing as Haven or Silesia.

You would do badly bringing a knife to a gunfight. You would do badly bringing a gun to a cooking contest. The SLN has been more the cooking contest, only a tame political one instead. I'm sure Honor Harrington or Lester Tourville would have been gross failures in it. I'm sure Joseph Byng would have been an awful failure in the RMN. As it happens, the contest between the RMN and the SLN is much more the RMN's kind of thing, and we're judging them by that standard. (Which, to be fair, is a pretty good one for a navy, intended to fight.)

For another, there's that same institutional blindness, which you only ever really avoid if reality rubs your face in being wrong. Reality hasn't rubbed the League's face in anything in centuries. Reality hasn't gotten in the League's way til recently. Now, the SLN has let their dog rip up Reality's prized begonias and that harmless neighbor turns out to be 6'10", 360 pounds of very angry gardener muscle with a chainsaw.

There are at least THREE gardeners coming out of that tool shed.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:There are at least THREE gardeners coming out of that tool shed.

dreamrider

All of them with heavy duty chain saws.

The Cupid thread has stoked a fear that has led me here.

Enquiring minds haven't unearthed any romantic entanglements of Michelle Henke. Yet it isn't so unlikely that she could find herself in the hot seat soon.

What is the possibility of the MAlign approaching the Solarian League with a clandestine formal agreement to temporarily ally, under the radar.

A strategy utilizing another massive Solarian attack on the Manty home system to divert attention from a second, simultaneously coordinated, even bigger Oyster Bay might work, if Manty sensors and senses are solely preoccupied.

What's preventing the League and MAlign to take a page out of the Alliance book? The League just wants revenge from an upstart of a miscreant neobarb, and the MAlign still wants to rid itself of both. Not to mention how gullible League IQ is. And blind revenge, well, blinds you. As if the League hasn't always peered across rims of Solarian colored glasses.

Wasn't there also, at the launch of Oyster Bay, other MAlign ships closer to completion? I may be mistaken about that.

The MisAligned League. Has a ring to it.

cthia wrote:What is the possibility of the MAlign approaching the Solarian League with a clandestine formal agreement to temporarily ally, under the radar.

Pretty close to Zero.

The MAlign has had tremendous success manipulating key figures and has agents in place to continue manipulating events without coming out of the shadows.

The MAlign does have bigger, more capable spider drive warships -- the Leonard Detweiler class, aka the "Lenny Dets" -- but it will be a year or more before they're ready. Apparently they were the original choice for the full-scale Oyster Bay, which would have included Haven as a target. There is no conceivable reason for sharing the tech or even existence of the Lenny Dets with the Solarian League or anyone else. I'm not even sure they have been shared with the rest of the Renaissance Factor.

I suspect there will be an urge to use the Lenny Dets for another Oyster Bay type attack, with Haven included, but some bright tac-witch is going to recognize the static in FTL comms caused by a spider drive for what it is, and the Lenny Dets' weaknesses are going to be fatally exposed.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:What is the possibility of the MAlign approaching the Solarian League with a clandestine formal agreement to temporarily ally, under the radar.

Pretty close to Zero.

The MAlign has had tremendous success manipulating key figures and has agents in place to continue manipulating events without coming out of the shadows.

The MAlign does have bigger, more capable spider drive warships -- the Leonard Detweiler class, aka the "Lenny Dets" -- but it will be a year or more before they're ready. Apparently they were the original choice for the full-scale Oyster Bay, which would have included Haven as a target. There is no conceivable reason for sharing the tech or even existence of the Lenny Dets with the Solarian League or anyone else. I'm not even sure they have been shared with the rest of the Renaissance Factor.

I suspect there will be an urge to use the Lenny Dets for another Oyster Bay type attack, with Haven included, but some bright tac-witch is going to recognize the static in FTL comms caused by a spider drive for what it is, and the Lenny Dets' weaknesses are going to be fatally exposed.

Thanks Harold.
However, you've left an awful lot of 'between the lines.'

Pretty close to Zero.

But not zero?

The MAlign has had tremendous success manipulating key figures and has agents in place to continue manipulating events without coming out of the shadows.

Yes, but how much more, and who can they manipulate now? The entire 'verse at large is aware of them. The Manticorans and the Havenites, allies now, knew something was fishy even before they were exposed. The Havenites had a hard time convincing all but Harrington, Harrington had a hard time convincing Elizabeth. THEN, collectively, they all had a hard time convincing the League. BUT, that particular cat is out of the bag now. So who would be a target for their assinine persuasions? I suppose the League could be. Confuscious knows that it takes more time for a gerbil size brain to permeate the sensibilities of the League than for a treecat clan's decision to forego celery.

In the case of any further direct League manipulations, well, you all know I'm on board for more SLN attacks. But even creatures below gerbils on the sentience scale are none too susceptible to continued insanity. And doing the same thing over and over and sending inferior ships against a much more technologically superior opponent and expecting different results other than becoming space kill is beyond insane. So, what other than further military action, in the form of a coordinated attack could there be? Unless, of course, they could influence arms of the League to withdraw expediting their demise. But why help kill an 800 lb gorilla when you could still use it in your own military machinations?

The MAlign does have bigger, more capable spider drive warships -- the Leonard Detweiler class, aka the "Lenny Dets" -- but it will be a year or more before they're ready. Apparently they were the original choice for the full-scale Oyster Bay, which would have included Haven as a target. There is no conceivable reason for sharing the tech or even existence of the Lenny Dets with the Solarian League or anyone else. I'm not even sure they have been shared with the rest of the Renaissance Factor.

Hasn't it been over a year of my nailbiting, awaiting the next read? Really now, I'm about to camp outside, on the block of the Mad Wizard's house, buying pages, paragraphs, even sentences of completed next book manuscript like crack, cooking it up and smoking it.

But there is no need for them to share knowledge or existence of the Lenny Dets. Remember, no one has seen them, or even what was used at Oyster Bay. They need only pledge to the League to use what was deployed at Oyster Bay, full-well intending to use the Lenny Dets.

I suspect there will be an urge to use the Lenny Dets for another Oyster Bay type attack, with Haven included, but some bright tac-witch is going to recognize the static in FTL comms caused by a spider drive for what it is, and the Lenny Dets' weaknesses are going to be fatally exposed.

Which brings me to a past hypothesis. The MaLign are not Mensa challenged like the League. They have to know that a technologically capable entity like the GA are bound to develop detection capability, especially with assistance from their defected Herlander Simoes. Giving the GA that time would be a strategic blunder tantamount to Haven waiting too long to launch Beatrice.

If the Lennys are even close to completion, as were Foraker's toys, now would be the time to pull a Theisman and deploy them. And what better screening elements than a navy you want dead anyways? And misdirection by preoccupation is the oldest tactical feint in the book.

At any rate, I haven't heard that it wouldn't work. But that you don't think it'd be the MAlign's cup of tea. Perhaps not, but things are quickly changing since Oyster Bay, and necessity is the mother of invention, except when the necessity is the need to survive, then it becomes the mother and father of invention.

There's a real opportunity for some sort of ally between the League and MAlignment to work. No sharing of tech needed. Quick and dirty. And a bigger Seafood Bay, to serve up the remaining big fish, Haven, Manticore, Grayson, in a coordinated, simultaneous, League-MAlign attack will punch out the GA.

cthia wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:I suspect there will be an urge to use the Lenny Dets for another Oyster Bay type attack, with Haven included, but some bright tac-witch is going to recognize the static in FTL comms caused by a spider drive for what it is, and the Lenny Dets' weaknesses are going to be fatally exposed.

Which brings me to a past hypothesis. The MaLign are not Mensa challenged like the League. They have to know that a technologically capable entity like the GA are bound to develop detection capability, especially with assistance from their defected Herlander Simoes. Giving the GA that time would be a strategic blunder tantamount to Haven waiting too long to launch Beatrice.

If the Lennys are even close to completion, as were Foraker's toys, now would be the time to pull a Theisman and deploy them. And what better screening elements than a navy you want dead anyways? And misdirection by preoccupation is the oldest tactical feint in the book.

At any rate, I haven't heard that it wouldn't work. But that you don't think it'd be the MAlign's cup of tea. Perhaps not, but things are quickly changing since Oyster Bay, and necessity is the mother of invention, except when the necessity is the need to survive, then it becomes the mother and father of invention.

There's a real opportunity for some sort of ally between the League and MAlignment to work. No sharing of tech needed. Quick and dirty. And a bigger Seafood Bay, to serve up the remaining big fish, Haven, Manticore, Grayson, in a coordinated, simultaneous, League-MAlign attack will punch out the GA.

There may be something to manipulating certain officers to go get in trouble where it serves Alignment interests - after all, that's just what was done with Byng, Crandall, and Filareta, with Rajampet helping in some or all of those cases. So far, that's been to complicate things for Manticore somewhat and mostly to bleed the SLN and shatter League confidence.

Letting responsible people in the League actually know about the Alignment, or suspect it seriously, would be an awful move. The Mandarins are corrupt and suffer from towering arrogance; they're not stupid. (And even the towering arrogance is getting battered - enough of that and the sound brains beneath it may start to work unimpeded.) If they had an Alignment they could believe in - or even convincingly fake believing in - they could get off the hook even now, stop the madness, control investigations to minimize damage to them (especially since they can throw Rajampet under the bus with gay abandon), and preserve the League. Boom, the centuries-long Alignment plan is toast. Wiping out the entire Haven Sector would be dubiously worth that.

There may be some situations in which a SLN force engaging a GA one would be useful cover for the MAN. For instance, if you want that GA force dead, an SLN force sent to engage it could account for the disappearance of the GA force - if you leave no survivors on either side with an accurate account of how they died. But for that, you'd need small, isolated forces targeted, to guarantee no viewers who would not plausibly be killed in the action. That's not Manticore, Grayson, or Haven, with their massive sensor arrays. It's not even populated systems, unless they've got practically no sensors on the planet.

It would include lots of wormholes in RMN possession now, at least those without settled planets or potential innocent bystanders with sensors nearby. But you'd still be pushing plausibility to do that to too many such junctions, and the RMN at least will suspect that any wormhole termini pickets that are supposedly blown away by Solarian forces with no survivors on either side were really miniature Oyster Bays. That's not helpful for the Alignment either. Maybe some wormhole picket assassination would be worth it. Maybe the idea that some SLN forces can at least reach a mutual-extinction tie with RMN ones would help prolong the conflict on the Solarian side. But that's the best I can see that way.

cthia wrote:The Cupid thread has stoked a fear that has led me here.

Enquiring minds haven't unearthed any romantic entanglements of Michelle Henke. Yet it isn't so unlikely that she could find herself in the hot seat soon.

What is the possibility of the MAlign approaching the Solarian League with a clandestine formal agreement to temporarily ally, under the radar.

A strategy utilizing another massive Solarian attack on the Manty home system to divert attention from a second, simultaneously coordinated, even bigger Oyster Bay might work, if Manty sensors and senses are solely preoccupied.

What's preventing the League and MAlign to take a page out of the Alliance book? The League just wants revenge from an upstart of a miscreant neobarb, and the MAlign still wants to rid itself of both. Not to mention how gullible League IQ is. And blind revenge, well, blinds you. As if the League hasn't always peered across rims of Solarian colored glasses.

Wasn't there also, at the launch of Oyster Bay, other MAlign ships closer to completion? I may be mistaken about that.

The MisAligned League. Has a ring to it.

Zero probability. If this mysterious group does come out of nowhere to offer that level of assistance, it will prove to the Solarian leadership that Manticore has been telling the truth all along.

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:The Cupid thread has stoked a fear that has led me here.

Enquiring minds haven't unearthed any romantic entanglements of Michelle Henke. Yet it isn't so unlikely that she could find herself in the hot seat soon.

What is the possibility of the MAlign approaching the Solarian League with a clandestine formal agreement to temporarily ally, under the radar.

A strategy utilizing another massive Solarian attack on the Manty home system to divert attention from a second, simultaneously coordinated, even bigger Oyster Bay might work, if Manty sensors and senses are solely preoccupied.

What's preventing the League and MAlign to take a page out of the Alliance book? The League just wants revenge from an upstart of a miscreant neobarb, and the MAlign still wants to rid itself of both. Not to mention how gullible League IQ is. And blind revenge, well, blinds you. As if the League hasn't always peered across rims of Solarian colored glasses.

Wasn't there also, at the launch of Oyster Bay, other MAlign ships closer to completion? I may be mistaken about that.

The MisAligned League. Has a ring to it.

Zero probability. If this mysterious group does come out of nowhere to offer that level of assistance, it will prove to the Solarian leadership that Manticore has been telling the truth all along.

Which would mean absolutely nothing to either the League or the MAlign if the GA would fall, for neither would have anyone to answer to. Problem solved for them both.

And the MAlign sure wouldn't care what either one of them knew so long as there's no GA.

What everyone is proposing, is that both the League and MAlign simply sit around twiddling their thumbs until hell comes aknocking and all they worked so hard for falls. Obviously the MAlign are developing the Lennys for a reason, and indeed are planning to act. At some point. I'm only suggesting that they expedite their timeline, as Haven did.

And that the enemy of your enemy, is your friend.