munroburton wrote:cthia wrote:If I'm honest with myself, I think the one whose actions I'm more disappointed with or surprised by is Honor's. Honor knew the capabilities of Apollo like no one else. She also had to know that she wouldn't be needing all of the Apollo capable ships, or birds. Why didn't she say—at the very least— "Hey, why don't you guys allow me to detach Able 1 2 & 3 just in case someone breaks into the store while you're minding it!"
Because if anyone should have seen the possibility and even probability of such an attack should have been Honor. IINM, textev even favored Honor of being the only one who possibly did foresee it.
One thing is for certain, D'Orville had to have winced internally and swallowed a certain retort "Where the hell are my Apollo birds? How the phuck did I allow myself to be talked into letting Harrington take all of them!"
Sometimes I think Apollo's effectiveness took everyone by surprise, including ol' Salamander herself. But yeah, she had several weeks more than everyone else to think about the consequences, as Eighth Fleet travelled home to deliver the news.
It all comes back to timing. Theisman had already done about a month or two of preparations for Beatrice, before Lovat, which made it possible to launch Beatrice in the tiny time window they had before Manticore's system-defense Apollos were ready and caught everyone off guard.
Indeed to all of your points. If I may add...
Yea, everyone keeps trying to pass the buck and blame it all on what amounts to a simple
clerical error. At least it isn't being blamed on the alcohol,
although compared to this, alcohol would be a much better excuse. Well, the buck stops here. It is no excuse that the system defense pods wouldn't be available for another month. In that case the solution was still very simple; delay Eighth Fleet's objectives for a month. It wouldn't have mattered if the initiative was temporarily lost to the Havenites, if a mighty thrust to the heart of the Havenites was in the very near future—checkmate!
After Apollo was distributed to at least
one RMN fleet, then there should never have existed any such "window of opportunity" for the RHN to invade the Manticoran system, period. UNLESS under penalty of incompetence.
Apollo effectively closed that window—a window that was realistically open to
both polities pre-Apollo.
The reason that should have been the call anyways, to deploy at least a minimal subset of Apollo in Home fleet—even if all else was equal— besides it being the smartest thing to do... strategically is...
1. It is the smartest thing to do strategically.
Why? Because you...2. Always protect the Home system first and foremost. It is the number one priority. And this has now become both your number one offensive and defensive weapon.
3. Protect your Queen—which is recursively synonymous to protecting Manticore. And you always do that with your most advanced weaponry, because your home system is the most valuable resource and objective.
However, even amidst all of the above three being painfully obvious and a given for
any navy, the RMN is tasked with a very important added responsibility. Their very life-blood may depend on this newly self-created responsibility...
4
PROTECT APOLLO ITSELF—For the simple and clear fact that the full production force of the birds wasn't yet on the table and wouldn't be for another month... Which means that your first priority has now become
protect the production facilities at all costs as the new first order of business—of duty even. It has morphed into your new heir of responsibility and to do anything less would represent a gross dereliction of duty. It would be criminal negligence. Manticore AND the production facilities has become synonymous in importance.
Which strategically meant that everything that the RMN
absolutely needed to
immediately and critically protect was at home. And, after Apollo was invented and introduced a game changer, it represented a priceless investment. "Apollo" should have become the "Queen" by friendly takeover. By unveiling Apollo, the RMN jeopardized the entire Apollo program and could have lost it. If I were the Havenites, I would have made an attempt at the production facilities immediately. Do what the Japanese relatedly failed to do at Pearl Harbor by leaving the oil fields intact. Do what armies used to do against fortifications just about to get a Gatling gun ready. Attack before the scale tips decisively. The tactic is nothing new.
The Havenites could have planned an attack to destroy the Apollo production facilities just as the Malign did.
It questions why their most powerful fleet—which was NOT positioned smartly and strategically at home where she belonged so she could readily protect the honor of the Queen, Manticore and the Apollo production facilities itself—wasn't at least off on a mission spearheading its own thrust to the Havenite's capital of Nouveau Paris instead of beating up on one of the flunkies.
It is as if the RMN distracted their own most powerful fleet. It is as if the RMN shot its own CM against its own Eighth Fleet and Eighth fleet went chasing off after "false targets" or "objectives."
It I didn't know any better, and I do. It was if Harrington experienced the intoxicating effect of raw power and it temporarily went to her head and she became mad with power and had to leave the system brimming with power and loaded for bear to go pick on someone. And even though she was loaded for Peak Bear, all she was really expecting to encounter were a few Gremlins.
She had to show off. Instead of plan.
It is what it somewhat felt like to me as a reader. Yet I knew better.
TBH, the true effectiveness of Apollo had to be first acquired, and I suppose Honor didn't already know how effective it'd prove to be either. Though I'm having a hard time convincing myself of that.
